someone said today on twitter that this week has been like a rollercoaster ride for me, and that is exactly how i feel! firstly this happened
which made me think that the early offer made on the house wasnt accepted and i would be up for a heap more inspections and dealing with Troy the Teenage Real Estate Agent. i have a much worse name for him now but i will refrain from using it on an open forum. so in between storms
i took the dogs for a run on the beach
and then detoured to get some packing supplies
i managed to clean out this cupboard
and pack a heap of books on the weekend and it was all a bit weird and lots of sad.
i got really tired at one point, and sick in the stomach, and i had maybe 5 nights in a row of really bad dreams and interrupted sleep and i thought maybe something was wrong. but then i realised i just wasnt looking after myself very well, so i went to the actual supermarket, not just the 7-11, and bought actual food, like with nutrients and things in it and i chopped up a heap of tomatoes
and cooked them in the oven with garlic and chili and then put them in a pot with chorizo and paprika and made my favourite go to pick up me soup
it did the trick and i’ve been feeling better since.
until yesterday, when i was teaching all day and it was so exhausting, one long workshop with 40 postgrads, and i came out and read my email and there was about 5 emails from the landlady asking me to get back to her because she’d accepted an offer on the house and they wanted to settle in 42 days which meant the 6th of may but they wanted vacant posession and would it be possible for me to move out before then and i was like wait what? you sent me a letter giving me 90 days notice until june and we already agreed i could move out the day before i go overseas and now you want me to go two weeks earlier and where the fcuk am i meant to go?! she said she was mistaken about having to give me 90 days, that the prospective new buyers solicitor told her it was only 30 and they didnt know that i was still going to be in the house because TROY THE ARSEHAT real estate agent hadnt told them EVEN THOUGH HE KNEW!! i said to trent later ‘how can he go to sleep at night knowing he’s lied like that’ and trent said ‘does he drive a lexus’. yes. arsehat squared.
anyway, i pushed back and said ‘well we have a 90 day agreement and i have that in writing and im leaving on 22 may cant they just wait’ and she said she would talk to them because she agreed we had an agreement and she said she had told troy to make that clear. long story short, she rang me back and said they were ok with may 22, so its back to the original plan but not before i had a complete freak out and melt down. i did melt down a little afterwards, it just hit me that this is is really real and this house isnt mine and wont be my home and i could hardly sleep last night again.
and this morning the most amazing thing happened. i opened my work email and saw this
it goes on to say that i have been awarded the Karen Buhler-Wilkerson Fellowship for 2014, which now makes my visit to UPenn official business and i get proper access to things, and a title, and i also have money now to go back twice, because i have to present a seminar there about my findings. so now i can go for christmas yay and be in the snow and cold and not have to deal with all the shit here.
its only a tiny amount of money but its not the money i was after, it’s about that foot in the door. the first one of these things is the hardest to get, you just need someone to take a leap of faith and give you the chance and then others think ‘oh well if they gave her money’. so now i can really start building my international track record, let alone do amazing interesting work. this fellowship is looking at some of the american nursing approaches to the development of mental health nursing practice especially in relation to PTSD so i will have to work my butt off when i’m there in june now to get through it all! but there is no better centre in the world to give me a chance than the barbara bates centre at the university of pennsylvania. i cant even describe how honoured and thrilled and excited i am right now.
so i had been feeling totally overwhelmed by work again and realising i was doing too many things and panicking about the future, and i had decided i wasnt going to apply for any more grants for a while, but getting this one has inspired me to apply for another one through the american association for the history of nursing. it’s due monday and there goes my week and weekend but strike while the iron’s hot, as they say.
i had also decided that my knitting was stressing me out again. what is the point of having a hobby thats designed to relax you if all it does is stress you out!! i cant concentrate on the lace, i cant read the chart properly at night time with my eyes so sore from a days work, but if i dont knit i feel really agitated and like i havent wound down. so i decided yet again to put away the complicated stuff, including the thoroughly irritating striped hoody sleeve, and start something new i really want to wear in yarn i really adore
this is the madeline tosh merino light in ‘tart’ that i snaffled on pre-order from suzyhausfrau and i had always thought it would be one of these (Brise, by Hannah Fettig) so i just started, and now it is up to here and is to die for.
i can take this away with me this time because its all one piece and just easy knitting, and then finish the hoody when i get back. and then i can be draped in knitwear for a northern winter after all!
i thought last week that maybe i wasnt coping with all this stress. but i am coping. having feelings and being stressed or anxious isnt not coping. coping is having those feelings and doing what you need to do anyway. someone reminded me yesterday that im tough. i appreciated it, coming from someone facing much more serious issues than me. and this morning’s events remind me yet again that this is life, the up and down, the rollercoaster ride.
i’d be bored without it, probably!
k xx
