Woo Hoo! I remembered my password! So hey there to anyone still paying attention it has been quite a few years since I last posted anything here and a lot has happened! I'm engaged!! That date I had over two years ago is now my fiance! He's the best thing ever! He is also the reason I'm writing in here again. He goes away to sea often for his job, he is a Marine Scientist. He alternates 3 to 4 weeks at sea with 3 to 4 weeks in the office. He is now gone for a month and the section they are working in is far enough out to sea that he doesn't have cell phone or internet signal... it's gonna be a long month. I don't know how often I'll be writing in here, but seems I will be doing so when I'm lonely... I've been living mostly at Facebook these days and I also have a myspace page that I check often but don't use that much anymore, so if you want to stay in contact with me better, search for me over there (Amanda Hartford). I figured that I would write in here again so that I don't annoy all my friends with constant status updates every two seconds while he is away...which I'll probably still do anyways. So as the title says and as I mention a lot has happened in the past few years... life over all has been great since meeting Jeremy but life is never perfect and of course I've hit some really rough patches. I'm no longer an aquarist and I no longer work at Mystic... the last year working there was a horrible nightmare.... the whole time always doubting myself and my ability as an aquarist. Things are always tumultuous (25 cent word of the day!) there but for a long time it became like WW3... and I hear that since I left it has only gotten worse. The short of it is that things were turned upside down and the tanks that I took care of for 2 years and knew inside and out were taken away from me and I was given all completely new and very difficult tanks to take care of. That compounded with some personal issues cause me to have a complete melt down and I lost my job...leaving the aquarium with quite a bang. The aquarium totally sucked the confidence and life out of me... so for now I went back to my safety net... I'm back working in retail... though that hasn't been totally smooth sailing lately either. Though even with the bumpiness I'm still in line for a promotion. I don't know if I will ever go back to working in an aquarium or working with animals but I miss it everyday... I miss the animals and I miss the people I worked with. I'm still struggling with what happened.... yet I'm very glad not to be sooo stressed out anymore... I didn't realize how much stress I was dealing with until I didn't work there anymore.... it's a hundred times more then ANYONE should have to deal with.
The personal stuff I was dealing with that year was a combination of a few things. One of them was that a friend from High School was dying. He wasn't really a close friend but he was an amazing person... a hero... and I wish I new him better. He had Cystic Fibrosis and his whole life he defied doctors outliving everyones expectations and he lived with his whole heart... he was an amazing person.
Another thing I was dealing with was the fact that my Dad's cancer came back.... I took it a lot harder this time than before... one of the reasons being that I had a dream (before I found out it came back) that he had cancer and that it was terminal.... luckily that was not the case... though it did take a lot out of him this time (had a mild stroke... had to have a bone marrow rescue). We found out that while he was in the navy (never even saw battle) a plane decided to fly over his ship and purposely dumped it's extra load of Agent Orange all over the ship. If this is the reason that he has cancer then it is highly likely that it will keep coming back... knowledge that is a bit tough to deal with. For awhile he got assistance from the VA but "because he had such a great recovery" they ended that assistance... even though he is not able to work 8 hour days anymore...let alone 40 hour weeks.
But as I said life over all is going well. I'm now living with Jeremy in a cute duplex apartment in the middle of no where in RI. We have a cat named Betty... who is a sweetie... though since she is a tortie she does have a bit of a tude... though nothing like most torties. We are going to be getting married Sept. 11, 2010... no special reason to have it on that day... that's just how it fell... it is going to be deep in the middle of New Hampshire (were Jeremy grew up) at an awesome B&B. So far I don't have much set except for the location... need to start looking for a photographer and a clergyperson... it's a bit hard to do the planning when he is always going away... but I'm not worried yet as we still have plenty of time. Jeremy is a fabulous guy... he is kind, caring...etc etc... and he is also so much like me... we are just as dorky and awkward and we have so much fun together. His family is awesome too. We just went to a family reunion of his... and all I gotta say is that his family knows how to do it RIGHT! It was awesome... 3 and a half days of non stop fun... partying, drinking, eating, swimming, hiking, etc etc. it was a BLAST!!
So... that is pretty much the short of what's been going on with me. I switched my email from my secondary account(which was closed) to my hotmail account which, as I see, will not allow emails from here ....so I won't always respond right away...won't know if anyone commented until I sign on here and look... so be patient if I don't respond right away. Well that's all for now!
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