YIKES!!!!

...well well.

a ton has happened, so i'll try to make this as brief as i can...

...as you might know, i stayed with friends in port orchard, WA until the beginning of january. on jan. 10th, i found an ok room in the basement of a house in the next town, bremerton. my dad was stationed at the navy base there in the mid-60s. there is a big ferry there that goes to seattle in 50 minutes, and there are probably 200,000 people in bremerton. the house i lived in was 2 stops away from the ferry.

a week ago the manager of the place, jay, who also lives there, informed me the house was going to be CONDEMNED by the city because of wiring issues and the neat toxic mold under the wallpaper in the bathroom.... i had to move AGAIN.

my older sister lived about 5 minutes from the house. the next day she stopped by and i gave her the lowdown. since i was already in bremerton, i know she didn't want me to leave. jay had said that he got an apartment back in port orchard and he had an extra room for me. but my sister (and me) didn't really want me over there. i had just gotten settled in bremerton and really didn't want to make a big move again.

when i got to the house originally, i got my 25 boxes out of storage. most of the boxes were filled with cds (about 1,000 of 'em) and books (about another 1,000 of 'em). i hadn't seen any of that stuff for 4 years! boy, that was great getting those things out...

the other thing is that the hard drive on my computer crashed 2 months ago. jay had contact in california with a computer company and could get me the hard drive for about $20 and install it for nothing. every day that clicked by without having that hard drive was excruciating. i have a lot of friends all over the world, and that was the way i kept in touch with them. i also couldn't do job searches, etc....

i was really at my wit's end. i had to move, jay was dragging his feet about the hard drive, my small amount of DSHS money was going for rent and utilities... things looked pretty bleak. i had really wanted my own place, and i was willing to shell out the cash to do so. then it was all falling apart!

thursday of last week it all came together rapidly. my sister texted me that she found me a room just up the road from where i lived, with people from our church. whew!!! i was to move that saturday. jay had also informed me that day that he had ordered my hard drive!! so i packed up and moved 2 days later, gave jay my address so they could send me the hard drive, and the place to where i was moving didn't want any money for rent or utilities!!

but do i have a JOB yet?!?! that was the original goal, wasn't it?? throughout all this, i was still applying for work. and i'm extremely close. i finished up my paperwork to be a substitute teacher at my old high school, i had a lot of contact with the area director for boys & girls club and they have a job for me, and i sent my resume and application to the holly ridge center for individuals with developmental disabilities, upon their request. double WHEW!!!! i'm really close... :)

through the division of vocational rehab, with whom i've been working, i had to do 11 hours of testing as part of a nero-psych evaluation, as i mentioned before. i got the results two weeks ago. the doctor handed me a 15-page report, and we went over it for 2 hours. interesting...

...well, ok, only interesting to ME. but i had to take an IQ test, as well as a bunch of others. for the record my IQ was rated at 115. not bad. the average adult is 90-100. the doctor said that in most of the tests, if every 15 points over the average and you're in the next TIME ZONE, so that was helpful. i had thought that my short-term memory has been pretty bad since the operation, but he said my memory is just fine. it's my ATTENTION that is severely lacking. he said that he is really opposed to labelling me as ADHD, since my other test scores do not in any way point to that. in general, my other test scores were far above average for an adult.

what really stuck out to me, and the doctor, was that my score for "verbal comprehension," which encompasses word knowledge, verbal usage, and all things wordy, was simply off the charts! my score for that test was 98%, which means i scored higher than ninety-eight percent of all the people who have ever taken the test!! he said the average is 60%, so i was more than two time zones above the other people. like i said, i guess i am the only one who would find that appealing. this doesn't mean you all should come to me with word questions... :D he also said it would be appropriate for me to look for work where i could speak before groups or write, proofread, etc. i told him that i've been looking for that kind of work... i didn't tell the doctor, though, that i never capitalize...

another interesting note is that my AUDIAL skills were much higher than my VISUAL. what this means is that i have a far keener sense of what i HEAR, rather than SEE. he said this could be attributed to the fact that i play music. but he said my ears are extremely sharp. i guess that's good to know :) see, all that time in a recording studio paid off!! just don't show me a piece of artwork... :P

all in all, i've come full circle (in the short time i've been here). i really appreciate eveyone who's stuck with me and offered encouraging words. the battle is far from over, though, and i really have to take it all (cliche) one step at a time. i'll get there!