Returning Home Once More

Wow, it has been quite some time since my previous blog and I’m sorry for that readers. To refresh your memory, the last time I had uploaded some writing I had just gotten back from my trip in San Diego, adopted a new dog and visited a Lego convention. Not to mention, I was still living in Nebraska, but we’ll get to that later. I guess it goes without saying, but these last few months have been pretty uneventful and somewhat tough to write about, but don’t you worry because in this blog I’ll give you an extremely speedy update, so try not to get whiplash as you sit behind your computer, phone, or tablet screen and read this fun new piece. Without further ado, let’s get this ball rolling. LIGHTS, CAMERA, ACTION!

To refresh your memory, I had just adopted my sweet, cute Ollie from the Basset and Beagle Rescue in Omaha and boy was he a little trouble maker! After a couple nights of constant wake-up and go potty outside every two hours, it occurred to me that his foster mother had said that he may sleep the through the night, so I gave it a try and to my surprise he didn’t wake up to potty until 7am the next morning! Finally I had some sleep under my belt after having been a little deprived of it previously. Soon enough, his bladder and accident control had grown strong enough to be left for a few hours at a time so I could start living my life OUTSIDE of my room again! (No offense, Ollie) haha After knowing Ollie could be left alone to his own devices without having any accidents or making messes, my cousin and I began to try driver’s training. 

If I had not mentioned it before, I was 25 and still had not learned to drive yet. The last time I drove in California with my dad, I had a panic attack the first time I entered the main road and had to pull into a side lot to calm down, putting away driving for quite sometime after that. Well, out in Omaha I decided to retry my hand at pushing pedal to the metal once more and after driving around in a church and down residential roads for hours at a time, I decided to try hitting the main road. It felt incredible being able to traverse the streets comfortably as a 25 year old adult in a car (even with a supervisor next to me). California Codey would have never dreamed of being able to do this, but something about Nebraska changed me….until I went for my first driving test that is. I don’t know if I’ve ever shared before with you the incredibly convenient bad luck my family has had with ridiculous things, but here we go. As a kid, appliances would go out the day before we needed them. For winter months, our heater would bust. On cold days, our water heater would break down. On laundry days, our washer/dryer wouldn’t work, etc. but I’m guessing you get the point here. Well, on our way to my first driving test, the car I was driving for my first driver’s test…its battery crapped out and in the parking lot of the DMV to be exact! And well, that bad luck just seemed to flow through the rest of my driving experience. After failing my test 3 times, I decided that maybe I was better off using Uber and Lyft for a little while longer.

The months following August seemed to go by pretty slowly, and though I was having a great experience in my living situation with the holidays after summer, I began to miss California. So after Halloween, and a month’s worth of debating in my head, I decided it was time to return back to the state that raised me the most. So when the first weekend of December finally showed up, I packed up my puppy and my things and set my course back to sunny California. I think my dad always sort of expected me to come back home, but never did he think he would be gaining a new dog with my return. As a kid, the only pets I was allowed to have in the house were a parakeet and fish while the only dog I ever knew lived at my grandparents’ house and even lived outside so this would be a big change for my dad. Luckily as a child, he had his own dachsund named Poochy so at least he was familiar with how to raise and house train a dog. Ollie though, was now 6 months old and had not had an accident in months, so I was pretty confident he could adapt well to a new living space and surprisingly to this day has never had an accident here. I was though extremely nervous as to how my dad and Ollie would be together face to face, but that quickly changed when they met each other here at home. Soon enough, my dad and Ollie became buddies and to my surprise are extremely close. My dad adopted the Papa-to-a-puppy, Pops name to Ollie and now I can leave the house if I need to and leave them together to play or for Ollie to be fed dinner. As I was my dog’s only real connection and father for month, it’s been rewarding seeing my dad and Ollie’s friendship grow together. Any time my dad walks by his puppy pen, Ollie quickly darts up to greet him and my dad gives him a thorough petting and good morning scratch. Every time I take Ollie out to potty, he has to stop at my dad’s chair on the way back in to play a game of Patty Cake with his grandpa. It’s the cutest thing! In some ways, I think it’s really helped my dad overcome his loneliness after my mom passed, but he will never admit it. Nevertheless, I think he’s pretty happy I came back to California, puppy and all.

All of last year in Omaha, I was unemployed. I had been living off my savings and earning some unemployment, but I knew that had to change once I returned to California so I applied for a job at Disneyland before my flight back home. The day after I landed in Long Beach with Ollie, I had a Zoom call job interview with a hiring manager for Disney. I had always wanted to work at Disneyland, my entire life to be honest. Living practically around the corner from the House of Mouse, it had always been in the back of my mind so when I saw that they had job openings I figured it was my chance. My interview went extremely well and I was hired on the spot. The only issue was, I had to go through accommodations for my IBS which lasted almost 2 months until I could schedule my first day there, but my awesome friend helped me figure out how to speed up the process a bit which was really nice. Thanks again for your help and advice, Alex! Well, as things panned out, I ended up getting hired for a position at a store right outside of the park in Downtown Disney (I will leave unnamed for the time being). Most of my adult life, I have worked retail so I was pretty pumped knowing I would be specializing in the same thing at Disney. I was trained in late February and have been there ever since. Everyone I work with is extremely nice and super helpful. My trainers were awesome and my coworkers have been really easy to get along with. Though I only work a few days a week, I find I’m pretty happy where I ended up. I look forward to moving to another store after my probation is over, maybe even working inside the park too!

So far the 3 months after I’ve been back have been pretty refreshing. My best friend and I have had tons of nights to hang out and play more board games while both of our dogs play in her backyard, and I have been trying my hand at more art mediums to try and expand my horizons. Lately I have been working with clay to make phone charms and clay pins to add to my Etsy and online shop here. I’ve been trying to draw more too! Sadly when I left Nebraska, I couldn’t afford to ship my Cricut cutting machine back here so I gave it to my cousin who has been using it for her teaching job. So now I’m going to be saving up some money so that I can buy a new one to use with the materials I shipped back here beforehand. Hopefully I can buy another one soon that I can use it to add more fun items on my Etsy, but I haven’t saved enough yet. 

I can’t believe it has already been 3 months that Ollie and I have been living here with my dad in California. While it was a really hard decision to leave Omaha and all of the awesome, supportive family I had back there, I’m really happy I came back here. In doing so, I have gained an awesome job and a better relationship with my dad and my sister. It’s given Ollie an opportunity to grow as a dog, meeting other friendly faces too and a much warmer weather climate to go on walks in as well. As tough as it was living in Nebraska away from my California family here, I feel I grew as a person and it helped me become more independent and responsible for the way I lived. It also helped me overcome a lot of the depression I still had built up from my mom passing just a few years before too. I cannot thank my Nebraska family enough for all the help and advice they gave me along the way. It truly helped shape the way I think about things in my everyday life now. I also can’t thank my dad enough for allowing me to return home with a new dog and even more collectibles! ;) I sit here comfortably on a day off, drinking my coffee watching my dad play with Ollie and write this with a sense of hope for my future to come. While I’m sorry that it has been a long time since my last blog, I hope you can now understand why it has been so. Now that I’m back to a personal schedule of work and caring for my dog, I look forward to having some time to write more blogs and stories to share with you as well as create more fun things that will be available to buy from my Etsy and online shop too! 

As always, if you have read up to this point, I thank you again for the following and support. You are all such a great reason to continue creating and writing more exciting things. I really hope the next time I upload a blog that it won’t be 7 months time, so until I do…thank you for your time! I’ll catch you all later! 😁