blogging

Odds and Ends


Sometimes it’s difficult to come up with blog topics day after day. Today is one of those days. It’s not that I haven’t ideas, but many of them are vetoed by my husband as being to TMI for even him. Others just aren’t thought generating to fill an entire page of blog. Often, I self-censor. Yes, hard to believe that I would veto myself, but I do. And then there are the days when nothing comes and words limp forth “like crippled children” to badly coin a phrase from my favorite childhood book Harriet the Spy.

 

The ironic thing is that much is afoot but perhaps too much for me to break down into a single blog right now.

 

The highlights:

 

I have three good short stories in the works right now and very good idea of where I might get each one published.


We are all planned and booked for our honeymoon at long last. A B&B in Dubuque after we drop Katy off at my folks and a cabin on the edge of The Shawnee National Forest in Southern Illinois (yes, we are once again going for the non-traditional romantic spots because why mess with what works?)


My plan to get back into shape has hit a snag. I am putting on muscle and that means weight and size increase. I was really liking being bony but that is no way to approach old age, sadly. 

We may be staying here in Canada after-all as the Texas thing is tied up in sky-rocketing costs and morphing into a position that might entail too much travel, but it may yet come out okay. We won’t know until late March at the earliest.


Canada Immigration has updated their turn around times on residency applications and we could have approval by early April.

We are still lice-free (knock large pieces of timber together).

I can navigate the city by myself (and with a little help from OnStar).

 

Oh, and I have reached a decision about wanting to give back in terms of grief and grieving. I don’t want to start/or lead any kind of group. I am not a mentor and think really that this is a silly idea. Mostly because of something Rob pointed out to me about the widow board. He noticed that people tended to group in the 1 to 6 month sections according to common dates or months and then stick together for a while lending support. He noted however that the vast majority of these groups disappeared as the people lost the need for the board and stopped interacting there. And he was right. My problem is that I never fell into any “peer” group there. I found the board too late in my first year and had already come to many of my own conclusions about a variety of things – hence my need to “give”. As Girl pointed out to me, I will know what to do when the opportunity arrives. So, I think I will wait and see. 

6AM


Went and bought an alarm clock for myself on Saturday because I wanted to start getting up before eight (or eight thirty) and try and re-establish a more work friendly routine before moving back to the States. I will never find a teaching job that lets me sleep in and for now I could use the extra time in the morning for writing and getting things in order for the initial move. I know that April/May isn’t exactly around the corner and that I made the move up here in less time (plus sold my house, car and gave away nearly all of my furniture to boot), but I would rather avoid the panicky feelings of deadlines looming like large scary monsters.

So, was I up with the sunshine? No. And just an FYI – the moon is still bright shiny and full at 6AM in northern Alberta. The reason for my spectacular failure was that I couldn’t fall asleep last night. It was probably one o’clock by the time I managed and even then it was another one of those dream filled sleeps that I am beginning to find aggravating as they are just non-sensical and exhausting.

Part of my trouble is that I don’t really wind down prior to going to bed. I am usually busy with something – writing or shredding or something too busy. Lately too I am stiff from hunching over the shredder or my daughter’s head. And finally, Wednesday will be two years since Will died. I haven’t any sense of how to commemorate it. The first one was just getting to and past it, but now that I have and the day isn’t as fraught with anxiety and dread – now what? His grave is back in Iowa. His friends fell out of touch long before he died. My own family will not remember and truthfully saw his passing as a blessing for me and although they are right on an intellectual level, the emotions don’t match up for me. His mother considers me a murderer for not intervening when the aspiration pneumonia set in that final weekend. Katy is too young to drag into this commemoration of loss thing. I think for now it is better to celebrate his birthday and remember the happier times of his life and not dwell on the illness and death. Since she is a carrier of the disease that killed him, she will have her whole adult life to consider that and the fallout as it will effect her and her children (should she choose to take that risk). So, I am a trifle bit alone in this remembering stuff and honestly – I don’t feel like it anyway. I look at pictures of him when he was well – no, he was never well – but when he was not visibly ill, and it’s hard to remember how I felt then. It’s like flipping through someone’s photo album. Would it be awful of me to just feel sad but more grateful that it’s all behind me now? Because you see, that is what is making me really sad. I am happy. Happier than I can ever remember being. I love Rob. I love our life. I am looking forward to the future and the plans we have made and the ones we are still formulating.

Getting up early is a practice thing. Just like everything else.

So Much to do


I have too much to do to be sitting here blogging. I am still plowing through laundry due to the week long visit from my sis-in-law. Her visit too stirred up unpleasant memories because like most widows who live and breathe it, all she wanted to do was talk about issues and irritations and grudges that surrounded her husband’s death. Unfortunate timing really with the nasty letter from my former mother-in-law arriving on the heels of SIL’s departure and with the 2nd anniversary of Will’s death a mere two weeks away. And about that, the only thing I can say is that I will be glad when it is behind me. My major emotional association with it right now is impatience and the very real sense that I am not like other widows because I don’t miss Will or pine for our life together. I like my here and now too much to look backwards and I resent the intrusion of the day and grief into my life.

So, my to-do list is overwhelming me and my want to do list calls seductively at every opportunity. Write poems for an on-line literary magazine or strip beds? Spend the afternoon writing a short story based on an idea I borrowed from Rob’s memory of Shelley? Or sort through boxes of papers for tax information? Banking? Or wiling away the time before my massage preparing for my writing group? You see my dilemma. I have a house to clean and purge and a novel that is screaming for revision. There are school districts to be researched for job possibilities. A resume and letters of reference to update. Certification issues to deal with and I begin to understand why women decide to remain at home longer than they need to. I was reading an interview in Newsweek with some author of a book for 40+ women on tricks for maintaining a youthful appearance for the sake of their careers mainly because its become such a sin in our society to be an older woman who isn’t playing delusional games with herself about what she looks like. With this looming, housewife looks better and better. Truthfully though, free-lance writing is what is attracting me most simply because I prefer writing to nearly all activities save spending time with Rob these days – and even he will tell you that when I am deep in a book or working on a piece that he has a hard to pulling me back to the now.

Lists. I need lists. And a little bit more ambition. And a household staff. Okay, that last part was a joke. I don’t have money enough to coerce anyone into doing some of the work that needs to be done. It is a good thing we have until June now to do it. I could never be ready by April.

I keep threatening – myself really- with cutting way back or quitting the blog thing all together. At least for a while. I have a lot to do this month. I may have to make good on that.