Rainy Day Blues
It's been a while since the last update, mainly because I've been too down in the dumps to even think about sitting down and putting it all in writing. Things are looking up, though, despite the rain that's falling outside *g*.
The downward slide started on my birthday. To begin with, the hubby was traveling, which was a pain. I've lost count of the number of times that he's either been traveling or attending a business dinner on either my birthday or our anniversary (or both). This time though, he was due to get home that night, so he didn't miss the entire day, which was a good thing. The bad thing was that I spoke to him twice on the phone during the day and he never once said "Happy Birthday" to me. He said it when he got home, with a kiss and a hug, and that was nice, but still...and neither child uttered the words at all, even though the three of us went to Taco Bell for dinner.
We have a family tradition, born of times when Scouts, soccer, work, school, etc. got in the way of going out to eat, of the birthday person getting the dinner of choice (not restaurant, though) on their actual birthday, and then picking a restaurant to go to later (or, if nothing is going on the night of the birthday, then going to the restaurant on that night -- their choice). So, the day after my birthday, the hubby is all anxious to take me out, and I was looking forward to it. We thought we'd go to dinner, then to Barnes & Noble (I've got some gift cards for there from Christmas). Only neither kid wanted to go. They were too busy/wrapped up in computer gaming. I made it out to the car and even had it turned on before I realized that I wouldn't enjoy the dinner if it was just the hubby and me.
Strange that when my kids tell me that they're not interested in going out to celebrate my birthday, it's something that I'm supposed to just take in stride and deal with, but when I do or say the same to them, then I'm being "hurtful and spiteful, and saying that just to make them feel guilty."
So the weekend started badly, then looked good, until Sunday. That's when my mother called to tell me that my cousin's daughter had killed herself and her funeral was the next day. It jus so happened that my step-father was having surgery the next morning, which meant that none of us could make it down to North Carolina for the funeral. I later found out from Mom that Chris had killed herself on the 19th, the day before my birthday. I haven't heard that she left a note or anything, but she was suffering some medical issues. Her brother and his wife had recently had a baby, and the baby was still in the hospital with minor issues. Chris's mother couldn't reach her on the phone, so she called her son and asked him to go check on her -- they lived on opposite sides of the same apartment complex. So he ended up finding his sister's body. In a move that's unusual for a woman, she'd put a bullet in her brain. Reports from the funeral were that the undertaker had done a great job with Chris and that she looked really pretty (she'd put the gun in her mouth, so I'm guessing that the damage was in the back of the head). Shirley, her mother, was holding up well. Doris, Shirley's sister, wasn't holding up so well. My mother did something she hasn't done in ages (long family feud-type thing) and called her brother (Chris's grandfather).
My stepfather's surgery went well, and he was out of the hospital the next day, minus one gall bladder. Not everyday is a blue one.
It doesn't help matters any that when I'm down, things seem to be magnified. The longing to be able to go away somewhere alone to just sit and think becomes nearly overwhelming. When I was growing up my parents owned a trailer down along Currituck Sound. We didn't go in the winter (mainly because Daddy couldn't figure out how to get the heater to work. Daddy, bless his heart, was not mechanically inclined. Whenever he took the lawn mower apart to do work on it, it would never fail that when he had it back together, there would be parts or screws or bolts leftover. he figured that as long as it worked, it hadn't needed those parts anyway). So, when the first warm weather hit, we'd be there every weekend. In the summers, we'd head there during the week. One of lots in the complex was on the water, and there was a rock jetty from their property. I used to walk out on the rocks as far as I could go and then just stand or sit there for hours, my mind taking me far, far away. In the front of their place, they had a swing, and when I wasn't on the rocks, I was on the swing. It was shaded and a great place to sit and do nothing. Once Daddy died, Mom had a hard time keeping it up, and we couldn't get down there, either. So she sold it. A part of me wishes we'd found a way to keep it, but we'd still have the same issues about upkeep.
Something was started a while back that I had reservations about, and those reservations turned out to be well-founded. Disappointment and feelings of abandonment are high right now, from that and from other things. They, like the sadness, will pass, but they just feel so much more intense right now, and it's a struggle to keep my mouth shut and not say something that will hurt everyone involved.
My best friend and I used to take a weekend a year off for ourselves. We didn't go far away, but where we went wasn't important -- the important thing was that we went off together. We talked, or didn't talk. Di and I have never had the need to talk when together. The hubby and I are like that, too. There's comfort in our silences. With Di, we can talk about something, then be quiet for a while, and one of us will say something new and the other will know just what she means *g*. It's been a looong time since we've been able to go on our yearly adventure, and it had been on my mind a lot recently. Di called and said that she'd been thinking about something she wanted us to do and I said "Go off to Williamsburg?" (that's where we usually went). We both got a laugh out of the fact that our minds were on the same thing. We don't have a date for it yet, but we'll be going once it gets warmer. We are going to the movies or something this Saturday -- and I'll be able to give her her birthday card and present (from December) and her Christmas present. You'd think that we live hundreds of miles apart, but it's only about 30 miles, if that far. And yet we haven't seen each other since November or early December. Talk on the phone a lot, but no visits. That needs to change, too.
Okay, enough depressing stuff. Time to go back to sunny days and good moods *g*.
The downward slide started on my birthday. To begin with, the hubby was traveling, which was a pain. I've lost count of the number of times that he's either been traveling or attending a business dinner on either my birthday or our anniversary (or both). This time though, he was due to get home that night, so he didn't miss the entire day, which was a good thing. The bad thing was that I spoke to him twice on the phone during the day and he never once said "Happy Birthday" to me. He said it when he got home, with a kiss and a hug, and that was nice, but still...and neither child uttered the words at all, even though the three of us went to Taco Bell for dinner.
We have a family tradition, born of times when Scouts, soccer, work, school, etc. got in the way of going out to eat, of the birthday person getting the dinner of choice (not restaurant, though) on their actual birthday, and then picking a restaurant to go to later (or, if nothing is going on the night of the birthday, then going to the restaurant on that night -- their choice). So, the day after my birthday, the hubby is all anxious to take me out, and I was looking forward to it. We thought we'd go to dinner, then to Barnes & Noble (I've got some gift cards for there from Christmas). Only neither kid wanted to go. They were too busy/wrapped up in computer gaming. I made it out to the car and even had it turned on before I realized that I wouldn't enjoy the dinner if it was just the hubby and me.
Strange that when my kids tell me that they're not interested in going out to celebrate my birthday, it's something that I'm supposed to just take in stride and deal with, but when I do or say the same to them, then I'm being "hurtful and spiteful, and saying that just to make them feel guilty."
So the weekend started badly, then looked good, until Sunday. That's when my mother called to tell me that my cousin's daughter had killed herself and her funeral was the next day. It jus so happened that my step-father was having surgery the next morning, which meant that none of us could make it down to North Carolina for the funeral. I later found out from Mom that Chris had killed herself on the 19th, the day before my birthday. I haven't heard that she left a note or anything, but she was suffering some medical issues. Her brother and his wife had recently had a baby, and the baby was still in the hospital with minor issues. Chris's mother couldn't reach her on the phone, so she called her son and asked him to go check on her -- they lived on opposite sides of the same apartment complex. So he ended up finding his sister's body. In a move that's unusual for a woman, she'd put a bullet in her brain. Reports from the funeral were that the undertaker had done a great job with Chris and that she looked really pretty (she'd put the gun in her mouth, so I'm guessing that the damage was in the back of the head). Shirley, her mother, was holding up well. Doris, Shirley's sister, wasn't holding up so well. My mother did something she hasn't done in ages (long family feud-type thing) and called her brother (Chris's grandfather).
My stepfather's surgery went well, and he was out of the hospital the next day, minus one gall bladder. Not everyday is a blue one.
It doesn't help matters any that when I'm down, things seem to be magnified. The longing to be able to go away somewhere alone to just sit and think becomes nearly overwhelming. When I was growing up my parents owned a trailer down along Currituck Sound. We didn't go in the winter (mainly because Daddy couldn't figure out how to get the heater to work. Daddy, bless his heart, was not mechanically inclined. Whenever he took the lawn mower apart to do work on it, it would never fail that when he had it back together, there would be parts or screws or bolts leftover. he figured that as long as it worked, it hadn't needed those parts anyway). So, when the first warm weather hit, we'd be there every weekend. In the summers, we'd head there during the week. One of lots in the complex was on the water, and there was a rock jetty from their property. I used to walk out on the rocks as far as I could go and then just stand or sit there for hours, my mind taking me far, far away. In the front of their place, they had a swing, and when I wasn't on the rocks, I was on the swing. It was shaded and a great place to sit and do nothing. Once Daddy died, Mom had a hard time keeping it up, and we couldn't get down there, either. So she sold it. A part of me wishes we'd found a way to keep it, but we'd still have the same issues about upkeep.
Something was started a while back that I had reservations about, and those reservations turned out to be well-founded. Disappointment and feelings of abandonment are high right now, from that and from other things. They, like the sadness, will pass, but they just feel so much more intense right now, and it's a struggle to keep my mouth shut and not say something that will hurt everyone involved.
My best friend and I used to take a weekend a year off for ourselves. We didn't go far away, but where we went wasn't important -- the important thing was that we went off together. We talked, or didn't talk. Di and I have never had the need to talk when together. The hubby and I are like that, too. There's comfort in our silences. With Di, we can talk about something, then be quiet for a while, and one of us will say something new and the other will know just what she means *g*. It's been a looong time since we've been able to go on our yearly adventure, and it had been on my mind a lot recently. Di called and said that she'd been thinking about something she wanted us to do and I said "Go off to Williamsburg?" (that's where we usually went). We both got a laugh out of the fact that our minds were on the same thing. We don't have a date for it yet, but we'll be going once it gets warmer. We are going to the movies or something this Saturday -- and I'll be able to give her her birthday card and present (from December) and her Christmas present. You'd think that we live hundreds of miles apart, but it's only about 30 miles, if that far. And yet we haven't seen each other since November or early December. Talk on the phone a lot, but no visits. That needs to change, too.
Okay, enough depressing stuff. Time to go back to sunny days and good moods *g*.