If I’m not careful, the little things nitpick my mind.
Call me Dory
All day hubby has talked nonstop and loudly. I never want him to feel bad, but he doesn’t understand I need some quiet. I’m not focusing well on things and he started crying because he can’t understand himself. He keeps talking about how this house needs work and we shouldn’t have bought it. When he started saying how WE need to pull the vinyl up in the kitchen, I didn’t want to hear it. He mean’s ME, I need to do it. I can’t. The list of household needs continues to grow, while the money doesn’t. The kitchen sink needs the piping fixed. The deck is sagging. The shed is falling down. The dishwasher isn’t working. The yard needs landscaping. The baseboards need washing and so does the car. The window glass needs replacing.
Last night, G broke down the boxes for recycling and put them in the can like I asked, then didn’t pull the can to the road for pick up today. I just shake my head. So freaking literal.
I feel like Dory. Just keep swimming. Just keep swimming. Just keep swimming.
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Gotta go outside.
Gotta get away.
AAAAAHHHHHH!!!!!! Someone is gonna loose hair! I’m gonna pull it out! Yell, noise, cry, talk non-stop.
I need sleep and silence.
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damn stroke
Of all the things this stroke has stolen, it’s our family togetherness, my mate and lover, and my friend, that I miss the most.
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Sweet enough…
I ended up pushed out of the bed at 5:30 this morning. I’m sipping my second cup of coffee. Most of the daily chores are done. I like how we live. Isn’t that a strange thing to think? I have things I can do, but not too much I have to do. I can focus on different jobs whenever I feel like it, or not. I have clean laundry – folding optional. lol I’m terrible, but when a person has chronic pain, that’s how they do things.
Yesterday, G bought me the WOW upgrade I didn’t have. I enjoy playing the game and when I’m up at odd times and my hands ache, it’s an alternative to knitting 🙂
We decided that since G has no living expenses at present, he’d kick in with the current student loan check and get us a few items that we haven’t had in a long time. Clothes for him, Steve – the lawnmower we need (we got a push mower not a gas driven one). He’s going to get us a rake too. I’m very certain just these few things will make people happier around here 🙂 It takes these items off my need list so we can focus on other things.
March begins our true month of fixed-income living. Saving for taxes in the winter, buying dog food and flea meds regularly, cable, phones, utilities, groceries, car payment, insurance, medical stuff. Outside of that, we have options to keep or adjust. Then we can save for more blankets, towels, curtains, blinds – fixing the deck and getting fence panels.
One thing I want is real soil for my front yard beds and the shrubs pulled out. We have to get this shed knocked down too because it’s not safe. Geoffrey can’t do it and neither can Steve or I. I need to string some more fence wire if I can get the shed pulled down. All these things I always depended on Steve to do. My skill set is NOT building. I had hoped Kaiha could help with this stuff but Steve had a cow over the thought of her staying with us. Oh well. Kaiha seems to be doing well and I’m thankful for that.
A childhood friend may be coming to stay with us. I’ve had so much help in my lifetime that no way am I going to withhold what I can do for someone else. I’m hoping she and Steve will get along. She likes Trump so he will have someone to talk to about him. She’s a photographer and we share a lot in common. Her grandmother was the one who taught my mother to crochet and I loved her thread crocheted blankets. She was such an inspiration and she had the tiniest little house…Mrs. Ruby Clyburn still influences my life 🙂
Now that it’s later in the morning, I have my plans set for today. I intend to put the battery back into the Hyundai and try to get it started. I also need air in the tires of the Nissan. That tire plug gets to be focused on this month. Maybe I’ll vacuum the floorboards and check all the fluids while I’m at it. ***Battery in and car moved. I’m gonna fill the bird feeders and put out the pathway lights. I want to go to the library. and I have color on my head. First time since before the stroke. Light Ash Brown. If it colors some of the gray it’s enough 🙂
I have been leaving small things for Steve to do. I brought the bowl in that he sat out on the patio for the cat. It’s on the dresser for him to pick up and walk with to the kitchen sink. I gave him a basket of clothes to fold – His stuff and towels. (I still have to refold the towels because he refuses to fold them like I want them – in half lengthwise first so they can just be draped over the rail without refolding later). I asked him to fill the kettle with water and turn it on for coffee (yes I drink instant). He’s been frustrated and crying and his foot is swollen so big it won’t go into his shoe. I’m was going to have him help me with car fluids but without shoes it’s not going to work. He’s got to have some engagement. He’s depressed and refusing to go on errands with me. I have really done all I know of to do for him. He has to work if he wants more.
I just wanted to put down what the days are like. After Steve folded the clothes, he shuffled off crying. He does the loud no words sounds and I swear he does it because he likes the sound. Yesterday I sat listening to him tell me how he’d probably use a gun on himself if he had access. Exactly why I don’t have one. he sits around sniffling loudly like Trump. Another thing he likes the sound of – Salt DISlikes the sound and growls the whole time. I just told him to get up and blow his nose so Salt can rest. I can ignore most of this. Like it or not, I’m going to make him participate in things. He bitched for cable and I got it for him then he complained how much it costs. Blah blah blah.
My sister Andrea’s husband died on the Feb. 18th – he was 48. One year and a day after her. No reason specified yet. Either his heart was bad, he overdosed, or his hand injury swollen terribly from a fall, threw a clot. Their little girl was swiped out of the home within an hour. She’s being protected. The situation holds accusations galore and I am blocked from my ‘christian’ sister’s FB because I pulled “the big sister card and gave her a DON’T you dare air the ugly online in that manner. Oh well – little loss.
Ok, I guess this is all. Gripe, gripe, bitch, bitch. Oh what a relief it is! lol I have oregano and echinacea sprouting and that makes me HAPPY! Seeds soon! I’m gonna plan the veges while I wait for the money 🙂 It’s all sweet enough.
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This edge called life
There’s a precipice we teeter on as we watch our dear ones go through their life’s tribulations. We think we suffer with them and we lift our voices with them in anguish and we hold each other and try to rebalance each other. Maybe each of us regains a moment of ease at different times. Maybe we just think we do.
If we are lucky, we go through our pain and it resolves itself. Some wounds don’t heal and we hurt over and over and over. When we link arms to look into that chasm together, if one of us falls in, the rest of us scramble to stay on the edge AND pull our loved one back to the edge again with us. It doesn’t always work. They fall to a ledge that simply can’t be reached no matter how heroic an effort the support team musters.
The fallen cry and panic and scratch to get back but eventually they seem to hunker on that ledge and put up a brave front teetering on their own as the rest of the team watches and rebalances. In nature, it’s the point where most will wander off, listening, and grab a bit of food. Eventually the listening for the missing becomes a distant memory unless they call out again.
I woke up with this image in my mind this morning. Knowing there will be some who will go down each ledge with the one in pain – maybe even allowing themselves to fall to stay with a mate or a child or a friend. Hoping for all they are worth that they can push their loved one back up to the edge. Sometimes in their effort, it works. Sometimes it doesn’t.
I imagined the face of the cliff with scattered bodies clinging each to their own narrow place. Sometimes death creeps in and takes one here or there on their ledge. Sometimes one will jump hoping the bottom can be healed from, or will end the battle. One man falls asleep and topples off. Another looses grip and slips. One is accidentally pushed.
At the top there comes a false calm as the onlookers slumber and resolve to help again next time. One mulls the lesson so they can do better. One vows to stay away from the edge altogether. All the while, we journey with our arms linked – until we can’t. Some of us pray. Some of us shout until we can’t shout anymore. Some accept their position as their fate. Some fight and scratch and claw and never accept where they are.
My friend lost her son yesterday. Her family’s pain has shut me and Steve up. I cried for her husband and children and their children. I want to reach out and offer something – from my own ledge, where I’m clinging to Steve’s hand as he pulls away from me to be alone on his own ledge. Her precious oldest son lies at the bottom and can’t be reached. I called out to my own children at the top and felt each look over the edge to see me for a second.
What do we do to make things better? What choices lead us to where we are? At what point do we let ourselves move too close to the edge? What pain is generational? Does it have to be generational? Do we have to bear our burdens alone? Psalms 23 is typically read at funerals when it should be memorized and depended on way before we need that rod and staff…the rod and staff and the Lord who wields them.
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so hard
As happy as I am that Steve is still with me, there are things that make this very difficult. He is not the same. It’s like he has these extreme opinions without the extreme intelligence to hold the opinion. I know that probably doesn’t make sense.
He was up until 2:30, cried till 6, got up at 9. He’s crying about the cats and every little thing. What’s wrong Steve? Nothing. But it’s the not crying after stroke thing, it’s depression. He stays in another room and WAILS. Then he started crying about the birds not having food. he told me I have to clear the stairs before I go down. I couldn’t stand the crying. I got so ticked over the urgency that I told him I’d take care of the snow with my laser eyes and dashed out in my socks. I took the bird seed down the steps, the feeder top was frozen shut. So I threw some on the ground and ran back inside. Wooh the wind is brisk!
He got up to plug in his phone, almost fell over from not walking in 3 days which is MY FAULT according to him. He’s been crying for every reason under the (lack of) sun. I ordered cable because he’s crying over the football game. He won’t shower. He’s crying over almost peeing on himself because of urgency. He doesn’t pee on himself, just squalls on the way down the hall in case he does it.
I haven’t had a hug in weeks. No love, no sex, no support. I’m so mad at Lisa I could spit. Kaiha’s not coming for her dog. Maybe someday she will, but now she has a BF she’s worried about staying with. She’s heading to AZ to stay with Lisa’s Ian. Lisa has the nerve to tell me she can’t handle my life and I need a blog and to keep stuff off of FB because it’s too hard on her. REALLY? I told her I couldn’t believe what she was saying to me. She said that I’m being vindictive and wanting everyone else to hurt too and she doesn’t know me anymore. She stopped being my FRIEND when Kansas went to prison 15 yrs ago. She gives hit and run advice because she has a friend who had a stroke and he takes care of himself better than Steve does. I could pull HER hair out! I know she doesn’t read what I write or she’d of never paid for my daughter to visit at a time when I NEEDED her to be responsible. Even at 31 my daughter is still throwing chaos into my life and I look like the crazy one. fuck that. I’ve blocked her from seeing my posts but i’ve lost my outlet because I worry that she’s right.
And all the time, Steve struggles and people applaud the idea of counseling when all that does is tear open the wound for someone else and I have to go on and live with it because Steve’s mind is what it is. I can’t undo, unthink, unsee, unfeel this crap. 3 hours of some social worker listening isn’t going to fix anything. It just lays it open so Steve can feel the pain again. He’s not right no matter what anyone says. It’s either crying or talking nonstop in that opinionated fashion demanding I agree with him over Donald Trump and the horribleness of the liberals. OMG. My mind needs silence.
Just silence.
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New Year
I have been trying to keep my head down as this year closes out because it’s been hard with all the FB posts about loss and how ugly 2016 has been and all the politics still hitting hard and now the New year with it’s resolutions – I’m not a resolution maker. Never have been. A lady I’ve known for several years posted one of those “Feed your soul – manifest your intentions after writing down your year’s experiences” posts and I found myself thinking and writing as I’m prone to do – I need someplace to put it and thought maybe HERE would be a good place.
*I couldn’t even begin to write down all that happened in this past year in one setting. It was the hardest single year of my life that I get to package into ‘one year’. Relationships changed, I changed.
My husband’s stroke was discovered on Christmas Eve of 2015 and made me move into the role of caregiver for a second time. I had sworn I’d never do it again. Always, always, the things I say I’ll never do come back and hit me square in the face. Caring for my mate I found I didn’t like either of us sometimes and my personal goals were drawn by circumstance rather than by ME. 2016 has had a real cruel edge to it instead of the gentle flow I always ‘think’ is the way to do things.
I made terrible decisions because of misinformation. By terrible, I mean huge, frightening decisions. I was lied to, mislead, and used. I walked away from personal belongings and planned income. I had to abandon 10 cats. I faced my own necessary lies. I became the head of my household. I lost friends and was lifted up by friends.
We faced crushing loss and looked family abuse and drugs in the face, again. We had to pick apart the truth of generational mistakes, draw lines, and bare our souls. Intimacy took on a different meaning. Forgiveness became the word of the day for months on end. My rose colored glasses broke all to pieces, but I realize, it was time. The year ultimately became about relationships – the good, the bad, the ugly, the sad and the restored.
I see light in the coming year. I think that while the forced change felt like a slash and burn, the results on the near horizon are pretty amazing. I’m not liking the “frame” of loss when I look back on 2016, but maybe that has more to do with AGE, aging, and personal/emotional/health ‘care’ than anything else.
It’s written that time and chance happen to all of us, but how we respond to it is up to us, don’t you think? I’m looking forward to looking FORWARD. I’m ready to claim the promises of restoration. I’ve always relied on outlines, (A.B.C., 1. 2. 3.) in the past. I have different plans for this coming year. I’m imagining myself holding the colors and leaving the details of the big picture to my Creator. Today, I see the wisdom in HIS design, over my own. So bring it on 2017. I can honestly say I’m ready for the lessons and revelations. *
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Nice
Had a nice morning enjoying Steve’s time in bed. I seldom get time by myself. I did some herbal study and bought a small bit of henna for my hair. I worked a little bit on the crocheted airplane I’m making for Haskell. I also started a slip stitch scarf in purple and gray, and got laundry started and dishes done. I watered the herbs and checked the fluids in the car. I poured baking soda on the carpet where Salt keeps pooping. Lastly, I made chicken salad for Steve’s lunch. I’ve picked up the dishes and wiped counters, made popcorn and sat back down. Here I am blogging and ready to pick up my needles. It’s a beautiful Saturday.
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Today’s thoughts.
I’m such a simple person. I’m an intovert unless I need and I mean NEED not to be. I’m the person who gets over stuff until my face is rubbed in the mess 100 times. Probably I’m full of selfishness.
I cry over my kids and always wonder how different things might have been If I’d realized I was as important in their lives as their father. I miss relationships that didn’t develop. I miss grandchildren I never see. I am to be estranged from another grown child over a dog – and I think how ironic that a dog is what my mother and grandmother ‘s relationship broke over. Steve was talking about my lack of boundaries again last night and how I let myself be used at a time I had no right to say YES. I get angry at him when he says that, but in a way, he’s right. I crossed a line when HE needed protecting. I told him that it wouldn’t matter if he died right then, I’m done being disrespected and called names. This thing with my daughter- the latest update states how she entrusted her dog to me WHICH IS A LIE – she dropped him off at my house, with her brother who almost starved the dog because of his Aspergers and I wasn’t there for 3 months because of the stroke and rehab. I look like a nut who gave consent and then in the middle of her project is being unreasonable and messing things up. She was supposed to be gone and back in 45 days. We even threatened to not let her have the dog back except he doesn’t fit in with ours. He came with fleas which we can’t afford to treat, he fights over food and pushes for dominance, he shits on my carpet. And still we love on him, but he senses he’s out of place.
Even when she comes, maybe next week, she’s homeless, no car, I can only hope she has a place to go…and we have to close our minds to what happens to this dog that deserves so much better and to another daughter. Sigh…Kaiha is beating the record for the fastest time on the AT but she didn’t follow the rules so it will be unofficial. What good is that? I’m sure the experience has been life altering, but it’s ending. Now she says she never wants to see me again after she gets the dog and I’m to the point I don’t care. She says I am emotionally abusing her for saying I dont want her and her dog. I feel like the sacrifice we were forced to make (by her not coming as agreed) has been for nothing. Of course they blame Steve for me setting any boundaries at all and I’ve had the fact I left them with their dad used as excuse to call me an asshole AGAIN… I get that my kids don’t like him, but he’s not the problem. He’s my problem, but not THE problem. The lack of respect they have towards anyone not themselves is the problem. I say they…but it crops up individually… and they are a group.
Yesterday I came across a picture of Olive. The only one I ever got of kayla’s baby girl . A couple of weeks ago, V and I talked about how they will pay for me to visit when I can leave Steve and G. Who knows if that will ever happen? I know I think too much.
You know what I want? A Doctor Who knitting marathon, real food instead of crap, and my meds which I can’t afford. I’d like paint for my house, and for my windows, birdseed, and money for pots to plant my irises in … simple stuff – and a bit of peace. I want to get up, say Thank you, and have it not be forced through the mesh of someone else’s upset.
And today is Kay’s birthday. I don’t get to feel about THAT either.
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Green Jean Granny 