Month: July 2006 (Page 1 of 3)

I had Wed-Fri off, and five days away from work was nice. Actually, because I get OCD (and control freaky) about things, I still checked email, but successfully resisted the original plan to “pop in” on Friday to make sure everything was fine. I got one phone call and was able to answer the question, so hey – it was nice. Time not spent on death, dying, cancer, driving, the will, the burglary, more driving.

So I got it in my head to finish some things. And finish things I did! I had a pair of socks on the needles that had begun as socks for JWo, were diverted briefly towards my dad, but then obviously everything HAPPENED. So. Back to the Wo they went, and I got those done first:

Opal on 1’s:

Then, I turned to the truly evil project that has been waiting since late Winter/early Spring: The Homespun Prairie Stripes Afghan. Yes. Knitting with Homespun. Now, here’s the bitch of Homespun. I hate how it knits. That binder thread snags & it’s hard to control. But the finished product is so soft, washable, and this pattern’s pretty. I had half the yarn for it in the first place, plus the pattern, so I figured, knit ‘er up. And I turned a blind eye to the part that would later be my biggest stumbling block: the border.

Because the border has mitred corners, so you not only pick up 8 gajillion stitches on each side, but you increase your stitches, so it takes even longer, for the 16-row border. WOOHOO. All I can say is, it’s nice, it’s pretty, it’s soft, and IT’S DONE.

Then, I also finished Under the Banner of Heaven, by John Krakauer – talk about a mesmerizing, informative, disturbing & jaw-dropping book. I was raised without any organized religion, and knew very little about the origins of Mormonism & even the history right here in Independence, MO (a Kansas City suburb, now known more for meth production than divine salvation…) Without inciting a debate on religion, I can say that it gave me a deeper understanding of my favorite HBO show,Big Love! And that there’s a thin line between faith and a cult, and the fundamentalists who have 46 wives who are on welfare, or sleep with their own daughters or wed 14 year olds should be stopped. OK, that was kind of inciteful. But I don’t think my blog really plays to the polygamists, either. ;)

Ran across this blog and laughed my butt off at the different Kansas City Barbies. Also slightly relieved that there was no South Kansas City Barbie, however, I’d wager she does drive a Honda.

While waiting in the spacious waiting area at Carmax, to get their extremely lowball offer on my dad’s truck that we did not even consider:

“I’m moving away from you. You’re putting off too much heat.”

“I know. I’m like a furnace.”

“YOU HAVE A FUNGUS????!!!!!”

“I’m like a FURNACE, Jennifer. But thanks for shouting that I have a fungus.”

Some days I wake up, and I feel all energetic and bustling and ready to hit the day. Other days I wake up and I feel really focused, really polished, ready to knock out some work. And still other days I wake up and feel sluggish, slow, and wish I were going back to bed.

Then? I have the occasional day I wake up and feel like….. this…..

The Jen-nino……

Look out, Kansas City.

Joan Didion wrote a book called “The Year of Magical Thinking”, and her words, her stark, stark writing, take my breath away. It’s essentially a chronicle of the year following the death of her husband, John Dunne, and her grief. I can only read it in demitasse spoonfuls. It is beautiful, it is so accurate, it is like an acupuncture needle to my heart and it is like air in my lungs, simultaneously. Painful, reflective, reassuring.

She speaks to the moments, where you forget, where you believe reality is different, when you expect your loved one to come through the door, call on the phone, those moments that happen in just a fraction of time, like when you first wake, before truth is confronted and settles around your shoulders. In that fragment, you can believe it was all a dream, it didn’t happen, there’s a mistake somewhere, an error in the code. Then you are reminded. Then you see the other memories. Truth prevails. That kind of vascillation can make you feel pretty crazy.

In the grief group, I gravitate towards talking about anger. Anger is a safer place for me. Anger lends itself to a semblance of control. I also quiz the facilitators. We have been asked to bring in pictures, to talk about the person we lost. I could feel the room shrink up in fear, as I felt my own skin retract, pull in. As graciously as I could, I acknowledged that they had run many of these groups, and so I was not questioning the validity of this assignment, but WHAT PURPOSE DOES THIS SERVE? Of course there was some nervous laughter from the other participants, because I believe I was saying what they were thinking, and honestly, I knew from my own reaction they were wondering if they could do it or just avoid it altogether. The answer was that it helps. It helps to memorialize the person, it helps to solidify the experience, and, well, they’ve done a whole bunch of these groups and me? I haven’t done it before, ever. So I’m trusting them. I want to burst into tears at the thought of doing this. But I won’t avoid it. I am processing the fear and the grief right now, and over the next few days, so that by Monday night, I can do this, even if it means I cry through the whole thing, but I will do it, because like Joan Didion, I, too, am scrambling for a process, a structure, a loop to grab onto as the grief bus lurches and surges and screeches to a halt and the moments fleet by when I hear the word “Dad” in my head and I know it will never, ever, ever mean the same thing because I am now without one.

I know I’ll never stop missing him. I just look forward to that point in time, and I guess it all comes down to time, when it doesn’t feel like a cheese grater on my heart when I realize he’s never coming back, he wasn’t mysteriously switched in the hospital with a doppleganger, this wasn’t all some crazy joke, that he won’t be on the other end of the phone, giving me advice, laughing about Jon Stewart, singing John Prine with me, loving me. I miss him so.

Flying right in the face of my father, who told me nobody was interested in my dreams, today? I choose to give you BOTH the dreams I remember from last night. It’s been quite some time since I remembered a dream, even – and I know all the ones I’ve had in the past month have been scary, bad, filled with conflict, filled with fear. No great shakes to interpret that, I suppose.

The first was extremely vivid. I dreamt that I got up super early, and rode my bike 30 miles, to a quaint shopping area in a small town outside of St. Louis. When I got there, I found the bike shop where I’d originally purchased the bike, and wheeled it in, stating I needed repairs. It had a flat tire, and was missing one of the pedals. I amazed them with my story of having ridden the bicycle there, especially with only one pedal, and then we decided the bike was worth $8 and I could just buy a new one for $500, but they had to put it together, and I was really stressed out because I still had to ride it another 30 miles to get work.

Would that I exercised half as much in a week’s time!

Then I had a second, awful dream, where two guys were trying to kill us, and I kept shooting my shotgun at them, but instead of blasting, it worked like a pellet gun, and I was really pissed, because the whole point of a shotgun is “general aim” and then I finally disabled the one guy by pelting him in the arm, and got his gun away and we were waiting for the police. Yeah, that last part? Doesn’t require a lot of interpretation, hm.

I have a few days off, in which I am revelling. I haven’t had a day off that wasn’t linked to cancer, death, burglary or exhaustion from driving, in a really long time. So if it means I still have crazy dreams when I sleep, I’m ok with that, because at least I’m sleeping, and at least my brain is finally trying to untangle everything. I have a whole ‘nother post on grief & the erratic process (Hey! it’s definitely like riding a bike with one pedal!)

So we’re in a meeting today, and we’re talking about Lasik surgery, and whether insurance would ever even cover such a thing, and I chirped, “Well, maybe for pilots or something,” you know, always trying to think outside ye olde box; Kristin thought I said “PIRATES” and basically the whole conversation derailed while everyone shut an eye and started shouting in piratey accents, “ARRRRR” “Swab the decks!” “Ahoy!” “Matey!”

That’s the fun part of advertising. The not-so-fun part is never shown, like billing, or traffic. But seven grown adults pretending to be pirates? That’s a movie scene even Johnny Depp could get behind.

OK, here is the mental picture I have of our internet connection at work: Take a monkey. Preferably a monkey with issues. Give the monkey a hefty combined dose of speed and barbiturates. Put a bucket on his head. String bananas and firecrackers at varying heights around the room. Scatter some tacks on the floor. Close all the doors and windows, and spin the monkey around. Hand him a lighter. See what happens!

Yes, the more I ponder that visual, it’s just like that. We’ve returned to the Skinnernet, clicking the mouse constantly, hoping a frozen snickers bar might eventually drop from the ceiling; some things get through, but then mysteriously, pages cease loading and freeze up. It’s frickin’ maddening. I’m writing this blog in Word (Word. Fo’ bloggin’ and shiznit.) so as not to lose it when the monkey lights up a firecracker.

All of that aside, I had the bad luck to exasperate a cashier at World Market on Friday. They had emailed coupons that gave you 25% off your order, including sale merchandise & gourmet food, so I took advantage of it – picked up some staples, some clearanced drapes & a curtain rod. What wasn’t clear was that you have to present your coupon at the BEGINNING of your transaction. So the little dude exploded when I said, Oh, hey, I have the 25% off coupon, and he tried to cover by saying he needed to start asking for coupons first. Uh, yeah. Because all my couponing has been conditioned by the grocery store, where you hand over your coupons at the end. Plus, I was unloading everything. So, his manager told him he couldn’t cancel it, and we had to return everything, and re-ring it up. Egads. That happens. I had the afternoon off, so no need to panic or rush. I load up my stuff, puzzling in the back of my head why it was still so expensive, I put it all in the car & look at my receipt. He gave me 10% off.

Back into the store. He has me get back in line & we return everything, again, but it’s crazy, because he’d given me the employee discount and he had to manually calculate the prices and I said yes, it was fine if we were off by a few cents. Then, he could not, for the life of him, get the correct code to work on the food. At one point, he offered me another 25% off coupon just to call it quits & walk away. That was the only thing that pissed me off; I said, basically, you’re requesting I spend MORE money, and I can print another coupon at home! So he slogged through, the manager never returned, even though she was paged, and finally, with the assistance of yet another cashier, we got the whole thing rung up correctly. And yes, I got almost $20 off, so it was worth it, but it was stunning to me that a major company (they’re owned by PierOne) would have such a deficit in their register systems. I actually went back to World Market on Saturday (a different location, mind you, and I was quick to present my coupon at the start!) and my cashier still had some issues and questions & had to consult her manager.

Needless to say, I’m done shopping for a while. And, apparently, that applies to online as well, since nothing stays loaded more than three minutes, what with THE MONKEY running around.

I am telling you, working five days in a row is a bitch. And I even have the afternoon off. So maybe we should change that statement to four days in a row. Maybe it’s just all downhill once you mention the word “working”; I dunno. All I know is, the process of grieving, the process of re-fortifying your fortress after a burglary, re-establishing your routine, the process of reclaiming your formerly-scrubbed and halfway-normal life, which is now an unwashed and unkempt life, like a runaway ragamuffin at the train station, who needs to be deloused and fed hot soup and put to bed with a hand-knit blankie and properly lectured when the time is right – all of this takes a whole lot of energy. Energy you don’t even realize is pouring out of your pores into the universe. But it’s why every night, and thankfully so, I sleep as though I have been drugged with horse tranquilizers and when a dogfight breaks out at 2 in the morning over who gets to sleep on the big pillow at the bottom of the bed, I snuffle and snort and have absolutely no impact on the situation. (Thank Goodness there’s JWo! DogWrangler Extraoridinaire!)

A portion of my energy has been spent badly, fretting and being irritated with my mother. She is also grieving, and I cannot fault that – but in her desire to be the Ultimate Victim (Now with Lifelike Hair! By Mattel. Wine bottles and internet account sold separately.), she is trying to make me feel guilty, sad, bad about myself and my actions as they did or did not affect her throughout my father’s illness, death and subsequent events since. But! Because I have gone through a rehabilitation of sorts, Therapy Boot Camp for Dummies, the al-anon for co-dependents and only-children with Excessive Desire To Please Syndrome (EDTPS), I recognize her melodrama and woe-is-me bleating for the rusty saw-toothed bear trap it truly is. However, it has not prevented me from spending four days being extremely angry and burning up some energy as my brain tries to quiet it, fold it neatly like a 400-thread-count sheet, smooth the surface one last time with the palm of my hand and put it away.

And, as usual with trying experiences, there is a lesson. A lesson I’ve learned and re-learned and put into practice any number of times over the years. I wrote about it some time ago, when things at the former employer were pushing me to near-critical levels – in retrospect, things that pale in comparison to the trials of this year. But that lesson originated from my lifelong conflict with my mother, and it is still true today: the handle opens from the inside.

Today? I’m spending my afternoon with a chair shoved under the handle and a wardrobe pushed up against it. Let the healing recommence.

Today, I re-named LaFonda (temporarily) the E-Z Bake Honda. Seriously. We could bake bread in that car, casseroles, souffles, you name it, it could be accomplished. Someone needs to invent a big suction device that sucks up all this heat and then stores it away for winter! Git on it, you spammers! I can sacrifice hearing about your Nigerian money trail and your enlargement creams for – oh – ONE MONTH – if you just put your noggin into creating a vacuum (that doesn’t lose suction!) to store up all this dreadful heat for when we need it most, like, January. Mmm-kay? In the meantime, I’ll be frosting cupcakes in the trunk.