kvetching up

 T-Mobile updated the phone software. Let's hope it allows me to post. I have so much news these days, and I want to write it down. Glitching still. Nuked 500 plus words. I installed the duckduckgo app. Let's see if that makes a difference. Today, I went to a 3rd party Dept. of Licensing storefront today to transfer the title of the Honda Accord Coupe, Abby's car, from Jenny to me. I then had someone come take that car and Leiney's 2008 Honda away. Both are in need of serious repairs, and I'm done putting money in them. Hence, the purchase of the 2001 CRV for Abby earlier this week. Wow, this is working. . . Tomorrow night it's Abby and me ringing in the New Year. Leiney is going to a party. . . ‐‐----------------------------------------------------------------------- I gave notice at work last week. I am starting a new job on January 23rd. It is not labor related, weirdly, but does involve investigation oversight, investigations and training. I'm ready for ...

Abby made a yule log. Last year we ate the one my dear friend Jeremy had given us. Also like last year, I am hiding in my room from the multitudes downstairs. I am exhausted, physically and emotionally. Jenny was actively dying at this time last year, her suffering nothing anyone should have to bear. Just before 6 this morning, I sat downstairs sobbing, the dogs cuddling me. The kids didn't hear me, they were asleep, and I am glad this was the case.  I rarely update now, given that my phone doesn't work properly when I try to make an entry. Everything gets wiped out. Let's just say this Christmas has been quite the success. From the giant tree to the presents the girls received, and the hosting of Christmas and Christmas Eve, all went better than planned.  Still, Christmas has been a painful time for the three of us. I don't know how it couldn't be this way. Despite starting early to salve and distract from the pain, and even though I haven't looked back on Dece...

Since a recent phone update, none of my browsers on this phone work correctly when using blogger. I don't know if it's a software problem or a platform problem, but it has made my ability to post on the fly almost impossible. In fact, it just erased about 1000 words that followed. Fuck. As much as I love all the secular and most of the non-secular parts of the holiday season, even with the celebratory atmosphere, my feeling, aside from child rearing, rearing, that my life has been less than purposeful is ever present.  I have a purposeless career, and meaningless day to day living. This along wabith an inability to feel connected to anything besides my dogs or anyone besides my children is unlike anything I have experienced. It isn't being anchorless. I am just not able to feel connected. I thought Jenny would outlive me. I always believed that, and she did as well, as evidenced by a discussion she had via text back in 2013 with a friend in which she was disparaging me, but...

4:10 a.m.  The house is ridiculously decked out in Christmas decorations, but it needs more. I need more. I went shopping this morning. There were no hoards, no thronging masses. At Cost Plus, there were 8 or nine sales people and us, Abby and I.  I am a lost soul. I sit alone in the dark, listening to Yeats put to music by Mike Scott, an island of candles burning and making the house smell of Christmas. Tears are rolling down my cheeks, as I go to the well again and again for more strength, trying to power through. It's not working, I am simply filled with sorrow and ever more tears. The early dark doesn't help the situation.  I have turned to candles to make the house more festive, to perfume the air.   4:15 p.m. The girls and I have been out all day, shopping for Christmas items, after a hearty breakfast at the Pancake Haus. Small Business Saturday in downtown Burien and the holiday festival at the Piazza in Renton, both fell short of expectations. This is an us t...

Here we are. I held a crying Leiney tonight, who was cursing the holiday, cursing it coming without her mother alongside. Jenny was the holidays in Leiney's child's memory. Abby is mum. When I came in from the garage, where Leiney had been working out crying in my embrace, and told Abby that Leiney was sad and missing mom, not a word or response. Nada. This is troubling. Me? I'm still alternating between bitter and sad, can't shake the fact that her infidelity wasn't just with me, but with my kids with whom she spent such little time.  We are going to Jenny's sisters for the holiday dinner. My big sister is in Hawaii. It is going to be hard.

Early this morning around 3:30 or 4:30, depending on your predilection for moving clocks an hour back and forth, I woke up and realized that for the first time in 32 years, I will be celebrating the holidays without a partner by my side. This isn't breaking news, since Jenny passed it was always going to be so. But, I hadn't counted the beads on the abacus, at least not consciously. I started playing Christmas music on November 1 . I am decorating today. We have 10-12 or more Rubbermaid storage boxes full of Christmas cheer. We have lights to string across the fence, and others to hang in the house and on the tree. I've already declared Christmas Eve will be here, at our house. I want everyone here, Jenny's family, my family. We have all the accoutrements relied on every year. I'm buying a 12 foot tree. I'm decorating early, very early. Jenny was just inches from actively dying on Christmas morning, and I had to admit her that night and leave her alone--because ...

I have been awake for a while now. My head full of random thoughts, fragments of dreams and a yearning to find sleep again. It won't happen. Nerves? Probably that's a bit of it, as I have a job interview today. But, I have woken up early several times in the last two weeks. It frustrates me. Sometimes, as I walk around the house, I stop and think, "I am alone." I am traveling through this world now without a partner--not just a partner, but my life's partner. It's a terrifying admission, as I go through each hour pretending nothing had changed. It isn't that I feel I am without friends, given all the support you all have given me these last couple years. But, the way I define myself has changed. The decision making is mine alone. There is no one else to check in with, no one to disagree with, no one who will tell me my schemes are hairbraned. Mostly, as meager as it was in the end, there is no one to offer shelter, succor or simple reassuring company. ‐--‐...

The holiday season is upon us. I got a call from a dear friend last night, checking on on me. I'm fine, I told her. Then, "It's too soon to tell." Jenny's absence is a void, to be sure. And Christmas for us, probably because we are the youngest in our families, almost magic. When dating, all through the year we would look for ornaments to commemorate our lives together. This continued after marriage--until she died. This year the kids and I will forego Thanksgiving decorations and go straight to the 10 Rubbermaid storage boxes of Christmas decorations.

  Changing Times Friday night found Abby and me at the Inn at Lynden, a lovely little hotel in what I would describe as a bit of bleakness. I don't find Lynden particularly worth visiting, but Abby had the ACT at Lynden Christian High School on Saturday morning, so there we were. The ubiquitous faux windmills gave the place the feel of a poor echo of Leavenworth (the town, not the prison, although I wouldn't argue much with anyone describing it as feeling like some sort of stifling incarceration, given it is a city so famous for its piety).  Abby has now taken the SAT and ACT. She refused the offer of prep courses, and instead did her own preparation. I hope she kills it on one of them. I have been to the pumpkin patch three  times this year. Abby couldn't go the first time. Last week, smoke week, kept the asthmatics in the family (namely Leiney and I) from being able to weather the corn maze. On Sunday, Abby led us bravely through. There was no acrimony, no dallying, no ...