Taking my finger off the self-destruct button

little_h_2

hi Wordsmith, I have read your diary (and keep reading) but haven't posted yet.

I was so very sorry to read about your dad.

I'm glad you reached a decision on the house, I'm sure it will work out well. poorbutrich has a point, and I have heard others say the same thing, that whatever decision you make will be the right one for you.

I talk to my dog too. Sometimes he talks back but mostly I just wonder how he would respond and imagine him talking back instead.

However, my dad talks to all of their dogs - they all have the same voice but as they all have their own little characters, we know who is 'talking' at the time. Oh heavens, what must this sound like! :rotfl:

So sorry about your cat too

Wordsmith

Thank you all for posting, and no, no sign of Toby One Eye.

I have been working hard towards getting out of the doldrums. I hope this weekend to get the shop accounts finished, so that will be a huge weight off my mind and hopefully the rest will follow. I have quite a lot of work on at the moment (good, good, good), but am getting a bit stressy trying to fit it all in. Motivation has been low, but I can feel it returning.

Pluses

• I have got work.
• Have been posting a daily to-do list to the self-employment thread.
• Favoured friend coming out for a few days in March.
• Have at last got onepoll to let me have some surveys.
• Washing machine flooded kitchen again, but lovely landlady’s lovely husband has fixed it again, at no cost to me.

Plus or unplus?
House sale seems to be going ahead. The buyers took a while to pass on information re solicitor, so I was beginning to think they were stalling for some reason, but they’ve done so now. I have allowed my head to rule my heart so I should be pleased. I know it was the right thing to do.

Unpluses

• Haven’t earned as much as I need to. Hopefully from next week, I can start to put that right.
• We have decided to be there when Dad’s ashes are scattered at crematorium. At first we thought we wouldn’t, but both of us would now like to be. Obviously this in itself isn’t an unplus, but it does mean another flight over, and for some reason they ain’t cheap at the moment.

I worked late last night and got home at about 11 p.m. Brian wasn’t there to greet me as he usually is and couldn’t be found anywhere around the house. I heard a plaintive mewling from somewhere and eventually found it was coming from the closed barn next door. I couldn’t get the door open so had to go and ask lovely landlady’s lovely husband to do it. So, 11.15 p.m. and landlady, her husband and I were out cat rescuing, not very ably aided by two overexcited dogs. Mama cat was interested in all the goings on, but couldn’t give a rat’s ar5e about her poor frightened son. Freed Brian from the barn but he was a bit spooked and ran off. Tapping of a cat food tin with a fork didn’t bring him in, but he reappeared all Kevin-like five minutes later, strutting into the house with a “Yeah, so, I’ve been out a bit late. Where’s my supper?” attitude. And I got to eat my Pringles and three lemon biscuits (not being good, just the end of the packet) with a glass of wine (also known as “dinner”) at about half past eleven. I don’t pay nearly enough rent to be able to cause my landlady so much hassle on such a regular basis.

startagain_2

:T


Wordsmith,

Whilst I realise that your life is sad, difficult and full of angst at the moment I have to say that you write the bestest posts ever! The description of the Brian the downhill, or is it uphill, cat coming in made me laugh. I can just picture it.
I expect your landlady enjoys having you as a tenant and I wouldn't worry about the £'s - I am sure you make up for it in other ways.
Congrats on the work, typical that it now means you are stressing about the amount and the time scales. Why, as humans, are we never satisfied?
Keep your chin up.. Nice sounding dinner by the way

SA

chevalier

hi Wordsmith
So sorry to belatedly hear about your Dad passing. That must be very hard to deal with, especially as you weren't in the same country.

And then the cat too, just to make things more painful.

I am glad that you will be at the ash scattering. I think it is important. I wasn't there for my step fathers ashes being scattered and I regret it now, as he was a great father figure.

I hope that you can use the 15 minute burst technique to pile through the work. It is really amazing just how much of something I can get through in 15 minutes if I focus on the task and do nothing else!
chev

Wordsmith

I am emerging from the fog that I guess was grief. It wasn’t all-enveloping – the first few weeks after Dad died I was all over the place, not working well, not sleeping, feeling really low … and, with an astounding lack of insight, couldn’t really understand why! Gradually my life has got back to normal, although I am only just getting back to my usual sleep pattern (out like a light after two mins of book reading, dead to the world until rolling out of bed after half an hour of hitting the snooze button … and still feeling tired:o). Although we have always (well, as adults) got on, I have never had a particularly close relationship with my sister, but when I came back after the funeral, I missed her dreadfully, and still do; she told me that after I left she felt very lonely, too. I couldn’t bring myself to post on my diary. And I am having to force myself now. Hopefully this will release the log jam and I can be as verbose as usual!

Coming up to the new year I had started to make some important (for me) decisions. Even some new year’s resolutions – I don’t usually do those as I think if there is something you want to change then you should start straight away, not wait for new year. But it just so happened that round about new year was the time I came to the realisation that changes had to come about in my life and that it was high time I made them. Then I put life on hold because of death. So my life changes are going to start now – and spring is a good time to have a rebirth. (Although looking out the window you’d never believe it was spring and rebirth is a bit of an overstatement for what I have in mind!)

I have also had a “big” birthday – big as in large number … huge, massive. This was shortly after Dad died, so I let it be known that I didn’t want to celebrate it (I’m not big on birthdays anyway) and so it passed with just a couple of cards. I am not generally given to introspection, but realising the large, huge, massive number of years ago that I was born did give me a bit of a jolt that even with a normal life-span I am running out of time. And now I’ve had a bit of a health scare – nothing major, a pinched nerve in my back I think (I have got an appointment with an osteopath, but he couldn’t fit me in until next week). Although lots of people have this, I am a bit scared because this was the first sign of my dad’s health problems at roughly the same age. By the time he was 53, he was in a wheelchair permanently. I’m not usually a hypochondriac, but my general lowness has I think made me a bit panicky.

Most of all, though, I came to the realisation that I don’t really have many memories. “Making memories” was already one of my rebirth resolutions. It was reinforced recently when I was in the UK (for Dad’s laying to rest), and my sister was going out to dinner with the WI. I didn’t want to go, but she had arranged that they could fit in another one and so I felt obliged. Well, what a fabulous bunch of ladies and what a lovely evening I had. They were intelligent, funny and had such wonderful stories to tell of their experiences. (Another resolution: I don’t get the opportunity to go out often, so when the opportunity comes knocking, just do it.) I text favoured friend (jokingly) “I want to join the WI”, he text back (not jokingly) “I think that you would be found out very quickly”.

This is a long post (some things don’t change). It is not as morose as it sounds – I feel very determined. It really is time to take my finger off the self-destruct button. And although I didn’t mention money (it is, after all, an MSE diary), that is involved, too.

This is the bridging post between the old and the new. I will get back to proper MSE posts.

elantan

Yay your back .... Really missed you .... Sorry to hear about your dad i think i was incomunicado at that point

Hope the back isnt too sore and settles quickly ... Sounds like your rebirthing is going to be exactly what you need

Radish72

Welcome back Wordsmith

I think grief effects everyone different and you cope the best that you can at that time and for a long time after. I'm guessing after losing your dad your relationship with your sister will change and it sounds like for the better and will bring you closer. The time that you both spent looking after your dad so wonderfully can now be focussed on looking after each other

Happy Belated birthday, maybe you can be like the Queen and if you feel like celabrating have another birthday in the summer, when its lovely and warm

Heres's to making lots of wonderful memories

beanielou

Good to 'see' you.

Wordsmith

Thanks Elantan, Radish and Beanilou. Grief is a very odd thing. I worry sometimes that I haven't cried for years. I didn't cry when my mum died or during her funeral; I didn't cry when the cat went missing (and I so loved that cat); and I didn't cry when Dad died or during his funeral. Is there something wrong with me? I know that different people react in different ways to grief, but surely crying is nearly always part of that? I think I will keep it bottled up and then one day something simple, like my normal brand of baked beans won't be on the supermarket shelf, and I will weep like there's no tomorrow. I am trying to buy different brands of baked beans so that I don't get used to one, just in case.

Horace

I wouldnt fret about the not weeping - I don't cry either much to the annoyance of the rest of my family. I even tittered at my grandma's funeral because her friend came out of retirement to do the service and the poor dear started coughing and I swear I could hear grandma's voice in my head saying "don't kark it at my funeral" To say I was persona non grata for several weeks after that was an understatement. I even managed to upset my cousin who was pregnant at the time because she asked why the funeral cars were going a particular way and I said that we were visiting Grandma's favourite places - as a result one upset cousin who refused to come into the crematorium and again I was in the doghouse. I prefer to talk about the deceased but have learnt now to keep my mouth shut because everyone else prefers to weep and wail.

The tale of Brian being locked in the barn made me smile too - I can imagine him being quite haughty when he eventually came home for food.

Don't beat yourself up - the best baked beans are Heinz. Happy Belated birthday too @-<

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