Adventures, Misadventures , Reflections and Profanity

Life has somehow managed to get even more chaotic than ever. Just to make ends meet I have had to take on more than one other job. My days now begin at 4am and they end at irregular times each day. In addition to the extra stress it is now the holiday season and I hate the holidays. Over the weekend my husband and I went back to my home to visit my family. This is our first Thanksgiving since my mother died and so we wanted to be together. It was stressful to get the funds together to pay for the trip and the trip itself was incredibly sad and disappointing.  My family is an absolute mess and they always have been, but after the antics of this weekend, I am almost certain that my husband now wants nothing at all to do with his in-laws every again, and I frankly don't blame him. And now, as the first of yet another new month approaches, I am scrambling to get the money together for rent and bills. There just aren't enough hours in the day for me to make the money I need to k...

I have come to learn that this thing we call grief is really just love. It is love for the person we have lost, but we can no longer give to that person because they are no longer with us. All of the unspent love gathers in our eyes and pours forth as tears. It collects in our chest to form that hard, painful lump that makes it hard to breathe. It gathers in our throats and makes our voice catch all hard and sharp when we speak about them. We don't stop loving someone when they die. If we did, there would be no such thing as grief. That love turns to longing and that longing turns to pain when it cannot be satisfied because the thing we are longing for is the return of the person whom we miss so terribly. Some days I am OK. I can go one entire day now without crying, without feeling sorry for myself, without experiencing that crushing feeling of despair, and that is progress. But then there are so many more days that are like today. The grief is too much and it rises in my ches...

Well, I made it back from our trip across Nevada and back again. It was a journey, that much is true. It started with a drive from Las Vegas to Reno early last Friday morning. the nearly 500 miles long road trip takes about 8 hours to complete and by mid-afternoon, we were sitting in my sister's living room in down town Reno, unloading our things from the car and getting ready to head over to Sparks to take in the sights of their Friday night Hot August Nights celebration. If you don't know what Hot August Nights is, check it out here: https://hotaugustnights.net/ It is the largest gathering of classic cars in the world and it takes place each year in the month of August in the Reno/Sparks area. If you're into American muscle, this is definitely your scene. Our plan was to see the parade in Sparks on Friday night, then check out the happenings in Reno on Saturday night. We did manage to accomplish both of these goals quite handily and I was thrilled to see so many wond...

This year I completed all of the credits required for my bachelor's degree except for one single class. The class in question began on the very day my mother died this year. As a result I missed most of the class because I was overcome with grief and anxiety. After that it was impossible to catch up and the result was the only class I ever failed in my entire college career. I have to make up those three elective credits before I can obtain my diploma. I have been using the website StraighterLine.com to take the class. I have presently completed everything in the class except for the final exam. My current grade is 91%, but I have been putting off the final exam for over two months. Why is that? Well, I will tell you. I have opened up the computer multiple times over the past several weeks with the intention of taking the stupid final exam and then getting my credits and moving on with my life by obtaining my bachelor's degree and likely moving forward to grad school. When I ...

Yesterday I tried something that I have never done before: I attended a support group for grieving people. Having lost 4 very important people in less than two years, the most recent of which was my mother in January, I have been struggling with grief and anger and exhaustion from it all. the anger and grief has started to make me a bitter person and I have caught myself being cold or short with people that I love, and that just isn't acceptable to me. I started researching online for some resources for free grief counseling. Being a teacher, there just isn't a lot of extra money to go around, so it was imperative to find something for free. My first choice was to find a grief counselor of some kind, but unfortunately one on one counseling just isn't ever free, or even affordable from what I could find, which I guess makes sense. That left support groups, which honestly scared the crap out of me. the thought of sitting and crying in a room full of strangers sounded like a t...