One More for You Sweetie...

Since I'm already in tears...

Love,
L

For My J ...

J, I miss you so badly. Today the weight of your absence is absolutely crushing.

I miss that you can't tell me again that Eli Wallach didn't know the dog was there, and it really scared him. I miss that you aren't here to say "Close your eyes the spinning's starting up." I miss watching your face when you are so lost in the song and the movie. I really do love this movie as much as you did. Thanksgiving won't ever be the same again. I'll try to watch it for you though.

I miss you Sweetie.

Love,
L

Ok, One More. Then I'm Done.

I left some friends off the list. I don't want to leave anyone out.

The TV Girls - I can't believe how devoted you've been to me during the last 3 months. I know how much you loved J. I love you all the most! S, when you call, it's like being handed a glass of ice water after wandering around in the desert all day. When I saw your e-mail pop-up on my screen Tuesday, I actually said out loud "Thank God!" I'll see y'all friday night. Put me to work! I love the picture. It took my breath away and made me cry. It's hanging on my bulletin board at work where I can see it everyday.

My Ex - I'm so glad we've patched up our friendship. I've missed you for 20 years. Thanks for calling me out of the blue and listening to me ramble. I do want you and your family to come visit me. Give me another 9 months or so, and I might call up your brother and see if he wants to get into some trouble.

STH - I'm an awful, terrible friend to you. I think I was an even worse roommate. But you put up with me anyway. WTH is that all about? Stop it. You deserve better. Now, forward me some spam.

The Yard Apes - What's shakin' babycakes? Love ya. Mean it.

One More because I'm Really Bored and Have the Time

I know it sounds like it, but all is not gloom and doom all the time. There are happy moments. (But I always feel guilty about having them.)

Exhibit A: I love my car.

No, I REALLY, REALLY LOVE my car. My car makes me happy. My friend named it the "Car of Rage" because it looks too happy. I love the Car of Rage because it goes fast, and most importantly, it has a really good sound system. Because I am all about the tunes (and driving fast). I still haven't learned all the alarms, flashing lights and quirks of the car yet. At least once a day (and at the most inopportune times), I set the panic alarm off. I had to get another friend to teach me how to use the cruise control. I never had it before. Several times I've caught myself trying to unlock the house with the little keyless entry thingie. Not too sure about why I keep doing that.

Exhibit B: I love my animals - most of the time.

I have two cats, H & K, and a dog, W. For the most part, they make me happy. Lately, the cats have been fighting a lot. And W has been pouty. My parents think that they need to feed them every 15 minutes. So now the animals think they should eat every 15 minutes. This is part of the reason I had to get the cat food last Saturday while I was crying at Wal-mart. The little buggers are going through the food like crazy.

See, I spend way too much time thinking about the cats. Crazy Old Cat Lady is showing up. But anyway, it makes me happy when they curl up in my lap or pile all their toys on the bed every night to keep me company.

Exhibit C: Television. Reality Television.

Stick a camera in somebody's face, and I'm so there. Maybe it's a holdover from when I worked at a television station? At any rate, I am hopelessly addicted to reality tv. Survivor, Amazing Race, Project Runway, Big Brother (I promised J I wouldn't watch it anymore, but he's not here to hold me to it), American Idol, Shear Genius, America's Next Top Model, The Hills - you name it, I probably watch it. And it makes me happy. Maybe I'm just nosey?

Exhibit D: Music.

I like pretty much everything except COUNTRY MUSIC. I do not like the country music. It's a long story that I might tell one day. Ok, I take it back. I like my Grandpa's music. He was a musician and played all over the place with all sorts of other musicians. He could play anything. I took up the piano at 8 years old for him. One day he sat down with me at the piano and said "Play something girl." I was only 8. I played this little song about the mailman from my beginner's book. Grandpa was really disgusted. He said "All those lessons, and you can't even play Your Cheatin Heart?" Grandpa thought that music wasn't created after Hank Williams.

But I digress.

I love Garbage. I want to be Shirley Manson. She's so freakin' cool. I love Nirvana. I miss Kurt Cobain screaming. I love Nine Inch Nails. I have mad, mad, mad love for Trent Reznor. Swoon... I love Duffy. She makes me cry which makes me happy. I know. It's convoluted. I love B.B. King. You would too if you ever heard him play Lucille in person. I have. Best concert EVAH. I love Stevie Ray Vaughan. Tin Pan Alley is simply amazing. It's the low down dirty blues. I love Rocco Deluca and The Burden. I have mad love for Rocco too. It seems I have a thing for dirty boys. Must be all these Saturday nights spent in the Loser's Club.

Exhibit E: I love my people. Great friends rock!

I'm surviving because of my friends right now. You peeps know who you are:

The Movie Girls (One more movie set in Greece, and we're taking a trip! I'll bring the Kleenex.)

Pirate Girl (my partner in pizza crime, long late-night talks and butt-loads of e-mails)

D & N (the fart-machine girls who check on me everyday no matter how busy they are and who actually want me to talk about my problems)

K (who was there when I needed her the most)

B & E (my true heart sisters forever)

T (my let's-talk-about-sex-and-all-things-TMI girl - dang you make me laugh even on days when it's all I can do just to exist on the planet)

and the Dirty Boys at work who keep me laughing and entertained all day while I'm trying to work already.


I got some things to be happy about.

Please, no comments about the grammar and spelling. I'm lucky just to make a complete thought these days.

The Saturday Night Loser's Club

If you're reading this, you qualify for membership in the Saturday Night Loser's Club. It's free to join. The only requirement is that you must have no life at all.

When J was alive, we lived for the weekends. We couldn't wait until it was Friday night. As soon as the clock hit 4:30, I bolted out the door at work and raced home like a crazy woman. We had fun - a lot of fun. Then when Sunday night arrived, we'd both be lower than dirt just thinking about going back to work.

Here's an example of what we do in the Saturday Night Loser's Club:

6:00 p.m. - Drive by Taco Bell. Get nachos, a side of rice, and a side of Cheesy Fiesta Potatoes and a bag of Fire Sauce - to take home and eat alone.

6:15 p.m. - Ignore phone call from J's mother.

6:17 p.m. - Ignore phone call and voice mail from J's mother.

6:20 p.m. - Arrive home. Plop into recliner with Taco Bell meal and a bottle of water (cause we're on a serious diet). Turn on tv. Watch Wednesday night's rerun of "Project Runway" on Bravo. (Cause we missed the first 15 minutes of it Wednesday night.)

7:00 p.m. - Wake up to find the cats are licking the bottom of my sandals. What the crap? Dang, I totally missed the last 15 minutes of "Project Runway".

7:something p.m. - Flip around on tv. Find movie "Raising Helen". Don't really want to see it, but it does have John Corbett in it which is always a good thing. But as usual, I missed the first whatever minutes of it.

8:ish p.m. - Guilted in to answering phone call from Grandma.

Hey Grandma, guess what? I went off and left all the toilets running while I was gone. I poured 2 boxes of powdered laundry detergent down the toilet so it's clogging up the septic tank. I also left all the doors and windows open, and thieves are carrying everything out of the house right now. (This is a partial list of the don't do's that Grandma puts me through during every phone call.)

Somewhere around 10 maybe p.m. - Remember that I had washed a load of clothes earlier this morning (grief makes you stupid). Re-washed them.

Checked in on the young widows/widowers online. There were a few complaints about Saturday night being pathetic. They are SO my people. I love my people.

Cranked up iTunes and turned it up REALLY LOUD. Maybe it will attract the neighbors or maybe if I'm lucky - the Police. I doubt it though. I never heard of anyone getting turned in for disturbing the peace cranking Abba to the max.

Poke around in the del.icio.us bookmarks for awhile. Then decide to blog about how pathetic it is to be alone on Saturday night.

I know no one's actually reading this because everyone bought their condoms at the Wal-mart Pharmacy today. It's Saturday night after all.

Post a comment if you want to join the club. And send me a timeline of your Saturday night activities - unless you're in the condom club. I don't want to know about that.

Grief makes You Crazy

It really does. Grief actually makes you crazy.

You find yourself doing and saying things that you would never do and say in your normal life. It makes you stupid. Crazy and stupid.

Saturday night, I realized that I needed to have some medication refilled. I didn't have any left at all, and I NEED the meds. I ran to Wal-mart to just get it done. So I'm sitting there on a bench in front of the pharmacy next to the condom aisle while I'm waiting for my refill.

For the next 15 minutes or so, I count 15 people. 15 people buying condoms in 15 minutes. Old people. Young people. Girls. Men. Married couples.

I start to cry. Ten more minutes go by. Holy crap, the whole dang town is buying condoms. It occurs to me that even old people are getting lucky tonight. I cry even harder.

I'm crying not because I am apparently the only one in town spending Saturday night alone. But I'm crying because I'm taking home anti-depressants, kleenex and cat food.

It looks like I might be on the path to becoming a Crazy Old Cat Lady.

I knew a Crazy Old Cat Lady when I was a kid. She painted her entire house bright purple - the outside of her entire house. On Sunday mornings, she would put her speakers in the windows and blast John Phillips Sousa music out the windows. Everyone called her "The Purple Woman". I don't think I ever actually saw her, but I always felt like she saw us as we walked by.

I wonder who died that she loved.

Room 353

What's Room 353 have to do with anything? Nothing really.

It's just my office number. Work has become my sanity and my life since J died. Home is not much of a home any more. Basically, my life is in Room 353.

The crappy thing is that it's not even really an office. It's a storage room slash break room. From the doorway it looks like a closet. It's kinda dark in there too. But people seem to like it because I generally have a full house of visitors every morning. This afternoon, I looked up and some strange guy was just standing there in my cube smiling at me. There's just something about that room that makes people want to hang out there.

I used to really, really live. When J was alive, we had so much fun. We weren't just married. We were best friends. We had that kind of marriage that makes other people sick. You know when two people are so perfect together that it stops being J and L and becomes JandL. Sort of like Brangelina, I guess? That was us. J used to say we were like a pair of shoes - a perfect match and a perfect fit.

When he died, I didn't just lose him. I lost everything. I lost my whole entire life. All the fun is gone. All the things I loved to do are gone. I don't live anymore. I just have a life. It's kind of like I'm just sitting around waiting for my turn to die.

In the first few weeks, I started to think about it a lot. Dying, that is. I wanted to. I wished for it. I hoped for it. I planned it. I almost did it and scared myself so badly that it shocked some sense back into me. I just have a life now. And it happens in Room 353.

What happened

May 29, 2008: The day that I stopped living.

I don't remember anything about that day up until about 10:45 a.m. I've lost that entire morning from my memory. But at 10:45 a.m. I was getting ready to go to a meeting at work when my friend K was suddenly standing in my doorway. She said "Something's happened to your husband. You need to come with me." I remember she was wearing a black skirt and a black blouse.

The next thing I remember I was at the hospital, and the nurse was asking me if someone is with me.

"Why?...Oh no, no, no, please."

I was taken into a small room and a faceless doctor grabbed my hands and said he was so sorry. I think I told him to go back in there and keep trying. Then there was this long explanation that I couldn't listen to and something about who can we call. I think I sat down at some point. And no matter where I looked no one was doing anything. Lots of talking around me and over me. But no one was trying to fix this.

I have no idea what happened next. I couldn't breathe.

For the next 4 hours, people streamed in and out of that room crying and hugging me. How on earth did they know to come to the hospital? Who is calling all these people?

Someone hands me a box of Kleenex. I want to see my husband. I have to talk to him. The nurse won't let me go. She tells me I need to think about it first. Am I sure I want to have that picture in my head forever? Do I want to donate his organs?

"What? He needs his organs." Legally, they can't contact me again if I say no. If I say no to what?

"What funeral home do you want?" Stop talking about funeral homes and organs being donated!!! I need to see my J. Please God, strike me dead too right now.

For the next few days, people came in and out of our house like it was the Holiday Inn. There was a lot of food, but no one was ever eating anything. My ears were hurting from holding a cell phone against each one for 3 solid days.

Arrangements had to be made. A casket had to be chosen. Flowers. Music. A black dress.

Please, I just want to wake up now.