Post by Honeylioness on Jan 13, 2011 16:48:49 GMT -5
13 January 2011[/u]
Yikes, where do I even begin?
Perhaps the first full week of December 2010 when I realized that my money tracking and spending in two areas were completely out of control? Which in turn made me feel as though why bother for the month - just let it go.
The nagging sense of guilt, especially when talking to Mom, about the fact that we were not coming out for Christmas this year, AND I have not sent her the quilt I had all the best intentions of doing for her 70th birthday in November? (never mind that my Dad's was almost a year late).
Is it the looming deadline for my Whistler quilt and the complete lack of communication from either the teacher or the museum? I am not sure if either of them are even still interested in moving this project forward.
Perhaps it came from knowing, and watching people learn, that nine employees in my division were losing their jobs just before Christmas. Sure there is a Severance package - but not really the point is it when you are told "Happy Holidays, oh by the way, you no longer have a job".
Maybe things started to turn down-wards the evening I was watching television with Ines, bit into a soft piece of licorice and almost swallowed half a lower molar that cracked down the middle to the gum line on one side of a very old filling?
Or perhaps I am feeling this way because I have become aware that my periods are becoming more off-schedule, and this is usually an early sign of menopause and I have to face the idea that I will never be a mother - even though it is something my heart and spirit have yearned to do since I was a teenager. There will not be a daughter to whom I can leave our family's heirlooms and legacies. No son to pass on the traditions of a family who have been on this continent since the mid 1600s.
And then there was The Great Cat Fight. On December 17th my best friend dropped off her two cats prior to heading down to Tennessee for two weeks to spend time with her husband's family. The cats, Loki and Thor, are BIG boys - easily twice the size of any of my other cats. Loki, the older one and the biggest (almost 20 pounds) is also a Beta more submissive animal. I could tell from the start that his game plan for the visit was to find a quiet hidey hole and keep out of everyone's way.
Loki on the other hand is relatively young and completely unaware that sometimes it is better to back down and walk away. A rather Alpha attitude that did not sit well with the other kitties - especially David. I was actually rather surprised that David would be so aggressive towards both cats - until I suddenly remembered, or noticed rather, that he was the only un-neutered male in the house. So his testosterone was definitely on the high side.
I had expected that for the first day or so there would be hissing, growling, posturing and minor scuffles for pecking order. However what came as a complete surprise was finding Tigger (my 8 yo Orange Tabby) on December 23rd with a hugely swollen back foot that was hot to the touch. At first I thought it might be a relatively minor cut that I could open and drain for him - but further probing told me this was beyond my home-remedy scope and he needed to be at a doctor's office NOW.
So that night, the 23rd, found me checking my boy into the hospital for emergency surgery on his foot. When the doctor called me a few hours later she said it had been "...a Mess..." The infection seems to have come from a cat bite received during a scuffle with Thor I had broken up a couple of days earlier. Because the injury was a deep puncture wound it had not bled and flushed the area so infection had rapidly developed and was affecting at least two of his toes and part of his "ankle". It had taken them more than an hour to drain and clean the foot out and I should be aware that there was a possibility that he would still loose one of his toes.
Once I got Tigger home it was a real challenge the first couple of days to keep him quiet and isolated from the others so he could rest. Then there was the twice a day oral antibiotics ... something he was NOT fond of. And after the first follow up visit to the vet he kept chewing off his bandages! Not that I could really blame him ... he did look silly with that one neon pink foot all bandaged up - it so clashed with his fur.
On the upside he did pass his second follow up visit with flying colors. The foot is healing great and he can keep his toe! And my friend offered to re-imburse me for all the vet bills. That's so great of her because I had wiped out my tiny savings to pay for them.
Then I entered the after-Christmas "blah" season. Where not only could I not seem to get out my own way, but I had absolutely NO energy to do anything - not even fun stuff. The things we did do over the week before New Years were really forced on my part and done on behalf of the girls as I would have preferred to pull the covers over my head instead.
Oh, and lest I forget .... I had to come into the office and lost a half a day of the vacation day I had planned to take in order to deal with a situation that never should have been last minute if someone else in the office had gotten off her keister and done her part of the process three weeks ago when I asked her to!!!!
And then January arrived - and I began to feel as though perhaps things would turn around.
I went to an acupuncturist for the first time in my life - I would really like to be a non-smoker again. Not just for the health reasons, but seeing that line item and it's numbers each month on my spreadsheets is making me almost physically ill. While I am not able to call myself a non-smoker yet .... it is getting better and tapering off from where my consumption used to be.
I got a burst of cleaning energy and in one weekend we packed away all the Christmas decorations, cleaned the whole house, hauled the tree off for recycling then cleaned out the car and took it to the car wash.
My quilt is almost done - tonight I hope to finish applying the binding as we had a tentative deadline to get it done by this Saturday.
However the final straw in the creation of my most recent tizzy came on Monday night. For reasons I am not really sure of I came home in a bit of a bad mood but had done my usual watch the news before making dinner routine. As I was in the kitchen starting to chop onions the phone rang. It was Redhawk.
More and more lately I have been wanting to reach through the phone lines when he calls and grab the boy by a part of his anatomy that will REALLY get his attention! Even since his brother died early in December he has been more manic. Except, it's not really that. It's more that in the last year I have felt like a public facility - nice to use when there is no other option, but not his first choice. When he does call I am not sure I have been able to finish a complete thought or paragraph before he is cutting me off - usually to tell me something he has told me at LEAST four times already.
There is no reciprocal give and take of time, support or emotions. I think it is more force of habit than anything else that keeps me picking up the phone. That and I feel sorry for him in some ways. But that is not reason enough to hang onto something that the other person had made no indication he even gives a sh!t about.
The first thing that is odd about this phone call is the time - usually he only calls after 10 pm my time ... it is barely 7pm when this call comes. And without warning, preamble, any semblance of manners he says:
"I'm going back, I'm not really cut out for a civilian life"
I just stand there, holding the phone in a stunned quiet. So he rambles on: "Yep, just a soon as they finish patching up my hand, 'cause that's where I belong"
I feel a cold deadly rage building inside as I snap out "Oh really?". He starts blathering about how he promised his dead brother, getting revenge for 09/11 blah blah blah blah .... but in the end it's all bullsh!t ... I know it and he knows it at some level also. I finally snap out "I can't talk about this right now" and hang up.
I am not sure which will win first, the rage or the tears. The girls sense something is SERIOUSLY wrong and wisely keep out of my way for a bit - even through dinner. My stomach is churning and it is a close race as to whether I will scream or throw up .... or both.
****************
He called again last night. For once my cold "Hello" must have penetrated even his thick skull. For the first time in almost forever he starts asking how I am, that I sound odd, am I upset? Did something happen? Was I just tired?
He only gets one syllable grunts from me until he says "Why are you upset?" ... at which point he gets it full bore.
WHY??? You ask WHY? You must be f***ing kidding me right? You were shipped back the last time because you had been blown to pieces and your hand destroyed. You have almost NO hearing left at all, you're 57 years old and you VOLUNTEERED to go back into that H3LL Hole again??? Why? so you can either inflate your ego even more by convincing yourself you are saving mankind, or to commit the slowest suicide known to mankind - killing yourself because you are too stubborn to actually deal with your emotions and let yourself off the hook for being human!!!
You say you tried?? When?? When did you try??? Hiding away where you live with a dog trained to kill and maim for the only company. In a structure that basically caved in due to your self centered idiot son who could not be bothered in over a year last time to check out the property and make sure the pump was working so all the pipes didn't freeze and burst??
When did you try? When did you even come to see me? Not when you returned home .... not after visiting your dying brother, not after his death. Not when I asked you to last summer in between my hosting obligations.
When was the last time you ever asked ME how things were going? What was happening in MY Life? How I felt about anything??? Did you ever really consider me a partner or just a convenience. Have you ever once considered me: my feelings or my thoughts, in any decision you have made in the last four years.
I think from your actions the answer is a glaringly obvious "No".
I. AM. DONE.
Perhaps it is finally time to grow up and realize that I am not ever going to have a relationship with a man - never mind ever get married and have a family. Not only do I seem to have zero ability to pick men who want that ... I can't seem to find one who will even make an effort.
I feel as though I have flushed six years of my life down the toilet. That I put my life on hold, wasted time and wasted my life and therefore lost my last window of opportunity to have what I want and what I try to remember I deserve.
What is wrong with me that I could not dump this person earlier. Why should I have given a rat's a$$ that "now was not a good time" because he was deployed or hurt or needed space to re-adjust. I am such a spineless idiot. And in some ways I just don't even care anymore.
Yikes, where do I even begin?
Perhaps the first full week of December 2010 when I realized that my money tracking and spending in two areas were completely out of control? Which in turn made me feel as though why bother for the month - just let it go.
The nagging sense of guilt, especially when talking to Mom, about the fact that we were not coming out for Christmas this year, AND I have not sent her the quilt I had all the best intentions of doing for her 70th birthday in November? (never mind that my Dad's was almost a year late).
Is it the looming deadline for my Whistler quilt and the complete lack of communication from either the teacher or the museum? I am not sure if either of them are even still interested in moving this project forward.
Perhaps it came from knowing, and watching people learn, that nine employees in my division were losing their jobs just before Christmas. Sure there is a Severance package - but not really the point is it when you are told "Happy Holidays, oh by the way, you no longer have a job".
Maybe things started to turn down-wards the evening I was watching television with Ines, bit into a soft piece of licorice and almost swallowed half a lower molar that cracked down the middle to the gum line on one side of a very old filling?
Or perhaps I am feeling this way because I have become aware that my periods are becoming more off-schedule, and this is usually an early sign of menopause and I have to face the idea that I will never be a mother - even though it is something my heart and spirit have yearned to do since I was a teenager. There will not be a daughter to whom I can leave our family's heirlooms and legacies. No son to pass on the traditions of a family who have been on this continent since the mid 1600s.
And then there was The Great Cat Fight. On December 17th my best friend dropped off her two cats prior to heading down to Tennessee for two weeks to spend time with her husband's family. The cats, Loki and Thor, are BIG boys - easily twice the size of any of my other cats. Loki, the older one and the biggest (almost 20 pounds) is also a Beta more submissive animal. I could tell from the start that his game plan for the visit was to find a quiet hidey hole and keep out of everyone's way.
Loki on the other hand is relatively young and completely unaware that sometimes it is better to back down and walk away. A rather Alpha attitude that did not sit well with the other kitties - especially David. I was actually rather surprised that David would be so aggressive towards both cats - until I suddenly remembered, or noticed rather, that he was the only un-neutered male in the house. So his testosterone was definitely on the high side.
I had expected that for the first day or so there would be hissing, growling, posturing and minor scuffles for pecking order. However what came as a complete surprise was finding Tigger (my 8 yo Orange Tabby) on December 23rd with a hugely swollen back foot that was hot to the touch. At first I thought it might be a relatively minor cut that I could open and drain for him - but further probing told me this was beyond my home-remedy scope and he needed to be at a doctor's office NOW.
So that night, the 23rd, found me checking my boy into the hospital for emergency surgery on his foot. When the doctor called me a few hours later she said it had been "...a Mess..." The infection seems to have come from a cat bite received during a scuffle with Thor I had broken up a couple of days earlier. Because the injury was a deep puncture wound it had not bled and flushed the area so infection had rapidly developed and was affecting at least two of his toes and part of his "ankle". It had taken them more than an hour to drain and clean the foot out and I should be aware that there was a possibility that he would still loose one of his toes.
Once I got Tigger home it was a real challenge the first couple of days to keep him quiet and isolated from the others so he could rest. Then there was the twice a day oral antibiotics ... something he was NOT fond of. And after the first follow up visit to the vet he kept chewing off his bandages! Not that I could really blame him ... he did look silly with that one neon pink foot all bandaged up - it so clashed with his fur.
On the upside he did pass his second follow up visit with flying colors. The foot is healing great and he can keep his toe! And my friend offered to re-imburse me for all the vet bills. That's so great of her because I had wiped out my tiny savings to pay for them.
Then I entered the after-Christmas "blah" season. Where not only could I not seem to get out my own way, but I had absolutely NO energy to do anything - not even fun stuff. The things we did do over the week before New Years were really forced on my part and done on behalf of the girls as I would have preferred to pull the covers over my head instead.
Oh, and lest I forget .... I had to come into the office and lost a half a day of the vacation day I had planned to take in order to deal with a situation that never should have been last minute if someone else in the office had gotten off her keister and done her part of the process three weeks ago when I asked her to!!!!
And then January arrived - and I began to feel as though perhaps things would turn around.
I went to an acupuncturist for the first time in my life - I would really like to be a non-smoker again. Not just for the health reasons, but seeing that line item and it's numbers each month on my spreadsheets is making me almost physically ill. While I am not able to call myself a non-smoker yet .... it is getting better and tapering off from where my consumption used to be.
I got a burst of cleaning energy and in one weekend we packed away all the Christmas decorations, cleaned the whole house, hauled the tree off for recycling then cleaned out the car and took it to the car wash.
My quilt is almost done - tonight I hope to finish applying the binding as we had a tentative deadline to get it done by this Saturday.
However the final straw in the creation of my most recent tizzy came on Monday night. For reasons I am not really sure of I came home in a bit of a bad mood but had done my usual watch the news before making dinner routine. As I was in the kitchen starting to chop onions the phone rang. It was Redhawk.
More and more lately I have been wanting to reach through the phone lines when he calls and grab the boy by a part of his anatomy that will REALLY get his attention! Even since his brother died early in December he has been more manic. Except, it's not really that. It's more that in the last year I have felt like a public facility - nice to use when there is no other option, but not his first choice. When he does call I am not sure I have been able to finish a complete thought or paragraph before he is cutting me off - usually to tell me something he has told me at LEAST four times already.
There is no reciprocal give and take of time, support or emotions. I think it is more force of habit than anything else that keeps me picking up the phone. That and I feel sorry for him in some ways. But that is not reason enough to hang onto something that the other person had made no indication he even gives a sh!t about.
The first thing that is odd about this phone call is the time - usually he only calls after 10 pm my time ... it is barely 7pm when this call comes. And without warning, preamble, any semblance of manners he says:
"I'm going back, I'm not really cut out for a civilian life"
I just stand there, holding the phone in a stunned quiet. So he rambles on: "Yep, just a soon as they finish patching up my hand, 'cause that's where I belong"
I feel a cold deadly rage building inside as I snap out "Oh really?". He starts blathering about how he promised his dead brother, getting revenge for 09/11 blah blah blah blah .... but in the end it's all bullsh!t ... I know it and he knows it at some level also. I finally snap out "I can't talk about this right now" and hang up.
I am not sure which will win first, the rage or the tears. The girls sense something is SERIOUSLY wrong and wisely keep out of my way for a bit - even through dinner. My stomach is churning and it is a close race as to whether I will scream or throw up .... or both.
****************
He called again last night. For once my cold "Hello" must have penetrated even his thick skull. For the first time in almost forever he starts asking how I am, that I sound odd, am I upset? Did something happen? Was I just tired?
He only gets one syllable grunts from me until he says "Why are you upset?" ... at which point he gets it full bore.
WHY??? You ask WHY?
You must be f***ing kidding me right? You were shipped back the last time because you had been blown to pieces and your hand destroyed. You have almost NO hearing left at all, you're 57 years old and you VOLUNTEERED to go back into that H3LL Hole again??? Why? so you can either inflate your ego even more by convincing yourself you are saving mankind, or to commit the slowest suicide known to mankind - killing yourself because you are too stubborn to actually deal with your emotions and let yourself off the hook for being human!!!You say you tried?? When?? When did you try??? Hiding away where you live with a dog trained to kill and maim for the only company. In a structure that basically caved in due to your self centered idiot son who could not be bothered in over a year last time to check out the property and make sure the pump was working so all the pipes didn't freeze and burst??
When did you try? When did you even come to see me? Not when you returned home .... not after visiting your dying brother, not after his death. Not when I asked you to last summer in between my hosting obligations.
When was the last time you ever asked ME how things were going? What was happening in MY Life? How I felt about anything??? Did you ever really consider me a partner or just a convenience. Have you ever once considered me: my feelings or my thoughts, in any decision you have made in the last four years.
I think from your actions the answer is a glaringly obvious "No".
I. AM. DONE.
Perhaps it is finally time to grow up and realize that I am not ever going to have a relationship with a man - never mind ever get married and have a family. Not only do I seem to have zero ability to pick men who want that ... I can't seem to find one who will even make an effort.
I feel as though I have flushed six years of my life down the toilet. That I put my life on hold, wasted time and wasted my life and therefore lost my last window of opportunity to have what I want and what I try to remember I deserve.
What is wrong with me that I could not dump this person earlier. Why should I have given a rat's a$$ that "now was not a good time" because he was deployed or hurt or needed space to re-adjust. I am such a spineless idiot. And in some ways I just don't even care anymore.