Kreep Show

I’m seriously creeped out right now.

I had an unwelcome visitor, we’ll call him “Craig with a K” (CK for short), because that’s his name (and how he spells it) and I don’t give a rats ass about protecting his privacy.

About a year ago I met CK through an acquaintance; he’s in his late twenties, an artist and graduated from the same college as HE did. I thought HE and CK would get along well and we all hung out a few times. CK was a bit more of an artistic “personality” than HE was, or that I was able to appreciate. At one point CK told us about a piece he had started working on but then had a dream about it and I can’t really the remember the rest but the short story was somthing along the lines of if he changed the piece to like it was in the dream the rest of his dream would start to come true…or something like that. I’m not sure if he told us the whole thing because he believed it or because he thought it would make him seem more artistic.

Anyhow the last time I saw him, he had just dropped by and we all ended up watching a movie. HE went to bed early because of work the next day, he wasn’t even out of the bathroom when CK started hitting on me…at least it seemed like he was hitting on me, looking at me and raising his eyebrows with this kind of “so ya wanna” smile on his face. Multiple times. I’m pretty sure I wasn’t mis-reading it.

I played completely dumb and thank god the movie ended shortly after. Here’s your hat, what’s your hurry.

I told HIM about it, HE laughed because honestly who does that?!?!?

We never heard from CK again…until last month when he called up and asked how we were doing. Thing is, I got the feeling that he knew HE was dead, just a gut feeling. Plus, usually when I tell people there’s a big ugly pregnant pause while people process what I’ve just said. CK didn’t really miss a bit saying he was shocked or whatever. CK asked if I was working I told him I was still at the restaurant and he asked which one? Again, this didn’t ring true, I’m pretty damn sure remembers which one. Then he suggested we get together for a beer or coffee to talk…yeah, sure buddy…I told him to call me in a 2 or 3 months figuring that would put him right off.

Except, in the last month I’ve seen him walk by the restaurant 4 times. In the last 9 or 10 months I haven’t seen hide noir hair of him on the streets, but he just happens to be passing by my work 4 times in the last month?

And guess who was on my doorstep tonight? Yep, Craig with a K.

I had the main door open but the screen door latched, and there he is standing on my porch.

He tried the door, I said it was a bad time and I was busy.

He asked how I was doing, I shrugged my shoulders and said “coping”.

HE said I look different, I said I was only getting about 4 hours of sleep at night.

He said “no, you look great”, I said a few people have mentioned that and I just don’t get it. (A few people have and I don’t).

He asked if I had 5 minutes, I said, again, right now’s a really bad time.

He looked at me kinda crestfallen, I shrugged my shoulders and said I was sorry, that it just really wasn’t a good time, then walked away from the door.

And I’m seriously creeped out right now.

It all seems pretty harmless, it reads like it’s harmless… but after seeing him walk by work the 3^rd time I was feeling a bit weird about it, the 4^th I was just uncomfortable about it and now tonight he’s on my doorstep and have this overall gut creep feeling.

If he shows up again I guess I’ll just bluntly ask what he wants and go from there in getting rid of him…I mean I don’t have time for this bullshit, I feel like I don’t have enough time for my friends, why do I have to waste time on this fuckwit?!?! Frankly I want to be writing a reply to an e-mail a great friend sent me tonight, but nooooo, I have to vent about Craig with a K because I’m feeling creeped out about him.

I better be PMSing because this shit’s really not funny.

Dr Feelgood

I have no reason to be feeling as down and morose as I have today but I’m really struggling today. I think I’m PMSing? (On top of everything else.)

I had a great weekend, my monthly weekend off from work. Shopping with C on Saturday, Sunday I did the “Run for the Cure” (jogged the whole thing except a brief walk at a water station) yeah for me. Then dinner with the P family where I taught Mrs P how to make a big ass-lasagna that got high marks from the rest of the family. Great weekend!

Tomorrow I have off. C and I will do our weekly sushi lunch, then go the fairgrounds to help set up for the 2 day hunter/jumper show that’s part of the huge horse show that runs the entire 6 days of the fair. Wed and Thurs the horse show. It’ll be great! Lots to look forward to!

But I’m honestly about 5 minutes away from tears, and have been the whole day. And I’ve been noticing that it’s harder for me to be at home lately.

I’m starting to wonder if those people who came up with the stages of grieving do know what their talking about. I’m wondering if I’ve been sort of in “denial” for the last few months? I mean, I’ve talked about how it’s obvious that HE’s dead, ashes right over there, blah, blah, blah. But I’ve also talked about how there’s still a part of me that thinks he’ll come home, and now I’m wondering if that part of me was bigger than I thought and reality’s starting to set in?

I don’t know.

I do know it’s very hard for me to sit in the living room at night and watch something. Either I get up and end up doing something else or I end up in tears because something’s reminded me of HIM or that HE’s not there with me or that HE will never be with me again.

There’s still a few areas in the house that need to be sorted out, a closet or two, and I have no motivation to get that off the list. Infact I’ve stopped making “to do” lists entirely; I need to get back to that.

Ditto with the barn, but frankly I’m just getting comfortable going there, seeing the horses and riding, I think sorting through stuff there might be a spring project.

Overall, I’m more emotional than I was a month ago, not just today, in general.

I don’t like it.

There’s still the sleep issue too.

I have the Sublinox, but I’m afraid to take it.

I’ll get to the side effects in a minute but my first worry was that I’ve never taken something like this before, what if I have a medical reaction to it? I live alone…

The possible physical side affects are a laundry list of cold and flue symptoms, abdominal pain, diarrhea, dizziness , drowsiness, dry mouth , fatigue, headache, heartburn , hiccups, loss of appetite, nausea and weakness…hiccups?!

Then there’s the “Mental and Behavioral Changes” it reads as follows:

“A variety of abnormal thinking and behavior changes may occur when you use prescribed sleeping pills. Some of these changes include aggressiveness and extroversion which seem out of character. Other changes, although rare, can be more unusual and extreme. These include confusion, strange behavior, restlessness, irritability, illusions, nightmares, hallucinations, feeling like you are not yourself and feeling more depressed, which may lead to suicidal thinking.”

“Suicidal thinking” and I’ve now got enough pills to carry it out. Fucking wonderful.

And for the record I have NOT had any ideas about suicide, but I am sad, (gross understatement) and probably depressed, so how far down the road is it exactly to suicidal thoughts, and how far down that road will these pills take me?

Then I found this little gem on a Health Canada advisory website: “Sublinox™ is a sublingual formulation of zolpidem that was recently authorised for use in adults in Canada. Sublinox™ (zolpidem tartrate) is indicated for the short-term treatment and symptomatic relief of insomnia characterized by difficulty in falling asleep, frequent nocturnal awakenings and/or early morning awakenings. On the international market, zolpidem has been reported in association with cases of complex sleep behaviours, where people rise from bed while not fully awake and engage unknowingly in activities which they do not remember doing the following morning, such as driving a car, leaving the house, eating food and making phone calls. Complex sleep behaviours are rare but potentially dangerous.”

Great, I already have a history of talking in my sleep, and again, I live alone now.

And I get that they have to write all this stuff out for the same reasons Tim Hortons now has to have a warning about how coffee is hot on their cups, better safe than sorry when it comes to liability…but still…there is nothing I’ve read that makes me comfortable with the idea of taking these pills. Especially since they were prescribes by a doctor who never even talked to me on the phone?!? (BTW that particular ass-hat has a rep in the area for being the local Dr Feelgood, at least as far as writing ‘scripts for his clients go.)

My one and only idea is to stay overnight at C’s the first night I take one, frankly, it’s the only way I’ll be taking one. ‘Tho it’ll have to be on a day I don’t have anything planned for the next morning, which would have been tonight but it’s after 11pm. So, maybe next week, I’ll let you know.

Also, Dr Asshat hasn’t gotten back to me with a referral, which is the main reason I went to see him! Since the appointment I’ve asked a few people if their family doctor’s accepting new patients. Friends at the gym, the barn, my favorite bank teller. The women in line behind me at the bank thought her doctor might be accepting new patients; I’ve got his info and have to follow up.

On top of everything else I’ve been feeling fat and bloated so I got on the stupid scale at the gym and according to it I’ve somehow I’ve managed to gain 10 pounds in less than 3 weeks?! Is that even possible?!?! Ok, granted I have had a few chocolate covered jujube binges, and some steak, but for the most part I've really been getting back on track with eatting well, bringing food to work, eatting more veggies, fruit. So WTF?!?!

I better be PMSing because none of this shit is funny.

...ok, and I have no idea why that one section of text above is in black. I've tried fixing it but it won't work and frankly I don't care that much right now. If I care more tomorrow I'll try fixing it again but for now that's as good as I got.

Third time’s a…well, it wasn’t charming

This morning was my doctor’s appointment. I haven’t actually seen him in about 3 years and I remember from that time I had to wait about 30 min after my appointment time to see him. Apparently things have not improved. The general talk around the waiting room was how long the wait time was and how it had gotten worse and worse over the years. Two to three hours was apparently the norm?!?!?

Meanwhile one patient kept wandering back and forth between some back room and outside, breathing very badly and coughing. After about a half-hour he appeared wearing a face mask…WONDERFUL! Typhoid Murray’s been wandering around exposing us to his phlemy breath for a good half hour before someone slaps a mask on him. Another patient entertained me by showing me pix of her sister’s cakes and cupcakes on her smartphone. Apparently the sister is a stay at home Mom with one child but their trying for two and she figures baking out of her home could help bring in extra money and she only charges $1 per cupcake and uses almond past and not fondant because it tastes better and is easier to work with, she makes wedding cakes as well as ones for showers and birthdays but can do pretty much anything with any theme and don’t you just love the one she did for her friend’s birthday that follows’ her friend’s shoe obsession?

…yep….

Talk circled back to wait times and I did some quick math, I was in for at least another hour and a half wait, and I had already been there an hour. All I really needed was a referral for someone to go to for grief counseling, so I played the widow card. Walked back up the receptionist, explained I was there for non-medical reasons, explained why I needed a referral for a grief therapist, and lied that I had another app. I couldn’t miss at 1pm – which was quickly approaching. She asked if there was anything else I needed and I threw in the sleep issues. She wrote everything down and said the Doctor would contact me later in the day. And he did, actually the receptionist did, telling me that someone would phone me within the next day or 2 with a referral. And, get this, there was a ‘script waiting for me at a local pharmacy for a “sleep aid”….WTF?!? Not that I don’t want help with falling asleep but it seems a bit odd/negligent/foolish to prescribe a drug to a patient you haven’t met. Am I wrong????

So I now have 14 “Sublinox” tablets, they’re basically the same as “Ambien”, or at least that’s what the pharmacist told me. He also said they’re “not that addictive” but I need to take them before 11pm, otherwise, if waking up at 7 or 8am, I’ll be groggy for a few hours. So my plan is to take them on nights when I’m not working the next morning, just in case. I’m also going to Google for side effects.

…I still can’t believe he prescribed them to me without seeing me?!?!?!?

My 3^rd tap class was last night, it was better than the previous two but I still spent a lot of time wondering what the hell I had gotten myself into. The teacher just teaches so damn fast. And I do get that the rest of the class is more advanced than me, but a few of them have said after class that she moves along too quickly. That makes me feel better but I’m beginning to feel like I’m not getting a lot out of the class, and this is taking into consideration I’m also taking a ½ hour private lesson, and I practice a little bit through the week.

I’m uncoordinated and there’s a huge disconnect between my feet, my brain and my memory. I got the teacher, J, to show me, very slowly, the “Cincinnati” step she was teaching us, 3 times. By the time I had walked back to my place I had forgotten it!

I didn’t have huge expectations for me picking it up quickly, but yikes…..

Ok, and I am going to bitch a bit. A few things I’ve learned with my tap tutor are that I need to keep my knees a little bent to maintain a lower center of gravity to be more balanced and I need to take smaller steps…I would have thought this was stuff the teacher would be noticing too? But apparently not. Giving her the benefit of the doubt she does have about 10 other students in her class but I don’t see her giving any others advice on form etc either, it’s all about the steps and chorography. I think my tap tutor is brilliant ‘tho, as well she should be, she also teaches little kids to tap. Anyone who can teach kids can teach anyone!

If push comes to shove I’m wondering if I can drop the class and keep the tutor?

I’m also considering doing the “Run For You’re Lives” 5K race next month. I had plans to do a few 5K’s this summer/fall but cancelled out on them. I want to do it because it’ll give me something to look forward to, which I’ve learned is very important right now. Also, it’ll give me more motivation to start doing some serious running again. (By "serious" I mean doing 5Ks outside and hitting the 7K mark again, not the Boston Marathon).

Problem is this is the same race (my first) that HE came to, to cheer me on and he was so proud of me when I finished. The other consideration is that this is a zombie race and I’m not sure seeing people all gory looking is physiologically a good idea due to how HE died? So I might be actively deciding to have a very bad day if I go…

…but I want to go, it was fun last year….Ok, and really, so what if it turns out to be a bad day? I have them, and I can’t avoid things that might set me off, hell, I have a lot of moments where living in “our” house set me off….still, it seems a little foolish to choose to do something I know could result in a very bad day….

Ugh! And HE’s not around to help me make up my mind.

I’m doing the 5K “Run for the Cure” this weekend, I’ll decide after that.

Brush with Fame

Love my camera and love my friends!

This has nothing to do with widowhood, which is probably a good sign, and everything to do with a great day I had.

Two of R’s extended family were visiting and I took them on a whirl-wind tour of Toronto. In just over 13 hours we covered Casa Loma, Chinatown, Kensington Market, ROM and the CN Tower – long day, lots of fun!

And guess who we shared the elevator with at the CN Tower, Laurence Fishburn!…ok, not an A-lister but still pretty cool. (If you’re thinking to yourself “who?!” he was on CSI Las Vegas and was in The Matrix, his first acting gig was in “Apocalypse Now”)

Anyways, it was a good weekend; I talked to a famous person, tested out my new camera and had fun with friends.

Vin, Vince & Amy

It’s been a quiet week, and I’ve only had one really bad day since my last post, so I guess that’s pretty good.

I’ve also had satellite TV installed, mainly because adding it to my phone and internet bundle actually drops my overall bill by $40+…yeah, I’m still trying to figure that one out?! I also thought it would help fill up my nights a bit. Problem is I’m not overly keen to spend time in the living room, we spent a lot of time there watching movies and I’ve caught myself a few times turning to where he’d sit to make some comment about the dumb ass show “we” where watching. (And there seems to be nothing but dumb ass shows on these days.)

Anyhow, Joseph, the satellite guy came to install everything. Joseph looked a lot like a young Vin Diesel….Young Vin Diesel kinda turns my crank.

I don't know why I think he's a hottie, I just do.

To be blunt I was having impure thoughts, my loins were anyways, my head was yelling at my loins “Bad Widow, BADDDD! Down girl, down!!!”.

I mean WTF?!?! I’m more than a bit disgusted with myself.

Worse, it’s not the only time it’s happened. I’ve already mentioned that we get a fair amount of Latinos at work right? Well, some of them are damn hot and they don’t really follow the North American loose jean fashion, they wear them well, I’ve always done some ogling, but now it just feels shameful.

My friend K, also a widow, has warned me that a relationship with a man in the next year is a no-no, and I believe her, I can see all kinds of problems arising from that…no pun intended. Plus, I’m no bucket of sunshine right now; anyone who’d want to go out with me in this state is not someone I’d want to be in a relationship with.

…but meanwhile my loins are occasionally being vocal and when they do I feel so guilty, my own body’s betraying me and HIM!

Just because she ownes a silver tea service and
wears pearls does not mean she knows everthing!

And it’s not like there’s any book that covers that particular facet of widowhood. The closest I’ve seen is in my copy of “The Complete Book of Etiquette (A guide to gracious living)” written in 1952 by Amy Vanderbilt (“The foremost authority on manners today”). At the very end of her chapter dealing with funerals she has a paragraph titled “the Resumption of Dating” and states:

“The lonely widow or widower wishing to face realistically the problem of deep personal loss today is, after about 3 months of widowhood, ready for quiet dates with members of the opposite sex. Modern men and women approve such emotionally healthy reaching out for reassurance. In a small, conservative community such dating is limited at first to evenings at home, movies, the theater, musical events, walks and drives, small parties with other couples.”

Yeah, riiiight!

For starters, I’m not lonely, I miss HIM indescribably, but I’ve got friends to attend movies, theater events and small parties with if I wanted to. Evenings at home? That’s exactly what my loins want! And as far as “modern men and women approve such emotionally healthy reaching out”, I can’t think of one friend that wouldn’t be more than a bit startled if I started dating now.

I dunno, Amy has some great advice (I used some of it to write out my post-funeral thank you cards) but I think she’s way off base here.

I guess I’ll just have to accept this as another complication, an unexpected one, on the road of widowhood.

Another thing I need to curb is the god damn “retail therapy”.

I need to be smart about money in this phase of my life, not fashion forward!

Widowhood isn’t solely to blame, about 4 years ago I weighted about 220 lbs, joined a gym and (thanks to C and her great personal trainer skills) am now down to 154. At about 170 lbs I started to kinda like shopping for cloths, I fit into stuff not in the “Plus Sizes” sections at stores. At my current weight it’s almost easy to walk into a store and find something I like on me.

It doesn’t help that I purged a lot of my older (bigger) cloths and needed to buy some new fall/winter wear…actually I think the compulsion to shop is actually pretty much gone, I’m not a total idiot….but there’s this pair of killer boots, seriously savage kicks, that I want. I’ve always been a bit of a boot junky, a great pair of boots looks great no matter what you weigh, and these ones have my name written all over them.

Google “Vince Camuto, Bollo boots”, the ones in brown. No, seriously, do it now!………Ok, so having seen them, can you blame me?!?!?

I can’t justify buying them, I don’t need another pair of boots, and I need to be smart and careful with what money I have…but there’s a part of my brain that’s a whiney 7 yr old, the one you see pitching a fit because Mommy won’t buy her candy at the grocery store, that feels I deserve these boots because HE’s dead. Then there’s the more rational (but still evil) part of my brain that’s trying to rationalize the hell out of the purchase, 1) I deserve these boots because HE’s dead, 2) they’re classics and won’t go out of style for a long time/hold they’re value, 3) I’m pretty much a jeans and t-shirts kind of girl, these boots will dress that look up for certain events, 4) I deserve them because HE’s dead, 5) I get a widow’s allowance, I hate that I get a widow’s allowance, why not save some of it for something I like? I’ll buy the boots as a last blast, then get serious about saving, our wedding anniversary’s coming up, HE owes me. And how low is that?! Using my dead husband to justify a boot purchase?!?!?!

I’ve even done my due diligence and looked at a lot of other less expensive boots to see if there’s something similar that I like at a lesser price. Nope, there isn’t.

Clearly my loins and fashion sense are in league with each other and must be stopped.

Good Girl Gone Tap

Three months ago yesterday HE died. For someone who can’t remember dates/figures I’ve been very cognoscente of how much time has past. Three months ago today, at this time, I was sitting here, watching C and K clean my kitchen, listening to P make phone calls for me and wondering how I was going to get through the day. Three months, I knew last week it had been 11 weeks, but 3 months, its starling.

It’s a weird twilight zone where I know time is passing but it almost feels like it was just last week that I went to the funeral. (Sounds so trite but its true).

Emotionally things have (thankfully) shifted. I’m not rolling through the “7 stages of grieving” daily, I’ll have a few good days, (as in none-crying/sort of have my shit together) then have a bad evening or morning, usually its evenings ‘tho. It’s not so much the Symphony of Suck as bad elevator music playing in the background…it’s till sucks ‘tho…And I am getting better at dealing with telling people I’m a widow, but it’s just damn awkward for everyone involved. Me, them, just a really bad pregnant pause after I say it.

Especially if that person has just inquired if I’m married while asking me out. Yep, had one of those yesterday at work.  I won’t get into all the details but a larger than normal tip was left to make up for the faux pas. And he really felt bad, and I felt bad for him, because how was he to know? It’s not like a go around wearing widow’s weeds or anything. What I did mind was as he was leaving he said “I think you’re a good girl”…. ….???? What the hell is that supposed to mean? And how the fuck would he know solely based on my (excellent) waitressing skills? To add insult to injury my manager told me the same guy asked my idiot co-work, Z, out two weeks before. ICK!

The whole thing is kind of funny and a horrifying glimpse into the current dating scene….I’m very happy to be currently not dating and having a very good reason not to.

Random updates:

-         My first tap class was a few nights ago. I was the only one who had no previous dance or tap experience, actually I think everyone else had previous tap + other dance experience…so, big learning curve. Plus I’m not co-coordinated to begin with. I still had a lot of fun and have arranged to have a “tap tutor” (yeah, I know) to get me up to speed on the basic steps and terms. (All these years I thought it was “ball chain”, turns out its “ball change”, who knew?!). I enjoy being challenged but the basics (which everyone else in class knows) are overwhelming me so a few private lessons should help…I hope! So it was fun but of course I came home to an empty house and HE would have gotten a laugh out of my dance miss-steps. So keeping busy at night’s not exactly solving that problem, I have to come home sometime; I guess I’ll just learn to deal.

-         I have an appointment with my doctor to get a referral for a therapist for the grief counseling. It’s not until the end of the month but I’ve hung on (with massive help from friends) this far so I can sit it out. I think I’m also going to have to talk to him about my sleeping issues; they are better but not great.

-         On a happy note I made it to the gym the last 3 days in a row. I’m sore. It feels good!

Dancing to a New Tune

Nights are tough for me; I think I’ve only mentioned that about a billion times right? It’s not just the “late at night in bed can’t sleep” issues, it’s also what to do with myself after dinner before I go to bed to toss and turn. It’s the same time of night HE would be getting home from work and we would be hanging out, I find myself very restless…. I can read, I can sew, I can practice my Spanish or surf the net, but some of these things take a certain amount of concentration, which I don’t have much of these days. And TV is out since we don’t even have basic cable and renting movies has been a pretty big gamble lately.

Tap Dogs

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oRUdvu3Qo-E&feature=related

So, to help fill up my nights I’ve signed up for…..tap dancing lessons….

Yep, tap.

Saturday my Mom and I went to buy me tap shoes, which makes me feel like a 12 year old, but in a good way.

Why tap?

Ballet holds no interest for me, at all, jazz is out because I’m not a fan of the music, I don’t even know what “lyrical” dance is, and at 42 I think I’m a bit too old to be learning how to “crunk” in a hip hop class. Tap it is. It seems like a good combination of fun and “stompy”, which suits me just fine.  Plus, years ago HE took me to the big city to see Tap Dogs, if you’ve never heard of them check out the link below the pic. Tres cool in my opinion.

My parents visit went fairly well to, they seem to have accepted the fact that I’m A) Not ready to start college/find a new career this exact month and B) That everything that needed to be sorted out here at home has been. So we’ve just been hanging out, it’s been pleasant. I used my new camera to distract Dad, (unfortunately that led to him downloading the pix on my computer and him feeling the need to “fix” my computer, and by “fix” I mean him downloading programs he feels are essential and re-organizing things the way he likes them) and Mom puttered around in a non-invasive way.

Before leaving they mentioned their next visit might be in November, possibly December depending on my Christmas plans, which gives me a kind of a deadline for figuring out my game plan for what comes next in my life. School? New job? Running away to join a circus? The options are endless and terrifying. And I know it’s a repetitive and maybe boring theme of this blog but it’s a big fucking issue/problem that I need to sort out.

It’s also made me question whether or not I was just drifting along while HE was alive? I think yes, I could have been more pro-active in the last few years with work/a career but just merrily drifted along as a waitress in a small restaurant in a small town. Don’t get me wrong, the money’s ok, waitressing’s great, but I could have pushed myself more, towards more, and it makes me sad that I’m doing it now and didn’t do it with HIM, for us.