I’m Not Here

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Helloooo 2009…

I have to say, I am not sorry to see the backside of 2008. Aside from our wedding? 2008 blew. Hard.

The short version of the latest is that our beloved little Minou, who joined our family right before Christmas in 2007, passed away during surgery on December 29. She had a congenital issue, we found out way too late, and she is sorely missed. Words cannot convey how much of a gut punch it was to go from one of the happiest experiences of my life to one of the most tragic in the space of what seemed like a few short days.

The wedding, however, was absolutely wonderful. It rained beforehand, which is typically not the greatest thing to see right before an outdoor wedding, but we were not going to be deterred. The heaviest of the rain ended before we mounted up to head to the outdoor horse chapel, and it pretty much only sprinkled during the ride afterwards.

I’m sure everyone feels this way about their wedding, but it was truly a magical experience for us, and a memory that we will both treasure forever. I’ve started my first scrapbook, in digital form, and hope to have it completed in the next couple of months, if possible. I’m having a harder time getting motivated to do the mound of thank you notes that still need to go out, but that may be more because of the sadder parts of recent events. I’m planning to set aside a chunk of time this weekend for the thank yous.

Here’s the title page for the album:

Try not to mock my non-existant scrapbooking skills, still learning… I’m very glad that I’ve tinkered as much as I have with Photoshop and PSP, however, because those skills are proving invaluable.

Some other pictures from the wedding:

These are just a handful of the hundreds of pictures we’re sorting through to put together the scrapbook. I’m thrilled that we have so many to choose from; we opted not to hire a photographer, but instead relied on family and friends because we knew there would be a ton of cameras in attendance. We were not disappointed in that regard!

Happy New Year to everyone, and here’s hoping that 2009 has all of the wonder and magic that we all deserve!

Down to 16

Image by bouncer1788 via Flickr

I’ve completely got to stop setting fire to blogs, importing the posts I want to keep, and starting all over. It’s just ridiculous at this point. So…meh…the links in some of the posts are going to take you nowhere at this point, still working on fixing that. Pardon our dust, and all that good stuff. Now that that’s out of the way…

Things are barreling on nicely for the wedding…sixteen days from today, we’ll be married. *Happy Dance* Very much looking forward to the whole kit and kaboodle, but sometimes in those really crazy moments? Wishing we’d eloped. Shhh…don’t tell.

I still have to sort out our reservations for the week of the wedding. Whose bright idea was it for us to get married out of town?? Oh yeah…mine. I’ve found the cutest little motel, and it’s close to the wedding chapel where we’ll be having the ceremony. Balconies look out onto the river; fireplaces and jacuzzis and king beds, oh my! It’s been two years or so since the last time we really had any sort of getaway, we’re both looking forward to it greatly. Not sure that the dog and the cat will be thrilled, but almost a week away will do wonders for us both.

I’ve gone back to twitter…that evil, bad mistress of timesucks. There’s just soooo much wonderful information on twitter. And I do love me some information, no doubt. Might also be a way to subconsciously retreat from my “to do” list. Procrastinate? Who? Me?

Oh. Nice place I’ve got here…

I should stop by more often.

I have three posts sitting in draft in various stages of disrepair. Ugh. Where did we leave off? Oh, yes. The dehumidifier.

It and its friend, the obscenely loud blower, stayed with us for a full week. I will repeat that, because it still horrifies me now. A. Full. Week.

Either on their own are loud enough, but together? Wow. And apparently I don’t get out as much as I thought I did, because all told that week? I spent about 3 hours away from them, total. I totally wish I were kidding. Working was interesting that week, and there were a few times I truly expected to get myself canned. Luckily when Plantronics says “noise canceling” they mean “damn skippy!”

After that? It’s a blur, I will try to sum up:

• My desk chair tried to kill me. No, really. Tried to kill me. It was planning a slow, painful death; and at first I didn’t even realize the chair was an assassin. My foot swelled up, and I believed it was related to the dehumidifier (well, it WAS from Satan, so who wouldn’t expect it to be the culprit?) and the fact that I drank (key tense, that one) just Coca-Cola all day every day. A week of pampering and propping, and still with the swelling. Until I noticed a small bruise on the back of my right thigh. Hello, Assassin Chair. I’ve had it for a few years now, and apparently I’m being poked by one of the screws coming up from the bottom. A week in alternate seating and all is well; the assassin chair has been modified until I can afford a new one, and painful slow death has been averted once again.
• Remember the past tense up there? Yup, I actually seem to have given up on my BFF, Coca-Cola. I’ve only had maybe two full ones and a few sips in the last two weeks, and I’m not even craving it any more. How odd. It’s great, don’t get me wrong, I have been “giving up so much Coca-Cola” for years now, and it’s always been painful. But now it’s a cup of coffee in the morning and water all day, with maybe a Dr. Pepper or root beer, more often neither; very rarely do I even think about a Coke, and I have yet to CRAVE one with all my being like I have been known to in the past.
• And not to bore you with any more, but hubs and I (well, almost-hubs? We’ve just always felt married, and it was easier to say since we knew we were going to do it eventually…) finally set a date. My mom is thrilled, my stepson (well, the one we’ve gotten hold of) is thrilled, the rest of our friends and family are thrilled. We’re having the ceremony three hours away, in December, on horseback. It will be beautiful, but we are obviously devoid of common sense because Oh. My. God.

More boring you with wedding angst later, but I just wanted to scratch out a moment and say I’m still alive, I’m missing blogging like all holy hell, and I need about 18 more hours in each day, please….

scratch that

did i say put the apartment back together? oh how naïve of me, i know now…

this arrived this morning. a large fan is threatened for this afternoon.

have i mentioned that i work at home? on the PHONE?

please send wine.

practice, practice, practice

so…remember all that breathing i was talking about the other day? that practice came in handy last night, and will today as i try to get in my full day of work and put our apartment back together again.

was a crazy busy day yesterday, and hubs and i finally had a chance to sit down together around 8 and start watching our favorite shows. (new adventures of old christine? we’ve been watching since your beginning, and you’ve really grown on us, we weren’t sure at first, but we’ve come to ♥ you greatly. i missed most of you…hopefully tivo still has you? never mind, just checked, and tivo has betrayed me.) i’d gone through the kitchen to our tiny laundry room to get the last load of the laundry that i’d done in between calls all day, and all had been well.

suddenly, from the kitchen: “hunnnnnnnnny??? um…did you know about all this water in the laundry room????”

all WHAT water???

under the washer and now under the fridge, a huge, growing puddle of water. we grabbed towels to contain it, we wrung them, we strategically rearranged them – it kept coming. my first horrified thought, of course, the washer. i’d used it all day, and it had made that funny noise. was it something i should’ve listened to much more closely instead of shrugging off?? we turned off the hoses to the washer. no change.

maybe the drum had a leak? if so, wringing the towels into the washer like we were was top on the “ain’t gonna help” list. but no. there was a lot more water than that.

the fridge? could it be coming from there? we pulled, we heaved, we shoved. nope. the line to the ice maker, amazingly dry. all the other things that could have been leaking? not.

then we decided a hand washing was in order. wait. we have water all over our floor, but none in the tap??

hubby went for a smoke (have a few for me, please!) and i went for the phone. the apartment’s answering service knew all about why i was calling already. “ohhh, yeah. there’s a huge leak in your building, and they’ve turned the water off. if you don’t have any water by oh, tomorrow, give us a call back.”

ahhhhh, thank you so much for coming around and telling all of us what was going on. so helpful.

i went to find hubby to let him know what i’d learned, he was outside with pretty much every neighbor who had just let him know the same thing.

seems an apartment on the second floor had some sort of explosive water leak which cascaded in waterfalls to the first floor apartment beneath it. which then? invaded all of our laundry rooms and kitchens. some also had seepage into their bathrooms, but we were lucky that we were only dealing with one room.

one apartment had 2-3 inches of water. all throughout the entire apartment.

the water-sucker guys were there. one whole guy, actually. and he had enough to do for 80 men just like himself, as far as i heard. so we trundled back to our apartment and made sure our barrier was still in place…no point doing all sorts of furious catching up, since it was something on such a huge scale that we would never contain it ourselves.

eventually the cavalry arrived, in the form of guy number two with his little sucky truck. we ran into him during another venture outside, and figured that he would be a while in the neighbor’s apartment, so we gave up on the idea of him visiting us before we passed out.

just after 11, he knocked on the door to mop up our laundry room and kitchen swamp. by 11:30 or so he was gone, and our floor was (mostly) dry. at least we weren’t in imminent danger of needing an ark. always good, that.

and now? after what feels like ten minutes of sleep? the writhing mass of today has begun again. wish me luck.

breathe

Image by Shutterhack via Flickr

i’ve got several things on my plate lately, and it’s leaving me feeling frazzled. many of these things, actually, are not even my things. not mine to own or to worry about or to tack to my “to do” list.

many of these things that aren’t even mine to worry over take up so much brain space that the things that are mine to worry over end up taking a backseat. oh, the irony. such is part of my mission in recent months. deal with what is mine, and leave the rest.

easy to say, but it has proven difficult for me to put into practice. today’s task is merely to breathe, deal with that which i know is mine, and accomplish what i can towards those items that are under my purview. the rest can take care of itself. and if it can’t, who is to say it is my responsibility to take care of it anyway?

for today, i will not over plan or nag myself to death. one step at a time, i will reclaim that valuable real estate between my ears and put it towards the tasks that are mine to accomplish.

link of the day: yowza…haven’t even really had time to read, see how bad i’ve gotten?? ah, here we go…just what i needed for today. hazelden offers a ton of recovery literature and resources, among them the “today’s gift” daily newsletter subscriptions. many times, i’ve received a passage that was exactly what i needed right then. i have several daily readers related to al-anon and codependency help groups, but i don’t always have a few minutes to dig out one of my books, flip to the correct date, and read that day’s message. (i know, the effort, right?!?) but no matter how rushed my morning, i have 25 seconds to click open an email and read. if you need any sort of recovery information or inspiration, i highly recommend hazelden’s “today’s gift” subscription. (they’ve never spammed me, just the one email per day for which i’ve signed up.)