So I know I've been lax in the coming back blogging, but I find that I am still running really, really slowly. Like my energy tank (which is always at about a quarter full anyways) totally forgot how to distribute that quarter tank to the places it needs to go. I'm doing a lot of wheezing, a lot of sitting up too fast and having my head spin and almost blacking out, a lot of stuff I thought I was pretty much adapted to, but am apparently not. (Actually, it's kind of pissing me off this whole "Just when I think I get used to how things are and have stuff at a vaguely controlled level, my body decides to screw with me some more and start all over again" crap is beyond irritating, but I am still feeling so SO much better than I was two weeks ago, so it feels sort of petty to complain now. We'll see, as time goes on if that attitude sticks or not.)

I do keep thinking of things to blog, even look over at the computer and will my thoughts to go from my brain directly onto the screen without any additional effort on my part, but I have yet to master this skill (any tips?), and so posts remain unwritten.

In the meantime, I have been (very, very slowly) combing through the 1000+ items in my Google Reader, and here are a few of the posts I read today that I thought "Hey I could've written that!" (Except it never would've come out this good, so you're lucky I'm pointing you to them...) and in an effort to both highlight exceptional posts and clean out my brain a little bit, I give you some links:


Amalah asks: "Can't anyone just be SAD anymore?" and one of her commenters leaves the brilliant reply that there is a difference between "rational sadness and irrational sadness". That comment really lit up parts of my brain that have been taking me to task for not accomplishing all I should (/want/need to) be accomplishing right now...sometimes there are reasons for taking it slow, and that's ok. Sometimes there are reasons for being sad, and that's alright. It's the times when there is no rationale, no reasoning: those are the times you have to worry about. (In other words: cut yourself some slack, dummy.)

Melissa over at Suburban Bliss writes a familiar-feeling post about moving that hits really close to home:

"The problem with moving when you're practicing Extreme Denial is you don't actually pack anything when you're preparing for a pretend move. You tend to think you'll "pretend pack" when the "pretend move" is closer."

We signed our package and sale yesterday. We have till March 30th to vacate the premises. We still have nowhere to vacate to, are living in a mess of boxes and stuff (but not stuff in boxes) and I am stuck somewhere between extreme panic and extreme denial... but mostly I'm just stuck.

Y'all know how close I am to my mom, and how hard it has been this past year when she hasn't been all... here. She's been dealing with losing her mother, her house, & almost her sister; she has her own health issues, all of the stuff I have been ranting about here - the wedding stress, my brother and his 'wife', dad, the kiddos, me, and on and on and on - a million plus things to deal with, so I'm not saying she doesn't have a perfect right to be as checked out as she needs to be, but I think this is a safe enough place to say that it hurts. It hurts me to not be able to say the words that she needs to hear, to not be able to ask her to say the words I need to hear - the wanting to make things easier for her, winds up, inevitably, making things harder for me.
(Not just emotionally, but physically too: there are a lot of things I could use help on that I hesitate to ask for help because it's just not good timing. Having her as my PCA and not being able to ask for what I need has been a whole hateful level of awkward and awful to our relationship.) Chicken and Cheese talks about her own relationship with her mother, and how the stresses of her life keep piling up, and how frustrating it is to know that you've had this plan, and how "it turns out that plan was built out of Popsicle sticks." I'm feeling very "Popsicle stick" built myself, lately, and that post made me cry a little.

On Sunday, I went to another wake. My best friend/college roommate's husband's grandmother, a lady I met only briefly and barely knew died last week, after a frighteningly quick battle with pancreatic cancer. My roommate's favorite in-law, and a sweet woman, with a wonderful best friend who I sat with at the wake and listened to for an hour. Last month, I was too sick to go to the wake of my Nana's cousin in-law, the kleptomaniac who eventually went almost completely blind but still insisted on writing her own Christmas cards ("Merry Christmas, Love Irene - Sorry this is messy but I am blind you know.") Basically, I am sick of going to wakes, to funerals, to places of grief. I am sick of grieving. And yet, it's not going anywhere, it's a part of our lives. But I'm with Meredith: It just doesn't seem right.

cancer is not something you expect to hear on a friday morning. not ever. not on a sunny day when life is already out of balance. cancer is not something that creeps into a man so alive, so tan, so good at doing hand stands for his kids at the community pool all those years ago.

my dad can’t have cancer.
not today.
not tomorrow.
not ever.

The Servant over at Serving the Queens lost someone that matters to her, recently, and she talks beautifully, heartbreakingly, about loss and love:

For the time being, these things do not change what is the truth to me right now, and that truth is achingly painful, and I am indescribably sad.
He is gone.
And so I weep.

I'll keep them, and their families, in my prayers, and keep hoping for them as I hope for all of us.

Looking back, it seems like my brain is full of sadder things, but that I'm in good company. I do hope that we'll all be feeling better, soon. That life will start giving us some breaks, give us a chance to catch our collective breath.

Hope you are breathing well, and I be back!