Missing You -- Lots

I feel so alone, even when I'm not.

The hardest thing/time is whenever I come home from anywhere, and you aren't waiting for me.

Even your front room is cold and awful in this weather. I am so glad that I'm not having to try to keep you warm and healthy in this terrible terrible cold -- and if you did get sick, I wouldn't be able tio gbet you out. If you weren't already dead, this weather would kill you.
At least I was spared finding you cold and dead in your recliner.

My thoughts, as you can see, are scattered and disconnected. I don't know why.
All I do know is that this last week or so, I have missed you terribly, and it is almost painful that you aren't here and I can't find you, and you never will be again.

And, in some other way, I don't want you there. I want you to be somewhere where you are at peace, where you are warm and healthy, and free. For all my loneliness, I prefer to think of you that way.
It's an either/or choice, and one I have no choice in making. You are where you are; I am where I am; and that's all there is to it. I hope you know where I am, but I also hope you don't know how bad things are for me. There's nothing you can do, and you are free from earthbound worries (or so I hope.

Makes me kind of silly for saying so, doesn't it. But, even if you are not, I can write. I feel a need to talk to you, about you, with you, around you. Sometimes you feel so far away, ansd the words are what I deal with. They are me.

Be happy.
Be healthy.

But, oh, I wish so that you could be with me.

worrisome weekend

It was a scary weekend, Rex, let me tell you. I went and got the kids -- Hailey had been insisting I would be there Friday, so what could I do? When we got there, Tam was telling us how the baby is sleeping for short periods of times, or for long times -- no rhyme or reason that she could tell. Also that he was having some short temperature spikes -- which Hailey does in the night on a fairly regular basis. She wasn't too terribly worried because he had a doctor's appointment on Tuesday, anyway, and she intended to bring that stuff up.

So, we bundled up and hauled them off. Warren was pretty fussy at times Friday night, and took the short naps, but he would get down and play. I had to put chairs down tom keep him out of the kitchen. What is it in the kitchen that so fascinates the little ones? All the legs to hide behind and under?
I started saying Warren is Explorin' (like Dora the Explorer)

He warmed up to his horsey, after a while. The one he got for Christmas, that Hailey just fell in love with and decided he had to share with her. He didn't mind sharing. He was scared when we first sat him on it; kept trying to put his feet up. Then, eventually, he wanted to stand beside it and push the buttons to make it make noise, and he did finally throw his leg over it. Couldn't quite make it without help, but he tried.

Saturday started out the same way, with a whiny Warren occasionally explorin', but then about noon he stopped. He wanted to cling and cry and he would doze off while I was holding him upright, but if I laid him down, he'd wake up. His nose was running and his fever was climbing. And he didn't even want to play with the wet washrag on his head!

And, as it got later, he started getting those black black circles around his eyes. The ones you used to get when it was not quite time for the nebulizer.

And I could feel rattling in his ribs when I was holding him upright, so he could breathe or sleep at the same time. Not have to choose one or the other.

The washrag wasn't doing much for his fever.

I was pretty sure he was going into pneumonia. I called Tam and said I was bringing them home. If she felt it was just a cold, then she could treat it, but I knew it was more than a cold. He was either developing pneumonia or on the verge of a full-fledged asthma attack. There is something seriously wrong when a baby won't play, at least a little bit!

And those big black circles!!!
I was scared and edging on hysteria. I know respiratory problems when I see them, and the little ones can go into pneumonia so fast!

It turned out to be upper respiratory infection -- not a cold. Throat, ears, sinuses infected. I may have been hysterical, and over-reacted, but I wasn't wrong.

I wasn't wrong.

And who knows that acting as I did when I did didn't prevent a pneumonia? I can't claim that it did or didn't -- but it could have.

I never want to see anyone with those black circles all around their eyes. Certainly not our Baby Boy.

All's well that ends well, as far as Warren is concerned. I do wish I hadn't panicked, but I'm glad there was just cause for my concerns.

And very glad that Tammy listened to me, for once, when it comes to her kids getting sick. Although I have been wrong about Hailey a couple of times.

I lied.

Well, at the very least, I was wrong.

I can't take care of myself.
I can't work,
I've turned into a fat useless blob of a person.

Thank you for not saying so. For letting me have my illusions and delusions for a little while longer.

Guess I should have been clued in when you had to regularly tie my shoes for me, and then help with putting on my socks.
That should have told us all a lot, but I know now that we weren't listening.

I couldn't do the job, Rex.
I couldn't do the hours, or the floors, or the repetitive motions of the job. I ended up back in the ER all twisted up. Not like the proverbial pretzel or question mark, but somewhere between the two. I got up to go to work Saturday morning and couldn't stand straight, and it really really hurt to propel myself.

So much for that.

More frightening, to me, was the getting lost while driving thing. The first night I was coming home through Mt Washington. Well, Beechmont.
The second morning I was late because I 'lost' the road to work. Was 5 minutes late that day.
The second evening I found 32 to come home, but I found it via Taylor Rd, where the airport is, and I have no idea how I got on Taylor Rd. I turned left after Amelia High School.
Friday morning, the snow covered morning, I rode up and down the road for an hour trying to find the plant entrance. Once it started getting daylight, I found it, but I was an hour late.
No problems getting to where I needed to be afterward, though. Thank God.

Rex, I have driven those roads all my driving life. I would have thought I could not possibly get lost on c Clough and Shayler and McMann. How did that happen? How is it even possible? Throw in GlenEste Withamsville, and 125, and I should have been home in half the time, not twice the time.


I could see myself on the news as one of the crazy old people who just drive off and no one knows where they end up until they find them starved and dehydrated in their cars, That's if they are even still alive. (Of course, I'm not really old enough to qualify as an old person.)
I don't want to drive forever, running around in circles on roads that I should be able to drive in my sleep.

It didn't help when Phyllis Walls was killed driving roads she probably knows -- knew -- like the back of her hand.

Maybe it's the car. I just haven't trained it on my drivinhood roads.

It has all scared me. Not shook me up; it's really scared me. Terrified.

So, I don't know what I'm going to do. I'll figure it out. I have to.

But I'm so, so sorry I lied to you, even if it was more a being wrong than a big fat lie.

Back to work.

Well, I did it. I got a job. A stinking, stupid, boring factory job, but I got it. I'm working. I told you I could take care of me, and I am doing it.

I liked taking care of you much better.
Didn't have to put my shoes on for that. At least, not much.
Didn't have to stand for three or four hours at a time either.
Didn't have to drive unfamiliar roads in the dark. First night going home, I ended up on Beechmont heading into Mt Washington instead of on 32 heading towards Batavia. Don't know how I did that, even now.

But, I'm doing what I told you I could and would, when we had to let you go. Not that we had much choice in the choice, but I hope it helped you that I said I could take care of me, and now you see I'm doing it.

I hope you are looking the other way when I cry from the pain. I'll get used to it, and maybe I'll even be a fit person again someday.
If that happens, I'll give you the credit, because I had to make a scared lie into the truth once you were gone.

In other news, Bub is taking steps, Tam says. I haven't been able to see them because of the work thing -- looking forward to next weekend, when I hope I will be more flexible and less achy. I miss them both so much. Almost as much as I miss you.

But I can go see them, even if I can't bring them home. I haven't visited because it would be so hard to not bring them home.

Promise kept, Rex.