Interesting weekend…

This weekend was a bit of a double whammy for me. Friday was one month since my husband shot himself. And Saturday, would have been his 58th birthday. So…knowing that these had the potential for being difficult days, I tried to plan the days to keep busy and not dwell. I was totally unsuccessful on Friday. I spent most of the day trying to get things done and falling apart at every little thing. I sort of finally gave up when a friend of mine came to put new locks on my doors (I literally had no key to my house. Long story…but bottom line is that I feel very safe in this house and neighborhood, but didn’t feel too safe to leave it for several days at a time with no way to lock up, so got all new double sided deadbolts and my friend, Steve, installed them for me. I had been struggling all day, and after he installed the locks we went to sit out on the front porch and I fell apart. He was great and basically just let me cry and rant and rave. I did seem to get a good part of it out of my system and then things went from just bad to absurd. While we are sitting out on the porch, a woman drives up, gets out and says "are you (insert mine and husbands name here)? I said I was, but that he was deceased. She walked up on the porch and handed me a paper and said I had been served. I looked at the paper, and basically burst out laughing. The local hospital is SUEING me for 47.68 that some how got overlooked in the myriad of bills that I received from my breast surgery. Now, I won’t go into the problems that have taken place at our local hospital over the past year, but this is a prime example of how screwy they are. The paper clearly states a court date and is officially filed with the county clerks office, but it also clearly states that if I pay said bill before the court date, I will NOT incur extra charges for service or court cost. Now, since I know (from experience with evictions) that it costs 85.00 to have someone served here, they are totally losing money on me! And, had they sent me a proper final bill, instead of lumping all of the various hospital charges separately, I would have simply paid it along with the 800 or so bucks I have paid them to date for that surgery. Why would I NOT pay this small amount, when I have already paid them almost 20 times that much??? Don’t you think a phone call to bring it to my attention would have been more cost effective???? Anyway, after I got over laughing at that, I went to get up out of my porch chair, which I sit in almost daily, and the darn thing fell apart. I slide out of the chair, ripping my nicer pair of Capri’s beyond repair. And also ripping a nice 4 inch or so gash in my leg. Now, it didn’t hurt when I did it, and it wasn’t until Steve helped me up from my very undignified position of rolling around on the porch, that I noticed that there was blood on the porch and realized what I had done. It was pretty high up on my leg and since I didn’t want to put Steven in the uncomfortable position of trying to help me treat my leg, I sat and held a paper towel on it and chatted another minute and sent him on his way. I took a good look at it as I was cleaning it out and decided that it could probably use a couple of stitches in the deeper part, but knowing that my doctor was gone for the day and not wanting to go to the ER (of the hospital that is suing me) I had a couple of butterfly bandages, and with great difficulty and probably great amusement had anyone been watching, managed to get it butterflied. I checked it today and it is healing nicely. It never did really hurt. That evening was just sort of sad…I couldn’t seem to find anything that interested me on TV, in a book or even on the internet and I didn’t sleep well.

Saturday dawned a better day. I think it helped that birthdays were not that big a deal with us "on the date" and also several folks realized it was his birthday and called and I chatted with them. Sat. afternoon was an interesting experience. I had plans for the evening, and needed to leave hear around 6:30, and about 4:00 a person I really don’t know that well, knocked on my door, announced that she knew it was my husbands birthday and wanted to take me out for a drink. I did tell her I had somewhere to be, but she was insistent that she would have me home by the time I needed to be and off we went. I guess I should have noticed that something was "off" while she was at my house, but I didn’t, and almost as soon as we got into the car, my son called from the airport on his way home from Alaska and he didn’t have much time, so she assured me I wasn’t being rude so I talked to him until we arrived at our local hang out, and I hung up and we went in. Very soon after that, I realized that this was NOT her first glass of wine of the day! She ended up crying to me about how there was a time when she wanted to kill herself. What it ended up being was me doing a counseling session with her. I came very close to saying as we walked out the door and I had already told her I was driving home, "that will 120.00 bucks please", but refrained from doing so…it was just weird!

I then headed out to my evening engagement, that I KNEW was going to be at least interesting, if not weird. I was going to a "music fest", that was actually friends of mine that have 10 acres out of town and were allowing their son who is an Indi music freak, to have a sort of "battle of the bands" at their house. Most of the people that were attending were in the 25 ish range and some of them I knew from when my kids were in college, but I was actually there at the behest of the parents, who are friends, to kind of help chaperon. They had set up a camping area and it was clearly stated that if you were drinking, you were camping. As the alcohol level rose with the kids, the music got louder and often worse (although some of them were pretty good!) and I definently saw the potential of this whole thing going to hell in a hand basket, but somehow it never did. About wildest thing that happened were a couple of guys that decided to dance in fairly skimpy underwear, after which appropriate blackmail pics were taken, they were politely asked to put their pants back on! There was a HUGE bonfire at midnight (the father in this bunch is a volunteer fireman and he had done a good job of setting it up and it was a good night, no wind, for it. I actually got cold around 11:00 or so, but wanted to see the bonfire, so I stayed until shortly after midnight and headed home. But, I laughed a lot, danced with a few of the kids and basically had a really good time.

Sunday was spent helping my college girl move in for a couple of months. Long story, but she needs a place for a couple of months and I have plenty of room and I have known her for years. her brother lived with us for a few months a year or so ago and they were both here from the day my husband died until after the memorial service and were just won

derful. Her brother is my oldest son’s best friend. She is in school in the morning and works until 9:00, and has a boyfriend, so I don’t feel cramped at all. But, I could tell she was sort of down in the dumps today, so I made a chicken and rice casserole, feeling she needed a home cooked meal, told her not to get used to it, but it seemed to hit the spot with both of us tonight. So, now I’m heading to bed. I’m still dealing with "CRAP" of just trying to get all the business straight and that wore me out. Tomorrow I have to go to the city for a meeting so will be gone most of the day, but it is the first time I’ve gone since "the event" so I will endure another round of condolences that are appreciated, but sometimes hard to take. I’m not really looking forward to it, but it has to happen eventually.

So, that has been my last few days and what is on the agenda for the next day or so, so we shall see how that actually plays out!

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