3:11am – Calm, cool, and collected

Too bad every day can’t be as peaceful as the early morning hours have a tendency to be!  I’m aching all over, because I helped the lady we’re buying the house from move some of her stuff out of the storage room on our back porch.  You would not believe how much stuff could FIT in that room!!!!  And we’re not done!  There will be more to gather and load on Friday.

Stupidly, I wore flip flops while I walked back and forth from the back of the house to the front of the house what felt like a million times.  I won’t be making THAT mistake again!  Next time, it’s real shoe time!

The situation with Mama has eased, to some degree.  She’s still urging me to clean clean clean the house, but I guess that will never change.  Even if I had it spic and span, she’d probably find SOME fault with it.  That’s just the way she is.  Ok, maybe that’s not entirely fair.  She DOES praise me when the house looks neater.  Honestly, I can’t figure out why my mother’s approval or disapproval means so much to me, at the age of 35.  Why am I so driven by what my MOMMY thinks?!!!

As for my wife….well, things could be better, but they could also be FAR worse.  They HAVE BEEN far worse, so I accept what I get, you know?  Right now, I feel totally exhausted, and it seems like I will never be fully rested again.  No matter if I get a good night’s sleep, my body hurts (because I have put on so damned much weight!!!!), I’m tired, and I still have to get up and do things for my wife and myself.  You don’t know how much I wish I had someone to look after me!  I guess that’s really a bad attitude to have, but I am soooooo freakin’ tired, and I want a break.  

While she was in the hospital this last time, I didn’t really get a break, either.  I was running like a chicken with its head cut off!  Then, she got back home, and reality set in again.  For some reason, I had thought they’d "really fix her" in the hospital this time.  I thought they’d identify what was causing her pain, both physical and emotional, and do something about it.  That was unrealistic of me, but I still expected it to be like that.

I’m not trying to blame it on my wife, my tiredness.  It sounds like it, I know, but that’s not what I mean.  Admittedly, I am not the caretaker type.   While single all those many years, I had fantasized about having a partner who would help me as much as I helped him.  Well, what we plan and what God plans are sometimes two very different things.  Maybe He’s trying to humble me.  I didn’t think I needed to be more humbled, but maybe that thought in itself is the REASON I DO need it!

Some people seem constantly surprised when I say something about having found the right partner.  For some reason, they don’t seem to think I believe Laurie/Mikey is the right person for me.  I know I gripe a lot about my wife, but I love her with all my heart.  I need her, just as much as anyone else needs his partner.  I consider our marriage to be a very good one.  It’s solidly constructed, even with all the seemingly-endless issues that keep popping up.  I know she loves me, too.  I don’t have to wonder or think or guess.  I KNOW.  It is my sincere hope that she KNOWS I love her, too, though I guess I couldn’t blame her for wondering.  I’m hardly the ever-supportive, loving husband that I should be.  

There’s no easy way for me to explain the way I am.  I don’t even really understand it myself!  I seem to have inherited some really BAD qualities from my Nanny.  Just like Nanny, I find fault with everyone, even when it’s near to impossible for anyone else to find it.  Just like Nanny, I find myself criticizing people, even when it’s NOT constructive.  I find myself being judgmental, and that’s one thing I absolutely HATE about anyone, much less myself!!!!!!  

When Nanny’s influence isn’t causing me to act like she did, it’s still there in my mind, haunting me.  For instance, I went to Jack In The Box for some food the other day.  As I turned into the parking lot, I found myself looking around to see if anyone I knew saw me there.  I just KNEW they’d say to themselves – and maybe to me, too – "THAT’s why he’s so fat!"  That’s Nanny’s influence.  She ALWAYS had something negative to say about EVERYTHING…..kinda like me, I guess.  I don’t want to be like this.  I want to be a happy, optimistic person, but it just doesn’t seem to be IN me to be that way.

When I go to the grocery store now, I sometimes have to ride in one of those carts, because my arthritis has gotten worse as my weight has increased….a deadly trap to have fallen into, because now I can’t exercise much without being exhausted AND in lots of pain! Every time I get into one of those carts, I hear Nanny in my head, saying that the only reason people ride those things is that they’re too fat or too lazy.  And I keep thinking that everyone I pass in the store is thinking that same thing, which makes my social phobia TONS worse!!!!!

I always am convinced that I smell bad, too, even when I first get out of a bath!  I can’t explain that one.  I will flat-out ASK people, "Do I smell funny?"  Just people I trust to be truthful.  Most times, they say no.  Sometimes, I am not imagining things, and they’ll tell me that I could stand to freshen up a bit, but the majority of times, they say they don’t smell anything bad.  I don’t wear cologne anymore, so they don’t smell anything GOOD, either.  I’m always afraid my deodorant/antiperspirant will fail me, too.  I have always been the type who perspires a lot, even before I weighed so much, so this has been a chronic fear for a long time.  Especially because of all the experimental times…times when I was trying out a new one to see if it worked better for me, but I found out, much to my horror, that it wasn’t as effective as the previous one….usually, I’d find out while in a public place.  

So I’m a very paranoid person about personal hygiene.  It really SUCKS to be so exhausted all the time and STILL be so paranoid about that stuff, because now, it really seems to be too much effort to "fix myself up" sometimes.  So I just stay home as much as I can.  I HAVE to get out sometimes…we have to eat, for example….but I try my damndest to stay OUT of public.  

This is sooo not how I intended for this entry to go. 

Nanny is deteriorating FAST.  I know I was just highlighting her bad qualities again…boy, her influence just never stops….but she’s still my grandmother.  I’m not happy with her condition.  She is dying, and we know it.  That’s not easy.&

nbsp; I visited with her on my mother’s birthday, which was September 25.  Nanny was in a really bad way that day.  She was totally incoherent, wheelchair bound for most of the visit…..later on, she walked with her walker….and she looks horrible.  She’s slumped over, unable to carry herself with her always-rigid, straight-up-and-down posture.  I didn’t cry in front of her, which is what I had been afraid would happen.  I saved it for later.  At one point, while I was outside smoking, Nanny commented that she wished…..and let it trail off.  When Mama asked her what she wished for, Nanny replied, "A few more years."

WTF?!  How do you answer THAT?!!!!!!! 

What a time for a moment of lucidity.

Laurie is trying to help me cope.  It’s hard for her, I think, because of all the horrid memories SHE has of Nanny from the past five and three-quarters years.  

My grandmother is one of those people who is very well-liked by those who don’t really know her.  Those who DO really know her…well, they have often found her attitudes funny.  That used to really annoy me, but I guess I really understand, in a way.  I mean, my friends have witnessed her picking a fight with me, my blowing up at her, her calling me names and kicking me out of her house.  They know what went down, but they laugh about it.  I don’t always find it so funny.  I do see where they’re coming from, though.  You couldn’t WRITE shit like this!  You couldn’t INVENT the scenarios that have played out between my GRANDMOTHER and me!  It’s too ridiculous to believe!!!!  But it happened.

It wouldn’t surprise me in the least if my sister called tomorrow and said that Nanny died overnight.  I keep thinking about that, every single day.  Nanny was given a life-expectancy of another six months in August, but I don’t think it will be that long.  I think I may have seen her for the very last time the other day…alive, that is.  

I’ve written a eulogy…I guess it’s called that, anyway….that I will post here as my next entry in a few minutes.  While I have some extremely bitter memories about Nanny, I"m trying really hard to let it go and forgive AND FORGET!  I don’t think I could stand being angry at someone who is dying again.  It happened with Daddy.  I don’t want that EVER to happen to me again.