And Now, This…

11 Wednesday Dec 2019

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I was up at 2:30 AM, stayed awake til 5:30. I wanted to see J off to work around 4:20. Then I went back to bed. I slept til around 9:30. I went to AA, and shared a traumatic moment from my childhood, that I rarely talk about. I must have been 8. It was summer, August. Mother was in a particularly angry(?) or emotionally distraught mood. I was not good at psychological assessment at that age. She was upset, and was about ready to drink a bottle of Dickinson’s Witch Hazel until I knocked it out of her hand. It was a glass bottle and it shattered. Nothing was ever said about this ever again. I thought she was going to kill herself. I knew that was a bad idea.

Now I know that this was an event of childhood trauma for me. And since, sixty-one years later, it still haunts me, this might be PTSD.

Having shared that, I went about my day. I did some shopping, found a nice beef eye round. I felt like taking a nap, but changed my mind and went swimming at the Y, first time this month. I did 1750 meters. And shaved afterwards. I used all the grooming products that make me feel masculine. As we say, if you want to gain self-esteem do estimable things. I slew one dragon from my past, bought a nice roast, and went swimming.

Now we are waiting to go get $1 tacos. I am working my way up out of the pit I fell in.

Train Horns

10 Tuesday Dec 2019

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I sit, dealing with my arthritic hip, drinking my coffee and writing this post.

A train horn sounds, then a fast moving freight passes before the Virtual Railfan LLC camera in Ashland. There are lots of empty freight cars, which might explain its speed. Lots of freight cars.

It passes. Auto traffic resumes. I sit here, contemplating my tiredness. i have yet to hear back from either mental health practice I emailed last night about working with me around my issues. I am about to tell tbem to sod off.

To say why we love people who abuse us is a mystery. A mother, an ex-wife, the who of it doesn’t seem to matter in the jungle of the brain.

The tired is working its way back into my body.

J wore a very flattering pair of dress trousers today. It was easy to tell how the physical work at Target has toned her lower body. I must tell her that.

Later.

10 XII. 2019

10 Tuesday Dec 2019

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It was around 515 when I woke up. I lay in bed, thinking I should try and sleep a little longer, Then I said “What the Hell, I’ll just get up.” So I got up. In examining the World of AMTRAK, I discovered that there is a service disruption with #98 Northbound Siver Meteor. According to the app, she arrived in Petersburg @ 422 AM, departed Petersburg @ 422 AM.Her arrival in Richmond has been continually postponed for about 2 h ours now. I love a good mystery (sarcasm). She’s like Wagner’s Der Fliegende Holländer, condemned to wander the Earth.

I should go back to bed.

Today’s Early Morning Ramble

09 Monday Dec 2019

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I have been up for awhile. I found some cartoons to watch on YouTube. I looked online for therapists. I don’t know who to trust. I have unresolved grief issues around the death of ex-wife #2, (absence of) sex issues with current wife, issues around sexual abuse when I was a teenager, and basic despair. I would have to talk with…..children, or at least so it seems to me.

Grief sucks. Repressed grief sucks even worse. The therapists all suggests that talking to them will make things better. That means I have to trust them. I don’t know if I will.

Christmas Knitting Porn

08 Sunday Dec 2019

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These Christmas stockings were knitted by my paternal grandmother’s sister, my Great Aunt Margie. I believe she lived in Cadillac,Michigan, Grandma’s hometown. This dear lady, whom I never knew, knitted stockings for us children,my parents, aunts, uncles and cousins. She passed away in 1954 so my younger brother, and 3 of my cousins had stockings knitted by Daddy’s sister, Aunt Midge. My sister has the stockings of my parents and my late brother, in addition to her own. I am loaning mine out to her since we won’t hang stockings this year. (We won’t go there for right now.)

Awake, Grief Present

07 Saturday Dec 2019

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4:00 AM. I am awake. Nothing new about that. I am watching a video of a narrow gauge train in Wales. Quaint and quite lovely. The Brits earn tbeir “Q” alliteration without much effort on tbeir part.

There is sadness within me. I feel tbe loss of my brother and ex-wife most actuely around this time of year when they both died, one year apart. I am not over her death. We were alcoholic, abusive to each othet, and had different views on many things. Yet I loved her. This is what comes into my head right now.

Maybe her dislike of me at the end mirrored my own sense of low self-worth. I dunno. She was there to validate my self-hatred.

Nobody ever said I was emotionally healthy.

Bedtime, After I Digress

07 Saturday Dec 2019

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She won’t mind if I go upstairs, take my melatonin, brush my teeth, and go to bed. But her show is on, or one of them anyway.

I will suggest we watch a sitcom DVD, maybe I Love Lucy, as a break from Seinfeld. Even I tire of them. Lucy has more physical comedy, which is hard to follow when I am not actually watching, but the music can’t be beat. Sometimes I long for the Fifties, which is to say I long for my childhood, with my brothers and my sister, my parents and the cast of grandparents, aunts and uncles, who made guest appearances in the family drama.

When I consider the post WW Two morphed into Cold War world we lived in, we knew that tension was part of things, The peripheral conflicts made themselves known, like the time Hungarian refugees moved into an apartment next to us after the Hungarian Revolt.

We were living in an apartment while Dad had a house built for us. It must have been 1959. The refugees moved into the adjacent apartment. There was a son, they called “Shiny”, his real name was Alexander. There was a mother and Shiny’s two sisters. The father had tuberculosis and was away getting treatment. He was a hairdresser.

We made friends with the kids. The mother smoked. Mother made friends with her. We liked them. Eventually we moved and they moved. They were Catholic, my first exposure to Catholics. Catholics were different.

But the Fifties, despite the refugees and the Civil Rights movement that gripped The South, was about progress and new stuff. GE’s motto was Progress is our most important Product* When I watch Lucy, it brings back the wonderful progressive world of jet aircraft, Sputnik, interstate highways, color TV, polio vaccines.

I guess I could say more. All I really want to do though is go to bed.

*{I could do a whole rant on GE, from Mr Magoo to tbeir spokesman, a former movie actor named Ronald Reagan).}

Self Care

06 Friday Dec 2019

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Today I emailed the Nocturnal Adoration lady and told her I could not do the 4:00 AM Holy Hour. I need the rest. I also cancelled out of the book study group. Same reason. That means casserole idea is on hold. Well the AA Christmas Dinner at the Clubhouse is Sunday. I can prepare it for that.

Pushing myself comes easy. Cancelling out, especially Church stuff is hard. I vacuumed the downstairs carpet. That will be all the work i will do today.

Right now, I’m waiting for J to get home. I told her to order a pizza and bring it home. Looking forward to seeing her.

Recipes And Recovery

06 Friday Dec 2019

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Our Church book group meets Saturday. We have lunch afterwards, I thought about turning the chicken cacciatore I made the other day into a casserole. I might need to add more mushrooms a package of thawed frozen spinach, more pasta, cover w cheese and bake in the oven til the cheese is melted.

But I keep wondering If I have enough (over a quart size container). Everybody is bringing something and there are Italians in the mix of participants, so I’m betting somebody else can cook. (Gratuitous ethnic stereotype!) Well, I have now declared there is plenty. So I won’t worry.

Somebody at the AA meeting today celebrated five years of sobriety, This is significant for me because five years ago, 5 December 2014, is the day my brother died, the same day this guy got sober. My brother was not alcoholic, but he died too young (65). Maybe Charlie, my brother, has Neal’s back, or so I like to think.

Life is hard enough without people making trouble for no good reason at all. There is magic in keeping your mouth shut. Be gentle with each other and yourself.