Greetings gentle readers,
That hiatus was a twee bit longer than I anticipated. The end of the release kept stretching out without the hours getting any better (the upside is I earned a ton of comp time, for once I’ll have as many vacation days as my husband. 
) and no sooner was I done, then my husband went into a refuel outage. As in, I finished up on Friday and he started overtime on Monday. So I took over all household duties from him and he took over 12 hour days/six days a week from me. I do not think either of us was thrilled about the trade. 
We’re having trouble remembering what “normal” looks like.
We also have a daughter that is graduating from college later this month and is currently apartment hunting in NYC. My experience with this has led me to believe that Dante left out one of the rings of hell. We are acting as guarantors for her apartment (just think of it as a rental co-signer) and let me tell you, the Department of Defense has NOTHING on a New York city real estate agent. I had to apply for a secret clearance for my first job out of college and I swear I had to give up less info. Things got very messy due to the potential roommate and eventually fell through but we spent a week or so scrambling for paperwork. And if I may speak as a proud mother for a moment, we were just incredibly impressed at how our daughter handled the whole thing, coordinating everyone, taking care of paperwork, budgeting and most importantly, being incredibly clear about her boundaries. She’s back to hunting for an apartment but we are very confident of her future endeavours based on what we seen the past two weeks.
Last but not least, I have just started going back to therapy regularly (yes, the hours were that bad. I fit in three sessions over a period of two and a half months. ) because I finally feel ready to face the body issues. (To be clear: I say “ready to face” in the same way someone goes to face the executioner. You have no choice, but try desperately to cling to some dignity. ) My next post will be spent talking about what’s happening on that front.
Quick update on my mother, she never returned my phone calls even after I left a third phone message. That message made it clear that my door was open and that I loved her, but she was going to have to contact me, if and when, she felt ready. I did decide the one thing I would do is to mail a card on her birthday so that once a year I would be indicating the door was still open. Her birthday was at the end of April and I sent a card, which has also been totally ignored. (Side note: I want to start a card company that specializes in cards for family members if you hail from a not so functional family. One that sticks to the basics instead of paeans of praise. One upside of this situation, I will not have to spend an hour in the card store hunting for a Mother’s Day Card that I can send to my mother and still maintain my self-respect as a reasonably honest person.) I think the saddest part of this is how relieved I am to not be in touch. We’ll see what happens down the road.
Last, but not least, I am introducing a new feature on the blog: Ask AG. I do some of my best writing when interacting with people and answering people’s questions. It’s the one thing that I miss about being on a forum versus a blog. So I have dedicated a space to your questions and input on what you’d like to see on the blog. Please check it out when you get a chance and if you’re interested.
I have missed everyone and have missed being around the blogosphere, I am looking forward to getting caught up. I’ll try to make the gap between this and my next post much shorter.
