PlazaJen: Passion Knit

That was the subject line from some spam I got today; I thought it had a nice ring to it. Of course, I didn't open it, because we don't smoke & I haven't found much of a need for ashtrays, burly or otherwise.

Today's somewhat better on the health front, probably due largely to the nap I squeezed in yesterday. My coughing didn't stop last night, and this morning, it finally dawned on me why my back hurts: the coughing! My entire ribcage area feels like I've been treated to a visit from a loan shark or something. I'm hoping that a couple more days of the meds will start kicking this bug out of my system & life will get back to normal - a term that's always relative.

I'm blue (da bo dee da bo dah), because I had to sign the papers that say my dad's will & all that stuff is Final. Since he left nearly all of his estate to his wife, that also brings up some issues that I keep stuffing into a footlocker and piling books on. It reminds me of the bright hot Springtime afternoon that I had a blowout fight with him over his decision to leave everything to her, and how he finally got angry with me, and stopped trying to protect me and said, "Jennifer, I wake up in the morning and wonder if this is the day I'm going to die." He hid the severity of his illness from all of us, but I think in that moment, it helped set the stage for what would come later - which still came far too soon. I remember feeling panic and regret for a few days after that conversation, but I don't anymore. I'm glad we talked about it and scrappled through it like we did with anything else we didn't see eye-to-eye on. I wish things were different, so many things, and no amount of money or stuff will ever take from me the relationship he and I had. Sometimes with blended families, it's hard to dissect the semantics and definitions of words - both my dad & his wife viewed their partners' children as their children as well. Call me selfish - and I know my dad WAS a dad to her kids - but I was his kid for 31 years before he even knew them. And it sounds petty and yet, with everything I could get wrapped up in and off-track focusing on, that is the one thing that makes me feel a little better when my Panic Gnomes try to get me swirling over what's fair and 100 other things I can't control. The other part of my blue is that I'm going to have to go home & go through a whole bunch of stuff, things I'm dreading seeing and remembering and the tidal wave of emotions that will come with it. Part of it is my hatred of who I was when I was a teen, and all the reminders I'll have of my fractured, broken relationship with my mother. The regrets of knowing now what I didn't know then, and the mistakes I made. I prefer to live in a candy-colored bubble of avoidance.
It's so much nicer than a burly ashtray.