NEW DAY; NEW DIET

Please forgive me for not updating.  I know it makes at least one of you worry sometimes.  Last week was just a very, very bad week here in geebaland.

The funeral went as well as can be expected.  We had about 20 people (more or less), 17 of which came to the nice luncheon.  My Dad did the service in his full “motorcycles for Jesus” regalia and scared off some of the older, out of town relatives.   He did an okay job, considering it was his second funeral and speaking in front of people is not his best thing.  Also, he was pretty fond of his late and former mother-in-law and is easily choked up in his old age. 

My mom was pretty ragged, but she had lots of support.  The Boy was too kind to his Nana, as we sandwiched her in comfort.  I, myself, don’t find funerals to be as sad as most.  I have a harder time later on, when I really start missing the person.

Anyway, the luncheon was nice and we went back to the apartment after to do some more packing up/divying up of Grandma’s meager belongings.  This part always makes me uncomfortable.  It seems like picking the bones of your loved one.  But Mom had some definate things that she wanted and I had some definate things that I wanted, and most of the rest was going to charity, so it was pretty easy.

Thursday was more difficult.  We had the interment so far away, that we decided it would be just the two of us attending to make it easy for everyone.  It took us forever to find he place, so much has changed, then we were suprised to find the funeral director set up graveside.  We had assumed, given the frigid temps, that it would be int he mosaleum.  I usually skip the interment whenever I can.  I’m claustraphobic and hate the very idea of being buried.  But it was quick and not too bad.  Then we had planned to go on a “sight-seeing tour” of our old homesteads.  That was the horrible part.

The whole city of Flint has become a giant slum.  Every turn we made brought us more and more down as we looked at the places we used to love and found them either completely run down or destroyed.  It was so sad for me to see a town I had once loved become a ghetto.

We stopped at the apartment again but one look at my mom’s face told me she was feeling as run down as I was.  We needed to take a break from this ongoing task, so we each went our separate ways.  (My way included a two hour nap!)

Last week was harder, I think, for both of us.  We didn’t have that constant communication that we enjoyed the week before.  I went back to work finding tragedy had struck my coworkers’ lives as well and also that I had made several large expensive mistakes.  I developed a cough (I think it’s from my sinuses) that interrupts my sleep nightly.  I was depressed and angry and just didn’t want to deal with this greif anymore.

Then Thursday arrived and the Husband had an appointment to see about getting some home improvements done that we’ve been needing.  He called me at work to tell me that they were going to cost about double what I had inticipated.  When I got home I asked that we implement a plan of taking at least two estimates for any expense over $500. (A perfectly reasonable plan.)  This led to one of the worst fights we’ve ever had, ending when the Husband called to cancel the work.

I was so frustrated I was cleaning!

I went to go hide out in the office and checked my email to find that my cell-phone bill for the month was an amount so large that I could only stare dumbly at the screen.  Holy crap!  It was more than my mortgage payment.  Eight pages of phone calls between the Boy and his long-distance “girlfriend” came spilling out of the printer.  Luckily, they have broken up!  But even the boy, who says he knew there would be “some charges”, was in shock.

I couldn’t think of a punishment that would equal the amount of that bill.  I’d take his phone away, but he doesn’t really care and I really need him to have it.  Besides, I had done a similar thing when I was his age that resulted in some life-long lessons and pain for everyone involved - I didn’t think I needed to do much more than show him the results of his recklessness. 

Believe it or not, this may have been a turning point for me.  I kind of had to stop wallowing in my own self-pity the next day and figure out what to do.  I called my cell-phone company and explained the situation, asking if there was anything I could do to lower my bill and also block the three different numbers the girl was calling from.  They opened a case for my bill and got me hooked up with some tools that will not only block my requested numbers but also notify me when certain preset limits are close to being met.

When I got home that night, we also had a message from the contractor, offering to lop $500.00 off their original estimate.  I okayed the work and got to feel smug about it.

Today I got the email on my cell-phone case and they had knocked my bill down by around 80 percent.  I was literally dancing in the aisle.  I sent off the full balance of the payment and drifted home on a cloud!

Things are definately looking up.   (There’s a rumor afloat that spring might actually make an appearance after all!  What do you know?)