Loss & new projects

There's been a lot of loss these last few weeks. Two women from my support group have died which has been extremely difficult. And 3 or 4 of Z.'s good buddies that she's been in school with since pre-K are going to different schools next year. Now that is quite different from death of course, but it took me a few days to realize that I was grieving that as a loss too. Last week I was sad and depressed much of the time. Then on Wed. night I went to my monthly gyn cancer support group, which I haven't been to in months, and said to A. before I left, "I hope it's not too depressing" (because sometimes it is) and sure enough, we spent almost the whole time talking about death and end of life issues. Important stuff, but just really bad timing for me.

I have also been so damn cranky lately. I find myself short tempered, swearing at other drivers, swearing at myself, wanting to swear at A. and Z. (but instead I'm just bitchy, particularly to A., who is going to get the award for most patient husband if I don't get past this soon). I feel just plain mad a lot of the time, everything is pissing me off. And I'm sad and I hate wasting all this time when I am not sick feeling this way. It's hard to work through your feelings when you feel like time is racing by you.

I am not falling into the abyss here or anything, but it's definitely been a struggle lately. Like my previous post said, there are good days and bad days. I am trying to focus on some "projects", sometimes that helps to keep me from spending too much time on the "dark side". We are in the midst of redoing Z.'s bedroom from the pink butterfly theme that we did the summer before Kindergarten, to this much more sophisticated "teen" feel with gray and blue walls and a big neon green lightening bolt over her bed (the walls are painted but we still have to make the lightening bolt, which will be cut from plywood and painted and hung rather than painted directly on the wall). I found these great curtains at Ikea that look like you are looking through the leaves of trees at the sky for her windows. We are also going to buy her a new bed and book shelf unit at Ikea as soon as we can get out there. In the meantime she is enjoying sleeping in the guest room. When this is done I want to get the hallways painted and then start working on A.'s and my dressing room, a pit of a room that needs attention badly.

I'm also enjoying the spring flowers, trees and bushes, even if it's causing me a huge sinus headache at the moment. Our backyard is in it's Giverny moment (the place in France that Monet painted a lot of his famous water lily paintings), with the section of the lawn that has no grass, but lots of wonderful flowering groundcovers. Soon the backyard will be an explosion of color when the azalea's blooming peaks.