It’s been forever since I have written a single word. Thought I might catch up with what’s been going on……. Very little, in fact, has been going on. I feel like I was sick forever. So much for the flu shot. After 10 days of being sick I finally went to the doctor and found out I needed  antibiotics and steroid nasal spray. The only positive thing that happened because of being sick was that cigarettes started to taste like crap. I didn’t try to quit, nor will I say I did quit, but at least I’m on the right track. I’m finally starting to feel somewhat normal again. If normal means I still think about my mom every single day and obsess over whether we could have done anything differently that would have made any difference in the long or short run….. My nurse practitioner told me those kinds of thoughts are quite normal, and that if it is bothering me excessively, I should go to grief counseling. I find that to be highly unlikely, but it is an option. For now, I believe I will go with plan B instead.

When we were getting towards the end of mom’s battle with cancer, I remember saying when this is all over, I’m going to go the ocean, someplace warm with crystal clear water and spend some total relaxation time there. (This is plan B) Then, when it WAS over, I could not make any decisions about where and how. It was all too overwhelming. I finally booked a caribbean cruise for next month, with a few days before and after in Florida. I do love South Beach in Miami! I’m pretty excited about it. We are going with another couple, and they have never cruised before-I think it sounds like a lot of fun.

Mom really wanted to do the big Rhine River Cruise in May, and while I had every intention of going ahead with it and doing it in her honor, I find it is very difficult to wrap my head around since she isn’t here to do it with. I’ll keep it as an option, but it may wind up being next year instead of this one. We’ll see…..In the meanwhile my cousin Traudi’s husband, Roland was just diagnosed with cancer and we are all horrified that the word cancer is back in our everyday vocabulary. Luckily it isn’t brain cancer, and there is more hope for him at this point, but it’s cancer nonetheless. I freaking hate cancer. Who’s with me?

I have not made a lot of progress with mom’s clothes and shoes. I have most of her shoes in bags ready to be taken to Goodwill, but if any of her friends would like any, please let me know. She wore an 8 or 8 1/2. Tyler is doing well in the house and seems to be in a slightly better place. Jenna and her husband are considering a move to just outside Orlando, Florida. I wish it were closer instead of farther, but we hope that at some point they head back in this direction. I’ll never forget the time we went to Disneyworld in June. I was eaten alive by mosquitos. I’m not a fan of the mosquito.

Hopefully, I will feel more like writing (and painting) again. It has always been very cathartic for me. Lately it just hasn’t come freely or naturally, so a break was in order. Keeping my fingers crossed.

Well this sucks. We have had reservations for the New Year’s Eve celebration at Hacienda del Sol with a great group of friends for weeks. Two cute outfits were hanging in my closet waiting for me to choose. I woke up on Tuesday morning feeling a little under the weather and every day got progressively worse. So instead of ending the year with a bang, we will end it with a whimper….fitting I guess. I hope I was not yet contagious on Sunday when I saw so many people, I recommend Emergen-C or Airborne to anyone who is concerned about it.

I don’t generally get sick much, and I think it might be because I was always very physically active. Between mom’s illness and my broken arm, and everything after,  I’m still not getting the exercise I once did. So that is my goal. Take better care of myself again…… it’s time!

For my friends who are out celebrating tonight, have a great time! We are with you in spirit! We will be the ones sitting by the fireplace watching Carson Daly and cuddling with the dog and cat. Happy New Year everyone!

Yesterday was Mom’s celebration of life at Athens. It was such a lovely day. We got to see and visit with so many people we haven’t seen in a long time. I think mom’s friend Penny put it best. “It was almost as though you could feel her presence in the room.” That was exactly how I felt too…. I think mom would have approved-it was her kind of party. Andreas and his team did a great job-the food was delicious and the drinks kept coming. The afternoon felt very warm and comfortable and it was everything I hoped it would be. It was obvious that my mom had a special place in the hearts of many people. Toi and Walter came from the east coast, my brother in law and sister in law from Washington State-we appreciate it so much! I loved hearing all the stories told both publicly and privately, and there was a small degree of closure.

There was something I wanted to mention yesterday and totally forgot. I wanted to thank everyone for the sympathy cards, that continue to arrive and the many people who made donations to the American Cancer Society and to TMC Hospice foundation. A few people tucked some money or a check in their cards, and I want to thank you for that. It was very sweet, and I will donate it to hospice as well. Thank you so much! A big thank you to Gina for the wonderful refrigerator magnets that she had made to commemorate the occasion. Lillian celebrated her birthday yesterday and Rosa today-happy birthday to you both!

Christmas was, as many things have been this year, kind of a mixed emotion kind of thing. We so loved having our family together even though someone very important was missing. Having Jenna and her husband Tyler here was such a wonderful treat! I could get used to having that be a yearly occurrence! Hint, hint…..Our son, Tyler hosted Christmas Eve at his place. It felt strange that mom was not there, but we talked about her a lot and made Wienerschnitzel like she often did at her house on Christmas Eve. The three of us cooked together, and after dinner we had cookies that Tyler made. We sat around the tree that he decorated with mom’s favorite Hummel ornaments and each of us opened one gift, like we used to when mom was with us. We will keep the traditions alive, even though she is not here anymore. She will always be a part of us and in our celebrations and our lives in general.

Christmas Day at our house was a wild display of american consumerism and excess. We had an embarrassing amount of gifts under our tree. I think we were all trying to overcompensate for our loss. It seriously took 1 1/2 hours to open all the gifts. Everyone took great care in choosing very thoughtful, wonderful presents. We had so much fun! And shortly after the last gift was opened, the first friend dropped by, and the day continued like that. Christmas Day brunch at our house always consists of Lox and bagels and mimosas, with people coming and going. This year we added a delicious breakfast casserole as well.

I feel like this is what our new normal will look like. We will have moments of pure joy and happiness interspersed with sadness and longing for someone who is gone. And that’s okay too. As long as we have ups along with the downs, we can’t complain. Here’s hoping for a much better 2016 than 2015! I am so lucky to have so many wonderful people in my life!

Our gas was finally reconnected on Tuesday afternoon and we no longer had to camp out or go back and forth between our house and Tyler’s. It was glorious! The first thing Rick did was heat the jacuzzi. The first thing I did was make a dinner of Rack of Lamb, roasted potatoes and greek salad. We turned the heater up to ridiculously warm. Making up for lost time…..

I needed a little break from writing-I felt like the whole no gas thing was making my increasingly whiny and annoying, so I wanted to save everyone from that nonsense!

The weeks leading up to Christmas have flown by….it seems like no matter what it is we try to accomplish, we only get a small part completed. We went to the funeral of the 32 year old daughter of one of Rick’s friends/customers on Thursday. Wow. Someone so young struck down by cancer puts a lot in to perspective. No one should have to bury their children. It is supposed to be the other way around, and I guess we should not be surprised when our parents die. I am really trying to remind myself of that when I start to get too sad.

Tyler finally got to spend his first full week in the house without having to travel for work. He is starting to settle in and get comfortable there. He loves the wonderful neighbors he inherited-now if only the cats would start to get along! Schnapps is being a big bully. I don’t know if animals grieve, but I swear to god, he acts like that is exactly what is going on with him. Rick would tell me to not project human emotions on to an animal, but the heck with that.

I look forward to seeing many of you on the 27th, and like I said before, if you know of someone who would like to come, please pass it along. The more the merrier. It will be cocktails and appetizers and such, buffet style (since we don’t have a good head count) and hopefully some nice reminiscing. If you have any photos you’d like to share or stories you’d like to tell, that would be wonderful. We’d like to keep it casual and low pressure.

I hope everyone has a Merry Christmas!

This has been a pretty good week. I think I’m starting to come out of my funk. I started off on Monday, meeting Tyler’s property manager at his apartment for the final walkthrough. Everything went well, and it was deemed immaculate. Yes! That’s always something a good German likes to hear…. I followed that up with some light shopping and a sushi lunch at La Encantada with my friend Vivian. While I was gone, the county inspector came out to inspect the new gas lines and we passed. The engineer for Southwest Gas came out again, got the paperwork signed and scheduled work to begin on the new meter on Thursday. We may actually have heat and be able to shower in our own bathroom this weekend! I’d say cook too, but who needs a stove or a gas grill when you have the electric skillet?

On Tuesday morning I got caught up on everything mom-related that was pressing, via phone calls or emails. It took several hours, but by 11:00 I was finished! What a relief! After that we finally got the tree up and decorated. It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas in here. We decided to spend the night at mom’s so we could get some laundry done, take a shower, check on the cats and do some organizing for Tyler while he’s out of town. We met some friends for dinner at Athens and had a fun night. The next morning I thought I’d get started in the kitchen, and before I knew it, I spent 7 hours in there. Tyler should finally have some room for his things.

On Thursday I got some more shopping done and had a nice long phone call with one of mom’s best friends. It was wonderful to catch up with her. When the washing machine part arrived, Rick put it in and IT WORKED! We can wash clothes here again! We went out for prime rib with friends in the evening, and I have to say it was one of the best days I’ve had in quite a while!

Does anyone remember the Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young song with the line: “It’s getting to the point where I’m no fun anymore. I am sorrrrry!” That is so me these days. I’m weepy and feeling sorry for myself. I do not like this me at all. At the risk of being repetitive, I just want to take a damn shower in my own bathroom again, cook a meal on my stove, have some heat in the house and do some freaking laundry. When will this shit be over?

I am trying like hell to decorate the house for Christmas. It is just so incredibly hard this time around. We finally hauled the 9ft tree down from the attic and all of the accompanying decorations. I just can’t seem to get them set up. Hopefully if I look at them long enough, it will come to me. I have no problem doing the present shopping. Every day more packages arrive via UPS or FedEx. There is a growing pile of boxes. I miss doing Christmas crafts. I would love to sit there and mindlessly do that again, but there is this pressure to take care of stuff that is pressing and not just do something for me, which is probably exactly what I should do, but can’t give myself permission to do.

I spent most of yesterday helping Tyler finish up at his apartment and also try to organize his things and move stuff around at the house. It is so much harder when there is almost no room for additional stuff. There are still boxes everywhere and if we don’t start getting rid of things those boxes could well be there forever. How do you decide what to keep, what to give away, what to trash? Who can stand to go through the personal belongings of someone you love and just detach yourself from your feelings and do that? Apparently not me and not Tyler either. We also want Jenna to be able to choose things that she would like to have. Early yesterday I received a text from Tyler telling me he was so sick of all the random crap all around his bedroom that it’s making him hate living there. I get that. If you have no problem with disorder that would make no sense to you. Every time I go over there to shower I am overwhelmed with the desire to organize and put things away, but remind myself that it isn’t my place. We discussed it last night and there are things that I can do while he’s out of town all week for work again.

The re-piping of the gas lines was finally completed on Friday evening. That makes 4 solid days of plumbers here all day and on some days, in to the evening. We have the county inspector scheduled to come out sometime on Monday. What a convenient timeframe. Sometime on Monday. Anyhow, once we pass inspection, Southwest Gas will schedule to come out and do the trenching to the new meter which will be up against the house instead of all the way out by the mailbox. The big question now is how long will that take? Rick’s bet is that we will have gas on Wednesday-ever the optimist. I say we will be lucky if we have it by Friday, and that the following week is more likely. I remember the engineer saying they schedule 4-5 days out. So…..I pray Rick is right.

I know mom sent out invitations for Mickey’s celebration of life last year (although that isn’t the norm-I think it had more to do with needing the information in advance to get on the base), but that is not happening with Mom’s. For one, she has absolutely no addresses in her address book. Only phone numbers. I have tried to call the people that I know are not reading the blog, and if you happen to know of someone that would want to come and does not read it, please pass along the information. I hope most, if not all of her friends can make it. Andreas is asking me how many will likely come. I am thinking around 70 or 80. It’s at 2:00 at Athens on 4th on Sunday, December 27th. If you can make it, you can message me here under comments, email me at mrogers268@aol.com, text or phone me at 520-850-3198. Whatever works best for you.

It’s starting to be funny. I got up this morning and had some nice hot coffee and turned on the Today Show. I went upstairs and all of a sudden the lights in the bathroom went out. You got it-no electricity. Not just us though, thank god. Our neighbors lost theirs as well. But….really? Rick, usually Mr. always look at the bright side, said good god, what else? I, ever the realist, said water? Then we both laughed, me a little more, and perhaps sounding semi-hysterical. (it came back on two hours later!)

The interesting thing about the gas leak, was that not only did we have a huge leak just outside the garage, but also in the kitchen behind the range and in the furnace room in the garage where the gas line was teed off to go to the gas range when we remodeled 13 years ago. So, at this point we should just be thankful that we weren’t blown to kingdom come…small things that make you grateful-hahaha!

I’m keeping this brief today. Obviously if electricity is out, so is the internet. Tyler and I burned through tons of our mobile allotment while Internet shopping on our phones while in San Diego. I’m sure overages will be brutal. Although, at this point, who cares…..

The good news, as I write this very chilly morning, is that there is a team of plumbers pressure testing our gas lines, prior to the new ones going in. The not so good news is that it will probably be next week sometime before we have gas in our house again. Sweet Jesus, this sucks. I nabbed a circa 1960 avocado green electric frying pan from my mom’s house. So that ups the choices of what I can cook in my house. So sitting next to my overpriced Wolf range is this tacky looking old electric frying pan and a crockpot. Taking turns between the two. On Sunday night, after we got back, I managed to throw together shrimp scampi. On Monday, I put a couple of skinless, boneless chicken breasts, two cups of chicken broth, a can of black beans, a can of El Pato salsa, a cup of water, 1/2 of a chopped onion, 2 cloves of chopped garlic, a teaspoon each of cumin and chili powder in to a crockpot, and voila, tortilla soup! At the end I added the juice of a lime and served it in a bowl with some tortilla chips and topped it with some shredded cheese. It was SO good! Seriously, this is idiot proof! Anyone can cook with a crockpot. Just throw a bunch of stuff in it and walk away…. We ate it huddled by the fireplace, which, thank god, I did not yet change to gas. We would have been even more screwed!

At the risk of sounding like a total whiner, I will share the newest shit going on in our lives. So, after we got back from San Diego, I threw a load of towels in the washer and sat at the bar in the kitchen to read the frying pan pamphlet. I decided to get up and go get something across the room and stepped in to water. A lot of water. The washer had flooded the entire first floor while I was sitting 15 feet away from it and did not notice until I stepped in to it. WTF???? So we spent the next hour and a half getting the water under control. Well that was fun. We were pretty excited about the fact that a plumber was already scheduled to come the next morning. Unfortunately, that did us no good whatsoever. I thought for sure the drain line was plugged up. But, alas, no. That was not it. It’s the damn washing machine. Granted the damn thing is 15 years old, but, this too???? Probably not worth fixing…….And you know, you can’t just buy a washer, you have to by a dryer as well. No one makes almond appliances anymore. Why the heck not? My laundry room had a washer, dryer, and refrigerator, all in almond. So then I checked Consumer Reports to do some research. They break it down to a standard top load agitator style, which is what I have. Then the top loader HE style, sans agitator. And last but not least, the newest version, the front loader. Well damn. If anyone has any suggestions, I am ready for it, because I can’t seem to care enough to make a decision. but I do need to get on the laundry situation.

I have not taken a shower since Sunday morning in San Diego and am trying to get myself together to go to Tyler’s to shower, but I can’t leave while the plumbers are testing the lines. I’m afraid to even go out and look at what my front yard looks like. Would it be bad to just crawl back in to bed and pull the covers over my head?

San Diego is pretty beautiful right now. Usually, once a year there is the King Tide, when the tide comes in the farthest, so there is quite a bit of coastal flooding. It is really pretty. We have been enjoying some nice down time. We’ve taken lots of long walks on the boardwalk and to Trader Joe’s and most recently to CVS. Tyler started to feel kind of crappy on Thursday night, and Friday morning woke up with a full blown cold. My theory is that this is the first time he has been able to just sit still in months, and his body decided it was a great time to go ahead and get sick….and so he did. We have stocked up on stuff for vegetarian soup, and picked up mucinex, zicam, chamomile tea, honey, and cough drops. Keeping our fingers crossed that all of this helps. In the meantime, there is a lot of movie watching and random snacking, interspersed with me taking Idgie on walks.

I’ve done a lot of internet shopping the last couple of days, which has been fun. No crowds, no parking hassles-it works for me. I’ve tried to order something from the Michael Kors website twice in the last few days. All I can say, is don’t bother with that stupid site! I placed my order yesterday, received a confirmation email and two hours later received a notice that they did not have the product I ordered. If you can take an order, you need to be able to process and ship it, otherwise there is no point in having online ordering! Very annoying! I may have written them a note to let them know what I think of their site…..surprise!

By Friday evening, Tyler just wanted to rest and we had quite a few leftovers, so Rick and I headed out for some delicious seafood. The Pacific Beach Fish Shop usually has long lines, but on this chilly evening after Thanksgiving, was pretty quiet. We got home quickly and settled in for a nice evening of TV watching by the fireplace.

On Saturday morning Rick and I took Idgie for a long walk to Mission Beach before the 9:00 a.m. cutoff for dogs. No dogs on the beach between 9-4. We had planned to go to one of our favorite breakfast places, The Mission, but you seriously have to plan for about 30 minutes of standing in line to get in. And poor Tyler just didn’t feel up to it. We are hoping he will feel well enough to go out to dinner tonight, it being our last night here.

Mom would have been 82 today. I really can’t believe she is no longer here and we will never see her again. She was so damn healthy and lived such a clean life-it still doesn’t seem possible. How did it go so fast? When will I stop feeling bad about missed opportunities to spend more time with her? I always felt we had so much time… I think of so many people with so many health issues, or who didn’t take as good of care of themselves, that live so long, to such old ages. And my mom is gone-where is the justice in that?

Every day brings a new surprise. On Sunday, Tyler and I worked very hard to unpack all of his belongings and find a place for everything. This has not been an easy task. It probably would be easier if we could part with mom’s things. We are trying to avoid a lot of that at this early date and so continued to try to condense and organize.

I found out that I come by my need to buy shoes naturally. The closet she kept her shoes in was a total disaster. It seemed so out of character…. I dove right in and found about 15 pairs of shoes that had never been worn in addition to 3 large bags full of shoes that are most likely on their way to Goodwill. It seemed to be the one area where I had no great attachment. But I did keep a few pair…If anyone wants to see if there are any shoes you might want, please let me know.

The phone rang in the afternoon and it was someone mom had known for many years. She is the niece of old friends of hers. We heard the message the lady left asking if she could have lunch with mom on Friday, and knew it was a call we had to answer. These calls are always long and difficult. When I gave her the news about mom she told me all about what an impact mom had on her and her family. I get this so often! It was a recurring theme in the sympathy cards we recieved and hearing the stories has been awesome! The more little pieces I learn about her, the more inspiring it is.

By Monday morning I finished up everything that needed to be dealt with now and finally left shortly before noon. I then made the rounds to banks closing credit and debit cards and leaving death certificates. Nothing but fun stuff.

On Tuesday morning we finally got an engineer from Southwest Gas over here and found out we had two choices. They could relocate the meter and a plumber would have to re-do all the remaining gas lines which would leave our front yard looking like it was bombed, right before the holidays…..Or we have a plumber just come and fix the leak. Of course, nothing can be done until Monday. So the second choice seems most likely. Having the front of the yard destroyed before the holidays is out of the question. A third option would be welcome!

Off to San Diego in the morning for the long holiday weekend……