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.