Guardian Angel Roxanne sent me (through facebook) to a page with some nice advice.  The best of the bunch for me just now:

Stop putting your own needs on the back burner.
 Stop trying to be someone you're not.
Stop being scared to make a mistake.
Stop trying to compete against everyone else.
Stop wasting time explaining yourself to others.
Stop trying to make things perfect.*
Stop trying to be everything to everybody.^
Stop worrying so much.#


*A common mom problem, I suspect.  Definitely a Me problem, having been raised by a woman who did seem to do every single thing perfectly.
^I know this is a mom deal --- trying to meet every child's needs.  It also dovetails into the making things perfect issue.  And I'm still trying to be everything to a person who isn't here any more.
# How easily typed, how near-impossibly done.

I Promise

One day, these posts won't be "Oh, Pitiful Me"-themed.  But that's pretty much where I am right now.

 

Briton is in his new apartment.  Yesterday was fairly exhausting, yet I had trouble getting to sleep last night.  I'm interested to see how he did his first night in the new place.  We're meeting up in just a little while to go get Hannah.  I don't think she had a very pleasant end to her semester, and I don't think she's going to want to talk about it, though we surely need to.  We simply can't keep spending what little money we have on sending her to school if she isn't going to be a student.

And need-to-do-s from Nashville are still rolling around in my head.  Basically, I'm in a constant state of near-panic.  Or, more accurately, near-panic-attack.  I just cannot get my mind to be still.  And trying to distract myself fails utterly.  Losing Mama --- hell, this whole year --- has made me realize how easily time can be wasted.  It can slip out from under you before you know it, and you never get it back.  What have I done this year?  A nervous breakdown.  And a half.  Couldn't find a job.  Now, trying to pull together a Christmas, funds are even scarcer than they were last year, my heart and mind and dealing with grief and loss and children's problems. . .  "Let this Christmas go," I've heard in my head more than once lately.  "There will be others."  Maybe.  But what if this one is our last one all really together?  What if, for everyone's sake, this needs to be a really fun holiday?  Who puts that together?  It's supposed to be me, I guess.  And I'm not up to the challenge.

Back in Athens, getting ready to move Briton into his apartment tomorrow, then go to Atlanta to bring Hannah home for the holidays Tuesday.  Thoroughly unsettled, body and mind.

Time

I am in Middle Tennessee.  Have been since Sunday night, actually.  I had wi-fi installed in Mama and Daddy's house today, so that when we come here in the future, we don't have to live computerless.

It has been an agonizing week.  I brought Finn with me, and discovered on the trip up --- discovered twice, to be exact --- that he gets carsick.  And he's been very (understandably) whiney when I've had to leave to undertake all this paperwork, then very (understandably) clingy when I return.  I've tried to keep my outings to a minimum, but what you find when you try to wrap up a deceased parent's affairs is that one necessary form always leads to at least two others.  And appointments must be made.  And it is cold and raining and then snowing, and you are on such an edge that you are eating your anti-anxiety medication like candy.  And when you finish a day's traversing, you start downing melatonin and ibuprofen PM so you can just go to sleep and not have to feel the panic anymore.

I've had people offer to come by, to talk to me on the phone, but I simply haven't been able to face that.  I've been so frantic, so distressed that I knew having to talk with anyone would undoubtedly send me right over the edge.  So I've lain here with my feet elevated and my heart pounding, and poor little Finn skooching up as close to me as he can get, begging not to pass out.  Or crack up.

And I have to come back and do this time and time and who knows how many more times again before everything is really done.

I just can't look at any of that right now.  It's too, too, too much.

Next Steps

The death certificates are supposedly on their way.  When they arrive, Finn and I will leave for Nashville.  I'm taking him for the company, and for the fact that he is the most high-maintenance of the pets, and Briton has a busy enough week ahead of him without having to "put up" with all of Finn's shenanigans.

 

We have Riley, Mama's cat, here with us now.  She, in her own house, was the most skittish cat I've ever been around, so you can imagine how timid she's being here with all the noise and paws and barking and general carrying on.  She has come to live under Hannah's bed --- Hannah made really good progress with her before she (Hannah) went back to school.  Again, since Finn is the most energetic soul in the house, his absence might prompt her to come out and explore a little.  Poor thing --- she's been through a lot.  I know she was right there with Mama when and after she died.

I don't know how long all the "getting things in order" will take me.  Briton moves into his own apartment the 12th, and I know he wants me here to help him.  But I can only go as quickly as the Williamson County, Tennessee bureaucracy will allow.  One of the very first things I'm going to do is make an appointment to have wi-fi installed in the house.  Whenever any of us is up there, I want us to be able to compute.  We used to just go to Borders, but. . .

I've got two bags of knitting packed, along with one I left up there.  I seem to be expecting an awful lot of downtime.  We shall see.

Does Anyone Else Have This Problem?

Each year, when the holidays are over, it seems to take forever to take down and pack away the decorations.  And some are always missed.  (There's a Nativity in an upstairs bookshelf that hasn't moved in three years.)  Yet, before all that, when the decorations are first being brought out and placed around the house, there never seem to be enough.  Only a couple of little areas in the house have very much Christmas going on.  

 

It's kind of sad.  And not in the heartwarming Charlie Brown kind of way.

 

No, our house just seems sort of bare.  Granted, there isn't much of a holiday budget this year, but aren't there nice, inexpensive ways to make each room feel Christmas-y?

 

 

Ah-Cheer

For someone who didn't actually see her daughter all that much in the last week, I have somehow managed to come down with the most aggravating symptoms of the head/chest cold that was wracking Hannah's health while we were in Tennessee.  Sore throat (actually, it feels like someone is rasping my throat with a saw), cough (which makes the throat even worse), fever, headache. . .  I feel miserable.  Thankfully, I guess, the death certificates have not arrived yet, so I don't have an imminent trip to Nashville.

 

 

(This is precisely how I feel.)

 

We brought Riley, Mama's cat, home with us, and have been trying to ease her into live at The Chez.  Hannah made some real breakthroughs in the last couple of days, with Riley volunteering to spend time with her --- even purring.  I've never, ever heard that cat purr.  It will be interesting to see if any of the progress is lost, now that Hannah is back in Atlanta, and won't be back until mid-December.  

The rather spindly little artificial tree that I bought after Christmas last year is up.  This is the first time in Briton and Hannah's lives that we haven't had a live tree.  But they understand.  The tree isn't decorated yet, but we'll get there.  The stockings are up, and a few Nativities are out. . .  It is beginning to maybe start to feel like Christmas.

How about at your house?