Wandering thoughts

As I wander thru the weeks and am doing things, handling things and living onward, I sometimes feel like a shell. Doing what I need to do. Even laughing and being with friends. Enjoying tastes and colors and moments.

I am confused inside and I don't really want to move forward yet, but I feel like it is reaching the point where it is expected. Where I am expecting it. An inch forward. But for every inch forward is an inch of what was that is lost. What I really want is to go back and if not have what was lost again, at least have a reprieve from the facade of being 'okay'. A week to just not do anything and be okay about it. Yet, as others have children, I have my pets and as many of us widows have, we have bills.

Sitting home last night - with a dog on each side of me, I took a moment to look around at what was accomplished this weekend and it was good. Talking to the guy at Comcast and learning that they have to send a guy out to look at my cable was not good.

I hate repair guys. Especially from Comcast. About three years ago we had a problem and it took them 4 guys to visit and figure out what was really wrong. One guy was looking up on the pole, one was following out lines out the window, one just stood in my kitchen and looked confused and the last one was an older guy that strode in, checked this, clipped that, attached those and it was fixed.

Jim was the wire guy. He has our house wired for cable like nobody could imagine. We have a cable coming in and then it splits for the internet and tv. That was put on by the cable guy. Then a little further down the line it splits into maybe four? different ways to handle a tv in four rooms. Our main living room, the bedroom, the kitchen and the office. The wiring at that point looks very convoluted and makes me shake my head. It's a Jim thing.

I am not sure what I am going to do in the future. I can't believe I am even thinking of the future. But I meant the future when there are no longer any 'Jim things' to look at and smile about. And I don't mean actually 'things' like physical items. But more like stuff that I know was a Jim-ism to do. Let's see if I can call a few up. Well, the splitting the cables is one. In every house we lived in, he was the electrician/cable guy. Along with that is the tv in every room theory. I haven't turned the one in our bedroom on in over five months. A towel hanging over the shower rod instead of on the towel rack. An unmade bed vs a made bed. These are things we do differently enough that I knew he had been in the room when I saw them. And have missed them.

Oh yeah, how about the flooding in the basement. Major Jim-ism and I forgot it completely. We have a basement that seeps water at one end and sort of slopes. If the rain lasts more than a couple days we have to worry. Jim solved this years ago by inventing the kitty litter dam. It sounds just like it is. He would put a line of kitty litter across the path of the water and it would soak it up. Then when the rain is past, just shovel the litter into a bag. It worked well because we have a very small very cramped very unfinished basement. I forgot this trick. It rained and rained a couple weeks ago and my basement did get flooded a bit. I went down to check and saw the old 'dam' lines and remembered. And started crying - mad at Jim for being gone and leaving me this mess.

I have been sleeping without an alarm clock. That was Jim's duty - to set the alarm to play a certain cd of music. We had a sound machine all night and then the classic music to wake up to. I tried it once when I came back after he died. I couldn't get the alarm to work right or the sound machine to make the right noise. I sleep to the sound of nothing and wake up when my body's moorning alarm goes off. It was a Jim-ism. He could coax things to do many things you would never thought possible. I dread the day when I have to try and hook up or change the wiring on the tv or cable or tivo. Oh my.