KattyWilly

Back in the year 2000 Cindy and I got to take a trip to Prague with my sister and brothers.  We went in June and it was a beautiful Prague Spring.  Back in those days there weren’t any moblogs or cell phone cameras even though we wished there were.  Brother Larry did have a digital camera and we brought our old fashioned film cameras to record our trip.  We did have access to blogs back then including the one we set up on Weblogs.com.  Thanks to the generosity of Dave and the folks at Userland we were able to visit the local Internet cafes to post updates while we were there so family and friends at home could follow along on our trip.

Recently changes with Dave and Userland meant that the Weblogs.com sites had enjoyed their time on Userland’s servers and needed to find new homes.  I had a couple of sites there including our travel log.  The travel log hasen’t been updated for years but I still go back now and then to visit.  When the Weblogs.com sites went down for a few days it was kind of sad not being able to go look at those pages.  It took a couple of day but the sites are back up at a temporary home.

Once at the new home there were some links on the pages that referenced the old server.  The folks handling the move of the sites are working on fixing things so links to the old addresses will redirect to the new location.  I went ahead and paged through each day of our trip and ‘fixed’ the links manually so they will go to the new site.

It was another bittersweet experience looking at those old photos of the two of us.  Remembering how magical that trip was, the great times we had together.

Julie is talking about home schooling and says this:

“When I was a girl, my mother cautioned me You become like the person you
marry. I think that the truth behind this observation is that people conform
to the people around them. It’s not necessarily something intentional. But human
beings by nature are like sponges, subconsciously soaking up the influence of
others.”

Which reminds me of one of the things I have recognized during my
grieving process.  The loss of identity.  I have no doubt
that I became like Cindy in the 24 years we were together.  I also
know that after her death I lost part of my identity.  I was
surprised at how much of “who I am” was derived from what she thought
of me, and the things I felt about her.  Part of what made me who
I was, were the things I/we did that she enjoyed, tolerated and
disliked.  It is the daily process of becoming like another
person.  When that suddenly stops there are questions as to the
things you do that are enjoyed, tolerated or disliked.  It is
another loss, one of the ones that isn’t immediately recognized and is
difficult to adjust to.

Julie also sends me off to find some new music. http://www.christinedente.com/

I love songs with
lyrics like “sha sha” or “bop bop” or “ooh ooh ah ah”, real “sing along songs”
where you don’t have to make up lyrics they are already made up for you
🙂

“If there’s a God in heaven
 What’s he waiting for
If He can’t hear the children
Then he must see the war“

One of the things that we have to deal with the the questioning of God and religion when someone so good and kind is taken away from us, and we see the most horrendous and evil walking among us every day.  It is a reoccurring theme in the grieving discussion groups.

I’ve been feeling down all week, just realized why.  The folks over on Widownet are talking about Nancy.

“Every time I see or think about Nancy Reagan it just makes me so sad. Their love story is very public and seemed so genuine. And I just can’t bear to think of the pain she is feeling, the pain we all know so well.”

“When I saw her lay her head down on his casket I broke down in tears too. “

“Hmmm. Now Nancy is one of us, I guess. My heart goes out to her. “

“… she looks like one of us. “

“Life/Work Balance: Great Jobs For Great Moms”  Somehow the Life/Work balance always gets phrased in relation to moms.  In general our society somehow doesn’t seem to place as much importance on the Life/Work balance in regards to dads.  As a single dad I feel the struggle daily between my life and work.

Wanted to write more but, here I sit at work and life just called so I need to do some balancing.

It’s the Universal Wireless Multimedia Receiver!  Almost.  If they took one of these and put a set of Bluetooth wireless headphones on it, and a LCD screen to watch video on and ran it on batteries you’d have it.  Then all we’d need is Wi-Fi everywhere.  That’s what I’m wiching for.  It won’t be long. 

The only problem is that it will probably end up being a phone, and they will want to charge you by the minute to listen or watch video 🙁

Techbargains has a link to get one of these for < $100.  By Christmas they’ll be so cheap I’ll have to get one 🙂

Weekend Photos

Some recent photos.

While reading about a great omelet which I found from a link in my morning reading about restaurant menus, I found this idea in an article about Newark and terrorism and the Sopranos.

“On Sunday’s ‘The Sopranos,’ Tony stayed up one night channel-surfing. This is not unusual for Tony. His sins keep him awake. Or rather a perplexing question about his sins: Why has the committing of them become so joyless? Why don’t they yield happiness?”

Now none of these has anything to do with this idea, and why it somehow struck a chord in my head.  But I find more and more, that strange little statements, thoughts, song lyrics, about things totally unrelated to my situation and daily routines, have strange connections to feelings and emotions that I have these days.

For this particular statement in my case has nothing to do with the Sopranos, I admit I have never seen the show, and nothing to do with my sins.  It has to do with life, and love, and my daily struggles with self identity.

Unlike Tony, instead of my sins, I struggle now with my emotions, my feelings of affection for my daughter’s mother, my wife.  They are something that that are with me every day.  I still awake every day with love in my heart for their mother.  But now even writing that sentence and saying “my wife” makes me realize the feeling Tony Soprano feels, why does this feel so joyless, why doesn’t it yield happiness?

I know the answers but I still have to ponder these questions.  I have to analyze my condition and my progress through this process of healing.  Who would have thought that an injury that is so invisible to the people I will meet, can be so painful, and difficult to heal.  The realization that this injury doesn’t heal on it’s own is one that puts the future in such a different light.  I don’t know how to describe the realization that I am going to have to work so hard each and every day to ‘heal myself’.  ‘It’ won’t heal on ‘it’s’ own, I have to work to heal.  I have to do the things I do each day, and work through the problems I have, the emotions I feel, and understand the reasons and learn to let the emotions happen and try to find ways to let those emotions change and shift somehow and become new emotions new feelings.

Almost half my lifetime was spent feeling those ‘old’ emotions.  They were fantastic emotions.  Feelings and thoughts and ways of daily life that in some ways are still here but in others are gone, and can’t ever be brought back again.  I am certain that it will take time for those emotions to change.  I say change, as I know that they will never go away, but somehow age gracefully like we expected our lives to do, as new emotions and feelings start to accumulate and join those ‘old’ emotions in the memory banks of my mind and soul.