Checking In

Another week down. And what a week it's been. My sister was in town from Africa (she lives there - long story) and she kept me sufficiently occupied. We started off the week quietly. Dan went back to work and I worked from home. I actually ventured to the office for a few hours Tuesday morning. It was hard and I couldn't stay that long but I did it. It just felt eerie - almost like I was soundly back to my "old life" but with half my heart missing. I spent the drive home crying. That's pretty much how it is - act normal in front of other people and completely lose it in the car. Par for the course for us mom's with angel babies.

What else? I joined a gym. Been there a few times this week. It's nice to slip on some headphones and run on a treadmill. Release some of my aggressions. My fuse is so short these days and it's probably much healthier to expend my energy at the gym rather than blow up in people's faces. I can't handle people's ridiculousness right now. Problems just seem petty and pointless and my filter is almost non-existent. Something I need to work on and hopefully the gym (and my counselor) can help.

That was another thing I did this week - saw a new counselor. I really liked the other one I was going to but she was pretty expensive so I looked into some free counseling provided by our local hospice program. I definitely liked the new counselor but I could tell she was a little overwhelmed when I told her my story for the first time. It's really weird telling my story - it does seem almost unbelievable. Like a movie. When I'm retelling it, I feel like its impossible that I have lived through what I have. But I did and I am here, trying to move on and live.

Most of the time I feel like I'm just going through the motions of the day. Smiling when I'm supposed to smile, laughing when I'm supposed to laugh but not really feeling anything. Numb. I hope that this will start receding but the pain is still too fresh. The normal parts of my life that I enjoyed so much four months ago are so meaningless now. Hopefully, this too shall pass.

Now for the excitement of the week. Ready for this - it's a doozy. I was sitting in my office getting some work done on Thursday when I started hearing this weird noise by my desk. Went on for awhile and I every time I turned down my music to listen for it, it would stop. Finally, I figured out it was coming from my file cabinet (the one holding all of our "important docs" - you know, birth certificates, mortgage papers, tax returns, etc.) I opened the drawer and the files looked chewed up. Toni and I started lifting the files up and we saw it. A long skinny tale running toward the back of the file cabinet. Yep my friends, we had a mouse. Toni ran to the store and brought back some traps. We were going to put them in the file cabinet when we saw it again. A very LARGE mouse. A field mouse whose body was a good 8 inches (not including the tail). We screamed, shut the door to the sun room/office and called my dad in hysterics. He came over and tried to move the file cabinet, the mouse ran out and went under the couch. When we moved the couch outside, we notice tons of mouse droppings and that it had burrowed a hole in the couch and was probably living in it. We still aren't sure where the fucking thing went but at least I know it's not in my house.

Long story short, Dan and I spent hours cleaning and disinfecting the room. We scrubbed the floors, threw out the couch, wiped down each and every book in our bookcases, etc. I'm still not sure what to do about the files though. The mouse ate quite a few of them and peed and pooped all over the rest. I don't think I can throw these documents away (kind of need our Birth Certificates, etc.) so I'm still trying to figure out what to do. Oh, the joys of my life. Two steps forward and three steps back. Luckily, all these weird, crappy things that have been happening to us have just now become amusing. As I said before, after what we have been through, you can't sweat the small stuff.