Thursday Thoughts #4 – Gym, Tears, Kid Date Night, and Loneliness

The past two day I have been a bit reflective, and … cranky, for lack for a better word. Unsettled and kinda foggy. I have been really tired and facebook has been super addictive when I’ve been between things.

Forgotten

I stayed up way too late Tuesday night. It is fairly typical for me on Tuesday nights to do so. Even when I don’t feel like a therapy session is particularly intense, I guess we are still digging around and stirring stuff up. My mind just gets really busy and it is difficult to settle down.

That is part of why I asked my parents a few weeks back to come over and take the kids to school a few times per week, currently Wednesdays and Fridays.

So yesterday morning I woke up pretty exhausted after only 5.5 hours of sleep. I was looking forward to my parents picking up the kids so I could go back to bed. Unfortunately, my parents forgot about us. 🙁

My mom has been busy this week with a deadline at work and my dad is not a morning person. So when I texted my mom, she was already at work, that she had a deadline that morning. I was frustrated at being forgotten, but I told her I’d go ahead and take my toddler.

Luckily my dad hadn’t left the house when I called me, so he was still able to come over and take the big kids to school at least, though they did end up being late.

Gym

So I got home from taking my toddler to school and was contemplating my morning schedule. I have on my calendar to go to a Zumba class in Broken Arrow on Wednesday mornings. I was tired and really didn’t feel like going out there.

Since I started going to the gym in January, I have had very few days where I had scheduled myself to go to the gym and actually talked myself out of it. Yesterday was one of those mornings. At least it was until my sweet trainer sent me the following text:

“Good Morning! Are you coming in today? You’re welcome to hop in on noon or 10a.”

She has a few group training sessions going this week that I’m not officially involved in, but I couldn’t ignore the timing of her invitation. So feeling the love, I replied about how I’d talked myself out of the zumba class, but I’d join her 10a group.

So I stayed in bed for a nap but got myself to the gym almost on time. I am glad I went. We did the rock climbing wall again and I was able to go higher than I did last time. I felt stronger than the previous time.

I did not particularly enjoy the barrel rolling that we ended with as I felt kind of nauseous. I know that I don’t do well with spinning around in circles, but it didn’t occur to me when I started, that barrel rolls are basically circles on the ground. It took a few minutes for the room to stop spinning.

Afternoon

After leaving the gym I picked up some lunch and ate it on the way to the Dentist’s office. I have been going to the same dentist since the 1st or 2nd grade. I love how extra clean my teeth feel after a cleaning.

After the dentists office, I went home to meet the cleaning ladies. It is always so pleasant at my house after they come. I laid down resting most of the time they were there.

After they left, I sat down to write what I thought would be a quick facebook post to my ACTS facebook group, but it ended up taking more time than expected.

I shed a lot of tears writing this post. I had been thinking about writing it for a few days, but once I saw the words on these screen. Waterworks. This is what I wrote:

Since it is coming up next week, I wanted to share that I was able to schedule the mass intention for the 6:30am mass on April 20th for the repose of Kraston Colby‘s soul.

6:30 is too early for me to round up my little people, but I thought some of you might want to / be able to attend.

April 20th is the 1 year anniversary of his death, so your thoughts and prayers on that day would be much appreciated.

The women’s retreat this last weekend was such a blessing to me. Much love to all my ACTS sisters (and brothers too).”

The response has been lovely. Seven sweet sisters indicated that they would be there, some with their families. Several others posted that they could not attend, but would be praying for us. My post has 30+ reactions (fairly evenly split between likes and loves).

Work

I do still work, currently 6 hours per week. So after I finally posted and the crying subsided, I headed to work. There I spent most of the afternoon looking over a project that I originally did two years ago and they didn’t build. My boss had worked on it a bit bringing it up to date with the architect’s latest changes.

Oldest child came blowing through on the way up to therapy. His therapist is in the other end of my office building, which is handy. I was able to stay at my office and get a little bit more done during his session.

Kid Date Night

So this week was date night with eldest child. He decided that we would eat at Taco Bueno and then go to Andy B’s to play in the arcade. Normally we each have our own play card and don’t interact as much. I had forgotten his wallet, so we shared my play card. We played more together and interacted more, so I actually kind of liked it.

One game we played a lot was a snowmobile racing game. We also played Jurassic Park and some super hero game where you get a physical collectible card spit out at you after every game.

I played a few rounds of the Dance Dance Revolution. I enjoy dancing and as long as the song I pick has a relatively steady beat, I am pretty decent at it. My former best friend growing up had a younger brother who was amazing at dance dance revolution, like even went to competitions and stuff. I think of them whenever I play.

While we were there, my nanny texted me that we were out of bread for lunches tomorrow, so after we spent all the money on my card, we went to Target to shop for groceries.

When I got home, I was still tired, so I decided to skip my daily post and double up today.

Thursday Morning

This morning, despite 7.5 hours of sleep, I woke up feeling just as exhausted as yesterday. I took all the kids to school and then went to 9am mass. I haven’t typically been going to mass on Thursdays, but my tenant for the old house had some mail for me and offered to bring it to me after mass today.

I was a little early, so while I have been sitting on the front row lately, I ended up sitting toward the back near a friend who was also there early. It ended up being just the right spot.

Another friend who sits in the front row was there and, just before mass started, her husband showed up, surprising her. I had the perfect angle to see her face light up with the biggest smile when she saw him. They have been married for nearly 15 years. It was beautiful.

I felt such joy for them and was glad I sat where I did to be able to see that moment. Because it got me thinking. How often did I smile like that at Kraston?

For most of our marriage, I was tired and stressed or pregnant, whatever. I don’t remember smiling all that much. I remember complaining a lot. I’m sure I did smile at him. I hope I did.

But as homework, I want to encourage you married ladies, to think about when the last time you smiled like that at your husband. With pure joy to see him. If I ever remarry, I want to remember her smile and pray to smile like that when I see him, even after years and years.

It is funny the moments where you know you are right where you are supposed to be to learn something.

Loneliness

I suppose I feel a twinge of loneliness most times I see a happily married couple together. The subtle intimacies. I miss standing next to him. Leaning into him. Holding hands. An arm around my shoulder. The hand on my back.

And this is probably a bit TMI, but it is day 15 of my cycle, which means I am ovulating right about now. So I’ll just say I miss the, ahem, greater intimacies of married life as well right now. It has been around 17 months. Having been married for over 9 years, well over half of my adult life, there is some physical frustration there.

He’s not here anymore. It has been almost a year. His hormones aren’t here encouraging mine, so why is the middle of each cycle still so hard? Baby girl is 21 months old, which is right around the time we conceived each of the younger two kids.

I can totally understand why most widows, particularly young widows, start dating again as within the first year after loss. Kraston was the only boyfriend I have ever had. I only ever went on a scant handful of dates before him.

The rest of my Thursday

After mass, after all of this swirling contemplation, I took a two hour nap. I got up, had a quick lunch and went in to work. I had two product reps coming in to call on me and a bit of work to do in between.

After work I came home. One of Kraston’s friends came by to visit and had dinner with us. The kids were ridiculous with the routine disrupted by having a visitor, but settled down okay for bed after he left. I’ve been writing every since.

I still haven’t started on my post about the retreat. I’m not sure I will really get to it as I feel myself slipping into survival mode. I am really struggling to keep up the schedule I’ve been working with the past few months. I’m going to need to drop back and plan a bit more downtime / naps so that I can attempt to keep the rest of my schedule going. I didn’t go to the gym today and I’m feeling that too.

I know this is temporary and part of this process is learning to recognize the signs. Grief doesn’t ever go away. You just learn to deal with it better.