In the immortal words 30 June 2009

In the immortal words of Bon Jovi, “Never say goodbye.”

Easier said than done, of course.  Tonight I made a farewell dinner for my good friend Bridget.  On the menu were sweet n’ sour mini meatloaf muffins, pierogies (frozen, not homemade), homemade whole wheat-molasses bread, and steamed broccoli.  I have to say, it was all a major hit.  Apparently Bridget’s husband loves meatloaf, and she rarely makes it.  So he was thrilled to be getting meatloaf for dinner.  I’m not a huge fan of meatloaf myself, but these little meatloaf muffins are not nearly as intimidating as an entire loaf.  Plus they cook in only twenty to twenty-five minutes, instead of the hour or more a regular meatloaf can take.

Is there anyone else who’s never had pierogies before?  I’d had them before, but when I found a $1 off coupon, making them just 99¢ at the commissary, I just had to buy them.  All I did was pan-fry them up, and Kurt couldn’t get enough!  And what better to serve with meatloaf but some kind of potato??  Pierogies it was, and Bridget and her husband, who’d never had them before, thought they were delicious.

I’m so glad I could do this for them.  I’ve cooked for them before, but I knew they didn’t want to eat out on the eve of their drive to their next duty station.  It’ll be another couple weeks before they’re perfectly settled, so I figured a home-cooked meal would be the best thing for them.

I will miss her so much.  The first night I met her, I told Kurt later that I thought she and I would really hit it off.  She’s just as quirky and nerdy as I am, and we’re both interested in the same sorts of thing.  And because of her, I love Top Chef and So You Think You Can Dance!  I will miss texting her at 8:30 at night and coercing her over to hang out with the promise of Kurt’s delicious popcorn.  It didn’t matter what day of the week it was, or what was going on the next day.  She was always willing to come over to spend time with me, or to invite me over to her house.

I went over to her house after dinner tonight to retrieve some of the food she couldn’t take with her on the move.  It was so weird seeing everything taken down off the walls, all her belongings packed up in boxes.  It was really hard to see.

However, there is a slim chance that her husband will be transferred to southern Virginia in a year, near where we’d like to go next.  It would be really awesome if that happened, especially since her husband is Air Force.  It’s not surprising to follow someone around the country when they’re part of the same branch of the military, but ending up with someone from another branch is pretty darn rare.

Keep your fingers crossed!

So this is the third person I’ve said goodbye to in the last couple of weeks, but this is only the beginning.  Of the ten families on our street, we’ll be saying goodbye to three, possibly four, families before the summer’s over.  My next-door neighbors are moving in a few weeks, and I’m kind of hoping we don’t get new neighbors.  How awesome would it be to have the whole driveway to ourselves!

Oh wait.  That means we’d have to shovel the whole thing come winter.  Dangit.

Hopefully this is the last of my sad news.  It’ll be quiet without Bridget around, but it won’t be the end of the world.  Grace still has swim lessons and summer camp to keep her busy, and I’m trying to meet new people for her to hang out with.  I’ve still got two good friends on my street to spend time with, though neither have small children.  I’m sure I’ll find plenty of trouble to get into!

I’m thinking we need to take a family vacation around New England, explore this part of the country before we leave it ourselves next year.  I’m starting to learn that time moves more quickly than I think it does.  Before I know it, we’ll be moving ourselves.

The hardest part is saying goodbye 29 June 2009

I guess I am doing as well as can be expected with the loss of my Koolit.  I really didn’t expect it to hit me so hard.  I’ve never been one of those people who takes my dog everywhere I go.  I never even wanted a dog, except Kurt did.  He had two goals when he first moved to southern Virginia in 2000 — he wanted his own apartment (ie, no roommates), and he wanted a dog.

At least he got one of his wishes.  I sort of ruined his first wish when I moved in a year and a half later.

He picked Koolit because he was twenty pounds, the limit imposed by his apartment complex.  Koolit was the only dog that small at the Norfolk SPCA, and he was being kept in the cat room because he barked too much in the dog room.  He’d also worn a little patch through on his nose because he absolutely hated being caged.  How could we leave him behind at that point?

We took him down to the Atlantic Ocean down at Virginia Beach, thinking he’d be like all other dogs we’d known who loved the water.  Koolit wanted nothing to do with it, and usually shook in fear with every bath we gave him.  I guess it’s a bit cruel that his ashes have been spread over Narragansett Bay, since he was so afraid of water, but it gives me a little bit of peace.  I couldn’t think of a more soothing and beautiful place to be laid to rest.

It’s just so weird to have him gone.  We told Grace that he’s never coming home, that he’s going up to heaven.  I don’t know if she understands the concept of “heaven,” but she hasn’t asked where he is.  She just knows he’s gone.  Sometimes she gets a little sad and I make sure she gets some extra cuddles.  Every so often, something reminds me of him and I get a bit teary.  But I hold it together till Kurt comes home and then I get hugs of my own.  It helps.

And now I’ve gotten more sad news.  As I’m sure you’ve already heard, our dear Cosmic has passed away.  I only met her the one time, but she was so full of life and energy and laughter.  She kept me in stitches the whole time we were there.  Grace absolutely loved her and couldn’t get enough of dancing with her husband Terry.

She’s not exactly smiling in this photo, but it was probably the only few moments of that entire afternoon that she wasn’t smiling.  By the time we left her house, my cheeks hurt from all the grinning and laughing we’d done.

Over the next few weeks we exchanged a few more emails.  That’s how I found out that she’s got a sister named Carol, while I have a sister whose first name is Karyn.  Karyn and Karyl, or Carol and Karen — how cool is that?  We went back and forth emailing about our names, and how we got them, and how both our families include light people and dark people.

I always intended to go back this summer.  She told me it’d be better if I waited till she moved into her new place, so she would have more room to offer her guests.  But now it’s too late.

At least now she is free of pain and medicine and her oxygen tank.  And as Terri T. pointed out, Karen is probably snuggled up to Koolit now, giving him all the love and hugs I wish I could be giving him.  I’m sure she’ll take excellent care of him till I can join them.

Goodbye, Karen.  We love you, and we miss you terribly.

Shoulda woulda coulda but not 26 June 2009

I was supposed to go out drinking tonight.  My friend whose husband has left for training to prepare to ship out for Iraq invited me out for a drinky-poo or three a couple evenings ago.  However, she neither called nor emailed me to confirm, and so here I sit, alone on a Friday night with a grumpy baby.  Kurt’s gone out to see the new Transformers movie, you see.

It’s probably for the best, though thinking about it more, now I miss him.  He’s got to work tomorrow morning, you see.  Yes, it’s a Saturday, and no, we don’t get any kind of compensation.  His bosses are worried about the students not passing their finals, so they decided it would make sense to force the instructors to work on the weekend.  How it’s going to help, I don’t know.  If the students had been studying all along, they wouldn’t be in this situation.  But they haven’t been, and now they’re worried about passing.  All these guys went to college, so I have no idea where they got the idea that they don’t have to study to pass a course.

But then what do I know?  I’m “just” a wife.

I’m not doing well today anyhow.  It started yesterday when my computer locked up.  It’d been doing it on and off the last couple of days, but it came to a head last night when it wouldn’t start up without locking up.  I started freaking out to the point of being physically ill as Kurt attempted to fix it.  I tried to go back to a restore point, but the computer locked up during that process and eventually blue-screened.  It ran a check-disk after restarting which fixed a whole lot of bad files, and once it loaded I disabled Windows Defender, as that was the last thing to get an automatic update.  I have spyware installed anyhow; I don’t need a buggy Microsoft program to do it for me.  Since then it’s been working fine (knock on wood), though every hiccup makes me nervous all over again.  I know it’s just a computer, and I have all the data off it that I need, but it’s still frustrating.  I just wish my body would realize that it’s fine, that I don’t have to go into panic-attack mode.

These are the days I wish I had a prescription for Xanax.  Seriously.  I’m sick of this stressing me out to this degree.

My day got worse when Kurt came home for lunch and it was time to say goodbye to Koolit.  Of course I busted out crying, petting him and scratching his head, trying to convey to him how much I really loved him, and how much I didn’t really want to let him go.  I just hope he understood.  I know it’s for the best, I know we couldn’t do anything for him, but the house feels so empty now.  All day long I’ve had one ear cocked, waiting for the jangle of his tags as he shakes his head.  Not hearing him sigh in his sleep as he curls up against my feet is odd.  Not watching to see if he needs to go out or seeing him pace through the living room, looking for something he’s not even sure of, feels so strange.

But I know it was time.  I know he didn’t have a good quality of life.  I know he was tired of smelling like urine, of not being able to stand to eat his food or drink his water.  I know he missed jumping up on the bed with me to curl up and catch a few more z’s before I finally rolled out of bed to start the day.

He was my constant companion, my very first baby.  He was there when I had no one when I first moved to Washington, when I was alone and knew no one else.  He protected me and kept me warm on the long, cold, winter nights when Kurt had duty or was out to sea.  He was gentle with Grace and then with Mary Ellen, somehow realizing that they’re baby humans that needed to be handled carefully.  He’s been a part of our family since before we were even a family.  We brought him home just a month after Kurt and I became a couple.  He was the very first thing that was ours together.

And now he’s gone.

But he’s in a better place, and I know I’ve given him an amazing gift.  Last night we took his paw prints so we would always have something to remember him by.  I printed out a cute photo of him, and the plaque now stands on my sewing table where I can see it whenever I like.  It helps.

The day grew even darker right around the time Kurt texted me to tell me Koolit had gone to his final sleep.  It was right around then that Beanie IMed me to tell me about our dear friend Cosmic.  I was fortunate enough to be a part of the great ficus tree delivery last winter to Cosmic, which allowed me to meet that wonderful lady myself.  I was worried that she would find it odd to have a strange girl show up on her doorstep with her family, but Cosmic welcomed me in with open arms.  (The homemade cookies might have helped.)  Grace danced round and round with Terry, and wanted to be his little helper with every little chore.  Her laughter and her willingness to see the lighter side of everything was so refreshing.  I only got to know a tiny part of her that afternoon, but I always looked forward to going back and spending more time with her.  It looks as though I won’t be getting that opportunity.

I don’t want to say much about the Michael Jackson thing.  I must be the only person in the world that wasn’t obsessed by him, but I did think he was pretty cool.  Even then I was more into rock than pop.  I have to say I agree most everything that Pischina wrote in this post, and she’s hit the nail square on the head.  The King of Pop, the Michael Jackson we all knew and loved and admired, died fifteen years ago.  It was just a shell that’s been walking among us ever since.

I can’t wait to put this week behind me.