Happy birthday, Javacat!

I assembled a bookcase today, so I feel like I accomplished something. I'm slowly getting my house looking like not a disaster.

Yay Hil! I remember bookcase assembly and it was a pain!

Aargh, I met with my aunt today for dinner and she hasn’t been answering my lawyer! We need her to give an affidavit that I am an only child to get everything started, but she missed my text about it, so wasn’t answering the phone to unknown numbers! I gave her the number, so hopefully we can get this straightened out.

She lives in my mother’s town and is supportive of my moving there. She, too, had to be talked out of my mothers narrative that everything needed to be torn down, so maybe my uncle and I are in denial. But it really doesn’t seem that bad.

Baby steps, Sophia. I think the overwhelming number of things that need to be dealt with after the loss is somewhat of a buffer to having to deal with the grief.

Go Hil, the number of pieces in these projects is sometimes insane!

The good news is that we are moving back in during the first week of June. The bad news is that the cabinets were delayed, so we have no kitchen until probably late June.

No kitchen is way easier to deal with than being away from home so long. Your view will look better than ever.

Back home again after the whirlwind trip to NY. Animals happy. I didn't even bother to worry about losing my streaks because I was too tired to do puzzles. My laptop didn't even get opened, until last night because I left my Kindle in the hotel and had to use the Kindle app to continue my book. I'm just going to use one of my tablets now, but it had to be charged first. The tablet is a little bigger, but not too big, so if the hotel doesn't find it I will be okay. (diamond shoes too dang tight)

Baby steps, Sophia. I think the overwhelming number of things that need to be dealt with after the loss is somewhat of a buffer to having to deal with the grief.

I think so too. I am sort of like, I am fine, when everyone is talking to me about grief. But what I am is good at a crisis, and bad at real life, and this is a crisis. Although Maria, who knows me best, told me she could tell that I was really fine and not just holding on by a thread. I am renting a car tomorrow and going down and staying overnight with my cat. It is super rainy so I can also check the sump pump and roof leaks.

My aunt (widow of my uncle, not mom’s sister) said she really feels my mom is truly gone. In other deaths she has struggled with feeling the departed in the house, and she is not. We also agreed that she really wouldn’t want any celebration of life thing. I have been feeling some pressure from Maria and my mom’s high school friends to do something, and I am like-what? She would hate anyone at the house, she had no favorite places, my uncle and cousin, and I are uncomfortable at those type of things and don’t want to speak. I think I can go to dinner here with my mom’s friends and satisfy them, and Maria is probably OK and thinks I need closure. Her family always does a big thing. I am fine going to other people’s big things, but my cousin’s and my track record with grandma, grandpa and his father is either going into a giggle loop or hiding from people. I had a nice lunch with my uncle, and a nice dinner with my aunt. I can have dinner with my cousin and his wife, and with her high school friends, and maybe with Katie and Maria and my friends in the village? That seems simpler.

That sounds like the right way to go about it, Sophia. You don’t have to do a big thing and it doesn’t sound like a big thing would really be what anyone wants, it’s just kind of expected

Yeah, my mother was unexpected.

Guess who’s getting an emergency root canal? Fuck my life.

Guess who’s getting an emergency root canal? Fuck my life.

Unpleasant! However root canal is very different nowadays than when it was a synonym for excruciating pain. It's mostly weird to feel them working inside your tooth but you'll be numbed the fuck up.

Yeah, I’m not worried about pain; I’m just tired of shitty things happening.