We're back

I'm finally feeling like writing again. After floundering for months in the dark pools of grief, I'm starting to feel like ME again. It's been a tough year and I'm so glad that Bill still loves me.

We’re just back from a week in Ireland, and didn’t wake up at 4 a.m. this morning for once. That’s been our only ‘jetlag’ incident; going over was no problem at all…coming home, we just went to bed really early and therefore woke up really early. Piece of cake!

We loved Ireland. We stayed about half an hour south of Dublin in County Wicklow. We’d drive up to the DART station in Greystones and take the train whenever we wanted to get to Dublin—yes, we rented cars and DROVE on the wrong side of the street for a week—but not into the city. Well, “street” is a strong word, now isn’t it. More like “lane.” Their “two lane” roads are little more than a path barely wide enough for a single car. And when you are sitting on the side of the car where traffic whizzes past at nary a few inches to your right…it felt like death was just a sideswipe away. But we lived, and Bill & I only yelled at each other a couple of times.

We even drove over to see the Bunratty castle and the cliffs of Moher one day. Very beautiful. We passed, somewhere near Limerick, what we decided was the pub with the best name in all of Ireland: Tipsy McStaggers. Jack thinks we should name our next dog Tipsy. We did a lot of the tourist-y things—the Guinness factory, the hop on/hop off bus tour of Dublin, dinner in Temple Bar—but we decided not to go to kiss the Blarney Stone after learning the locals “christen” it nightly because they hate the tourists.

The real reason we were there: the Dublin City Marathon. Race day was incredible. Great weather—light breeze & sunshine. 12,000 people packed onto the streets around Trinity College—every one in a great mood and wanting to GO. The guy who won the race did it in 2:11—shattering the previous record. We were walkers for most of this marathon—my best friend Kari and I and our friend Laura, who battled uterine cancer last year. Laura, a lovely Irish-American lass, decided during chemo last year that if she made it through the illness, she wanted to do the Dublin Marathon—and would we like to join her? She was the real hero, the real athlete: last November, she couldn’t even walk to the grocery store a few blocks from her house. This year—she was walking 26.2 miles in one day. We were so proud of her!

The next day, the newspaper said a man died of a heart attack at mile 16. Yikes! After we finished, we limped back to the hotel, where we celebrated with Champagne, cheese & crackers—and a long visit to the hot tub.

I just now feel like I’m starting to get back to normal (whatever THAT is!) in the healing process from my Mom’s death. My brother seems to have this uncanny ability to make everything about 30-times more difficult than it needs to be, and we’re not quite through with the “who gets what” phase of things, so I think that part is going to get a little worse before it gets better. But we’ve paid the taxes (ugh) and thanks to my mom and dad’s incredible foresight and caring, I’m now able to stay home. No More Work. At least, until I want there to be work. I’ve retired—yeehaw! And it’s been pretty groovy—and at the right time. Jack is now in this incredibly tough school and we spend hours and hours on homework everyday. I’m finally learning Algebra! What made absolutely no sense to me as a kid, is sort of making sense now.

I thought I’d have all this free time when I stopped working, but I’ve been amazed at how busy I am! I also imagined taking a nap every day—I love naps!—but that hasn’t happened even once. Ha!