Life is weird!

Abraham, my spiritual guru, tells us that our "croaked" loved ones are always with us.  (They use the word "croak" to show disrespect to the word "death" because there is NO death.  We simply leave these physical bodies and return to source...)  And I absolutely believe this!  My brother has done an excellent job of proving that to me with blatant signs for a long time.  But since Mark passed (transitioned is a better word, says Abraham), I have seen things that I think are signs, but in my mind, I'm so convinced he's mad at me that I have doubts.  Mad about what?  Well, not being a better care-taker... I'm really not a very good care-taker.  I'm squeamish, and I get frustrated easily.  It's one of the reasons I was never enthusiastic about having children. And probably mad about the fact that I didn't fight to bring him home, that I let them send him to the nursing home.  But even if I were a good care-taker, I knew in my heart it would have been more than I could handle. He's a BIG guy and just getting him from bed to the wheelchair took two nurses... And I think surly HE knew that it would be too much for me, but I felt as if he blamed it on me.  So I wondered if he would stay away once he transitioned...  

But things have happened that I'm pretty sure are messages.  Some of them subtle and easily written off as coincidences.  (Another "Abe-ism"... we humans call things "coincidence" and we define that as a concurrence of events that don't seem to have a connection.  But think about the root... "coincide", which means more or less things coming together.)  One that I don't think I can chalk up to coincidence: I've gotten Danbury Mint ads in the mail before - I can't remember the last time, but I've seen them in the past.  For the first time, one showed up in the mail about 10 days ago addressed to Mark.  It was an ad for a lovely necklace and said, "buy this for Denise for Christmas"...

I thought, "Very pretty! Now why didn't one of those come in all those years Mark was here on earth! Now that's irony!"  But I also thought it's pretty, and even though I don't wear necklaces anymore, I do hang pretty ones from my rear view mirror and this would be lovely with our birthstones... and I set it on my desk to consider.  But after I looked at the price, about $130, I said I don't think so!  And I forgot about it.  Well, a few days ago, I bring in the mail and here's another one!  

Hmm, now I'm listening!  I think when I didn't get the first message, thinking "this is a coincidence that this is coming NOW of all times", he sent me a second message, one a little more blatant!  Ok, I think I've gotten a clear message!  And I do feel better.  Of course, Abraham would tell me that there are no negative feelings like anger or resentment once we transition - only pure positive energy and love. And I guess maybe Mark is trying to tell me that...

And I think I got another one last night.  This one takes a bit of explaining.  For probably at least 7 or 8 years, I've been nagging Mark that I want to replace our old big-screen projection TV with a new flat screen LED.  Well, in order to do that, we needed to get the basement in "presentable" condition and I nagged and nagged him to help me do that.  It's been a terrible sty down there for a long time.  When we finished the basement in 2002, the agreement was that this would be "his" space and that he would take care of it.  Which he did NOT.  It was a holy mess.  Every now and then, I would do some tidying or some dusting, maybe run the vacuum, but not often.  As I told him, I have enough to do to take care of the upstairs.  He was absolutely NO help whatsoever and I had no intention of adding another 800 SF of cleaning to MY chore list.  So it was always a mess.  Well, I kept thinking that surly the "prize" of getting a new TV would light a fire under him, but it never did.  When he passed, and I started wading through the mess down there, I thought ok, now the prize will be mine for dealing with this sty!  Well, as of last week, I got the wall on which I want the new TV painted (by my handyman) and I'm ready for it now.  But I've been procrastinating because I really hate going to NFM this time of year - it's a zoo!  Well, guess what?  I went downstairs last night to watch TV (like I do every night) and the TV apparently took a shit!  The screen was divided into about 6 grids with "frazzled" bars and loud static over the dialogue.  At first, I thought maybe it was the channel, but nope - it's the TV.  Honestly, I think Mark zapped it!  He's saying, "Ok, woman, you've been bitching about this forEVER - now get off your ass and go get that new TV!  You don't have ME to blame it on now!"

So I went to the Mart and - yes, it WAS a zoo! - picked out a TV, a soundbar, a mounting bracket.  They're going to deliver it tomorrow.  And now, I'm going to go on Amazon and order an Amazon Firestick and become a "streamer" and tell Cox Cable to fly a kite!  That should save me about $100 a month...

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I'm reading a book - you wouldn't believe how long it's been since I read a book!  I really used to love to read, but in recent years, if I sit still long enough to read, I usually just fall asleep.  Well, one day a week or so ago, I decided to pick up my Kindle and play some solitaire on it.  It's easier on the bigger screen than on my phone.  When I opened it, there was a book at the top that I had downloaded a year or so ago when someone gave me a little synopsis of what it's about and for some reason, I decided to check it out finally.  And WOW, it's fascinating!  It's called You Are the Placebo.  It cites a lot of research about how when the mind believes something is true, it IS SO, which was discovered when they started doing drug trials using placebos.  One study went so far as to take a group of people who had bad knees, who all needed knee surgery.  Not knee replacement, mind you, but I'm guessing laparoscopic-type surgery.  They took half the group and did the surgery and on the other half, they "faked it".  They made the incision and sewed it back up.  Surprise - the "faked" surgeries were as successful as the real ones!  And for most, the improvement was permanent!  There are lots of interesting anecdotes like that.  So the premise is that you don't need drugs or surgeries or any of that to "fix" what ails you.  All you need is a new mindset.  Not that it is EASY, but it can be done.  The mind is POWERFUL!

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This was started... well, I'd say nearly a month ago!  I intended to add more to it but didn't get back to it.  Well, a LOT has happened since then!  The handyman came by the following Saturday, which was my birthday, and got the TV up.  But guess what?  He couldn't get the sound bar working!  To make a long and infuriating story short, I gave up on the JBL brand after TWO soundbars were bad and got a Bose, which has yet to be installed on the TV.  Why?  Because we've hit some snafus.  Right now, I'm waiting on cement guys to do some leveling so they can install the carpet.  I won't even go into the saga of the first installers who I wanted to throttle because I'd rather not ever job my memory of such a negative experience!  But it will all get done, sooner or later.  Just trying to be patient...

But what I really came back to blog about was another "sign"... When these things happen, these very positive experiences, I WANT to remember them, remember the details, which is why I try to get it down while it's fresh in my memory...

So yesterday, I went to SD with my peeps, Dan, Derrald and Larry, and I picked up a purchased truck at a dealership in Lennox, SD.  It turned out to be a Ram with a glasspack - louder than crap!  Kind of cool...  Anyway, I'm coming back down 29, still in SD (where 80 is the speed limit on the interstate!), and I start talking to Mark.  I said, "Wow, this truck reminds me of that truck we bought back in... what, the early 90s, right?"  It was a neat truck with fog lights and other after-market accessories, and it had a glasspack and was "rumbly" let's say!  Anyway, so I'm talking along to him about this kind of cool truck, talking about some of our other vehicles over the years, and I said something like, "I sure wish I could hear you talking back to me!"  As soon as I said that, my eye caught sight of what looked like a big PUFF of smoke in the sky off to my right.  You know, kind of like a big truck with an exhaust pipe above it letting out a puff of black smoke, but this was over a field.  I looked closer and it looked like a second puff of smoke beside the first one, but then I saw it wasn't smoke at all - it was a GIANT murmuration of birds, moving so beautifully!  I've seen smallish murmurations before, though not many...  This wasn't as large as some I've seen in video, but I'm sure there were several thousand birds (I've read they can be as big as 100,000 birds!)  I watched it as long as I could, and I knew right away (the timing was too perfect) that it was Mark's way of saying, "I AM here and you just have to listen with your heart to hear me..."  It was a stunningly-clear message and even now thinking about it makes me cry happy tears that he's working so hard to get me the message.

I told Mom the other day that I must have some bad ju-ju going on.  All the shit that seems to go sideways for me.  I think it must just be the funky place I am, somewhere between feeling relieved that the stress is gone and Mark isn't suffering, and the sadness I feel that he's gone.  And now that the misery is over, I'm grieving for the guy that he WAS, the guy that's been gone for a long time (except for occasional glimpses...), who I never had a chance to grieve for because I was taking care of and worrying about the guy he had become.  And don't get me wrong - most of my day is fine.  I'm not sitting around in a funk or balling my eyes out.  I'm truly fine 95% of the time.  Even truly happy.  I find joy in many many things.  I'm staying busy.  But a few times a day, something makes me think of Mark and most of the time, it makes me smile and it's a good memory.  But sometimes, a feeling of utter sadness hits me and I have no idea what will prompt it and I just have to take a few minutes and deal with it and then find a happier thought, and then I'm ok again.  I know he wouldn't want me to be sad, so I allow myself a little indulgence in the sadness, then I get on with the day...

Back to the big basement project...  I had a hauler come take the old projection TV (which they literally broke apart to get it out of here!) and several other things out of the "junk room".  I had hoped getting some largish things out of there would make the prospect of attacking THAT a little less overwhelming.  It did NOT!  I cleaned off a set of old wooden shelves that had become Mark's "catch all" when he didn't want to put shit away.  I pulled two FULL laundry baskets full of loose tools off of there, and a third basket FULL of "other things".  Things like... sand paper, carpenter pencils, things that didn't qualify as tools but weren't trash either.  On top of those three baskets, I filled a large (probably 4' long and 18" wide) box with trash.  I couldn't believe how much SHIT was on those shelves!  Now I have to sort through all that shit and get it organized enough to put in a garage sale next spring.  I'm thinking maybe I should just get it all together in the garage and see if I can find someone who will just pay me a set amount for the whole shebang.  It's truly overwhelming!

Well, I need to get my day started.  I have some calls to make, and I desperately need to get my hair cut and colored.  I'd like to get out and find a generator, but I'm not sure how one would hook it up and make it work.  I need to make some calls...  They're predicting winds of 50-75 mph tomorrow!  I'm thinking power outages...