Delicate balances

12/17/07 Monday
Delicate balances. It’s four in the morning. I woke up at three and put some wood on the fire as the house is cold. The mulberry wood is better than that elm but still won’t last through a night. I seem to wake up at two or three every cold night to do this so I suppose there is a psychological mechanism that helps me do this. The cold doesn’t bother me, it’s there just like pain always is, but I just ignore it. Cherie gets sweats and a jacket on as soon as she gets up. For her it is different. It was kind of funny, nah I suppose it wasn’t, when the guy teaching Sunday school talked about how cold it got in the trailer he and his wife lived in during the early years. I’m not really sure who said it because I had a real bad slowdown so it’s kind of blurred. I do remember him talking about how his grandparents only got three channels on their TV as if it was a mark of how rustic times were. We only get four though occasionally we can get channel nine in. Two of them are the religious stations.

Sunday was a rough day. Cherie had to drive me home from church. The delicate balance of our finances has taken a hit. Something we thought we could rely on is no longer there.

Cherie’s car must go to the shop as it has taken to stalling out and backfiring through the carburetor. The truck has already eaten up a hundred and six dollars worth of gas and only has a quarter tank left. It will be the main transportation now. Cherie’s last check from the cotton survey job will come in next Friday so we will have to wait till then to take the car in. Not sure where to take it.

I called my former secretary and good friend’s daughter yesterday because Eileen no longer has a phone. It is depressing to hear how bad things have gone. How I wish I was up there and could help. She no longer has a car or phone, her stove and refrigerator were repossessed by the rent to own place that takes advantage of the poor. She has hooked up with a guy she knew when she was twelve who is an alcoholic and sucking her dry. I guess that’s better than the heroin addict. Her son, also an alcoholic, is not making payments on her house she has let him move into so she may lose that. They haven’t had electricity in five months. Eileen moved out of the house after her husband died, just couldn’t stay there any more. And Eileen’s health has been bad anyway. COPD, Emphysema, Scoliosis, and a world of other things. She’s allergic to alcohol and never drank but her daughter says she’s drinking now. It sounds like she’s given up. Another delicate balance going out. A life going…just going.

The delicate balance of a relationship seems to have been changing over the last few months with us. It’s hard to put a finger on but it’s there. The whole dynamic is different. I think I must start a private journal now. Before this was a place I could put my thoughts down honestly, and it is to be my memory of things I can look at later. That is no longer true because the world reads this blog. I am learning that straight forward honesty isn’t good. In a sad way I guess I am learning to put up a front and hide my thoughts. I never did this after waking from the coma and was proud of my “honesty” but am learning that honesty isn’t good. People can’t handle and don’t want it. And they don’t offer it either. They don’t say what they mean, people generally say what they want you to hear, what puts thing in a light that makes it all ok. Am I learning to be like that?

So I’ve been up for hours now mulling over things, letting these thoughts roll around in my head as I wonder and try to understand. That’s hard to do without all the information, when you have to fill in the blanks and that is just guessing at them as it is.

It’s after five now. I suppose I should try to get some sleep. During and after the bad slowdown yesterday I spent most of the day in bed.
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1:00 – It’s been a rough day. Had one of those headaches all day and just generally feel crappy and drained.

3:12 – I suppose I’ve caught something. Going through this hot and cold thing where I must cover up and then am sweating. The headache has persisted. I’ve been working on putting together the year here in pictures. That is hard as there is so much that has been done and happened, and so many pictures. I want to send this as a Christmas thing to our friends but it can’t be twelve pages long, or shouldn’t be.