Catching up and moving forward

It had been my plan to write in this blog daily, but it's been 13 days since my last post. I had been doing a pretty good job of it, but then a bad week put me off. Ironically, the two things that really help during tough times, writing and exercising, are the things I push aside when I am upset.

On the exercise side, I know well enough to get back at it, so I let 4 days go by and then pushed myself back into it. One class was all it took to make me feel better, and that led to the next class and the next and I was back on track.

On the writing side, I just felt overwhelmed with the need to write about all that had been missed in my blog. Each day brought more that I had missed and it just seemed easier to ignore it. That seems to be a big part of my failures in life. I put things off, and they steamroll into bigger and bigger issues, then I hide from the pain of my failures by immersing myself in something trivial where I can block out thought.

Today I am catching up. I'll make this my catch up blog, then move onto the new stuff starting tomorrow.

So what was it that threw me off track? It was a number of things. First Harold went away on a business trip that so far has played out like the whole premise of Gilligan's Island.

Just sit right back and you'll hear a tale,

A tale of a fateful trip

That started from our Birch Bay port

Inside our weekend crib.

Monday: Harold's first plane to Dallas had to land in Salt Lake City due to mechanical problems, where they had to sit all day and into the late evening.

The first, and second planes had mechanical probs,
The planes had to be tossed,
If not for the courage of the fearless crews
The planes could have been lost, the planes could have been lost.

Tuesday: They finally got to Dallas at 3:00am, where he slept a few hours on a cot, and then was supposed to board the plane to Little Rock at 6:00am. But this plane also had mechanical problems so he didn't get to Little Rock until much later that morning. He raced off to the office, to attend the meetings with some customers, but was soon pulled off to help out in a problem with another customer.

This same morning, I had a call from Greg, my ex-husband, telling me that he wants to have Cairo, our daughter, half time. One week with him, one with me. This was so he no longer has to pay me child support. I told him "No way!" He told me Cairo had asked to live with him, and he would take me to court for her. I slammed down the phone on him and texted Cairo, asking her to call me right away. She called on her next break and told me she hadn't asked to live with him, she had wanted to stay a week with him because she was in trouble with me at home, since she had sent 71 US text messages and downloaded 3 ring tones for an excess of $30 on her phone bill. This was the third time she had done this and I had made the mistake of calling her at Greg's. I will never, ever call her at his place, angry, again. I will wait until she comes home. I had to go to Greg's that afternoon to pick up the child support check 11 days late, and he tried to continue the argument. I left, my final words "Leaving you is the best thing I ever did in my life!"

Wednesday: I was at my Mother's house and looked at my phone and saw I'd missed a call from Cairo. Checking my voicemail, I saw it was a message from her crying and saying "Why can't I reach you when I need you?" I was calling and texting for a couple of hours and I had no answer, so Mom and I went down to her school where I was trying to have her paged and had to talk to the counselors and ended up crying and totally embarrassing myself. I left a message with them for her next class (after lunch) and went out to the parking lot to wait with Mom, and when the bell went we saw Cairo walking around the corner with some girls. I called her over and it turned out she'd been sick and thrown up but then after a bit felt okay, and she'd forgotten about me, and hadn't checked her phone.

Thursday: Greg called me to tell me he cut me off his medical early. Then Harold called me to tell me that he has to stay in Little Rock until next Wednesday.

Friday-Sunday: Cairo and I went down to Birch Bay for the weekend and had a good time together. We went home late Sunday night.

Monday: We went to Mom's for Thanksgiving dinner. There were 6 of us, Mom and Fernie, the Bob's, and Cairo and I. This would have been Harold's first Canadian Thanksgiving and I was really sad he was missing it, but happy I only had two days left before I'd see him again.

Tuesday: Harold called to tell me the problem isn't fixed yet. He has been working night and day, 24hours at a time, then go and sleep a few hours and come back again. They wanted him to stay until Saturday now. I cried and was angry, but knew he had no option. He had to stay.

No sleep, no home, no regular meals,
Not a single luxury,
Like Robinson Crusoe,
As primitive as can be. 

Wednesday: I skipped out of the gym, went to ABC and had breakfast and read the paper. I figured I'd go that evening instead but then had to drive Cairo to her youth group meeting. I went to Starbuck's alone and read for a few hours, then went back to pick her up, then had tow ait another half hour while they all went to McDonald's for a treat.

Thursday: I went to the gym, and worked all day on moving my web sites to a new server. That evening I took Cairo to Musical Theatre and then went to Greg's to go through our photo albums. He is moving in with Denise, his new girlfriend and this might be my last chance to get the photos. It was something I forgot when I moved out of the house. We stayed away from the topics that would get us yelling at each other, went through the photos and I left to pick up Cairo.

Friday: I was going to go down to Birch Bay early, but went to the gym first, and since it was such a nasty day stuck around to pick Cairo up from school. I hadn't heard from Harold in over 24 hrs and had left a few messages so was really worried about him. He called while I was waiting for Cairo, to tell me they want him to stay ANOTHER WEEK!!!!! I was really upset when Cairo got in the car and she was such a sweetheart about it. She asked me if I would like her to spend the weekend with me, and then called her father to tell him she is coming down to Birch Bay with me.

Saturday: That's now. I got up about 9:30am and have been wasting time all morning. I decided to bite the bullet and catch up this blog, since it is a nasty day and Harold had the clubhouse keys so we can't go swim or play racquetball. I'm about to head out of here, to run down to do some shopping in Bellingham. Hopefully Harold will be home next Friday, but I'm not holding my breath.

So this is the tale of the castway,
He's been there for a long, long time,
I'll have to make the best of things,
It's an uphill climb.