…… on many levels.

My dad and his wife came to spend the night and to buy my Mustang. The car Jim surprised me with on my 40th birthday.
It looked like this:

And I loved it a lot.
I’ve had it for 13 years.
Go ahead …… do the math. I don’t really care all that much.

That car has been with me through some really great times.
And through some of the worst times anyone should have to experience.
But for the last 6 years, it has mostly sat in the garage. I drove it once in a while, and it was good to have as an extra car when Son #2 needed some wheels. But mostly, it sat.
And I thought it deserved better.

So I called my dad, who had asked about buying it a few years ago.
Before I was ready.
But now, I was.
Mostly.
Until he drove it out of the driveway.
And tears poured down.
Because I should not have to be selling that car.
Jim should not be dead.
But there you go.
Another chapter closed.
It doesn’t get easier.

A couple of days ago, I fell in love with a house. A smaller house, but a beautiful one.
So I put an offer on it.
After a day and a half, they countered.
And today, I looked at another house, and then re-countered.
And they said yes.

It’s hard to believe.
On the one hand, I am beyond thrilled to get this house. To start over with something that’s me and what will be, rather than what was, and what will never be.
I’m excited to move into this house and make it my home. My Houston home.

But I’m also beyond sad.
I wish that I weren’t having to make this decision.
I wish that I still loved the house I’m in because Jim is in it with me.
But he’s not.
And never will.
The closing of yet another chapter.
A very long, and mostly wonderful, chapter.

Too many chapters have closed in my life.

And then there’s this:
Daughter #1 has been trying to make an appointment for a CT scan. The scan that the cardiac surgeon told me my children will need to get, every year for the rest of their lives, after he told me that Jim had died.

Unfortunately, her health insurance company doesn’t agree. (Thank you, Obama). They say that it’s not necessary.
Easy for them to say. They didn’t have a father die of an aortic dissection.

She asked me to look up her records and see if I could find anything that gave the surgeon’s instructions about getting regular CT scans.
Unfortunately, and for whatever reason, I have no records from 2008 or 2009. At that time I used a CPA firm that Jim had used to do our taxes. And then they folded. And took our records with them, I guess.

Also unfortunately, a very good friend (at that point in time) was in charge of the medical records for the kids. She was an amazing woman who helped me with all of the scheduling of the CT scans and all of the research into what might lie ahead for them. She also got them involved in a study for aortic dissections.
But we never learned anything from that study. Mostly, they just used the word “inconclusive” a lot. And I don’t have any of those records. She had them, and I’m guessing that she still has them.
But she is no longer a person I can contact for help.
That has been made perfectly clear.

So I spent the morning searching on line to see if I could remember/recognize the surgeon who came out to talk to me on December 18, 2007, at about 2:00 a.m.
But I couldn’t.
So I pulled out his death certificate to see if that dr. was listed.
It was the first time I really perused that piece of paper.
And I actually felt more and more light-headed as I read it.
I hate that piece of paper.
And I hate where it takes me.

But it didn’t give me the information I sought.
So I told Daughter #1 to call the hospital’s cardiac unit and talk to them about what happened and ask for their recommendation.
And then I sent an email to Jim’s aunt and uncle.
I asked them if they knew what his mom/Jim’s mom’s mom had died of.
After Jim died, his mom told me that her mother had died of an aneurism, but she didn’t know what type.

It was the first time that I really saw red and wanted to hurt someone.
As Jim sat in that hospital room, waiting for surgery, the doctors and nurses kept quizzing me on what could possibly have caused it.
Was he hit in the chest?
No.
Was he in a car accident (like Princess Diana?).
No.
Had he had high blood pressure?
Never.
There was nothing, anywhere, to indicate there could be a problem.
No family history of anyone dropping dead from an aneurism?
No, not as far as I knew.

Would that knowledge have helped Jim, in the end?
No, I don’t believe so.
But it sure would’ve been good to know before then.
So that he could’ve included that on his health records.
It might have saved his life.

Maybe. Should’ve. Would’ve. Could’ve.
Wasteful words.

But it still pisses me off that his family didn’t openly discuss things like that.
Secrets do a lot of harm.
A whole lot of harm.

But I digress.
So I poured over the death certificate, and once I started feeling light headed and nauseous, I stopped.
And then I received the email that told me what had happened to his maternal grandmother.
She had, indeed, died of an abdominal aneurism. It led to kidney complications, which also contributed to her death.
I read that …… and I felt numb.
It was hard to breathe.
And then I cried.
And cried.
And cried.

I cried for what could’ve been.
I cried for what could be.
I cried for the senseless loss of the other half of myself.
I cried for the senseless loss of my children’s father.
And I cried for the unknown future of my six precious and very loved children.
Because two weakened aortas, does not bode well for them.

And yes, I know that this information could help save their lives, help them get pre-emptive medical help, help their doctors discover the first hint of a problem before it becomes a life or death issue.
In a couple of days …….I’ll be able to be grateful for that.

But today …… today I am sad, depressed, and angry. Very, very angry.
My kids have been through enough shit in these past 6 years. They really don’t need this crappy sword hanging over their heads.
But there it is.
And it makes me sick.
And tired.
And beyond angry.
I hate this.
I resent it.
I wish I could take it away.
I wish I could take it upon myself.
And once again, I’m pissed at God.

It wasn’t enough for us to lose Jim.
Now we all get to wonder, for the rest of our lives, if one of them will be next.
Or if one of them will get to have open heart surgery to avoid death.

So there you go.
An emotional day.

They never seem to end.

Pray as you feel led.
Pray for those of us who can’t …… at the moment.

Thank you.
Very much.

…… via pictures.

I’m hoping that this post won’t be a short novel. Or even a short story.
But I can’t make any promises.
I’m trying to catch you up.
Because I care.
And because you expect great things from me.
Or at least fun things.

So, here are some more pics from Tampa. These are from Sunday, post Camp Widow, as we took the trolley through town and then walked around a bit.
Here’s what you need to know about this part of Tampa:
Starbucks on every corner?
Nope.
Tattoo shops on every corner?
You bet.  (I apologize for not realizing that my camera was set in some strange color setting.  For a while I thought it was just my eye sight.  See?  It’s not all fun and games being me.)

Tattoo parlors …. 3 in less than 3 blocks.  And these were ONLY 3 out of many.

I just thought this was humorous.  I mean, I’ve never pictured the U.S. Customs and Border Protection office as having “customers”.  Detainees?  Yes.  Customers?  Not so much.
A rose by any other name ……

You have to take a good look at this picture to understand why I found it of interest.  And no, we didn’t go in.
Dang.

I don’t remember who this guy was.  I could totally make up something, but I don’t have the energy at the moment.  Use your imagination.

And this …… well, this bordered on insulting.  Because really?  A stripper version of the Statue of Liberty?
Someone needs to get punched.
Maybe that’s just the New Yorker in me.

And this is self-explanatory:

This was a cruise ship with a couple of awesome-looking water slides. It was very, very tempting. But we kept going:

Sunday evening all of the people from the board who were still in town went to dinner.
We were pretty tired.  Which mostly explains the second picture:

I left for NY on Tuesday.  I got in at around 12:30, got to the the apartment around 2:00, left at 2:30 to go to my volunteer job in Harlem, got home around 5:00, and left with Daughter #3 to go to the Tenement Museum with the Manhattan Women’s Club.  We toured one of the apartments and then had a tasting dinner from several local ethnic restaurants.  It was a lot of fun and very informative.  I love learning stuff like that …… about the history of an area.         We had a really good time.

The next day I went to our book club meeting, did laundry, packed and left for the airport at 5:00 in the afternoon.  My flight left at 7:00 and I got into Houston at 10:00.
It was a very long day.

Yesterday I went to the orthodontist, where I finally got those dang rough bumps taken off of my teeth (kind of “sanded” off …… not that much fun), had impressions made for final retainers to wear at night, and then told that I’m done with wearing anything during the day now.  WHOOP and DOUBLE WHOOP!!!  My teeth feel so much better now that those bumps aren’t rubbing against my cheeks or the inside of my mouth.  And I’m SO glad to be out of the Invisaligns!!

After that I went house hunting.
It was a good hunt.

Then I went to the Houston Symphony with my friend Lori. We went to dinner at a “hole-in-the-wall” restaurant, which was located in a very sketchy area.
And no, I’m not being dramatic.
Here’s the entry to the restaurant:

And yes, you really do have to knock …… and wait.
Kind of like a speak easy.
But without the thrill of doing something illegal.
Or so I imagine.

Here’s a picture of the outside.
Oh, and the food was very good.

Then we went here:

We had a great time.  Steve Tyrell was the host of the evening and he sang a lot of old, wonderful songs, accompanied by the excellent Houston Symphony.
And then there was intermission.
He came back, sang a song, and then everything went dark.
Very, very dark.
We thought it was part of the show. It was not.
Oh, and the sound went out …… along with the lights.
And they stayed out.

The guy playing the trumpet started playing after several mysterious and funny minutes, when we all realized this was not supposed to be happening. And so the singing started again. With the pianist using a borrowed cell phone for light.
And the orchestra just sitting there, twiddling their thumbs.
Or so I suppose.

The light that you see here is light from the first row …… and their cell phones. They turned them on and pointed them at him so that he could see …… and we could see him.
It was a riot.
🙂

For some strange reason the darkness made the audience feel free to sing along. For the rest of the songs, which I’m guessing were fewer than we would’ve had, had there been light.
And working microphones.
It was a very interesting evening.  I told Lori that I was certain this would not have happened, had she not brought me.  Because that’s just how my life rolls.                                                 Right?

I played tennis this morning and it was glorious.  The weather was cool, the sky was blue and the sun was shining.
We played three sets and I’d love to tell you that I played gloriously, but …… not so much.
However, on the bright side, I didn’t suck as much as I anticipated …… for someone who hasn’t played tennis since the first of November.
So there’s that.

Tonight I went to dinner with two of my lovely Circle friends and Daughter #2, who drove in from Waco today. Son #1 is also driving in this weekend.
It was a fun night.

I’m now sitting here with D#2’s dog, RG. He’s pretty relaxed.
Which is a rare thing. You can usually find him bouncing all over the house.
Literally.
He bounces higher than a kangaroo.
Or at least a small kangaroo.

I think that catches you up.
At least as much as I want to catch you up.
🙂

And now I shall leave you with some really cool pictures that I took from the plane on the way to Houston. We were up above the clouds and the sun was setting.
And I couldn’t stop taking pictures.
I hope you enjoy them.
🙂

…… is over for 2014.
It was a great weekend.

When last I left you it was Tuesday.
And now it’s Tuesday again.
So much has happened in one short week.

I left a cold NY for a warm, humid Tampa on Wednesday. I happened to fly out of Newark that day.
You know, as in …… Newark, New Jersey.
Now, I’ve flown out of that airport many, many times. And other than the morning after the-snowstorm-from-hell (where I thought I might be killed in the security line, where hundreds of people were waiting to pass on to their gates), there hasn’t been that much worth writing about.
But this time I discovered something new about the Newark airport.
I had just arrived at my gate and settled in with my Kindle to continue reading the Divergent series (I’m on book 3), when, out of the corner of my eye, I spied this guy:

Yep, that’s a pigeon. A rat with wings.
Walking underneath the rows of seats.
I looked up in surprise, looked at him, and then looked at the girl next to me.
She said, “I know, right?!”
Right.
He walked several several rows past mine and then headed back my way.
That’s when I noticed something.

He didn’t really have feet. One leg ended with no webbed foot at all, and the other one ended with something that looked like a clubbed foot.
I know.
But he walked around quite well.
And then he enjoyed sharing some french fries with me.
I’m a sucker for a club-footed pigeon.
(I’m wondering if he’s like, Newark’s mascot or something.)

Jim’s aunt and uncle picked me up at the airport in Tampa.
It was nice to spend some time with them.
They took me to their house so that I could change out of my winter clothes and put on something that would make me sweat a bit less.
Just between you and me …… there’s not many clothing items these days that make me sweat less.
I’m just sayin’.

After that we drove to Tarpon Springs, which is a small Gulf-side town founded by people of Greek descent. It almost felt like being in Greece.
Almost.

Not only are there lot of Greek families there …… there are a TON of sponges.
Yes, sponges.
I’ve never seen so many sponges in my life.
Nor had I seen a sponge museum.
Until Wednesday.

Yes, you read that right …… it was a SPONGE-O-RAMA!!
And yes, we did indeed get to watch a sponge movie.
It.
Was.
Riveting.
🙂

Here are more pics from the area outside of the museum.
A sponge-collecting boat (for want of a better name …… I guess I didn’t pay THAT much attention in the museum) 🙂

Sponges!!

There were a lot of pelicans eating around this fishing boat. They were cool. (And I saw huge pelicans in Tampa, flying above, and diving into, the water for dinner.)

This is a well-known Spanish restaurant in Tampa … supposedly the oldest and largest in the country. All I know is that it had very good food.

And then there was Camp.

I returned to a very warm and lovely New York today. Fortunately I’m getting the hell out of Dodge before the next snow storm hits here on Thursday.
I’m flying to Houston tomorrow.
Where I’ll go to the ortho to get impressions done for my upcoming retainers (which means I’m just about done with these braces!), check out a couple of houses that are on the market, play some tennis, go out to dinner with several friends, spend some time with Son #2, spend the weekend visiting with Son #1 and Daughter #2, who will be driving in, and spend some of the weekend with my dad, who will be leaving with my Mustang.
The Mustang Jim bought me for my 40th birthday.
I have loved that car.
But it needs to be driven and not sitting in a garage all of the time.
Even if I cry as it’s being driven away.

But I’m not going to leave you on that note.
Instead, I’m leaving you with me …… doing my Miley Cyrus impression as “Wrecking Ball” was being played Saturday night.
Enjoy.
And you’re welcome.
🙂