Smoothing?
The racing thoughts feel like they have dropped in their tracks and created major blockages inside my head. No racing thoughts so far this morning butnae much else is getting through, either and that's okay by me. With a mere 3 days left to winter vacation and five days until we restart the school routine, I believe the time for thinking is past. The base from which we plan to launch that school routine is in place and it will either work, or it won't. Testing, one, two, three. . .
Hubs has been in what we have dubbed, "Freight Train Mode" for most of this week, where he has all the compassion and awareness of an overloaded freight train. Whether in rest or in motion, changing the trajectory or velocity of a freight train is somewhere's between challenging and fatal. It is best to just stay off the tracks. The complex processing of grief and major life changes is allot, all by itself. Add in the demands of his paid gig and the housing upgrade and it isnae much of a surprise he is running on the sheer strength of will which nurtures his FTM (Freight Train Mode). His FTM has been obsessing over moving the major appliances to the new house. To hire help or macho his way through lone stranger style. Personally, I question the wisdom of a strong, fit back moving such pieces solo, but I'm mostly just staying off the tracks. That is yours to sort, honey pie. Is the disassembled refrigerator currently blocking our back door a sure indicator that FTM won out? His intelligence and planning arenae as enhanced as his mindless stubborn streak in FTM. I be rather proud of him that he let the pieces fall while he rested and regrouped. Unchecked, his FTM has been known to create considerable collateral damage in his fiercesome drive to, "Just do ^it^." He has taken today off his paid gig and his freight train whistle is already blowing, all the way to unrealistic expectations of my welterweight assistance, but is able to crack jokes about his FTM and insert a few safeguards against the collateral damage. He even gave me blessings to jump out of the way instead of trying to catch heavy appliances with my mighty 110 pound sack of well-aged brittle bones in the event of a mishap. I promise to keep my cel phone handy so I can dial 9-1-1 while I watch you bleed to death, Love. It will give me something to do while there is nothing I can do.
The foundation for our offering of potential solutions for the newly orphaned children is in place. Done is done. I believe the fine tuning which remains to be done can serve as cathartic distraction for smoothing the bumps and cracks in our wounded psyches. Just believing. . . Prayers ongoing. Letting God lead The Dance.
Testing, 1, 2, 3. . . Reality checks both needed and appreciated.
Replies
Support my friend.
Although my husband doesn’t get “FTM”, he does suffer from regular “NCO” fits. When they hit, there’s are collective duck and cover throughout the house. We’re closing in on 6 years since he retired with twenty and that “NCO” stick still gets occasionally wedged in tight where the sun don’t shine. We never know what is going to bring out the old “NCO” but his version is like an anal Warrant Officer crossed with a Drill Sargent on the war path. He gets all “by the book” and slightest mistakes ..., well you’re familiar with the drill.
Hugs, support & love my friend!
My beloved was too young to be an Official Draft Dodger for the Viet Nam protests, but he woulda if he coulda. The draft ended a year or three before he graduated HS. I'm older than he is. He still gets offended when I compare his sports training to military training.
Boot Camp was my first honest break in life and the first set of comprehensible rules to surface in my broken life. Boot Camp was my finishing school and remains my prideful alma mater. I'll have to do some pondering before I adopt the moniker as my own, but "NCO Fits" just might be a fair comparison to Hubby's FTM. The PTA co-members from when my sons were still young and cute are still texting WTFs about NCO Fits I threw in pumps and pearls. Should I have warned them?
I.F. I am using your analogy correctly, the stick up my ass has a stick up its ass when I am throwing "NCO Fits." Warning! Warning! Beaten Crazy Bitch Wolf on the howl! ! ! Control Freak in need of a wilderness retreat coming at you! ! !
Yup. . . That nag flag's been a-waving too. . . Plying therapy tools. . .
(Knowing laugh)
You’re right about the stick. After 6 years it still occasionally gets wedged up there pretty tight. But that my husband’s stick. I have an entirely different one of my own.
Plying the tools right along side you Arfie!
Hugs
It does sound like there's a lot on both of your plates, arfie. For him, "The complex processing of grief and major life changes is allot, all by itself. Add in the demands of his paid gig and the housing upgrade...." Hope he doesn't throw his back out or anything moving those major appliances by himself. Oof.
Too late for that hope, Muji. His back was already pretty wrecked when he still had tight buns hidden under those baggy blue jeans. I call his flavor of chronic back pain, "The Big Guy Syndrome." The big guys are asked to do all the heavy lifting and ? ? ? He is a people pleaser. . . My hope is that one day he will learn, hopefully while he can still rise to his full 6'5". Either way, it remains his to sort.
This morning I found the inside of the ice box smeared with blood from where he cut himself and just muscled on through. "Well. . ." I sighed after he told me the unsurprising story, "Not the meanest oil in the freight yard. It'll come off." He cleaned it off himself while he put the ice box back together. All's well that ends well.
We went on to a delightful lunch in the nearby metroplex while we picked up a few more odds and ends for the new house and discussed our individual grief, fears and anxieties over all this. Hubs had a dream last night about a reunion restaurant chain YS and his Jr High and HS buddies loved. Guess where we had lunch. Moons Over My Hammy. It's getting easier to remember our cherished son. Some. Maybe. Works in progress.