Getting my ass in gear

Yep, I'm finally getting my ass in gear. After Barbara passed away, I got into the mode where I just didn't feel like doing anything, but I'm now actually starting to do the things home owners are suppose to do around the house. Things like cooking, cleaning, shopping, laundry, things like that.

After the first week, I went back to work, which was good, because it distracted me. Each night I'd stop on my way home from work to get something to eat. It was always the same, have a few beers and eat dinner while I read the newspaper. Then I'd go home and sit on my ass and do nothing, not even going on the weekend.

After about 1 1/2 month of eating out everyday, it finally dawned on me that I was wasting the $30 to $50 a day eating out, so I started going home after work and eating something frozen or eat take out I'd have delivered. Once in a while I'd go shopping and stock up on the necessities and more frozen food. Sometimes if I was ambitious, I'd buy a pound of chopped meat and make a Hamburger Helper or something like that. I usually didn't cook it and wound up tossing it out a week later.

By now I was doing laundry one in a while but only if I absolutely had to and ran out of something. Brian had picked up the slack with that, but he was hardly ever home since he had a girlfriend, so it just didn’t get done.

One day around this time, I took a good look at my clothes and realized how shabby they looked. I hadn’t bought any in years, yes years, so I shopped on line and bought almost $900 worth, I even bought new shoes.

Then on Saturday November 6th, I had my first big step in getting back to normal and spent the night out listening to live music and didn’t get home until around 2 AM. I remember chatting with the bartender and the two guys next to me and buying their CD. Damn that felt good. I told you about this right after it happened.

Around this time Brian and his friends were turning the garage into a clubhouse. A bunch of them would come over at night and have small parties. I popped in one night on November 12th to say hello and was introduced to an interesting game call Beer Pong. That evening started to get me back into a partying mood.

The next big step and I think the biggest one, was the day we had our company Christmas party on Friday, December 16th. Briefly, since you’ve heard this one too, I started drinking at 4 PM, after the party my friend Scott from work convinced me to go with his wife and best friend to a bar/grill near where we live. I spent the rest of the night listening to a Santana knockoff band, flirting with Scott’s wife and the ladies behind the bar and eating free food the owners swiped from an IRS party the were catering. Then around 12:30 AM small group of 21 year old firemen came in and I drank more beer and about 6 or 7 shots of Southern Comfort before leaving and getting home around 2 AM. Of course I suffered the next day or two, but it was the best kind of suffering. Because it felt so good to actually be back to my old self for that one evening. It was then that I decided to get my life moving forward again. Thanks Scott, for convincing me to go with you guys.

Right after Barbara died, I said I would know when I ready to start going out and dating again, when I could talk about Barbara and what she went through, without getting upset and crying. The night of the Christmas party was the first time I realized I could do just that. I’m still overly emotional about things I see or read about, but not about that. Now I decided I was ready to move on.

Then about 2 ½ weeks ago I took the day off to just hangout. It was Brian’s day off so I actually got to spend more than two minutes with him. I remember him getting up, walking into the kitchen in his bare feet and then yelling, “WTF is all over the floor? It’s all sticky?”

“I spilled something last night and I guess I did clean it up very well.” I said. “I’ll clean it up.”

“NO, I’ll do it, where’s the bucket?” he said rather loudly. “This place is a pig sty!”

You know what, he was absolutely correct. The house had not been cleaned at all since the Friday before Barbara died which was October 14th, three months ago. Brian turned into a cleaning madman and cleaned the whole house, vacuum, dust, polish, mop the floors and even cleaned the big mirror over the sink in the bathroom. He would let me do anything so I just sat at the computer watching him for the next couple of hours and felt ashamed of myself. Ashamed that I had been so neglectful.

His yelling at me was just the thing I needed to snap me back to reality. I would have never been able to get away with that stuff while Barbara was alive, either her, or her caregivers would get on my case when I slacked off, so I kept up with things. I really needed that from him.

Then Thursday morning, about a week and a half ago I read an email just before I left for work and then a second one when I got home that evening. They were from a woman not too far from me that had read my MySpace profile and was interested in meeting me. We met, went to the high school and saw a show and then had dinner one night and have talked for too many hours to count since we met. You know her, Arlene (aka, SassyLadi). She really is a wonderful person and very pretty, so don’t listen to her when she says she’s not.

Yesterday I started catching up on the massive pile of laundry downstairs and put in another load when I got up this morning and another one just now. That’s another thing, I’m actually getting up at a reasonable hour on the weekends and not sleeping my life away anymore.

So my friends, lets all say hello to the old BTExpress, because I’m BACK!!!!!