Ride 'em cowboy!

I've been on this major roller coaster ride this week--emotions up, down, up, down....Yee ha! Has Mars gotten back on the straight and narrow yet?!?

For the past two days I thought about martinis alot on the way home from work. I used to stop and meet a friend or two and drink those wicked things until, well, until I didn't have to feel anything any more. And I realized that that is exactly why I was thinking about them. The events of the past few days have made me feel, I mean really feel emotional in so many ways that I'm on overload. I just don't want to feel another thing. But this is not to be--the martini marathons--so I have had a few good cries and laughed til I cried and I feel about the same as if I had had the martinis but without the danger of driving home afterwards and feeling like s--t the next morning. This is progress.

I have not allowed myself to listen to NPR in the car lately. Instead I put on some soothing music. Several times since I started doing this my instinct has been to reach over and turn on the talk talk talk. Why do I feel a need to do this? Because in the same way I don't want to feel I don't want to think about all those things that are causing those emotions. I want to be distracted. I want to worry about the war or the elections or Darfur or anything that is not my feeling.

In the midst of all this craziness, some cool things have happened. Today I was at my lowest. On the way home from work I thought to myself that I would love it if there was a personal letter for me in all the bills that waited for me in the mailbox. I actually envisioned such a letter. And sure enough, there was a letter from my dear friend, Elizabeth, and just seeing it--I didn't even need to read it--changed my afternoon. I went to the visitation for my friend whose husband died and darnit if she didn't uplift me!! When I got home the phone rang and it was a friend of my mother-in-law's looking for MIL's telephone number, and she spent about 45 minutes telling about when I first started dating Durham and how much she and MIL had come to love me. As soon as I hung up, my daughter Jean called full of problems she wanted to discuss but by the end of the conversation we were both laughing uproariously at something so silly as to not be repeated here.

Having sighed alot, cried a little, and ended the day laughing at ridiculous things, I'm feeling better already.