First Day Back

Today is my first day back. First day back to real life. First day back to work in the office after a 2 week vacation and a week to be at home while waiting and coping. My co-workers were great to pick up my mess to get through some looming deadlines, and today I get to see what has become of it all. I did not check e-mail once in the last 2 weeks.... work email that is. And my other personal email accounts, were only checked occasionally. It was great to be unplugged for so long. I'm trying to figure out if I missed it. Any of it.

In the last 3 weeks, my life changed and yet it has also gotten back to normal. I feel "normal" and I look "normal" but I am changed none-the-less. I have dealt with our loss the only way I knew how, by ignoring it and being upbeat and all business about it. And then when I thought I was doing fine, I broke down. When the opportunity arose to start trying again I lost it. I wasn't ready. I'm not ready to go through that again. Eric had no idea what was going on because I had pushed my hurt so far down he only saw the light of the future. My grief brought up his grief and we spent the first few days of the year just being in that place.

2 weeks ago we flew out to the East Coast to be with Eric's family for Christmas. They were absolutely great about everything. We only get to see them once a year if not every other year. Eric's nieces are growing so fast (3 and 9), so it was fun to reconnect with them and to see all that has changed. As always, we had a great time with Eric's sister, brother-in-law and his mother.

We rented a cottage in New Hampshire for the week of Christmas and spent the bordering days in Massachusetts at Eric's sister's house. Lots of cooking and eating of the kinds of snack foods I don't usually buy for our house. Chips and Dip are my and my hips friend. Mugs of hot chocolate with piles of whipped cream were almost constantly in my hands. We made comfort foods, built big fires, and stayed very cozy in the cottage when we weren't out in the snow or shopping for those last minute gifts.

We had a beautiful White Christmas, and lots of fun playing in the snow. The day of our arrival at the cottage was one of the most exciting as we discovered just how much the Honda Odyssey and Accord are not equipped to go up a hill of ice to the driveway of the cottage (the Accord got much further then the Odyssey). Unloading 2 cars with enough luggage and groceries for a week AND Christmas presents for 7 people and carrying it all up an icy hill in the dark... AWESOME! Of course the boys were able to get the cars up the hill with a few bags of salt and sand, after the cars were completely empty. We were snowed in the second day which was a welcomed calm way to start the week. We got to see sunny days, snowy storms and freezing rain in that week. It really was a wonderful time where time seemed to go slowly at first and then magically the week was gone. Sigh... hopefully we'll be able to return again in a few years.

Last week my company opted to shut down the US/Canada offices for the week, so while unplanned, I got another week off (using vacation time of course). I was going to sort and purge and organize. Our house was going to feel light and chaos free. I was going to go through the last year of photos I've never sorted through or published on Flickr, and I was going to renew my Flickr account for that matter. I was going to see friends and catch up on all sorts of things. Well... I saw a few friends, and this morning I finished the last load of vacation laundry (it wasn't that much it just got easier and easier to walk around the sorted piles of clothes on the floor). Yesterday I even processed all of our photos from the vacation. Hey, getting through 1 week of photos is a dent into the 15 month and growing backlog. The drawers, freezer, closets and pantry are still a total mess, but I'll get to them someday.

Oh, I should mention that after the miscarriage, we did a little self-pity shopping and bought ourselves a camera. It was a planned purchase to get for the baby, so we decided to get good at it now for the next time. It's not super fancy, but it is my first experience with something that doesn't fit in my purse. Let's just say that I had thousands of photos to go through from our 10 day vacation and I was only in about 2% of them. I think I love it. It has an issue with the video out port, so it will be getting returned this week. But this time I know a little bit more about it and will be choosing the lenses instead of just taking whatever kit lens they packaged with it.

So that's a little update on how my Holidays played out, and how my new year began. I truly hope that yours was as full of warmth, family, fun and memories... but hopefully you got through those lofty ideas of doing stuff around the house.

Hope your first day back was smooth going and over painlessly!