More Baby Steps...

Today, they had the annual "drop off" unused narcotics day at our local police station. And I still had some Fentanyl patches in the cupboard.  So I took them to the police station and dropped them off. And got back into the car and broke down in tears....

And another thing, been going on, is our cordless phone is "dying" -- and I've not changed the "greeting" message at all since Bob died.

A little backstory -- our former cordless phone "died" after Bob's stroke. It still had the "greeting" with Bob's voice sounding perfectly normal and when the phone died, we went and bought a new one and I thought, jeepers, I'll have to record the "greeting" and then, had a "brilliant" idea, because Bob was still here and maybe he could record a greeting.

So I worked a simple script for him. And of course, with his aphasia, he kept screwing it up. So I finally thought, okay, we can do one of those "cute couple's" messages, you know the ones, where two are talking saying "Hi, this is Diane and" and the other says "Bob" and figured all he needed to remember was his name and after I say "leave a message", he was supposed to say "Bye" at the end.

We tried this, I don't know, 16-20 times, and he kept screwing up, to the point we were both laughing so hard, then finally when re-recording he got the"Bob" part right! Yay! --  but when it was time to say "Bye" he said "Diane" instead and I started laughing, he was laughing then silent and finally said Bye bye -- and when I played it back Bob said "That's funny!" so I kept it plus I was tired... and I figured there was time to retry again.. but we never did.

And after he died I just kept that last "greeting" on our answering machine... Bob and me, laughing.... jeepers. The good old, bad old times... and I couldn't bare to erase it.

Some people have told me "never change it!" and that it's beautiful and makes them laugh but others have told me "it's morbid" as he's dead, and then others (like my pool cleaning service) were surprised and confused, thinking Bob was still here....

So I guess, it's time to change the greeting... jeepers will be 3 years next month... But I still didn't want erase that old message, felt so much erasing another part of Bob...

And as the phone has been acting up, ready to die -- I went from the police station dropped off the patches then, in tears, drove to Best Buy, and got a new cordless phone, because I don't want to lose that 'greeting' message, figuring if I "save" the phone it before it dies, I will always have that recording to listen to and maybe can get that recording transferred to a flash drive or something.

Today, I experimented using my TracPhone to call our number and my camera to record the greeting message:    Here it is: hope you can hear it! Click to enlarge if you can't hear it... and to those of you who are used to calling me, there will probably be a bland automated greeting, soon...  but know you got the right number...