Baby Steps

So, this past month I actually went out for an evening (dinner and music) which is something I haven't done in I can't even remember how long --- this was with my new "widows group" -- four of us from the last grief group I attended.  It was one of the widow's first wedding anniversaries without her hubby and we wanted to do something special for her.

Problem was that she wanted to go to a place that was about 40 miles away and involved going over the very scary Skyway Bridge (popular suicide jump bridge) and it would be at night, in the dark!, coming home and I am not particularly fond of night driving even when a scary bridge is not involved! Heck, I am not particularly fond of driving on that bridge during the day.

So, I said I'd go if someone else would drive.

The original plan was for all of us to meet at one spot and then Peggy would drive us all, but I was worried about getting to the pick-up place because of the night driving thing and so another widow offered to pick me up at home and bring me with her.  I know this is part of my neurotic behavior since Bob passed, but... after we made that plan, another widow also did not want to drive to the pick-up spot and OK, good!  I'm not the only neurotic here!

So it went down like this:  Linda came to my house (close to hers) and Candy picked us both up here and drove us out to the pick-up spot where Peggy picked us up! It was like musical cars -- but it worked.

I was also so darn anxious about this whole thing -- making sure my mom and dad had all contact numbers in case something happened to us and we (4 widows) went over the edge of the bridge or something equally bad and wanted to make sure my parents would contact my vet to pick up Kona (and feed Ripley and the fish, yes I still have Chris' fish) if I was dead or hospitalized....

Well, nothing happened. We made it there fine, had a good dinner, listened to the band playing and got home just fine. All that worry for nothing.

But funny, I wasn't the only one in this group who was anxious. Turned out one of the other widows contacted her neighbor to "make sure" her car came home that night and to make sure the neighbor had her contact numbers if the car didn't show up! She had also seen two hearses earlier that day and thought it was some creepy sign...

It's nice to know that grief does this stuff to other people too.

My therapist/shrink said it was good to confront fears like this -- and soon I'll be able to do such things without freaking out. We'll see....

Then yesterday, I replaced the shower head in the bathroom. Now, I know that isn't a big deal, but I had been putting this off and off because I was afraid I'd mess it up somehow.  I am pretty good with a paint brush, or refinishing, or even rebuilding a screen window or rewiring an outlet, but anything to do with plumbing gives me the creeps.

We've had a long standing problem with the bathroom shower.  It does not have much pressure.  Thus, the tankless water heater doesn't respond very well when it's turned on.   This has been a long ongoing problem, even when the contractor was working on our house and his plumber could not seem to fix it.  So you have to wait and wait for hot water and lately it had gotten so bad that the only way I could get hot water in the shower was to also turn the hot water in the bathroom faucet on.  I've been doing that for months.

And I was thinking maybe it was a problem with the shower head.  I was thinking I should replace it. And I finally got the gumption to do so yesterday and bought a powerful shower head (the highest GPM I could find) and, you know, it took 15 minutes (not even) to take the old shower head off and get the new one on and this morning I took the most luxerious HOT pounding shower ever in that bathroom!  I did it -- stupidly waited forever but I finally did it!  And to think, the plumber couldn't figure this one out.

I know these are just baby steps --- but it's a start and it's amazing how grieving can destroy one's confidence. And I still miss Bob so very very much.