Unapologetic

Sometimes, when you have a deadline, anything goes. This is one of those times. I don’t usually plan what I will blog about, like Ernest Hemingway once said “There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.” It usually just comes.

Not tonight. Tonight I am overwhelmed. Over tired. Over stimulated by noise and under resourced.

This post will basically be an update. Housekeeping, in a way. And, I’m not sorry. 😛

Nothing new on Natalie. It still hurts to breathe. I still wonder, when I speak about her in the past tense, why don’t people look at me like I’m crazy? Why do they look like they know what I’m talking about? I guess a better question is why do I keep expecting someone to be surprised and tell me I’m wrong? It’s all been a very long, very real (but not) nightmare? Because there is still a part of me that is wishing for this not to be true…

I was at Bath & Body Works yesterday and while checking out, the sales girl looked at my Visa card (which is customized and has a picture of Natalie on it, you know, with the rainbow-colored wig? Her eyes are looking away and she’s got a half smirk, half kissy face?) and she said “Is that you? No, who is that?”

“That’s my sister” I replied.

“What a great picture! She looks like she likes to have fun!”

I smiled briefly and said “she did.”

I found myself feeling my way around this unfamiliar boundary. Did she notice the past tense?  Do I tell her the rest of the story? Do I tell her that she’s gone? That part of me went with her?

I grabbed my bag and wished her a good rest of her day.

It felt good, not explaining. I wondered why I had been doing so before.

Because she was so important to me. She still is, just in a different way.

I wanted people to know that yes, she did like to have fun. She liked to work. She loved her family and her friends and her poor damn near blind doggy. That she was incredibly, immeasurably talented and that the world is now deprived of that. That her heart and soul, expressed through her voice and music would now only echo as a recording. But thank God, for those recordings…

Dammit. Someone tell Hemingway he forgot crying, in addition to the bleeding. The “ugly cry” we’re so afraid to show people (I am, anyway). You know the cry, right? The shiny, red, puffy eyes. Mascara, not that I’ve worn any since the end of May, running and leaving black streaks down your face. Snot bubbling and running. Face frozen in what could be considered a smile, if not for the tears. That silent, deafening, grief. You can’t get enough air in or out. Your head starts to throb in time with your blood pressure… Fuckin’ A, Natalie. WTF?

I wasn’t going to write about her. I didn’t know what I was going to write, but it wasn’t going to be about her…

So. What else? We are STILL moving. Kinda. We have one more car load of stuff and the townhouse will be done. Cleaning is pretty much done. We do still have the garage though. We’re trying to decide if we should find out who wants any of this stuff (Salvation Army, Disabled Vets, GoodWill etc.) and saying fuck it, it’s the rental place’s problem now. They can charge us and we’ll give them $10 a month…

My Acme date. To do stand up or not to do stand up? I had entered into Acme’s Funniest Person in the Twin Cities competition sometime in April. I was given the date of July 5th to perform. I was starting to panic. Should I push myself? Give myself time, it’ll be around again next year? Less than two weeks away, I was feeling the pressure. Finally, I decided to email the person in charge. I briefly explained what I was dealing with and wondered if it was at all possible to get a later date. I didn’t expect her to change anyones schedule and if she couldn’t do it, no problem- I just wanted to check out all my options. Maybe I’d be ready, maybe not. She emailed back a few hours later with her condolences and gave me Aug. 23rd as my new performance day! OMG, the relief! I’m so grateful. It’s good to explore your options.

As for moving in, we’ve got some serious wall space we need to cover. Not everything has found its place yet and we’re thinning out a ton of our belongings just because it’s too much. I don’t want to feel weighed down by anything, anymore than I do.

I guess that’s it for now.

See ya Wednesday, where if I were to plan on what I was going to blog about, it would be a response write to another blogger’s piece on the past!