synergy

Christmas Eve

Okay, we're off to spend Christmas Eve with K's family. I got a bit teary-eyed at breakfast as I remembered the challenges of last Christmas. K was starting to recover from her episode with bipolar, but she remained very ill. My mom was visiting and I was killing myself trying to make sure that everyone had the perfect Christmas. I remember only breaking down into tears as the exhaustion and stress took over.

This year is very different. Admittedly, we were shopping this morning, but it was the fun type of shopping where you know exactly what you need to buy and you get to go into cool stores and buy it. We're functioning better in the cold. Today is a balmy 5 degrees above zero, that would be on the Fahrenheit scale, not Celsius. Wind-chill makes it about -15 according to www.weather.com. Thankfully, our car is curled up in a nice warm underground parking garage at the hotel.

K's illness continues to demand accommodation as I mentioned yesterday. Before we go out in the evenings, we try to get back to the hotel for her to rest a couple of hours, so she won't be too exhausted. It seems to work. She's even been drinking. The last couple of nights, she's been having a Bloody Mary, her drink of choice. When we met up with her ex-husband for dinner, she took part in a bottle of wine that he had been saving for her. Given that until recently it looked like K would never drink again, it was a bit surprising that he hung on to a bottle of wine waiting for her to return. Also, it's the first time in two years that she's seen him. K's always careful about drinking and concern for her medications and alcohol interactions has made her even more careful than before the bipolar diagnoses. I'm surprised she feels well enough to risk it, but there have been no problems.

Yes, we saw her ex-husband. She divorced him after we got together, but I was not the one who lured her away from her proper heterosexual marriage. Rather, the luring had been done years before we ever met. The ex seems to like me and has made comments to K that I should date him if K and I ever broke up. Not bloody likely as far as I'm concerned. K's been irritated with him for years. He never moved on after the divorce. Five years after she moved out of the house, her things like a bottle of Tums, soaps in the bathroom, were never moved. A disturbing thought isn't it, that artifacts of a person are abandoned even with someone living around them.

He did share his good news with us that he's selling the house they lived in together and is moving to another community about 30 miles away. It's time and maybe he will even move on with his life.

Back to Christmas Eve, we'll be off in a few minutes for K's family. We need to stop by her sister's to see her baby turtles, five cats, and dog. Then on to her parents for the traditional Polish Christmas Eve meal, consisting primarily of foods I dislike, Polish sausage (yuck), sauerkraut (yuck), Polish mushroom soup (yuck), and pierogies (YUM!). I'm not as ungrateful as a I sound, but it's not the meal I anticipate all year, as is done in K's family.

Tomorrow we return to my mother’s house to celebrate Christmas Day. Our Christmas is fairly quiet, but my gift is being about to enjoy it without fear of K’s illness. That’s enough.

Merry Christmas!

posted by synergy @ 2:44 PM