Step Away From the Cake

 I still miss her. I still think about things I would be doing if she was still here, but life goes on. In a way, I feel a little guilty. I have so much free time now. I don't have 20 minutes of pills and biscuits in the mornings or 10 minutes of them at night. I can come in here and stretch and not have to keep an ear out for her, if she needs to go out. I said this with Rocco and I'll say it again. These things don't happen suddenly, they sneak up on you one at a time and you don't realize it. I can't tell you exactly when we started having to help her up. I can't tell you exactly when I had to start making sure she went out before bed. I can't tell you exactly when we started leaving the back door open all the time for her. But these things just became our new normal. Whenever I was doing anything, I would stop if I heard Bella get up and go see if she needed me. I was more conscious of how many times she went to the bathroom than I was of my own bathroom...

 We let Bella go yesterday and it was very, very emotional. I'll be writing about it in detail over on Feather, Fur, and Fins, but I did want to set the stage here. The good news was that I allowed myself to be incredibly sad most of the day. I cried in the morning. I cried in the afternoon. I cried when it happened. I cried after. The point is, I didn't think that I needed to be strong for anyone except me. And if that meant I cried a lot, I cried a lot. It was rather freeing not trying to be strong for anyone. I talked with Hubby during the day about the event coming and about Bella. We laughed, we cried, we were sad and it was all okay. Feel the feelings. In the past I have felt like I had to hold it in so that I didn't upset Hubby or whatever (I'm not even clear on my thinking here) but yesterday I just let it go. I had to deal with my stuff and he had to deal with his stuff and we had to deal with our stuff together. It was actually very good. Trying to protect som...

 The last day of school was Thursday. Actually it was Wednesday. We had classes on Wednesday, then graduation that night. On Thursday we had the awards assembly which was from 8 - 11. Then we had lunch provided by the PTO and we were done. I purposefully planned a few days of complete and total down time. I had no plans on doing anything on Friday or Saturday. Friday I had a couple of appointments and then we went to lunch. Later that night we went and saw Top Gun: Maverick in the theater and that was awesome. Yesterday we had some friends over to say goodbye to Bella and we just hung in the pool all day. Side note: I seem to have gotten a sunburn on my arms and across my shoulders. I never get sunburned. What the hell happened. Back to my story. Today Hubby is going to a friend's party. They have this party every year but I am just not up for it. It's a group of people that have known each other for years and sit around and drink. There is also a younger group that hang in the...