An Educational Week

I live by the view point that if I fail to learn something new each day, then it was not a day worth having had. If I go too many days without learning something I become upset and strive to change my life so I am able to learn something new, even if it is nothing more than a stray, interesting fact...such as the fact that Georgia was the historical home of wine!

Now, this past week, I must say I have learned a lot. I have been lonely, extremely tired, grumpy, injured and all out having a bad week. But I have learned so, so much.

I have learned that I have some amazingly awesome friends. I got messages from a couple of people the first night I was alone for the week, after my hubby left on a business trip, asking if I was lonely, ow I was sleeping, if I was going to be ok. And when I injured myself and needed stitches, a friend did not hesitate to race around, and take me to the emergency department, spending a sleepless night with me and my extremely bruitsalised foot. Said friend even made sure that I didn't have a moment of silence while we waited for hours fro the doctor to stitch me up, and kept me laughing the whole time, and my mind off my injury. And as soon as I let it be known that I was injured I was overwhelmed with text messages and face book emails asking if I needed help, offering me a place to stay next time he's away, and sinply wishing me well. So that was a lesson for my week.

Another, less painful lesson I learned was that when I am extremely tired, especially in the beautiful hours after midnight and just before dawn, I love to use chalks. To draw, to shade, to create, and if I don't have them to use, I become twitchy, grumpy,m and upset. What suprised me about this was the fact that I never realised this before, despite having used chalks in these hours many times before; I guess not having them makes the relation to them and late hours more marked :P

I have learned that my family are amazing. My husband is a wonderful person, and I have learned more with each day how wonderful he is, and how much I need him here (I need you to let me sleep now dear!) and how much I truly miss him when he is unable to be by my side. I have also learned exactly how much my attention span and ability to conduct a normal life are effected by his abscence; its like I become that kid with ADHD who cant do anything for more than 5 minutes, combined with enough hyperactivity to cause me to end up unable to sleep, dancing round my living room at 4am singing along to Pink. I mean, hell no >< And my mother in law; she never hesitated to give me a lift, or to come and pick me up to baby me and force me to take care of my injury.

And you know, I even discovered a new support in my own imediate family, which I would never have suspected. I mean, we burned a hell of a lot of bridges between us over the years, and at this point in my life I had decided there was never going to be a time that they were there for me. And yet when I called them with a problem this week they didnt hesitate to tell me to stop worrying, they had it covered. So I learned that maybe I have been a little harsh on some of them myself in recent years, maybe I should give them another chance...well, some of them. Not mother :P

So, despite this having been very similar to the week from hell for me, I know that it was a valuable week in my life, and for that I treasure it. I would regret my life without having had the enriching lessons that I found this past week. I also learned a lot about other people this week, about all the different personalities that surround us every day, and about how they all interact; how easy it is to make a whole emergency room laugh. So, despite it having been a bad week in some respects, I do believe this was a really, really good week :) Thank you very much to the people who made it such, and the events that shaped it :)

Because I Can

The Weekend From Hell, And Why I Have No Trust Reserves Remaining.

Weekends; fun things in general are they not? I used to think so too. I also used to think friends were awesome people who you could trust endlessly and who you didn't have to worry about when you were around them, that you know you're safe with friends, and your friends know they're safe when around you. Well people, I think I learned a new lesson about friends and weekends recently. And I know that I really am not impressed, and I do not like it at all, which is true of most lessons one learns in life I suppose, but this particular lesson was dangerous, and potentially deadly, and taught to me, of all things, by a woman I once called a friend.

So, lets look at my weekend as a whole before I analyze it for myself and for you. You know who you are, by the way dear girl, you know who you are. I cooked dinner Friday night for myself, my husband, a friend from when I was in school, and a mutual friend of my husband and I, our house mate, and I had a beer while doing so. We all ate at about 6:30pm, and then my school friend, female, and I sat in the kitchen chatting, and each had 2 small glasses of port. A couple more mutual friends arrived, and I introed them to my friend, then 3 of us had a shot of jagermeister. I then poured a glass of champaign each for my friend and I, looked at the clock, quarter to 9, then...lost all memory. Next thing I remember is being awoken at half midnight by my understandably upset husband throwing me my phone, with a text to another man on it telling the man I loved him and was drunk, and asking me to explain it or get out.

Now, for the record, I am faithful to my marriage. I do not cheat on my husband, and if ever I did I would have more sense than to leave a message to my lover on my phone at all. Added to which, I had apparently passed out, as had two others, by 10pm in a puddle of my own vomit, and no one could wake us at all. And the text had been sent within the time period in which I had been semi conscious in the bathroom, throwing up anything my stomach had to offer, oblivious to the world, and most certainly not able to send a text, let alone tell you what a phone was. Not pretty, by far, and nothing I am in the least proud of, but definite proof, to me at least, that there was no earthly way I could have sent the message. And of course, we are overlooking here the fact that when my husband found my phone, with its message, it was directly beside my so called friend in the kitchen, the opposite end of the house to where I had last seen it, before my memory loss. And so the plot thickens.

We shall now fast forward about eight hours from half past midnight, and I have finally succeeded in convincing my husband that a) I did not send the text message, and b) I was not about to leave him, unless of course, I was asked to. I was also dedicatedly telling him that there was no way the events of the night before were normal at all, and that never in my life had I ever suffered memory loss form any amount of alcohol, let alone the small amount I recalled drinking the night before. Shortly thereafter, my husband got the most delightful job of taking the former 'friend' to the train station, and, lo behold, on the drive there she admitted she had been trying to break us apart, who knows why, and had very little to say about it at all. Needless to say, upon the return of my man, I got a lovely bunch of flowers as an apology from my husband for his lack of belief in me.

Meanwhile I had been comparing notes with our house mate and the other friend who had been effected, let us call them mike and john, and both men also said they had had memory loss of the night before, but also knew they had drunk very little before they passed out; less, in fact, than I myself had consumed. We all agreed that there had been nothing normal about the night before, and that we were all still too sick and too weak, let alone too uncoordinated, for the normal effects of so little alcohol in our systems, and also that the only common element had been Jagermeister. My husband, let us call him Rob, when he returned home, was unwilling to believe that we were serious about there being anything wrong with the Jagermeister, so, because I felt I had to prove to him, and myself, that I was not lying, I took a shot of it. Within fifteen minutes I was having trouble breathing, my legs and face were numb, I was dizzy, my vision was blurry, I was nauseous, and feeling very disconnected from the world. And it took me a further three hours for the effects of that single shot to wear off. As for the effects of that Friday night, it took a total of three whole days for my body to recover from whatever was in the Jagermeister.

So, you ask, what lesson was it I learned? I learned that if you have someone over for drinks at your house, make certain you don't just know them well, or even very well; make sure you know them enough that you would trust them with your life. I learned that despite there being no motive, some times people are just out to kill you. I learned that even in your own home, you cannot leave a drink alone. I also learned, and this is the most valuable lesson of all, that some people don't know where the line is that they should not cross. And that when they cross it, they have unwittingly stepped off the level ground, and into the deep end, the end in which deep fury lurks, then end in which a nice little woman who is there for her friends turns into a furious monster when crossed. And dear girl, if you are reading this, then please, do not underestimate me. I will follow you to the full extent of my ability to find a way of making you realize the wrong you did, and I will do it politely, lawfully, and with the dedication of a hound. They say hell hath no fury like a woman scorned; I was not simply scorned, and hell has not yet seen my like.

As to the effect this had on my marriage, well, its recovering; she failed in her attempt to destroy my marriage, though she came close. Rob and I are talking things through still, but we will remain together, we will survive as a couple, and we will work in out. I do believe we still have a couple of issues, such as the fact that he was so willing to believe her word over mine in the beginning, but which couple doesn't have issues?

Because I Can