Okay so I spent one full week away from here, long enough to get my head around some of the stuff that has been going on in my life but now I need to purge. I give you plenty of advanced warning that some of the things I have to say are dark ugly things, sad and powerful but they are stuck inside me and have to come out, life happens and we can't run away from that.
conversely some of the stuff I have to say is very happy and awesome and good. This is not the blog of a chronically morbid girl/woman and yes good things DO happen to me.
Okay sad first, let the flood gates open. They say bad things come in threes and in my life I have found for what ever reason that tends to be true. November kind of snuck up on me this year and when it hit it was with a bang, three things right out of the gate that just sucked the breath out of my chest.
The first was that an old friend of mine, who I admittedly have not seen in rather a long time, was mugged on his way home from work in a very very dodgy area of North Dartmouth. Not content to just mug Jamie, the evil fucks beat him into unconsciousness with a rock. He has been in the hospital since, he has had surgery to relieve the pressure on his brain. The doctors say he will be okay but I wonder how anyone recovers emotionally/spiritually from that kind of vicious, senseless violence. Many years ago Paul and I were accosted on Barrington street and while I received only an few punches to the face Paul was beaten rather more violently. Neither of us were hurt badly, certainly nothing like what Jamie has endured and it still left a deep indelible mark on our psyche's. My heart truly goes out to Jamie and to his family.
The second thing that happened was genuinely the most terrible. Shortly after midnight on November 1st I got a call from my Friend Wanda. Wanda knows that you can only call my house that late on a work night if it is REALLY important so I was worried as soon as I saw her name on the call minder but when I answered the phone I was really concerned because I had never heard Wanda so upset. Wanda is a very strong woman who has really been thrown her share of crap but has always faced adversity in a very stalwart manner hear her bawling on the phone struck fear deep in my heart. I was sure she was calling to tell me that something was terribly wrong with Toby. Toby is her amazing son (who will soon be my god son) who just turned one and has faced a lot of illness in his first year of life because he was born 13 weeks early. But when she could speak it wasn't Toby, it was even more shocking, it was Austin the 2 month old baby of our friends Karen and Sheldon. Sheldon is Wanda's very best friend and the two of them have been inseparable and since Sheldon is a stay at home dad they spend a lot of time raising their sons together. Those boys were going to be best friends. They were going to be dressed in the same clothes and joke about being twins. Austin was only two months old and as healthy as any parent could dream for. But there was an accident and now he is gone. I am not going to go into the details of what happened because I respect Karen and Sheldons privacy but I will say that it was a terrible accident and like most accidents it could have been avoided and at the same time it could have happened to anyone. I can't wrap my head around a healthy little baby dying, it just makes no sense to me and for that reason I could not go to the funeral, I don't know if that makes me a bad person or not but I just could not do it.
Which leads me to number 3. To understand number 3 you have to crawl into my brain for a moment, you have to understand how very much I loath and fear November, that one person I know had just been beaten into a coma and a perfectly healthy baby boy had just died for reasons God and I still haven't worked out the details about. My mind is in full blown crisis management mode. This is a place my mind is pretty comfortable with actually but that is neither here nor there. Two days after Austin died the phone rang and it was my sister bawling her eyes out. My sister calling me crying does not alarm me as much as Wanda, that is what sisters do, they call each other when they are tired, frustrated or had a huge fight with their S.O. My sister and I call each other crying on a regular basis. However as I said my brain was already in crisis management mode and my sisters crying had a slight, unfamiliar edge to it. She wanted to know if Sweet Baboo was home and since he was not since it was the middle of a work day she wanted to know could I please call him to come and get her. My sister VERY RARELY asks for this kind of favour so I am starting to panic a little. Then she tells me... She needs to go to the IWK (the children's hospital) there has been an accident and her oldest child, her only daughter, MY god daughter has been struck by a car while on a school outing. Everything stopped, the whole world just froze. Jamie was beat into a coma, Austin P. (as my sister also has an Austin who is alive and well thank God) was dead and I was SURE that the child I love so much some days I forget she is not mine was dead or critically injured. Elizabeth had no idea how bad it was we just had to get there ASAP. I called Sweet Baboo at work but I was crying too hard to understand what I was saying but he figured he should just come home. When I hung up the phone I lost it even more. I stood in the middle of my living room half dressed, screaming, totally unable to pull it together. Somehow my fingers managed to dial Wanda's number and she talked me down a little, in the very least she helped me get into a pair of jeans. When Sweet Baboo got here I met him in the driveway and he still didn't know just what had happened and I had started cry again so he could not understand what I was saying. I think the scariest moment was when he finally understood what I was say "Brianna was hit by a car." His manner didn't change at all he was totally cool and together but he went totally pale for a moment. Then he forced me to get it together. He told me that Elizabeth needed me to be strong and I HAD to stop crying before she got in the car. So I did... and so had she. The drive to hospital was SO long and quiet. But about 30 seconds after we walked through the Emergency Room doors I heard a smart ass teenager giving grief to a nurse and the world was all better. A saucy girl like that can't be hurt too badly. And thank god she wasn't, it was all soft tissue damage and despite her pain and the emotional weirdness of being hit by a car (while in the cross walk WITH the right of way) there is nothing wrong with her that some advil and time won't fix, she didn't even have to stay over in the hospital. I can't begin to tell you how hard I prayed and gave thanks to God that night.
Now some good news...yay good news!!
We got the sweetest new flat/townhouse!! It is so awesome, and I just knew we were meant to live there when we went to see it. Sweet Baboo told me not to get my hopes up, 'cause he is so practical. But In my heart I knew that place was ours. It is SO pretty and it is just the right size upgrade for us. I can't wait to go UPSTAIRS to go to bed. I can't wait to have house plants and a spare room/computer room. I can't wait to spread our legs out a little bit and be a little more comfortable. Don't get me wrong, I do love this place. We have had two very good years, happy years but we are ready grow a little, ready to not be able to touch the ceiling, ready to not hear every single noise from upstairs. And the new landlords are really awsome. We are so excited. It is going to be a BIG job to pack this whole place up and clean it to perfection in three weeks, but I know I can do it and I know I will have help. YAY us!
I am going to the new place on Thursday to take some measurement's and I will take some pictures to share. YAY!!
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