While You've Been Reading Other Blogs.... {in pictures}{and really unabridged}

...I've been keeping myself busy. See, I started to read this book for book club. It's all about how fat ladies numb themselves with food when they're too afraid to be alone with their feelings. Like, it even talks about ladies whose boyfriends and fiances and loves of their lives died, and they got a new boyfriend, called food. You know why it's easy for me to flip the bird at the thought of dating and boys and marriage? Know why it's easy to live without them?

Well, that and the fact that signing over my last name and 401k and half my bed just for sex (which also entails shaving regularly and eventual screaming kids) with someone who is not Rbf, makes me want to join a nunnery or start telling people I'm a lesbian that isn't attracted to females.

But seriously, this book made me look at food differently. If food were my new "boyfriend," then it was like finding "white pride"-themed and/or Olsen Twin paraphernalia under his bed while you're looking for your sandal. You're turned off and disturbed and want to break up with it. 

If food were my new boyfriend, seeing that 20 pounds I've gained since the funeral is kind of like, oh, giving that new boyfriend a chance to explain himself, and then him just trying to justify it by saying he's ONLY into the pre-bag-lady-era Olsen twins, you know, before that one twin got gross and scary looking. {You: "So, basically you mean the 15 year old versions?"} In other words, it's not only the confirmation you need, it's actually worse than you thought.

All this is to say that I've kind of broken up with food (in terms of our emotional relationship...I still obviously eat) and the disturbing role it played in my life. And instead of escaping the reality of my life by "treating myself" to Crown Burger every other day, I've been running myself ragged to escape reality. With other things. Picture time.

Working more with CCI and their incredible service dogs

FYI - My floor has been cleaned since this picture, and I've gotten a pedicure.

I did a no-no and left Mylie in my apartment for a couple minutes while I ran down to switch my laundry over. I came back upstairs, opened my front door, and this is exactly what I saw:

Just sitting there at the end of my entryway, staring at the door in "sit" position, waiting for me to come back. I wonder how long she would sit like that.

Bridesmaiding...that means the bachelorette party.

And no, I didn't carry a black purse with a brown dress. I was holding the bride's so she didn't lose it. She's not a big drinker, but we couldn't let her enter marital bliss without getting her destroyed in public.

And the wedding

YMAD

{Priming 20 teenagers to raise $70,000 and take them to a 3rd world country...by bringing them to a retreat and taking pictures of them as they wake up. Teenagers LOVE that. I just thought it would be a good way to see which ones are going to whine the most when they have to shower with a bucket and a ladle in India.}

Honeybuzzing

Quilting

Birthday Coordinating

Putting others down to build myself up

{Seriously watched this three times in a row}

Homemaking

{This is just the start...but for toying around, I think it's cute, isn't it? You have to say yes.}

I am still unpacking. I still don't know where to put things. I've been here four months...and I don't feel moved in yet.

Burying Dad-1

{I really just never posted about this...it's a few months old}

Book Clubbing

{This is the book that made me quit eating my feelings}

And at the end of all that, sometimes I just can't do much else. So I go back to my apartment, and in this weird stage 45 weeks after It Happened, I cry... like two weeks after It Happened. And sometimes, like on his birthday, I cry so hard my eyelids do THIS:

Yeah, they swelled to the size - and shape - of bananas. Gross! I got up to get another tissue and caught a nice shot of that in the mirror, and literally had to get my camera and take a picture. Oh, in case you have not noticed, this isn't a blog where I'm going to try to impress you in any way or, like make you jealous of me. That right there was proof, since you just vomited on your keyboard. Super fug. But to make it up to my flagging ego, I'll post a picture of what my eyelids looked like before Rbf was killed:

Don't ask me why I have a picture like this. Probably because I got new eyeshadow and couldn't believe how pretty it was, and thought Rbf would be totally stoked to get a picture of it on his blackberry as he waited to load a couple of oil tankers. Who wouldn't be? Anyway, I just think, with lots of makeup and lots of lovely deep satisfied sleep, and foot rubs from an eager-to-please Reboyfriend who regularly said things like "I adore you," living that life, that's what your eyelids would look like. No?

And I've been doing other things I don't have pictures for, like ballet class and running the Memorial Fund. Dealing with the nightmare that has become my Dad-1's estate. Oh, the ulcers. My grandparents are getting divorced. Three other couples I love are, too. My life is just weird.

And because I told Iceberg it was him, not me, and told him he was a really nice thick thick shake of a guy but that I needed to be freakishly busy and didn't have time for our relationship...and because I live alone now and I sit down on my couch after work and embrace reality and sit with swollen sinuses and bulging eyelids and heavy heart...

And because last night I unearthed his trucker calendar and biker bandana and two of his toothbrushes, and had to refrain from putting ON that bandana and talk myself down from brushing my teeth with his toothbrush {no lie, my friends}...

I think the fever is breaking, because oh, my loving God, it is nothing like what I thought "45 weeks later" would feel like. It hurts. BAD. And treats and gifts to myself don't work anymore. So I guess when it starts to hurt worse, that just means it's healing, right? So I do what other 45-weekers in that family do.

I drive to a small cemetery in southern Idaho to visit my boyfriend and pick up my mess from last time.

I get tired. And cranky.

{OK the one below is true fatigue, but it just turned out funnier than sad, so I had to post it}

For awhile I would go out every free night with my friends to the playground of nightclubs around my apartment and dance, ignoring the scattered disaster of my apartment. Now, I stay home and unpack every free night I get. 

And I cry. A lot. I miss my best friend. I miss him saying "I adore you." I miss everything about him, and I resent Colbie Caillat for singing those words when she really has no idea what the hell she is saying. 

I weep on the edge of my bathtub and at my breakfast table and over the kitchen sink. I am not living at my uncle's anymore, so nobody is around to distract me. Yesterday I pulled a blanket out of his closet (yes, he has his own closet at my apartment), and the smell of him pulled up into my face and through my nose, into my chest and all throughout my heart, and it leveled me. It's what 45 weeks feels like.

I didn't mean for this to become a pity party, but that's what I've been up to. Thanks for reading to this very last word. xo/km

P.S. Thanks to everyone who gave me these bachelorette, Honeybee and cemetery pix, etc. I'm so used to being behind the camera I forget I have no pictures of myself unless, of course, they're pictures of my eyelids. Gotta keep those documented.