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Help!

Second job interview just completed (an hour and a half telephone interview) and I now have two jobs waiting for me! I have to make a decision about which I take.

First job is day tours based out of Uluru and single accomodation until March, whereupon I may be given the opportunity to do three day tours. It's a small company but very qualified and passionate and I would love to work for it. Not sure about the money as I failed to ask the right questions during the interview, being grief stricken and all.

Second job is based out of Alice Springs and I'd have to relocate in order to do it. Trips range from 2 to 8 days and I do prefer extended touring. It's a big national company and there's the opportunity to work in various products all over Australia and even overseas. Money is great. But there's not the camaradarie that you get in a smaller company (this one has upwards of thirty guides) and it's not outback camping style.

Both companies are prepared to wait for me until December to work. Both are prepared to start me on the upper end of the pay scale, due to my qualifications and experience.

I don't know!

Edited to add: Fuck! A third one now. I can't even decide what to wear when I get out of bed in the morning at the moment, let alone a job. The organised, logical person I was seems to have vanished in the face of this resonant grief.

Progress?

Say cheese

---

financial meltdown

Where to from here?

I have a two hour job phone interview tomorrow and I don't know which job it's for! I'd applied for one job online whilst I was in America and a few emails back and forth semi-secured me the position. Then last week I had a phone call, which I woke out of a deep sleep for, and I think it was that company and they said that I had the job. That was out in the desert, at Uluru. Then, last week, I had another phone call and I'd just finished crying so I didn't get that name either (and I'd put my resume out there to quite a few places).

I might well get offered that job tomorrow as well. I do interview well. In fact, I told my daughter to stick around and listen to how it all went as she could pick up a few tips.

The thing is (and it sounds terrribly conceited to say so), I am actually very good at my job, at being a tour guide. Companies often approach me, rather than the other way around, and I've been in quite a few media things over the years. I have no doubt that I will get a job when I want one, according to season and demand, but it's trying to decide whether I work away in the red heartland or in the city. I do prefer extended touring because you get to know your passengers, and I don't like living in town. But my girls live in town and I love the hell out of them.

I've done tours up to a month, tours of two weeks, tours of two days and one day and I've done tours that were only two and  a half hours long for two years!  They've covered the range from Eastern Europe to interior desert; from heavy industry to boat cruising; from gourmet wine to iron ore. The one thing that all of these tours have in common is that I never, ever got bored with any of them.

So, I think it's safe to say that I will have a job soon, if I want one. Well, that I will have a choice of jobs, I mean.

Why I blog

For me, it's a very useful way of expressing my feelings. I've always kept a diary and this was just the natural extension of the paper version. Plus, I found out that my dad read my sixteen year old diary that detailed my first sexual experiences in detail and I never felt quite safe with it again, so when an electronic version came up I jumped at it. Of course, the default setting for this blog is 'everybody' and probably anybody could hack into the other entries if they were really, really determined but for some reason it just feels more secure. That is after I am no longer married to a hacking, spying SH.

That and I no longer write about my sexual experiences in detail. Although I've written a little porn, based on them, here and there and posted it anonymously, through others.

Ron doesn't read it. I want to make it clear that he can, even the private stuff, but he chooses not to. As he says, it's my way of dealing with life and he doesn't want to impinge upon my space. That if I want to I can vent about him there and call him nasty names and whatever, secure in the knowledge I am verbally beating him up without fear of retaliation. If I really want him to read something I've written about him, then I send it to him, or he will ask to see it. In the early stages of our relationship, I'd make the blog entries from the letters I'd written to him. Now, not so much.

What dying man wants to face quite up to the reality that I detail here? So I don't tell him what I write unless he asks.

It's strange: yesterday we were talking on the phone and he was revisiting verbally his time here in Australia and saying how much he loved it and would love to do it again and I was terrribly conflicted. He's not coming back, I know this, he knows this, so why does he talk as if he is? Is he trying to get me more upbeat by getting me to focus on a future that looks positive? Is he hoping I'll forget I'll my medical knowledge and my awareness of his terminal condition? Is he just trying to fool himself? Was it all to get us to both stop being so upset?

I'm never going to shoot him down but it makes it terribly hard for me to bear. It just reminds me of one of the happiest times of my life that I will never have again. No wonder I keep crying so much. I have to learn to compartmentalise, to focus on one aspect of his irrational coming-to-terms-with-dying-soon behaviour at a time.

Fuck this constant crying. My face hurts. I suppose one advantage of my face peeling off from the constant barrage of tears is that it is akin to a laser peel, which wealthy middle aged matrons pay a lot of money for. I do have a steroid based lotion I can apply but its a little pointless as crying just washes it off again and its expensive and I'm broke.

Am I having a pity party for myself? I had a friend who accused me of just that and I stopped to think about it. I don't think so. I think I am just mourning. It's not so much about what I am missing out on but what we are missing out on together and what he is missing out for himself. Nobody deserves to die at 38. I think I am entitled to grieve. I also think that I will not be counting that person as a friend any more.

I don't honestly know whether it makes it better or worse to speak to Ron on the phone. It distresses both of us almost unbearably. But so does the prospect of not speaking to him. It's a luxury we really both can't afford.

I left my perfume with him when I left because I knew I could never wear it again. He said it would be a comfort and it has been. He says he sometimes sprays a little on the passenger seat of his truck (they call utes and Hilux type vehicles 'trucks' over there) and remembers me sitting there.

Today, for the first time in a few days, I made an effort. Changed the bed linen, cleaned myself up a bit. I normally love the clean fresh feeling of new sheets and fresh showered body snuggled down into them but tonight I don't give a damn. I hate the world.

Sick of titles

This post is just me whinging. Ignore.

I like my life with clearly definable edges; plans and structure. I don't cope well if these things don't exist. Don't get me wrong: I adapt extremely well to change; it's just that I will put up a new plan up there instead of the old and, once again, I will have guidelines to stick to, even if they were not the original ones.

 I can't get mad. 

I feel guilty about even getting a little antsy in the pantsy: I'm a bad girl for wanting to pick up that phone and call him for hot phone sex. Because maybe he chooses less excitement these days in favour of a more sedate (and extended) lifestyle. I can't even use it for my own fantasy material without remembering how I actually stopped his heart there, for a moment once, when I was with him. Death fucking is as close to the line as it gets.

The balance of power has shifted and the 'our' is not so equal any more, when talking about the relationship between us.  The equality of it was what made it so good: the equality in talk, work, love, laughter, sex, aspirations, goals.... you name it, we could communicate and understand each other's points of view. We no longer share the vision of an extended future with each other. That's not going to happen any more and all the trying  in the world won't make it so.

 Try as I might to be understanding, loving him as much as I do, I can't help but resent the fact that once again a man has the upper hand in a relationship with me. Ironically enough, it was Ron that taught me the joys of a truly mutual partnership but, through no fault of his or mine, it proves not to be an enduring one and I want to scream and scream and scream with the injustice and rage of it all.

I have no control over his dying at all and my distaste at this state of affairs makes me truly ashamed of myself. He doesn't want me to be there to hold his hand at the end and I've given him the huge gift of making that so. But for me, that leaves me in a kind of limbo. I feel powerless in my life again and I can't seem to move past it.

There's so much I want to say

Ron and I spent a lot of the night being nauseatingly goo-ey with each other via g-chat, him supposedly working and me doing anything but sleeping. We revisited the early stages of our romance, spoke about the now, talked a little about the then and skirted lightly around the subject of my future without him.

He even told me about a resolution to a situation that had been ongoing for a while and it clearly made him very happy. He's tieing up his loose ends, whether he consciously realises it or not, and I am very grateful for the attitude of the other person. I don't know whether they realise how very sick he is but its giving him closure, so I thank them very much for this.

And of course, I spent a lot of time crying. I can't help it: not huge sobs, just an on-going welling up of salt. I wasn't crying whilst I was talking to him but I've been crying all day today on and off. It's not feeling sorry for myself; it's just that I am going to miss him so much and it seems almost impossible that I'll never get to touch him again, never get to hold his hand, or kiss him.

I've spent a lot of time reading about his condition, desperately trying to find some loophole here or there but there really isn't one. Years ago the statistic was that  the majority of patients died within 3 years of the onset of symptoms. He's had less than that but, even with drug therapy, matters aren't going to improve.  Death will be as a result of congestive heart failure, most likely.

In severe cardiomyopathy, which is starting to manifest itself now, the symptoms become more apparent and he shows them in the form of cold and clammy extremities, shortness of breath, blueness to the fingers, toes and skin, generalized weakness, dizziness, and syncopated heart rhythm (not beating regularly on the left side).

Understand that he's told me very little about all of the symptoms; they are just what I have observed and what I've read about. I haven't actually asked him too much directly because I don't want to upset him more than I have to and stress exacerbates the condition. But I want to know.

One of the sympotms which has turned up from my reading is the patient having a sense of impending doom, in severe myocardial disease. It's nothing that can be intrinsically measured but invariably indicates a progression of the disease. I didn't know this before but several times Ron has told me of this feeling and, looking back, each time it has corresponded with a deterioration. I haven't told him. I don't think I will. He doesn't read here, although sometimes I'll send him a copy of a post here or there.

But I want to know. How will it end?

Will it hurt him? Will he just drift away in his sleep, dreaming of those who love him?

I wish that so much for him.

You know what they say. That you can bear your own pain but having to bear that of somebody you love that much crucifies you.

Maybe he knows how the ending of his life will probably be but I don't feel like I want to bring that dark spectre up unless he does first. I want our time together to be as happy as I can make it.

Besides, there's so little time.  So much to cram into our words; a lifetime of love into such a short space.

For us, there has never been enough time. I suspect there never would have been.

The Murdochurian Candidate

---

Sarah Palin

He's out of the hospital

New medications, old ones adjusted, warned about this, advised with that.

Even back at work, trying valiantly to put in a full day's effort because, as he says, 'What else can I do?'.

Now he has told his dad, his best friend and his ex-wife. Next comes the heart-rending task of telling his kids. I am very glad he is doing this because children do need to know; they understand a lot more than adults might think and the feeling of betrayal would be huge.

It is entirely possible that he might he might just die drifting off in his sleep. Or by a sudden, massive heart attack. I suppose I hope for the former. I don't want him to be scared. I wish I was there, holding him in my arms when he dies. It could be soon, it could be in a few months. God, I love this man.

And he makes me laugh so much, still. I told him about the death therapist (oh, ok, grief counsellor, if you must) and her saying "Now we are coming to the end of our time together" and me bursting out laughing, so very inappropriate in that tastefully sombre room full of restrained help for the bereaved. He thought that was funny, too.

Then, somehow, we got into a conversation that turned into the frankly lascivious. He started to describe all of the little things he remembered exactly about my body and that he has very intense sense memories of me.

I chastised him because, well, surely it can't be good for his heart.

me:  would it be okay?

 him:  bad for the health????

 me:  laughs

 him:  how could it get worse???

 me:  sorrry!!!!!!!

 him:  'died while jerking off' on my toe tag'!!!!

me:  god, that made me  laugh so hard. First time I've laughed for weeks
sorry my darling

I went to grief counselling today

Such a dramatic term. But the woman I saw had been recommended to me from several different sources and I know that she dealt with Hospice for years, supporting dying patients and their families.

I don't really remember everything she said. I cried a LOT. I used half a box of tissues and the front of my shirt is really soggy.

I do remember, however, that she put forward the idea that Ron had sent me back to Australia early so that he could get on with the complicated, heartrending and necessary business of dying, whether he knew it or not.

I felt that too, and had done right from the start, which is why I agreed to go. Something within him couldn't progress any further down that inevitable path unless I was not around to see it. He had a clear idea of where he wanted me to be and what he wanted me to be doing, secure in the knowledge that the only thing that could lift me out of potential fatal depression was a life I could slot back into, a job I had  a passion for. So, he set things up that way and I did what he wanted.

A gift from the living to the dying.

I've been pondering this for a few days now, ever since a comment on an earlier entry, where the writer implied that leaving him was a fairly shitty sort of thing to do. Those sort of snide comments have been showing up for a while and I have a fair idea of their origins and why they are being written but petty details like that just don't seem to matter right now.

In fact, nothing seems to matter right now. The world seems to have shrunk to me and him and everything else is seen through a layer of insulating bubble wrap.

By the way, I got that job, but that doesn't seem to matter either. I'm not excited, thrilled or even at all interested.

The only thing that was even the slightest bit non-sad today was when, at the end of the hour long session, the counsellor said softly to me, "Our time together is coming to an end...".

All today I've been very sad

I haven't heard from Ron for a couple of days and I was woried. Weekends aren't normally good for us anyway because he goes up to the mountains to see his kids and reception is bad there. But today I've been more uneasy than usual, getting tot he point where I was convincd that he was either in the hospital or dead.

Matters weren't helped by a comment left on one of my blog entries trying to subtley suggest that by going back to Australia I must a) not care very much, b) he's playing me because he doesn't want me around or c) a combination of the two. I won't say that I laughed at the comment because I didn't but one thing I do feel confident about is the depth of the love and committmment that Ron and I share and nothing is going to shake that.

Anyway, he's in the hospital. Hopefully, he will get out later in the week.

Hopefully.

I can feel him slipping away from me and it is so devastating.

He's dreaming true again, dreaming of the places he and I will now never go to together, holding my hand as we scramble down sheer striped rock wall faces to limpid pools of translucent water far below. Where fleeting bands of sunlight turn ordinary shapes into gold encrusted sculptures. Where the air smells like warm honey, fecund and rich. He turns to me and brushes a lock of hair from my eyes, leans forwards and lightly passes his lips back and forth over mine.

That was his dream. '

Last night on hospital tv, via the Disovery channel he found the place and the name, 'Karajini'.

Yesterday he was spraying my perfume on the passenger seat in his truck because it makes him 'think of you and it smells like love'.

Today he's in a white sterile environment, hooked up to numerous painful and invasive tubes, having all manner of indignities done to him. So many machines, so much monitoring.

And each little beep takes him a little bit further away from me.

I am so sick of myself!

I am sick of smoking.

I am sick of the weight I have piled on.

I am so sick of being in this sick stuck place mentally and emotionally.

I want the old me back.

So, I have to lose the weight, have to give up those friggin fags...have to get myself back to a place of self respect. 

Did some excecise tape this morning.  Geez, so out of shape. 

I don't have a choice.

I just have to do it, give a rats arse about myself and my appearance and stop this self abuse.

Touch

He keeps me smooth and soft and supple. When I am with him, I glow. Passing strangers sense the passion air brushed molecules that make up the body I wear for the world and they respond to a signal that isn't even for them.

His touch makes me glow, makes me so much more appealing to others.

Without him, I feel dry and desicated; shrivelled and withered from lack of touch. I'm parched and thirsty.

I want to be touched. I want to be curled up in the lee of his body, our legs tangled together, my neck on his arm, his hand on my lower breast, the top of my head snuggled under his chin...

I want to hold my hands, palm flat, up to his and marvel at the way the top of my fingers only come up to his first knuckle; the way that my thumb ring will only fit onto his little finger.

I want to wear his watch with an extra 6 cm of holes cut into it to make it hug my wrist, the owner's skin memories pressing now into mine.

I want to stroke his chest, his stomach, and lower down, feel the length of his body lying next to mine. I want to lie on top of him and  use him as my mattress, to fall asleep that way, my head on his defective heart, so that I can will it onwards.

I want to spend hours and hours making out, just letting him kiss me and kissing him back. Using our lips to talk without words, to say the things that are best left inside in order that we might hold ourselves together.

I want to make love so slowly, without speed or force or passion, but so intimately and enduringly; a connection of the mind as well as of the body. A joining that lasts for hours/

I want him to come in the door, throw me against the wall and rip all my clothes off, lift me up in the air and have me savagely and within seconds, my legs wrapped around his waist, arms around his neck, teeth buried in his shoulder.

I want all of these these things and I want them all at the one time.

But most of all I just want him to touch me again.

I don't  care how. I don't care if we never have sex again.

Just the touch of his little finger on mine would be enough.

Oh, please.

Oh, what a day.

I feel so detached from it all.  People ask me questions and it takes a minute to realise that they expect an answer. Then another minute to formulate an answer that is within the acceptable range of what most people would regard as normal.

Forget asking questions, making appointments, organising job hunts; that simply isn't possible.

I even got my daughter to do my grocery shopping because I feel so alien amongst people, like I don't belong; strange and separate.

The telephone rings and I look at it as if its a bit of foreign technology I've never seen before: strange and frightening. If I let it ring it will stop eventually. I don't think that the person on the other end can possibly have anything to say that will be of any interest to me at all, so I just let it ring.

Food: I know it's supposed to be good and necessary but I can't make choices. My daughters tell me what they want to eat and I do my best. Then I stop moving again and go into blank mind mode.

God, I just want to be numb all the time. Everything apart from numb just seems a waste of energy and I'm so tired.

I'm so tired.

Nobler in the mind

---

global warming

Do you think I need medicating?

All the exercise in the world isn't taking away the anger.

I find myself with my fists balled up all of the time. This is not normal.

I find myself aggressively thrusting thorugh crowds and muttering under my breath, "Out of my way, cunts!".

Presumably, things will improve.

Presumably.

What have I done today?

Pretty much nothing.

With the aid of sleeping pills I've slept most of the night and day away. I needed it but I felt sorry for my daughter who finds it very dull. At intervals I'd drag myself out of bed to thrust food in front of her and then stagger back upstairs to be asleep again. So nice. I want to be asleep forever.

At around four I forced myself to get dressed and go for a walk/run with her on the bike besides me.  I deliberately wore very few clothes and there was a piercing wind so I had to run or walk very fast in order to keep warm. As a result, I ran more than I walked today, which is an achievement of sorts, I suppose.

I don't care.

I don't care about any of it. It's not helping. Nothing is helping.

Random lights have been purchased!

Oh boy, it is done, ordered and paid for the lights today.  Gosh, I haven't seen them in real life, hope to God I have made the right decision.  I have ordered two 800mm ones and one 500mm one.  Will cluster them in dropped heights.  This is the first really big purchase I have ever made of something unseen, hope they live up to my expectations.  They are such a big ticket item price wise and they are/will become a classic so I hope they don't date really bad. ( they prob will but.....I will have to live with it)

The bathrooms are the next major nightmare.  Again I like simple, classic white but I want to have a feature as well.  Favouring marble at the moment. One feature wall of a Calcutta marble, it has a nice dark vein through it.....I am really stressed out about this house. Sometimes I feel a hint of excitement about it but mostly I feel crippled by indecisiveness and how it is such a big task.  But....we are on the downhill slope....soon it will be over. ( I hope!)