Hippo, birdie, two ewes...

... to the multi-talented gmcdavid!!! Have a great one!!

Grounded for the day

The flower_cat has told me in no uncertain terms that I'm not going anywhere today -- I still have a fever and a headache from the viral crud that started last night. Took a combination of aspirin and Afrin to knock down the headache and congestion to the point where I could sleep...

Actually, neither of us had a particularly good night of it.

... so I'm staying home, not going to the Where 2.0 conference, and maybe puttering around the house and websites.

On grieving

Every grief is different, and everyone processes it differently, but the broad outlines of the grieving process are fairly consistent. It doesn't matter whether you're mourning a parent, a dear relative, a child, a friend, a pet, a home, a relationship, a project at work, or something even more abstract: a possibility, a missed opportunity, or your youthful sense of invulnerability. After a certain age, losses become inevitable. It takes not only time but work to get past a loss.

Remember that the objective is acceptance. Not forgetting your loss. Acceptance. In some ways, it's even harder than forgetting.

Acceptance means coming to terms with your loss: making it part of your experience, and putting it in its proper place in your memories. This may involve analyzing what happened so that you can learn from it, in hopes of not making the same mistake a second time. It may involve writing a poem or song, or a letter you will never send. It may involve a very selective kind of forgetting.

It means putting your loss among your treasured memories, carefully, so that you're not thinking of it day by day or letting it get between you and your life, or between you and other people. You'll always remember. There will always be reminders: a chance bit of overheard conversation, a long-out-of-touch friend, a scrap of memory, a color, a flower, a name. You have to make it safe to remember. You must learn to remember the person, not the pain; the lesson, not the loneliness, the good times, not the grieving. You have to get past your loss: make a part of your past, a landmark on your journey.

When most people tell you to "get over it", they mean for you to step over it the way you would step over a mud puddle or a fallen branch: forget it, and move on. (If your friends see you wallowing in the mud, or weeping for months beside a fallen tree-trunk, they can be forgiven for telling you this.) No. Build a bridge of smooth stones across that little stream, and put a pebble in your pocket to remember it by. Take a chainsaw to that tree-trunk, and carve your name on the fresh-cut surface.

It's a healing process; wounds take time to heal. Don't rush the process, or let well-meaning friends rush you, but don't hold back, either. Do the work.

Make an entry in your journal, and tag it so you can find it again. Mark its anniversary, if it's sufficiently important. Write a song, and practice it to the point where you can sing it in public without choking up. Not a miserable song that says how sorry you are for yourself. (OK, write one of those, too; it's part of the process. Burn the manuscript as soon as you can see how awful it is.) Perhaps wistful, perhaps angry, perhaps ironic and funny. Preferably hopeful and maybe even happy. Tell the world you're OK now.

Get to the point where you mean it, when you say that. You will.

Puttering.

Since I've been at home all day, it seemed reasonable to do a little puttering. So far, I've:

1. Handed Colleen her new EeePC. It does everything she wants except play live365, the screen is significantly larger, and it has a multi-touch trackpad. Win. Happy (slightly belated) Mother's Day, Love!
2. Reconfigured the old EeePC (borrowed from work) with something resembling my own browser bookmarks and preferences. Verified that Pidgin works, though the keyboard is way too small for comfortable IMing.
3. Brought the other Fry's Windows box (Seymore) down from the attic, got it running, (the RAM had been cannibalized) and upgraded it from DeMuDi to Etch. Still don't know what was wrong -- even Windows seems to be working. This makes the third (and last) box I've upgraded this way; it's a little tricky but manageable.

(Of course, now that the Wolfling is "borrowing" the monitor that used to be in the office, I don't really have any place to put either of the two Fry's boxen.)

Still have a noticable fever -- Colleen was right to keep me home. Took a nap instead of a walk; slept at most a couple of minutes, but even lying down and being quiet for half an hour was a big help.

OK, I haven't been very productive, but at least the day hasn't been a total bust.