{{{Jen}}} You never know what will sock you in the gut. I was married for 13 years, and I could never convince my husband to take a vacation. About four years after the divorce, he mentioned on the phone that he had gone rafting on the Colorado, something that we had talked about. I completely lost it, and it was like all the anger I had in me from the divorce hit me in one blow.

May the surgery be really successful, Connie.

{{Jen}}

I guess it just feels like one more nail in the coffin.

I thought the coffin was already in the ground. That part of your life is over, it is true. And you will occasionally stumble across an emotional landmine. But they're just emotional landmines. Things which bring up the loss. They're random and they don't have too much to do with some linear timeline of "getting over it" or moving on.

{{Jen}}

(((Connie, ChiKat, Jen)))

I hate people who beep at others for following, or trying to follow, the rules.

thinks about Egyptian traffic. laughs and laughs and laughs and laughs.

Over here the rules of the road are:

• try to avoid squishing people. beeping helps with this;

• beep to tell people you're there, because they probably won't be looking/will not have any mirrors/will have decided to fill their back window with strange and tacky objects;

• beep to tell people you're coming past them (on the right or the left or over or under or however the hell you can manage) ;

• God is responsible for your safety. You are not. (This includes the safety of your children. By all means, chat on the phone while overtaking a large truck and bouncing your infant son on your lap, neither of you wearing seatbelts. God will be your airbag. Beeping will amuse your infant son.)

I thought the coffin was already in the ground.

Tell my lizard brain that.

God will be your airbag.

This needs to be on a bumper sticker.

{{Jen}} That's got to be hard. Ack, my comforting words are not coming out right, so I'm gonna leave it at the brackets.

Cass, I'm sorry you got hit with this. But you're doing fine. Feel sad, but don't feel like his actions are some sort of judgment on yours.

Or people who honk at cars that don't turn right on red fast enough.

Oh that drives me batty! Turning right on red is optional! Optional! And when I get beeped at I will sit there until the light turns green and wave happily at the beeper. I'm a brat that way.

Oh wait, I missed this bit. I would totally honk at you for that. And cuss. And probably make faces. And honk again.

God will be your airbag.

OMG! Dad and I used something similar to this in an analogy about his driver's ed classes and biology classes including ID. Something like "While I may personally believe God will be my seatbelt. It's not the law, and not something I should teach in class."