Sunday's sometimes hard

Sunday nights are often lonesome. I don't know if it's partly the looking forward to another busy week, or the sense that I didn't have enough fun/get enough done on the weekend, or what.

(No, I have no interest in the big awards show on tonight. I never cared about it much but this year, after learning that the "Swag Bags" the actors got - largely out of hopes of them "advertising" the luxury products in them - well, each one is worth 3 3/4 years of my salary for a flipping swag bag and I can't with that. Especially not when I think of people who have genuinely hard jobs - for me, because of various reasons, hospice nurses top the list today - who don't get paid a lot and sometimes don't get much recognition for what they do)

I watched Father Brown, which I often did in the past, but it was a hard episode, with a couple of deaths and also a spying subplot that reminded me of the times when there was real concern about the Soviets' role in geopolitics when I was a kid. Maybe not *quite* as much a "bomb dropping is imminent" sense like one character seemed to have, but still...brought up some of the anxious memories of my tween years.

And also, I am missing the different people I have lost in the last four or so years tonight.

I am still having dreams about the people I've lost, primarily my father, and primarily ones where the person is healthy again, and whole....the main one I remember from recently, my parents were down here visiting, and for some reason we were all going to sing with the choir at my church - both my parents had been member of their church's choir but I am way too self-conscious about the quality of my singing voice to ever consider that, even if I had time.

Anyway, in the dream, we were heading up to the church, and I was walking behind my dad, and I thought "wow, whatever new medical regimen they have him on, it is really working, he can walk just fine again." And then suddenly my cousin Chum - who died in 2016 - was there, and he was in good health. And what led to the dream breaking up for me is that he started talking about his pending remarriage, because his wife had died, and I suddenly was like "Wait. Bonita is fine, and in fact he predeceased her" and then I woke up and was sad.

I will say most of those dreams take that form, where my dad (or whatever other person) is there and is healthy and fine. And I don't know if it's simply my brain doing wish-fulfillment, or if maybe somehow, just somehow, there's some way for people to send a message from the Great Beyond about "don't be sad, look, I'm fine, everything's fine" but given some of the doubts I have....it's hard for me to trust too much that, however much I want to.

But yeah. Even in happier times Sunday nights were lonely. Next week is going to be very busy; I feel regularly like I have 10 pounds of potatoes worth of work and only a 5 pound sack of time and that makes me stressed and sad.

Right now I'm working on the crocheted afghan. Crocheting very long makes my shoulders hurt but there is also something soothing about working on it. (And it requires little thought, and most of my other projects I have to pay attention to what I'm doing.

But yeah. I had to get up and go get a "friend." Sadly, the only friends I have handy are ones made of fabric and filled with stuffing, but it helps a little bit.

I did get hugged by a couple people at church, including Mike, who hadn't done so for a couple weeks (he's stuck up in the choir now, so doesn't come down at greeting time - he caught me after church). He asked me how my mom was doing. She's doing fine, and I told him she was.....but honestly I wish he had asked how I was doing. I mean, I'm basically OK but I think in some ways I'm less OK than my mom; it is really a thing to be working full time (and then some) when dealing with grief, even "older" grief that isn't so fresh. And I don't even know what would help, other than time...maybe having fewer responsibilities and maybe I can knock out a few of the things nagging at my mind in this coming week and I won't feel quite so bad then. But I think this is just going to be another hard semester, especially with the new class.