Indian food...

is good for what ails me, usually.

This weekend has been a bit difficult, and Emily has gotten on my nerves a lot, and even Jon is bugging me for some reason. I'm glad he's done with the grant proposal and available to be with us now, but it's almost like I got used to having more time and space, although I didn't appreciate it at the time. I think if we get a chance to get out by ourselves and spend some time together we will probably be fine.

Nothing sounded good today, in terms of doing family stuff, and he finally suggested we just drive over to Pittsburgh to this one Indian restaurant we found last fall. So we did that, stuffed ourselves silly (at least Jon and I did; Emily ate rice and naan bread), then took her to the "playground mall" -- what Emily calls the nice mall near Pittsburgh that has an indoor playground (and decent stores and people who look like they are somewhat educated and civilized and come in a variety of colors and ethnicities, unlike this place). We got back and will go see some fireworks tonight.

I think part of my problem this weekend is that it reminds me a lot of Hannah. One of the best pictures of her, where she's dancing in that flowered dress, was taken on 4th of July 2003, at Lili's house (the girls were putting on a "dance show") and after that we went out to Willow Metropark and saw fireworks. That whole night was so much fun, and it's one of the last few times we had a holiday together as a family.

Emily has been asking about her more and more, and sort of putting together the bits and pieces of information that she has understood up until now. Today in the car she was asking about whether Hannah cried when the car bumped into us and she got the boo-boos, so we had to try somehow to explain that she probably died almost instantly and never knew what happened and never got a chance to cry, but that she also didn't feel stuff hurting.

I cannot believe how hard this is. It's almost like for the first time I have had to acknowledge that she actually DIED, which sounds strange, but I think I've been shielding myself from that. I know my knee-jerk reaction when I hear about someone else losing a child is, "I can't imagine what they're going through", which is ludicrous because I know all too well, but on some level I don't want to and so I disassociate myself from it.

I'm starting to realize that I am far more affected by this, more upset, depressed, confused, traumatized, etc. than I have acknowledged to myself. I *feel* normal, but I think the truth is I no longer know what "normal" is, or that it's changed for me.