Karwoski Life

This week has been a bit emotional for me, for various reasons. I think I’m just so ready for Matt to come home and for us to be together again. It’s been so hard to be apart, and it seems to be getting harder all the time. I think the fact that we’re coming up on the 1 year anniversary of Matt’s hemorrhage is weighing on my mind. It seems like we spent each day, week, and month after September moving farther and farther away from the ugliness of that horrible time in our lives…putting it behind us and moving on, which was good. Now, as we approach the anniversary, it’s bringing up all kinds of memories and emotions that I would just assume forget. I’m sure it will be better as we move past the anniversary and put more time between us and that infamous date, but I suspect the approach of September will always stir things up deep inside. I just hope that with each passing year, the feelings are less and less intense. Of course, I also made the mistake of watching parts of our wed...

Well, we’ve made a decision about when Matt is coming home! We talked about it a lot the past few weeks, as the time was approaching. He knew he wanted to be home before his birthday (the 9th) and before the one year anniversary of his injury (the 14th)…so, we have decided that he’ll come home on the 1st! That way we can enjoy the long holiday weekend together at home, and get all settled in before starting the next phase of the journey. So, we are really on the final countdown now! Less than 2 weeks to go!!! YAHOO!! It’s hard to believe that he will have been there for almost 12 weeks…the time has gone by fast, and yet we are SO ready to get back home and move on from here. Matt has done well in Omaha; he has honed his skills and worked hard to make some good gains. We are looking forward to getting home and figuring things out around the house again. This weekend at the hotel we got around pretty well. Every time we are together I am more and more confident in his ability to function...

I had a thought the other day…by the time Matt comes home from his stay at Omaha, he will have spent 6 of the past 12 months away from home. It just really hit me, how much time he’s spent in some sort of rehab/hospital setting in the past year…and it’s no wonder that I’m going crazy waiting for him to come back. More and more I am just feeling desperate for us to get back to some sort of normal life together – to have lazy Saturdays in our own home, to eat together on our patio, or in our family room, or at our dining table, to go to sleep together in our own bed, and wake up together as well, to have that quiet time at the end of the day together, getting ready for bed and talking about the days events…we always have our best talks right before bed. It seems unimaginable to me that we have spent so many nights apart…it is hard to grasp the fact that nearly a year has passed since our lives took this unexpected detour. I think of all the changes, all the things we’ve learned…the vario...

Well another week has come and gone…the time is flying by and we are both starting to look ahead to Matt’s homecoming. I know he still has 4 weeks left, but we are on the downhill slide, at last! We are both very anxious to have him back at home to start yet another phase of the journey. Even though there are lots of unknowns for our future, we both agree that this homecoming will go much smoother than the last one…that he is so much stronger and more capable of doing things, and the transition back home should be easier. Of course, we’ve learned that with each transition there are frustrations and unexpected things are bound to pop up. But, I think we are both better prepared to deal with them now, than before. Matt and I talk a lot about the future and he is very hopeful about things, and is also down to earth about his expectations. He’s working as hard as he can, to get as good as he can, but understands that he may not be exactly what he was before. His psychologist put it ...

Our cat, Steve, is what we have lovingly called the ‘World’s Greatest Cat’. He is the opposite of most cats, who are often too independent and skiddish to be of much fun. Unlike most cats, our Steve prefers to cuddle, hang out, snooze, and just plain be lazy. He is also, not the most nimble of felines. He tends to miss his target when attempting to jump on small surfaces, he has been known to roll off the edge of the bed and land with a thud, and generally moves pretty slow (unless our niece Meghan is approaching with her high pitched squeal of delight…’KITTY’!). Every once in a while he gets a wild hair up his butt and runs around like a crazed animal…but it’s pretty rare, and mostly in the evening when we are all downstairs. We will hear him running around the upstairs in a wild frenzy…I think just reveling in the fact that the dogs are downstairs and he’s got a few moments of freedom. And then, he just kicks back and takes a nap. Well, Steve is apparently completely lost without Mat...

Here are some better pics from the car show!!!!

Ok, so they put a butt load...and I mean a BUTT load of pictures of the QLI race day/car show event on their website...and here is the only one of the TA. How disappointing! You can see George from the side, and the other guy is Dave...a fellow resident and gear head. I'm going to see if I can't get track down some better pics. I will post them when I do. You can see the rest of the pics here: http://www.qliomaha.com/Race_Day/