¿Y Maria? ¡Se Fue...!

(Translation: And Maria? She left.)

A complete list of the wedding party's attendees would include:
My wife and I (at least I remember us being there)
My older brother (best man/ one of the Best men/ second marriage certificate witness)
Maria Sanchez (best woman, but not a Best woman/ oh, wait, they call that a "bridesmaid"/ except I think her two sons [at the time of the wedding, since she might have more children since] disqualifies her from the "maid" part/ first marriage certificate witness)
her two sons (if she had another, she could have made a TV show out of it)
My dad and step-mom
I would say the minister, except I'm pretty sure he left right after the ceremony
Lorena (not the one who is my wife, but the lady that introduced us)
Two other female co-workers, only one of whom I remember the name of (Angie)

Obviously, not the most-heavily attended marriage in history, but I'll take it anyway.  The reason I bring all of this up is because I finally decide to contact Maria to tell her about Lorena's death and, as the title would indicate, there was no Maria there.  I can't remember if it was a landline or a cellphone, but either way, the number is in the hands of someone else.  So, Maria, if you're out there, I didn't lose that number, I didn't (at the time I used it) want to call nobody else (I'm working with lyrics here, so please forgive the double negative), sending it off to a letter to myself wouldn't have helped anyway, it's not the only one I owned (although it is the only one I owned for you), and, finally, I suppose it could have made me felt better, except I was already home.
Oh, one more piece of trivia of dubious importance: Lorena (my deceased wife, not the co-worker by the same name who introduced us) was staying with Maria somewhere between 3 and 9 months after she stopped working for the other Lorena's brother and sister-in-law and before she moved in with me.

Bedroom update!

Or, It's Not What You Think¹

Listen up, you yahoos!  I know what probably many of you might be thinking after reading such a titillating and tantalizing title: he's been recently widowed, he's posting this after a Saturday night (spent prowling meeting places, no doubt), and now he's talking about the bedroom, so it must be about that.  Puh-lease!  Give me more credit than that.  If I had found another companioness to companionate² with, I would have informed my family immediat... well, at least one week before our wedding⁴, if past performance is any indicator of future results⁶.
Anyway, after my wife died, I tossed the too-small cupboard (that's the closet... closest approximation that I can think of.  Although it wasn't made to hold cups, it was about the same size and had a shelf which we somehow lost) and only-slightly-bigger "media center" and moved the TV and the computer/computer desk about a month ago, during which time I somehow lost the cord that connects the TV to the cable box.  A few days later, while calling the cable company to find out why the TV wasn't picking up any channels, I managed to disconnect the cable box and lose misplace it as well (Trend?  What trend?).  Then, just yesterday, I built fabricated constructed formed a bookshelf, the details of which can be found in various footnotes. The next step I plan to undertake involves moving books that I had stacked on the bookshelf in the living room to the bookshelf I... had a hand in the formation of in the bedroom.  Plus, while I have more or less separated items of hers that I have no interest in keeping, I still have to get them boxed up and see if my grandson wouldn't mind helping me take them to a donation center.

Getting so much (or at least somewhat) better all (or at least some of) the time

Then again, I suppose it depends on what's getting better.  Physically, I feel good... like I knew that I would now.  Ok, maybe "know" is a bit strong considering how I have been feeling the past few days due to the heat.  However, at the moment, whether it's because it's early morning and it hasn't heated up yet, the temperature has cooled a little, or maybe my figuring out that the fan has a high¹ setting for a reason, I seem to have a bit more energy.  Oh, great.  Just as I finish writing that, my eyes don't want to stay open.  After these messages, I'll be right back.
So... did you miss me?  Of course you did.  But let's return to our feature discussion and turn to how I have been dealing with my wife's death.  That remains virtually unchanged: long periods of coping followed by gut-wrenching moments of one thing or another reminding me of her.  Even events as innocuous as buying a rotisserie chicken (the focal point of many of meal since moving to Los Angeles) become an opportunity for such an attack, as if going to or arriving at one of the bus stops near our home or shopping at the pharmacy that filled her prescriptions or the other stores and restaurants in the same plaza didn't provide enough.  Yet from the very fields of familiarity where grow such weeds of sorrow also sprout forth the soothing herbs of tender memories.  Perhaps time can teach me how to better tend the latter while eliminating the other.

My Mom... celebrity lookalike?

I'll just let you, the readers, be the judge:

Then again, I could just be falling into the temptations of letting my imagination run away with me.
Did I mention how much I love you, Mom?

Enlarging the (Google+) circle

Or, A Lesson In the Fine Art of Subtlety

Warning!            Warning!            Warning!
The following post is extremely graphic¹ in nature.

Alas and alack! It appears that perhaps some of my dear readers remain uninformed regarding the means by which to add another person to a Google+ circle.  For example, perhaps someone has a brother who has demonstrated that he loves his younger sister more by already adding her to his Google+ circle at least a week ago and to whom she has yet to reciprocate such feelings, however limited they be in comparison to his.  Or maybe one has a son or even a brother-in-law... it doesn't matter since I shall graciously provide the information to rectify this situation in my Jon Best's Creatively-Named "How to Add Someone to a Google+ Circle" Guide.