I go to visit Ailish’s grave about once a week. Often, but not always, on Fridays.

I am quite looking forward to the spring; the cemetery will install Ailish’s headstone, and I think we have chosen it with thought and love.

When I visit, I tend to walk around, counterclockwise, and often talk, sharing things from my week and expressing how much I miss Ailish. I was there on Wednesday and noticed that the grass has been worn down in a circle from my pacing.

The bus driver entered a plea yesterday. He plead not guilty to both charges against him. A trial was scheduled for June 11, 2012, two hundred and sixty three days later. Coincidentally, two hundred and sixty three days is how long I was married to Ailish, before the bus driver struck and killed her.

I have very little to say here. The bus driver received two charges against him: failing to yield to a pedestrian in a crosswalk; and careless driving. Considering that Ailish had the right of way, was in a marked crosswalk, and had a walk signal, being charged with only two traffic code violations already seems like a slap on the wrist. I am disappointed that he plead not guilty.

Dealing with estate issues requires patience.

Today, the bus driver was scheduled to appear in court to plead to his charges. I didn’t go to court; there was no point, his hearing was scheduled in front of a Justice of the Peace. In the late afternoon, I called to find out the results. Even with the docket number, there was much confusion. Eventually, after I had been on hold for almost fifteen minutes, the lady on the other end of the phone determined that the case had been further delayed until Wednesday. If I call back in 48 hours, they should be able to tell me what happened. Or maybe the case will be delayed further.

I finally received Ailish’s life insurance cheque, and deposited it today. That process required me to answer some rather invasive questioning from the bank clerk (“What did you sell to the City?”, “Was she a bicylist?”). The transaction also apparently required a bank manager and numerous telephone calls, as well as a detailed description concerning the hold placed on the newly deposited funds.

With that taken care of, I picked up supper from Tim Horton’s, only to have my debit card declined on a $9.51 transaction.

So, back to the bank. Now I have to explain to them how holds work on newly deposited funds. It turns out they had decided to place two holds on my chequing account, leaving my balance rather far in the red.

I’m not quite sure why everything must be so confusing, time-consuming, and difficult. I would have expected banks to regularly deal with cheques, or the court system to regularly deal with cases. But I really should not single out these two examples; pretty much every company I’ve dealt with in the past 145 days has been like this.

On weekend mornings, Ailish and I would cook breakfast. This requires two people.

I was responsible for the coffee and the eggs (poached medium, of course). And setting the table. Ailish was responsible for cooking the bacon (extra crispy), and pointing out all the things I had forgotten to put on the table when I set it. We’d handle our own toast. Me, because I liked having the toast ready and buttered for when the eggs were finished. Ailish, because she couldn’t stand cold toast and so had to time it to perfection.

It’s really quite difficult to get the timing down exactly. Coffee’s easy, of course. But bacon takes far longer to cook than eggs do to poach, so we had a whole system in place. I would set the table and then prepare the coffee. While Ailish started on the bacon, I would set up the egg poacher. Just before she flipped the second set of bacon, I’d plug in the egg poacher. Then, we’d put in the toast. Ailish would examine the table and point out all the things I had forgotten this time. Once that was corrected, the bacon would be finished, the toast would pop up, and the eggs would buzz. Breakfast would be perfect.

It just doesn’t work by myself.

Today is my birthday.

It is also four years since I started dating Ailish. You can read the story of how we started dating here. We actually started dating on the 2nd, but it was kind of early-morning on the 2nd.

I was remembering back to my birthday in 2007. I celebrated it at Ailish’s place. She cooked me dinner and what I particularly remember was desert. She had made a sort of porcupine out of various fruits, including a liberal amount of pineapple, which we had just been discussing via email. She also gave me some candies for a gift. :)

The porcupine, particularly, was wonderful and made me laugh. I think Ailish was a bit disappointed that I didn’t eat the whole thing, but it was a significant amount of fruit. She must have spent quite a while preparing it.

That was a great birthday, made better by us starting to date, officially, in the early hours of September 2nd, once I returned home.