Why I don't like parties

On balance it would have been more satisfying to stay in but had I stayed in, I would have made the mystery of what the evening could have been a reason to be disappointed in myself. The party was a lot of standing, a lot of small talk, a lot of people surprised to see me there, and a lot of relief when I left to go home. I'm still not happy with myself and for practically the same reasons I'm always unhappy, but at least my instinct about the fun I was sure I was not going to have was spot on. There is at least that. I wore my good blue jeans, a flattering top. Truth is most women don't dress for each other and they don't dress for all guys. They dress for the guy they hope will notice them. And not just notice them but appreciate them in a way that makes them wonder what you're all about.

I grow sad on many things, especially lately, but right now I am sad over missing that rare fitting puzzle piece for me in relationships. The one where the guy thinks I'm awesome, the guy who likes the things about me I never expected in addition to the things I hoped he would admire or like. The one where I never once wish I was someone else. Where I'm so glad I'm me and not more or less of anything. It's a real damn shame that didn't work out when I did have that. It's made it impossible to want anything else. I do genuinely get people who feel they've peaked. That life has nothing more to offer them but sorrow, struggle, and disappointment. Everyone has sorrow, struggle, disappointment, the insult of my existence is there is nothing good to break it up. I've made my absent minded, work friend boss the best thing in Philly to happen to me. He's my closest friend here and we aren't even friends. But he's good to me so I'll try not to diminish our relationship by outlining what it isn't.

Rejection

Man....it's been a whole month since this started. My mother transfers to a new hospital tomorrow where they will investigate why she's not getting better. One of the theories is an infection of the donor kidney. I really don't think I could do much worse in trying to do good. First she suffers then she almost dies. Great job Ava. Got any other assassin organs you want to donate? As Homer Simpson would say, "Never try."

Would it be wrong to consider this an object lesson for anything I try to love? The head knows that sentence was uber-dramatic, the heart wonders if it's true.

Hatin on a G

There's a great piece of poetry by the rapper T.I. in his single You Don't Know Me;

Contrary to your belief, I'm as a real as can be,
Fuck your thoughts and your feelings * you don't know me.

I just like that song. No particular reason to bring it up other than I just discovered it and by discovered I mean my Dad told me about it. My Dad is into trip hop too. I don't even know what that is but my brother does and it kind of messed with his head a little to see it in my Dad's play list. That man loves him some music. I love that about him. He doesn't care if it's Sinatra or whatever trip hop is, if it speaks to him on some level, he likes it.

I just got an e-mail on the dating website I insist on being on so I can maintain a baseline depression. He sent me a picture of a puppy and the following:

Hello, you are really friendly--and---cute!
Would you consider an interracial?

I responded:

Thanks for the gift (the puppy picture). A puppy picture-you really can't go wrong with baby animals. So you're an interacial, eh? As soon as I know what races those are, I can make a final determination as to whether I do your particular mix. That's only because I'm insanely racist against certain Caucasian heritages and really fond of others. Sorry, sometimes I
can't help myself.

I am open to dating anyone I get along with.

Ava
--
I keep seeing guys only three years older than me and forgetting we're only three years apart. I'm getting old. 39 is not too old for me. When did that happen? My gray hair is making an increasingly visible march through my hair and while it's still a bit of a novelty, I'm starting to think it ages me a bit. It's one thing to wonder if something is going to last forever and quite another to wonder if you'll ever have something at all. I keep wondering if I should stop being so hard on myself and get my hook up on because I'm simply not a relationship person or keep waiting for nothing to happen while I nurse impossible crushes on the worlds least available men (to me). I have no reason at all to think I will ever be a different kind of girl. I'm just not the girl who always has a guy, I'm the girl who never has a guy and who I'll bet had her girlfriends wondering at one time or another if maybe I wasn't into guys (not that there's anything wrong with that). I wish I was that girl but that girl can no better survive without a guy than I can manage to have a guy of any sort interested in being with me for any reason. And no, I am NOT counting bus drivers, security guards, or street sweepers. If my girlfriends dated those guys, I would but they don't so I won't.

Arg

Sometimes I wonder

Every family has their dynamic and likely to outsiders it seems strange or dysfunctional but in our family, I think I've always kind of been one of the grownups. When my father was away in training, I balanced the checkbook and reconciled the books with him. When I was in college, I arranged my classes to pick up my sister from school. When I left home I sent for her during summer vacation, paid for her summer camp. I've slept on the floor next to my sister's bed while she was sick so I could catch her vomit in a bucket and my Mom could get a full night's sleep; now I'm holding a bucket to my mother's mouth so she can spit her phlegm. I have told my sister repeatedly she is the reason I won't have kids but perhaps I've had my kids. Perhaps I've done it all already or at least my version. Sometimes I wonder if this role of being a third parent and helper to my dad is supposed to be preparing me for something or if it is the substitute for the family I'll never create.

Something, Anything

I thank the Lord for a sound mind and the activity of my limbs. I grew up hearing people say that. It was a common preamble during testimony service, one people would say but rarely have any experience losing either faculty. I know I had my moments during boot-gate 2009 when I lamented my foot jail, sleeping with it, hot muggy days in it, not being able to drive because it was on my right foot, the totally clashing ankle brace I wore for a month after including to a friend's wedding (the one picture I saw-not happy, eyes go right to the ankle). Total bummer. But tonight at the gym (which I badly needed), I was taking a break between sets and thinking of my mother who can't even sit up without assistance. The shoulder presses were hard but not as hard as it is for her to go from the hospital to rehab so she can try to walk again even while she struggles to eat still. A person who has absolutely no expertise in renal patients told my father there was nothing they could do about her inability to eat or keep anything in her she does eat, that's what renal patients to. Total sack of shit community hospital fucking attending physician said that to my father. What. the. fuck. I seriously want to burn the place down--actually I just want to lock him in his car covered in napalm and set him on fire, just him. Tell him that's just what napalm does, nothing I can do about it. My father wrote us devastated. I told him no one is less credible than this attending since Mom's doctor at Hopkins (a diabetic nephrologist-kind of an expert at this) kept hunting for this thing that has ailed her since the transplant and made it really hard to stay healthy. Same thing with her less competent current nephrologist. Never said what was going on with her was normal. Kept trying to figure out what it was. My god. Every vet I've ever met is leaps and bounds better than any medical doctor I've ever met. That's what's wrong with healthcare. Not a damn thing caring about it.

So I started this post intending to speak of how lucky I am to have the activity of my limbs, that I dug deeper tonight knowing my Mom is struggling far harder than I am with a bicep curl. I'm conflicted about what to do next. A part of me says stop everything, go home, stay until everything is better. Or stay until...until what? I stayed until the transplant, now I wish we hadn't done it. This is just a very hard time. I've been short with friend and foe alike. A person I do not like is coming into our office tomorrow and I'm not sure I'm going to make it without saying something inappropriate. My mother said she understood how people become addicted to drugs when I saw her last weekend. They had to give her morphine for her pain and she felt so good after, she said she wished she could always feel that way. This is a woman who wouldn't take tylenol after her hysterectomy. Seriously God, coming through with that healing would be pretty great and well-timed right now.

We're all coping or not coping in our own way. I'm trying to use exercise but I do feel often like none of this matters and I should just invite either one of the worthless guys I knew over just to have the company and distraction. I just want something else to think about before I go to bed and wake up in the morning and throughout the day. I want something good to happen.

I'm on my period

That's more an alibi for what follows than a piece of information the world just needed to know about me. I read a story long ago written by a woman who was very close to her dying father-in-law. She wrote about her grief and about her husband's grief. She asked her husband at one point what she could do for him and he told her, have sex with me every night. He wasn't being facetious or crass, he just wanted the comfort, release, the life affirming thing that sex can be. Most of my girfriends have rarely been without a man in their life. Even when they say they need to not be with someone, they are still kind of seeing someone. I've only met 2 other people who are, as Ashley coined, 'sex camels' who go without for long stretches. I am without a man in my life and at times like these, I could really use the affirmation, the comfort, the release.

I know I *just* said I was happy being unmarried but can a girl get a boyfriend or something?

This is the hard part

Dear Dad,

Oh holy mother of god. I've been thinking about it and yes, you did say absolutely every soul crushing, hope stealing, deadly thing you could have said to Mom tonight. The part of me that wondered as a teenager why she stayed married to you kind of hoped she would ask for a divorce instead of turning her head and looking out the window to be somewhere other than listening to you say she couldn't go home. A part of me wondered if it would have been better for her to have slipped away from us without having to endure this hardest part, especially since she has to do it with you.

~Ava

It is only a matter of time before we blame the sick for their ills. Why do we do this? Why do we pretend life is fair? That if you eat healthy and blah, blah, that life won't just steal your health anyway. Why do those of us who enjoy health feel like we've done something to earn it? Don't get me wrong, my chubby ass is in the gym working it out to try to mitigate the ass kicking life has in store for me but I'm not 'healthy' because I'm good, I'm healthy because my ass is lucky. I want to tell my mom it's okay if she doesn't want to fight to stay here. I hate to see her so miserable, so alone, so without hope that she can even eat normally again. Who would force someone to stay here under those circumstances? I want to quit my job and just stay home to get her better. I don't want to leave her to the psychological torture of my Dad. It was truly awful. He went without a breath for 3 minutes covering themes like the hospital sending her home to die, sending her a shitty rehab place where she would be left in a corner, all the things she couldn't do right now, how he would figure out how to live on a fixed income so they could both retire, things he needed to do for work, how he didn't want to move to be close to her family.... I finally said, 'this isn't really hospital talk.' I mean, Jesus man why do I have to tell you that? We didn't know this time last week if she was brain dead or would ever regain consciousness. She sat up today. For fuck's sake, calm yourself man. She's in a really tough spot. It's hard to be so weak you can't reposition yourself on the bed. Give. her. a. break.

Dear Mom,

This is not your fault. You are a trooper and continue to be. We didn't help you as much as we should. We left you to your own care and hoped our nagging and goading would motivate you when you were clawing your way through every day just trying to get by. We failed you. I'm sorry. I love you and I want more than anything for you to be well. I question my very faith in the face of your suffering and I know you wonder if it will ever be better, if it's worth all the hard work just to be here miserable. I know my answer will always be yes, I want you here in whatever condition you are in, but I also know my answer is selfish. I love you and want more than anything to see you healed whether this side or beyond. I guess what I'm saying is you don't have to stay here for me. I will never be over you and I wish you didn't have to suffer.You have done so much. You have seen the world, visited me every place I've lived, held wise counsel both in my youth and now. You have remained married to a very flawed man. I don't know how you did it. Seriously. I mean, you had some money and you know your family would have helped raise us. If they were handing out Nobel prizes for living with him, I think you'd sweep. I hope it's the gall bladder. I want so much for you to feel better. If there were justice your drug addict sister wouldn't be the healthier of the two of you.

A good old fashioned fight

Most times my tack in confrontational situations is to write a letter or just ignore it until I can discuss it in good humor or not at all. I rarely want to talk about something at the moment it bothers me. I like to examine it, figure out what bothers me, what parts of the interpersonal conflict are mine (i.e. I'm more mad at me than them), what parts are useless staying mad about because they are things that can't be changed, and then press on. I don't like emotional conversation because it's messy and rarely drills down to actual issues, it's name calling, it's walking out, it's accusatory tones, it's just not usually useful and it wasn't useful this morning when Ashley and I had it out either. But it felt good to leave her ass at home to take the bus to Virginia and I hoped she had a horrible trip because I'm evil but also because her sense of entitlement pissed me the fuck off.

No fight, even between strangers is ever just about whatever set it off. This fight was no different. We're rounding the corner on a year of occupation. She's a semi-terrible roommate (the semi an allowance for the times we enjoy in spite of ourselves). Her room is terrible, she does next to no household work. I even wash her clothes because she refuses to pay attention to where the soap goes and I don't want to buy a new washer before I go. She has never vacuumed, she's destroyed my property, disrespected my home, and daily disrespects me by not showing the simplest considerations. And though I shouldn't, I get overly emotionally involved when I see people making stupid or inefficient decisions. She makes them all the time and then argues her stupid position with conviction I wish she had for making better decisions.

The details of this fight are not important. The upshot is I left this morning to visit my Mom and she could have gone with me. She didn't and she is still on her way here. If my calculations are correct, a three hour trip has taken her over 8 hours. Time she could have spent with Mom. I never expect her to acknowledge I was right but I do wonder what she'll do next time. I'm usually pretty good about not rubbing it in. We'll see how I hold up.

It's that time again

It's that still time between big things when I have just enough time to be wistful and sad. I'm not proud of this and can probably rationalize it but I think I fall in love with someone I work with everywhere I go. They can be a boy or a girl but it's that one person that makes leaving so hard. I've worked in small organizations my entire adult life and have never worked with anyone twice so as much as I hope to work with my boss again, I'll be lucky to grab a drink with him or catch him by chance in the hallway and that makes me sad. When I left for Philly, it was time. And leaving Philly, it's time for that too. Even if I stayed my boss would be gone and he's the best part of coming to work.

So I'm doing that thing. That thing that fills the quiet with noise. When it's quiet I'm sad or I worry. I think about increasingly awkward ways to be a total fan boy to my boss; the heartfelt letter, the ridiculously inappropriate expensive gift. Arg how I hate change and losing things. How I hate breaking new people in, feeling them out, treading lightly. How I hate finding where to shop, where not to shop. But I keep choosing it because I hate being bored more. Because I know there's a small town girl in me that would be content to stay and never even know what the people do three towns over. That hates seeing the same thing over and over again. That feels relieved and blessed that I sold my home and no longer have a place I have to come back to. I love feeling unattached. I feel both claustrophobic and nostalgic when I go anywhere I've already been even though a part of me really hates going somewhere new. Mostly because of the people. So it's that time again.

Boo-hoo. Sniff-sniff.

I hope you new people are awesome.

Getting back into the swing of things

I forgot my password so I was locked out of here for a few days but now I'm back. (Yay). Much to cover, much of what I meant to post will never make it here but before I lay my head down for the evening, the high points follow:

-Mom is doing better. Though she is still in the hospital and we still have much ground to cover, she is awake, she is talking, she is here.

-I woke up this morning feeling badly. I stayed home. I ended up taking several extended naps in the sun. I'm pretty sure my sun napping habit is to blame for the number of people in the hospital who mistook me for my mom's sister. Her face was smooth, soft, and unlined even unconscious. We were all a little worse for wear but I'm apparently wearing it worse than everyone else.

-Sometimes I wish I were married. Most times I'm happy I'm not.

-I really like letting Baloo loose to chase squirrels. She's sprawled out on her doggy couch totally pooped.

What I've learned (I think)

I've learned that while I will never be ready for my parents to pass, there is nothing unsaid between us. There are potential milestones in my life I would like for them to be present for (marriage, children), and things I wish we had done (family vacation) but I'm not estranged from either one of them like my brother and sister are from my dad. Probably takes twice as long to work that stuff out in the vacuum of loss so I hope they both make it a point to try to get there before a very sad time.

I've enjoyed the conversations with my father during this time. We're not a TV family but some of the conversations we have feel like they could have been written for a movie. They are honest, articulate, funny, deep. I know my brother and sister are still figuring out how to have that kind of conversation with dad but I think it will come.

I think dad is right, my mom would do better emotionally without him than he would do without her. He's been a mess. That woman is his entire world. But on any given ordinary day, we all take each other for granted. We take ourselves for granted. We make plans assuming we will be able to follow through on them. We hurry off the phone assuming we can call someone later. We get pissed at one another and don't speak. Whenever we don't have to acknowledge our mortality, we live like we are here forever. This time last week, I was attempting to get my mind around losing my mother at any moment. Anytime we weren't physically in the room, we panicked thinking she might slip away and would have been alone. Even driving back Monday night to drop Ashley off, we figured we might miss her so we lingered in her room talking and hoping she could hear us so she would at least know we were there.

Mercifully, cruelly, callously, life does go on. It reminded me in the occasional call from work from someone who didn't know and in the updates I received from my boss. People are having bad days because they broke a nail or got a flat tire or because they don't know how long it will be before they fully recover from an injury. In the middle of all the family drama, I went one morning before going to the hospital and got my car washed and my eyebrows shaped. It felt so weird to do. It felt weird to decide I was hungry and leave the room to eat. Seemed selfish and pragmatic at the same time. My eyebrows were out of control, my car was filthy, I'm glad both are looking good now. Still kind of felt like a BP executive taking a vacation.

As much as I want to seize this moment as a carpe diem live fearlessly moment, I still won't ask the cute guy who parks next to me out for a drink though I just adore his way. Saw him this morning. He noticed I had washed my car (he was giving me crap about how filthy it was last time I saw him) and then he gave me a hug and told me he was on his way out of town for a week to see family. Bless his West Virginian accent cotton socks. I just want to put him in my pocket. If I knew that was the last chance I had to make my move, I might have taken the plunge and just proposed we grab a drink sometime. Instead I told him I would see him when he got back. So basically, I've learned nothing from the last week.

In rare form: Ava's day of rage

It started yesterday afternoon with Verizon. Or maybe it started with the blood pressure monitor beeping and the unsuccessful attempts to lower mom's blood pressure. I don't know. I just know the monitor was beeping, my phone wasn't working, and the worst representative in the world from Verizon was explaining to me how phones are now computers like I just arrived here from outer space. When I told her I wasn't happy with her service and wanted to speak to someone else, she told me I was going to hear the same thing from anyone else. That's when I turned the corner I think. I told her I didn't ask her to tell me what someone else might say to me, I asked for a number for someone else to speak to. Then I wrote the website and called her criminally incompetent. I'm not sure how much is just being wrung out by ill parents and well parents making themselves mentally ill with sleep deprivation and stress plus regular life stuff but I am irritable as hell. I think only the people who know me know I'm really irritated because when I called my boss out on this furlough business letting him know I did take his decision personally and no matter what happened I was going to remember he had a choice and chose me, while I was candid, even by my standards, I don't feel he really felt the burn of what I was saying. My dad has that problem sometimes. He says things in such a way that people are more inclined to think he's wickedly caustic instead of really terribly serious. I think he actually told one of the doctors treating my mom that he would either have a friend for life or his last enemy. I don't know how he gets away with this stuff. Maybe because its clever and he's smiling when he says it so a person can walk away and only later think, WTH?! I think that guy meant he was going to kill me if things didn't go well.

BBC is reporting that we've all got a stay of execution for at least another month on the furlough and the adage of the month, danger averted was never really dangerous at all comes to mind in the exercise of the last few days when productivity was directed towards figuring out how to be less productive. I feel about the same as I did during the infamous hanging chad debate on who actually won the 2000 election. I was overseas at the time and it was embarrassing. The Brits sent me a joke e-mail declaring the great experiment of American democracy a failure. The email also announced their intention to bring America back under the British Commonwealth. Ha-ha, that's hillarious. Both then and now, both sides get a big F. The last time we had this kind of shut down it was also Republican stonewalling adventure against a Democratic president (Clinton). I wasn't a fan of Pelosi as just a human being but seriously Republicans? I'm so tired of the revival of irrelvant debates, tired of being emotionally agitated by the newsertainment that dominates our media. One has to work hard to even try to understand what the f is really going on because it is in each sides interest to distill their issue into the simplest most palatable sound bite and demonize the other side's position. Let's face it America, 9/10ths of us would be happy to just live and let live/die/whatever. We care about the air and water in mostly an abstract way, we just don't want to be uncomfortable or get sick from either one. We want to be able to attain a reasonable standard of living (totally relative), and if asked if we want more will always say yes. We will say no to anything you propose to take away, even if we aren't using it. The evil in poisoning the discourse to the point it isn't productive is I think it's a smokescreen to get people all wrapped up in what a scary idiot Sarah Palin is so we don't pay any attention to what people who are actually in government are doing. We get wrapped up in statistics that will probably never apply to us and take a position simply because we were offered a question to have an opinion on. Not because we are actually substantive on the issue.

Fun times. I'm long overdue for the gym. Need to bleed off the rage-o-meter so I can stop scaring my friends.

When I take the time to think about it

This furlough business is like being forced at gunpoint to pick your favorite child and then being told the gun was never loaded. Sure, you're relieved but now you've got a kid who didn't make the cut and is never going to forget they weren't picked. Any pragmatist knows they are totally replaceable, sometimes they don't even need to be replaced, what they did can be done without, but no one likes to be reminded of their overall insignificance. So fine, maybe Congress will pull its head out of its ass to get some air but I'm still looking at my organization and thinking, seriously, what the fuck? Gotta say, it's got me thinking I ought to act the part of being really non-essential. I don't care how the blow is softened, I will never believe it was arbitrary. I've got to say though my girlfriend who is essentially between assignments and can only work a few hours a day made the cut so it's hard for me to believe we drilled down to the individual level if that decision passed muster.

Anyways, my boss is still awesome. I don't even care if he's a terrible human being in disguise because if he is, he's so good at it, I have to respect it. He's still hitting it out of the park, even when he has to tell me I didn't make the cut. He hated making that call and I knew he hated making that call. Going to miss working with that guy. Even if I'm not his favorite.

The Easter Bunny is Satan's messenger

I officially hate April. Wish Ashley had been born some other month so I could hate the entire month without exception.

It doesn't seem to be fair, that life marches on even while yours stands still. Maybe I will be furloughed next week, maybe I will be important enough to stay on. Just got a call from my boss, I'm on on the furlough list. Can't go to work even if I want to. Awesome. What the fuck ever. I've refused to follow the discussion because it despairs me and I've had enough of that. I will say the consideration of a government shutdown makes me feel like I don't live in a superpower. I feel like I live in a developing nation that doesn't have its shit together. A nation that can be hijacked by idiots more enchanted by the David and Goliath scenario of being a minority that cripples the bad ol government that ironically employs them as well than they are with pragmatic forward looking solutions. Wonder how much the exercise of shutting down the government is costing. Wonder how much the uncertainty of a paycheck slows spending which in turn slow the economy. Just wonder how long this season in politics will last. Makes me sick.

Feeling somewhat out of the woods or at least not as deep and lost as we were, I feel the adage from a few posts ago, danger survived was never really dangerous, creeping into our thinking. We were emphatic on Monday that we were holding a family intervention to convince my mom to retire early. Today my dad backed off remarking she could do whatever she wanted. My girlfriend's husband was laid off, a girlfriend of mine just had surgery to remove breast tumors, my mother is critical but stable, I don't know if I will be able to go to work next week to try to dig out from this week, and I think the guy next door to us is dying. Nevermind the bigger world, earthquakes, Libya, whatever else is going on outside of my little universe. I want to cave into myself right now. I want to cry. But it doesn't help anything so I will nut up and look for the upside in this shit storm.

BFF Boss

My best and most trusted confidant in this has been my boss. He is my pen pal, my text pal. He tells me about work without pressuring me to come back to it. He makes me laugh, he remains curious but doesn't dwell or lament the situation. He doesn't ask about me or how anyone else is holding up. I don't know why he's ideal. I think he's kind of like my blog. It's a one way conversation that can turn into a dialogue. He doesn't ask me if he can do anything, he knows what he can do for me and he does it. He supports my absence and makes me laugh. Maybe because I don't expect anything from him have I been so impressed with him. We joke about streaming death metal 'music' in my mom's room, what I'm missing at work that he's going to take credit for, he gets me spun up about co-workers he knows I don't like and just gives me a break from all of this. He's just struck precisely the right note and I'm even more crazy about him than I ever was.

Today was a banner day. She opened her eyes when I called her name. I'm not sure how much she is seeing or understanding as she doesn't follow directions (squeeze my hand, blink) but seeing her eyes open when I call her name is just amazing. Her eyes are bloodshot and cloudy, the rims are so swollen it looks like tears welled up, but man oh man it was awesome to have her consistently respond to her name or just 'Mom.' When my Dad came in for his shift, I told him and he tried it and she opened her eyes. He was overwhelmed and bent down to kiss her forehead for a good 30 seconds. He said he had been on the kitchen floor praying today and now owed God something. Not sure what he promised God but he was so delighted to see his wife open her eyes. He texted me today and said he missed her. He's a mess. I would be a mess if I saw what he saw. Her talking one minute and 5 people working to stabilize her next. Today was Ashley's birthday. Opening her eyes was probably the best gift ever.

Photograph

I'm not sure why but we have been taking pictures of Mom. I don't know many people who like the pictures they take when conscious so I'm not sure why we are taking pictures of her in a state we certainly don't want to reminisce. If things go well, she will not want to see them either. A part of me thinks my father will whip out the pictures to make emphatic points during the conversation he hopes to have with her about retirement. I hope he doesn't, I can't see that going anywhere good. I took it one step further today. I have my actual camera here and I snapped a guilty picture (or three). My dad has sent some on to relatives who want to see and I've considered whether my close friends want to see. I think we take these pictures for the same reason people record the tornadoes and tsunamis heading straight for them. To memorialize, to make permanent witness to the trauma our minds will numb for us as time marches on.

There is a passage in the short story, How Beautiful With Shoes, I won't do it justice, but it says danger met and averted was never really dangerous at all. Essentially, it couldn't have been that bad if you survived. I know intellectually that isn't true. This is bad. Inching back from a fatal drop is not nothing. Still being in ICU is not nothing. Respirator is not nothing. But I see her wrinkle her sedated head when they move her around and I see her try to move her hands and feet which are restrained so she doesn't dislodge all the lines tethering her to this realm and I feel like she's going to make it. I feel like I will get to ask her if she heard me, if she remembers her silent coughs when her gag reflex was triggered by the tube down her throat when they changed her position. Ashley says she won't. Last time she was sedated she apparently didn't remember anything but this is also a woman who doesn't remember the things you tell her when she's awake. I hope she doesn't remember because we've said a lot of random-ass things just to fill the room with words. Mostly I hope she doesn't remember because she is cold and has a tube down her throat and nose and other things in her chest, neck, and hands. I'm cold in here and I'm healthy. I guess that's why I took the pictures. When I'm tempted to minimize the danger because it was survived, I'll have the photographs.

Sleepwatch 2011

Ashley and I got weepy as we quickly hauled ass out of town yesterday lamenting we hadn't done anything with our lives yet, there was so much more we wanted her to see us accomplish. It will never be enough though. I will never be ready. I have no doubt she would be irritated if she knew we were taking turns watching her sleep. I dropped my sister off today and then (naturally) went to the mall. When I got home, I hung out in the car not ready to come inside. My dad came out after a while and said he had been a little weepy but then concluded he didn't have anything to be weepy about. He had heard the latest from my sister indicating the weaning of another branch from the forrest of IV stands clustered around her bed. He vacillated between accepting they had a good run and optimism she would pull through and outlive him. He saw her almost slip away yesterday and it changed him. He said he didn't want to be left alone with us (the kids) and then asked if that was bad. I told him it wasn't good but it did touch me deeply. We appreciate sarcasm always. If humor is a deflection for things that hurt or scare us, we are some of the scardiest cats that ever were. I will never be ready to lose my parents. I was on the phone with my mother Wednesday but I needed to go grocery shopping and was eager to get on with it. I got in the elevator hoping not to lose the signal but I did. She didn't call back and neither did I. Two days later she's in the ICU. I've been talking her ear off. She probably doesn't hear me but if she does, she's probably annoyed that I'm killing her buzz with my incessant jabbering.

My brother is still in Omaha and I think we're a little mad that he isn't here but also understanding that it's not a small thing to jump on a plane to watch a forcibly sedated person sleep. Family stresses often grate at the raw unresolved issues between people. If he made an effort to visit normally, it wouldn't be as annoying that he hasn't dropped everything to help now. If I ever heard from my extended family, I would not be as pissy about them blowing up our phones now. I know she's their family too but I kind of want to circle the wagons and tell them to leave us alone. I'm still harboring some useless ill will from the kidney transplant when they inundated me with calls and texts about my mother and only one person asked about me. I'm a little jealous also I think of what she gets from them that she doesn't get from us but that's another story for another post.

Time to rally and head out for my shift. She would be so irritated at the fuss. Oh well. Guess she should get better so she can fuss at us about it.

Am I a crier?

I like to say I'm not a crier. I also like to say that people are what they describe they aren't and aren't what they describe they are. So I guess I'm a crier then. At least I was today. I was stoic, even philosophical, 'no one gets out alive' and other such intellectualizing of the circle of life or death. I was pragmatic, correctly assessing I could do nothing there to impact outcomes so I may as well continue on with work. And then I talked to my father and he cried. I didn't cry then and his emotional crack swept through like a squall, ending with an announcement that he had his moment and it was time to move on. He was describing watching my mother crash, she slipped away while he was talking to her. If he had left as he considered doing to grab a computer from work, we might have lost her then. Now he won't leave her side. She is overwhelmed with tubes, breathing by machine, eyes slightly open in her sedated state euphemistically referred to as 'rest' by the ICU staff.

I tried to be cool, relaying the information to my brother, noting she had a 'little crisis.' Then he asked what dad was going to do. A little welling, a tear or two. I composed myself, returned to the office. Eye contact with the boss was all it took. I lost it. Choking sobs. I was horrified. To his credit, he ended the meeting he was in and told me to go home. He gave me a great hug, told me he was sorry this was happening, loaded my purse with fun size Twix and sent me on my way.

What a guy.