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.