Not a very inspiring title, but since I went through the trouble of googling it for correct spelling it stays.

I have been getting tons accomplished (see: one less cat in my bathroom).  But I am getting a little worn down by it.  Yes, I have the flexible hardly-a-job-at-all-really schedule.  But this has allowed for me to try a few things here and there that seem so easy to fit into a few hours a week.

These days I’m stuck with a few hours in the afternoon where I sort of sit and drool until my PM activities take up.

I’m trying hard to not do that (sit and drool).  I’m trying to make time to sit at the computer and research stuff and do “work”.

Did you know that amazon.com is “work”?  (And you thought I was using quotes incorrectly!)

The sanctuary still takes up a big part of my week.  Or at least my week days.  Week days I’m in town.  I really only have 3 flexible days in my schedule and I do my best to volunteer all of those days in order to make the hourly requirements for my volunteer level.

It’s not the same.  I can’t remember how much I divulged when I left my paid position there, but suffice to say if there had been management/benefits/career advancement worth staying for then Gma would have had to suck it up and deal.  I made the decision to leave when many things were up in the air.  And now that the dust has settled…it’s not the same.  (And no one ever says that when the “not the” part is better than the “same”, do they?)

Yet I stay.  In part because at first I was concerned I needed more structure to my work week than 4 hours in the car, sixteen billion worried nosey questions, and some Jack Daniel’s.

And now?  Now I don’t know.  I suppose I stay because it’s a place where I am still an important person.  And I don’t have anywhere else that’s true.

But I am tempted to change that.  Tempted to look for another place where I am needed but not reminded of how it used to be.

In the middle of all that is the fact Tom and I want to do this hike.  We will do this hike.  It will be awesome or horrible or both.  Definitely not neutral.  I am toying with the idea of doing some housekeeping around here, adding some password protection on a few posts, and then outing myself to friends and family in order to use this blog to journal the hike.

So do I hang on to this sorta schedule?  Too busy or too bored and always too tired?  Or do I dump everything and charge headlong into a new project only to say, “Can you hold that thought?  I gotta go walk 2,200 miles”?

Gone!

The stray cat has found a home.  Just like the funny post I wrote about it.  Except while I have a physical address of the family that took the cat, my funny post seems to have entered innernets ether.

Argh.

If only that were euphemism for something!  Like aunt flo!  Because she’s here too!

Yet, I have a stray cat in my bathroom in a very literal sense.  A literal white/gray medium-haired neutered male who is microchipped but the information was never updated and his owner from 2 years ago who lives over an hour away left me a voicemail that I was welcome to keep the cat.

THANKS!

On Tuesday, which I somehow had scheduled pretty tight anyway, I was coming home from my first round of errands and a cat crossed the road from the mangrove side to the side where a condo complex is under about 70% foreclosure.  I hemmed, hawed, then stopped.  99.9% of the time, a loose cat is going to be too scared of you (or me) to get close enough to do anything.

This one came right over and settled into my arms.

While there, and I debated whether someone thought it was OK to have an “outside” cat (it is illegal in our county and my neighborhood specifically is a major bird nesting area), I felt mat after tangled mat on his underside and decided he was coming with me.

Guess who doesn’t like car rides?

I came home, whipped up an emergency cat-kit in the bathroom (Tom should really get over his hoarding tendencies long enough to rid us of excess pet paraphernalia if he doesn’t want to come home to strays), popped him in there, and ran out to Just Brakes!  Where I decided they were Just Douches!  And they decided they Just Didn’t Care!

Since I had some random cat in my bathroom, I decided to leave it as is and inform Tom he was the official Tell Mechanics About the Weird Road Noise person.

I scooped up the cat again, stuffed him in a carrier, and off to the vet.  Where we found he was chipped, and even though it was an area code for a few counties away, it was still a working number for the name given in the chip’s record.  The vet left a message for Joe, giving him my phone number.

I knew it wasn’t a done deal, but I couldn’t help feeling this was all going to be a small 24-hour adventure I could write about and share.  Because I had grabbed the cat out of instinct and less out of a need for a 48-72–or-heaven-effing-help-me-724-hour adventure.

But Joe called and informed me he had moved away and gave the cat to another family two years ago.  I asked for him to call back with any details – initials even!  I am an awesome googler! – but nothing.

And so.  After checking on petfinder.com, craigslist, and a local county lost/found page, I posted ads on all 3 for this found cat.  I also called animal services so he is listed in their book.  And then I made some poorly crafted signs and tried to hang them up around the neighborhood except all the condo associations keep shitty management hours.

And there was a sheriff at the park right where I wanted to tape a sign on this nice pretty locking glass case for signs.  Doesn’t that sound like something there is an ordinance against?  Maybe it’s littering?  Or informing the public without a license?  Something?  Hasn’t anyone else heard you can get fined for putting up silly homemade signs on public property?

The sherriff, who put his cell phone call on hold long enough to give me the world’s most “Are You Mentally Compentent?” look, had never heard anything of the sort.  And even though I thought he might be trying to do some sort of “Aha, gotcha!”, I put up my damn sign.

But so far, no dice.  I have now taken the cat for testing (feline HIV and feline leukemia – both negative) and his basic shots.  I haven’t let him out of the bathroom yet because while I certainly could try and referee that particular UFC match by myself, why put myself through it alone when Tom will be back tonight and can help while I calm everyone’s nerves with a large glass of wine?

If said stray can handle our crew and vice versa, we will foster him until the domestic rescue organization we work with has room for him at an adoption center.  If they all can’t just get along, we’ll keep him in the bathroom until we can find another foster.

We are not keeping him.  Ain’t gonna happen.  And he is cute and long-haired and needy just like Tom’s other favorite cat in the house so please everyone have my back in this so Tom is outnumbered when he meets this feline tonight?

(Despite what he may say, it is his fault we have Pixie, our last acquisition.)

The stray is now 90% de-matted which I did with nail scissors and every groomer in the tri-state area (which is…FL, GA, and what?  Lousiana?) is shrieking that you DO NOT CUT MATS OFF OF ANIMALS!(!!)  And I KNOW.  I KNOW.  I am a horrible stubborn woman.  But seriously, don’t cut mats off of your animals.  Find a good groomer.

I cut the mats off because obviously I am an idiot.  Also, I was concerned a groomer would decide a full shave was in order and a shaved cat is not exactly the look you go for when vying for adoption.  Mr. Bigglesworth is not a sought-after look.  Since I’d like my bathroom back sometime this year (although this is a great excuse for not having shaved legs.  Sorry yoga class mates!), I want to keep him looking as bushy-tailed as possible.

There’s also a wee chance I might know a thing or two about grooming animals myself.  But mostly I am an idiot who would like Mr. Stray to find a home toot sweet.

If he could take aunt flo with him, that’d be awesome.

Grandma and I could not really be more different.  And yeah, that’s a pretty easy statement to make when you span two generations.  But personality-wise, I very much take after my mother.  A que sera que sera state of mind where I am not too concerned about things I can’t control.

(Which is also why I’m such a damn perfectionist about my self.  Because I can control me.  Usually.)

I do not read weather reports.  I rarely check traffic conditions (except when I have complete control of when Iwill be on the road).  I’m fairly confident I will continue to breath, eat, and drink clean water no matter what scandal has rocked the government or my friends.

My grandmother on the other hand, tracks the weather report religiously.  Not just for here.  She’s been worried the past two weeks about the heat wave in Chicago.  She watched the WGN news (Chicago local station on many cable networks for some reason) every night and will update me on all the latest miseries going on there.

She cannot fathom that I am not aware of where my husband is right now.  I know he’s in California.  I’m pretty sure he flew into a town named Ontario?  But out of sight is out of mind.  There’s nothing I would/could do differently if he were in California or Texas or Oklahoma.  (And for several weeks I believe I confused a city in Oklahoma for one in Texas so even if he tells me it’s jumbled and gone by the time it takes me to type a blog post.)

The fact that Grandma is a worrier is something I can usually tolerate.  Except for the fact that she makes no attempt to tolerate the fact I am not.  And except for when she lets truly piddly shit interupt a nice evening.

Case in point: tonight, we went to dinner.  As usual, her eyes – no – her entire seated body – tracked each person that walked by our table.  I kept wanting to ask her who she was expecting to join us.  Can’t you just tune out the outside world and accept that if the person walking by is our server they will indeed stop and serve us?

But even this I can understand a little, I guess.  It must be frustrating and difficult to see as poorly as she does.  I mean, I would just happily use it as an excuse to ignore people further but I get that she’s not like that.

However, at the end of our meal someone who was not our server took her credit card and check to ring her up.  Since it wasn’t a familiar face, Grandma’s straining to watch the world pass by cranked up to infinity.  Even after I pointed out her weird behavior and said we weren’t in our rush so don’t worry about it (and she shot back, “I’m not worried!” with a little fake laugh that fooled no one).

What bugs so much is that I AM RIGHT HERE IN FRONT OF YOU TALKING TO YOU!  I could be saying something very important!  And you would miss it because you are so caught up in trying to catch the eye of a server even though you can’t remember what she looks like!

I could not help myself.  At the crux of two servers passing us and she was almost standing in her seat to get a good look at them, I blurted out the only thing I always knew would get a boyfriend’s attention for sure.

“I’m pregnant!”

“Oh, here’s the check!  I thought it was about time!  Can you tell me which one I have to sign?”

Not only did she give me a great story to tell, you can bet your sweet ass I am going to tell this story to HER next week and tease her unmercilessly.  Just not when we’re at dinner.

Tom and I had our 4-year wedding anniversary.  I tried to blog all sweet about it, but I still cringe at the cliches that come out of my mouth when thinking of how perfect – for me – he is.  And the relationship that we created, and continue to work on, is exactly what I needed.  I cannot imagine life any differently.

But through the “Yay!  We’ve now officially been married the longest I’ve ever been married!” celebration, things have seemed mighty shitty around here.  Nothing new.  Same old sick cat.  Same old sick A/C.  Same old sick Grandma.  (Although we did receive some less dire predictions from her oncologist than the surgeon’s office.  I’m not exactly sure who/what to believe, but since she is leaning towards little or no treatment anyway, I think it’s a moot point.)

Last Friday I was so fucking fed up with being me, listening to me, thinking about my problems.  I wanted to divorce my damn self.

I am joy to be around, let me tell you.

But…I solider on.  I think part of it is that I have no big goal in my life right now.  I put looking for a job on hold because of Grandma’s illness.  At this point, assuming the March start date we desire for hiking the AT, it would almost not be worth it to go through the hiring process somewhere.  And while that’s true, just as true as the fact that my schedule being so flexible puts less strain on our household with Tom gone 24/7, it still leaves the aftertaste of BS to me.  I have that midwest work ethic in my DNA and the fact that my job/schedule/priorities are a little…fanciful? superfulous?…at times gets on my last nerve.

We continue to sock money away, preparing financially for the 6-month leave when we hike.  But as far as other preperations, we’ve covered all the big items we can for now.  And it’s too early to get into the nitty gritty planning although if anyone’s reading this and would like to foster a slightly-used cat for 6-months, please let me know.

I started running, to give me some sort of goal and new challenge physically.  I’ve been pretty down about how the weightloss stalled and finally owned up to a 6-pound gain on my little weightloss app.  I mentioned that all my measurements are same/smaller so I can’t complain too much and someone else cheered that this means I’ve gained 6 poinds of muscle and that’s just awesome.  And I was like…huh.  Yeah, I guess that’s how it works.  I can honestly say in my weight loss ups and downs and my general enjoyment of physical activity, I don’t think I’ve ever reached the point where I can say I’m not focused on the numbers on the scale.

But since the measurement that stayed the same is my damn ass waist, I still have a dozen or so outfits I can’t wear and it’s driving me bat shit.

Also, how is it so impossible in this land of silicone to find a 34DD bra??  I need the girls to slim down a little bit more just so I can continue to shop at Walmart for all my lingere needs.  That’s how I’ve kept a man this long!

Because really, who doesn’t need a 4 hour hike around central FL in July?

It’s been in the 90s here since 1923, so Tom and I have made no effort to hike since returning from Washington.  I think also we were feeling a little “been there, done that”.  Especially after spending a multi-day hike amoung real mountains and setting foot on the real, true AT for the first time.  A trek around our usual haunts just doesn’t live up.

(Actually, that reminds me that we did hike once between now and then.  At our usual, neighborhood haunt of a 3-4 mile trail – including the boardwalks – at Wheedon Island.  I remember it was Memorial Day weekend because we had a little extra time together than the usual 48 hour whirlwind.  We saw – I kid you not – a pet bunny that had been dumped by the side of the road.  Coloring was all wrong for a wild rabbit.  And he sat there calmly munching a nearby bush while we walked up on him all like, “Dude, is he a…?”  “Got to be.”  We came back with the car that evening, and one day after that, but could not find him.  Probably for the best.  Some fox got a good meal, and Pixie does not have a pet rabbit.)

ANYWAY.

I had an extremely shitty Thursday, made shittier when I tried to be all, “Buck up!  Get our of the house and do your regular chores and you’ll feel better!” because people and technology suck and endevoured to make me fail.  Friday I ran small errands – attended a caregivers support group, did the grocery shopping the debit card system refused me the night before – but that was it.  I had been dealt the “Some days it’s not worth getting out of bed” card, and I knew when to fold ‘em.

Since Tom got back late, late Thursday/early Friday morning, I tried to muster some interest in the fact that I had a significant other and suggested we plan something interesting for Sunday, the only day he would be home that I didn’t already have something planned.

(I had a most awesome yoga class on Saturday morning and while exhausted, we could have done something that PM except for the fact that our AC is on the fritz.  AGAIN.  And yes, I did need to take a gulp sip of wine to write that sentence.  The only good thing I have to say is thank goodness it decided to give out mere months after being fixed rather than waiting the usual year.  We definitely have the repair guy’s attention.  We couldn’t go out Saturday because as soon as we called, he offered to come over and charge the unit so we’d have some kinda-cool air until mid-week when he can come back and do a full investigation.)

ANYWAY.  PART DEUX.  ANYWAY’S REVENGE.

I also mentioned to Tom that I realized a big “duh” moment for me on why perhaps the scale isn’t magically on a downward slope might have something to do with the fact I’m no longer strapping 10-30 lbs to my back and walking for 4-8 hours once a week.  I really need to step up my burn throughout the week unless I want to start cutting calories more which I do not.  I will eat my homemade ice cream while running in place if that’s what it takes.

He decided he wanted to hike as well and chose for our Sunday adventure to try out the Green Swamp – a huge SWFTMD site about an hour or so to our northeast.  Now that we are old hats at the actual packing/planning/hiking part, per usual our hardest time was negotiating the driving directions.  Please note, Tuskegee Ave was the correct answer to not one, not two, but THREE turns labeled as other streets.  You’re 0 for 2, google maps app.

Wary of the name, we were delighted to find that the Green Swamp’s trails bone dry despite a week of raining in these parts.  What’s more, once we got off the main road and onto the real hiking path…it was shaded!  A rarity in the scrub land of central FL.  It’s also the first hike where we encounted gopher tortorise up close and personal on the trails.

While I say we are old pros at the planning and such, we really had no pre-hike plan or conversation and hadn’t packed that much water.  3-4 liters each, which sounds like a lot until it’s 97 degrees.  But!  At least we are old pros enough to discuss as we walked and ended up back at the car almost 4 hours to the dot since we left it, each with at least a half liter left. 

As I sit here, in pain from both my first camel posture where I could reach back and touch my heels and my first walk of any significant distance since May, I realize that sometimes when life seems really shitty and I don’t know how to cope, I should just take a hike.

**Before my grandmother’s diagnosis, I was asked several times how I could plan a 6-month trip to hike the entire AT next year and leave her alone.  At the time, my answer was that she was fully able to get by without me and had other help available.  Now, the truth is I suppose I believe the question of leaving my grandmother will be solved naturally before that time.  And if she is alive and kicking cancer’s ass next March, yes I will leave her and go hike.  As she would insist.  There is a chance neither scenario will pan out and I will be faced the fact I do not wish to leave her.  But just as I wish for her to live each day for what it’s worth and not worry how many more days she has left, I want to live as if I can make this dream come true.

Today I was on my way to my grandmother’s.  (Surgeon post-op appointment tomorrow)  Around mile marker 322 or so, 7 miles before I-75 meets up with the turnpike and becomes a 6-lane interstate, traffic stopped.  Completely.  No scootching along.  No fits and starts.  Just stopped.

I was lucky in that I was listening to a local-ish radio station, and despite it being past traffic-reporting-time the DJs did announce that I-75 was completely stopped due to a fatality investigation.  A pedestrian was hit and killed at mile marker 341.

At the I-275/I-75 merge (what?  You aren’t familiar with the FL interstate system?), a gold Toyota Tundra had been an absolute ass, swerving lanes and braking in front of me so I couldn’t pass.  When I finally could, he rolled down his window and gave me a cute wave, like he was so pleased with himself.  I can only assume he felt I’d cut him off somewhere further back and was extracting revenge.  I am not the best driver, but since doing the Tampa to Gainesville stretch once a week for over a year I’ve become very prudent.  I drive 5-10 miles over the speed limit.  I drive in the right most lane.  I try and slow down versus speed up when I want to change lanes and someone else is riding up because we all know if I speed up in front of them they are going to also speed up and let me know how I ruined their day by passing in front of them.

So what I’m saying is that I think the gold Toyota Tundra guy was completely off-base for giving me any shit, let alone the dangerous swerve into my lane to immediately brake so I couldn’t pass a truck on the merging ramp.  Whenever someone does shit like that, I have to wonder why they are giving me so much credit for being a good driver.  Because he kinda just put his life in my hands.  Plus, he’d been behind me – way behind me – and I’d let him pass me once.  Why couldn’t he just appreciate the passing and pass on by?

Anyway, it bothered me a lot.  (Can you tell?) More than I think it should.  I’m not sure if there’s a way to quantify how much random acts of asshole-ness should bother you, but since I’m big on letting things go I was starting to get pissed at myself for still being pissed at him.  Especially because I’ve been into yoga lately and isn’t that suppose to calm me and make me one with the universe.

Thinking of yoga made me think of karma and then my fake if-you-smile-you’ll-feel-better-smile turned into a real smile as I imagined passing him later on stopped by the police.   (Yes, after I got to the speed I wanted, he passed me.  AGAIN.)  I even wondered if it was possible for a citizen to stop while a police officer was writing a ticket and give their two-cents on additional infractions for which the person could be charged.

At mile marker 322, I stopped thinking about him completely for a while.  Until I had the horrific idea that perhaps he was the one who hit the pedestrian.  A quick google search reveals it happened an hour before I even got on the road.  But this line of thinking in general made me reflect that when bad stuff happens to me, I never take it as a sign that I’ve been a horrible person and the world is giving it back to me.  I just wallow in the misery.  Sometimes I try to be a better person afterwards.  But I never put it together with my past trangressions.

So now I wonder if gold Toyota Tundra guy thought about me at all during the hour+ wait on I-75.  I also kind of wonder if all those accidents/speeding tickets I got in 1999-2003 were trying to tell me something.

The wait on I-75 was annoying, but somber.  And relaxed because I knew what was going on.  I realized afterwards how calming it was to know right away the problem and not sit there wondering every 6 seconds, “WHY AREN’T WE MOVING??” 

I also reflected that since I’m not the best driver, it was kind of against the odds that I stopped completely for an accident in which I was not involved.  It’s been 3 years since I rear-ended someone who darted back into traffic from a left turn lane.  When I started seeing Grandma once a week, I was sure I was going to see a speeding ticket in my first six months (OK, SOMETIMES I go 15 miles over the limit.  Maybe 18).

After an hour, I reached Exit 329 where all traffic was diverted to exit.  I got gas, peed, and attempted to use my iPhone to figure out how long it would take to reach Gainesville on back roads.  I knew the general roads, but not specifics once I got to Gainesville nor timing. 

Of course the GPS was wonky and kept saying it couldn’t find that location.  (Not where I was, but where Gainesville was.)  But on the way to Hwy 301, I stopped at Wendy’s for lunch and actually sat in the car to eat so as to not tempt fate with another accident.  It also gave Lady a chance to pee in their nice grassy field littered with gin bottles.  But most importantly, it gave me time to listen to the radio and hear I-75 was re-opened and I was still close enough that I could see the traffic driving by.

I had heard there was a 100-yard “debris area”.  So when exit/mile marker 341 started coming up, I tried to pay attention.  That’s gruesome, I know.  But someone’s life ended and it effected my life for several hours which is more than most strangers’ deaths effect you.  I wanted to know where to…pay respects?  Have a moment of silence?

There was no sign anything had occurred.  No police car still canvasing the area.  No crushed-in railing from where someone tried to swerve.  No nothing.

For the next week or so, Grandma and I can still pretend everything is normal.  I am not even sure if her surgeon told her the news…Grandma asked me while she was still in recovery and groggy on pain meds and I said yes, it was evident cancer had spread to her lymph nodes and she said, but what does that mean, no chemo right and I said, well, yes chemo is the usual treatment but we don’t have to worry about that right now and she said OK.  She hasn’t brought it up since.  We will visit the surgeon next week and that’s soon enough for me.

Grandma has been slow to get back in gear and while I understand she had a kinda major operation, I do believe she is using it as a bit of an excuse to just give in to her general tired and worried attitude.  So when I came today and found she hadn’t dressed all day, I pressed for us to eat at the pseudo-restaurant that’s part of the cafeteria.

Several times throughout the meal she conceded that the dinner was better, more fun, more relaxing and probably good for her.  I mentioned I wasn’t leaving until I saw her dressed and out doors so she might as well as have agreed to a pleasant dinner before I grand marched her.  She said she might have sensed that.  We then had the following conversation.

Me:  Now tomorrow I’ll run errands in the morning, fix lunch, and make sure you’re set for dinner before I leave.

Grandma: Oh, you don’t have to do that.  I can take care of myself.

Me:  You can, can you?

Grandma:  Yes, and I’d better.  Otherwise my granddaughter will…

Me:  Get on to you?

Grandma:  Yes!  You would not believe how tough she is!

Me:  I can imagine.

Grandma:  She’s so tough on me!

Me:  I solved that problem by not having kids.

Grandma:  Well if I had known how it would turn out, I might not have either.

Me:  Indeed.

Grandma:  That’s the problem with things like this.  You never know what you’re going to get.

Dear Dad,

Yesterday was Father’s Day.  One of the 3-4 times during the year when you would have actually gotten on the phone with me.  Like many other things, I dreaded it for weeks and when it came it wasn’t so bad.

Actually, I was just too wiped out from caring for your mother to notice.  Tom and I went to Sunken Gardens because we have a family membership and we needed some reason to get out of the house before it was 4pm and we were still glued to the sofa.  There’s a restaurant that shares the parking lot and they were advertising special Father’s Day hours and I was kind of like, “Oh right.”  And felt a little more sad and frazzled.  Especially because I thought about bringing it up with Tom again so he would call his dad.  I didn’t.  I have a feeling Tommy is going to get short-changed on several Dad-centric things for a while because I just can’t care that much.

Your mother had a hysterectomey.  The day afterwards was confusing and frustrating and horrible because she really did not look good in the morning and felt like her left ankle was sprained from being in the stirrups so I was scared to push her to walk much even though that meant delaying when she could be discharged.  The doctors came in the morning before I got there, and came again in the evening after I left.  She kept remembering treatments she thought someone had told her she might get and would get agitated about not getting them in the small window of time between naps when she wasn’t exhausted.

I realize that nothing much would have changed if you were still alive.  She got on your last nerve and days like that make me understand why.  You would have been in Chicago and I would have been in Florida and the whole thing would have played out almost exactly the same.

The surgeon could tell just be sight that the cancer has spread to her lymph nodes.  She took out some obvious and easy-to-retreive nodes.  Typical treatment is chemotherapy.

Mom seems really gung ho on chemo and treatment and beating this.  As is every single cancer support site I can find on the web.  And even though I know you wanted to fight death to your last gasping breath, I think you would side with me on this one.  That she is 90 and the doctor says that even with metastasized cancer and no treatment it’s still not a done deal that cancer will be her cause of death.  Because she’s 90 and when you’re 90 sometimes you just die because your 90.

I want this to be Grandma’s decision.  But I want her to know it’s OK to say no to treatment.  That maybe she will have a better quality of life in the time she has left not going through chemo again.  I don’t feel like anyone in the medical community is going to offer that opinion – it’s an opinion equated with defeat and death and no extra work/billing for them.

I don’t believe no treatment has to be equated with defeat and death but I am having a hard time figuring out how to tell her in a way that doesn’t make it sound like I want her to die.  Because every time I think of saying no to treatment I think of removing your breathing tube.

I think of how it’s probably not what you would have wanted.

But you were dying.  Not like grandma is dying because she is old and has some bad cells pinging around in her body.  You were dying as in you were going to pass away that day regardless of what we did.  And deciding to stop your hospital care seemed like the kindest thing to do.  For you, for Mom, for us.

I wish I could have told you, before you made your decision to be intubated, that I wanted you to accept hospice.  But I had just gotten on a plane and was reeling from all the information and didn’t want to tell you because I didn’t want it to sound like I had given up on you.

And now it feels like I did anyway.

So I cannot let your mother feel like I have given up on her.  But I also want to make her feel comfortable with the idea of – not giving up exactly, but letting go.  Whatever will be, will be. 

Love,

Your Daughter

The birthday party went very well.  I’ve never seen creamed spinach prepared quite like that and the cheeses used in one of the appetizers were blah, but the main courses and dessert were amazing.  I ordered speciality cakes like the display ones you see in the bakery case of your super market.  I think in the end it was cheaper than a made-to-order birthday cake and tastier too.  I purchased one white cake and one chocolate and put 9 and 0 candles in the center.  May not be a feasible way to do cake for a large party, but for the 14 of us it was perfect.

The white cake was be far everyone’s favorite – really yummy icing – and I was gracious and let Tom finish my piece only because I figured there would be some leftovers to pig out on later.  But while I was chased down with a half-full bottle of chardonney to take home (I ordered one white and one red wine to be offered and paid by the bottle), no one said boo about leftover cake.  Next time I will not be so giving with my sweets.

I was so very done with people by Sunday morning though.  And people were not done with me.  I particularly could not stand how I was the decision maker.  I even said as much when asked for the umpteenth time when we should have lunch but I was told since I had already decided when we needed to leave I had to decide when we had lunch.  Dude.  I had not “decided” when we needed to leave, it was dictacted by my Mom and George’s flight and remedial math.  Anyone else could have used additional substraction (oxymoron?) to figure out lunch time too.  But no.

I was also probably crabby because while I had packed and shopped for my mother’s special diet and George’s snack attacks, I did nothing to keep my own usual food plan on track.  Sunday’s breakfast and lunch were almost completely processed foods and carbs (hello free breakfast buffet and subsequent brunch buffet with no protein I consider edible!), I was on a blood sugar roller coaster and demanding cake for dinner. 

Poor Tom tried to steer me away, but I was set on a take-out shmorgusborg.  And then I planned out a huge, but slightly nutritious, meal from our local Greek restaurant only to have their phone ring and ring.  It’s a small local chain which has cut back hours at this location and apparently their big seller is weekday lunch.  We ended up almost coming to blows between picking another restaurant and ordering, but somehow food arrived and while I did indeed order two (smallish) desserts, I did not also order the fried trio appetizer or even get french fries with my sandwich and sometimes you just have to look for a win somewhere.  

I thought getting back on track yesterday would be easy-peasy, but I scarfed a ton of granola bars and never, ever felt full.  Even with my foolproof plan of organized activity outside the home for the late afternoon, my prime snacking time.  I don’t know what to say about today except that I really need to have one good day before everything gets set in motion again with my extended trip to Grandma’s to see her through surgery.

My poor grandmother’s medical woes really got out of hand and gummed up her birthday.  Or maybe they gave her something else to focus on and that was a good thing.  I don’t know.  But her primary care doctor got pretty snippy and thorough with her sugerical clearance appointment and all of a sudden decided she had a heart murmer that needed testing before she went under the knife.  After a rushed appointment that day, and a stress test yesterday (which was her true birthday.  Happy 90th!  Have some heart-racing drugs and lie still!), she has finally been cleared.  She has a heart murmer because when you get to be 90, you have heart murmers.

I’m thankful her doctor cares, but this was incredibly difficult for her at the last minute and in the end, considering how this cancer can/will spread, there was only one decision to be made.  She has to have the surgery, and he knew that so why be a dick about it?

Although I will admit I am getting a tad scared about this Thursday.  It’s necessary.  And she’s in good hands.  The tumor is such that she can have the least invasive surgical option.  But still.  I cannot even type what I am panicking about in my head because it is too horrible to allow words.  I know she is 90 and last I checked we have not cured the big dirt nap but it doesn’t make it any easier.

I am just so glad, crabbiness and carbs aside, that we had her birthday party.  I need to take a deep breath, pack my bag, and go hide the leftover granola bars.