Thursday, November 26, 2015

Lemonade Stand

I’m trying to make lemonade. I’m doing a pretty good job of it, but I will admit I’m a little tired from the effort. I’d try to sell you a glass, but it’s not that kind of lemonade. It’s the kind you make when life hands you lemons…

My holiday plans were radically shifted when my father became very ill one night. He’d been working on it for a few weeks, gradually losing his apatite, feeling very nauseated, and, because he does love to share such information, NOT POOPING. My father has very few boundaries.

Sunday night, he was in so much pain, my mother woke Tam at 2:30 and said, “Pop needs to go to the hospital.”

Fast forward to the ER doctor saying they need to transport him to Portland immediately, because he needs surgery and their surgeon won’t be there for another week. “He will not live if we wait.”

Things get a little confusing here, because my mother insists he was taken by helicopter, while Tam says they went by ambulance, running lights and sirens the whole way. Whatever the method of transport they used, Pop lost consciousness twice on the way due to pain.

When they got to Portland they rushed him into emergency surgery where they discovered a ruptured duodenal ulcer, approximately 3 centimeters in diameter (about the size of a quarter). The surgeon had never seen one so large, and called in the other surgeons on his team. They all agreed it was the biggest they’d seen and now they had to figure out how to fix it.

Long medical story short, they patched him up, drained off the fluid in his abdominal cavity (about three liters), blasted him with heavy duty antibiotics and stuck him into ICU, where he stayed for two nights (and almost ended up there for a third, because the old fart kept pulling tubes out of places they needed to remain). Good times.

My mother, whose grip on reality keeps shifting without warning, has been spending a lot of the time being very sad (understandable, unless you’ve been a witness to the skirmish they call a marriage for the past 65 years). All of a sudden, they’re back in love and she’s a weepy mess. It’s kind of weird, but whatever.

We ended up staying with my dad’s sister, Aunt “This Looks Bad”. Seriously, she can look at your hangnail and make you want to end your life before it does. Every time my cousin called, she’d say, “Oh, honey, it doesn’t look good…” even though I told her he’s only in ICU until his blood pressure stabilizes, but otherwise things are going fine.

She and I had many long chats, and I will freely admit she was very helpful with my mother, and I’m extremely grateful for her allowing us to stay in her lovely home. But… she’s a little shallow at times. We were talking about my plans and what my schedule is for making it happen. I said I’m working on it as quickly as I can, but when I’m called away for things like this, it does hinder my progress. I had also mentioned that I work on my manuscript in the mornings before I go to work because it’s the only time I have right now.

That’s when she suggested I “put [my] little book project on hold.”

Put my “little book project…”

Little. Book. Project.

Oh, yes she did.

The sky fell, my world screamed, and my heart wept. I went numb. I smiled and said, “I only work on it in the morning, or after I’ve exhausted myself getting the house ready and I need to stop.”

She barely acknowledged my words, just reminding me of what my priorities are, or what she says they should be. Then I was informed that I will not be able to take care of my parents and I need to put them in a home, because she knows what it’s like.

Funny, people tell me that, but people don’t really know what I’m capable of doing or how strong I really am. I held back my desire to write while I raised a family and it nearly ended me.

I work in a job where I’ve come home with concussions, jammed fingers, and bruises in the shape of footprints on my chest, all from out-of-control students. Yet I went back. I lifted, changed diapers on students almost as big as I am, and kept a wild child from injuring several students just by speaking calmly and gently.

I’m not normal. Most people don’t have jobs with those things in the description, so to tell me I can’t do something because THEY can’t do it makes no damn sense to me. Seriously, would you approach a cowboy and tell him he can’t ride a horse because you tried it once but it was too hard and you fell off? Or telling a nurse she can’t give shots to people because YOU’RE afraid of needles???

Yeah, that’s kind of what it feels like to me. People who haven’t been doing what I’ve been doing for the last ten years are telling me I can’t do what I’ve been doing, only with my parents instead of students. I can’t do it because they couldn’t do it.


So. To all those folks who think everyone is equally skilled at every damn thing, have some fucking lemonade. I’m gonna go work on my “little book project.” 

Friday, November 20, 2015

Taking a Look Around

I’ve been busy. Work takes up an inordinate amount of my time, which is a shame, but since it pays the bills (or most of them, anyway) and my writing hasn’t quite reached that level, I’ve got to keep the job. Money is more than a little tight, and my parents have decided they can’t help with expenses, even though they promised they would do so when we were working on getting the house. Ok, I’m drowning in debt right now and it sucks. Like a lot. And I’m a little scared. But I have a job…

The manuscript is coming along. Editing is taking a great deal of time, since I’m trying to be more careful and not let some of those “brain bumps” slide by. It takes a lot more effort and energy on my part, but I’m pretty sure the final outcome will be worth it.

Moving has hit a low point, however. I’ve been working on trying to get the place in order, but there is so much stuff here, stuff that isn’t even mine, that I’m more than a little overwhelmed. It’s taking a lot longer than I expected, which depresses me, which slows me down, then I have to leave to take care of the parental units, so I lose time working on the house, which depresses me, and stuff doesn’t get done, which depress—you get the picture. I’m a little depressed.

Here’s the deal: these are first-world problems. I have a job. I have a home (well, technically, I have two of them, which is one too many, but that’s a twisted tale filled with “are you fucking kidding me?”)

But these are problems only those with plenty can claim.

Yes, my life is currently a shit-storm of messy, but I’m whole. My children were able to grow up without fear of being blasted into oblivion by a car bomber (although there was always that fear in my heart of some lunatic gunman coming onto campus and fucking everything up), there was food on the table and a roof over our heads. Our vehicles were usually functional, and if one went toes up, I was a stay-at-home mom who could drive the man to work and pick him up again if I needed the car for anything.

Life wasn’t perfect, but it was good. It still is.

Life isn’t perfect, but it is still good. I have so much, and a great deal for which I am thankful.

And I just realized that I am lucky.

If my house wasn’t so full of other people’s stuff… if there was room in my house, I would be happy to host a refugee family. I would do my best to give them some security, shelter, and whatever they need that I have.

But the place is a wreck and stuff is piled everywhere while I attempt to get organized, so I’m reluctant to open my doors to anyone. Maybe they wouldn’t care. Maybe they would be so grateful for a safe place to stay, they wouldn’t mind the boxes of stuff piled here and there, boxes of embarrassing excess that makes me want to scream and tear my hair. Maybe they could use that stuff when they have their own place to stay.


Looking around, I see now that I have so much, and I’m a very lucky woman.