Once more unto the breach

I’m back. I think. (Yes, again.)

The beginning of this year started with such promise. I read. I wrote. The grand expectations of chewing bubble gum and kicking ass, sans bubble gum.

Obviously, if you’ve kept up with any of my new year whiny-ness, you’re aware that it all came to a screeching halt at the end of January. Life happened in spades. Nothing earthshattering. Nothing beyond the busyness of living and the irritation of an immune system that doesn’t like to cooperate in a traditional manner.

Wah wah wah!

I *think* I’m getting a hold on my immune system, or at least it’s so worn out that it’s becoming complacent. I may be exhausted, but I can still get shit done once my immune system goes into hibernation between flares.

And as for all the rest, the visiting family and local family mini-emergencies, I’m happy to have had the time logged with loved ones and to have been there to support the young ones in my life who needed it. I’m happy to have made new memories and to have found past experiences beneficial in improving the current lives and futures of family who needed it. There is a sense of continuity in using family history to pave a better road to prevent old crap from claiming a new generation. Considering how strongly family has come up in my life this month involving old family wounds and new generations, there’s a separate post in there somewhere. Hell, there’s at least a book or two in that as well.

I’ve slid into home in the most birthday-dense month of the year for my family. I’ve baked cakes, cooked favorite meals, wrapped presents and even managed to get a few balloons to the chagrin of the birthday adults. Did I pull it off with panache? Nah. And that’s becoming more and more okay. Acceptance is a beautiful thing.

I’ve had a few epiphanies this year already. One was very welcome: the only validation I need is from myself (relatively speaking). There’s plenty more that goes with that (yet another, other, post), but for someone who seeks approval in so many avenues, it’s an important idea to come to. At least this month. Who the hell knows what I’ll think about it in a few more months. The other epiphany, if it can be called that, has helped me understand even more why it’s best to let go of certain situations. Vague? Well, that’s as much energy as I feel it warranted.

I have not completely fallen off the reading wagon, watery eyes aside. I’m going between a Stephen King tome and what seems to be a lighthearted fantasy novel about a bookstore. But it’s been a nonfiction book I devoured that’s captured my thoughts of late. The daughter of an abuse survivor goes on a quest to find out what happened in her family’s past. This was my first foray into so-how-screwed-up-is-my-family-history-really. Geographical and personal differences aside, there were some uncanny similarities in my family’s story and this one. I was damn near giddy, compartmentalizing my horror, to see what was common. I was frustrated that the writer’s mother had found a way to thrive (seemingly at least) while my mother hit a brick wall during her ascent to putting her life together and never recovered. To clarify, I don’t begrudge the woman or her daughter a damn thing. Instead it makes the despair a little more tender at how my mom’s (and dad’s) life has turned out. Also, it gave me a baseline for how to approach telling a story of that nature. Someday, I will write a book about this area of my family’s history, about the rippling waves that still impact the generations further removed from it. I struggle with how in the hell to tackle such a project, knowing that this is a story I’ve been wanting, needing, to tell as long as I’ve been aware. I appreciated the author’s approach (Some reviewers didn’t, but I got it.), but there are completely different journeys. At least now I have some sense of one way it’s been handled.

And in the end, that’s kind of the point of these place holder blog posts. A personal Pensieve to unload extraneous bits of this and that to give my fictional muses and non-fiction family story more room to develop. A venue to ramble, to mold thoughts, to ponder in as much detail as I feel necessary while I continue working on the bigger picture. If a portion all have the same general content, then that’s the junk that needs to be jetisoned to get the cogs working again. Repeating myself here is at the very least cathartic ranging up to potentially helping me recognize what I need to work on for myself in the future. Then again, at the very, very least, it’s having written something. It doesn’t need to be eligible for an award or even interesting to other people as long as it helps keep me writing.

So, writing has been a bust. Working on getting back into a groove there.

Reading, not doing too bad.

Coffee, too sad to contemplate, although it’s on an upswing over the past week.

Foreign language, enh.

Napping, still not enough. Then again, I wouldn’t be satisfied until it was a nap a day minimum, so it’ll never be enough.

Sick again... again

The moral of the story for 2016 continues to be: when I set perfectly reasonable personal goals for myself to kick off my year, I will end up being sick more times in the first month and a half of the year than I've been in ages.

It feels like the first month and change of this year have been a whirlwind of activity punctuated with feeling like dog poop that's turned white and covered with decaying leaves.

So I will not be gushing about what a fantastic job my husband did on Valentine's Day for me, especially considering we had not discussed anything at all beyond 'let's grab a pizza and watch a movie at home'.

I also will not be bubbling over about relatives coming to visit from near and far.

And there will be no child's level of delight over going to visit THE mouse's kingdom last week or the momentous expensive decision to get annual passes for the first time in my life.

I've written squat. This vexes me greatly.

I've read very little. Focusing on books when my eyes are watering and head feels like concrete isn't happening.

Coffee consumption is piss poor.

I did sprinkle one of my theme park visits with a bit of foreign language. I'll consider that a teensie, weensie win.

And whatever else I was keeping track of, well, tough cookies.

This is me putting a pin in things until I can make something semi-cohesive later. After my sinuses drain and my coffee intake is on the rise.

Warm Fuzzies

When I started this blog, I wrote about one of my niblings coming out. It wasn’t a shocker, but I wanted to be sure to convey to them my unconditional support because for whatever reason in this day and age people still apparently have to come out. And my perfectly adorable nibling can’t be free to be who he or she is within her own extended family because of ignorant and oppressive views. Well not in my house, buddy.

Before coming out, we were together when the Supreme Court ruled in favor of marriage equality. We cheered in delight as the nation took a big (and long overdue) step in the right direction on a government level. His or her sibling was with us, not understanding why we cared or that it even mattered. I tried to explain & received a shrug which was shorthand for “it doesn’t matter to me & I may or may not be hungry again” in kid-speak.

And if you haven’t read my little post about my nibling coming out to me, I will take this moment to clarify that I refer to no specific gender for the purpose of my nibling’s privacy. In my other posts, I stay pretty gender neutral when referring to any of my nieces and nephews (or sundry family members) as well, again for their protection and privacy. No shame, just protective.

Well, we reached another milestone around here. One of my siblings (& family) came for a visit. I invited my dating nibling to invite the signficant other to the family dinner. Before I could finish asking, fingers were flying on the phone. Signficant other asked parents, received approval and responded. I believe warp speed was achieved locally that night. Because I’ve never had to hide who I was with (at least not in this respect), I was a little taken aback to be asked if it was okay that this person be presented as the significant other AND did Uncle so-and-so know (of their same-sex-ness).

My response was that they would be in my home and in my home they could be exactly who they were. Always. I wasn’t sure if Uncle so-and-so knew, but I assured them that considering I know my sibling’s spouse has LGBTQ friends that there shouldn’t be a problem there. I added, because I realized that may not be reassuring enough when you’re young and not able to share who you are with everyone in your life, on the off chance that Uncle so-and-so not be okay, I would remove him from my house. My nibling’s mouth dropped. Yep, that’s right kid. I would throw my own sibling out of my house (& so much more) to protect your right to be who you are. Without hesitation. Who you love isn’t something to be ashamed of (In this instance. We all know plenty of straight and LGBTQ folks dating asshats regardless of sexual orientation. But I digress.).

So the day came and I picked everyone up. It was their first extended family get together as a couple. I made introductions and referred to this unknown teenager as our beloved nibling’s signficant other. Not friend. No veiled wordplay. Teenagers grinned then froze, their eyes zeroing in on facial expressions. A polite chorus of “nice to meet you” echoed. The grins turned into megawatt smiles. The earth did not shake. Fingers did not point. Bibles were not thrown at them.  Nibling significant other (from here forward, NSO) called me “Aunt” in front of everyone. I was taken aback, because when it was said, it was like someone new to the family testing out calling their new or potential in-laws Mom or Dad. There was weight and meaning packed into the title. I gave NSO a warm smile and handed over a drink. We piled into vehicles and went to dinner after an hour or two of banter and our resident love birds sitting together. Later, once the out of town relatives were on their way and the grandparents retired for the evening, the teenagers cuddled without a second thought in front of me. I took a ‘mom’ level amount of pictures. Before I dropped them off for the night, I double checked and confirmed which pictures could be uploaded to which social media sites. Zero indication of romantic status could go on ABC. Cute, romantic pics could go on XYZ. I added an extra level of privacy filter of my own and didn’t tag either of them in any pictures I did share.

I got a big hug from my teen nibling when I dropped them off. Later, I was tagged in his or her social media post (on XYZ, where they are openly a couple) thanking me for having them over together. Cool *cough* aunt was suddenly full of the warm fuzzies.

Getting back on track

Before I attempt to go anywhere with this post let me start with things said by my family in the last few days:

*At dinner with out of town relatives: "How did your dinner taste?" Parent A's reply "Like it was good for me."

*Me coming home after a meeting & seeing my husband eating the casserole I made for dinner: "How is it?" Husband "It'd be better without the vegetables in it."

If I don't start writing this stuff down, I'm losing material for later.

I've been spinning my wheels a little the last week and some change. I haven't written a bit, but I have been reading. In my defense, I've been sick, so focus and mental acuity have fled the building. I got worse before I got better, but I think I'm finally *knock on wood, sage the house, sprinkle everyone with holy water & spray the next person who sneezes or coughs near me with Lysol* on the mend. Which is a relief considering yesterday when my husband asked how I was feeling I replied, "Like I should have had tubes put in my ears." I've already mentally written an excuse note to myself about being AWOL on my to-do list. But it is time to get back to it.

Just because my eyes and nose are crusted over, I'm hacking up parts of my liquefied lungs, everything made of bone or muscle a-c-h-e-s in the worst way and I can't hardly draw breath through even one nostril, doesn't mean my imagination has taken a sick day. Quite the contrary. While I am a grumpy mess unable to get comfortable no matter what, I am fielding story ideas and plot suggestions and character development like crazy. Very little comes of any of that, as I'm foggy and cantankerous and achy and the thought of staring at a monitor makes my eyes seal shut. By the time I'm feeling slightly more human, I'm jonesing to make notes on whatever I'm able to remember.

I've also fallen egregiously behind on coffee drinking. Perhaps the most despicable of all the permutations of generic illness: lack of interest, willingness and or ability to make or go out and get coffee. Despite only being a coffee drinker for almost a year, this most of all worried my family.

Today, I read, I'm writing and I had an extra dose of life affirming coffee.

There has been some cool stuff bracketing this sick nonsense. Writing group/friends/people/humans/bipeds/vertebrates went on a local boat tour. Perfect weather, comfortable vessel. They could have cranked up Jimmy Buffet, passed out iced tea and just done a few laps around the lake and I would have been happy. It was a good time for sure. Also, we all zeroed in on the perfect serial killer death shack. Because that's what happens when writers get together. Innuendo and death. Two of us later went to see one of the Best Picture nominees, Spotlight. Incredible movie. I can't even begin to articulate the emotional response I had. (I see a consistent problem with my inability to use words to describe situations and things and my desire to write...) There was another outing planned, but it was called on account of ridiculously frigid weather. There may or may not have been pancakes instead. And then today, I got free tickets to an advanced screening of a comedy my husband & I were thinking of going to see when it comes out.

Writing: Nada for a week +

Naps taken: 2 for the year, I think. Very disappointing.

Reading: Finished 2 library books, almost done with a 3rd just in time to pick up a newish Stephen King book from the library. I'm kind of in a dark, twisty, introspective reading vein. This will give way to more genres the more I read, but right now it just feels good. I'm going with it.

Language: Aw, shucks. I've got no excuses except a shitty memory and allowing myself to get distracted. I have actually begun to follow a few YouTube language guides, but I'll do more when I load some podcasts that I can listen to no matter what I'm doing.

Coffee: Haven't had any in more than a week, so I took a flying leap off the unintentional wagon and grabbed a venti on the way to critique group. And I enjoyed each and every sip of it.

Positivity: I always feel pressure when I'm sick, but even more so when I start to feel better. There's so much that needs to get done, that I couldn't get to or forgot to take care of. So I feel a little under pressure now to make sure I catch up, BUT I still feel overwhelmingly like everything's good and there is some awesomely amazing, great stuff on the way. Which is a nice change from how I felt yesterday:

A Hard Day's Night

What's it like to have a traditional (as if the idea even really exists) mother? What's it like having your mom call and nag you about who you're dating, your marriage, when you are having kids, why you don't have kids, why you have so many kids, why you make your meatloaf with breadcrumbs instead of corn flakes, etc etc etc? What's it like to be able to call your mom at times of immense stress for advice or support? What's it like to have a mom who doesn't look at you at least once a month like you're dog poop on new shoes or the devil in the flesh?

It's not my intent to sound whiny. Truly, I have been very clear that aside from the strain of watching your parents decline, it has been special to spend time with them. However my thoughts come across tonight, I am grateful my parents are still here and are with me.

Tonight though, is the reflection of a typically difficult evening with my mother. She cycles, and right now we are in the midst of an obsession about her health. Specifically, about a malady she is convinced she has.

This has been a fairly common thing for her to struggle with, but over the last few years as she's aged, as all of our lives grow and change, the rest periods are fewer and farther between. It's my understanding that hypochondria and medical obsessions can be common/co-morbid with various mental illnesses. This is not to be confused with some doctors who believe anything outside of what they expect a patient to say is all in their head. Those people are assholes. And are all too common to find.

In my youth, I was aware of my mom having a few medical problems in addition to whatever she saw the psychiatrist for. Aside from her being in the hospital for a procedure once or twice when I was a kid, I wasn't really aware of what specifically was wrong with my mother. Her medical problems (along with her psychiatric issues) seemed to slowly increase after I was a teenager. When I was in college and we lived apart, I remember her needing a few surgeries but also that there started to be lots of testing for everything under the sun.

Around the time my first nibling was born, the dam burst and she had what ended up being a physical manifestation of her mental illness. And it went on for years. The slightest stress, the slightest worry, her mind wandering far away from us and dwelling on the dark recesses hidden from the world would send my mom into what looked like a seizure. Except they weren't. Endless testing and doctors and tinkering with medications proved it. I noticed the correlation and if I distracted her before the tremors progressed beyond her hands, I could stop what was coming. Over time (like almost a decade) this psychosomatic situation slowly dissipated until we realized she hadn't had one in more than a year. From time to time, especially over the last year or two, the tremors in her hands start up when she's getting lost in her own head, but it hasn't moved beyond that stage. Thankfully.

My mom portrays herself as a very fragile and unloved victim when she's not well. I can't begin to count the number of times she's manipulated people to try to get them to believe she's mistreated - to the point I was once almost arrested and another time my freaking siblings believed it. And I know that part of it is her illness and part of this is because she was abused as a child and wants someone to recognize that something's been done to her. There's a disconnect that she's safe and comfortable now. The rational part of my mom's brain set sail a long, long time ago.

The short version of her medical obsessions is that nothing has ever been found. Which I understand better than some that medical testing is not infallible. But if you had even the slightest understanding of the diversity and inconstant nature of her maladies you would understand that there isn't anything to be found. I've taken her to just about every kind of specialist known to man. She's got some medical issues, absolutely. But then she reads the warning label for whatever prescriptions she gets and we spend months (or longer) hearing that she's got every single fatal symptom listed. Her doctors have asked us not to let her see the inserts on the medicines anymore.

Also, her symptoms and complaints vary depending on problems or illnesses being experienced by other members of the household. If I have a sinus infection, within 2 days of her knowing, she's taken to her bed. My mother has had maybe 4 colds in my lifetime. Tops. If I'm having an arthritis flare up, suddenly she needs a cane to walk. If my father's sick... well, when he's sick she's convinced he's dying, but once he's on the mend she's 'sick' for the next week. My husband had tendonitis and she needed a sling for her arm.

So I'm on day two and a half of fighting a crappy bug I must have picked up this last weekend. I've recently suggested that a contributing factor to my mom's 'crippling' back and knee pain is the chair she spends 65% of her day in - because I sat in it for an hour and could barely walk afterwards. Which means it's time for her to switch her obsession to something I can't fix. If that sounds narcissistic, trust me, I get it. But I'm also 30+ years into my mom's weird relationship with me. The minute I suggest something practical to help with her pain, discomfort, illness, whatever, her eyes bulge, she leans towards me and starts slinging as much sludge as she can my way. I am mean. And I am evil. And I don't provide the care and necessities she needs. Today she tried to tell me that she's never allowed to go see the doctor. I asked her about her regularly scheduled visits with at least 3 doctors and why she hasn't made an appointment to see a doctor about the current illness du jour if it's as serious as she believes. She didn't care for reality and became even more hostile.

Sigh.

This too shall pass. She'll either cycle out of the obsession or fixate on something else. I'd like to hope she'll have a lull, but so far I don't see that on the horizon. Tomorrow my dad is supposed to call her doctor about today's concern to get a recommendation of treating at home, coming in for a check-up or going straight to the specialist Mom's seen in the past.

Hopefully, tomorrow is a calmer day.

Numb

I spent Wednesday night/pre-dawn Thursday tending to a sick puppy - puppy being a relative term used interchangably with senior dog who thinks he is- and is treated as though he is- people. He didn't always make it outside and it was coming out of both ends. We are now 3 months past finding out he's got cancer and should have been dead more than 2 months ago. So every time he's the slightest bit off, there is an extra bit of panic that sets in. His stomach, and the accompanying entrances & exits that were highly unhappy, finally settled for the night some time around 4/4:30ish. He wagged after his last round of abdominal pyrotechnics, which eased my concerns a bit. That little wag is his kind of all clear after not feeling so hot. I woke up to the girl dog, my little pretty princess roller derby dog with the constitution of a goat, refusing to eat and curled up in a ball with very little interest in the day.

What I also woke up to was the stunning news that Alan Rickman had died.

It was another instance of Facebook being the news, and while the first person's feed I saw was a completely reliable source, I checked with credible news sites.

I was numb. I knew that this was going to be a far more twisty-to-my-insides kind of thing than being struck dumb over David Bowie's death a few days earlier. But I was numb. My first thought was honestly, well it happens in 3's. And then I shoved it in a worn cardboard box in my brain and set about getting done what else I had to get done on the little sleep I'd gotten. 

The boy puppy devoured his breakfast and was in high spirits, his tummy troubles forgotten. With girl puppy (a rescue of unknown age, but solidly on the side of adult/senior-ish dog) not feeling her usual minx-like self so soon after the boy puppy, I suspected a short-term tummy bug and hoped for the best while I kept a wary eye on her. I was glad I was attempting to make chicken stock for the first time because I would have simple boiled down chicken and carrots to try on her on later. 

I had places to go and appointments to keep and by the time I got home I was running on fumes. I had made myself a coffee to go before I left the house (just managing to catch that I had forgotten to add the coffee as the water started heating up), carefully drinking from my insulated travel cup because I'm clumsy and I have a history of spilling just about anything I eat or drink. Today I learned my nifty insulated travel cup leaks. I learned it after went to an appointment with a large coffee stain on the front of my shirt that I didn't notice until much too late. Can't win 'em all.

As I sat at my desk in the late afternoon and tried to make some sense out of the thoughts I had compartmentalized earlier in the day, tears burned my eyes. My mother, who has not had the most stable of mindsets in the weeks following Christmas had been circling me. If that sounds strange, it's something she tends to do when either A. she senses something's off in me or B. she's having extra troubles. This was firmly a combo of both. I love my mother, but I can tell you that she has a sixth sense when my defenses are down and it's not so that she can give me a supportive hug and kind words of encouragement. I shoved everything away again. This was not the time to process.

So? Hours later the boy puppy slurped up his dinner (without spitting out his meds, a major victory in the day) and girl puppy happily downed a very modest but well tolerated bit of boiled chicken and vegis & wanted more. I was relieved. Even more so that her modest dinner has stayed put.

And I still feel numb, interspersed with moments of complete heartbreak. I spent the better part of the last twenty years (ahem, or longer) saying various version of the following: "I'd gleefully listen to Alan Rickman read from a phonebook, A-Z. Every page." Some of my favorite movies, from preteen through my ultimate favorite in adulthood? He's in them. Yeah, he's in a certain blockbuster franchise. And yeah, he was fantastic in it. But I adored him so much before that.

For someone who attempts to weave words into cohesive and interesting stories, I am at a loss for how to express the depth of artistic appreciation (as well as obsessive devotion to that distinctive timbre of his voice) I have for him. What I do know is that there are a list of movies that for some time to come, I will suddenly find myself heartbroken and tear stricken as I watch.

Because he'll need their spoons... get it? 

This seems like sound advice today.

Today made that abundantly clear.

Brief update

I'm sure I have something rattling around in my noggin that I'd ordinarily want to purge, but I'm tired with a monster headache brewing. Also, it's chilly and a great night to curl up with a good(ish) book or do some character plotting. Or fart around with a game for a few minutes. Whatever floats your boat. 

I am, headache whining aside, in a pretty good mood after hearing some lovely things about a piece of short fiction I wrote & reading some good fiction from future bestselling authors. One of these days I'm going to have to submit something somewhere once more. Gotta think on that. Gotta get a lot more writing in as well. 

I'm feeling writey (that's a technical term) but I also feel like catching up on some reading or, dare I say it, one of my neglected tv/online shows. I'd hang my head in shame, but I'm partially kind of proud that I don't ordinarily have time to binge watch. It also just feels right that if I have a towering, never ever to be completed to-be-read pile that I have a long list of shows and movies I may never finish either. How are people bored? I don't have enough time to do all the things I'd like to.

Here's the run down:

Writing: Spread across Jan 8-11, I wrote 1968, 514 & 736 words. Lost track of which days those numbers go with, but they still count. 

Naps taken: Still none. This is an annoying trend.

Reading: Finally finished The Girl on the Train, almost done with the other book I'm reading. Another book cued up from the library & going to get back to a book series I'm behind on that I have at home before the next book is released in March. 

Language goal: Still slacking, but did visit the French pastry shop with delightful results AND actually spoke a bit of French with the owner. C'est bon! 

Coffee consumed: hitting this one out of the park - go me!

Positivity: Outlook still optimistic. Thumbs up.