This Much Is True

To celebrate, we're going to Katherine and Alan's for a family cookout. It'll be interesting to see if they realized that two couples attending today have anniversaries (the other one is Tuesday); maybe she ordered a cake.

More likely, pigs will fly.
I am SUCH a bitch...

Labels: Age, Family, Life, Love, Snark, WOW

Mom found her escape from pain at about 9:15 p.m. last night.

Labels: Death, Family

I'm flying to Colorado tomorrow. I feel that I have to, not only for my future peace of mind, but for Mom's current peace of mind. I also feel like I need to give my sister a break on carrying the load. She's tough but this stage of things is particularly hard to deal with alone. My other sister simply can't physically be here, and my brother has (apparently) checked out of things. Neither of Marie's daughters (nor any other grandchildren) are picking up the slack either. That leaves me.

A word to the wise: chickens really do come home to roost. And you reap what you sow. I'm not going to explain that except to say that when you treat people with love and respect and understanding, usually they'll return the favor.

I bought a return ticket that is non-refundable, so clearly I expect to return on Wednesday regardless of where things stand with Mom. I'm not sure if that makes me an optimist or not.

In the meantime, Beast has a business trip around a fairly close-by portion of his sales territory, so Sparky is going to travel with him, spend lots of time in hotel rooms (and the car), and bond with Dad. They'll actually leave tomorrow too and return home sometime Thursday.

My short-term goal tomorrow: don't cry in public. This means, in effect, "Don't think. Distractions are good!"

My long-term goal for the week: ....

As usual, I have none beyond getting through it alive and with some shreds of my pride and mental health intact. I have pretty low standards.

Marie and Jan do have a computer, so I'll be able to check in, but not to the level that is "normal" for me. So, I'll see you all Wednesday or Thursday.

Labels: Death, Family, Life, Sadness

I wonder why I've never really aspired to happiness...or, frankly, much of anything else. Is that why I'm (usually) not unhappy? My goals are small: get through today without making tomorrow any worse than it has to be without my assistance. I don't have--never have had--serious long-term goals. I sense that this is why I have what are essentially panic attacks every time I have major projects to manage: moving, major trips, work processes, etc.

Then again, I'm feeling extra-morose tonight, and cranky. Sucking it up, being the grown-up, doing my duty: it's not fun. It's incredibly important to do that, however, because I know that where I'd end up if I didn't "do the right thing" is an ugly place that I don't want to visit. Or live, God forbid.

Whatever. I don't have the energy or the interest in really delving into my psyche tonight. I have some tough days ahead this week. There is no way around them, so I might as well face them whatever courage I can muster up. Because that's what we Scots do.

If only my fucking eyes weren't all screwed up AGAIN now.

Labels: Cranky, Ethics, Health, Life, Sadness, Stress

Mom's in a coma. At this point, I can't make decisions about anything because she could be fine tomorrow, or not.

This
sux.

As Beast pointed out, at least we're here, not in the middle of last week (i.e., nowhere) with no phone service.

[edited 6:30 a.m. 6/24: And, as usual, it was a false alarm. She woke up and ate something yesterday after all.]

Labels: Family, Sadness, Sick

I'm back. (I love living in a house rather than a mobile home.)

I'm exhausted. (I love sleeping in my own bed.)

I'm nowhere near as sore as I anticipated being. (Apparently, shelving on low shelves and weeding share the same muscle set.)

I'm clean. (Using a grody school locker-room for daily 3-minute showers that are either 120-plus degrees or 50-degrees--but never both mixed together!--does not promote good hygiene.)

I'm footsore. (I probably walked 5 miles every day, and/or stood for 6 hours every day, this week.)

I'm appreciative of the weirdest, smallest things. (Privacy while showering, small mosquitoes, having just one child--and a son!--of my own, bedroom windows more than 10" off the ground, not having to shout a color every time someone burps....)

Labels: Around the House, Church, Happy, Sleep, Strange, Teenage, Travel

When life is too much, roll with it, baby
Don't stop and lose your touch, oh no, baby
Hard times knocking on your door, I'll tell them you ain't there no more
Get on through it, roll with it, babySo.

Beast is in Memphis on a last-hurrah business trip this week. He got a call this afternoon from his boss. Apparently the past week...? Specifically last Tuesday? Forget it ever happened.

As in "Nevermind."

As in they aren't laying him off after all.

Confused? Yep. Relieved? You betcha! Corporate America is weird.

Labels: Family, Happy, Strange, Work, Worry

I grew up in Colorado, in a suburb of Denver. My parents and I went to church about 3 miles from my house, in yet another suburb. That church was and is 2.5 miles as the crow flies from Columbine High School. When I was in high school in the late 70s and early 80s, many of the other teens at my church went to school at Columbine.

So, on April 19 20, 1999, I watched with the same profound shock and horror as the rest of the country as two boys destroyed any shards of any feeling of safety we had left about our country's schools. The acrid icing on that poisonous cake was that I knew alumni, I knew the community, I knew the places the national media was talking about: Swedish Medical Center (I was a candystriper there), Clement Park (teen hangout), Ken Caryl Ranch (lots of our church members lived there), and so on.

Knowing the area, of course, didn't make the event any more comprehensible. The explanations that the media quickly began to promote didn't make a lot of sense either. And that school's architecture is forever etched in my brain as a building I don't want to be near. Ever.

In 2001, we went to visit my family (who now live elsewhere in Colorado) and stopped in Denver for a couple of days. One of those days was a Sunday, so we went back to "my" church. There were a few discrete items in the building and moments during the service where the presence of the killings loomed large, even two years later.

The next day, we went to visit all the family graves (most of my family is in two large cemeteries on different sides of the city). As we drove through the cemetery looking for my father's burial site, we slowly approached 13 crosses standing in an "island" in the roadway. My father's resting place is about 25 feet from the official memorial for the Columbine victims. I believe those crosses were wooden at that time. They have since been replaced by 8'-tall black granite crosses. (If you watch the virtual tour here, you'll see the crosses at the end, briefly.)

Aside: my father built the original mortuary at this cemetery in the mid-1960s. He was paid, at least in part, in kind: four burial plots.

ANYWAY. I'm reading the book pictured here--Dave Cullen's "Columbine." It is very detailed, easy to read...and I've been trying hard not to read it at bedtime so that it doesn't affect my dreams too much.

I am about 2/3 through the book. I may have to stop reading it. I spent part of today compulsively Googling factoids, drawings, schematics, and photos since the book itself is all text. And I came across a photo today that I never should have embiggened. I knew when I saw it small that clicking on it would be a bad idea. And I watched my hand as the index finger banged down on the left mouse button anyway. Now I can't get the image out of my head, and it only fueled my compulsion to do more research.

I know that what I'm looking for is twofold: 1) Why did Harris and Klebold do what they did? and 2) How can I be sure that my son will never, ever, be involved in something like this? I know that reading this book is not going to answer either of those questions. It's the same quandary I had in 1999 immediately after the shootings happened, and after 9/11, and all the other times when I've wanted nothing more than to go far away from the world and protect my son from Everything Bad. The panic will pass. In the meantime, I can't help but look at every passing teenager with the thought "This could be the one. Or that one could be...."

The mission trip in a week--where I'm surrounded by 60 high school kids 24/7--could be fun if I don't get over this tout de suite. Anxiety + paranoia is not a great frame of mind to be in anyway. It makes for difficulty in concentration among other things. There are no answers, and eventually I'll get back to accepting that fact.

Labels: Books, Church, Crime, Death, History, Sadness, School, Teenage, Worry

Cost of the War in Iraq

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