More weird dreams

So I woke up at 3 this morning with a terrible stomach ache. No more day-old deli sandwiches from Meijer, I think. In the process of trying to go back to sleep, I got to thinking about my mom...and then started dreaming about her. And then I was confused because I was dreaming that I was visiting her last month, but she was fine when I left (as she always had been in the past). I was so lightly asleep that I actually woke up at this point confused about whether or not she was dead, thinking about all the people I had to tell about the 'error' and worrying about that.

And then I went back to sleep and commenced worrying about our (non-existent) rental house which was actually a house we supposely used to live in (I'd never been in this house in real life).

I'm thinking this is looking like a really L O N G day at work.

Doctors who need to be shot

So, a good friend posted this last week. I had known she wasn't handling the meds well, but didn't realize the full extent of her problems.

Then I saw her Saturday and found her to be quite ill. Not sick. Sick is different from ill. Sick is the flu. Ill is...this sort of thing.

I offered to kneecap the doctor several times. She demurred, for now, because her focus is on getting healthy again. And she's not into the whole physical violence thing. She's also stubborn as hell and not real excited about medical "science" right now, so seeing another doctor was far down her list of Things To Do soon.

Fortunately, sometime ago I 'friended' her husband on Facebook. Yesterday morning I saw this update:

Today I took [artcat] to the hospital for some test[ing]. She will be there for two or three days. Please keep her in your prayers. Tue at 9:50pm

Artcat is not a hospital kind of person. I was VERY concerned. This update came through just as I went to bed last night:

[T]est and more test.....things are improving. [artcat] is in room [#]B at [hospital]. In May she had a blood test that registered her hemoglobin at 13.4. Normal is between 12.5 and 18. When the blood count gets as low as 8.0 it is transfusion time. Tuesday's test registered 4.3. Things look like they are improving with the first transfusion and they are still trying to find the reason for the blood loss. They have one more test in the morning to rule out internal bleed. Wed [at ~10:00pm]

From another source, I found out that one of the things they are checking is how well her bone marrow is doing.

And I've just realized that I've never gone over my sister Ellen's illness when I was a toddler.... Suffice to say that whenever I hear the words "bone marrow" I freak the fuck out.

I really really want to kill this doctor of artcat's. All I can hope for is that those in the hospital are REAL doctors who are able to put her back together again.

Oh how I hate flurries!

Doesn't it always seem that bad news travels in a pack? I've certainly seem my share of personal (i.e. family) bad news, but when I broaden the scope, here's what I see scattered around:

• A dear friend whose doctor needs to have evil things done to him for ignoring her phone calls for weeks until she showed up in his exam room in early-stage organ failure because of medication he prescribed! [this brings up ghosts from my childhood and freaks me way the fuck out in very abnormal ways]
• Someone who is hospitalized tonight because of a fall a couple of days ago.
• A coworker who's father died just under a month ago.
• My sister needs a tuneup in her brain electrodes, but there are some issues there. Long story. Of course.
• Another friend who's mother died about 10 days before mine.
• And a couple of others' whose parents are at the stage my mom was at about 5 months ago.
• People forgetting the whole "innocent till proven guilty in a court of law" thing. Accusation doesn't equal fact.
• Ongoing medical issues with another friend who has, essentially, had a headache since November. Every day. Can you imagine dealing with a three-year-old 24/7 with a headache? Yeah. Doctors have no idea. Doctors suck.
• Gout in another family member. Though that's easing due to--of all things!--cherries.
• Stupid men involving themselves in extramarital situations and having their lives destroyed over it (not to mention the lives of their wives and families). Guys: KEEP YOUR DICK IN YOUR PANTS, and your pants zipped/glued shut!
• The legal maneuvering over my mom's broken leg is still hanging fire in our family. See footnote here.
• The economy is hitting home in libraries across the country. Ohio is slashing and burning its way through their astoundingly fabulous libraries. Our city is sending ominous links via email to articles about other communities' belt-tightening as we approach the budget planning sessions for 2010-11.
• Schedule Nazi just doesn't seem to understand that some of us never want to see her again.
• PTF pissed me off this week in a way that he hasn't achieved for months. Possibly over a year, in fact. Over something insanely stupid. Of course. What else is new?
• [whinge] I work Tuesday-Friday this week. I'm going to ALA on Saturday--just for the exhibits--all day. I work Sunday; Sundays S U C K! And then I work Monday-Thursday next week. So basically I'm working 7/7-16 every day.[/whinge] The problem is exacerbated by the feeling like I'm at work for 7 or so hours daily and get virtually no cataloging done. Since that's the part of my job I love the most, I'm getting whinier and whinier about it, not to mention behind-er.
• Our super-wonderful senior shelvers will be leaving for college in 5 weeks or so. WAAAAAHHHH!!! Am so sad about this. For me; not for them, of course.

There's also the fact that the new director, while starting to get her legs under her as far as the job goes, is still needing a LOT of information regularly. And we've undertaken to make some rather ginormous changes in some of of our major work procedures...there's a lot of stress. I like change. These will be good changes when they are all in place and understood...but it's hard.

This is the sort of mood where I probably could use a large glass of wine (or two), but I'm too afraid of using alcohol as a crutch (family history + ) so I probably won't. But the inside of my skin itches from all this drama and angst and things to think about that I don't even know where to start. Gah.

Roll With It

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, baby

Steve Winwood (not an artist I like, but, well, the lyrics fit)

So.

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.

Upsetting

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.

Important Message

Last week was an exciting week for Sparky. This is from the School District from their online posting. We also received it, in slightly different form, as a paper note home from school:

Important Message for [high school] Families and Students
Th!s m0rn!ng at ab0ut 10:30 a.m., we d!sc0vered the f0ll0w!ng message 0n the wall 0f the f!rst fl00r b0y’s restr00m: “B0mb 0ff 0n Fr!day”. The p0l!ce were called and !mmed!ately began an !ndepth !nvest!gat!0n and a th0r0ugh search 0f the bu!ld!ng.

We are tak!ng th!s threat very ser!0usly and are w0rk!ng cl0sely w!th the [C!ty] P0l!ce Department t0 !nvest!gate the c!rcumstances and s0urce 0f the message. Wh!le threats 0f th!s nature are bec0m!ng m0re and m0re c0mm0n !n area h!gh sch00ls, we n0ne-the-less want t0 take all necessary measures t0 assure a safe and secure env!r0nment. T0 that end, there w!ll be a full p0l!ce presence at the sch00l b0th t0m0rr0w and Fr!day. Please welc0me them as they are there f0r every0ne’s benef!t.

After careful d!scuss!0ns w!th the p0l!ce, the dec!s!0n has been made that [the school] w!ll f0ll0w a n0rmal schedule f0r classes and act!v!t!es 0n b0th Thursday and Fr!day. We w!ll use th!s webs!te and 0ur aut0mated ph0ne call!ng system t0 keep y0u !nf0rmed 0f any further devel0pments.

Thank y0u f0r y0ur understand!ng and c00perat!0n.

[C.T.], Pr!nc!pal

The classes on Friday were at less than 75% capacity. Nothing happened, except for having lots of cops in the halls. A senior was arrested on Thursday. He's 18, and as such will be tried as an adult. Mentally, he seems to be 2--and no, he wasn't going to set off a bomb: he's apparently got a history of doing asshatted things like this, he was PO'd about something to do with Prom, or so runs the scuttlebutt.

And so far this week, the middle schools have had to go to "alert" because the same thing has happened there. This is nuts. I'm all for reinstating stocks and rotten vegetables in the center of town. Beast prefers the concept of a toothbrush and giant dirty tile floor.

Amazing fact

OK, so yeah. I just figured out/remembered last week that I can RSSify one of the cataloging listserves I have had delivered to my email for years and years. It is VERY ACTIVE--i.e. it hit the (apparent) 200-post limit in Bloglines in less than 4 days--and it just piles up in my email and makes me crazy. I set my email account to stop received emails...

...this morning I can't believe how much lighter I feel when I logged into my work email and it didn't immediately pop up with "400 Unread Emails--You SUCK!" I'm much more used to ignoring unread feeds than emails. Training? Dunno, but the posts are substantially easier to read in feeds than in email as well. Faster, cleaner, more easily disposed-of...

Ahhh. Technology working FOR me. Yay. Listening to Bob Seger on my old college station helps, too (they played Slipknot and Something Corporate and Hoobastank just before--don't worry it's not all crap!).

---

This one's for Aims--
Urban Word:

Irregardless: Without lack of disregard.

Irregardless, I feel your pain on the Net 2.0 webinar. Sux to be you, eh?

What I've accomplished this week

Mood: blergh
Hair: I have brushed it; I have not yet 'dealt with it' this morning
Listening to: Sparky eating breakfast, and the furnace. I love furnaces! (It's officially -2F degrees outside; our thermometer says -7F)

1. Avoided a 3.5 hour meeting at church (didn't know it would last that long, and believe me had I been there in the condition I was in...it would NOT have lasted 3 hours!). Can't wait to see the minutes, though!
2. Cataloged about 45 books (at work)
3. Read about 4 million listserv messages and cataloging/library feeds (mostly from home)
4. Checked over several recon'd CDs, and found several errors...oy (here at home last night)
5. Email (at work, not so much at home, which has been depressing, but there ya go...)
6. Slept during the day almost every day.
7. Talked to my oldest sister on the phone, and cried.
8. Worried
9. Talked to my MIL on the phone and listened while she cried.
10. Worried
11. Talked to my oldest nephew on the phone (I need to call him back).
12. Worried
13. Talked to Beast on the phone while he dealt with the medical situations in Ohio.
14. Worried
15. Visited Dean, which I'm coming to realize will be the last thing I do for him. That bridge is burnt.
16. Got angry.
17. Drove 8 hours in one day, on a trip that should have taken 5; 1.5 hours of that was spent moving 15 miles. Did I mention snow? Ice? Stupid drivers? People in the ditch with their headlights pointing perpendicular to the road? Having to pee for 2 hours and not being able to pull off the road for fear of never getting back on it?
18. Spent a lot of quality time with assorted porcelain fixtures.
19. Worried
20. Cleaned out Bloglines: deleted some feeds that don't update often or annoy me when they do; added a couple of others. Net count: down 13 from 137 to 124.
21. Played IM tag with my oldest niece yesterday afternoon; we never did manage to be at our computers at the same time.
22. Did not punch Schedule Nazi, though there were at least three separate reasons I wanted to, one of which was an email I received Wednesday (and read at home) which said, "Ask me what I did to your [work] cart." This left me with visions of mayhem and having to reorganize the whole damn thing. It wasn't that bad, but still.
23. Talked to CT about labels. She doesn't like the color of the purchased light blue labels. Her own are a 'pretty' light blue. Did not punch her.
24. Gaped in astonishment at Tom Cruise. This video is long, but OMGWTFBBQ times 12--as if we needed confirmation...it's horrifying.
25. Mentally swore at my brother for being an asshat.
26. Called our insurance company and gently suggested they update the doctor page on their website; our clinic moved almost 5 years ago, but the address on the website is the old address. Also asked about taking Sparky for an eye exam. Forgot to ask if he's eligible for new glasses. Don't think he is, though.
27. Helped Sparky with the garbage collection and other weekly chores.
28. Emptied the dishwasher.
29. Called my doctor's office again and asked about a referral to my allergist, also asked for a call-back when it was done.
30. Ate out about 10 times, primarily fast-food. And too much, every time.
31. Worried
32. Encouraged Sparky to figure out something to do for his birthday, and then realized that Beast will have to be the one to deal with whatever Sparky decides because I work that day. Hmmmm....maybe the next weekend instead....

So, a semi-productive week, but virtually no work-for-pay items on the list. Oh well. I'm off now to eat my morning bagel and get ready for work. Woo-hoo. Yee-haw. I'm so excited.

Whatever

Driving at rush hour through horizontally-falling snow is not fun. The DTs suck and watching someone go through them sucks too, even if the person suffering them is unconscious and fully sedated. Golf is a stupid game, and it makes people swear a lot. If you don't have a will, a medical power of attorney, and a legal guardian for yourself in case of accidents or whatever...you should. Go get one.

Now.

Mood: Tense, emotionally exhausted, and unhappy (in no particularly order)
Hair: STINKS! I hate cigarette smoke!
Listening to: Beast swearing at his Tiger Woods golf game

World Blessing Generator has this to say to me tonight:

May Wisdom and Happiness compete to see which can do you the greatest favor,
and all of your relationships be blessed with balance and harmony.
Continue your spiritual practice no matter what happens or what anyone does to you.
Pray and
accept.

Life is funny

I'd like to be able to say that my life is funny. I guess it is, if looked at in a very mordant way.

My eldest nephew (James) left a message on our home phone today (along with four other people! WTF? Seriously--we can go weeks with no messages most of the time!). His dad, Dean, is in the hospital, and "it doesn't look good." He must have said that 42 times over the course of that message plus the follow-up calls. "It doesn't look good" means that Dean:

• is on a ventilator, and therefore unconscious
• has one foot that will need to be amputated due to gangrene
• may have had a mild heart attack
• has taken so much aspirin that they are pumping him up with blood thickener at the hospital
• ....and God only knows what else is wrong with him.

He hasn't seen a doctor since my sister/his wife Ellen died. In 1994.

James' request was for me to let the rest of the family on this side know, and also...well, jeez, he's not sure what he's supposed to do if "things really go to hell," i.e. Dean dies.

James and his brother Don live about an hour from us. Their dad lives about 2 hours further on. I can be at the hospital with Dean in about 3 hours tomorrow. Beast is on a business trip, but he can get there after his meeting tomorrow in 5 hours. We are the nearest relatives on our side of the family.

These are my baby nephews (current ages 32 and 34). I have shed so many tears over them in the past decade-plus. And Dean was always my funnest bro-in-law...until Ellen died and he rolled over into 100% alcoholism, threw away his career, his house, all the heirlooms from my sister--except Grandma's quilt--and moved back in with his mother at age 57.

Beast's Dad is out of the hospital. I guess that's our silver lining.

I'm telling you: I need a family health chart!

Mood: Wired, and tired. I have no idea if I'll sleep at all tonight.
Hair: Attached to my head and probably a giant mess.
Listening to: The wind blowing the microwave vent open and closed; it's suddenly very gusty again.

On the bus

Here's a call you don't want to receive from your kid as he rides home from school on the bus, especially when you've just returned home and haven't heard/seen a weather forecast since 6 a.m.:

Mom! Is there a tornado coming right now?

[The answer was yes...sorta]

Update, or Why I've Been Quiet

Aside from the obvious answer of "BUSY!" which has become rather an automatic response to anyone asking where I've been...

We are in a holding pattern right now.

The new floors are done, and we can't put the tree up until Advent starts (Mom sez!), and we are back to our regular work schedules more or less this week. I don't want to even THINK about Christmas cards, but I guess I had better...we received our first one Saturday.

So, the main holding pattern is around Beast's mom. She went in the hospital last Sunday with abdominal pain. After some tests--MRI, CT scan--they've discovered that there are some anomalies around her pancreas, her lymph nodes are also 'not right', and there's something funky going on in her lungs as well. She is going in today(actually, is probably there right now) for biopsy/ies. We should have a clearer picture of what is actually going on by the end of the week, or whenever the doctors get the results and can interpret them.

However, whatever the results are, as adults we all know that when three totally separate systems/organs are involved in something like this, it's not good. And the doctors have pretty much laid the groundwork for a diagnosis of pancreatic cancer which as probably metastasized to her lungs and maybe her lymphatic system.

Beast has been holding off on telling Sparky anything, and in my unfortunately common Magical Thinking rationale, I haven't wanted to deal with it here either. Saying it--and typing it--makes it real, right? So, the list of those "in the know" is small: Beast's family (of course), Amy (because she was here this weekend), my oldest sister and niece (who may have told my other niece), and...that's all. I need to call church and give them an update for the prayer chain. And I'll mention it to my boss tomorrow in case I have to leave precipitately.

To clarify what I said in my last post about this reminding me of Thanksgiving 1994: my dad died the Sunday before Thanksgiving that year, so this is just another reason to NOT 'celebrate' that particular day. Unfortunately, it frequently falls on either Beast's or my nephew Don's birthday, so we do tend to celebrate on that day...which is confusing. And it's harder again to find obvious things for which to be thankful this year.

Not what I intended

This post was going to extol the virtues of music, list the songs I heard today at work and generally rave about Launchcast.

At 2:55 today, the power went out at work (and apparently, in the neighborhood as a whole). My list? I never had saved it.

After spending nearly 30 minutes helping get everything reset in the library, I checked to see if there was an auto-save somewhere. Nope.

So, here's the last hour of what I heard with my ratings/comments:

Alison Moyet -- Is This Love? 9 (I want to be able to sing like her)

The Police -- De Do Do Do, De Da Da Da 7 (about where my head was at this point)

Kenny Chesney -- Wild Ride 8 (this was the second Chesney song of the day--both off his latest album, both good--and I don't love country)

Bon Jovi -- Prayer '94 8 (interesting take on their more well-known version)

New Order -- Perfect Kiss 6

Operator -- Soulcrusher (Amended Version) skipped (had already heard Operator earlier)

T. Rex -- Bang A Gong (Get It On) 9 (mindless, dopey--in all senses--rock!)

Thievery Corporation -- The Richest Man In Babylon unrated (Thievery Corp. is great! I think I was focused on work during this song so I didn't rate it)

N'Klabe -- Ella Volvió (Remix) 7 (I do like N'Klabe)

The Gap Band -- You Dropped A Bomb On Me 9 (this is the song during which we lost power--irony?)

Joe Henry -- Love Is Enough unrated (undecided on whether I like the singer or the song)

Los Lobos -- Short Side Of Nothing 6

Soulive -- Morning Light skipped (ick)

Brandtson -- Stop Machine skipped (ick)

The Good, The Bad & The Queen -- Three Changes skipped (ick)

Miriam Makeba -- Pata Pata 10 (one of my favorite songs)

I Nine -- Seven Days Of Lonely 8 (very interesting)

Bodyrockers -- Dirty 8 (a misogynist's wet dream, but a great tune)

Steve Earle -- Leroy's Dustbowl Blues 6

Simian Mobile Disco -- I Believe unrated (love the name of the band, but I think this was another high-focus moment)

Constantine -- Everybody Loves skipped (had already heard another, better Constantine song earlier)

Queen -- Under Pressure 9 (...sigh...David Bowie...)

Caribou -- Sundialing 4

When I last checked the lost file, it had about 40 songs on it. I was only going to list the really excellent new (to me) finds. Oh, well.

This wasn't a bad day, but it certainly wasn't a great day. I'm worried about a dozen different things that need to be dealt with, and I have a mosquito bite on my ankle. On October 9.

WTF!?

Time to call my niece so I can stop my sister from pestering me any more!!

Foo-ball! Uhhh!

Hey, yo. The Pack won, beating the Eagles 16-13.

Don't sound so fuckin' surprised, all you "Favre is washed-up, over-the-hill" pundits. Hah.

The man has tied up John Elway, and will be passing him in the wins category next. And that is simply going to Make My Week when it happens. (I loathed Elway for the duration of his tenure in Denver; it was a long dry spell for me to go without cheering on the Broncos, and I blame the jerk for Dan Reeves' departure, the best coach the team had ever had up to that point...)

But I digress: the Broncos won yesterday as well. And the Bears LOST!! As Bob Costa said last night (I paraphrase): "The Bears defense was strong and did a good job. Unfortunately, the Bears offense also got off the bus for the game." I really, really, really love Bob Costas. As a matter of fact....the Bears have moved into the slot in which I hope they stay ALL SEASON: absolute bottom of the NFC North.

Two downers for the day, one relatively minor and the other a major tragedy: the Brownies lost (hugely), and Kevin Everett (Buffalo Bills) was badly injured, damaging his spine in a helmet-to-helmet tackle he made on the second half kickoff. What a terrible thing.

And that was the first week. Bring on week 2.

Some Days

There are some days where you know that going to work is going to suck. Sometimes it's because of the piles of work left from previous days. Sometimes it's from leftover interpersonal stuff.

Today, for me, it's the latter. Much as I hate resolving them, unresolved interpersonal shit is like the cloud behind Pigpen: you're not sure you want to know what it's made up of, and you would prefer if it went FAR away without intervention of any kind from you.

Best news on the work front: I'm catching up. Second-best news: Sparky is coming to work today with me. I have some work for him to do (for which, yes, he does get paid--by me).

On top of this, I'm really sore from my massage yesterday. REALLY sore, but my shoulders do seem a little looser. I think I'd really need a daily appointment for at least a week to get all the tightness to go away, but that's not practical. So, two Bufferin for breakfast it is.

And I'm back to worrying about my entire family. I think that was brought on by worries over Katherine mentioned by Elizabeth, then a discussion I had yesterday about my mom...and the floodgates opened.

BUT!!! I did sleep all night last night! And that's more important that anything else in this post, I think.

Carrying on a theme

It's currently 82 degrees, according to the Pixie. I'm not even checking anywhere else!

Took Z home, leaving at 7:30 a.m. He had band camp this morning at 9 so needed to get home to pick up the instrument, to pack a lunch, and to unload the 50 lbs. of video game gear he brought with him overnight. They were both up till around 1, then got up at 6. Sparky fell asleep in the car on the drive home (by way of Best Buy for a gift card for another friend at whose house he's spending the night tomorrow--sheesh!).

Sleeping in the car: momentous. He simply never sleeps if there is any kind of light on his face.

I'm tired too, and somehow I pulled a muscle. It's not acute, not gonna keep me from functioning, but it's annoying and feels weird when I walk.

Heard from our leaders of the mission trip in Minnesota that everyone affiliated with them is fine and accounted for. We stayed, and worked, quite near where the collapse happened. What a nightmare. I did briefly think about the road going out from under me today as I circled around a freeway entrance ramp. It was just a quick thought, easily pushed away, but I can see how terrifying it's going to be for the people who lived through this.

Have to be at work in 35 minutes, so I guess I should go "prettify" my hair (dried in the car on the way to Z.'s) and make sure I don't have any obvious clothing faux pas (what is the plural of 'faux pas' anyway?). Maybe I should eat lunch as well...?

Anxiety

Had a horrible dream during my waking-up moments this morning. First, the back story: Last night, I drove Sparky to the bookstore in our town at 9:30 for the Harry Potter doin's. Then I came home, took a bath (during which I nearly fell asleep), and made sure Beast had both phones nearby and an alarm set to be sure he woke up to go get Sparky at midnight (in the process, waking Beast up where he was snoring in his recliner). Then I went to bed.

The dream? The dream was that Sparky woke me up this morning by calling to say he'd spent the night at the city firehouse because his dad never came to get him. Beast was snoring in bed next to me (in reality and in the dream), and I was pretty angry with him.

This was at 5:10 a.m. Why the firehouse? {shrug} I saw plenty of cops in the downtown area (Gawd, it sounds quite odd to call it that--it's not what we call it in real life at all) last night while dropping him off. The police station would make more sense. So would Sparky going home with the owner of the bookstore, whom we know well.

I'm assuming Sparky really did get picked up and brought home.

Regardless, it's 6:00 and I have to go to work now, check in The Book to our first nine hold-placers, and gear up for our HP adventures pre-work hours. And then try to make some headway in my three nearly-full carts of backlog.

Oh, and there's the matter of Session minutes which I need to have finished by 8 tomorrow a.m., and finding my TobyMac CD which I need a song from for our presentation tomorrow at church tomorrow at 9.

And I've realized this week that the house, she is FEEEELLLLTTTHHHHHYyyyyyyyyyy!

Paranoid? Much?

In the past three months, three of my regular reads have intentionally "gone dark" in their blogs--two in the past few days--out of a concern for their privacy or loss of control of how what they have said in their blogs is being perceived by others. Specifically, by uninvited eyes. Somehow, I'm managing to keep my blinders on that No-one Could Possibly Find Me. But of course they could if they wanted to badly enough. Yup. I just checked: five keywords and there I am, discovered here and at the memes.

Yipes.

Things

Things I'm trying not to dwell on. I seem unable NOT to dwell today, however; I don't feel good, I don't know what's going on, and the combination of the two makes me weepy and worried. Once the worrying thing starts, all the worrisome stuff jumps on the train eventually.

My sister Marie sent an email a few days ago that included the following paragraph:

We are waiting to hear from [Alan] and [Katherine] about their appointment with a maternal fetal specialist regarding advice about any future possible pregnancies. Her obstetrician recommended she not get pregnant and look at adoption or surrogacy. Her kidneys seem to be returning to normal but they would not handle a second trauma of any sort, according to the renal specialist.

This isn't entirely unexpected news, but I'm so sad. So sad. I don't even want to talk to her or anyone in my family, I'm cowering under a rock in fact, having cut myself off from them--and most everyone else--while playing the "end of the school year busy-ness" card. It's hard to see children, especially new healthy babies. I just want to crawl under by bed.

My other sister, Jean, sent photos of their trip this month with all their kids and kids' SOs. In the first photo, you can see my oldest niece (in that family), Rosellen, her brother-in-law, her boyfriend, and my nephew Jesse. Way back to the right of the photo is my sister in her wheelchair.





This a closer photo of my sister on a different day of the trip, which looks like it might have been one of her "good days." She is sitting quite as straight as she can on her walker with a built-in seat. She looks a lot older than 57.

A good friend of ours just found out she has several messed up discs in her back.

We have friends who are out of work.

Beast is not enjoying his job (insert snort here).

I am woefully underprepared for the next six weeks of my life, both logistically and emotionally.

Church is doing what church does at this point in the year. I'm tired and want an extended vacation from it...

...and from the rest of my responsibilities.

Let's just not discuss my job. I love it; it's making me crazy.

Sparky's body has decided to grow again, so now we MUST shop for clothes for him. He needs pants for Monday's continuation, and shorts for summer, and possibly a million other things that I'm unaware of because he's a fucking clueless moron about everything clothes-related!

I've dropped so many balls all over the place in the past several weeks that I can't hear anything from the bouncing and caroming going on around me. I know people who are deeply hurting, and I can't do a thing about it.

And no, there is no out, no exit, no way around most of this. There is only through it, the Dark Forest of the Present, the World of Deflected Responsibilities.

Ugh. So wish I were ten years old.
{1:30 p.m. . edit: and I'm cranky over the concept of plagiarism right now...nothing like finding something you've done re-created on another URL...}

Fired

(no, not me)

You remember that cloud of dirt that always followed Pigpen around in "Peanuts"? Well, I think one of my best friends has turned into a job-Pigpen. Every job she takes lately, the company closes or downsizes. She's had about three jobs in the past five years, counting several long stretches as a SAHM/job hunter. Today's email subject is "HELP!!!!!!!!!!!!!" The full text of the message is: "Effective at 5:00 today, I am out of a job the COMPANY IS CLOSING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

It's not like she's been pretty much single-handedly paying the mortgage on the house or anything....

Shit.