Well, That Was Interesting

I hope you had a great Thanksgiving, surrounded by friends and family. That your turkey or whatever your family served was perfect, the sides were all delicious, and nothing and no one got out of control.

As is as much a tradition anymore as turkey and dressing, we watched football - accompanied by the yelling and screaming previously mentioned in my post of last Saturday.

Cam Newton and the Panthers are amazing - an 11-0 record, beating the Dallas Cowboys quite nicely.

In that game, it was upsetting to see Romo go down on the same shoulder that was broken a few weeks ago. He probably would have been better served by the docs, the trainers and the team ownership if they had given him even a couple of more weeks of rehab to rebuild the muscles and ensure the bone was fully healed. As it is, he went down, his wife was horrified - there was a camera shot of her, head down and crying - and the x-rays are inconclusive.

Later that evening was the flip-side of horrible. Brett Favre had his number retired at Lambeau Field and his childhood hero, Bart Starr, was on hand to celebrate with him. A really excellent moment - on Thanksgiving or not.

Closer to home we had a delicious dinner and then... Yeah. It seems there is almost always an 'and then' accompanied by the opening strains of Beethoven's Fifth - dadadaDA without the follow-on. In case you're not sure, here's the first movement - it's the first couple of bars I'm using as my horror movie warning theme:

Is it any wonder that some musical aficionados refer to that first movement as the "Fate motif"?

Anyway, I had misgivings when hubby came back from the store with a selection of items not on the shopping list. Five bottles of wine, a bottle of Bushmill's Irish Whisky, and two bottles of Drambuie. Anyone else see a problem here? And, hubby is a self-admitted alcoholic. He's been on the wagon for weeks and last night, he fell off - HARD. Really, really hard and he's in a world of hurt this morning.

Even though that's private information, it's something that's common enough among the general population that I'm not afraid to share.

I don't "drink". I indulge, in moderation, but know the signs quite well. When the tip of my nose and my lips get numb, I'm done. No more - just water please. Last night we shared two bottles of wine, with him drinking the lion's share - a glass-and-a-half+ to my one glass - and I was on the cusp. I thought (as in actively thought) about his offer of Bushmill's and decided to have a little. About a finger's worth, and that was enough. From there, I stopped.

And this is, I think, the difference between an "addictive" personality and a non-addictive personality. Hubby is the former. I am the latter. He says, because it's comforting for him to say, that I'm as much of an alcoholic as he is. But I'm not.

We shared the two bottles of wine, then he went to the Bushmill's. He had a glass of that, then decided to add some Drambuie and see how that went down. Another glass of whisky with the Drambuie and... wham. Instant inebriation and it wasn't pretty.

If he had not brought the liquor home last night I would have been a touch, but no more than a touch, disappointed. After all, what's a nice dinner without a little wine? But why on Earth he had to bring home more than a bottle or two is beyond me.

We had chicken for dinner, so a nice dry chardonnay or a crisp sauvignon blanc would have gone well, with a slightly fruity wine for "dessert" - and that would have been enough. What possessed him to buy any more is a mystery to me, and one I'm not allowed to explore. I've tried to explore it and have been routinely slapped down hard for my efforts.

Even last night, when he pulled the Bushmill's from the freezer (which is where he likes to keep it, so it's nice and cold), I asked, "Are you sure?" and he said with practiced joviality, "What's your problem?" My problem.

It's my problem because I can't help but wonder why he's doing this to himself. My problem because if I had said one syllable more he would have lost his temper and told me to 'shut up', or words to that effect. My problem because this morning he's going to be in a bear of a mood and caring for his mother will fall to me. Which is fine, really, but she's fussy and particular and she will fret and fuss and ask a million questions for which I mostly have no answers.

The 'where's * son *' is easy. He's in bed, sick as a dog and hungover. It's after nine o'clock in the morning and he's in bed and will probably be in bed until 10:30 or later.

'What's wrong with him?' is easy, too. She was there. She saw some of the aftermath - the stumbling and staggering and slurring. She didn't see or hear the upstairs bit, but that's just as well.

However, there are a plethora of other questions she might ask, for which I have no answer. Things like, 'why did he drink so much?' Well, yes, I could answer that question. Because he's an alcoholic with all the self-control of a seven-year old left alone with Bill Gates's credit line in a Toys-R-Us. But, for domestic peace, it's better I don't get into that. There are too many potential answers, none of them good.

At six-thirty last evening he announced he was going upstairs, to bed. She followed about a minute later, announcing her intent and going into the bathroom.

In the living room, I turned her bed down, adjusted it (it's got a motorized mechanism that raises the head), got her water, did the lights - bright lights so she can find her way from bed to bath and back in the middle of the night. At seven I was left alone in the family room.

Honestly? It was pretty nice. No blaring television. I turned the volume down and changed the station to the internet radio station I prefer (kdfc.com - all classical, all the time with no ads, just announcements because it's a publicly funded station). Then I spent a couple of hours relaxing and letting the peace of the house steal over me. At nine I went up to bed and was settled in, after getting Sam taken care of, at nine-thirty.

This morning I'm a little drowsy, but no more than that. I finished my whisky and started in on water, and stayed on water all night. Had some more this morning, so I'm in fine shape.

Later today I'll head out and do the errands - after the Black Friday madness has a chance to calm a bit. I don't have to go to any of the malls, thank God. Just to Costco and PetSmart and Safeway or Raley's. Typical errands but I have to do them today because Sam's out of cat food as of this afternoon and if I'm heading across town to do that, I might as well stay across town and do the Costco run. Safeway and Raley's are both between here and there, so it's just another stop in my trip. Easy-peasy and then I'll be done with errands for the weekend.

So - there's a window into my world on the day after Thanksgiving. I do hope that yours was more pleasant, less dramatic and full of satisfaction and great memory makers.

Have a lovely day today, too, okay?

Best~
Philippa

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Friday!

We made it to another Friday! I know that for most of us worker drones, this is a 'hooray!' day, the day before a weekend. For many, it's just another day because they're working tomorrow. For some, it's a scary day - the Day of the Pink Slip. I've heard on the news that some companies, big companies, are getting ready to lay off thousands.

I've been there, that last one, several times and it is no fun. It is survivable, but first it is shocking (even if you know it's coming), hurtful (even if you know it's coming) and ego bruising. It's just the way it is, but it is survivable.

Yesterday I was talking to a work-friend about life and stuff, including some of the bad things that have happened to me. I told her about 2012. My 2012. What I think of as My Year of Growing Up.

Being between 50 and 60 I think a lot of people would think I had already grown up and, yes, chronologically, they would be right. But there is always room for growth, strengthening and improvement.

Between about October 2011 and September 2012 I was tested - severely, but I survived, sanity intact, stronger and prepared for just about anything.

The family wars had escalated, with me as Switzerland. They started early on in our child's life. The dynamic between father and child was a disaster because he could not (not 'would not' but could not) let our child grow up. He could not accept that our child is their own person, liable to make their own choices and mistakes and achieve their own failures and victories.

I tried to stay neutral, out of it, when the hammers and tongs flailed. The combatants would shout and scream, throw imprecations and demand that I take sides.

Sometimes, when the situation was too egregious, I had to. I would step or get dragged into it.

As bad as those battles had been prior to that, they were escalating, more frequent and it was taking its toll on all of us.

Inside myself, I could feel the changes, the almost desperation for it to STOP. A building need to have it end. Finally, I put my foot down - our child, who was an adult, had to leave.

I hated to do it. It broke my heart that it had come to that, but the situation was untenable. It was the best possible answer for all of us. What was going on certainly was not healthy. It was, in fact, about as dysfunctional as it could be.

That was in January 2012 and I set a deadline of March 1st. By mid-February it was done. A mourning period followed. My husband was miserable. I was miserable. Our reasons were, I believe, vastly different. He had lost control over that person and it was 'killing' him. If our child had stayed, nothing would have changed.

Even now, three years later, he will not speak our child's name. He will not allow me to see them (unless I want a scream fest directed at me, along with threats of divorce). I am not supposed to call or communicate.

I still do, on the QT, because I love my child. I want to share my life and their life, to be a mom and, at this stage, a friend. But I can't because of control issues in my domestic partner.

Distraction came in February when we all got sick with a chest cold. My mother-in-law got it and it was so bad one night, we took her to the ER. They admitted her and she spent two weeks in the hospital. Hers developed from bronchitis to pneumonia. Her kidneys failed and she was put on dialysis. We visited every day, spent an hour or two, and went home and worried.

In early March, she was released and sent to a nursing home. It was her birthday, her first day there, and I stopped in after work. My husband had been at the hospital when they moved her, had followed her there, and was with her when I arrived.

Over dinner that evening he said he was worried. 'Mom' hadn't eaten much that day but the nurse had given her a different kind of insulin and he thought she had given too much. He fretted and fretted until, at nine o'clock, I said, "Go back. You're not going to sleep if you're worried. Go on back and check on her, make sure she's okay."

He did. She wasn't. When he got there she was, according to report, drenched in sweat, delirious, in and out of consciousness - in insulin shock. He called me, frantic. I made a frantic call to the hospital from which she had been released, to ask the doctor who had cared for her to call the home and talk to my husband. No luck. In the meantime, according to what I heard later, the nursing home staff did nothing. He was the one who got sugar packets and water from the coffee station and gave them to his mother. He was the one who dialed 911 and demanded the paramedics.

The reading on our glucose meter when he first checked her blood sugar was 55. It's supposed to be between 90 and 120 - that's ideal. The paramedics, when they arrived shortly after, got a reading of 62. Probably because of the sugar water she had received.

Back to the hospital for treatment.

The next morning we went to the hospital to check on her. She had been transferred back to the nursing home. 'Horrified' doesn't cut it. We raced to the home and spent an hour extricating her. The director battled with us until I asked, loudly enough for anyone outside the room to hear, 'you people almost killed her last night. Just how many bites at the apple do you want to have? Would you leave her here after what happened if she was your mother?'

At home, we rearranged the house while she rested in the car. She couldn't possibly climb the stairs so we moved furniture, carried her bed (the one that weighs probably 100 pounds because it has a motor on it so she can raise the head and foot) downstairs and got it set up. Then we got her settled.

For five weeks we nursed her, did what we could to get her back.

At first she had trouble breathing. She wasn't getting enough oxygen into her blood and would panic, making things worse. Her husband, gone since 2003, had an oxygen tank and hose. God knows why that came with her when she moved in, but it did and had sat in the garage all those years.

There was a little pressure still remaining and we hooked her up to that. It helped and, for about a week until the tank ran out, it kept her calm. When we didn't have any more she had recovered enough she really didn't need it. A couple of panic attacks, a couple of times of sitting her up, supporting her, and telling her to breathe, coaching her through it, and she was better.

In the meantime, still in March, I noticed one of our cats had a lump in her face, along her jaw. She kept rubbing at it and drooling. We took her to the vet. It was cancer. Squamous cell carcinoma and was going to kill her in a matter of months. She was started on morphine, administered three times a day.

We were still coping with Mom's situation. She couldn't get up to go to the bathroom on her own, so we had to move her from her bed to her wheelchair to the toilet to her wheelchair and back into bed.

In April, when I was moving Mom from her wheelchair to her bed, she got lightheaded. Thinking she was going to fall, she twisted - away from me. I got a hernia when I caught her and managed to get her back onto the bed.

I had felt a twinge at the time but didn't think anything of it. A few days later I found the lump. Not knowing what it was, my first thought was cancer. I called the doctor. He examined me and said I needed an ultrasound. That led to surgery. By the time I saw the surgeon four weeks later, I was in pain. I couldn't sit. I couldn't stand. I couldn't lie down. Anything I did hurt. A lot.

I was early for my pre-surgery appointment. He was late. I waited in his office for more than an hour and, by the time he came in to see me, I was in tears. Frustrated and in a lot of pain because the insides were pushing out and I could not get them back.

I had to wait two weeks for the surgery, which I had in June. Two weeks of recovery before I could go back to work.

On July 7th we put Katrina down.

On July 12th, after seventeen years of working for the company, I was laid off from my job.

In August, after complaining for weeks about swelling in his temples and terrible headaches, my husband went to the doctor. A biopsy later we got the diagnosis: Temporal Arteritis. A condition that can lead to blindness, strokes or death.

In September, capping off my year, my mom passed away at 93.

I got the call to come but, because I was unemployed, looking for work, and in the process of getting a background check done for my first temp assignment in the two months since being terminated, I couldn't. A day later, just before midnight, I got the call from my sister. Mom was gone.

It still beats the shit out of me every time I think of it. I'm crying now because I feel so damned guilty. But I know her. I know what she would say: "Do what you have to do, it's not going to change anything here. I'm being taken care of. You take care of yourself."

She was a great lady, and I miss her.

The result of all of that Year from Hell, what I had come to say was EOMD, things improved. When it ended, I had survived, sanity intact, and was stronger for it. It tempered me, like passing through a crucible and, despite everything, with Millie the millipede dropping shoes every inch, I didn't lose my sense of humor.

In 2012 everyone was talking about the Mayan calendar and how the universe was going to crash down on us in December. I decided what I was experiencing was preparation. A kind of cosmic boot camp and I started to refer to all the bad things happening as Early Onset Mayan Disaster.


Now, looking back, I would not wish, for one single second, to spend a moment in that year but those experiences, that time, made me who I am now.

Five years ago I would not have the courage or strength to stand up for what's right against someone who holds sway over me. Now I have and I will. I've done it. Surviving all of that was just a matter of standing upright, of forcing one foot to move, and then the other, to keep going, keep trying and, above all, keep hoping.

Even if it all seems pointless, pick through the rubble. Find the flowers. Pick them up and count them. Be patient. Be strong. Above all: Be kind to yourself and to others.

Have a lovely day.

Best~
Philippa

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