So, here I am...
Some of you might have noticed that there was no fic list for February. That's because, as my friend Sam tells me, February is THE WORST MONTH. And yeah, this February, a lot of shit happened and I basically spent about zero time on the internet. I'll try to sum up what happened, but I don't really feel like talking about it at length, which is why I didn't end up posting about it at the time. Tw: cancer, death, family shit.
So, we got a phone call. Ta, my step-father, was in hospital with pneumonia. He'd had it before, so we didn't think much of it at the time, but we agreed to come down and help out. By the time we got to Sydney, they suspected leukemia was the underlying cause, something they confirmed with tests, and a few days in, we got the prognosis of between twelve hours and two days.
My role that I took on was to keep things running at home. I cooked, I cleaned, and I relayed bad news to dozens of people. We were there for a week, during which people came and went, Ta got worse, Ta stabilised, and the amount of calls we got went from crazy amounts to just often. After a week, we went home, to recharge and to take care of our cats, who can't be left for longer.
We were home for a week and a half. During this time Ta gradually stabilised, and even improved, to the point where they were thinking about moving him to a less-intensive ward. But then we got three phone calls in quick succession - that he'd worsened, that he was dying, that he was gone.
The next day we went back to Sydney, again, for a week. Monday, there was a gathering at a funeral home, with a lot of people who couldn't make it to the funeral itself. There was music, culture, language and religion. Tuesday, as is custom, Ta was brought to Mum's home, to the front room which had been stipped of ornament and had the furniture covered. Family came over and gathered and ate, spent time with Ta. After everyone else had gone, Mum and Jase, ta's son, slept in the room with ta overnight. The next day was the funeral. Lots of people spoke, about ten I think, each for about five minutes. All the speakers were wonderful. The church was full. Thursday, we went home, and Mum and Jeff boarded a plane to New Zealand, accompanying Ta to the ceremony and tradition that the family (and Ta) wanted before his burial, in the same plot as his first wife.
On the whole, everything went fairly well. It was a very different experience for me, as funerals go, and something I found far more profoundly moving than any of the funerals I'd been to before. I'm not done processing everything yet, but I found closure in what I experienced. After a year, there'll be a graveside ceremony called an unveiling, and I've been invited to that. I don't know yet if I'll be able to get there, but I'd really like to. For the connection to that side of my family, but also for the fact that it might be my only chance at international travel, and I've always thought about visiting New Zealand.
After the week at home, we were in Sydney AGAIN, this time for Mardi Gras. We were exhausted, but the hotel had been booked for six months, and if we are going to the unveiling, we may not get to go, next year. It all went well - the hotel was nice, it was close to the parade and to several restaurants Emma could eat from, and catching up with randomyayness and alisso was really lovely, since we hadn't gotten to see anyone aside from family until then. The parade was good - nice weather, no police violence, no spectator abuse, that we saw - and it was a lot easier with Emma's new wheelchair than had we had to rely on the buggy to transport us as in the last two years. Emma's hair was a massive hit - purple dye on top with stripes of hair chalk making a rainbow down the sides. I stuck to my Autsitc, queer and born this way shirt from last year.
Before we went back west, I swung past the remainders bookstore under Central, and picked up both Blackveil and Mirror Sight by Kristen Britain for $21 total! So now, I can read through all five (current) Green Rider books and be up to date in time for book six, Firebrand, next year. I finished reading Janny Wurts' Wars of Light and Shadows (still an absolute fave, top ten, at least) including Initiate's Trial, which was new to me, in time for Destiny's Conflict, which is out in October, and I'm on to the last Benjamin January book by Barbara Hambly. The new one of that series, Drinking Gourd, is out at the end of the month, but I likely won't be able to read it for a long time, unless the library will purchase it for me, because the hardback is pricey. Otherwise, I'm reading Alice Walker (The Temple of My Familiar, to be followed by Possessing The Secret of Joy) and Alexander McCall Smith's Precious Ramotswe series (currently Morality For Beautiful Girls).
Other things, techwise. My computer, which had a dead battery, a broken cable and a dead down key, started losing new keys, one or two a day. We'd thought about buying Emma a new machine first, but it started to worry me that my machine would die altogether. As a fallback, I still have my little XP machine, and it still works, but it's got its own glitches. Fast forward to the end of our sydney stay at Mum's - she gave us a computer. It's about the same specs as the old machine, but it works. Apparently, when Ta signed up to study a while back, his tuition included the use of a laptop. He'd dropped out and didn't give it back, and Mum went to hand it back the other day... and they're shut down, in receivership, with signs pasted to the doors with a Queensland phone number. There is literally no way for her to give it back. And it's so unused it still had the little sheet of anti-static fabric over the keys when I opened it. So, the last few days, Brother1 helped me upgrade it from Windows 8.1 to 10 and I transferred all my data from the old machine to the new, deleting it from the old as I went, so I'd know I had everything. So, I have a working machine, and it didn't cost anyone anything.
Oh, and we might have solved the problem of Emma's machine, too. Brother1 can get a refurbished CAD machine from work for about $400 (original price, over $1500) that will be able to handle Photoshop and anything else she wants to use. We can upgrade it to a whopping 32GB RAM should we wish to, since it has four slots, and it has an i7 processor and a graphics card with 2 GB onboard memory. They literally have hundreds of these things, so it's no big deal for him to buy one for us. Once he gives us a concrete price, we'll transfer the money. We wouldn't normally have anything left after so long away, but we both got advances on our pension so that we could pay for the boarding and stuff ourselves, rather than bothering Mum when she was struggling to pay for a funeral, and we still have a few hundred left. So long as we're really frugal for the next six months or so, we should be okay.
Other than that, I've been making relish, chutney and pickle with zucchinis, peaches and tomatoes. I've been looking at my house, trying to plan how to make it less of a tip. And I've been knitting baby things, ahead of Brother2's new baby girl, due on the first of April.
Hopefully, this month will be less crazy. Hopefully, I will have time to think, time to work, and time to make myself feel more settled than I feel right now. But that won't be for a little while yet - next, we have the Easter Market, and selling our knitted stuff.
For now, I'm going to be satisfied with eating decent meals regularly, starting walking and yoga again, and stopping the climbing rose on the front frence from talking over the world (again). Baby steps.
This entry was originally posted at http://iamshadow.dreamwidth.org/427698.html. Please comment there using OpenID.
So, we got a phone call. Ta, my step-father, was in hospital with pneumonia. He'd had it before, so we didn't think much of it at the time, but we agreed to come down and help out. By the time we got to Sydney, they suspected leukemia was the underlying cause, something they confirmed with tests, and a few days in, we got the prognosis of between twelve hours and two days.
My role that I took on was to keep things running at home. I cooked, I cleaned, and I relayed bad news to dozens of people. We were there for a week, during which people came and went, Ta got worse, Ta stabilised, and the amount of calls we got went from crazy amounts to just often. After a week, we went home, to recharge and to take care of our cats, who can't be left for longer.
We were home for a week and a half. During this time Ta gradually stabilised, and even improved, to the point where they were thinking about moving him to a less-intensive ward. But then we got three phone calls in quick succession - that he'd worsened, that he was dying, that he was gone.
The next day we went back to Sydney, again, for a week. Monday, there was a gathering at a funeral home, with a lot of people who couldn't make it to the funeral itself. There was music, culture, language and religion. Tuesday, as is custom, Ta was brought to Mum's home, to the front room which had been stipped of ornament and had the furniture covered. Family came over and gathered and ate, spent time with Ta. After everyone else had gone, Mum and Jase, ta's son, slept in the room with ta overnight. The next day was the funeral. Lots of people spoke, about ten I think, each for about five minutes. All the speakers were wonderful. The church was full. Thursday, we went home, and Mum and Jeff boarded a plane to New Zealand, accompanying Ta to the ceremony and tradition that the family (and Ta) wanted before his burial, in the same plot as his first wife.
On the whole, everything went fairly well. It was a very different experience for me, as funerals go, and something I found far more profoundly moving than any of the funerals I'd been to before. I'm not done processing everything yet, but I found closure in what I experienced. After a year, there'll be a graveside ceremony called an unveiling, and I've been invited to that. I don't know yet if I'll be able to get there, but I'd really like to. For the connection to that side of my family, but also for the fact that it might be my only chance at international travel, and I've always thought about visiting New Zealand.
After the week at home, we were in Sydney AGAIN, this time for Mardi Gras. We were exhausted, but the hotel had been booked for six months, and if we are going to the unveiling, we may not get to go, next year. It all went well - the hotel was nice, it was close to the parade and to several restaurants Emma could eat from, and catching up with randomyayness and alisso was really lovely, since we hadn't gotten to see anyone aside from family until then. The parade was good - nice weather, no police violence, no spectator abuse, that we saw - and it was a lot easier with Emma's new wheelchair than had we had to rely on the buggy to transport us as in the last two years. Emma's hair was a massive hit - purple dye on top with stripes of hair chalk making a rainbow down the sides. I stuck to my Autsitc, queer and born this way shirt from last year.
Before we went back west, I swung past the remainders bookstore under Central, and picked up both Blackveil and Mirror Sight by Kristen Britain for $21 total! So now, I can read through all five (current) Green Rider books and be up to date in time for book six, Firebrand, next year. I finished reading Janny Wurts' Wars of Light and Shadows (still an absolute fave, top ten, at least) including Initiate's Trial, which was new to me, in time for Destiny's Conflict, which is out in October, and I'm on to the last Benjamin January book by Barbara Hambly. The new one of that series, Drinking Gourd, is out at the end of the month, but I likely won't be able to read it for a long time, unless the library will purchase it for me, because the hardback is pricey. Otherwise, I'm reading Alice Walker (The Temple of My Familiar, to be followed by Possessing The Secret of Joy) and Alexander McCall Smith's Precious Ramotswe series (currently Morality For Beautiful Girls).
Other things, techwise. My computer, which had a dead battery, a broken cable and a dead down key, started losing new keys, one or two a day. We'd thought about buying Emma a new machine first, but it started to worry me that my machine would die altogether. As a fallback, I still have my little XP machine, and it still works, but it's got its own glitches. Fast forward to the end of our sydney stay at Mum's - she gave us a computer. It's about the same specs as the old machine, but it works. Apparently, when Ta signed up to study a while back, his tuition included the use of a laptop. He'd dropped out and didn't give it back, and Mum went to hand it back the other day... and they're shut down, in receivership, with signs pasted to the doors with a Queensland phone number. There is literally no way for her to give it back. And it's so unused it still had the little sheet of anti-static fabric over the keys when I opened it. So, the last few days, Brother1 helped me upgrade it from Windows 8.1 to 10 and I transferred all my data from the old machine to the new, deleting it from the old as I went, so I'd know I had everything. So, I have a working machine, and it didn't cost anyone anything.
Oh, and we might have solved the problem of Emma's machine, too. Brother1 can get a refurbished CAD machine from work for about $400 (original price, over $1500) that will be able to handle Photoshop and anything else she wants to use. We can upgrade it to a whopping 32GB RAM should we wish to, since it has four slots, and it has an i7 processor and a graphics card with 2 GB onboard memory. They literally have hundreds of these things, so it's no big deal for him to buy one for us. Once he gives us a concrete price, we'll transfer the money. We wouldn't normally have anything left after so long away, but we both got advances on our pension so that we could pay for the boarding and stuff ourselves, rather than bothering Mum when she was struggling to pay for a funeral, and we still have a few hundred left. So long as we're really frugal for the next six months or so, we should be okay.
Other than that, I've been making relish, chutney and pickle with zucchinis, peaches and tomatoes. I've been looking at my house, trying to plan how to make it less of a tip. And I've been knitting baby things, ahead of Brother2's new baby girl, due on the first of April.
Hopefully, this month will be less crazy. Hopefully, I will have time to think, time to work, and time to make myself feel more settled than I feel right now. But that won't be for a little while yet - next, we have the Easter Market, and selling our knitted stuff.
For now, I'm going to be satisfied with eating decent meals regularly, starting walking and yoga again, and stopping the climbing rose on the front frence from talking over the world (again). Baby steps.
This entry was originally posted at http://iamshadow.dreamwidth.org/427698.html. Please comment there using OpenID.