Right, must not be like my dad. News, even bad, must be shared.
For those of you who don't watch mhuot's journal, it's being something of a tough couple of weeks. There are several people in our lives with bad news. Strung together like this, it will sound like an overwhelming litany, but we actually got all this with several days in between.
We have a friend who lives in California, Ramona to be precise. That's where one of the fires is, and we haven't heard from this friend since the fire started. His home phone has that scary busy signal, and he hasn't got a cell phone, so basically we have to wait for him to contact us before we know he's ok. I'm reasonably sure he's alive and physically well, but I'm really worried that his house and studio have been destroyed. He's that rare creature, an artist making a living, and the loss of his studio could be completely devastating. (I was also concerned about the rest of you in CA this morning when I heard about the quake, but it sounds like it didn't do much damage so we can be grateful for that.)
About 10 days ago we learned that a friend who has been fighting cancer for several years has stopped treatment and gone into hospice care. Fucking cancer.
This week mhuot's brother had an MRI and received a preliminary diagnosis of MS. He's been falling down a lot lately, so his doctor ordered the brain scan and referred him to a neurologist. He won't get into the neurologist for a couple of weeks, so the diagnosis isn't confirmed and there's no pronosis yet, but that's the likeliest candidate. The part that's most heartbreaking is that he's going to have to give up his paramedic job, which he worked so hard to get and the school for which nearly bankrupted him. Because dealing with a 3-month-old baby isn't enough.
There have been pieces of good news lately: we got the boat safely out of the water and delivered to a repair yard to have her gel coat looked at (my dad even fixed the brakes on the trailer first!), my cousin is getting married, I'm liking my new job and workplace, my stepmother hasn't done anything crazy for a while. We can't do anything about any of the things that are currently wrong, which means I don't dare think about them too much or I *will* get overwhelmed, but that's a snapshot of my current life.
We have a friend who lives in California, Ramona to be precise. That's where one of the fires is, and we haven't heard from this friend since the fire started. His home phone has that scary busy signal, and he hasn't got a cell phone, so basically we have to wait for him to contact us before we know he's ok. I'm reasonably sure he's alive and physically well, but I'm really worried that his house and studio have been destroyed. He's that rare creature, an artist making a living, and the loss of his studio could be completely devastating. (I was also concerned about the rest of you in CA this morning when I heard about the quake, but it sounds like it didn't do much damage so we can be grateful for that.)
About 10 days ago we learned that a friend who has been fighting cancer for several years has stopped treatment and gone into hospice care. Fucking cancer.
This week mhuot's brother had an MRI and received a preliminary diagnosis of MS. He's been falling down a lot lately, so his doctor ordered the brain scan and referred him to a neurologist. He won't get into the neurologist for a couple of weeks, so the diagnosis isn't confirmed and there's no pronosis yet, but that's the likeliest candidate. The part that's most heartbreaking is that he's going to have to give up his paramedic job, which he worked so hard to get and the school for which nearly bankrupted him. Because dealing with a 3-month-old baby isn't enough.
There have been pieces of good news lately: we got the boat safely out of the water and delivered to a repair yard to have her gel coat looked at (my dad even fixed the brakes on the trailer first!), my cousin is getting married, I'm liking my new job and workplace, my stepmother hasn't done anything crazy for a while. We can't do anything about any of the things that are currently wrong, which means I don't dare think about them too much or I *will* get overwhelmed, but that's a snapshot of my current life.