Copy/Pasting Update
Just gonna copy/paste a Tumblr post and an email sent to my bestie Kirstin, because I love being back on LJ but I have no mental energy to write anything original right now because massive sugar hangover and general life stress:
(From Tumblr, apologies to anyone who had to read the original whine...)
Yes, it’s Easter and I’m on Tumblr. Huge family celebration an hour away that I can’t get to it because I just had oral surgery and agoraphobia has me in its clutches again. And Easter at my mother-in-law’s house is one of my favorite things in the world with my favorite people in the world and I’m feeling very sorry for myself having to miss it. I spent all day yesterday cooking and baking, took all the dishes for an Easter lunch over to my parents, and then at 10PM discovered I burnt the last batch of dinner rolls. So even with quick proofing, I was up until after 1AM.
Added to this, my mom’s health has taken a sharp downturn and my dad is having some very concerning symptoms that he’s getting checked out this week which completely terrifies me because he is her 24/7 caretaker and guess who is their only other option for errands/driving/housecleaning/self-care. Oh my god, all of that on top of managing my own household and homeschooling and getting Zack back and forth to all his activities, I can’t imagine. I know I’m certainly not alone. We even have a nifty nickname, “the sandwich generation,” but this life situation needs a different name. I like sandwiches. Sandwiches are nice. This is nothing like a sandwich. We should be called the “tits and/or nuts in a vise-grip” generation.
So yes, I’m sitting at home, pretending not to notice my neighbors having an Easter family reunion under a huge outdoor tent while knitting and browsing Tumblr and feeling pathetic.
(And a follow-up email to Kirstin when I realized there are worse things than spending Easter alone)
It turned out to be no so bad after all. I sat inside and watched the rain and knitted and marathoned the entire second season of Broadchurch and ate half a flame egg all by myself. Meanwhile, Russ and Zack were stuck inside at the Easter party where my annoying sister-in-law Jania deigned to make a rare appearance and she bored everyone with a 45-minute story about some car wash club she joined and the cleaning methods they use and how important it is to your image to have a spiffy-looking car. Not sorry to have missed out on that at all. Today I have a massive sugar hangover, probably from eating half of a flame egg all by myself. :/
My mom is...not well. After a year of refusing to see her cardiologist (she had extreme shortness of breath and fluid retention and she thought her ALLERGIST could help her) she finally made an appointment and it is pretty dire. She has severe aortic regugitation (instead of her heart circulating the blood properly, it all just kind of goes PBLLLLT out the sides of her aortic valve), congestive heart failure with her heart function at 40% and dropping (so not only is most of the oxygenated blood going PBLLLT, her heart isn't doing a good job of getting what's left where it needs to go), an undiagnosed heart attack at some point and a suspected septal defect (big honking hole in her heart between the two chambers). So she is undergoing some very invasive testing in the next few weeks and she is terrified, as anyone would be, and she may be looking at open heart surgery to repair everything if her doctor feels she has a good chance of making it through. Right now he's not calling her chances of surviving the surgery.
Meanwhile my dad can't swallow. Even liquids are starting to be a problem and he chokes on everything. He's lost a lot of weight and when I visited on Easter Saturday, he was so weak he nearly fell. Yet he's trying to handle all the care for my mom and is refusing to see a doctor because it's just his "sinuses." Okay dad, and not a growth in your esophagus or anything? Okay. But they are grown-ass adults and do not take well to coddling or even to gentle suggestions so my role is to keep my mouth shut until the situation goes completely tits-up then I get to come in and mop up. It's fun.
So I'm just trying to concentrate on my own life and taking care of Russ and Zack and the house and etc. but meanwhile there is this low-level stress like a fever just hanging over everything and sucking all the joy out of life.
So that's me, how are you?