Beep Beeep BOOOOOOOP
Well... work was amazing today. 8-4:30 shift. I'll virtually never have it because one of the other leads gets it five days a week because she is old and relies on bus/taxi/being dropped off, but she's on vacation so I got it today and tomorrow. An hour before it opens, getting stuff ready, taking advantage of the limited morning shoppers to get stuff done. It was very nice. Then having an evening? Extra bonus.
Then I came home to try and do some things for my mom for mother's day. Got her some potting soil at home depot, then a burger and a hot fudge sundae at dairy queen. Incidentally, there are a minimum of 5 dairy queens I can think of in the Salem area.
Anyhow... I've spent my life taking care of my family... I got used to all my mom's quirks and foibles. She can't eat alone, she can't eat when stressed, she actively stresses herself out when not with children, neighbors, or spooling out events from her life verbally.
She's approaching sixty five... She's got the Oregon health plan which, for her, is pretty good. She's trying to get things taken care of before medicare kicks in and she has to pay out of pocket for a lot more. She wanted to get nitroglycerin for her heart symptoms again, but I could not fit all of the shockingly incompetent things that have happened on that quest into a novel. She also wanted to be tested to see if she has an allergy to wheat, but they've run about 65 blood tests that don't check her heart or her allergies. What these dozens of tests have done is start her down a path to getting a stint in her heart. She's had arrhythmia whenever stressed for years and years. Hopefully this would lessen them, but she just wanted a pill and instead is facing the prospect of surgery. (Also, while disgusting information to share, her dentures don't fit right so she has to take the lowers out to eat which sometimes results in thinking she's lost them which makes her HELLA freak out which I have a hard time coping with).
I guess what pushed this to the point of journaling is the call she made to my dad.
Ugh, I have no idea what order to go in for this... Where to dig in.
My whole life, whenever my dad wasn't working she was super upset he wasn't working and whenever he was working she was super upset he wasn't around. With his taxi driving she keeps trying to imagine there's some miracle shift during the day where he'll be there whenever she needs him and make money, but they are twelve hour shifts and you make the most money in the evening/night. But since she started going to the doctor and getting way more stressed and way more symptomatic, she's convinced him to take three days off instead of two. Still not enough though. She called him up to see if he could come home for a while.
When I was getting ready to get my car, I knew my choices were a junker or reaching for the stars as there wasn't really anything between. My dad was having to pay the taxi company sixty percent of the fares to pick me up from work each day. He said he'd put that towards food and bills so I could cover the car payments and we could live better lives. The problem is that at the best of times I feel guilty going "Can I have money?" and he doesn't usually think to offer it up. So instead I pay all the utilities, food, and then go without money for a week and a half... sometimes I'll give in and ask, or make it so he realizes he has to pay, but the system sucks. That's all on top of the fact that that depends on him working to even have the money to help.
So now he's taking more time off. I should be glad, he'll occupy my mom, maybe it'll be easier...
But the root of the problem is that as bad as my parents were, I never imagined them getting worse health wise. After my dad's last hospital visit, at least at home, he hasn't recovered to his normal levels. I keep wondering if we need to get him a breathing machine for while he sleeps so he can actually wake up during the day. I think at work he's alright, though, so at home is he constantly falling asleep because he's bored? Because my mom has him up in the middle of the day? Because he gets so little oxygen while he sleeps?
I'm going to buy him this finger clip that tests blood oxygen next paycheck just so we can get a clue what's going on at home.
But... I don't know. When I was in college I had that morbid graduation truck joke because I sort of vaguelly knew things would go downhill for me. The friend break up, family health, work dominating all of my time... It just plain sucks. This isn't a life. The only respite I get is Chronicles. It's so hard to schedule anything else because my work days SUCK and my hours SUCK and it just doesn't fit anyone's schedule.
I'm going to request X-men day off though. I am so tired of people seeing movies ahead of me and then having to see them on my own. If they reject that day off, I'm going to ask why if there is four leads and seven days in the week why I end up closing four nights most weeks.
But not a good time.