The Slice

It was a long, boring week. We finally had a weekend off after three weeks straight of work, and they made up for it last week by barely getting any work to us. I taught the new folks amendments and reprints. I did another round of teaching to our backup crew who helps proof when they can. Almost every day, the majority of the typists were out sick. (At points in most of the week, we were without typists at all, a rare occurrence.) Still, there wasn't much to speak of in the way of exciting things happening. We're waiting on another deadline that will hit on Friday followed by first house passage on the 23rd, which is usually the worst deadline in terms of "Hey, it's 4 a.m. Please come back at 7:30 a.m." infamy we've had to deal with in the past. Given the ridiculous backlog of work we've had to push out in the shortest amount of time I recall in my eight years of working for the state, I can only hope that's not a trend that will continue the whole session, but I also have my doubts. I've never been as aware of the cadence of session and what lies ahead before as well as having so many opposing waves of worry and apathy. Perhaps having so many personal things going on at the same time has something to do with it.

Thursday, I got a text from my mom asking how I was doing. I knew she had dropped by after my dad's appointment at the VA to get a check from Mike, and Mike said she had mentioned that my dad might need spinal surgery. They had been awaiting MRI results on his back because his legs have been bothering him and he's been losing his balance and falling a lot recently, so I was a little surprised it might require surgery. They were also supposed to get an update on the new medication my dad has been taking for his memory for a few weeks, but Mike didn't say anything about that. Still feeling exhausted from the workweek, I finally got up and called her after exchanging a few texts and seeing that she was writing something for quite a while.

She said she hadn't wanted to bother me since she knew Mike was leaving for the final four trip the next day. (Did I ever mention he won that through work? Maybe not. Humph, I'm always a little behind, but it's pretty neat. He took his friend Nate, and a customer got to go as well.) Anyway, I wanted to know how the appointment went since she's been worked up about not getting the MRI results for almost a month. It turns out he has a few disks in his spine that are slipping near his tailbone, and the spinal column is narrowing, causing the nerves to get squeezed (or something? I only sort of understand). Since this means inflammation isn't the cause of his pain, the next step is they've been referred to a neurosurgeon to see if he needs surgery or if there are other steps they can take first. Also, my mom was able to convince him to get a walker for stability when he's out and about, and also, it qualifies him for permanent disability placards for the car, which is probably helpful since he seems a little wobbly when he walks now.

Regarding the medicine, she said, "You ever read 'Flowers for Algernon'? This kind of reminds me of that." I said I had but didn't remember how the story went. She explained, "Well, there's a man who gives medicine to a mouse, and the mouse's memory improves for a bit. So the man starts taking the medicine, and his memory improves for a bit. But then he sees that the mouse declines, and he knows his is going to decline again too."

My dad has Alzheimer's disease.

The doctor didn't give her a stage, but he said that's what the medicine is for. My mom says it has improved his short-term memory over the last couple of months, and his memory seems to be pretty stable. The medicine sometimes causes nightmares, but those have subsided. My dad seems pretty happy, she says. It's made him much more pleasant to be around, she says. He thinks it is a miracle drug.

My selfish first thoughts were, "What if we're finally able to have children, and he doesn't remember them?" followed by, "I should have seen this coming. Granny didn't remember me right before she died either, and that was devastating."

My parents have been in the process of trying to figure out some of his projects. She's been after him for years to sell the radio station and find someone to take over the Irish-English dictionary he's been working on for almost forty years, since we won't know what to do with it. He's supposed to have someone from the Irish government coming by soon to take a look at it and see if they're able to take the whole project off his hands, which would be the best place for it. They also have someone interested in the radio signal and station, even with its outdated equipment. He's also expressing interest in selling some of his ham radio equipment he doesn't use and is headed to a swap meet in Visalea next weekend to see if he can get rid of some stuff.

While I am somewhat relieved that they are taking care of these loose ends, I am worried that all of this happening at once is a bad sign of things to come. I asked my mom, "What is he going to do with his time if he doesn't have those projects to work on?" She said he still has his other hobby of framing computer components for his "museum" he keeps in the house. That'll keep him busy for a while, she thinks. He has to have something to do, after all. He can't fade that quickly, right? Really, who knows?

My brother called last night and said my mom had told him. He then launched into all these things that he should be doing now that dad's on "borrowed time." He said realistically, there's probably about a year before dad declines completely, and it was probably up to my brother to start cataloguing stuff for my dad's museum. He expressed sadness that he didn't spend more time with him before now and said he'd need to do more.

I got angry at him immediately. I told him to stop.

Yeah, I get it. I really do. It's a scary prospect to think that one day, Dad won't recognize us. It's terrifying to wonder about the future and how things are going to change. I had my own selfish thoughts. I had my own wonders about where my mother has been now that she's decided to be my dad's advocate when she hasn't even really seemed to like the man in many, many years. (And Mike's right here too. When I said this, he said, "You can't blame her. At least she's here now.") I've thought about how much life has changed since we've left home, and even now as I sit here, I wonder why I didn't go out to eat with him more often like he always said we should.

Still... As I told my brother, we can't change what we've done in the past. We can't predict how long we have left. No one knows that. We don't know how his memory will go or what kind of quality we'll have or the length we'll have before it's all gone. Don't put a timeline on it. Don't stop living your life. Things are changing, but it doesn't mean life is over already. Dad's still here. His memory is still here. It could be years before it goes away entirely. Live in the present. Do your best going forward. That's how life goes.

I say these things to him hoping I'll remember them myself when times are dark and when hope seems lost. Live for today. It's all we have.

"A Tree"
A tree in dead of winter
doesn't lament its bare
branches or lack of
leaves

Instead, with sweet somnolence,
it stands silent, knowing
and waiting for
Spring
1/10/2019

Again, apologies. I have several other entries I need to get to, including the divulging of secrets. I was just hoping I'd have something more positive to add to that list, and it's not looking likely at this point.

In the meantime, I have to put this numbers game somewhere:
45 days into this cycle
30 days+ Resting heart rate elevated
16 days sore tits
5 pregnancy tests taken within 2 weeks (all negative)

It feels monumentally fucked up that I'm waiting to see blood right now-- near the first anniversary of finding out we'd lose our firstborn and beyond that within a few days of the anniversary of having to take medication to force my body to bleed it out.

I've been anticipating a different result for so many weeks, hoping I had predicted correctly again, only to now be preparing to be disappointed, even if the alternative is equally terrifying. I don't know what I was expecting really. It's just going to be a period, a temporary distraction. I should have known. Why even bother trying?

No one wants to hear it. No one wants to talk about it. I get it.

I'm really tired of being alive right now.

I took another walk this morning. Since the usual walking path I use has been closed for repairs for a while, I attempted to go to a different path I know of but usually don't take because it's a long way. Once I got there, I found a sign as well as a construction crew saying it was being repaired too.

Me being me, as I trudged through the sand on the side of the road instead, I couldn't help but see parallels and metaphors of this in my own life.

It seems like everywhere I turn, the familiar paths, the easy ways through and around things, are closing for whatever reason. I don't know if they'll reopen or if this is permanent. I can't see beyond the horizon. I don't know what's in store or even what it is I have to feel strongly about anymore. No one really knows the depths of this, nor do I know the cavernous losses of others. Such is only relation at this point, misplaced empathy and good intentions. Advice that falls on deaf ears.

It's hard not to compare our situation to others around us, those who seem to have really simple, straightforward things that I can't seem to grasp. Everywhere I turn, it looks like someone else is having a problem-free carriage, and I'm here stuck wondering what makes us different. I know appearances aren't always what they seem, but it's difficult not to ask those questions. I end up contemplating whether I was right to fear having children in my twenties, though I did so for entirely different reasons. I question the wisdom of continuing to try when all of it seems so far out of reach, getting further and further away each time. I wring my hands over yet another loss and think about how we're both partially at the end of the line.

I hear people around us saying to be happy with what you have, over and over again like it will help. I look around at our life, and of course it is satisfactory. I think ahead of what we can do with our lives now that our time will no longer be filled with thoughts of you. I place my hand on my now shrinking belly, as I have so many times in the past month, but I no longer speak. I feel empty and alone.

It has been a rough six months. Friday, I was elated because we had finally gotten everything we need to finish codification, a project that has unfathomably taken longer than the eight months it took us last cycle, and I was preparing to work this weekend to see where we could get on the last few documents before Monday. With a little over two hours left in the day, I heard my phone vibrate with an incoming call from my younger sister, who hardly ever calls unless she needs something.

The call was short. She said Stephanie had called. Grandpa Gabby had died. No further details.

I tried to keep it together but couldn't. I made arrangements with my boss. I apologized and said goodbye to Heidi, since it was her last day and we were having a going away party that started in ten minutes. My boss said we were in good shape and not to worry about the weekend since they weren't going to make it mandatory to work. "It'll be okay. I'm sorry you're hurting."

Still, I left feeling guilty. Also devastated. Numb. Shocked. Full of regret. I hadn't called on his birthday in April. Why couldn't I get myself to do even that? What had we talked about the last time we called anyway? Oh right. I couldn't understand what he was saying because I had woken him up or he was drunk or something. Grandma said he had fallen recently and been in the hospital, as had she, but they were out now. She asked if I had put in an order for a baby.

Right... That's why I didn't call often. He was usually the one who couldn't go one phone conversation without bringing that up, or he'd start teasing me about something though I'd asked him multiple times over the years to stop. There were consequences to these calls, and it was easier to avoid them if I could.

Still, what kind of justifications are those now that we'll never speak again? How had I managed to make things so complicated?

We grew up across the street from them. They basically helped raise us from the start. My whole childhood, they were there, and they didn't move until I was in college or just fresh out. Every time my mom needed someone to watch us, they were there. For every major event, they were there. I can't express how intertwined our lives were or how many happy memories I have alongside the not-so-great ones that seemed to increase in the past decade. That's what happens with people who you're closer to than even your actual grandparents. How do you even begin?

One of my earliest memories of him is the smell of pipe tobacco. To this day, I only associate that smell with him and my mother's father, though he smoked straight cigarettes up until the time he was put on a ventilator. I remember his row of pipes on the mantle of their fireplace, though I'm still not sure when he stopped smoking completely. He was the only man I've ever seen smoke a pipe, which seems relegated to the past and whoever grows a hipster handlebar mustache and insists it tastes better that way.

Then there was the food. He grew up in the depression era and had so many stories. One about how he used to love mayonnaise when he first got to Texas and once ate a whole jar of it as a kid. After that, he said, he didn't like it as much, and I never saw him put a lot on sandwiches. They used Miracle Whip, though, which I never really liked either. No matter what, whenever we'd drop by, he'd ask if we were hungry and load up a plate of whatever Grandma had around: fideo or conchitas with lots of hot sauce and pepper, carnitas, tamales, homemade tortillas stuffed with refried beans and cheese or eggs or cheese or peanut butter and jelly or straight up melted butter. The food was almost always homemade, as they had owned a restaurant in Arizona before moving here. Anything put on your plate had to be eaten or you were wasting it, even if you weren't hungry to begin with. Food was love, and that was that. I still dream about their food and miss it fiercely.

Usually whenever we'd be there, the TV would be on. Reruns. Talk shows. Nascar. Boxing. Disney shows for the kids, like "The Three Caballeros". He'd sit in his easy chair or on the floor and ask us to do things for him. Or crack his knuckles and grab your bare toes and pop the joints. (I hate this to this day. That's how I found out I hate anyone touching my feet.) He'd lay on the floor and ask someone to walk on his back to relieve the pressure. He'd ask if you wanted a knuckle sandwich then show you not to put your thumb inside when making a fist because, "You'll break your own thumb when you're punching someone." He'd laugh and tease, saying how pretty and ugly you were in the same sentence or how smart and how much he loved us. He gave me the nickname "overqualified" in later years after I was valedictorian and got my bachelor's degree. He always asked if Mike (or whoever I was dating) was treating me right, echoing the refrain of "Boys are stupid" that he'd said my whole dating life. He'd tell me not to put up with anyone calling me names, hitting me or mistreating me in any way, which is a little ironic.

He called popcorn "parcan". Also, Pepsi was "Pexi". My siblings and I would try to correct him, and he'd say it several times before getting it right only to say it the other way again later on. I always chalked this up to him always joking around and a little bit to a language barrier, that the Spanish he also spoke got in the way somehow. I didn't know until my mom mentioned it a few days ago that this is why they called him "Gabby" though his name was Savino. She said that he had trouble speaking and they were making fun of his speech impediment he'd had since he was a child growing up around migrant workers.

His birthday was on April Fool's day, and I remember him tricking us multiple times on his birthday, turning out all the lights in the house and saying the power was out only to laugh when we'd go and try the light switches. There were candles that wouldn't blow out. Cards that wouldn't open. All the usual pranks. One year, my mom frosted a brick and gave it to him as a birthday cake. We all laughed as he tried to cut it, and she eventually brought out a real cake. I don't know that I ever actually wished him a real happy birthday without some sort of trick to it.

He had a primitive snake tattoo that curled up his arm, one he gave himself with pen ink and a needle but always said he wouldn't recommend anyone doing that. He always had family around, with his three biological kids along with one adopted runaway. Their grandkids were our friends and near cousins. We met many of their actual cousins as Grandma and Grandpa babysat us and took us to many meals and ice cream the next town over, places to visit, parades to watch, people to see. They had two adopted cats named Bimbo and Stinky, so-named because they found her at the dump. He worked landscaping for my mom while Grandma watched us and translated for the local court.

So many memories. Grandpa used to smile and say in later years while they still lived in Smith, "Thank God for Jeane and Patrick. Otherwise I don't know what we'd do." I wouldn't understand the context of that statement, or his daughter Mila turning to my mom and saying, "Thank God you will take care of them," at the 50 year anniversary party they threw, for a really long time. Grandma would say they needed to watch the house whenever we were gone. Even as teenagers, they didn't want to leave us alone and said they'd watch us whenever. It all seemed cordial and mutual, though my mom griped over the years about grandpa overwatering or Grandma not letting us go outside when it was hot.

It wasn't until I was an adult that it entirely went south between them and my parents. My parents owned the house Grandma and Grandpa lived in across the street, and for many, many years, they had traded babysitting and landscaping services for rent money. My mom did the math and said they hadn't paid the rent in years though we'd been out of the house for a long time and landscaping services had slowed since Grandpa's knees and health weren't stellar, so she asked for it. That one is not my story to tell because I know it's much more complex than I'm making it seem, but I know not too long after it all was settled, Grandma and Grandpa made arrangements to move back to Arizona, where they'd lived before moving to Nevada and so they could be closer to other family who had moved there.

I've seen them only a handful of times since then, and I've never gone down to visit. I've never had time or made the time. It'll be awkward, I reasoned. I don't even know the family much outside of facebook, and there have been slights on both sides, I've said. The last time I saw them together was our wedding, and as happens at weddings, we were only able to talk for a little bit before being pulled away for other things. I didn't know that would be the last time I saw him entirely. I didn't know the last conversation I'd have with him, which I avoided as long as I could after the miscarriage because I knew what his questions would be, I'd barely understand. I didn't know.

My mom said she found out from talking to Stephanie that he had Bell's Palsy the last few years, and my not understanding him suddenly makes a lot more sense now. Being partially paralyzed will do that to you. I feel bad that I assumed he was just tired or drunk when I talked to him and didn't get what he was saying, though he also liked to talk about whiskey and tequila and ask if I was at the bar. I didn't know. After his birthday in April, I got an invite to a last-minute surprise birthday party for his 80th birthday being thrown by his daughter. I declined because I had other plans that weekend, but my mom said that Grandma had found out about the party and shut it down because his health was already declining and he was not himself then. She said she's heard that he had an infection in the time since then that they weren't sure they could clean out or operate on or something. He had been in the hospital but had been moved to rehab and was doing better for a few days before his blood pressure dropped. They took him to emergency and said it might have been a stroke. Details are spotty, but he died there. He's gone now. Probably out of pain and in a better place.

I keep feeling waves of emotions: guilt over the things I couldn't make myself do, sadness over his passing, numbness in between. Memories keep washing over me, and I realize that I'll never hear him sing "Happy birthday, mijita" seguing into "Gloria, gloria halleluja" again. I know I told him I loved him last time I talked to him because we always ended the conversation that way, but I wish I was able to hug him one last time, to let him know I really meant it despite everything that's happened over the years.

I don't know how to end this entry, so I'll copy what I wrote after I found out:

Time sure moves fast, even faster than it feels sometimes. The older we get, the more it seems to speed up. One day out of the blue, something happens where you'll realize while looking through old photos how few you have with people you love, how much you would have liked to spend more time with them but kept making excuses, how even when it's hard, you should have made time because now there isn't any left. I'll cherish the many happy memories I have, but I also have a few regrets.

I had a dream last night where a woman let me know about a governmental conspiracy via a document she gave me. It was something involving proofreading. I spent the rest of the dream trying to tell as many people as possible about the conspiracy because I knew I would be caught before long. However, each person I told, I seemed to lose more and more details about the conspiracy and why it was significant. By the time I forced myself awake, I could barely string a few words together but knew it was important to say the words anyway.

That's all I remember. I've had a lot of crazy dreams lately, really detailed stuff that fills me with dread upon waking but spares me the details. I semi-chalk this up to taking sleep vitamins at night, but surprisingly, the dreams about being late for work/school/whatever dream world thinks is important have dissipated lately, even on Sunday nights when they are usually present in spades and wake me up multiple times before my alarm goes off. Not exactly sure why, but it is a nice change of pace. It'd be nice if all the nightmares and the sleep paralysis went away, though. Always a little frightening.

I had a longer entry I wanted to write about what I was thinking about earlier during my walk, but dreamwidth seems to be lagging quite a bit. I will attempt this again when the site isn't eating half my words as soon I type them. Happy Sunday, all.

I called one of my coworkers "Aurora" today. I told her immediately that this was a compliment because my best friend's name is Aurora. Not sure if she believed me or not, but she said she liked that name. (My coworker's name is Doris. Not even close to Aurora, by the way.)

Damn, I'm tired. I've worked every day since the 12th. Working tomorrow, the next day and next week too. I'm waiting for laundry to dry so I can go to bed. Ah, oh well. What do you do, right?

I should post about Thanksgiving (which I still might do), but work has been really draining lately (for reasons I don't feel like rehashing right now). This is what I'm choosing to post about instead.

I dreamed last night that I was at a birthday party for tabular-rasa. I didn't know which room to go to in her very large house, and as I walked into a large room, a few servants closed the doors behind me. I rushed back to the doors when I figured out this wasn't the room where the party was, but they told me they couldn't let me out because of the special guest.

I went to the bar to order a drink and wait to be let out. As I was sitting there, Donald Trump sidled up to the bar, sat next to me and started talking to me. I thought, "Well, I'm attractive enough for him to talk to me but not for him to touch me," and I felt weirdly flattered and disgusted at the same time. I got out of there as quickly as I could.

I finally found the room where the party was, and my mom was there too. Amy was opening presents, and I grabbed one and opened it. I turned back to her and said, "I don't know why I did that. Sorry." I handed the gift to her, which was a large plastic light saber. She took a look at it and noticed that when I opened the present, I broke a connecting wire on the light saber. She started explaining that the connecting wire I broke was used to hook up the light saber to her phone and now it was broken and... In my shame, I didn't want to hear the rest of it. I cut her off and said I was going home with my mom.

We tried to leave through a nearby sliding glass door, but once we were on the deck, I found that half the stairs leading down were gone. We were forced to go back inside, where more of Amy's family/spillover guests from Trump's party were gathering. I tried to get Amy's attention so we could leave another way, but she was pissed at me still and distracted by everyone.

Then my stupid alarm went off.

This is the second time I've dreamed about Trump since the day of the election. At least he didn't chase me this time (but I did win the presidency in that one, so it's a wash).

Augh, I think this week is going to be crazy, so let's try again...

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Two days seems to be my record for the moment. I'll try again later. Thanks for putting up with my short bursts about this trip. Hopefully headed toward done soon.

Maaaan, if I don't at least try to start this, I'm not sure when I'll get to it.

ICELAND TRIP (Insert fanfare here)!
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Whew, this is definitely a work in progress, and I'm a little tired and sore at the moment. I will be back with more hopefully soon.