The Corner of Insanity

Title: Separation
Word count: 100
A/N: Sequal to More Than One, but before the two from yesterday.

I'd like to get a couple more written, but I've got a lot of work to do, then my niece and nephew have 5(!!!) dance recitals between Saturday and Sunday.

( What I've been up to )

Just to prove I come by my geek-ery honestly, Dad just called to say he got Mom's secret holiday gift, a Nintendo DS and some brain games.

:D

Short story - Laughter is the best medicine.

Apparently, whatever Dad was watching on TV had him laughing so hard he passed whatever was blocking his intestines. They're sending him home.

I? Now need lots of drugs.

Mom calls about an hour ago, asking what she should do for Dad while waiting for their GI doctor to call back. Apparently he's having bad stomach pains and no output in his ileostomy bag all afternoon. I give her the number for my gut surgeon and tell her to call him if she doesn't hear back from Dad's guy in 10 minutes.

I called Mom's cell phone just now, left a message. Called Dad's cell phone, left a message. Called the house, left a message.

Where the FUCK are they, and why the FUCK didn't they call me?!?!?!?

ETA: They're at the hospital, their doc called back, he's outputting liquids, nothing solid, so it's not a total blockage. Told her to CALL ME. Damnit!

I suddenly realized this morning that I am in the midst of a bad depression swing. That's why I'm not getting any rest from my sleep, that's why I'm not writing, that's why I feel like I'm on a train out of control.

Part of it is the near-constant pain in my shoulder. Part of it is the knowledge that I'm going to need some kind of surgical procedure AGAIN. Part of it is the whole house thing, selling and buying and fixing and cleaning. Part of it is my brother avoiding paying the $500 he owes me for the car. Part of it is his wife shutting me out of my nephew's lives.

And part of it is that I'm almost 32 and have so much I want to do, and little courage and less money to do it.

I'm sure I'll pull through this eventually... I always have. It just looks dark in the middle of it.

I should've done this earlier in the week, but in many ways I'm still recuperating from the week at the beach, and then coming back to work in a brand-new position at my current job. But let me try to recap a bit...

The beach itself was beautiful. Edisto Island is still pretty pristine, and unlike Myrtle Beach or even Folly Beach, it's not overly crowded. One morning Mom and Dad saw turtle tracks where one had come up overnight to start a nest.

Unfortunately, the whole week was marred by family stupidity. I'm not going to go into details here, but will just say that my sister-in-law owes me, my father, and my mother an apology for things she said before she took her husband (the ex-molester brother) and their two adopted sons home two days early. And I swear, I think I'm the only one who will defend my father when he's struggling with his OCD and the depression it triggers.

The reunion itself was great. My uncle Walt owns a huge house that he had built on one of the coastal waterways, so there was plenty of room for all of us to run around, play, swim off the dock, eat, and catch up on almost ten years of not seeing most of these people. It was a very different atmosphere for me... you see, my Dad is 16, 18, and 19 years younger than his three siblings, and his first niece was born was he was three years old. My sister and I were 10 - 13 years younger than our nearest cousins, so when we would occasionally see them growing up, there was a huge gap between us. But now that we're all adults, it's so different. I now want to get to know some of these people, and I told Uncle Walt that we definitely need to do this much more often. I mean, it's only 160 or so miles from house to his...

I've been a Help Desk monkey since 1999, and was beginning to wonder if I'd ever get out of it. Well, now I have: I am the Project Coordinator for three big intranet/internal systems projects, and have already scheduled visits to officers outside of the state that I'd been lobbying for as a Help Desk technician for most of the 2+ years I've been with this company. My new manager is a fellow geeky woman, with somewhat geeky young daughters, and I think I'm in love. ;-) She's recognized most of the Final Fantasy wallpaper that's been up on my desktop, and she love Heroes, and comic books, and... ;-)

So, good and bad things lately, which is how life usually is.

In about 3 hours, I'll be on my way to the beach. Should be... interesting, anyways. I mean, I'm sure I'll have fun at times, but if Mom continues to be in hyper wide-eyed nervous mode, I will not be sane by the end of it.

I got all three cats rounded up with very little damage to me, which is rather amazing. But I fully admit that I pretty much tricked Kahvi into her carrier, and Goldeneye really doesn't fight me unless he's being brushed. Sweet Thing was the hardest, I finally had to turn the old carrier up on it's back end and stuff him in like I've seen the Animal Control people do on Animal Planet. They're at the vet for the week, getting their massively overdue annual checkups done, nails trimmed, and getting Sweet Thing's gut and anus checked for issues.

I was pretty much packed by this morning, and the system I used will be something I'll have to remember for next time. One suitcase in the bedroom, and a backpack in the bathroom, and things from the bedroom went into the suitcase and things from the bathroom went into the backpack. No carrying things all over and forgetting why and leaving things, etc. I also have two new cross-stitching projects (a small one as a gift to my aunt and uncle who bankrolled most of this trip, and a bigger one with a dragon), all 6 Harry Potter books, and my PS2 with Final Fantasy XII (I'll mostly spend the week leveling up and maxxing out the license board) and a few kid-friendly movies.

When I get back here to work, I'll be off of the Help Desk and fully into my new job as Project Coordinator for the Intranet Manager and the Canadian Tech Officer. Back into an office, too, and out of this cube hell.

See y'all when I get back! :-)

My 61-year old mother has vascular dementia, which means she has all the symptoms of Alzheimer's without being helped by any medication. She has OK days and bad days, and yesterday afternoon she had an absolutely bad day, thanks to my sister behaving as she always has. What Mom seems to have lost is her self control... or at least she uses her diagnoses as an excuse for it. I'm never sure, Mom has always been manipulative.

Staying with her while I'm recovering from surgery has not been fun, because I'm a quiet, introverted person, and she constantly has to make noise of some sort to reassure herself she's alive. I have a check-up today, and while I know I'm not ready to go back to work (it's still exhausting to sit up for longer than an hour or two), I'm definitely trying to get to the point where I can be at my house more often than not.