Huh. But there’s a site feed link at the very bottom of the page (under the last post shown). I didn’t do that on purpose, so I must have done it by mistake, but it’s a good thing, right? So I’ll just leave it. Now I’ve got to get the Run-a-go-go button back up.
Well, shit.
I just updated my layout, and I lost the Run-a-go-go thing and my site feed link. Boo.
And I went to the gym last night and biked 9.42 miles (bringing the total to 31.73), so yay for me. And then Greg made a very delicious dinner, which included a super awesome red bean bun for me! (I *just* found these at the Asian market near us, and they’re vegan to boot! And soooooo delicious.)
Holy. Fucking. Shit: Heroes!
Damn.
I don’t know what else there is to say, because if you didn’t see it, well, you fucked up. It was fucking fantastic. (Although it did make me cry – at first because I thought HRG was going to die, and then when I realized what he was *really* doing, I cried a little harder.)
Well, I’ve been avoiding this meme for two reasons:
1 – I *still* don’t have all my music on my iTunes, and I think it would be more fun with a wider pool of possible songs
2 – I *do* have a shit-ton of audiobooks on my iTunes
But I got (passively) tagged by Pam, and I figured it was time to do the meme. And I decided I could just skip all the audiobook bits that showed up (which is good, otherwise the entire list would have been bits of His Dark Materials, and one track from the Bunnicula collection – which is all well and good, but I feel like it’s not quite in the spirit of the meme, even if it is probably more indicative of my personality).
So here it is. And I’ll probably do this again later, once I’ve got all my music imported, just to see if it changes, or if any of our actual wedding songs show up as the wedding song.
1. Opening credits: Jennifer’s Body – Hole
2. Waking up: 10 – Blonde Redhead
3. First day of school: Someday Never Comes – CCR
4. Fight song: Vacation – Cats & Jammers
5. Breaking up: Alhazred’s Vision – Nox Arcana
6. Happiness: Missile ++ – Blonde Redhead
7. Life’s okay: Come Undone – Duran Duran
8. Mental breakdown: Ancient Shadows – Nox Arcana
9. Driving: Raining Blood – Slayer
10. Flashback: Return Post – The Bangles
11. Getting back together: Heart of Gold – Tori Amos
12. Wedding song: Silent All These Years – Tori Amos
13. Birth of first child: High Powered – Dr. Dre
14. Final battle scene: Temperature of Happiness – Angela
15. Death scene: 2 Wicky – Hooverphonic
16. Funeral song: The First Taste – Fiona Apple
17. End credits: A Man/Me/Then Jim – Rilo Kiley
And I don’t know about the randomizing. Two Tori Amos songs, two Blonde Redheads, and two Nox Arcanas? It just seems…not so random. Although I guess it’s really just one of those so-random-there’s-a-pattern instances.
So far, the transplanted peas look great. Here are the pictures I took the other night, right after transplanting/thinning.
Peas:
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Left to right: onion, oregano, snapdragon, snapdragon:
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Left to right: onion, onion, tomato, tomato:
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Left to right: thyme, chives:
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Sweetpea:
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Boo. All that typing and I completely forgot what motivated me to blog again in the first place: I walked for 30 minutes today, another mile.
Run-a-go-go: 22.31 miles
Yesterday I got my rejection letter from the psych department. I was expecting it, since my GRE math score was so fucking abysmal. It’s cool. I might re-take the GRE and apply again. Or I might not. Some shit lately has made me rethink how much of a people person I am, and whether I really want to go into therapy, or whether I really want to just chill at the job I have now. So, more thinking time. Woo.
I took this picture of a sign like a month ago. It was only up for a little while, but it bothered the hell out of me because it reads wrong. Maybe that’s why they took it down. It’s possible they meant it to read as, “Injustice! Held hostage!” but the layout made me read it as “Injustice held hostage!” which really isn’t something to protest. I still think they meant “Justice held hostage!” But whatevs. Here’s the dumb sign:
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Here are some lovely flowers Greg gave me. I really love the rose’s purple-edged petals.
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Greg was super sweet and gave me Robert McCloskey’s Make Way for Ducklings* for Valentine’s, and a bottle of Tokaji Aszu (a Hungarian tokay – tokay is my new favorite drink). I gave him a bottle of Johnny Walker Black (scotch is his new fave) and two Rodney Dangerfield cds. And we had salad and lasagna for dinner, and Dr. Oetker’s mocha pudding for dessert. YUM! (I used Ina Garten’s turkey sausage lasagna recipe again, VERY heavily modified to make it vegan. I found a recipe for vegan ricotta, and we recently came across soy feta, so there were actually three different kinds of “cheese” in it this time, instead of just soy mozzarella, and it was fucking mind-blowing.)
*You have NO. IDEA. how absolutely crazy I am about this book. I’m talking looney-fucking-tunes. So it was extra sweet of Greg to give it to me, because I’m sure I’ve been driving him batshit talking about it since, and naming all the ducklings in it (Jack, Kack, Lack, Mack, Nack, Ouack, Pack, and Quack! And Mr. and Mrs. Mallard.), and talking about wanting a pet duck. (Probably not for real, though. I was focusing on how fuzzy and cute the ducklings would be, and Dara totally burst my bubble and informed me of how much ducklings shit. And it’s all liquid shit, too, apparently. Ew guck. I think I could handle grown-up duck pellet poops, and I’m no stranger to pin-feathers – I actually think they’re kinda ugly-cute. But constant runny shits would impede the fuzzy-duckling-snorgling, I’m pretty sure. So I’ll stick to cats.)
And here’s a scarf I recently finished for a friend, out of Lion Brand Microspun. Niku wanted peppermint stripes, and here’s what I came up with. It’s sooooo soft.
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I’m also working on a cross-stitch tutorial for Niku, so hopefully I’ll get that up sooner rather than later.
I also thinned out the peas tonight. They are going bonkers. Hopefully I didn’t kill them when I thinned them. We’ll see, I guess. I tried to transplant some from one container – I know it probably upset the roots of the remaining peas, but I can’t just throw out all my little peas like that, after they’ve actually grown and shit. The other two original containers, I just clipped some off at the soil level, because that’s supposed to not disturb the non-thinned roots. So hopefully some will live – but I really want them all to survive, so I can eat them! Muhahahah! (I love sugar snap peas. Seriously, I am not a fan of veggies, but I love, love, love sugar snaps, and will eat them raw.) I’ve got some pictures, but I’m tired of editing pictures and dealing with Photobucket right now, so I’ll put the plants’ pics up later.
Sorry I haven’t blogged in a while. I’ve been sick, and then when I got better, my mom went in the hospital with a hernia and had to have surgery and it was pretty stressful (she’s doing much better now), and then after that I just slacked off and didn’t blog. That’s pretty much it. And now I’m going to go work on a chemo cap. And when I’m done with that, a bath pouf. Oh! And – I got a gift certificate to the awesomest yarn store (the one in Hillsborough), and I picked up three skeins of Araucania Pomaire in the most gorgeous color. But I haven’t even taken pictures of that yet, so that’ll have to wait, too.
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So, it looks like I have no business growing plants from seed. At least, not trying to pre-germinate/pre-sprout them, or whatever. That’s what they looked like this morning, before I checked them, planted some, tossed others, left some alone.
I planted the peas that sprouted, and left them outside. My little book says they should be alright as long as it doesn’t get to freezing overnight – if it does I’ll move them in. Actually, I might move them in tonight, since they’re not hardened off. No, strike that – I won’t move them in. If the little bastards can’t take it, then they can just die. I can plant another batch in the fall.
I lost the cauliflower, basil, sage, rosemary, larkspur, broccoli, anaheim pepper, and collards to mold. It looks like I got a little overzealous in making the paper towels they were sitting in “damp.” The seeds that weren’t moldy but weren’t sprouting I put in new, damp (but not soaked) paper towels. We’ll see how they do.
The onion, chives, thyme, oregano, and snapdragon were well sprouted, but still tiny since they’re only a week old. So I moved them into little yogurt cups full of dirt. I also started tomatoes and sweetpea in some cups, since I don’t feel like starting them in ziplocs and having them succumb to mold.
The rest of my seed stash looks like it needs to wait until warm weather, and then be direct-sown. I’m too lazy to double check the dates today. Eh.
I hate my dad. It’s never about doing the right thing with him, it’s about having control and making everything about himself. A spectacle where he’s the star, and everyone else is just non-important supporting players, or the audience to adore him.
I’ve been sick the past week-ish. I missed three days of work, two days of class, I feel like ass, and I’m rather grumpy. But this isn’t really about me – I’m just explaining my frame of mind, I guess, why I’m even less well-equipped than normal to handle his shtick. I found out from my sisters Thursday that my mom had gone to the ER – initially, she thought it was a heart attack, but the doctors thought it was gallstones, and let her go home late that evening. She went back in the hospital Friday and has been there all weekend – turns out it’s a hiatus hernia, and part of her stomach is now above her diaphragm. She’s having surgery tomorrow (Monday), and the surgeon has requested that all her immediate family be there. This request probably has less to do with the seriousness of the surgery (although it is 4-hour surgery and rather complicated), and more to do with my mom’s status as a candidate for surgery – basically, she’s not in good health at all.
My parents still weren’t talking to me, so I heard most of this through my sisters. I decided that was ridiculous, and just called my dad up and said, look, I’m an hour away, if y’all need anything, just call me.
Things are beyond strained, but they’re still my parents, and I care, and I don’t want them to suffer.
So my dad takes that as an invitation to call me up on Saturday and bitch about how mad he is at the hospital staff for not doing what he thinks they ought to do. Specifically, he’s mad about two things. Number one, he’s mad they’re not operating immediately. Number two, he’s mad that my mom is sharing a room with a black womyn. (Yes, you read correctly. I think I’ve already covered his racism. If I haven’t, well, there you go.) I think number two is just bullshit and beyond ridiculous, but not surprising coming from my dad. As for number one, they thought she’d be in surgery Friday – but this was when they thought she’d be in surgery to have her gall bladder removed. My dad’s mad that her surgery got postponed while they did tests – but, really, once they realized it wasn’t her gall bladder, they pretty much had to do tests to figure out what was really going on, and what to do about it. I think it’s beyond ridiculous to be mad that they won’t operate until they know what’s going on.
Also, the doctors had ordered a CT scan, and needed her to drink two large cups of water and something – dye, maybe? To see her esophagus? She drank one, and then felt nauseous, so my dad badgered the nurse about whether my mom needed to drink the other cup in order to have the CT. The nurse asked the doctor, and the answer was that they needed both cups to be drunk in order to get a correct result on the CT. So my mom drank half the second cup, and then my dad poured the rest of it down the drain, and told the nurse she’d drunk it all. I’m completely flabbergasted. I’m sorry my mom’s been throwing up a lot from all the stomach acid and hernia and whatnot – but when a doctor tells you, “Drink ALL of it, or the results won’t be correct” what the fuck else do you do, but drink all of it? Especially when it seems (to me) that the implication is, the CT results will help them determine what to do, how to operate, etc. When you’ve thrown up twelve times in one day, yes, throwing up again would suck – but it would suck a lot less than surgery getting fucked up because you willfully disobeyed doctor’s instructions and got a fucked up CT because of it.
So I’m taking tomorrow off work to drive to Greensboro and see my mom before she goes into surgery, and wait around while she’s in surgery to hear how it went. I thought about driving down today so I’d have more time with her, but I’m still sick, and I thought maybe it’d be better if I go down tomorrow, to minimize the window of time I have to possibly infect her before her surgery. I don’t know if that’s realistic – maybe she wouldn’t catch anything from me today – but there it is. So I’m going down tomorrow. I think Greg’s going to go with me, since I’m so upset, although he may have to come back to town and teach a class in the middle of things. We’ll see.
So, today it occurred to me that I hadn’t heard any mention of Bonnie, my aunt, my mom’s sister. And I figured, she’d definitely want to know. So I call my dad, and he had Sarah call Bonnie yesterday, and tell her that Mom was in the hospital. And then he starts getting pissy because he hasn’t heard from Bonnie. And I was like, well, she’d probably want to be there, and Mom would probably want her there, so I’ll call Sarah and get Bonnie’s number from her. At which point my dad tells me that he hasn’t told Sarah how serious this is, and tells me not to tell her, since Sarah’s going to to school tomorrow. And I was like, jesus – don’t you think she should be there, if there’s a chance Mom will die? And of course he gets really sarcastic and nasty with me: obviously it’s better to worry Sarah even more than she already is by telling her her mother might die. And first of all, I’m not sure we need to worry about saving Sarah some anxiety, if this is a situation where it’s actually reasonable for her to be anxious. I mean, yeah, let’s save her some needless worry, but if it’s not needless, maybe it’d be better for her to be a little forewarned, and not blindsided by being yanked out of school in the middle of the day, after her dad’s been telling her how NOT-serious this is? And second of all, if I was in her shoes, I’d be pretty pissed if I found out my dad had known my mom might die, and had kept me from seeing her one last time. But, as he so graciously reminded me, *he* is Sarah’s father, not me, and this decision is for him to make. Note that he didn’t say, for him and our mother to make. So who the hell knows whether Mom would like to see Sarah one last time. I don’t know if Mom’s seen her since Friday, for that matter. But I’m sure that’s a decision for my dad to make. And third of all, and I told him this, Sarah’s been freaking out since Friday because she’s terrified of hospitals, and she’s already convinced Mom might die, so…how are we saving her any anxiety? I mean, yeah, she’ll be anxious, but – for me, at least – it’d be easier to handle with the rest of the family than it would on my own, it’d be easier to handle the anxiety if I at least knew what was going on and people were being honest, and maybe she’ll have less anxiety if we’re honest and tell her, “Well, there’s a 20% (or 40% or whatever) chance she’ll die in the operation, rather than the 100% chance you’re freaking out about.” I’m not a fan of all the lying and lying-by-omission and lack of communication that goes on in family, if you didn’t already know. I don’t give two shits how well-intentioned it is, because I’m convinced it’s all bullshit to begin with.
I tried not to argue with him. In fact, I told him I wasn’t trying to argue with him, but just that if I was in Sarah’s place, I would want to have seen my mom one last time. He said he’d think about it and make a decision – which just means he’ll do what he’s already decided to do – and then he said it wasn’t that serious. So, if it’s not that serious, why are you being so adamant that I get down there tomorrow? Whatever. I also told him he needed to call Bonnie, and he got all pissy about how she hasn’t called him back. So I reminded him that if he’s passing information to her through Sarah, and he hasn’t been telling Sarah the truth about how serious it is, then it’s likely that Bonnie doesn’t know how serious it is. And that Bonnie would definitely *want* to know the truth, and be given the option to show up tomorrow. He said he’d call Bonnie tonight, but I doubt he will. I’m debating whether to try and get her phone number from Susan and call her myself, but then if he *does* call her, and finds out I told her first, he’d be mad about that. Because none of this bullshit is about doing right by my mom, or taking care of my mom, it’s all about him throwing his authority around, and him having all the information and doling it out to the rest of us as he sees fit, and creating a spectacle that he can be the center of.
He also tried to pass off the surgeon’s request that the family be there as, “Well, he’s probably noticed that, even though she has three perfectly healthy daughters, the only person that’s been to see her is her ex-husband, and he thinks that’s sad, so he wants you to be there.” He was pretty nasty about that, too, and went on for a while, riffing on that theme. Which makes me ill because this whole time he’s been telling me and Susan that our mom is fine, that there’s nothing to worry about, and that he’s with her, and he’ll let us know if we need to come down, but we don’t. And now he’s going to turn all that around, and guilt-trip us, and say we’re bad daughters? Susan and I have offered every day to come down, every phone call. Susan had a trip out of state planned for Friday, and only left because Dad assured her it was just gallstones and told her to go, it was nothing to worry about – and she still offered to book a flight back immediately to stay in the hospital with Mom when she heard it wasn’t gallstones after all, and he said no, there was no reason. But now he’s throwing it in my face that neither of us have been to the hospital yet? When *he* was the one telling us not to go, and that it wasn’t at all serious? I don’t know why I’m surprised or upset, though, that’s his MO.
I don’t want to lie to Sarah, especially not about something as important as this. But I don’t want to put her in the position of knowing what’s really going on, and then having to hide that knowledge from her dad, and go about her day pretending everything’s okay when it’s not. So I can’t even post this until after the fact. Sarah, if you read this, I’m sorry. I just don’t know what else to do, and you know how he is. You probably already know, anyway, because you’re smart. But if I told you, and he didn’t want you to know, it’d become this huge thing when I show up at the hospital to see my mom, and I don’t want that when it might be the last time she sees me. I wish he could be fucking decent, but he doesn’t know how.
I’m so furious right now. This is all about him, and what he wants, and whether he has an audience to “appreciate” what he’s going through, and how he’s dealing with this. You know what? Fuck him. It’s not about him. And tomorrow, I’m going to go see my mom, and if it comes to it, I’ll explain to him that I’m there to see her, and not to participate in his little spectacle. I’m not starting shit, but I’m not participating in any shit, either. I’ll go see my mom pre-surgery, and then I’ll go sit in the waiting room and wait. And if he starts stirring shit up and making it all about him, I’ll peace out and go wait in a coffeeshop or somewhere else, and he can call me when the doctors know something. I figure, my mom will be in surgery, so it probably won’t make a difference to her whether I’m waiting for her in the waiting room, or waiting for her in the parking lot, or wherever.
I’m so mad I can’t stand it. And I can’t stop fucking crying. I think there’s a very real chance my mom will probably die either in surgery, or as a result of it, and I don’t understand why my dad can’t be a little fucking decent. My mom’s really ill, and he shouldn’t be co-opting that for his bullshit spectacle and his ridiculous pompous ego. And he’s the absolute last person on the planet I want around me if anything goes wrong tomorrow and I need to grieve.
On top of all this, and it’s such a tiny thing in comparison, but the hospital is also swamped with norovirus, to the point that they’ve been telling people *not* to come, if they can help it. And norovirus is second in its contagious-ness only to the common cold. I have to admit I’m a little scared – I’m pretty sure if I catch it, I’ll end up going to the hospital myself. But I’m not letting that stop me from seeing my mom, or waiting while she’s in surgery. It just means I have to stock up on bottled water, granola bars, and hand-disinfectant before I get there. And then an OCD-level of handwashing while I’m there. Actually, I think normally I’d be worried about the norovirus, but I think now it’s coming to mind a little more often that it would otherwise because I’m trying to avoid thinking about the fact that my mom might die soon. Because that’s a hard thing to think about. I mean, I know it’ll happen eventually, and I know she’s old and in very poor health, but I don’t think you can ever be really ready for it, you know.
The other shitty thing is, I’ll need to take something to occupy me while I wait tomorrow, or I’ll probably start sobbing, and I’m not into public crying. I say “I’m not into” it, but I really mean it’s bordering on a phobia – probably something to do with my anxiety and social phobia issues. I prefer to do my hysterical crying in private. So I’ll need something to fidget with, as a mechanism to keep myself in check. But I know that if my mom dies, and she might, I won’t want to see that knitting for a while, if ever, so what do I take? Okay, so to be totally honest, the knitting would also be a way to deflect having to talk to my dad while we wait, because he just doesn’t understand any of this shit, and never will, and can’t talk about anything other than himself most of the time. So I don’t want to talk to him during this, because what are we going to talk about? How I feel? Not hardly. But I don’t want to hear about his goddamned stupid business that I couldn’t care less about, while my mom’s in surgery and possibly dying, but he doesn’t understand feelings, or me, and he doesn’t really care, so why can’t I just worry and/or grieve in peace?
This is horrible. But then, I’m sure my situation is neither unique nor the worst anyone’s had to endure.
