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My Profile
Gift from Hil Part 2 - 2014-12-30
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12:39 a.m. - 2012-06-12
I've been trying to find the uppy things because in the big picture I am happy. My marriage is good. My kid is terrific. Aside from my knee still being a pain I feel physically sounder and healthier than I have in 20 years. Emotionally? Not so hot. Mostly I just need to vent. I'll start with a few good things. I had one of those soul restoring, hilarious, oh so necessary day long visits with my darling Stephanie and damn it was great! I love you so much, Steph! I am blessed to have such a friend. The dog has been dosed with the good stuff and I am hopeful we have prevented a flea fiasco like we had a few summers ago. No sense in inviting trouble, right? Like I need fleas in the rugs on top of everything else. So, pricey but sanity saving flea meds ahoy. Wolf's cough is much better. The doc wasn't sure whether it was bronchitis or pertussis so she prescribed a Z-pack (azithromycin). I was startled by the suggestion of whooping cough, Wolf's up on all his shots. She said even tiny changes in a virus or bacillus can let it sneak in around a vaccination, which I knew, I guess, but any suggestion that my kid is left vulnerable to disease upsets me. Not only is Wolf up on his shots, I like to think I've done okay at letting him get dirty enough to build up his own natural immunities. He plays outside, we eat street food from carts, he's allowed to kiss the dog, and the only one who uses hand sanitizer is Mick- our resident germophobe. And yes, if you're wondering, Wolf gets sick about once a year and Mick is laid low by some bug or other every 6 weeks or so. My electronics killing fiesta continues. I got a new phone battery but it's still only taking a charge when it feels like it. (Which isn't often.) On Saturday the dryer staged a rebellion leaving me with a load of sopping clothes including the shirt I wanted to wear to Steph's. Then yesterday my new-ish coffee maker died. It had been going haywire for the last week but I'd resolutely ignored the way the clock on it kept shutting off and then popping back on to flash 12:00. The same way I've been ignoring how I have to reset the outlet breaker and push the overload button on the plug of my blow-dryer every time I use it. However, my barely a few months old Mr Coffee Jr gave one final gurgle yesterday morning leaving me with a dead machine and a single teaspoon of coffee in the carafe. I cried, of course. I told Mick it's like I keep stubbing my toe over and over and over. One toe stub, not a big deal, but this constant parade of small glitches and aggravations is wearing me down. If I plug in one more thing and have it go poof I'm going to lose my mind. It's not just the continual suicides of my personal appliances either, it's all this other nibble, nibble, nibble on the calm and happy too. Life itself is harshing my buzz. It's the neighbor noise. Sawing and hammering and whistling and mowing and weed-whacking and dog barking and clanking and clunking and it starts at sun-up and goes all goddamn day. EVERY day. If I wanted to live next to a boiler factory I wouldn't have bought a house in the country. There was a 3-storey brownstone next-door to Metro Steam Fitters Inc. in Perth Amboy, NJ I could have gotten for a song. It probably would have been quieter there and I'd have been just that much closer to the beach. Sheesh. It's that FIL's in the hospital again. He just got out three days ago and there we were up at the ER last night. MIL is freaking useless. She's guilty and angry and is so busy defending herself she can't hear anything. She doesn't know what the doctors said. She can't understand or help coordinate a treatment plan. She doesn't know why FIL's in the hospital or what they treat him for and when he comes out she goes right back to dragging him around on all her errands. Someone as frail as FIL shouldn't be going to f-ing Walmart, duh. But the biggie is that FIL is literally starving himself to death. He refuses to eat or drink enough to keep a fly alive. So he gets dehydrated and then goes all wobbly and sick and he panics and his breathing shallows up and feh! There they are in the ER again. The docs plug an IV in and get him stable and send him home and then the whole circus starts again. FIL will NOT help himself and MIL makes it worse. Poor Mick is at his wit's end and I'm trying to be here for him. It's ex and how the child support is now 11 days late and so far there's been not a single sign he's going to cooperate with the court order to vacate the property. All his tottering piles of crap are exactly where they've been for years. Nothing, he hasn't moved a single hunk of scrap or moldy tire. I foresee another go-round at court and there will be warrants issued and I know I am going to be forced to put this stupid motherfucker in jail. Like that'll do anything to help anyone. It's how after dreading the appointment since I made it in May on Thursday I went to the gyno's office and waited. And waited. And waited. And waited. AN HOUR. An entire hour went by and nothing. Whenever I approached the window to ask for an update the receptionist would jump up and run into the back office. I'd go sit down again. Finally at the hour mark after I completely broken down with frustration and knew damn well that my tears would net me nothing but a pat on my head from the doc and I'd be dismissed as a daffy batty middle-aged twit Mick went up to the window and the receptionist pulled her disappearing act again. Mick wasn't having it. He slid open the glass, stuck his head in and insisted someone speak to him. Whereupon the receptionist reappeared, glared at Mick, and snottily told him the doctor was running late. Not only was the doctor behind but that I wasn't even next, too bad, be grateful I might get seen today at all so shut up and sit down. That did it. We left. So. I don't have my pap smear. I don't have any answers or help with my amok hormones. I don't have a prescription for a mammogram. And I don't have my blood test to check for ovarian cancer, a not unlikely thing considering my already diagnosed gene mutation, my mother's early death from cancer and how I'm bleeding continually these days. Mick checked with the district's health care coordinator and I can see someone in the Crystal Run network, I am not stuck with those shitheads at Horizon as previously thought, so now I am trying to get an appointment ASAP, but as a new patient it's a bit of a runaround. It's all this piddly stupid crap like how Sam's Club stopped carrying caffeine-free Diet Coke and it's a pain in the patoot to find it other places. And how Shoprite never has Mick's favorite oatmeal cookies in stock despite the shelf being crammed with every other style and flavor of Pepperidge Farm cookies. It's how I keep a very organized purse and don't carry any unnecessary junk in it but I still can never seem to find what I'm looking for without having to unload everything. It's how our local post office keeps insane hours and it took three tries to pick up a certified letter last week. It's how my bedroom is stink bug central. It's how I'm bursting into tears all the time for no obvious reason and the humiliation of not being able to control myself is eating away at my self-esteem. What's really getting me is that I did my part. I held up my end of the bargain. I stopped being a schmucky doormat. I put my life in order and stopped being such a pathetic victim. I kicked over the defeatist thinking, got rid of the lousy ex-husband (legally, if not physically), took a year to heal and get to know myself and then found a good, good man who adores me. I put my finances in order. I took charge of the chaos and tamed it. I ended my deadly love affair with the vodka and got off the binge-purge-starve merry-go-round. I tried therapy and am conscientious about taking not only the bupropion, but my herbs and vitamins and fish oil. I saved my house from the ex's tomfoolery and am slowly but consistently putting it back together and improving its comfort and safety. I helped my kid dig out from the autism wilderness and the hell of the special ed school. Wolf's just finished his freshman year at public high school without a single disciplinary note and he's on the goddamn B honor roll. I got rid of toxic 'friends' and beefed up my relationships with those who truly love and support me. I am involved in giving back through micro-lending and the local food pantry. I took hold of that runaway train careening off the rails that was my shitty no self-esteem, hysteric, loser life and wrested it back onto the tracks and made it run right. So what's with all this crap? I don't need to win the lotto. I'm not asking for fame and fortune. But a week, heck, even a day without something going sideways and stupid would be great. Enough with the breakdowns and the bullshit. I am resentful and totally ticked off with all this mess coming into my hard won new life. I never expected perfect. Truly. Into every life a little rain must fall, yadda, yadda. I get that. But a little payback from the universe doesn't seem like too much. A small period of calm would be nice. Just a chance to be grateful and enjoy, you know? To catch a break. To get up one morning and have the whole day be smoooove. No broken things, no health crises, no nasty letters from the bank or the IRS. To have the internet and all the appliances be steady on. To have the fricken Barky clan go camping or something. A day when the check shows up on time and there's no stink bugs trundling across my pillow. A day with no dropped calls or stubbed toes. Not a forever kind of thing, I'm a realist, but a day. A simple, straightforward, easy day. A high five from karma that getting my act together, playing by the rules, and doing the right thing was worth it.
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