zeptember

By December 28, my sinus infection or whatever it was, had started to finally fade.

By December 31, my husband’s doctor cleared him to be able to go out in public again, though we’d been stepping out of the house for the past two days as it was, because of cabin fever. The doctor said that as long as one still has a cough, one is still contagious, at least when it comes to H1N1. My husband had a mild cough, and was told as long as he coughs into his inner elbow, and washes his hands frequently, the spread of the illness would be greatly minimised.

So on New Year’s Eve, we went to our friend’s house, and enjoyed a mellow evening just hanging out. Some of our friends have young children now, so the house was filled with infant and preschooler noises as well.
I had reminded my husband on the way to the party about how to cough into his elbow, since we employ this method in the Montessori school I work for.
Of course, within the first half hour, my dear husband jokingly shoved his face into a box of homemade cookies and made ‘nom nom nom’ noises.
I pulled him aside immediately and reminded him of his germs. He sheepishly said he was sorry, that he’d forgotten already.
*sigh*

On January 1st, we decided to go dancing, since we’d been screwed out of most of our vacation by being sick. We sweated and danced our asses off at Meat vs. Death Guild.

The next night, we returned to the same location for New Wave City, and danced some more. I began to get sad on the way to the club, because I realised it was our last night out together before having to return to work. We’d not been able to go to Michigan to see friends and family, and we’d not been able to go out into the world from Christmas Eve til New Year’s Eve in any capacity to hang with friends, much less go wining, dining and dancing.

Today is the end of our “vacation”. Tomorrow it’s back to work. I slept in til 11:30am, despite having told myself that would be a bad idea - that I’d have insomnia tonight. Ah well.

Throughout the past week and a half, I’ve checked flight status on the airline we were supposed to have flown. Our flight made it safely to Michigan on December 25, and safely back to San Francisco on January 2. The Cabal party we were supposed to attend still happened in our absense, and pictures and dialogue were posted. I kept tabs on the weather - snow fell regularly through Christmas into the New Year in Michigan.
It’s a bit surreal knowing all of this, and having reality be that I never got on the plane.

Meanwhile, back in California, it’s been a mix of rain and sun, and the temperature has been roughly in the 50°F range during the day, and in the 30-40°F range in the evenings.

Yesterday as we shopped for a dishwasher, I informed my husband that we’d boarded the plane in Michigan and were now on our way home.
This morning I had a nightmare that we’d overslept and likely missed our flight back to San Francisco. I spent a lot of time on my cell phone with a bad connection to Travelocity to try to pin down whether the plane had left already or not. The nightmare ended with me at my ma’s house, having gone into the kitchen and turned down the country music on an old small boombox radio, so I could hear the phone conversation about how to go about getting booked on another flight. My husband was in the living room, my brother had just walked in the front door, and the boy next door stood on his porch with his wife, who was there and then not there and then there again…like some sort of hologram. The two looked a bit Victorian.

My cough returned Wednesday or Thursday as I cleaned the house, because of the dust. The cough settled, then returned again by Saturday morning, along with phlegm, after my husband and I had gotten all kissy face for the first time in about two weeks. I was hesitant but gave in. We’ll see if I get sick again. I don’t have the best immune system…

Yesterday I was so tired all day long, despite having slept in, that I wanted to cry. I overcaffinated myself to no avail. Today I’m feeling pretty tired again, but not as worn out as I was on Saturday. I’m guessing I was just super dehydrated and worn out from all that dancing and sweating on Friday, since it is the first major activity in weeks on account that I’ve been sick. I first got the flu around December 5, and my husband’s doctor thinks it was a blend of H1N1 and the regular flu. She says it takes weeks to fully recover from it, and that relapses can happen.

So it’s back to wait and see, now that we’ve had a weekend of strenuous activity via the nightclubs.

I just spent the past 6 hours on and off searching for airfare to Michigan. I’ve been searching on and off for the last few months and I keep dropping the ball.

This year is my 20-year high school reunion. I started off saying I wasn’t going, then I waffled, then I said definitely I wanted to go, then I got in touch with more and more old school buddies through facebook and found out none of them really wanted to go. Then they waffled, then they wanted to go, and now the most important ones to me no longer want to attend the reunion. It’s hilarious because I got an email the other day saying the whole reunion will be canceled soon if more people don’t commit to it and pay the dues for dinner and drinks! What losers our class continues to be.

I’ve been saying for the last couple of years that I want to go back to Michigan to visit friends and family, that it’s been too long, that my family will be mad at me if I don’t visit soon, etc…

And then I remember something - the ONLY family that ever came to see me in California over the last 12 years that I’ve lived here are my father, my aunt, uncle and my cousin (and my aunt, uncle and cousin came here to visit the rest of their immediate family as a present to said cousin who graduated high school back in 2000. I was just an additional bonus to visit as it were).
My mother, my brother, his wife and kids - none of them have ever come to visit me.
Granted, they’re all poor as dirt, living hand to mouth like I am much of the time. They don’t know how to save their pennies for a vacation any more than I do.

Therefore I’ve always felt it my responsibility to be the one to keep in touch, since I so thoughtlessly abandoned them by moving nearly 2,500 miles away.

I’ve had friends and chosen family come to visit over the years - that’s always wonderful of course.

But the family thing…I moved to California in 1997 and went back home for Christmas in 1997 and in 1998. That’s about all I could take, what with all the drama and politics that goes on in families. And well I was still an AngryGoth™ back then, who was going through the teenage rebellion several years later than most people.

I declared after two Christmas trips home never to do that again. And I haven’t. It’s going on 11 years now that I have not gone home for Christmas.

That, combined with just having gotten married last October, and my 20-year high school reunion coming up next month, and the stark fact that we still haven’t gotten out hard copies of wedding photos yet to immediate family - all that has me feeling much more obligated and in debt to the family for an in-person visit than I normally feel.

So I wrestle with the thought - do I want to go back home to visit? Or do I think I have to go back home to visit?

As I went through expedia.com for the umpteenth time this evening, trying to find the perfect schedule and airfare, I finally just growled, tossed aside the laptop and fled the room.
I spent several minutes in the bathroom just staring at myself in the mirror, trying to figure me out.

And that’s when it finally hit me on a conscious level - I don’t want to go back home. I’d much rather spend the $1,500+ it will cost for airfare, rental car, hotel and food for a week on going somewhere special with my husband, or buying stuff we need, or hell even getting some new nice clothes.

I keep trying to rationalise the idea of flying home for Christmastime, during the snow and freezing time, as something that would be enjoyable. I keep thinking we could turn it into a winter lover’s getaway and snuggle near a fireplace.
What a laugh.
We’d spend an entire day traveling, check into the hotel and try to catch some sleep. The next day, we’d need to get a rental car and slog through the snow and ice for 300 miles, which normally takes about 5-6 hours but in snow could take much longer. So that’s another whole day of travel. Then we’d spend two days visiting my father up north. Maybe there’d be some fun and lazing about in that.
Then we’d have to slog back downstate through the snow and freezing weather again and arrive back at a hotel - day 3 of 7 being nothing but travel. Then we’d spend the next couple of days trying to see my ma, any other family, and friends.

I’m twitching just thinking about it.

And I’ve been bitching at my husband to tell me if he has Christmas break off work or not. He finally told me yesterday that yes, they are shut down for one week between Christmas and New Year’s.
I realised while looking at airfare that not only do I still not have my autumn hours for work in place yet, but I don’t even remember if my workplace shuts down for a week or just a few days.

So now I feel sheepish for pestering my husband so much about his time off.

And I realised too that a lot of my mental friction has been just The Point Of The Matter against my husband - I know he despises Michigan and Kentucky where I have family. More than that, he hates flying in airplanes. He’s got severe flying phobia - I call him B.A. Baracus because he’s gotten unruly on flights, and has to be severely drugged to get through the flight.
So anytime I so much as mention missing my family back home, and could we maybe visit soon, he gets all bristly and short with me. This has been going on for the entire time we’ve been together. I then go ahead and make the flight arrangements, and we argue the entire time because his phobia ramps up severely, and I need his input as to dates, times and all that.
Once, I booked flight without telling him in advance, just to save my sanity. It did jack shit cuz once I let him know we’d be flying, he still flipped and hemmed and hawed and then totally backed out.
I flew without him (this was to visit friends in Seattle in 2005). I made him pay me back for the cost of the canceled ticket.

So it’s a lot of stress for both of us to even consider flying anywhere. Doubly so when it’s to a place he doesn’t even care to ever set foot in again, and doesn’t really care much for his in-laws to begin with.

That has left me thinking two things simultaneously:
1) FINE, I’ll go without you, then. I don’t know why I didn’t do this before. Wait yes I do - I still have a bit of that co-dependent streak in me.
2) You’re my HUSBAND now, you HAVE to come with me, otherwise you shame me and my family for being absent from my side.

While staring at myself in the mirror tonight, trying to get a grip on my brain meats, it occurred to me that I - ZEPT - do not want to spend all that money in cold and snow to be running around trying to please parental units by being physically present for them. My father continually treats me like a 15-year-old, and my mother continuously wants me to try becoming Christian - for her.

I wouldn’t even have time to visit the extended maternal family - and ma says they don’t even gather at the holidays anymore, anyway. All this I have in my head is just romanticised childhood memories of extended family holiday gatherings that ceased to exist 23 years ago. Going back now and trying to make that a reality would fail on all levels - families have split up, grandparents, an uncle and a cousin have died, other cousins have abandoned the family and/or the family has abandoned them, and let’s not forget that several cousins have gone on to have their own children and broken homes at young ages.

Then there’s my childhood homes - my ma still lives in the one I grew up in during the week, and it’s still as gross and disheveled and legally condemnable as it ever was when I lived there. My father’s childhood home, which then was my childhood home on weekends, and then full time during the last two years of college - that house was sold a decade ago and got a second floor added onto it. And development has claimed much of the wetlands forest surrounding the property.

Then there’s my friends and chosen family. Many of them have grown up and now have families of their own. They work full time and/or cannot afford to go out anymore. They certainly don’t party or go out on weeknights anymore. Others moved out of state like I did.

We can still have an awesome Cabal Ball - I can declare that I want one and we can set a date. If not that then a nice dinner somewhere - people usually are able to make it to a dinner.

The friends thing is not a loss - just an adjustment.

So other than that, what am I chasing?

What do I NEED from going back there?

It’s ghosts, now. It’s swirling dust. It’s the past haunting my mind. I don’t want to go back to Michigan, I need to go back to put my life there to rest. But haven’t I done that already? I thought every time I go back there, I declare, “I’m SO glad I moved away!”
Don’t I find out the hard way every time that my Michigan vacation is not a vacation? It’s actually rushed and complicated and frustrating due to family dramas and cycles I can’t break free of.

The only thing I NEED from that place is genealogical and geographical historical research.
That’s what I want.

And knowing that, I can then declare that it is Not Worth It to put my husband through hell for the false notion that he must be at my side to represent our marriage. I realise I have been trying to prove to my family that I have somehow MADE IT away from the nest. I’m not sure I have - I need their validation that I have. In my head, I don’t know if I’m actually away from home or if I’m still there in my bedroom writing in my diary, wishing I was grown up and had moved away.

I think that not until I have cleaned out my mother’s house of every last scrap of my childhood will I feel a sense of closure on my past, and finally begin to grow up on my own.

There has been recent talk on my brother’s part of retiring my mother, selling off her house, and getting her settled into an apartment near his place three hours to the south.

Therefore I need to just WAIT, and when I find out for sure when my ma will be moving, THEN I can fly back home with or without my husband, and help ma move, and box up or throw out the rest of my crap, and bid a final farewell to that despicable old house we had to live in for so long - the house that contributed towards my low self-esteem and self-loathing just by its very nature of being so run down and smelly and flea infested and in a shitty neighborhood and looking so obviously inhabited by people living below poverty level.

There.
Now I guess I know what I want.

I’ve been calling my dad every other day to check in. He got out of the hospital last Monday, and has had physical therapy and continued pain meds (oxycotin) for the excruciating pain. He says he doesn’t like to take the meds though because it takes him too far into la la land. He says he understands now why kids abuse the stuff but it’s too scary for him. I agreed and told him that I thought I was suffocating to death on just one low-dose (325mg) pill. I can’t even take half of those pills. That stuff makes me very aggressive and moody. I just wish my dad would request another medication if he’s not happy with the oxycotin. It breaks my heart to hear he’s in unbearable pain.

Still, his voice sounds like his old self, with only traces of the pain seeping through. He’s as strong as he ever was.

Dad gave me details of the fall and gorey details of the hip replacement. He said that in the military, one is trained to go through a series of steps when injured in the line of duty. If I remember what he told me correctly…
First you take stock of all your faculties and body parts - are you intact? Can you move? Then you figure out what the situation around you is like - is it safe to get up or are the conditions hostile? Are you near civilisation or remote? Can you survive in the current conditions? What are your supplies?
And then you try to figure out how long you can survive given the current situation. Once you go through all that, you can settle your mind, and then proceed.
Dad says he’s programmed to go through all that, so he did, and then once settled down, he realised he had his cell phone on him. ‘The wonders of modern technology’, he remarked to me.
He said he phoned his wife and she came down there as fast as she could.
I was mistaken in earlier posts - I thought she was right across the road from him. Nope, turns out she was a mile away. A mile is a long time to wait when you’re in that much pain, but he knew it’d still be faster than calling 911. He said it was “blowin’ snow” out there, with 2 inches (5cm) of snow piling up around him and falling on his face cuz he was flat on his back.

Dad says he had a 14 inch (35cm) incision for the surgery and 22 staples after surgery.

I’ve been meaning to look for graphic videos of hip replacement surgery. I want to know more than just the illustrated drawings I’ve seen insofar as what happens to someone with a broken hip undergoing hip replacement.

I think despite how well my dad’s doing (he knows people can die from this injury and from complications of the surgery and hardware), I think it was just finally all too much for me to take, emotionally.

I was upstairs rocking the baby to sleep for afternoon nap when my eyes just welled up and tears spilled down my cheeks. Silent tears. I’m still teary and still have a lump in my throat. I need a good cry. Hopefully can get one in before the baby wakes.

I cry because of the pain my parent is in and because he’s that much closer to the end of his life. Hip fractures happen most often to the elderly. I’m forced now to face the reality that my father is indeed elderly at the age of 66½.

I felt that with all the health issues I’m having lately, that my journal seems a bit too downer for people. So I came home and was going to post how cute it was to make a little girl giggle and snort today at work.

So that’s the good news.

Then I checked the phone messages. In all the crisis, she forgot I had a cell, and only called the land line, so I didn’t get the call til I got home.

My father broke his hip this morning.

He works as a hotel manager in one building, and across the street, he works a second job plowing the snow from a parking lot.

He had just finished plowing, and was checking the snow plow before heading back across the road. His wife says he told her he turned and his feet just came right out from under him. He called her and told her he broke his hip - he knew immediately. She found him laying in the parking lot and his right foot looked ‘off’.
She asked if he could right his foot. He tried. He couldn’t. So she called an ambulance.

Dad’s in the hospital now, surgery scheduled in the morning. He’s at Northern Michigan Regional. He’s on a morphine drip. Tomorrow he’ll get a spinal and anesthetic for the surgery. They’ve got his legs wrapped really tight, as they are taking precautions against blood clots. That is my single most terrifying fear. Second worst fear is that something will go wrong during surgery.

My dad has been an expert skier since before I was born. He served in the navy - was in the Bay of Pigs bailout. He’s still a biker dude. He spent the last several months ripping apart old apartments and fixing them back up again as one of his jobs. He’s a strong man. I hope he can remember this in the road ahead, cuz surgery and physical therapy are going to be a bitch.

Hips are serious business. Scary business. Especially in people over the age of 60 like my dad. He’s gotta pull through.

Well I wanted to get out to the club for the undead wedding themed party last Friday, but instead, the snotmonster cold I’d been fighting for a week finally caught up with me and killed me dead.

I took it easy for most of the weekend, while trying to get as many chores done as possible. Ugh, no more time, time running out. AIEEEE.

I’m tired of hemorrhaging money. Please, make it stop. Had a minor meltdown at B over this last night.

The cough and snotfest seems to have stopped as of today. I’ve coughed only twice. I spent the weekend drinking tea and water and eating assloads of vitamin C, vitamin B, cal/mag and zinc vitamins.

Although I ran errands on Saturday and Sunday, I feel like it was wasted time, all for naught, nothing accomplished. So frustrating.

The other monster I’ve been trying to keep at bay is the Endometriosis. I’ve exhibited symptoms for two damned weeks now. I blame myself for having a shitty diet because I’ve been under stress of starting a new job and continued “hurry up and wait…GO! AAAIIIIEEEE” on all the chores that need to be done before the end of this month.
When I woke up this morning, the pain was there. I checked myself every ten minutes but no girl do0m. I waited til the last possible minute to get dressed and go out the door cuz I wanted to be sure I didn’t have to call in sick. My body gave me the shaky ’sure, you’re alright’ nod, and off I went to work, zo0m.

It’s been a mellow day here with the baby. I’ve not taken her on a stroller ride outside. My body is shutting down. No energy. So tired. Knees have had it. Pelvic region aching.
I’m still on Motrin twice a day since last week.

Gah - I haven’t even gotten plane tickets to Michigan yet for November. I’ve not been home in 4 years, 3 months and 23 days (and counting). I’m going home to visit, dammit! I don’t care if Michigan will be frozen over by then! I wanna go home.
Hey, with all the bare trees Michigan will have by then, and spo0ky overcast sky, I’ll get some awesome graveyard pix for ya’ll. :p

But now, right now, I’m missing peak colour. *sob*