Month: August 2021

And it Begins

In relation to the previous post and the imminent empty nest syndrome, my step daughter just left.

She was here for three days. I thought she was going back to Vermont on Wednesday, but she hung around for an extra day and it was awesome. Unfortunately she still had to go home and she just pulled out of the driveway. I am at parental unit sadness level one, even though I am still going to see her tomorrow when we go up to Burlington to move my step son into school.

That’s beside the point. She left, I am sad.

Today’s Going to be an Emotional Day

Today is likely to be a little emotional. Tomorrow is going to be much more emotional. After that, it’s all down hill for a while.

Today is our last full day with Harry. Tomorrow we move him into his dorm.

Yeah… Robbie, your humble narrator, (who is already an emotional wreck for parental reasons) is going to be even more of an emotional wreck than usual.

You, faithful reader, have been warned.

Calming Down

I don’t know if I was over reacting a little this morning, or if I’ve just been so busy at work since then that I lost perspective, but things have calmed down quite a bit today. They both took naps (I’m jealous) and the sense of impending doom I felt earlier is gone. That’s good, right?

I was expecting Bellana to drive back to Vermont today but instead she made a salon appointment and planned to spend the day in Boston (I’m jealous). That means she’s going to be at our house when I get home tonight. Actually, I might get home first, but whatever. She’s going to join us for Marvel and Burgers night. What If…? Season one episode three. It should be fun.

During the earlier days of the Covid-19 pandemic, someone bought my parents a digital picture frame that can be loaded remotely via an app. We all added tons of pictures to it and it’s been running around the clock* ever since. Today I had to go out to the porch for something and I saw a couple of old pictures on the window sill, hidden by 100 years of stuff. One had a picture of my mother’s mother. The other had a picture of my father’s mother, and a picture of my father’s brother. I thought I would scan them and add them to the picture frame. I had to dig through a pile of stuff, it felt like Harry Potter in the last movie robbing the LeStrange vault, but I was able to grab them. I was surprised to find two more pictures hidden behind my father’s mother. One had a picture of one of my father’s aunts and one of his uncles, and the other was a picture of another aunt.

I scanned them all with my iPhone and added them to the picture frame. I’m still waiting for one of them to pop up, and for my parents to notice. That might actually take a couple of days as there is a little league world series game on and one of the teams is from New Hampshire. Suffice to say, distracted.

*It doesn’t exactly run around the clock. When the ambient light level drops below a certain level the unit shuts itself off. Outside of that it’s been running around the clock.

It is Ramping Up Now

Nothing bad really happened on last night’s parent sitting shift. My mother had pain issues but she eventually went to sleep and slept through the night. My father was fine.

It’s ramping up now though. It’s 8:21am and they both are having problems and I can already tell it’s going to be a colossally shitty day. The home health worker gets here around 9:00, and I am coming back to work after two days off.

So far the only issues have mostly revolved around one parent taking too long in the bathroom which causes problems for the other parent. Happy morning, everyone. My sister is supposed to be coming with a delivery at some point today. My schedule looks clear in the afternoon so hopefully work stays quiet enough to let that go smoothly.

My general mindset right now is the same as it is pretty much every second I spend here. I feel like I am going to start screaming, and when I start I don’t know if I will ever be able to stop.

Song Number 24 of 50 (I Hope)

I mixed three songs tonight. Hot Damn! My brain feels like mush now, so I am going to bed.

My mother was asleep when I checked on her a minute ago, but she was still up. Explain? Okay. She’s sitting up on the edge of her bed, slumped over to one side asleep. I woke her up and told her she should lie down. She said she will and then went back to sleep without moving. Her back is going to be searing agony tomorrow. It’s like talking to a brick wall sometimes, except you can usually get pissed off when people act like that. I can’t get pissed off now. I don’t think she can actually process that she’s doing anything that will have a negative consequence.

It’s pretty friggin’ frustrating.

Song Number 23 of 50 (I hope)

I’m on a bit of a mixing roll right now. Only partly because my mother is having a rough night. She had all of her discretionary meds. If she doesn’t fall asleep soon I don’t know what we’re going to do. It’s quiet in her bedroom right now, and she hasn’t come a-wandering out in a little while. After I post this I will go check on her.

The song is nothing special, but I kinda like it. The rhythm guitars sounded like crap so I had to EQ them. I always feel like a failure when I have to EQ guitars. I should be a talented enough recording engineer to actually capture my own friggin’ instrument correctly. I’m only being partly sarcastic when I say that, but rest assured I am being sarcastic.

On the up side, my father was flipping back and forth between the Red Sox game (that’s good) and a little league fucking world series game (oh, that is so not good). The little league game is over. Thank the baseball gods for that.

Song Number 22 of 50 (I hope)

I have been playing games with gear of late. There are two overdrive pedals on the rhythm guitar tracks. Both have their gain control on zero and their volume control maxed. The amp is a low wattage tube amp, and pushing in a crap load of input signal is enough to push the tubes into overdrive. There are a couple of songs coming that added a third overdrive pedal set the same way and it’s a really sweet distorted sound. It’s almost like I know what I’m doing.

I’m Here

I don’t know why but I’m a total mess tonight, emotionally speaking. We had both kids home for a while today and now I’m here and I just can’t deal. I had a couple of spontaneous balling my eyes out moments before I left home. It had been a couple of weeks since that happened so maybe I was just due. I don’t know. I just know I can’t take much more of this. It’s breaking me.