Tag: Family

Roll Reversal

Big time childhood roll reversal going on this morning. Morning pill distribution is at 8:00am. At the stroke of 8:00, thanks to the iOS Reminders app, I brought them both their morning meds and accompanying stuff (water, food, ect). They were both sound asleep. Neither of them wanted to wake up. It was 8:15 before I got any real response out of them.

Flash back to me at age 6-18. 12 years of schooling with approximately 180 days per year worth of me not wanting to get out of bed each morning and my parents constantly yelling at me to get my ass in gear.

Life is weird, you know?

Sleepy

There was a stretch of time there overnight when I was pretty convinced I wasn’t going to get to four hours of sleep. I didn’t get to bed until a smidge before 1:00am and it was a little before 5:00am and both of my parents were up and about. Mom was making breakfast and dad was using the bathroom. I would guess I was at about three hours and 45-50 minutes. Almost made it. Then my father went back to bed and a few minutes later my mother was back in bed too and shortly after I was asleep again. The total sleep time ended up being four hours and 35 minutes. I was up before 6:00 and I tried to get my morning bathroom routine done before they got up again. I almost made it. My mother’s bladder interrupted me. That was okay though.

Now at 7:12am I have a load of their laundry running and I am setup for work. I am going to cleanup my sleep station a little and then try to sneak in a little of last night’s The Walking Dead episode (season 11, episode 2). I think I can get it all in before work starts, but I will have to stop a few times for parent duties.

I was out of the office on Friday so I will have some hectic catch up to do once I sign in. That’s normal on the first day back after being out. I know I have some stuff that needs to be done for tomorrow, but I am hoping things are quiet today. I got enough sleep to be able to handle whatever the universe throws at me. It’s just a question of when I run out of gas. I am going to try to conserve enough energy to make it to 9:00-10:00pm tonight.

Fingers crossed, my dear readers*.

*In my silly attempt to paraphrase Stephen King’s regular greeting to his readers (what does he write? Loyal readers? Something like that) I misspelled “readers” as “reasers” and left it that way through a full proof read even though the Chrome spell check flagged it as an error. Oh yeah, we gone have a fun wun tuhday.

#Sarcasm

<sarcasm>

I’m back to my parents place for the night and it’s awesome. It’s a total blast. I have no residual emotional stress relating to spending nights in the house where I was so depressed that my best friend once told me he was worried I was going to do something to hurt myself. Nope, I feel great now. Just wonderful.

Obviously those fears were unjustified, but there were times when I was worried about the same thing. All of that was in this house. Yup, I love it here. Just love being here. Sure, the day I moved out ranks in the top five happiest days of my life*, but that doesn’t mean that staying here again isn’t the most awesome, awesome thing I could do.

Being here is the best.

</sarcasm>

*Off the top of my head, could my short list of happiest moments be?…

1. Our wedding.
2. Jen saying yes when I proposed.
3. Falling for Jen.
4. Meeting the kids.
5. Moving in with Jen and the kids.
6. Buying and moving into a house of our own.
7. Harry being his old self again after a couple of days worth of near unconsciousness in the PICU.
8 & 9 (tied). Bellana and Harry graduating from high school.
10. Raising the double freedom rockets and giving a hearty fuck you to the previous 33 years of failure and misery in my life and finally graduating from college.

Like I said, that’s just off the top of my head. If I really sat down and examined my emotional state during all of these experiences, number 7 would likely jump a lot higher on that list. Possibly because the events leading up to that wonderful moment are hands down, no question number one on the list of the worst moments of my life. Like, no contest. As bad as things are now and as bad as all the bad things that have happened to me and to those I care about throughout the last 50 years, nothing comes close to being as terrifying and horrible as Harry’s time in the hospital during the first days of diabetes. That first time he got himself up out of the hospital bed and sat up in a chair and talked to us as if nothing happened… fuck me, that was a glorious moment. That was bliss. I will treasure that particular happy moment forever.

Home for Now

Another chapter in the never ending story comes to a close and I go home again. I was 36 when I moved out of that house (April 2008) and lets say for the last 10-11 years I was miserable pretty much every second I was there. Then after my mother’s cancer I was there to watch her every other Friday for… what was it… eight more years? Now for the last five months it’s been 24 out of every 72 hours, approximately. I honestly can’t put into words how much just being in the house hurts me. That’s not even considering my parents’ health situations, which by themselves are soul crushing. Just being in that house makes me miserable.

I’m going back tomorrow night because why not just destroy my soul while I have the chance, right? I know it’s the right thing to do, and I know I have to do it and I know and I know and I know. Being the right thing doesn’t change the fact that the house itself is my personal hell.

The overnights should be ending soon. Unless the universe is fucking with us, hard… and I am not willing to discount that as a possibility, it should be ending soon.

Not soon enough.

…and I go back tomorrow night.

Damn Phone

I’m here at my parents house and it’s been a relatively quiet day. I sorted out the pills, started some laundry, and did a couple of other little things. The Home Care Professional (hero) is here and she was helping dad with some things. My mother was in her room reading the paper.

I thought to myself… do I dare? Do I dare watch a show on Netflix while I wait for the laundry to finish? Let’s try it. Toast of London, season one episode three (I am trying to decide if Matt Berry is the funniest person on Earth. Still not sure, but I do know that Ray Bloody Purchase is an asshole), I put on my headphones and press play…

…and the fucking phone rings. Oh for crying out loud.

Pills

It’s 10:37am. Did you miss me? I usually have a morning hello post hours earlier than this.

What kept me?

Pills. Yeah, man.

No, seriously. I just filled my parents’ pill caddies for the week. There was a lot of back and forth with my brother and sister. There are pharmacy changes coming in the near future and it’s affecting how we go about filling prescriptions and two of my mother’s 10000000 scripts need to be refilled this week because there aren’t enough pills to get us through to next week. Their primary care physician (who is also my primary care physician) is on the case though. All is well.

The bathroom is the other issue today. Not in an accident way, just in a there-is-only-one-in-the-house way. It seems like every time someone needs to go really bad there is someone already in there. I’ve been toilet blocked twice today, and I toilet blocked someone else once. It’s minor chaos.

My mother just shuffled into the room and asked me if I was her son and did she actually give birth to me.

I want to go home so badly I cannot put it into words. I am so tired of neglecting my family in favor of my family, you know? I was afraid to text Harry last night but Jen let me know that he was texting her, so I snuck in a couple. It’s only been one day and I miss him so much, and missing him makes me miss Bellana even more, and missing them both makes me so upset that I am here and not with Jen because I know she feels the same way, and it’s just crushing me so much I can’t even punctuate a sentence properly and I keep writing these endless run on things that when I go back to read these at some hypothetical point in the future are going to piss me off and now I am just doing it just because I am pissed off and I want my future self to also be pissed off at my grammar shenanigans and this is stupid and I am so miserable right now I can’t deal.

I think I am going to go upstairs and try to take apart a twin bed. No reason.

Fuck.

Miserable

When I left my son today he was on the verge of tears. When I left my wife today she had just finished crying.

Now where am I when the people I care about most need me? I’m at my parents house for 24 hours, that’s where.

I am the worst parent, step or otherwise, in the universe.
I am the worst husband in the universe.
I am the worst person in the universe.

The Caravan is Rolling

Well folks, here we are. The caravan is rolling. I checked Find My on my iPhone and it shows me that Harry is traveling north on route 89. The plan was for him and his dad to leave a couple of hours ahead of us so we don’t all get stuck in the dorm room together. Covid, ya know?

We should be leaving in a moment (though I just remembered I forgot to do something for work at the end of the day yesterday and I need to do that. It’ll only take 2 minutes).

We can’t deny it anymore. We gots two college kids now.

I am so excited for him and so proud of him and I think I might explode.

It Begins

Harry is spending the night at his father’s house tonight. He just left a few minutes ago. Our nest is officially empty. I know we’re going to see him tomorrow when we help him move in, and we’re going to see Bellana too, but…

…is it Christmas break yet?