Saturday, July 6, 2013

The new retirement plan

Lesson learned, don't take drugs and blog. That last one was an Ambien/vicodin combo with a terrible day thrown in for good measure. I don't really hate the "girls" at work, although I was almost surely letting out the inner demon on that blog. The thing is they are so blatant in their hatred and mockery of me. I am like a bear protecting it's den. I only get a small cubicle and they basically want to take that away from me and leave me nothing. A job is a great big deal for a 58 year old woman with no husband, 401k, or retirement plan. See I was living the Mormon dream. I really thought my X husband would be there and provide for me. I believed him when we knelt across an altar and promised forever. Whoa there Nelly, sliding back into bitter ville. Anyway, I should have done something by now to insure my future but I have never had the great job or the steady income to do it. Now it's almost over and whoops, my bad. No money saved. No retirement plan. So here is the new improved retirement plan: Work till I die.

Wednesday, March 20, 2013

Bitter much?

Today I picked up my brother from the rehab place. It was a nightmare. I really feel badly for feeling so put out. Like this is more important than work and I know that but I also want to express how crappy things are at work right now and I so did not need to miss another day. I can not find myself without a house and a job. Then the rehab/ hospice people schedule his release on a day that the 8 year veteran at work has scheduled off too. It just couldn't be a drive-by quick pick up either. They planned a whole day of suckitude for me. I had to take him to all these appointments, the store, and the bank. You know like I don't have a job and have unlimited chauffeur time for the injured brother?
I feel so low even just typing this so I may erase it all and start over with a perky blog on how happy I am he did not die from injuries sustained at my home. Screw that line of thinking, it is not my fault. However I am selfish for thinking how put out I was by spending my day toting him and all his injury accoutrement around all day. How I had no breakfast or lunch and had to spend my $ on parking valets and jeopardize my lofty career at Doofy just to take him to all the places he needed to be. Not that I am a whiner or anything but he got Oxycontin all day. I was stone cold sober.
I'm not even sure he was mentally there for most of this crap. But he WAS rambling on and on to anyone that could hear how much pain he is in and how terrible the injury was. That's the key word: was. It has been more than a month since the surgery. He recovered 20 days in basically a spa with enough drugs to sedate a small elephant. He GAINED weight. A lot of it. He refuses to use the walker for more than half the stuff he should use it for and had me pushing a borrowed wheelchair all day to take him to his various appointments. He has not had a day since the accident that someone else wasn't bringing him everything he wants and needs including me.
Wow, that was a little bitter. I better not post this.
Alright I will post it cause it makes me feel better and I do not get any Oxycotin with that cup of gall.

Wednesday, March 13, 2013

Ya'll come back now, ya hear?

Another blizzard sailed through the area on Monday. There is nothing like an early morning commute in horizontal snow. Last weekend was the same. The weather station here has a 90 million dollar doplar weather radar system. They said high 50's to 70 degrees all week. Today is Wednesday and we made the 60's today finally. Give me one million dollars and I will predict weather better than this.
Sparky and James let the house go into foreclosure. There are no words for how I feel about this. On the one hand I can tell they just got in way over their heads. On the other hand this has been a giant CF from day one. She took out a second mortgage and raised our rent. I can't personally see why but recently she bought a home for her son too. Now this one is going into foreclosure? I have begun the onerous task of packing up my stuff again. At the first real hint of any sort of notice, I am going to be ready to go. Pray for me.

Other problems: Robert has started talking with a southern accent. (See previous blog on Why Oh Why can't my family be normal) This accent would be (a little) OK if he had ever been to the south. Or had been around anyone with a southern accent in the last 13 years. Or had ever talked this way before except to joke about our dearly departed mother. Or didn't go in and out of the accent 3 times during a conversation.
Also new problem: He has become a hugger. Don't get me wrong, the huggers of the world are alive and doing OK, just not in my family. If my mother or father ever stretched out an arm towards us you would have seen 5 kids stop, drop, & roll away fast.  I have NEVER hugged Robert before last Sunday. Now he wants a hug all the time. Can you hear the Twilight Zone theme music, because I can.
Tomorrow his social worker is coming with him to the house to make sure he has some sort of grasp on how to live with his new titanium hip in our home.  Also to check that I have moved his stuff upstairs into a "better situation than what he was in before". She called me today at work to tell me all about her visit. As she prattled on I thought to myself what if I say NO, then what? They keep him in the hospice for the next however long? He can't drive, walk, stand up to cook, go to the bathroom, or use a shower alone. I felt as if she were trying to threaten me with not letting him come home.
And all the hinting that this was going to be better for him to be upstairs. Like I had argued against it with her before or something. He can't navigate stairs, I get it. But what's better?
Better than his old room and door with a lock on it? Better than a geeks wet dream solid state computer set up with high speed Internet and a 40" screen and surround sound? Better than his own refrigerator, griddle, toaster, and coffee pot in the room with him? Better than what? Who offered the inferior alternative? I feel like there is a piece of the puzzle I am missing here.
Well, now it is cold so I better go start the heater.

Tuesday, March 5, 2013

He's back

I went to see my brother tonight. Lets just say, the crazy man is back.
The boss at my new work... Mr. Perfect Plan, is turning out to be a few fries short of a happy meal. Today I wandered into his office to find him listening in to the dispatch center of our work by intercom. I would not want to listen to the dispatch center on purpose at all. These men are all a bunch of tobacco chewing, sweaty, filthy, macho, swear machines. The only thing they do better than swear is sweat and be dirty.  I have heard a guy in there use 3 swear words in a 5 word sentence. These are the guys mentioned in the payroll debacle. The ones who can't spell, tell time, read, or write. Some of them sound a lot like Bubba Gump with a mouth full of marbles. The men who don't chew tobacco and keep a lovely spit bottle on the desk smoke. It is like hell in there. They positioned it across from the men's room and the bathroom smells better and is cleaner. Don't get me wrong, construction work is dirty work and props for being gainfully employed, but did I mention the offensive smells and the smoke? Anyway, I hurried away and went and whispered to the least offensive of them that they were being watched and they now know to try a little harder to look at the black boxes on their desks before the jokes start.
 WTF? Where's the fun in listening to that crap.

Monday, March 4, 2013

Let it snow, let it melt, let it stop.

Is today finally over? Oh goody. Today started with a medium hard snow that resolved itself about the time I got home from the hospice. Robert needs his computer so I took it to him at the butt crack of dawn. It was very cold. After that I went to work and wow it really started to blizzard. Then it started snowing sideways. Then it got colder and snowed about 2 inches more. When I gave up and said to myself that I was going to be spending the night at work the sun came out and melted all the snow in less than an hour.
WTF?? What's the forecast? The Weather Channel said a 20% chance of snow. Therefore I packed my light hoodie since I could have suntanned on Sunday. I could not see the mailbox at one point in the day.  I want to see a 100% chance of snow. No wait I do not want to see that. That is where the broken hip came from.
By the way Robert's hip is not much improved, but he is no longer delusional. He is up in a wheelchair and making sense again. I do not think drugs are a good thing for him. He was very much improved today in personality. The doctors all agreed it would happen, I just did not believe you could go from totally bat guano crazy to normal and back 3 times in the same week.
Live and learn.

Friday, March 1, 2013

heal my soul

The truth is you can only love as deeply as you hurt.
That is why I signed up for this adventure, to learn how to love and hurt and choose.
Sometimes I submit to the will of God and just flow with the experience. Sometimes I want to run away and I try to bargain my way out of whatever pain or problem I have. You can only learn these things here during earth life experience, and I want to be good and experienced when I leave, but I swear I signed up for two of everything hard thinking I would be special or better at this. Or that it would be easy for me because I was so good. The truth is I am not as good as my sister Mary or my brother Timmy. They both were only here a little while to get the body and experiences and get out.
I'll probably be 100 before I get it.
The truth is I have gone as far as I ever want to go in pain and emotional trauma experience and still am stupid as a post.  I came here to get experience and got the deluxe package thinking it would be so fun and I would ace everything and here I sit a great big failure.
No, not a failure at life. You are passing if you're alive. I am a failure at the learning from this experience. I keep thinking "What was I thinking?" when I look back on my life and choices. You are supposed to learn from these things, but what am I not learning?  I guess if I knew then I would fly away home.
One thing I really need to learn is forgiveness. Oh yea I'm really good at talking the talk but deep inside I still have resentments, hostilities, and down right thirst for retribution for those who have hurt me in this life. I want forgiveness, but I so don't know how to give it. In fact given the chance I would cheer at the repayment of some of the crap flung my way by others. I don't wish anyone really bad stuff, but I would laugh at a little pay back.
"How's that feeling buddy? It's not so fun on the other end of that is it?"
I look around me and think I am on the right track but really I am about as smart as a moth and keep flying into the flame and wondering why it burns. Enough examining my soul for the night.

Wednesday, February 27, 2013

Paranoia. Today I put a really ugly face on that term. Oh I've had extensive experience with it in the past, but today it was brought to me and dumped on my lap like a hot drink. As it soaked in I just about did what anyone would do in that situation: jump up, run, and try to get the sting off.
My brother is in the hospital because he broke his hip. He is having a reaction to the drugs and trauma of the break and surgery: He is convinced that the staff is trying to kill him. He is sure all the nurses there at the hospital are out to get him.
Yes, he is prone to paranoia and I have had this conversation with him a thousand times in the past. No one is out to get you. You do not create that kind of obsession with your looks and demeanor. No one person has singled you out and targeted you for their chew toy, much less everyone around you. You just aren't that interesting, cute, rich, or famous.
Today I got to share this with him while he verbally offended everyone at the hospital trying to help him. At one point I wanted to just smack him. He is having a chemically induced hyper-paranoid episode and I wanted to crawl out of the room and deny all knowledge of him. He took it upon himself to insult the gender, race, intelligence, capability, and parentage of every Medical Professional who came to the meeting. Owing to great parenting he can swear in 7 languages, so everyone in the world got some today. I felt Giant embarrassment and then Giant(er) guilt for feeling embarrassed.
                               Why oh why can't my family just be NORMAL?
I have a sister who runs night ops. In a Burka. With night vision goggles and handcuffs. In downtown wherever the heck she is. Protecting the perimeter. She has been arrested for it. She believes she is doing right, she cares about security. She doesn't have a home, a car, or a job but she has night-vision goggles! Her really sad story is not atypical of any of my family. You know how they say every family has one? In my family it is one sane person, and I'm not even sure about that.
So today I missed a day of work at my new job to meet with every kind of doctor except a psychiatrist, which he really needs, at the Hospital he is in. I have to admit I saw one 90 year old lady with crazy hair and a walker going down the hall with her son and thought "why couldn't you be my relative?". And the conclusion: He will probably get better in a few days.
Meanwhile they all have me on speed-dial-in-case-of-offense and I wore out my repertoire of humble apologies today.
Twice.