Some whining and raving.

I have to confess I felt very alone this weekend. I’ve been going through a significant amount of personal stress. For one, I have been facing the very real and inevitable decline of my father, who was hospitalized recently for dehydration, and who subsequently went into rehabilitation care. Yesterday he was readmitted to the hospital for pneumonia and a UTI. He is very confused before this bout, disoriented and bellicose to the nursing staff. He was even upsetting other nursing home residents by walking around naked ::snickersnicker:: Apparently, even now in his weakened state he is combative and he tore out his IV this morning. It’s good to know he’s still showing some strength of will and vitality, even if he’s sick and dotty. I’ve been trying to figure out ways to get out there to see him. I’m worried that in this climate of layoffs, that my work would use my taking family leave as an excuse to get rid of me. I am also wondering where the money is going to come from... and who will take care of my dogs. I don’t want to spend the rest of my life regretting never seeing my father again just because of a job and fear of expenses. I have some weighing and balancing to do.

My father is 79 years old. I know it’s natural for this to happen, but I don’t care what anyone says, nothing can prepare you to see your parents age, become ill, and then approach the ‘d’ word. Nobody can be ready for that. I selfishly want my father to stick around so we can foster the little treasure of a relationship we’d managed to form in the past two decades. I don’t want to lose that. It’s taken so long to get there. I know it’s not all about me, but when you’re losing someone you love, that’s what grief is. It’s about you and what you’re losing. Daddy seems ready to go; he’s even welcoming it to some degree. I can’t handle that he’s so eager to deprive us of him.

Secondly, I am fighting a particularly strong bout of depression; having no husband around during this time is hard. I have been feeling extremely isolated and without a support system. I reached out last week trying to find people to do stuff with this weekend to keep those two days from becoming a glut of sleeping, and rampant self-reflection, and everyone had plans or was working. That really sucked. Meanwhile, my husband is actually doing a lot of cool things at his current assignment. He’s in upstate New York and has in his time there, already visited Niagra Falls, Orange County Choppers, NYC and did a boat tour of the thousand islands and castles of Virginia Bay. I haven’t had these feelings of being left-out since I was younger and my sisters got to escape and have lives, I got to stay home and take care of my brother and father. Damn it ::whine::. I wish I’d been there doing those things with Hubby. ::pout::

Saturday was a lost day. I spent most of it sleeping and doing little to nothing except occasional houseworky things. I only went out to walk to dogs. I didn’t even change out of my pajamas. Sunday, I slept in, but Hubby told me I should go out for a late breakfast, so I did. I took my netbook with me and sat at the Cozy Cabin for almost three hours, drinking tea and playing Diner Dash. I got an email from a friend asking if I wanted to go see a movie—YAY! I jumped on it. So I hit the hardware store for squeedle (squirrel as pronounced by my Puerto Rican mother) food, filled the feeders, did a quick load of laundry, took a shower and off to the movies I went.

We went to see Julie & Julia. I dare say, I adored the movie. Adored it. Meryl Streep is effing brilliant. The stories were both delightful; although one more fiction than the other. I sat down after the movie last night and checked out this blog by Julie; and it’s definitely well-written and engaging, but it’s not the ‘voice’ that was portrayed in the movie--the movie portrays a sweet-albeit self-absorbed type of person; and the blog personality is definitely more abrasive and frank; not a lot of sweetness there. Nonetheless, it is a delightful movie, we laughed, and I shed a few tears. Very few movies these days make me forget my life, forget the moment, and forget I’m watching a movie. This one did; for approximately two hours, I my brain was completely absorbed in the movie, and daddy and everything else was quiet for a bit. I exited the movie loving Julia Child even more. I highly recommend it.

In the meantime, I promise to blog more and stop wallowing in lonely self-pity. I will create a new office special today (I don’t know what happened to my last one... it probably got thrown in the recycle box and shredded to smithereens by Iron Mountain.