Busy days - work, play and Star trek

I really do exist. Besides work, I've been doing a lot of crochet and glue gunning lately. The crochet for a friend's birthday and Mom's incipient Belle's Blankets and the glue gunning and quilting for a friend's wedding accessories.

Here's a picture of the accessories. I used white, blue and brown ribbon with freshwater button pearls as accents. For the pillow and book I quilted one layer with a design all involved seemed to like from the book 1,000 Great Quilting Designs using DMC 938 and 827. Thankfully, for my sanity's sake, they loved everything...and it was a beautiful wedding, full of laughter - perfect for them.

Here's my version of Dave the Barbarian's pet dragon Faffy. I used the pig design from the book Toys to Crochet and just kind of "winged" it for the alterations I had to make to make it a dragon. Thank the gods for felt. The wings are orange felt in a vague wing-shape stitched onto pipe cleaners and sewn like there's no tomorrow into the back of the dragon. The patches are just single crocheted circles sewn onto his back. Horns are rolled up tubes of felt, sewn like crazy and the eyes, tongue and nose are glue-gunned onto him. Ben really liked it and actually recognized it without any prompting.

As for Belle's Blankets (named after Grandma), Mom wants to start a group of people that make afghans and throws for the vets at the VA hospitals around here. I figure I'll do a massive granny square and use up the rest of some of the skeins of yarn I've managed to collect in the past couple of months. Oh, I also have my Grim Reaper nearly finished. He needs his accessories and a face. I'll take a picture of him when he's finished. For an idea of what he should look like, check out the lower left-hand corner of the cover of Creepy Cute Crochet. Now I just need to figure out how I'm going to alter Cthulu to make him into a Ood for Dragon*Con. It shouldn't be too hard. Oh, I also get to try to catch up on my neglected stitching.

Mom broke her ankle and my new camera on Easter. It's healing nicely and I had to buy another new camera, which is regrettably bubble-gum pink but will do what I need it to do. She's healing fine. We got new cell phones and numbers. I've somehow managed to resist killing my co-workers these last two weeks. Did I mention I got my driver's permit on Friday? We'll see how long it takes for Mom to nag me about the lessons. I may have a week's grace. I also saw Star trek on Friday. It was really good. I'm still in a little shock over some things they did with it, but it was really good. Go see it!

Mom's home

Mom came home Tuesday. The diagnosis has ranged from a TIA to a migraine to the earliest stages of MS. She has a bunch of other tests to go through and we'll see.

Happy Mother's Day

This has not been a good day, well, weekend. TAFH came in Friday night. Cool beans, right? I had to work and had a pretty good time, actually. Then, Saturday morning Mom and I took off for breakfast downtown. We had a nice meal. She left to work a bake sale and I went to the library to research. While there the author of I Heard You Paint Houses gave a talk on his book and the various mob connections in the area. After that I went to see Iron Man again. Sounds pretty good, right? It was. Friday night and Saturday morning were the best part of my weekend.

Right after the bus pulled out of downtown to go to the mall so I could get to work, I got a phone call. Mom was being driven to Mercy Hospital from Honesdale because her leg wasn't working right. I just stayed on the bus and rode it right back to where I'd gotten on, making a number of phone calls the whole trip. It's a damn good thing I finally put minutes on the silly cell phone Friday night! I had been down to 10 cents. My brother and I stayed at the hospital until it was clear she was being admitted. They ran the usual gamut of tests minus the MRI. That is scheduled for tomorrow. It turns out the neurologists believe she has complex migraines. She has a history of migraines, so this really isn't too much of a shocker. We found this out this morning.

Mom's Mother's Day hospital stay isn't really the bad part and as I'm typing this I'm calming down even more because the whole weekend could have been so much worse. The problem stems from TAFH's OCD anal-retentive fucking attitude. Obviously, I had a disagreement (to be polite) with the woman today.

It was all about the house. She insists on cleaning, or re-cleaning, the house every time she comes in because we don't do things to her exacting standards. She calls it "a pig-sty." I am "lazy" because I don't clean it from top to bottom, just the way she likes it, every day. I will freely admit I don't clean as much as I could or even should. I refuse to run the vaccuum and do the dishes only when I absolutely have no other choice. I'll do anything else, though. The house may not always be immaculate, but it's always at least neat.

Now, in her defense (sort of, since she was only using it as an excuse for her normal behavior), she kept insisting that the cleaning we had to do was all for Mom's benefit, because Mom shouldn't have to come home to it. Well, after an hour of being pecked at I decided to leave the house. Without doing what she wanted me to do. I did some of it, gathered my things and told Grandma I was going for a walk. She followed me out the door and tried to tell me off. I am proud of the fact that her face is all still in one piece. If I could have, she'd be sharing Mom's room due to extreme bodily trauma and I'd be sitting in jail right now, happy as a clam for finally tearing her smug, superior face and attitude to shreds.

My only regret right now is that I broke down and told Mom what happened. Mom's in the hospital with migraines brought on by stress and work and I had to add to it. Happy Mother's Day, Mom. I'm sorry. My brother, who was told by TAFH what happened, asked me not to say anything a bit too late. He was surprisingly restrained in what he said to me. Other than telling me I have no common sense, as usual, the ass, he told me I had to control my emotions. I told him I control them a heck of a lot more than he thinks I do. I need to use better judgement, though in when to control them according to him. Usually he just comes solidly down on TAFH's side, so as annoying as his "advice" was I was proud of him for not just jumping on me totally.

I told Mom as I was walking to the crick. There's a spot there that I can sit and relax. Today I cried a bit with Mom on the phone and then by myself. Then a wind came up as I was sitting there with my eyes closed. It dried my tears and kept going until I felt some of the pain lift away. Between it and the sound of the water, I was able to calm down. I'm still upset. I will be for a while, but not nearly so much as I was. I may not be the most devout Pagan, but every once in a while They make Their presence known and I'm grateful for it.

I wrote a lot more than this while I was sitting at the hospital with Mom and my brother. I'm much calmer now, though and don't need it all written out.

TAFH is giving me the silent treatment and she and Grandma have gone to visit Mom. I warned Mom and told her to be nice. She said it'll be difficult, but the pain and drugs will mask any distant behavior, I think. She's more upset with TAFH than me. I just have to get through a few more hours and TAFH will be gone and all will be back to normal. Well, as normal as this household gets. I imagine Grandma will have words for me.

Rationality vs. Irrationality

Mom is expecting rational behavior from an irrational person again. TAFH told Grandma she'd call. She hasn't, therefore Grandma is angry and bitchy and taking it out on us. I want to just call TAFH, but Mom keeps saying Grandma "has to realize she can't take things out on us."

Hello! She's demented! That's what she does.

Mom's gone to work, so I'm going to disobey her and call TAFH anyway. I'll just lie and say she actually called here. It's either piss off Mom or keep dealing with a pissed off Grandma. Frankly, I deal with Grandma more often, so guess which option I'll choose.

*snort* I'm 31 years old and still worrying about pissing off my mother. I'm pathetic.

the house needs fixed... ;p

Mom is making plans again. Supposedly Grandma is going to be going to TAFH's house for a week in March. Mom has taken it off as a vacation week (she gets two, the *itch!) and is going to be working on the floor in the kitchen. Personally, I would wait until we were sure the skunk had moved out of the crawlspace under there, but that's just me and my wish to never be sprayed by one of the little stinkers. She says I can have some time to go to the library for research, but we'll see if that actually materializes. I have a feeling I'll be doing a ton of repair work instead.

To be fair, the floor needs to be replaced. It's old and looks it. The idea is to replace the kitchen flooring and at some point this summer, raise the floor in the bathroom, fixing the shitty remodel my uncle did years ago and give it a new floor as well. Thanks to the skunk we also have to dig up the foundation of the house, add 15 inches of galvanized steel around it (and out, like an L) so the little buggers don't crawl under next winter. Oh, and did I mention Mom's plan to use chicken wire instead of galvanized steel for the front half of the house that the skunk has never approached before? It'll be less expensive, so hopefully we can do that for a good bit. That $600 rebate is all spoken for.

If I listed all of the items that need to be repaired in this house, any reader would blanch. A partial list reads thusly:
1. replace floor in kitchen, bath, pantry
2. raise floor in bathroom and repair the bathtub/shower area so it stops leaking down the wall
3. finish the ceiling in bathroom
4. reinforce the porch which is being held up by crumbling bricks
5. replace porch steps
6. fix upstairs windows to block off the holes my uncle left that you can see through right to the outside

Should we just demolish the house and start all over?

Sleeeeeeeeeppppppyyyyyyy

Grandma fell today. She's a bit confused. She knows she's going to one aunt's house for Christmas, so she keeps getting her shoes on and getting upset with us for not bringing her over, even though we have two weeks yet. She also knows she's going to TAFH's house after Christmas and keeps asking about that. Then there's the fact that Mom was going to take her to the bank today, which didn't happen because of the fall.

Lately, she's had a lot of trouble getting up from the couch and needs a hand up nearly every time. She's calling for Mom or I all night and for the stupidest things, like just wanting to find out where we are. Sunday she called me from the front room because she needed to go to the bathroom and thought she needed help walking there. It's a shorter distance from the couch to the bathroom than it is to the monitor she stood in front of to call me! If I stay downstairs, she tells me to go upstairs but if I go usptairs she thinks I sleep and won't hear her when she calls me. I slept two hours Sunday night and about four last night. I only slept that much because I slept in an hour and was late to work today!

On the other hand, she does really well late at night. Her internal clock is totally gone. She sleeps all day and stays up all night. She's aware and alert at night rather than the daytime.

Argh! Now she's on about my laundry again. Can I help it that we do not have a clothes dryer and I have to put my laundry on the radiators to dry? If I do more than one load of laundry every two weeks I get screamed at. Since it takes me about four loads to do all of my laundry every two weeks, I get in trouble a lot. I'm not even washing clothing right now. Mom's taking a shower, washing the dye out of her hair!

She was teasing us last night. It's almost like dealing with a person with Multiple Personality Disorder. She switches from totally apathetic to cheerful to the Exorcist all in half an hour's span! It's a roller coaster ride trying to keep up with her personalities and demands.

She's really sore right now from the fall and needs a lot of help. Mom has to work early so she'll be going to bed early so I'm going to have to stay up late again. I'm so exhausted.

Am I selfish to just want to sleep for twelve hours and have everyone leave me the bloody hell alone!? Mom intends for us to replace the kitchen floor while Grandma is gone to my aunt's after Christmas. We know she's going for a week, but she thinks it's for two weeks. In a way, I sincerely hope she's right. I could use two weeks vacation. One week is nice, but two weeks would be utterly amazing.

I know it sounds like I don't love her. I do but it's exhausting keeping up with the dementia and her physical limitations. Gods help me if she gets worse...when she gets worse.

NaNoWriMo

Well, I've signed up for NaNoWriMo - National Novel Writing Month. The goal is to write 50,000 words between November 1st and November 3oth. It doesn't particularly matter if the writing is good or not (whew!) as long as you write a large novella of at least 50,000 words. I have been doing something I never do: outlining. Which might be why I never finish a real story, actually. I think this one has a good idea behind it.

You know how everyone says to write what you know, well right now the thing I know best is caregiving, so that will have a major element in my story. For scenes with my heroine's grandmother I probably won't even have to stretch my imagination too much. I can vividly recall arguments and conversations with Grandma now, so I can just recreate some of them. Although, I think my heroine's grandmother might be slightly nicer. After all, noone would believe the truth, would they?

Anyway, I'm at the U right now, polishing up the outline and updating my NaNoWriMo page with title and such (and wasting time blogging). Mom says she's taking Grandma out for a spin today. Oh! I have to call her and tell her to go to the Alpine Inn and get some KinderEggs since she's going towards Honesdale anyway.

She said maybe, maybe not. Now she's not sure she's going at all since Grandma is still sleeping. I swear, the woman needs to get out of the house. Actually, both of them do. I told Mom she should call her friend to go out tonight, but she blew me off since Sinspired and I might possibly go somewhere, even though I told her Sinspired is busy tonight and we're not going anywhere tonight for certain. Jeez, you'd think the woman actually doesn't want a night off.

Oh, I'll probably be using Shadow's Words to update the WriMo, if anyone is interested.

What a Woman Wants! (rant warning)

Someone kindly tell me what I did in a former life to deserve this one. I am getting more and more discontent with this whole babysitting grandma bullshit. Actually, I passed discontent a couple of years ago. It's so hard to maintain a positive outlook on life when the only thing you can be positive of is that you will wake up around 3am, go to work, possibly get a chance to chill at Borders for 45 minutes to an hour, come home and stay in your room waiting for grandma to actually need you. This is your life every Monday through Friday. Every weekend, you get to be the one making her breakfast and lunch and usually dinner, because your mother, her daughter, works most weekends so she can have a day off during the week in which she takes care of grandma. For this round the clock care, you get emotionally and verbally abused by a woman succumbing to dementia and diabetes. Your relatives treat you as if you should be thankful because, don't you know, you're getting a free place to live. Excuse me?! Grandma pays three bills, all directly related to her individual and specific care. She pays for her health insurance, the caregivers that come in when we have to work and her meds. Lately, Mom and I have paid for a lot of those meds and we're going to be taking over all of the taxes this next year.

I have no life. I have few friends. I have no boyfriend. I have no college degree, hence no future doing what I love to do. I feel like any time and money spent on myself is basically theft. I have arranged to take sewing classes. This will cost $75 and will run from 6:30 to 8:30 pm every Wednesday for the next 5 weeks. Mom has to make sure she can be home those nights. I get a small opportunity for self-improvement, but Mom hasn't had any time out for herself lately, so I feel like I'm being selfish in that I'm taking time that she could be using going out. Even though she doesn't.

I'm whining. Oh, woe is me, poor me, my life is so hard. I have a job. I have food (even if a lot of it is poison to me since grandma won't eat GF for us - only TAFH). I have a place to live. I have some spare money for hobbies. I may not have a lot of them, but the friends I do have are worth their weight in gold-pressed latinum. There are people out there who have none of the above and don't whine. So, that makes me selfish for whining in the first place, I guess. You know what? Feck it. I want to be selfish in this. I'm getting the raw end of the deal here. I spend more time with grandma than anyone else in the family and my only reward is abuse. I think I have a right to vent a little.

Here's a list of what I want:
1. Master's Degree in Library Science so I can make something of myself.
2. A boyfriend. Lots of wild monkey sex would be really nice. He should also have a brain that functions well above his shoulders, if I'm not asking too much.
3. Time to myself. Time to do what I want to do. Time in which I am not tied to a baby monitor waiting for my grandmother to call my name. Time in which I do not have to rush home every day and could go downtown and research if I so choose.
4. A relationship with my family that doesn't send them running the other way if I call them because I might be calling them to ask for help with their mother or grandmother.
5. The opportunity to travel and have adventures. There is so much of this world I have not seen, even with the whole army-brat thing. I want to see Africa and Asia. I want to walk the Giant's Causeway in Ireland and bask in the glory of Stonehenge on Solstice. Oh, and I want to fly to these places myself, in my own plane because before I die I will get my pilot's license. Hell, just the chance to hop a bus on Wednesday morning and take in a play in New York or visit my friends in DC would be exotic travel at this point, yearly vacations notwithstanding. Mom and I earn those vacations with every hole we bite in our tongues and every tear we shed silently when we should be trying to get sleep so we don't imitate the walking dead at work the next day.

31st Birthday - two days late, of course

Well, on Monday I turned 31 years old. Usually my birthdays pass with very little fanfare. I get a gift from Mom, a card from Dad and occasionally a friend wishes me happy birthday. I really don't mind that. This year was different. I got a cake with ice cream and the works. Mom made me a GF chocolate cake with butter cream icing and vanilla ice cream. Then my brother actually got me a present. My brother got me a DVD player. He also bought me a DVD to go with it, from Playtime Boutique. He had me open it in the kitchen. It was hilarious. As I was opening it, we both kept looking at Granda to make sure Grandma didn't look our way and saw what he got me! Mom's present is apparently still being made. I figure she has someone making me a frog. Tee-hee :)

I like my brother's girlfriend. She seems nice and her kid is a real cutey, if much less adventurous than my niece and nephew. He's a heavy sucker. Mom and I ended up babysitting him while my brother and his girlfriend went to a movie. I don't know if she and I would be as close as my sil were, but as long as she makes my brother happy, then I will be happy to love her or at least like her. Besides, it's an easy way to get a new nephew.

So the materialistic part of my birthday aside, I guess it's time to look at last year's goals and see what I have accomplished.

Last Year's List:
1. Lose 100 pounds (at least) and get back down to a size 12. (And stay there for the rest of my life!)
2. Go back to college and get my degrees in History and Library Science. Once I get them and get a decent career I can go back for another degree like Anthropology.
3. This isn't really one I want to do, it's more like I have to: Learn how to drive a car so I can get my motorcycle license and a scooter. A motorcycle would be preferable, but a scooter would be sufficient for my purposes.
4. Learn how to speak ASL, German and Latin.
5. Have something published, even if it's just my stitching patterns.
6. Visit Ireland, England, Germany and Egypt (Along with every other country in the world and Antarctica! I'll just list those four as the major goals right now.)
7. Learn how to fly a small plane.
8. Learn sky- and scuba diving.
9. Get a cat and some frogs.
10. I guess I should add the old standard of a long-term boyfriend/husband and adopting kids even though I'm not sure they really are one of my life-long goals.

Well, as of this writing, they all stand - even though I have made progress on the top two. I haven't lost 100 pounds, I've only lost 20. However, I have dropped to almost a size 16. Another few weeks of careful eating should see me there. If I really start exercising, it'll go even faster... My loan rehabilitation program is almost complete, so I should be able to to get another loan from PHEAA for college in the Spring semester. There's a light at the end of both tunnels.

As for the license, well, I made an effort, but I needed to send in the birth certificate for my passport, so it's really not my fault ... although procrastinating so long probably didn't help. I should have my birth certificate before we go on the trip, so maybe I'll go for the written test before we leave. Maybe.

6 is actually going to be exercised on our cruise. I'll be visiting two different countries. Part of 8 (scuba-diving) might be accomplished before the cruise. Mom was talking about us taking scuba lessons before we go. We'll see.

To be brutally honest. I screwed up this last year. I could have made a hell of a lot more progress on 1 and 3. I still can. I need to make another goal, one obtainable to add to those from last year. I just can't think of anything right now. Maybe one of my friends will have an idea as to something I can improve. At the moment, I can only think of becoming more devout in my religion, actually observing all of the holidays with real rituals, rather than just simple ones.

Argh Redux

So much for a good thing. Mrs. Hyde is back. Grandma's been listless lately and now the bitch is back. Between her and Mom I'm ready to murder.

Thank the Gods I got out last night, at least. I saw Spiderman 3. It was better than I thought it would be, but not as good as I hoped.

you are very sleeeeeeepy

I am tired. The keyboard is actually a little blurry if I don't concentrate on it.

So, why am I up? Why not sleep a little, especially since Mom is off work today? Because she and my brother went out and I had to wake up after two and a half hours of sleep to sit downstairs with Grandma. My brother had to go to the VA hospital for a follow-up on his leg and Mom needed to file her passport information and do something else that I can't locate in my muzzy brain right now.

*sigh* Why couldn't they at least have waited two more hours? Four hours of sleep after a hellish week of overnights and various other drama would have been sooooooo nice.

Well, at last the laptop is fixed again. If I worked on cross-stitch, I'd end up frogging everything the minute I could actually open my eyes for real.