The last week in snippets/scenes
Jun. 1st, 2019 08:19 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sereneCN: death of a pet, descriptions of stressful situations, including workplace "team-building"
May 23, 330 a.m.: I'm getting ready to take my mom to get her new heart valve, and my kid calls me, screaming. Like, being actively stabbed to death screams*. Her cat has suddenly dropped dead. So I finally figure this out, throw on some slippers, toss my shoes and socks and gear in the car, get my mom into the car, go to the kid's house, deal with a dead 24-pound cat, gather up my kid, who will not leave my side, and go to the hospital where my kid can't stop crying while they're prepping mom for surgery. My eggs and toast are on my kitchen counter 25 miles away. I spend the next several hours dealing with mom and the kid and testing my blood sugar once in a while to make sure I can continue to not eat while everyone else's trauma becomes mine for a while. The sandwich generation apparently doesn't come with actual sandwiches.
May 23, noonish, to May 25, noonish: The most stressful 48 hours in recent memory, and that's including the dead cat. Mom's surgery went well (HALLELUJAH), but she can't sit up no matter what, and she is uncharacteristically whiny about this. Until it starts being actually excruciatingly painful for her, and then she goes beyond whining to really intense complaining for most of the first 24 hours, until she finally agrees to take opioids (all hail opioids). After the first few hours, my brother comes for a couple hours so I can take the kid home because she's uncomfortable in the hospital chairs; I can't convince her she is not somehow to blame for the cat dying. I get back and spend the next two days in a recliner in the ICU. Mom was supposed to get out of the ICU after just a few hours, but she ends up spending 2 days there because they can't get her blood pressure to stay up. Thing is, we both have naturally very low blood pressure, so they finally believe her that it's normal for her to have 90/50 when she's doing fine, and they finally release her from ICU directly home. (HALLELUJAH redux)
May 26th I spent mostly just staring into space and running a couple errands for mom.
May 27th, 8 a.m.: I walk into work for the first 10-hour day of the summer (we work 4 tens all summer) and find several co-workers are out. I work so hard that I forget to eat. My blood sugar crashes around an hour after my usual lunch and I force myself to abandon my post and go get some food.
May 29th, 7:30 a.m. Fall up the stairs at Balboa Park while rushing to a work "retreat." Bruise my knee and yank some other stuff that will hurt on and off for a few days.
May 29th, 7:30 a.m. to 6 p.m.: Mandatory work "retreat"/professional development day in Balboa Park. Many, many exercises that require me to interact with 300 strangers (most of my 330 co-workers were there; I know maybe 30 of them). We were required to get up and switch places regularly. We were required to ask our colleagues stupid questions about themselves. We were required to indulge the speaker's desire to prank us with brain games. We were required to draw stick figures of ourselves helping people while the paperwork we needed to do to help actual people languished on our desks, undone. We were required to go on a two-hour Amazing-Race-style treasure hunt (I couldn't go; they didn't really have many ideas for disabled folks beyond Hey, head to that museum or botanical garden instead!, which was fine with me, but I was pretty ouchy by that point, so it took me almost 20 minutes to walk there in fits and starts, and it was only 2 buildings away.) Anyway, not a fan, but they did serve me the best vegan meal I've had in a long time: ravioli with coconut curry sauce, salad with cilantro-lime vinaigrette, and the best cookies of any kind I've had in a while.
May 30th: payday, yay, and we got a retroactive cost-of-living increase, so I was able to pay off the credit card I used to go on auto-pilot spending while we were in the hospital. Also, in good news, a student who's been a challenge for me since the day I got to this job almost 5 years ago got accepted to SDSU! Now, she of course came to me the day before her transcripts were due to them and it was some huge surprise to her that I could only help her with our school's transcripts, not her other three schools, but I whipped out my debit card, paid $5 each to three other schools online, and ordered her other transcripts, but there's still a possibility she will be rejected by SDSU because she didn't order them in time. If that happens, it is bound to be my fault. I'm ready for that conversation, she said ironically.
May 31st: I drive mom and uncle to play cards at the senior center and James and I go on a date to our fave Italian restaurant, and [redacted] and just hang out and eat and laugh and take some time. It's so so awesome.
May 31st: I find out mom's been trying to escape into her car but James has been catching her every time and they have a running joke about it now, but she promises to at least wait until her appointment on the 6th before flying the coop.
Today, we're taking mom and my uncle to the yard sales. Mom still can't drive. It should be stressful but fine.
* Spoiler space CN: morbid humor about violent crime
Actually, I got stabbed almost to death once, and I didn't scream that loudly or that long.
May 23, 330 a.m.: I'm getting ready to take my mom to get her new heart valve, and my kid calls me, screaming. Like, being actively stabbed to death screams*. Her cat has suddenly dropped dead. So I finally figure this out, throw on some slippers, toss my shoes and socks and gear in the car, get my mom into the car, go to the kid's house, deal with a dead 24-pound cat, gather up my kid, who will not leave my side, and go to the hospital where my kid can't stop crying while they're prepping mom for surgery. My eggs and toast are on my kitchen counter 25 miles away. I spend the next several hours dealing with mom and the kid and testing my blood sugar once in a while to make sure I can continue to not eat while everyone else's trauma becomes mine for a while. The sandwich generation apparently doesn't come with actual sandwiches.
May 23, noonish, to May 25, noonish: The most stressful 48 hours in recent memory, and that's including the dead cat. Mom's surgery went well (HALLELUJAH), but she can't sit up no matter what, and she is uncharacteristically whiny about this. Until it starts being actually excruciatingly painful for her, and then she goes beyond whining to really intense complaining for most of the first 24 hours, until she finally agrees to take opioids (all hail opioids). After the first few hours, my brother comes for a couple hours so I can take the kid home because she's uncomfortable in the hospital chairs; I can't convince her she is not somehow to blame for the cat dying. I get back and spend the next two days in a recliner in the ICU. Mom was supposed to get out of the ICU after just a few hours, but she ends up spending 2 days there because they can't get her blood pressure to stay up. Thing is, we both have naturally very low blood pressure, so they finally believe her that it's normal for her to have 90/50 when she's doing fine, and they finally release her from ICU directly home. (HALLELUJAH redux)
May 26th I spent mostly just staring into space and running a couple errands for mom.
May 27th, 8 a.m.: I walk into work for the first 10-hour day of the summer (we work 4 tens all summer) and find several co-workers are out. I work so hard that I forget to eat. My blood sugar crashes around an hour after my usual lunch and I force myself to abandon my post and go get some food.
May 29th, 7:30 a.m. Fall up the stairs at Balboa Park while rushing to a work "retreat." Bruise my knee and yank some other stuff that will hurt on and off for a few days.
May 29th, 7:30 a.m. to 6 p.m.: Mandatory work "retreat"/professional development day in Balboa Park. Many, many exercises that require me to interact with 300 strangers (most of my 330 co-workers were there; I know maybe 30 of them). We were required to get up and switch places regularly. We were required to ask our colleagues stupid questions about themselves. We were required to indulge the speaker's desire to prank us with brain games. We were required to draw stick figures of ourselves helping people while the paperwork we needed to do to help actual people languished on our desks, undone. We were required to go on a two-hour Amazing-Race-style treasure hunt (I couldn't go; they didn't really have many ideas for disabled folks beyond Hey, head to that museum or botanical garden instead!, which was fine with me, but I was pretty ouchy by that point, so it took me almost 20 minutes to walk there in fits and starts, and it was only 2 buildings away.) Anyway, not a fan, but they did serve me the best vegan meal I've had in a long time: ravioli with coconut curry sauce, salad with cilantro-lime vinaigrette, and the best cookies of any kind I've had in a while.
May 30th: payday, yay, and we got a retroactive cost-of-living increase, so I was able to pay off the credit card I used to go on auto-pilot spending while we were in the hospital. Also, in good news, a student who's been a challenge for me since the day I got to this job almost 5 years ago got accepted to SDSU! Now, she of course came to me the day before her transcripts were due to them and it was some huge surprise to her that I could only help her with our school's transcripts, not her other three schools, but I whipped out my debit card, paid $5 each to three other schools online, and ordered her other transcripts, but there's still a possibility she will be rejected by SDSU because she didn't order them in time. If that happens, it is bound to be my fault. I'm ready for that conversation, she said ironically.
May 31st: I drive mom and uncle to play cards at the senior center and James and I go on a date to our fave Italian restaurant, and [redacted] and just hang out and eat and laugh and take some time. It's so so awesome.
May 31st: I find out mom's been trying to escape into her car but James has been catching her every time and they have a running joke about it now, but she promises to at least wait until her appointment on the 6th before flying the coop.
Today, we're taking mom and my uncle to the yard sales. Mom still can't drive. It should be stressful but fine.
* Spoiler space CN: morbid humor about violent crime
Actually, I got stabbed almost to death once, and I didn't scream that loudly or that long.
no subject
Date: 2019-06-01 03:42 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-06-01 04:10 pm (UTC)I'm glad your mom's doing sort of OK. (And sympathies on the cat and the kid's reaction.)
I kind of like retreats like that, but not with a just-fucked-up knee, and not with 330(!) people. Oy.
no subject
Date: 2019-06-01 05:19 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-06-01 11:48 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-06-02 01:05 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-06-02 01:29 pm (UTC)I hope you get some time and space for yourself soon. <3
no subject
Date: 2019-06-02 04:44 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-06-02 10:20 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-06-03 08:09 pm (UTC)