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Today is the last day of the year, and I've been reviewing the entries in my journal. It takes time to go back all the way to January, even though most days I didn't post. In fact, I found several posts where I wrote that something happened... and never came back to tell what or write the details.
So, for those of you who missed the rest of the year, including me, here's some details:
Christmas Day: My mother and I get up in the morning. I am dressed and fixing a broken light string. She is getting ready to make breakfast. She gets the ham out from last night and starts to cut pieces for breakfast. She puts a bite in her mouth.
The first thing I know, she is leaning over the sink coughing and throwing up. I ask her, she says the bite of ham went down the wrong way. I try to help her, even trying the Heimlich maneuver, although I know it's not going to work. After about 20 minutes, I say, ok, let's go to the Emergency Room.
By the time we're there, she's pretty freaked. She can sort of breathe, but she can't swallow at all. I say, "Your throat is probably spasming and they'll give you a drug to relax your throat and then, if it doesn't move, they'll look down your throat and pull it out."
The nurse comes in and takes her vitals and tells her about the same thing. We're reassured. The drug doesn't help though, so we move to an examining room with equipment and all and wait for a doctor to come take the ham out.
An hour later, they call me back to the room. It hasn't worked and they're all a little surprised. The piece of ham, which they thought was in her esophagus, is actually right at the top of the esophagus, where the trachea branches off. They couldn't move it without fear of dislodging it into the trachea and compromising the airway.
So they've got her on more drugs and they're now calling a specialist in ENT and an operating team and an anesthesiologist. They've moved her to a third room where they hook her up to an EKG and ask her three or four times (and me once) about her history. We try to piece the story together, mostly for the anesthesiologist, who wants to make sure he doesn't accidentally stop her heart or destroy her liver.
My mom is less coherent and more emotional. She apologizes a lot. She asks the poor harried nurse the same questions over and over, and says, 'I can't swallow.' (Yes, ma'am, we've been working on that problem for 3 hours now.) By the time the specialist gets there, Dr. Link, she looks 20 years older, her hair is disheveled and looks more gray than I've seen it. Her face is slack and she looks so weak I almost cry looking at her.
Dr. Link has me sign paperwork about what the procedure is he's going to do. A release/consent form, and I have to sign it because of the medication that she's on, she's not considered legally able. I'm okay with it except for two things: 1) There's a risk of perforation of the esophagus, which could result in a fatal infection. I was easier about the choking. and 2) Dr. Link's prognosis is listed as 'guarded.' In other words, he can't be sure what he's going to find or how it will come out.
I have to sign a piece of paper saying my mom might die from this, and I said it was okay.
As soon as they tell me I can't stay with my mom any longer, I write down my phone number and my sister's for the nurse and leave. I go to my house, pick out some things, eat some leftovers (it's 3 p.m. by now) and go to Jennifer's house. I was going to give Jennifer my mother's clothes, but by the time I get there, she, glad of an excuse, has already left for the hospital (to do what?). I play with my niece for a bit, then sit down in the basement with a heating pad in my lap and take a nap.
When I wake up, mom's out of surgery and she's okay and Mike takes her stuff to her. We go home. My mom has aftercare instructions. She doesn't look like that anymore. She seems back to normal, but a little hoarse. I'm glad she's ok, but I'm worried that she doesn't seem to know how bad it was. She's worried about the cost of emergency surgery more than herself. It makes me feel sad and tired, because I'd like to not feel responsible for this. I can't do much about it.
What we got for Christmas: My mother did get me the digital camera I wanted for Christmas. She probably paid too much for it, but my mom does a lot more QVC shopping than research. Eternal infomercials. Otherwise, I am glad that she slacked off on Christmas spending this year. A nice red leather jacket and a set of bedsheets and a down blanket in a heathery blue/gray are the best things, along with the usual clothes and earrings.
I am pretty ok with my makeshift gifts. I give Jennifer a shirt I bought in California that she liked and my Sarah McLaughlin CD. I give the children stuffed monkeys and toys from the dollar store. Janel gave me a cape for Rebekah and a leather CD wallet for Jennifer. Mom puts my name on a couple of gifts she's bought. I choose to give Michael "Pirates of the Caribbean" on DVD. I can't believe how long ago it was that the movie came out.
Jennifer gets the coup, though. She is working at a gift store (and may buy it) in town and so she has made mom's present there. She collected some photos and letters from when mom and dad were dating (my dad has been dead for over 12 years now) and made copies of them and arranged a loose collage on a tray table, the kind that you set up in front of a chair on a little frame or sit on your lap. She covered them with some kind of polyeurethane finish I think. I'd never even seen these pictures or letters. I had never seen my parents at that age. And the snippets of my dad's writing reminded me of my own lover, and that felt weird.
But aside from that, it was beautiful, the words were touching, and everyone cried.
The Christmas Newsletter for 2003: Dear Friends,
In our last year, we went from being in the sick relationship with the crush from high school who was now married to someone else, and ended with the attempt to move to California which was aborted by strange interpersonal problems, resulting in making the cat really sick and my return to the job at Milano Pizza.
This year opens with me living with my ex-husband and sleeping with several people, who haven't been named before, so I see no reason to go into it now. I owe my ex money due to the sick cat, and I'm trying to file bankruptcy. I'm also, for reasons that seem distant now, trying to start an online arts and style magazine.
Slowly, I'm getting the bills paid, then, at the end of January (about the same time my ex and I separated and my grandfather died three years earlier -- should I take a hint?) a small ice storm shows up, and I, driving very slowly and carefully and far away from everything, hit a patch of ice and the one car that's parked on the road. My car is totaled. My insurance company threatens to cancel me if anything else happens.
My mother, sweet person that she is, buys me a new car. $6100. I'm supposed to pay her $200 /month for it over 3 years. This never happens. Just understand that now.
In March, though, things start to look up. I go to the first hearing for the bankruptcy, and it appears everything is going to straighten itself out. My dating life takes a sudden turn for the stable when I meet Puck (lj user="pucketrn"). A few weeks later I get a job with a courier company that promises to make money ($500-$700/week) and things seem like they will be going well for a while. How wrong I was.
It starts with the alternator. A few weeks into the courier job, my car quits on me in the middle of deliveries. My mother wires in $300 for a new alternator.
A few weeks after that, I take my car in for new brake pads. They charge me $200 and tell me that the car needs new calipers. I say, cars never need new calipers. I cry because I can't afford it. The guy says come back later and we'll fix them.
Over the next several weeks, the car's tires go out one by one. The car (a 1998 Malibu) earns the name "Miss Tenderfoots." It costs $300 and change to replace the tires. A couple of weeks after that, the brakes start making a horrible noise. I take the car into a different brake shop, and they tell me that the brake shoes have completely worn down in the past two months, the rotors and the calipers need replacing. This is all on the front wheels. Nothing wrong with the back brakes. The repairs cost $500.
A couple of months later, when the brake pads are completely worn down again, the shop says its the brake fluid lines getting pinched off when the brakes get too hot. They replace the hoses, only $100 and change, and replace the brake parts they put on before.
Then the car gets broken into: $200 for the new window. Then the head gasket goes out: $750. They finally find what's wrong with the brakes: the rear ones aren't gripping at all. That explains something about the many dings and misjudgments in stopping distance. That only costs me $100 for new front shoes for the fourth time. They also find out what caused the head gasket to blow: a bad water pump. Another $100.
So, now we've gotten from May to November. By this time, I'm thinking about moving to New Orleans, but thinking it will be sometime in February, and I'm visiting a friend and making plans and the car stops dead. This time, I'm sure it's a sign.
The car has been in the shop ever since, unrepaired. The mechanic says the cam shaft is broke and it's a $1,000 repair job. I want to give up and sell the car to salvage. My mother wants to 'get something back out of it,' since (counting the $1,000 for the cam shaft) she's put in the price of the car plus about $3,000 in repairs.
So, on the 31st of December, I have no car, but I owe my mother $9,000 for a car that's essentially worthless to me, because I won't need it where I'm going.
Meanwhile, the job that was supposed to earn $500-$700 a week never got over $480 a week and was much less at other times. I could only make $480 a week by working 50+ hours and if I had to do something else, like go to Dragon*Con, the money dropped precipitously. So, in 7 months, I earned about $11,000, spending approximately 1/4 of it on the car's gas and repairs and losing about $400/month in debt to my mother for additional repairs.
Oh yeah, did I mention that a truck ran into me, and there's a big gouge in the side because I didn't dare file a claim and have my insurance cancelled? If my mom sees that, she will keel over with a stroke, right there. People in the business have estimated repair costs between $1,500 and $2,500.
And of course, when the car breaks down, I can't work. So I've been out of work for four weeks, and any money has been given to me by my mother or my friends.
So, one year later, I'm still in debt, but now I'm bankrupt, and I have no credit cards at all. I no longer have a job of any kind and I've continued to lose money all year. My car is not my car, it is an albatross.
My cat is ok, though.
There is, however, some good news: At Dragon*Con, I went up to him and said, "Can I buy you a drink? I've been meaning to sit down and talk to you for quite some time now." True, I hadn't seen him in two years, but I'd meant to, the entire time. As it turned out, my timing couldn't have been better.
Also as it turned out, I wasn't allowed to buy any of the drinks, or my dinner. He and his friend did that. We circulated around and he begged off dinner with his friends. It didn't even occur to me that he wanted to stay and talk to me; I felt sorry for taking him away from a nice dinner. We finally broke up the discussion around 12:30 or 1 a.m. when I said I had to go home so I could get to work at 7:30 in the morning.
We sent emails back and forth, mostly forth; he put in about one word for every 10 of mine. I thought he wasn't all that interested in me, and I decided not to try to wedge into his life too much. But I had that feeling, when I talked to him, the way I had with the best friends of my life.
In October, at the height of the job crisis (compounded by working at the haunted house on weekends), I called him and asked if I could come visit. He was surprised, mostly because I was going to do it on the spur of the moment, and because I was going back the same evening. But he handled it with cool, unruffled my feathers, and made me feel quite comfortable and at home. Even during that first visit, someone asked if we were moving in together. I said no, but admitted to thinking about moving to the city.
We had a planned visit a few weeks later, with a hotel room, dinner reservations, shopping and general hanging out in the French Quarter. It became apparent at that time that this was rapidly becoming a relationship. We were obviously in full courtship mode, although neither of us was quite sure how we got there, I think. Or maybe it was just me. I'd never had a man who said so little about love and romance take so much effort. He dressed, not to impress me, but to match my mood and make me comfortable. He never let me pay for anything, and he listened. I was amazed at how easy it was to trust him.
We started planning for me to move, and when the car broke down at the end of November, I got a train ticket to see him and we started looking for job situations. Romance would have been in full blossom, except it was December, and I was sick. So, instead, we cultivated roots, talking late into the night and finding out about each other.
And today, although the transportation is practically non-existent and the job situation is soft, he said, come on anyway, we'll work something out.
And he loves me.
Happy new year.
So, for those of you who missed the rest of the year, including me, here's some details:
Christmas Day: My mother and I get up in the morning. I am dressed and fixing a broken light string. She is getting ready to make breakfast. She gets the ham out from last night and starts to cut pieces for breakfast. She puts a bite in her mouth.
The first thing I know, she is leaning over the sink coughing and throwing up. I ask her, she says the bite of ham went down the wrong way. I try to help her, even trying the Heimlich maneuver, although I know it's not going to work. After about 20 minutes, I say, ok, let's go to the Emergency Room.
By the time we're there, she's pretty freaked. She can sort of breathe, but she can't swallow at all. I say, "Your throat is probably spasming and they'll give you a drug to relax your throat and then, if it doesn't move, they'll look down your throat and pull it out."
The nurse comes in and takes her vitals and tells her about the same thing. We're reassured. The drug doesn't help though, so we move to an examining room with equipment and all and wait for a doctor to come take the ham out.
An hour later, they call me back to the room. It hasn't worked and they're all a little surprised. The piece of ham, which they thought was in her esophagus, is actually right at the top of the esophagus, where the trachea branches off. They couldn't move it without fear of dislodging it into the trachea and compromising the airway.
So they've got her on more drugs and they're now calling a specialist in ENT and an operating team and an anesthesiologist. They've moved her to a third room where they hook her up to an EKG and ask her three or four times (and me once) about her history. We try to piece the story together, mostly for the anesthesiologist, who wants to make sure he doesn't accidentally stop her heart or destroy her liver.
My mom is less coherent and more emotional. She apologizes a lot. She asks the poor harried nurse the same questions over and over, and says, 'I can't swallow.' (Yes, ma'am, we've been working on that problem for 3 hours now.) By the time the specialist gets there, Dr. Link, she looks 20 years older, her hair is disheveled and looks more gray than I've seen it. Her face is slack and she looks so weak I almost cry looking at her.
Dr. Link has me sign paperwork about what the procedure is he's going to do. A release/consent form, and I have to sign it because of the medication that she's on, she's not considered legally able. I'm okay with it except for two things: 1) There's a risk of perforation of the esophagus, which could result in a fatal infection. I was easier about the choking. and 2) Dr. Link's prognosis is listed as 'guarded.' In other words, he can't be sure what he's going to find or how it will come out.
I have to sign a piece of paper saying my mom might die from this, and I said it was okay.
As soon as they tell me I can't stay with my mom any longer, I write down my phone number and my sister's for the nurse and leave. I go to my house, pick out some things, eat some leftovers (it's 3 p.m. by now) and go to Jennifer's house. I was going to give Jennifer my mother's clothes, but by the time I get there, she, glad of an excuse, has already left for the hospital (to do what?). I play with my niece for a bit, then sit down in the basement with a heating pad in my lap and take a nap.
When I wake up, mom's out of surgery and she's okay and Mike takes her stuff to her. We go home. My mom has aftercare instructions. She doesn't look like that anymore. She seems back to normal, but a little hoarse. I'm glad she's ok, but I'm worried that she doesn't seem to know how bad it was. She's worried about the cost of emergency surgery more than herself. It makes me feel sad and tired, because I'd like to not feel responsible for this. I can't do much about it.
What we got for Christmas: My mother did get me the digital camera I wanted for Christmas. She probably paid too much for it, but my mom does a lot more QVC shopping than research. Eternal infomercials. Otherwise, I am glad that she slacked off on Christmas spending this year. A nice red leather jacket and a set of bedsheets and a down blanket in a heathery blue/gray are the best things, along with the usual clothes and earrings.
I am pretty ok with my makeshift gifts. I give Jennifer a shirt I bought in California that she liked and my Sarah McLaughlin CD. I give the children stuffed monkeys and toys from the dollar store. Janel gave me a cape for Rebekah and a leather CD wallet for Jennifer. Mom puts my name on a couple of gifts she's bought. I choose to give Michael "Pirates of the Caribbean" on DVD. I can't believe how long ago it was that the movie came out.
Jennifer gets the coup, though. She is working at a gift store (and may buy it) in town and so she has made mom's present there. She collected some photos and letters from when mom and dad were dating (my dad has been dead for over 12 years now) and made copies of them and arranged a loose collage on a tray table, the kind that you set up in front of a chair on a little frame or sit on your lap. She covered them with some kind of polyeurethane finish I think. I'd never even seen these pictures or letters. I had never seen my parents at that age. And the snippets of my dad's writing reminded me of my own lover, and that felt weird.
But aside from that, it was beautiful, the words were touching, and everyone cried.
The Christmas Newsletter for 2003: Dear Friends,
In our last year, we went from being in the sick relationship with the crush from high school who was now married to someone else, and ended with the attempt to move to California which was aborted by strange interpersonal problems, resulting in making the cat really sick and my return to the job at Milano Pizza.
This year opens with me living with my ex-husband and sleeping with several people, who haven't been named before, so I see no reason to go into it now. I owe my ex money due to the sick cat, and I'm trying to file bankruptcy. I'm also, for reasons that seem distant now, trying to start an online arts and style magazine.
Slowly, I'm getting the bills paid, then, at the end of January (about the same time my ex and I separated and my grandfather died three years earlier -- should I take a hint?) a small ice storm shows up, and I, driving very slowly and carefully and far away from everything, hit a patch of ice and the one car that's parked on the road. My car is totaled. My insurance company threatens to cancel me if anything else happens.
My mother, sweet person that she is, buys me a new car. $6100. I'm supposed to pay her $200 /month for it over 3 years. This never happens. Just understand that now.
In March, though, things start to look up. I go to the first hearing for the bankruptcy, and it appears everything is going to straighten itself out. My dating life takes a sudden turn for the stable when I meet Puck (lj user="pucketrn"). A few weeks later I get a job with a courier company that promises to make money ($500-$700/week) and things seem like they will be going well for a while. How wrong I was.
It starts with the alternator. A few weeks into the courier job, my car quits on me in the middle of deliveries. My mother wires in $300 for a new alternator.
A few weeks after that, I take my car in for new brake pads. They charge me $200 and tell me that the car needs new calipers. I say, cars never need new calipers. I cry because I can't afford it. The guy says come back later and we'll fix them.
Over the next several weeks, the car's tires go out one by one. The car (a 1998 Malibu) earns the name "Miss Tenderfoots." It costs $300 and change to replace the tires. A couple of weeks after that, the brakes start making a horrible noise. I take the car into a different brake shop, and they tell me that the brake shoes have completely worn down in the past two months, the rotors and the calipers need replacing. This is all on the front wheels. Nothing wrong with the back brakes. The repairs cost $500.
A couple of months later, when the brake pads are completely worn down again, the shop says its the brake fluid lines getting pinched off when the brakes get too hot. They replace the hoses, only $100 and change, and replace the brake parts they put on before.
Then the car gets broken into: $200 for the new window. Then the head gasket goes out: $750. They finally find what's wrong with the brakes: the rear ones aren't gripping at all. That explains something about the many dings and misjudgments in stopping distance. That only costs me $100 for new front shoes for the fourth time. They also find out what caused the head gasket to blow: a bad water pump. Another $100.
So, now we've gotten from May to November. By this time, I'm thinking about moving to New Orleans, but thinking it will be sometime in February, and I'm visiting a friend and making plans and the car stops dead. This time, I'm sure it's a sign.
The car has been in the shop ever since, unrepaired. The mechanic says the cam shaft is broke and it's a $1,000 repair job. I want to give up and sell the car to salvage. My mother wants to 'get something back out of it,' since (counting the $1,000 for the cam shaft) she's put in the price of the car plus about $3,000 in repairs.
So, on the 31st of December, I have no car, but I owe my mother $9,000 for a car that's essentially worthless to me, because I won't need it where I'm going.
Meanwhile, the job that was supposed to earn $500-$700 a week never got over $480 a week and was much less at other times. I could only make $480 a week by working 50+ hours and if I had to do something else, like go to Dragon*Con, the money dropped precipitously. So, in 7 months, I earned about $11,000, spending approximately 1/4 of it on the car's gas and repairs and losing about $400/month in debt to my mother for additional repairs.
Oh yeah, did I mention that a truck ran into me, and there's a big gouge in the side because I didn't dare file a claim and have my insurance cancelled? If my mom sees that, she will keel over with a stroke, right there. People in the business have estimated repair costs between $1,500 and $2,500.
And of course, when the car breaks down, I can't work. So I've been out of work for four weeks, and any money has been given to me by my mother or my friends.
So, one year later, I'm still in debt, but now I'm bankrupt, and I have no credit cards at all. I no longer have a job of any kind and I've continued to lose money all year. My car is not my car, it is an albatross.
My cat is ok, though.
There is, however, some good news: At Dragon*Con, I went up to him and said, "Can I buy you a drink? I've been meaning to sit down and talk to you for quite some time now." True, I hadn't seen him in two years, but I'd meant to, the entire time. As it turned out, my timing couldn't have been better.
Also as it turned out, I wasn't allowed to buy any of the drinks, or my dinner. He and his friend did that. We circulated around and he begged off dinner with his friends. It didn't even occur to me that he wanted to stay and talk to me; I felt sorry for taking him away from a nice dinner. We finally broke up the discussion around 12:30 or 1 a.m. when I said I had to go home so I could get to work at 7:30 in the morning.
We sent emails back and forth, mostly forth; he put in about one word for every 10 of mine. I thought he wasn't all that interested in me, and I decided not to try to wedge into his life too much. But I had that feeling, when I talked to him, the way I had with the best friends of my life.
In October, at the height of the job crisis (compounded by working at the haunted house on weekends), I called him and asked if I could come visit. He was surprised, mostly because I was going to do it on the spur of the moment, and because I was going back the same evening. But he handled it with cool, unruffled my feathers, and made me feel quite comfortable and at home. Even during that first visit, someone asked if we were moving in together. I said no, but admitted to thinking about moving to the city.
We had a planned visit a few weeks later, with a hotel room, dinner reservations, shopping and general hanging out in the French Quarter. It became apparent at that time that this was rapidly becoming a relationship. We were obviously in full courtship mode, although neither of us was quite sure how we got there, I think. Or maybe it was just me. I'd never had a man who said so little about love and romance take so much effort. He dressed, not to impress me, but to match my mood and make me comfortable. He never let me pay for anything, and he listened. I was amazed at how easy it was to trust him.
We started planning for me to move, and when the car broke down at the end of November, I got a train ticket to see him and we started looking for job situations. Romance would have been in full blossom, except it was December, and I was sick. So, instead, we cultivated roots, talking late into the night and finding out about each other.
And today, although the transportation is practically non-existent and the job situation is soft, he said, come on anyway, we'll work something out.
And he loves me.
Happy new year.
