Apparently it's a blog. And it still works! I feel like I've wandered onto the bridge of an abandoned ship, listing at a rotting dock, and found that there's still enough power to light up some of the buttons when I poke at them.1 Maybe a begrimed radar screen flickers into life, the blurred green sweep leaving dim trails in the half light. Of course, the ship will never go anywhere again, but it's fun to idly flick switches and sit in the musty captain's chair.
How much farther can I extend the metaphor? This far, no farther. The line must be drawn heah!
And while I was away, the year rolled over, giving us a fresh and shiny 2011 to play in. I expect a lot from this year, mostly because I know some things that you don't, which I'll be telling you about soon, but also because last year was such a...what's the calendrical equivalent of a clunker...a turd...a veritable--yes!--shipwreck of a year. (OK, maybe I'll extend it a little farther.)
To be fair, it wasn't the worst I've had, but it was close. It improved a bit starting in August, with the discovery of a whole group of new and fabulous people that I didn't know I needed in my life. So the year did have that going for it, but for the most part I'm glad that it's over, and I can be thankful for that as I peer ahead towards looming successes and known challenges. One of the things I'm going to try to do is kick some life back into this place, mostly because I'm feeling rusty in the word-smithing department. It's like any other skill. You get creaky and stiff if you're not exercising the typing fingers and the bits of the brain that make them go.
So: this is for me, and will be the written equivalent of watching me do the Stairmaster. It will be dull. But at least I'll be stringing sentences together. One! Two! Three! Huff puff puff. Maybe even on a daily basis.
The first of the aforementioned challenges is fast approaching: maternal shoulder replacement surgery, on Tuesday. Routine for nearly everyone except my mother; her medical history is a page and a quarter, single-spaced, and not one of her numerous other encounters with the scalpel has gone entirely according to plan. Her various chronic maladies almost guarantee a long and difficult postoperative recovery, and the chances of something going terribly wrong are much higher than I'd like. But bone-on-bone is very painful, and she doesn't have much in the way of options. Her choices reduce to the certainty of ongoing, sharp and grinding pain, and the near-uselessness of her arm, or the possible reduction of ongoing, sharp and grinding pain and the not-much-better-than-uselessness of her arm. And then, of course, she'll need the same damn thing on her other shoulder, which is also dissolving into an osteoarthritic mess. All of which is set against the relentless progression of a rare auto-immune disease that has already reduced her quality of life to a barely tolerable level. At 66, she has the mobility and weakness of a not-very-spry 86 year old.
I took her to the hospital this morning for her regularly-scheduled IVIG infusion, which should have happened on Thursday but didn't, due to the hospital being out of women's beds. Apparently they get full to the rafters in the first weeks of the new year, as various financial and regulatory annual limits reset themselves. So instead of having one last weekend at home before her surgery and subsequent six-week stay in rehab, she's in the hospital tonight, home tomorrow afternoon, and then back into the same hospital at five AM sharp on Tuesday. I am much more familiar with the layout of Santa Barbara Cottage Hospital than I want to be...these days, I'm there every three weeks for IVIG, and once or twice a year for the medical crises that occur with distressing regularity.
Now I'm sitting in her recliner--the one that I mounted on 4x4s to make it easier for her to get in and out of--paying some attention to Hellboy while awaiting the delivery of a pizza I probably shouldn't have ordered. Stress eating, most likely, but then again, Marty's does make a fine barbecue chicken pizza. The cats that I'll be feeding and tending to while she's having her shoulder rehabilitated are hiding somewhere, having already spied the packed suitcase, knowing with feline certainty that something in their world is about to go horribly different.
As do I. Well, not horribly different. But different nonetheless, with the undercurrent of fear that always accompanies these medical interventions in my mother's life. The complexities of her various conditions make everything riskier, decrease the good odds, and increase my fears. But: hope for the best, prepare for the worst and all that.
That's what I've written this evening. And look at that! Hellboy II: The Golden Army is on next, and here's my pizza. My evening is thus planned. Off into it I go.
1Which is entirely different from feeling like it's an empty stage. Totally different vibe.
How much farther can I extend the metaphor? This far, no farther. The line must be drawn heah!
And while I was away, the year rolled over, giving us a fresh and shiny 2011 to play in. I expect a lot from this year, mostly because I know some things that you don't, which I'll be telling you about soon, but also because last year was such a...what's the calendrical equivalent of a clunker...a turd...a veritable--yes!--shipwreck of a year. (OK, maybe I'll extend it a little farther.)
To be fair, it wasn't the worst I've had, but it was close. It improved a bit starting in August, with the discovery of a whole group of new and fabulous people that I didn't know I needed in my life. So the year did have that going for it, but for the most part I'm glad that it's over, and I can be thankful for that as I peer ahead towards looming successes and known challenges. One of the things I'm going to try to do is kick some life back into this place, mostly because I'm feeling rusty in the word-smithing department. It's like any other skill. You get creaky and stiff if you're not exercising the typing fingers and the bits of the brain that make them go.
So: this is for me, and will be the written equivalent of watching me do the Stairmaster. It will be dull. But at least I'll be stringing sentences together. One! Two! Three! Huff puff puff. Maybe even on a daily basis.
The first of the aforementioned challenges is fast approaching: maternal shoulder replacement surgery, on Tuesday. Routine for nearly everyone except my mother; her medical history is a page and a quarter, single-spaced, and not one of her numerous other encounters with the scalpel has gone entirely according to plan. Her various chronic maladies almost guarantee a long and difficult postoperative recovery, and the chances of something going terribly wrong are much higher than I'd like. But bone-on-bone is very painful, and she doesn't have much in the way of options. Her choices reduce to the certainty of ongoing, sharp and grinding pain, and the near-uselessness of her arm, or the possible reduction of ongoing, sharp and grinding pain and the not-much-better-than-uselessness of her arm. And then, of course, she'll need the same damn thing on her other shoulder, which is also dissolving into an osteoarthritic mess. All of which is set against the relentless progression of a rare auto-immune disease that has already reduced her quality of life to a barely tolerable level. At 66, she has the mobility and weakness of a not-very-spry 86 year old.
I took her to the hospital this morning for her regularly-scheduled IVIG infusion, which should have happened on Thursday but didn't, due to the hospital being out of women's beds. Apparently they get full to the rafters in the first weeks of the new year, as various financial and regulatory annual limits reset themselves. So instead of having one last weekend at home before her surgery and subsequent six-week stay in rehab, she's in the hospital tonight, home tomorrow afternoon, and then back into the same hospital at five AM sharp on Tuesday. I am much more familiar with the layout of Santa Barbara Cottage Hospital than I want to be...these days, I'm there every three weeks for IVIG, and once or twice a year for the medical crises that occur with distressing regularity.
Now I'm sitting in her recliner--the one that I mounted on 4x4s to make it easier for her to get in and out of--paying some attention to Hellboy while awaiting the delivery of a pizza I probably shouldn't have ordered. Stress eating, most likely, but then again, Marty's does make a fine barbecue chicken pizza. The cats that I'll be feeding and tending to while she's having her shoulder rehabilitated are hiding somewhere, having already spied the packed suitcase, knowing with feline certainty that something in their world is about to go horribly different.
As do I. Well, not horribly different. But different nonetheless, with the undercurrent of fear that always accompanies these medical interventions in my mother's life. The complexities of her various conditions make everything riskier, decrease the good odds, and increase my fears. But: hope for the best, prepare for the worst and all that.
That's what I've written this evening. And look at that! Hellboy II: The Golden Army is on next, and here's my pizza. My evening is thus planned. Off into it I go.
1Which is entirely different from feeling like it's an empty stage. Totally different vibe.
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