Reason for a week's worth of darkness

I haven't posted in a while because it's been a hellish, stressful and hectic week, but not just because of Christmas...

My father had a "mild" stroke a week ago Friday, but he's been home since Christmas Eve and is doing quite well. At this point he has some residual tingling and numbness in his left hand, shoulder and leg, and as i understand it, that's an amazing miracle. The PT (Froy) has been to see him twice, the OT (Diane) has been once, and what's her name the social worker was here once as well, and all seem encouraged by his progress and especially his upbeat attitude. But I'm not gonna lie and say it hasn't been hell on me and my mom, because it really has.


First off, he's stuck sleeping on the downstairs sofa bed because he's not supposed to climb stairs yet. The staircase is quite long, and because of his unsteadiness, he's using a walker. So Froy says he can't do it until he comes back to show him how on tuesday. The original plan was last thursday, but my dad's BP reading was higher than Froy anticipated, so he said they'd wait till next week. Which meant my dad would be stuck downstairs for several more days without access to shower or tub (they're all upstairs). Also, it's been difficult to relax and assume he's OK down there by himself. What if he needed something and no one could hear him?

I've decided that we can help him get up the stairs so he can have a shower this morning, but that won't be for another 30 minutes at least. He's an early riser by nature and by habit, so he's probably been awake since 6, but he's having to wait on us to get up and help him up the stairs. My mom's exhausted because she's been leaving her bedroom door open so she can hear him. Trouble is, she hears him getting up a couple of times each night to go to the bathroom, which means her sleep is interrupted a lot. So she's not quite ready to help me get him up there, and she'll have to stand next to the shower to make sure he keeps his balance OK.

We'll see how this goes, but so far, it's been the consummate never-ending nightmare.

Wait, Christmas is only 4 days away?

When I was a kid, Christmas could never come soon enough. I was already compiling my Santa list by Halloween, and of course I used the big Toys-R-Us catalog as my main point of reference for that heady list.

Now, it seems like Christmas pretty much comes right after Father's Day. Much of what's happened since June (or March for that matter) is a blur to me, and now I'm supposed to create this festive Christmas food for my family of parents, siblings, nieces and nephews, great-niece and great-nephew and my mom's inevitable band of hangers-on. I can't find my old menus on my Dell laptop, and I have no idea what I'm doing.

So that's my ounce of Christmas cheer for now. I would really just like to get ahold of a great bottle of rose Champagne and be done with it all, but that's not likely.

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Bird's lament

I loooooove this song, so I spent a bunch of time (not doing my work) to find it. Check it out:

http://alas.vox.com/library/audio/6a00ccff924ca7d75600ccff94628ed756.html

Nice! Moratorium on lethal injection in California!!

All I can say is, it's about bloody time. That Jeb Bush dummy has finally done the right thing by stopping all executions in Florida, but only after the man they killed in Florida last night took 34 minutes to die because they completely screwed up the injection. Can you imaging lying there strapped to that table and just wanting the thing to be over and they're torturing you first? Ugh.

Who knew that a Bush, or any relative of those political Bushes, could have a brain?

Going far a-field: blogging for clients

So my weekly never-ending nightmare: writing a corporate blog. This thing has really become a burden that I can't get away from, and there's no relief in sight. Suck it up or quit the job, I guess, but since I can't quite stomach the idea of living on the streets, I'll just keep sucking. So to speak.

It's a horrible thing to realize you don't know what you're supposed to know, and that you have no way to know as much as you need to know so that you seem to be in the know. You know?

That kind of circular reference is what I face each time I am charged with writing a new entry for that blog. Someone sort of "gives" me a topic that's high-tech and esoteric, Worse, there'll be lots of people editing my draft and otherwise putting their two cents in before I can post the thing. So lame! Where are these people when I'm struggling to sound like I have even a passing idea about, say, the pros and cons of Agent vs. agent-less technology or how to ensure end point security the first place?

These terms get thrown around as if I'm aware of import of what's being talked about, and then I sit there for some 4-6 hours trying to read my illegible scrawl of notes that are only half-way there. It doesn't help that I have ADD. I should really get that fixed sometime soon.

Well, more later...

R.I.P. Uncle Robert 12/13/2006

My Uncle Robert died this morning, before my dad had a chance to see him and say goodbye. He and my mom were booked on a 1 p.m. flight to Casper via Denver today, and now for obvious reasons, they're going to wait until the funeral to go out there. I'm glad at least that my dad won't be traveling now, with all the weather-related delays and the difficulty of getting from SF to Casper. He's still refusing to do physical therapy, so his hips and knees are pretty stiff and it's uncomfortable for him to sit, stand or walk for long periods.

Of course, cheaptickets.com and United are both giving them a hard time about the postponement. What asses these companies can be, and how annoying that they seem to live to profit off of the hardships and changed plans of others, but that's not news. What is news is that of my dad's 5 siblings, only 2 are left alive. Aunt Helen is in Casper and Aunt Effie is in Lander, if I remember correctly, and both are several years older than my dad. He may well end up the last one standing, which is good and bad. Helen's on the downswing, and Effie's just moved into "assisted living". Why on earth do they call it that? Sounds like being in some kind of coma, which Effie's definitely not. Anyhoo, guess I'll have to see what happens next...back to doing PR.

Bad-news week, part II

My Uncle Robert--my dad's little brother--was diagnosed with advanced liver cancer yesterday, and he has something like a month to live. He's a great guy, really kind and fun, but he never did get my sense of humor. I wish that had been his only failing, but he has this kind of cow of a wife who's not a very nice person. She's not evil, but let's face it, she's pretty close. Strangely enough, she also happens to be my mom's former step-sister (don't ask). What can I say--they're all from Wyoming, and I guess there weren't that many other black people around back then for my family to marry or whatever. Not that there are now, of course. But I didn't realize that at the time.

OK, time to veer off. My parents escaped Wyoming before I was born in Denver (thank God), and I grew up in the Bay Area. But they dragged us back to Wyoming and Colorado every summer. So since I was always around family whenever we visited Wyoming, I thought there were lots and lots of black people there. Not my fault, you see, I was tricked.

Back to my uncle...no news is good news. Pap has no definite news about his brother at this point, but he'll probably go back to Casper next week. I hate to think of it, because he had major surgery in August and he's not as resilient as he used to be. Refuses physical therapy, would rather gimp along and not complain about anything. He's a far cry from the Twain character I nicknamed him after--that good-for-nothing cracker Pap Finn from Huck Finn. It's ironical, you see.

So Uncle Robert has been married to this Anna chick forever, and she's a nagging wench who used to scare me when I was little. She reminded me of Aunt Esther from Sanford & Son, but she looked like that without twisting up her face on purpose. He's lived his entire adult life with this woman, who seems to have kneaded the joy right out of him. And now that he's at the end of his life, I wonder if he even considers that he might have made a bad choice in marrying the person he did. Sure, he has two great kids--I love my cousins to death--but you can't live your life entirely through your kids, and he didn't seem to. So where is his reward for putting up with near-evil his whole life? That's right--dying a painful death. I don't get God right now.

Bad-news week, part I

Guess if I start off at a low point with this thing, there'll be nowhere to go but up. But then why else would I have named this blog "neverending nightmare" unless I expected to put my ideas in that context?

Some things have happened lately that have lead me to what I'm calling a crisis of faith. I'm not a religious person, but I do believe in God and that things end up balanced out in the end. And even though I've been questioning the latter idea for years now, I'm starting to wonder about the former. Scary for me.

There's the James Kim tragedy, which I haven't been able to wrap my mind around. Imagine what he must have gone through during his last days--freezing cold, starving, lost and desperate to get help for his family. I was so sure they'd find him alive since it's hard to imagine someone going through all that suffering like that with such faith and devotion, only to have it end all wrong. But I guess that's what happens to all kinds of people all over the world all the time. Only difference for me is that now it's happened to someone I could relate to.

I really hate the idea that James Kim died without the comfort of knowing his wife and daughters had been rescued and were safe. As he started off from the car that was sheltering his family, he must have believed he was their only chance for survival and that failure was unthinkable. And as she watched him walking off, she must have been terrified wondering if they would all live through it and see each other again. And both of them, of course would have done anything to save their daughters--that much is obvious. I wonder what that last conversation between them was like? How do you make a decision like that and not get crushed by fear and paralyzed by hopelessness? I don't think it's possible to understand that unless you're thrown into such a situation, and God help us if we ever are.

God help us--that's the crux of my problem lately. Is God there, is he there to help us, and if so, why such a terrible outcome for James Kim when I know that thousands of people were praying so earnestly for his safe return to his family? If it's true that prayer works and that God answers them all, how could he turn us all down flat when we're asking that a life be spared? And, not that this should matter in the grand scheme, but a noble life at that? Who else should be allowed to live than someone so willing to risk everything for his family? I don't get it, and I'm really feeling disheartened by the whole thing.

I don't blame God directly for this the way I do when the Giants don't win the NL West and when Cal (yet again) doesn't make it to the Rose Bowl. I'm not surprised by these things, because I'm convinced that He's not a fan of my sports teams. I don't get why, because they're clearly the good guys in my book. But He seems to stand by while watching awful things happen to us, and for that, I'm not feeling particularly faithful at the moment.