Wednesday, February 4, 2009

purely a distraction...

hullo.
yay! jack is feeling better today! i was so happy to wake up from a pretty ok sleep to hear him happy. he's been up and about and giggly and silly and most importantly - NOT PUKING! i won't count my pukey chickens, though...there are still puke bowls placed conveniently about the premises. he had a piece of toast and some ginger ale for breakfast, and it all seems ok so far *touching wood*.

jared has an attitude today though, holy crap! maybe he's getting the evil sickness...and i don't feel too shit hot, either. but hey. i'm a machine, right? ...right? i'm pretty sure i'll be putting him down for a nap fairly shortly to let his little body do whatever it needs to do. besides, tharen will be home in the evening, and he is SO totally the one who's gonna have to worry about bedtimes tonight. that is - IF i even let him in the house. jesus, you have no idea whatta jackass loser he can be. hence, the distraction.

i figured i'd tell you about what else is going on in my life. it's what lucy was referring to when she made her first call in forever a couple weeks ago.

my brother's mother-in-law has cancer. the kick-you-in-the-face-and-cackle-while-you-die kind. she got diagnosed about a year ago with hodgekins or non-hodgekins....i'm not positive. whatever's worse, i guess. regardless, something's ravaging her body with a fierce intensity. she's probably not gonna win this battle no matter how much of a tough bitch she is. that may sound a little harsh, but her and i have quite a history. i'm having a hard time deciding how i feel about it. i mostly feel bad for my brother and his family. no matter how i feel about her, she's still part of their family and it must suck to see anyone suffer the way she is. i won't go into detail here, but trust me - it's NOT pretty.

milly's mom had a couple rounds of chemo over the summer and fall, but then caught pneumonia. she checked herself out of the hospital to come down to be with family for xmas and basically stayed in bed the whole time. then, after she got home, i guess they had to call 911 because she couldn't breathe. she was taken into the hospital, then med-evac'd to a hospital near here where they do her kind of cancer treatment. they did a body scan to find that not only had the cancer come back big time, but she also has a leaky valve in her heart. this means they wouldn't do another round of chemo until she has surgery on her heart, which she couldn't do because of the pneumonia. isn't that just the sourest pickle you ever plucked?


weekly body scans had become par for the course, and the next one she had showed the cancer is more aggressive than they thought. milly's mom decided to go for the chemo after being given two months to live. she then decided that if the weekly body scan showed no improvement that she wanted to stop treatment. i'm pretty sure she's since recanted that desire, but milly is still out at the hospital every day to visit her because she took a leave of absence from her job.

the money situation for them is screwy. milly's money won't start coming back in for another couple weeks, and my brother harry had to go back to work early. see, he was on e.i. for a perpetual bad back, but only recives 45% of his wage. with milly's cashflow m.i.a., he had to make sure nothing suffers, especially considering no one really knows how long this is going to last.....or what milly's gonna be like when her mom finally kicks it. they have two kids, 12 & 16, that need to be cared for and attended to, and harry doesn't get home until 6 or 7 every night. and even then, he climbs right into his 6 pack and a doobie while tending to the horses, chickens and dogs.

i tried to go out and give a hand and brought them a bunch of groceries, but that was short lived. see milly's family is crazy, and NOT in a fun way. there are so many stories i could tell, but honestly, i want to do my best to forget them. milly's been in our lives for 22 years now, so there's probably bullshit over flowing that pandora's box. there's just one unforgivable thing in particular her mom did that completely scars my view of people (mostly her). that's what's making it so hard for me to care about her. the karma kops'll get ya! milly's aunt is staying at their house, and harry thought it would be best if i stayed away for the time being. see, the falling out milly's mom and i had was a catalyst for that whole family's fuck ups to come boiling to the surface and they all had discord up until the cancer thing came about. i say if you don't wanna be classed as a classless fool, then have some fucking class. but anyway, that doesn't take away from the fact that i'm hurting for harry, milly, my niece and nephew. i may not be able to go there while milly and her aunt are there, but my first reaction was this:

*** (c) ***

heartstrings

i'm afraid to make the phone ring
for fear it will stop your heart
my parallel reality vicarious here -
tries to imagine, but withdraws with a start

never any past shall cross my soul in this
any request i will own
half my heart breathes in your house -
i shall due care as it is my own

with one step back i observe the race
and pray with a heart on loan -
for when the chips lay down &
you're on broken ground
that you'll know where your heart is going

(c) teague.
~cb'09~
(for milly)
***


so that's what's going on in other areas of my life, and why i have the pic i do for my profile. my heartstrings are stretched.

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