My life, for what it's worth, part 2

I used to do these every year, at the old place.  I think I'll do it again this year. 1. What did you do in 2017 that you've never done before? Bury my dad.   2. Did you keep your new year's resolutions, and will you make more for next year? Sort of.  I resolved to make time for reading every day.  I started out doing really well, and then dad got sick and died and I kind of got off track.  I've still read way more this year than I have in awhile, but I'd like to try to do even more.  And I think I want to figure out a way to limit my time on social media.  It's interesting and fun, but those are hours of my life I'm never getting back, and I bet I could find a better way to use them. 3. Did anyone close to you give birth? No. 4. Did anyone close to you die? My dad.  The man I considered to be my second dad.  The cat, and the dog.   5. What countries did you visit? I did not leave the US this year.  I did have a lovely week on Maui, whic

I'm gonna say it.  2017 has been the worst year ever.  Even not counting the president, which has been pretty awful all by itself.  I lost my dad.  I lost the man I considered to be a second father.  I've been dealing with all the drama of Emily's ups and downs, and my mom falling.  We lost the cat, which sent Joe into a tailspin.  And now the dog is sick.  Last Wednesday I went to rub the dog's head and realized there were big golf ball-sized lumps under his chin.  By the next day his front leg and his face had swollen up.  Joe took him to the vet, who promised to call with test results the next day.  Finally today I managed to get the news that it's lymphoma. I wanted to take him tonight to put him down.  He's not actively suffering but he's obviously uncomfortable and he's not enjoying life anymore.  Joe doesn't want to do it yet.  We need to have a talk about this (and I will do it tomorrow regardless, I don't want any animals suffering o

2017 has really sucked.  First my dad got sick and died.  Then my mom fell.  Joe has had various health issues and has felt bad for much of the year. This week, his cat got into some rice.  I have no idea why Emily had rice in her room, or how the cat got in there, the door is always closed.  But she did, and she did, and she ate a bunch of it.  I came home to piles of barfed up rice all over the house.  I wasn't too concerned, that cat has gotten real aggressive about eating things lately.  She drags kleenex out of the garbage and eats it (and throws it up)  Ugh.  But she seemed kind of droopy.  When Joe got home he was all freaked out about his precious.  He didn't eat dinner and hovered over her all evening.  After I went to bed, he decided to take her to the emergency vet.  They did some xrays and said she had colon cancer.  Emily was there and called her brothers.  They all came over to say goodbye.  I was a bad person and stayed in bed.  I loved the cat, but I had to

I have lived in Seattle off and on for most of my life, and every single November comes as a huge and horrible shock to me.  October is usually fairly sunny, and then it's like someone flipped off a light switch and turned on a cold shower.  It's dark when I wake up and dark when I come home, and today it was blowing so hard the windows in my office were rattling.  And it rained and rained and rained.  Sigh.  August is so beautiful here.  Why can't all the months be like August? We didn't lose power tonight, but my mom did.  In a shining example of why I keep him around, Joe went and picked up some hot soup and took it over to her, then stayed to chat and fix a couple little things.  He hates chatting.  Such a good person.  This is why I don't kill him about dirty socks dropped in the entry every day. I ordered an Echo Dot this week and we are having fun asking it questions.  Tonight Emily asked a question, and it didn't know the answer.  She told it it was

It's hard to believe how much has happened since I wrote that last post.  On September 23, my mom finished her dinner, stood up to put her dishes in the sink and discovered that her foot had fallen asleep when she put weight on it.  She went down hard, whacked the fireplace with her head and broke her hip in four places. I have been on her case since dad got sick to wear one of those necklaces that can summon help.  I think she secretly thought that, even though she knew people who had fallen and couldn't get up, that would never happen to her.  But she says she could not move.  Because her daughter did not listen when she said she didn't need a texting cell phone and got her one anyway, it happened to be right there where she could reach it.  My brother happened to be at a poker tournament 30 seconds away.  She was in an ambulance on her way to the hospital within ten minutes.  Thank goodness for that phone.  It is certain she would have laid there all night, and possi

Life goes on, so fast it's hard to realize we're halfway through September.  We have had such a pretty end of summer.  There was a ton of smoke here earlier, but it's been mostly gone for a week now.  I don't appreciate clean air enough. Emily went in to talk to the counselors at the community college and learned she only needs two more classes to get her AA degree, which is what Western told her she should do before applying again.  This is wonderful news.  She's been catastrophizing that it would take another year.  So she'll finish that up this quarter, take chemistry in the winter to get that last bad grade off her transcript and apply for next fall at Western.  I really hope they take her this time, we don't really have any alternate plans. She has decided to be a vegetarian again.  She does this fairly often, and it lasts a few weeks.  This time she's working so has more money to fritter away on it.  She's filled the fridge with meatless me

We made an offer on another office.  It's about 15 minutes from the current office, and I still wouldn't have a window, but the price is much lower and J is very happy.  The landlord has been thinking about it for two weeks.  I have washed my hands of it.  I hope my clients are willing to travel that much farther. I just got back from two weeks in Idaho.  I had time with each of my brothers and their families, and my mom was there the whole time.  Long time readers know that two weeks is pushing it for how long my mother and I can be together.  By the last day we had an argument over how to fold fitted sheets (I am not particular, and she unfolds and redoes it when I do it, which I know she will, so why doesn't she just do it herself in the first place instead of snarking at me to do it, and then she offered to show me how to do it her way and didn't understand why I was mad at her, etc.) I left in the middle to go to Oregon to see the total eclipse.  I was so happy

I have something going round and round in my head right now, and I can't stop being mad, so I'm going to put it here and hope it helps. I have two business partners.  One, we'll call her K, is a good friend, really smart, and a little spacey.  When we agreed to open the business five years ago, we agreed that we'd all be there working full time within two years.  The third partner, J, started full time immediately.  I worked at the school for two years part time, part time in the business, and then quit the school and have been full time ever since.  K has never quit her other job.  She also likes to work late afternoons and evenings in our office, which means often weeks go by without us seeing her.  And she's not real good at responding to emails and texts. This drives J crazy.  She wants K to work the same day hours that she does, and she wants K to put her availability and appointments on the office calendar so she can see them.  K is not going to work day h

I am excited for Michael tonight.  He's on a date! He dated one woman for six years, I thought they would get married and I was very happy about that.  I really loved her.  When they broke up, I was almost more upset than he was. It's been three years now, and he hasn't been on one date.  His life is happy and fulfilled, he has a good job and lots of friends, but I keep wishing he'd put himself out there a little bit. So for some reason this weekend, he made himself a profile on OkCupid, and two women wanted to meet him.  The first thought she might have time for him today but she was too busy filling out applications to medical school.  Hmph, I say.  Priorities. The second one he was meeting at 8 tonight for drinks and tapas.  At 9:30 he texted me that he knew I was fussing, and he wanted to let me know it was going really well.  Heh.  That boy knows me almost better than I know myself.   So yay!  Michael's on a date!

Here we are almost halfway through summer, and it's going so fast! Part of it is that when my dad died during tax season, I put a bunch of people on extension.  They would normally have filed on time if I nagged them, but I didn't feel like nagging this year.  So they're coming in to finish up now. Part of it is that I have signed up for a series on online classes.  One of them was awful, my first (and last) experience with a for profit university.  I could have just bought the book and learned as much as I did.  Probably more because I would have read the whole book instead of just a few chapters.  One of them (through the local community college, for 1/5 the price of the first one) is quite good and I'm learning a lot.  Very pleased with how that's going.  But these classes do require homework time. Part of it is that Joe doesn't feel good at all.  He had the kidney stone last year, and has just never really gotten back to normal after that.  He has a lo

I guess all those good resolutions about writing more often weren't worth much, were they?  It's been so long it's taken me five minutes to figure out how to write a new entry. Since I last wrote, tax season ended, our best yet.  It looks like we are going to need to move to a new office.  The one we have is very nice, but we hired an employee this year and it's getting a bit small.  More importantly, the landlord leased most of our floor to a very young and enthusiastic church group.  They use their space for choir practice, complete with drums and electric guitar, and youth group, with kids running up and down the halls yelling.  Most unprofessional.  So we've been looking at new places to rent.  It seems like a lot of work. Mom and I had a good time in Hawaii.  When we left, I was seriously worried about her.  Her stomach hurt, she said, so she wasn't eating.  She'd lost ten pounds (and if you know my mother, you'd know that's not a good thing

I had a client come in today whose son was born the same week as Emily.  The son has graduated high school and is now attending the school of "failure to launch," as his father put it.  He was dating an 18 year old who dropped out of high school.  Her parents did not want them "living in sin" because they are active in their church, so they took the young couple to a minister and helped them get married.  Now they're living in the girl's parents' basement with no education and no jobs.  My clients are beside themselves. I texted Emily that I was appreciating her rather more than usual today.  Her response was that this is a good time to tell me she's pregnant and has a meth problem.  SIGH.  Everyone else thinks she's hilarious. _______________________________________________________________________________ Ten more days until the end of tax season, and I'm not working on one of them.  This is starting to seem achievable, despite the ver

My mom.  Honestly.  I'd forgotten what it's like to travel with her. As I mentioned before, this has been a revolting winter in Seattle, and I am going to die if I don't get to see some sunshine soon.  So I told my mom I wanted to go to Maui after tax season.  She hemmed and hawed (but she doesn't have any new summer clothes!) but finally agreed to let me buy her a ticket. Then she fussed very hard, because our tickets are non-refundable and what if there's some festival in Hawaii that week and we can't get a hotel? I started looking for a hotel.  I sent her one that looked promising.  She said it looked like a fire trap, but, and I quote, "whatever you pick, I'm sure it will be fine."  Sigh.  I sent her another one.  She honestly doesn't care, but maybe she should ask her friends who stay on Maui where they go.  Fine, please do.  I sent another suggestion.  She countered with the name of the condo her parents used to stay at back wh

Last week, my business partner caught a nasty cold, and she insisted on coming to work every day.  I begged her to go home.  I told her how mad I'd be if I got sick.  And she would not leave.  Anybody care to guess where this is going? I haven't been sick in years.  Probably not since I left my former employer, where people would call in too sick to work and then come in to do their taxes and cough all over me.  I already had one cold this winter, and now I have a worse one.  Ugh.  My partner feels so sad and sorry, but I know she'll do it again.  Maybe I should get pneumonia to teach her a lesson. The good news is that I finally got caught up on all the work I got behind on when Dad was sick and then planning for the funeral.  For awhile there I was more behind than I've ever been.  Today I put the finishing touches on the last one, and then I brought myself home and put myself to bed.  I am going to go in briefly tomorrow and take Sunday off.  It will be wonderful

So much has happened since my last post.  My mom kept my dad home for another week, even though something clearly had broken in his brain.  He stayed up all night, every night, calling out, reaching for something on the ceiling, trying to get out of bed.  And of course, mom gamely "slept" next to him, telling him to settle down, keeping him in bed, not getting any sleep herself.  I went over there on Friday morning and her hands were shaking and she was gray.  I'm not ashamed to say I cried to make her call and get someone to come watch my dad at night that night. So she got a good night's sleep, which was good, because the next day she decided to take him to see the doctor.  The doctor took one look and called the ambulance to take him to the hospital, where he had every test known to man and was finally admitted.  They never did figure out what exactly had happened, but he was just out of his mind. Monday was the worst day ever.  I got there first thing in the m

This has not been the greatest week ever.  Business is booming, which is great, but that means I'm tired and working a lot.  The third partner is still working another job, so two of us are trying to do most everything.  We're kind of grouchy. I was really looking forward to having yesterday off, but when I checked my phone there'd been a call from my mom at 2:30 a.m.  Crap!  I called her right away, and my dad had tried to get up in the night and had fallen.  His skin is like tissue paper, so even though he fell on carpet he tore his skin and was bleeding all over the place.  She couldn't get him up.  Naturally she tried to call all the kids in town first, but no one heard their phone (I refuse to sleep with mine).  I would have told her to call 911 anyway. That's what she ended up doing, the paramedics came right away and got him back into bed, but he was bleeding so much they took him to the hospital.  The hospital bandaged him up, diagnosed a possible UTI an

It is hard to get back into the habit of writing.  But I'm going to keep doing it. My cold turned out to have the longest staying power of any cold I've ever had, I think.  After two weeks I'm still snuffling.  We have had snow, and cold, and record-breaking rain.  I went for a walk today for the first time in two weeks, it felt so good just to get outside! After the usual slow January, clients have started coming in at a brisk rate.  I have half a dozen folders stacked up waiting for me on Monday.  I have the feeling we're busier than usual for this time of year, which is nice. Emily has still not heard from Western, which is frustrating.  They will be registering for classes in another couple of weeks, and she needs to know where she should register.  If she registers at the community college where she's going this quarter, then I have to pay within seven days or they drop her, so I'm not super excited about rushing into that.  This may take a call from

I never get sick.  Seriously, it's been years since I even had a cold.  So two weeks ago, when Emily got a cold, I didn't worry about it.  She snuffled and honked.  I went about my business.  Then I started noticing a tickle in my throat.  I still didn't worry, confident that my body would fight it off. Long story made short, if I'd just given up and gotten sick when she did, I'd be over it by now.  Instead I'm sitting here coughing, with a fever and plugged sinuses and a voice scratchy enough that people look at me with alarm when I talk.  Ugh.  I must remember not to be smug. Tax season is a terrible time to have a blurry brain. I was amused to get a call from someone at my former employer today, telling me she's giving someone my name.  This happens every few months.  They have a premium office that's supposed to take care of this kind of thing, but apparently they're not interested, so they send them to me.  It's a huge compliment, and

A year ago my dad turned 90.  He had just survived a long session in the hospital, and then two months in rehab, coming home right before Thanksgiving.  He was wheelchair bound, but other than that he was feeling pretty good.  We threw a big party for him and invited all his friends, it was quite a night. Since then, he's had a stroke that affected his ability to speak.  The man who made his living communicating and writing can't get more than two or three words out, on a good day.  Sometimes he can write on his whiteboard, more often he can't. We had a much smaller party for his birthday last night.  Only about half the family was there, but we had a good time.  I couldn't help looking back a year ago and feeling sad for the turn his life has taken. I was also so impressed with my daughter.  She and I were there for lunch a couple of weeks ago when the speech therapist came.  Emily watched what she did carefully, and now whenever she's there, she pulls out th

Nobody in my family ever listens to me.  I give really good advice, and I almost always know what I'm talking about, but nobody listens. If I want them to listen to me, I have to get my brother to tell them. Here's an example.  A couple of years ago, my mom's oven started to go out.  It drove her crazy and ruined more than one meal.  I said, let's go get you a new one.  She fussed very hard because she only wanted white.  Black and stainless steel are ugly.  Grey would ruin everything.  It had to be white. White is not a color that's real popular right now.  The store I took her to only had one white oven, and it didn't have the little ridges on top to contain the mess if you spill.  She HAD to have white, and she HAD to have those ridges.  The very helpful salesman searched everything available anywhere, and what she wanted didn't exist. I took her home.  She continued to complain about the stove, but couldn't commit to the white stove without t

I don't really have much interesting to write about, but I said I was going to keep writing and I'm gonna do it. Work is going well.  I have already had five new to me clients call for an appointment.  Lots of people appear to be moving up from California again.  Not sure how I feel about that. It continues to be super cold (for us).  Today it got up to 40 and I almost didn't need a coat.  There have been days when it never got above freezing.  I know the midwestern contingent is laughing at me, but that's really cold here. Tomorrow is a federal holiday, but no one here gets it off except Emily, and she is making plans to spend it with friends. And that's about all I've got.  I will get more interesting, I'm sure, but right now it's just about doing the writing.

When I was growing up, I had a best friend, her name was Monica.  We met in first grade, and have been close ever since.  Her brother, Mike, was my brother's best friend.  Our parents liked each other a lot.  Over the years growing up, they came on vacation with us sometimes.  I was invited to their big family gatherings and Monica was invited to ours.  I really considered her the sister I never had, and looked on her parents as my second parents. Eight years ago this week, her brother Mike had a massive heart attack, and he died eight years ago today.  I still think of him often, especially around this time of year.  And last night Monica and Mike's father passed away.  He has been in failing health for some time, and had recently been discharged from the hospital to the local rehab facility.  I visited him Wednesday and thought he looked awful, but he's rallied before. This is so sad.  It's a part of life, I know, and his passing was as peaceful as possible.  I wi

I started a new journal at Wordpress, but it's too complicated.  I've forgotten everything I ever knew about html, and what I had there looked awful when I was done playing with it.  I did some searching on the googles for best place to blog, and this came up as one of the options.  It said a lot of people won't like it here because they can't customize.  Perfect!  I do not want to customize.  I want to write, and not have it look like a frustrated artist designed it.  So here I am. We have survived the first week of January.  It has been really freaking cold here.  Okay, cold for Seattle.  There have been days when it never got above freezing.  Often the "feels like" temps on my phone have been in the teens.  I've been very thankful for my heated car seats and my warm down jacket. I've also been very thankful that it's dry weather, and not snow and ice.  Michael drives 37 miles one way to and from work, and he works a swing shift, so he gets o

After two weeks, the holidays are over.  Joe goes back to work tomorrow.  Emily starts class.  I need to change the message on the voicemail that says we’re closed, and start showing up more often. We are having cold winter weather.  It is unlikely to get above freezing for the next few days, the weather folk say.  At least the sun is shining.  I can put up with a lot if the sun is shining. Besides writing here every few days, my other resolution is to read more.  I spend way too much time fooling around on Facebook.  I am going to cut back on that to free up at least 30 minutes of time to read (which you know will be more, once I start).  My aunt recommended Louise Penny as one of her favorite authors, so I am starting there.  I have read all the book club books up through February, so the March book will need to be next on my list. I have a friend who works for Princess Cruises.  Part of her compensation package is a free cruise every year.  She signed up for a ten day Caribbe

So I’m back.  I started writing at Diaryland in 2001.  When Emily graduated high school, I stopped writing, but I still have things to say.  So I’m moving here, and am going to try to write more often. Andrew at Diaryland never ever answers his emails, but I was hopeful he might this time.  Awhile ago, he advertised that you could make a book out of your entries there.  I thought I’d like that.  I have a lot of funny kid stories there I don’t want to lose.  But even with the promise of ordering three books, he didn’t respond.  So I’m going through, each day, copying and pasting a week or two worth of entries into a Word document.  It will take me all year, but I’m going to do it. A quick update on the kids.  When last heard from, Michael had gone back to school, gotten a certificate in composite manufacture, and found a job in quality control at a company that makes parts for Boeing.  He liked the work, but the pay was terrible, and the shop manager was a psychopath.  Michael woul