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

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 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 th...

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...

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 wit...

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 eclips...

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...

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 ...