It’s Raining, It’s Pouring…

This week is a marathon of appointments that are spawning more appointments. Today we had our long-awaited pediatrician visit for my teenager. He needed lab work and it was closer to there than home, so we went ahead to get it over with. It was raining buckets and there were streams running through the parking lot. My socks got wet going in.

Mom is extra crazy this week because of the comings and goings, and her new thing is accusing us of stealing our own car. Yes, it’s funny, but it gets old. Also she is projecting because she’s stealing and hoarding toilet paper rolls. I keep having to rescue them from her laundry basket.

She is codependent on me, so every time I leave the house it’s like shaking her whole ant farm and I never know what I’m going to come home to. My husband has the patience of a saint with her, but I know every time I leave not only am I going to be dealing with extra-crazy when I get back, he is while I’m gone. He is in IT and married to me, so he’s already met his quota for this lifetime.

When the teenager and I got home, I had a small handful of paperwork, and I dropped the damn school excuse in the driveway. By the time I noticed it missing, when I wrote the other excuse for the rest of the days my teenager has missed – because half the teachers aren’t following his 504, so he’s already tired of fighting over invisible disabilities – it was well and truly soaked, and I’m lucky it was raining so heavily it didn’t blow away. I thought it was going to be useless and I’d have to call them tomorrow and get a new one. Apparently doctor ink is forever though because after I dried it, it’s still readable. There’s a blue imprint of a post-it with the directions to the lab. I had to brush off some pavement grit but it still works.

A small win – a phone call dodged. I feel like this raggedy paper a lot of days. I can barely make sense of myself but I have to pretend to be some sort of authority on life for three, sometimes four people – not including me because I know for sure I’m bullshitting.

Here We Are in Paradise, or something like that ;-)

This summer has been spent so far settling into our new lives, fixing up our house, figuring out how to live together. There are ups and downs, but in between I can look out my windows and see green everywhere, and if I’m lucky, random animals.

The area we moved to is similar to our last one in that it’s many small towns running into the city. But there are so many farms. Farm stands, farm stores, farm markets. It’s like I’m back in North Carolina; I go buy all the veggies and fruit, then get stuff to go with it at the grocery store.

My oldest son is taking cooking classes in the city, so we’ve gone exploring the shopping that way. My youngest is turning into my hiking and swimming buddy. There are so many places to hike, many of them accessible. Mom is getting rolled all over nature once it’s cooler. Mostly I’ve taken her to the dentist, doctor, and out to eat lately. Her anxiety has been elevated since we had what turned out to be the move from hell: three month edition, bouncing around rentals. Even when she wasn’t living with us, she was coming to visit two different houses. The constant was me, and now she is fine when I’m home but starts to lose her mind if I go anywhere. D. can reassure her when she isn’t sundowning but early afternoon? Forget it. Plus she has had many…rather, shall we say, FUCKING HORRENDOUS experiences with men since she met my late asshole stepfather, so she can be a real grouch toward everyone in the family but me.

We are adjusting her meds to add one specifically for anxiety, because most of her sundowning has a very OCD flavor. We get creative too. She can’t stand to see us standing or sitting around for example. She’ll come out of her room and try to give us a job. Dan complained about this to me and I said “Oh she does that to me too. I just pretend I’m doing something.” I showed him my fake counter wipe with the nearest rag. If I’m playing video games, I’m “waiting on a text/email back from someone on the internet. Oh, there it is! Gotta finish this form.” (Half the time this IS true. I’m lining up dentists, doctors, eye doctors, therapists, new licenses, schools, and occasionally contractors if Dan can’t catch them.) The sky is the damn limit, okay? Call me Nurse Pragmatism.

Mom is also slowly coming off some of the meds they had her on in the memory care from her WV experience. She’s still on several and it gets confusing as hell. The memory care had them all in neat little bubble packs, but now that it’s me and an organizer. I’m just thankful for my own OCD and a fast pharmacy. Also this Ninja soda machine, because she has a sweet tooth and was downing sodas so fast I could’ve paid the mortgage in bottle returns. Now I just make sure we have supplies. I order the berry blast nine bottles at a time.

We brought Jiji, the ex-feral cat, and after she took a giant dump in the travel carrier less than thirty minutes into the trip to convey her gratitude, she did fine the rest of the way. She is doing great as an indoor cat, and there’s no way she’s ever getting out with all these animals. We have things that can kill her, but she’s more likely to chase ten different rodents down the mountain and get lost. She’s really been everyone’s emotional support kitty. Thanks to Pacagen spray, the Purina anti-allergen food, and D’s year of allergy shots, she can actually sleep in our room, usually right by my head, or on it.

After nearly two years of uncertainty, packing, selling, moving, traveling, we finally made it to one house, where we want to be, and now the whole country is going to shit. Par for the course. I dissociate with nature. I watch the birds, wander off to hike, drive down by the river…on bad days I dream of wandering into the woods like that hermit guy in Maine and hiding out until humanity blows over. Or until humanity is over blowing.

Today the birds inspired this poem, which is not a happy one, but was very cathartic to write.

What’s Left

The remnants of dinosaurs hunt for food
in the shady branches outside the window,
reduced to surviving on bugs and seeds.

The remnants of my mother lounge in bed
the next room over, reduced to anxiously asking
for soda, toast, help with a shower, reassurance.

The remnants of my sanity banded together
almost as long as the dinosaurs roamed
and took off for parts unknown.

Sometimes I get a postcard with a photo
of a lovely vista or majestic wildlife.
Wish you were here.

The Weather

It’s been a long, crazy year and I’m glad it’s almost over. Even though I dread the anniversary of D’s passing.

That’s how everything was marked this year. The first Christmas. New Year’s. Birthdays – my husband had his first single birthday. Every holiday, show we liked, song, funny thing the kids said.

Halloween was hard. It was his favorite holiday and he liked to go all out with the decorations and full-sized candy bars. We knew he was seriously sick last year when he didn’t feel like doing Halloween.

My small business has added to the stress, but at the same time, I think it’s helped more with keeping my mind off of things and being an outlet. It pushes me to create and learn new techniques. I meet interesting people and talk to them about my art. I get out of the house and go new places, meet other crafters, and sometimes we barter so I come home with treasures. Or I end up by the cake vendor and eat the treasures for lunch.

I have one kid with ADHD/OCD now, and one OCD who is getting tested for other possible neurodiversity soon. Both are medicated; so far only the younger for ADHD. I had to learn this whole secret-code process to get those meds because of the way ADHD meds are scheduled/classified legally. It seems like all the pharmacy hopping and prescription swapping involved in obtaining the meds would make it easier, not harder, for people to abuse these drugs. JFC. Anyway. Getting his ADHD meds triggers my OCD. Thankfully, since nobody gives a damn about those meds, they mail me ninety day supplies when I don’t even need them. Ah, American healthcare.

My older son has socially transitioned at school. Locally, that’s going OK, but the political climate for trans kids is shit, and we are watching each election. The last one went in our favor but there was a lot of misinformation and hate thrown around on social media and in the news. On the streets too. There is so much ignorance around trans kids and trans people in general. It can be scary, but more than that it just pisses me off. The whole idea of someone in the government, or someone who doesn’t even know me/my kid/the actual person, trying to mandate how they live their lives when we as a country can’t band together to stop our kids from shooting each other…maybe deal with that before you come at my kid for feeling like he was born in the wrong make and model.

The kids are getting sorted out, but between the alphabet soup and all the school viruses, they kind of swap health crises every few weeks or so. My husband is still dealing with his parents and the complete shitshow they’ve made in dealing with their son’s passing. Which has affected the health of his two living brothers. His parents have even contacted my family a few times saying they don’t know what they did to piss everyone off, and when I hear they’ve been stirring the pot again (before every holiday, birthday, any time a family member is already stressed, etc – iykyk) I’m very, very tempted to send them a laminated numbered list. And tell them to reread it anytime they forget. From the backs of their eyeballs, after they shove it sideways straight up their…yeah, that’s where we are with that situation.

My mom is still doing okay, but has had the usual take-advantage-of-seniors crap going on in her life, so I’m helping her and checking in more. I’ve gone on several road trips this year by myself; the kids and their dad have been avoiding the home state for obvious reasons. We went for thanksgiving and got to visit with friends and family (but of course missed way too many folks). We tried to keep it low-key, focused on the kids, and drama free, and for the most part we succeeded.

If I sound a bit less filtered it’s because I’m seriously out of fks. It’s been a helluva year, actually years plural. My old job went to shit so I moved for a new job that went to shit, then we segued into the murderous stepdad incident, both kids inheriting my neuroses, COVID, the resurgence of Dan’s neuroses, my brother in law dying too soon, resulting family chaos, my cousin’s narrow miss (thank fuckall he made it)…a loved one pointed out to me recently, I do have a tendency to focus on the negative. But it’s been a LOT. When I was listing the traumatic shit that’s happened the past five years to my kid’s therapist at an appointment this fall, I sounded like Evie Russell the energy vampire on What We Do in the Shadows, trying to drain someone.

I work three gigs and keep up with most of the kids’ various appointments/school stuff, so I haven’t been doing anything very impactful for my own mental health really. Besides staying medicated to the next galaxy over. I’m trying to work on self-care – writing more, walking/hiking/fleeing to nature, live shows, crafting, getting a therapist for the new year or at least getting on a waitlist so I can start when I’m eighty or whatever.

I feel like I’ve weathered into driftwood some days but at least it’s solid. Then other days I’m some spineless lump on the beach waiting for the gulls.

Either way, I’m still salty af. Sometimes I think it’s the only thing that preserves me.