October, 2008: From Here to Forever

It's October. So many things happening, changing, and I don't mean the leaves, because if there's one thing about Phoenix, it's that the leaves don't change.

Joaquin's cousin is moving out of of my sister's house. We are happy, yet sad, about this. When Joaquin heard, he said, "Angelica's moving out? She can't move out, uh, uh, she's way too young!" When asked how old you have to be, he said, "Well, let's see, she's twenty six now, right? She needs to stay for four more years. Then she can move out." Like Ivan said, at least we know what we're in for.

Although they haven't asked recently, I know it's gonna come up again. About me working full time. I don't know why I'm holding out. I just can't commit but my guess is that I'll relent because, well, at least I've got a job. I'm off the rest of this week because I'm already a little burned out with the whole helpdesk thing.

My mother never said which holiday was her favorite, actually, she said she didn't like any holiday, but my guess would be Halloween. Mainly because she LOVED candy and she would go all out for trick-or-treaters when only a few would go to her house. That was alright though, because then she'd have candy, candy, candy, all the candy she desired. She liked the decorations too. Last year around this time, we were in Flagstaff and I remember she bought a halloween bowl and dishcloth from a little store downtown. I remember she had a hard time walking but she just kept at it, I don't think she complained once about it, heck, even I had a hard time keeping up and I did complain. My sister noticed though, and suggested she sit in a restaurant and have a beer while we wandered around to see if there was any more stuff we absolutely had to have...seems like such a short time ago.

Isn't it interesting that the stuff is still around while the person who owned the stuff isn't. What is most important in that equation? I thought about this because Ivan just broke one of my favorite dishes from a store called Rue De France, which is no longer, and it didn't really bother me, it just brought up those feelings about our stuff outliving us, and my mom...

Ivan is working days now. Its gonna take some time to get used to. It's been just Joaquin and I on weekdays for quite some time now. We've got our own routine.

One of my big concerns is what I'm gonna make for dinner because there are days where I'd just cook for Joaquin and I'd eat cereal or salad or something. A man doesn't like only salad sprinkled with pieces of chicken nuggests as an entree. We had Domino's Pizza for dinner tonight. Joaquin and I have NEVER ordered pizza delivery the entire time we've been on our own.

I cried tonight, Ivan thought it was because of the dish. I told him no, it isn't the dish. I still cry sometimes, he's just not usually here to see it and I don't usually write about it because it generally passes quickly. I have lots on my mind and even with my luck the past week, I'm just feeling that the universe is really out of wack and has been for quite some time. Is it ever going to feel "normal" again or is this what it's going to be like from now on?

I ♥ Cats

Oy, tonight was scary. After having a good time swimming in Tia's pool, Joaquin decided to hold and pat the cat. No more than fifteen minutes later, when it was time to go, he started becoming congested and scratching his eyes. I told him to wash his hands and we left.

We thought it would be minor, but on the road, we could hear him becoming worse and worse. Luckily I had a Benadryl Perfect Measure pre-measured dose of allergy medicine in my purse. (Those things are a Godsend.) I was going to wait to get home and give him a Zyrtec which works really well, but when I asked if he wanted the Benadryl, he practically jumped out of his seat to get it. Yes! He wanted it.

His eyes were hurting more and more, so he asked his dad to hurry home so he could put water on them. He became impatient because his dad isn't the fastest driver. When we were closer to home, he started, yelling "Dad, hurry, hurry! It hurts!" We got home, he put cool water on his face and I gave him eyedrops and a cool washcloth for his eyes. He was feeling better within minutes and he is now sleeping peacefully. Scary.

I would say he is definitely allergic to cats. I told him that he can pet Angel but he must wash his hands right after. And he LOVES cats too, boo hoo.

Por-rrr favor-rrrrr!

Lately, everything, I mean everything having to do with my mom has been wrong. My sister even had a dream that two old people told her that they would take care of my mom's business because we're such screw-ups. I half expect to get a call from the mortuary saying those aren't my mom's ashes we buried. Really, by the way we've allowed things to happen, you'd have thought that we didn't care. To be honest, I don't really think it matters at this point, but that's not because I didn't care about my mom. I just don't know how people do this.

I think I've mentioned before about the problems we've had getting probate started. The lawyer was supposed to mail us some paperwork and it took some time and several phone calls before that happened. Then, I come to notice that my name is spelled wrong on the paperwork. When I got to the office, I noticed they had my mom's age wrong and my brother's name was spelled wrong on some other paperwork. Good thing my sister only has four letters in her name because one more may have been too much for them. Whatever. The papers are now ready to be filed with the court.

Several weeks ago, we got a call from the cemetary saying that we didn't buy a plaque for my mom. She was buried with her brother and mother so we couldn't get a full headstone, only a plaque. (Hmm...I'm wondering if they were the people in my sister's dream.) We oy -ed about that too but went to the office to pick one out and pay a couple of thousand for it. Today I got a call asking if I ever received the draft. It was supposedly sent two weeks after we met, which would probably be over a month ago. Yeah, right.

Let me tell you about my impression of the cemetary lady. I think she's a drinker. I'm not saying that to be judgemental, I think it's a fact. Some days I noticed that she slurred a lot, others, not so much. So I actually think she forgot. Whatever. I ask my brother to pickup the draft and he notices THAT THE DATE OF MOM'S DEATH IS WRONG. Oh, man, or, as my mother used to say when she was fed up with something: Por-rrr favor-rrrrr! And she'd really, really roll those Rs. Then she'd scratch her head.

Then, out of the blue, I see a weird message from the newspaper dated Wednesday, April 23, 2008 with the title: Re: obituary for publication on Sunday Feb 10, natalie has. It said, "Thank you, we have received your email message." It's actually a duplicate of a message we received in February. Okaaay... My mom never used the Internet when she was alive, do you think heaven has web access and it might be her trying to send us a message? Oh, wait, according to "Bruce Almighty," they do. That being the case, here's a note to mom: I know, por favor. We're working on it. Really. Don't be mad. Love, Your Screwed-up Kids and the crack-team they've assembled.

I was pretty sad when I found out that Joaquin needed glasses. I hate the idea of hiding his beautiful eyes. I knew it, but was hoping not. So, trying to make the best of the situation, we're now we're trying to pick out frames. He likes the ones at the end, but I think we're gonna get the first ones. He's cute anyway.

~*~

The other day my sister and I went to the antique stores in Glendale to look for a charm for a charm bracelet given to her by my mom. My mom used to love these stores, one in particular. As we were browsing, my sister pointed out an owl cookie jar my mom has had forever. It is apparently McCoy pottery, called "When Shadows Fall." It was nice to see it since we haven't been to her house for a while.

Another thing that caught our attention was one of the salespeople talking about beer with Clamato. In this case, Budweiser, which he says is now sold with the Clamato already mixed in. Our mom used to mix her own with Miller Lite and we always laughed about it. Who knew she was such a trendsetter? Yet another thing to miss about mom.

Word Of The Day

Intubate

More heavy sighs.

Heavy Sigh

I've been at the hospital for over sixteen hours in the last two days. My poor mother. She's just miserable. I believe she feels like this looks:

They put her in ICU and started blood transfusions because her blood got so thin. And just after she was starting to finally feel better.

We were thinking of going to Spain this spring. *Sigh* Maybe in the fall.

It's Allergies.

My family is driving me nuts. They're coughing and sniffling but insist on being together, claiming, "It's allergies." Well buddy, I caught your "allergies." My throat is sore, I'm hacking and my nose is running. Thanks a lot.

A lot happened this week. Joaquin's seventh birthday, which was a bit overshadowed by the fact that Grandma ended up in ICU. I took the week off to prepare for the party and have spent most of it at the hospital.

On Tuesday, Grandma decided to go to emergency because of shortness of breath and a stomach problems, both of which she's had several weeks. We thought she'd be okay, they'd take care of the low heart rate, diarrhea and breathing problems, check her out and she'd be fine after a couple of days recuperation.

Come Wednesday, things got really scary. Her heart became enlarged, she was not passing fluids and her kidneys were failing. She was very sick, which is exactly what the Dr. said. They decided to put her on dialysis to try to get her kidneys to do what they're supposed to do. They put a number of IVs to get medication to her heart as fast as possible and told us we'd have to wait, possibly days, to see how things were going. She was still having problems breathing and it was so hard to see her with that oxygen mask on her face. She was sicker than I'd ever seen her.

By Wednesday night when I left her, I was still worried, but she was beginning to talk and complain, which is apparently a good sign. Joaquin's school nurse, cousin Diane and Barbara stopped by. Diane was impressed that she didn't have the oxygen mask, only the nose tube. Yesterday, was amazing. She was talking a lot, they took her off the 24 hour dialysis to a 3 hour dialysis and by evening, she was sitting up and having broth (of course, she wants steak).

I'm still nervous because any of this can change at any moment, which was evident from what happened from Tuesday to Wednesday, but I'm hopeful. She's still in ICU for now.

So, why did Grandma get so sick in the first place? Doctors are thinking perhaps it was some sort of stomach infection, they're not sure. Maybe it was allergies.

Can't Argue With Progress

We've all heard that New Yorkers are cynical people and that you can't pull one over on a New Yorker. Tell that to my New York sister in law who once bought a VHS video of a newly released teatrical feature movie and found that it was, in fact, a blank video tape--she's a Floridian at heart.

Although he only lived there a short time, Ivan IS New York. He's constantly second-guessing people, looking for ways they might be trying to cheat him. He wears down car salesmen! (It's the truth, I've seen it with my own eyes.) I'm born and bred Phoenician. It's always sunny in Phoenix so trust is in our nature. Not anymore, baby. Now I'm just as suspicious as the next guy, becoming even moreso by the day. I hate it. It takes too much energy.

See, we thought our cable company was trying to cheat us with bandwidth. They'd done something similar many years before and we somehow got on the faster switch or something simply by changing a MAC address in our router. So when we had the big slow down about a week ago, we thought they'd done something similar in reverse. We had the techs out here, they did find a problem which they claimed to fix, but our connection was still flaking out. They told us we needed a new cable modem. I was angry. I was ready to call the Corporation Commission. But we decided to give a new modem a try and we got it today. So far, so good.

I still think Cable Co. made some changes to their internal network that caused the problem but, then again, our modem was almost ten years old. I guess it was time.

All this to say: Our Internet connection works.

Angst To Regret

I've mentioned the angst I've experienced with my neighbor in the past. It annoyed me that her adult children with questionable, possibly criminal activities, lived with her. It's not the fact that they're adults that bothers me; it's the "possible criminal activities." Plus, I suspect they leave shopping carts around the neighborhood. That's at least a misdemeanor. I know, gasp!

You can't pick your neighbors, I know, but I figured you don't have to be friendly. So, I never smiled or said hello, or even looked their way, just hoping they would move out soon.

I heard today that my neighbor's daughter was murdered while she was visiting a friend. I feel really bad. Now I think, would an occasional hello have really been so horrible? Whether the "possible criminal activies" had anything to do with her death or not, my neighbor has experience the worse type of loss, the death of a child. And my heart goes out to her. I regret that I couldn't find the capacity to be a little, even just a tad kinder to a fellow human being while she was alive.

Wah!

Nothing makes you feel older than losing teeth.

I had to have one pulled today. It broke the other day and since I've been battling with that tooth since last year, I said, "Pull it." I also had a really deep cleaning done on half my mouth.

I am in pain even though half my mouth is numb.

Drinking water is interesting again!

Oh, Woe! & Tips For Short Emergency Room Visits!

Saturday night we went to the hospital. Ivan was complaining that he heard a crack and felt a sharp pain in his back near one of his "falling off the ladder" bruises. Now, I was suspicious about the level of pain, but coming from a man who can endure and arm and belly of second degree burns, I figured it must really hurt. Plus, I didn't have the hospital scale of faces that they use to determine a patient's level of pain handy. Now I do. I believe he was an 8.

(EDITED: I asked, and he said he was more like a 5. A five? A five? I could've done laundry at a five. My everyday existence is like a three. The way he was carrying on, I truly believed he was more like an eight. I'm pulling this out next time for sure.)
If you know me, I'm all about convenience. If it's not convenient, I probably won't do it, or I'll do it begrudgingly. We're pretty lucky. We have several hospitals within 10 miles from home. Ivan wanted to go to the big hospital because he trusts them. I figured for a possible rib fracture, we can go to a smaller one and the wait would be shorter. I was driving, so we did a couple of drive-bys to see which emergency room had the least amount of people in the waiting room. He was drugged and x-rayed in two hours!

No rib fracture, but that doesn't really help the pain. Mega-doses of Ibuprophen do, however. I took a valium before I went to bed out of sympathy.

P.S. We got the truck back. Wish we hadn't.

If It Weren't For Bad Luck

Today, I took Joaquin to McDonald's because Burger King stopped its Simpsons Movie campaign and we were disappointed we didn't finish collecting all the figures. How many hamburgers and chicken nuggets must one eat to collect them all?!?

Anyway, he made some friends at the play structure and said he'd meet them back there next week and they'd make up another game to play. When we were leaving, the little boy he was playing with asked Joaquin for his phone number. I didn't know what to do. I can't imagine his mom allowing him to call someone he barely knows, but I thought it was cute.

We're definitely not phone people. I don't even ask people for phone numbers, mainly because I don't use them, but obviously, this kid knows how to make friends and I don't. So, tickled, I let Joaquin write his number on a napkin and give it to him. It's probably in the trash. I think that's what I would've done with it.

Trying not to be a downer is really hard these days. I almost can't write what happened today. Basically, when I saw the truck gone, and walked in to hear Ivan in the shower, I wondered what happened. So I asked him. "Where's your truck?" "He was singing in the shower like he normally does and said, feigning horror, "Oh no, my truck! Ahhhh! What happened to my truck?!" So I figured he took it to have something repaired and was just annoyingly teasing me like he often does.

So when he came out, I asked again, "So, where did you take your truck?" I figured I'd drive him to pick it up. He's thinking I'm really trying to pull one over on him and he's not giving in. We went back and forth for a while until we realized that it was actually missing. We started laughing. His truck was gone. Stolen. Purloined. From right in front on our house. In the middle, we think, of the day.

He called the police. The insurance company. We need to wait a month before it is declared a loss.

Joaquin used the situation as a chance to use all the bad words he knows: "Dammit! Stupid Jerks! Shutup!" He asked me for more. I raised my fist and said "Curses!" That one was not to his liking. I'll bet he'd like Daddy's bad words better.

Why didn't the stupid jerks take it when they broke the window last month?

Oh, But There's More...

While talking to my sister today, I realized that I've forgotten my son's misfortunes brought on by August, 2007.

Only one week after he started school (in August), he got a cold. He found the "culprit," a little girl in his class. He got over it in a little over a week.

Then, last Wednesday, just as he was getting over the cold, he got what looked like pinkeye. A few days of antibiotic eye drops cleared it up.

And finally, right now he's got a small circle on his back that Nurse Diane diagnosed as ringworm!

I'm scared. Only twenty four hours, thirty-three minutes and 15 seconds until September. I hope we make it.

Whaddaya Gonna Do?

Still around, August, 2007? I thought I told you to beat it.

The latest: Our air conditioning stopped again last night. I wasn't wasting time this time. I quickly called to see if a hotel room was available.

Ivan came home from work to have a look. Up on the roof at 8:00 (it's dark here by then), he finds a wayward wire had broken off. Ah ha! He was pretty certain he could fix it, but not until tomorrow. So Joaquin and I went to the hotel and he went back to work and met us at the hotel room at 1:00 A.M.

We got up early and he came home to fix the problem. Fix it, he did. It would've been a fine coup--had he not fallen off of the ladder. Now his back is all bruised and scratched from falling on one of Joaquin's toys and he's got a bump on the back of his head.

I know Ivan hates August, 2007 more than I, but he doesn't complain. Maybe because I do it enough for the both of us. I must admit though, that when I heard the news today, I put my face in my hands, shook my head--and laughed. It has reached the point of being ridiculous. I'm not putting out a challenge, but really, what's next, locusts?

I did ask Ivan who he made so mad that they put a curse on him. It wasn't me. I don't know voodoo.

I really should stop complaining and be grateful for the things we have and our usual uneventful existence.

I will.

In about two more days.

Giving The FInger To August

I'm really hating people right now. I'm going around with a permanent scowl on my face and I know exactly how old people feel. Friends? Nobody's my friend. Everybody just wants something from me. Don't look at me, I may bite your head off. Grrr!

My sister says it's the heat. I hope she's right.

Is It Over Yet?

August has NOT been a very good month for us. I say us, but I actually mean Ivan. First, our home air conditioning broke. Ivan spent hours on the hot roof, during the hottest time of the year, trying to fix it. Then, my car started getting hot, way passed the midline point nearing closer to the red zone. I complained to Ivan about it.

This is when the real trouble started.

On the day that it got really bad, he insisted on meeting me at Joaquin's school to check it out, against my protests. We were having a heat alert but he wouldn't take no for an answer. On retrospect, I should have just left and dealt with the repercussions later. Anyway, he was checking the hoses in my car and it seemed like no water was getting through, so he went to feel the hose in his truck. When he pressed it, the hose burst, spewing boiling hot liquid and antifreeze all over him.

He got second degree burns and blisters on his belly and arm. It looked so painful but he didn't go to the hospital. He said it looked worse than it felt.

The next day, another excruciatingly hot one by the way, Ivan went back and tried to replace the hose himself. One of the parts that came with the hose replacement part he purchased didn't work but the old cap fit, so he used that. He got it working and drove it to work. Yea!

Then, the truck started overheating on his way home and it eventually stopped about eight blocks from home. He hoofed it at 2AM, woke early Saturday to get the truck and found that the passenger side window had been smashed in and the culprit (as Joaquin says) went through the glove box and took his work badge!

All I've got to say about the whole experience is: Okay, that's enough!

There is one question that's been burning in my brain though: Ivan, why didn't you just have it towed to the freakin' repair shop in the first place?!? I feel bad about everything he's gone through, so I probably will never know.

In the meantime, my car is still running hot, he researched it and figured out that it is because one of the fans isn't working. Fortunately, he's not going to attempt to repair that one himself.

How many days until the end of August?