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I really ought to make a habit of posting here more often. My paid account lapsed a couple of days ago, and I meant to get it again before it did, but I haven't had the presence of mind and executive function to get up and get my credit card to do it.

We're having a white Christmas for the first time in years here.

I think it was 2016, the last time I really felt like my winter experience was majorly affected by any snow we had. I've had a few snow days off teaching jobs since then, but it was mostly because I worked for a system with really high elevations. Now that virtual learning has been discovered and outfitted, it's unlikely those kids are gonna end up with snow days much ever again.



This year is rough.

CW: Cancer, impending death

My mom is dying. That much was obvious from my previous updates this year.

I think it will be surprising if she lasts another week at this point.

She has remained in the house under hospice care, and my dad knew the hospice company he wanted to go through. Normally, they wouldn't take my mom's insurance, but they approved it and fast-tracked it because they know my dad. He does their pest control at their office, and he has occasionally volunteered in his capacity as a minister to do hospital visits and stuff.

They also did my grandmother's hospice care, and he knew the specific nurse he wanted to work with, too. She is so sweet, and I'm glad my mom has had such a bedside presence in this time, because while we try it's something my dad and I don't have. My dad is a bit too impatient even though it's out of love, and I'm just a coward.

My mom just sleeps now. It has gotten that bad in the past week. Time is immaterial in more ways than one. She had her last day outside a hospital bed sometime within the past couple of weeks. She had been weakening for some time, but I feel like it was less than a month ago when she was determined to come downstairs about every other day just to sit with us for a couple of hours, though it was absolutely exhausting for her. She would scoot down the stairs on her bottom, and it really epitomizes how determined by mother has always been to not let disability prevent her from living a life.

Then she stopped having the energy to come downstairs at all. She slept more and more, and she would wake up disoriented and frustrated with herself. We got a baby-monitor to help her not be left without help after, about two months ago, she bathed herself and needed help afterward and it took us quite some time to hear her from downstairs.

We also got her one of those little ringy-bells people set on reception desks, but she hardly ever used it. My mother wanted independence for as long as possible, and one night - the day before the hospital bed - she fell when slipping off to the bathroom by herself. It was quite the ordeal for her, myself, and my father to get her situated again, and my dad determined that night that we needed to get a hospital bed in the house for her safety.

We knew that it was sort of a death knell in itself too. My dad's exact words were, "She's going to have to get in the bed and stay in the bed, and it's going to be awful."

It's been far less awful than it could be. I really hope that she doesn't linger in this state long enough to get sores and even more problems.

She's stopped eating, though, and by now virtually stopped drinking. She doesn't seem to be suffering much either, the way she was when she was more alert.

Today the only real sign of life I have noticed is that she softly snores.

I am glad she seems to be at peace.

I go into the room sometimes and try to tell her I love her. The last time I saw her eyes open, I rubbed her arm and did.

Right now, though, I am definitely a coward and can't go in there for more than a few moments without a purpose or I start crying. A purpose would be to speak to her if she's ever visibly conscious, but I don't want to trouble sleep for her, and it breaks my heart to know how close I am to losing her. In a way, I've already lost her, and I just pray that her consciousness and heart know how much I love her and how grateful I am that this shitty year has allowed me to be with her and to know her better than I had in many years.

I've always kind of been a daddy's girl, but my mother is a tremendous woman -- frail but determined, powerful, and almost always kind.

- - -

I put up a Christmas tree. Seems pretty pointless this year, but it calms me a little to look at it.

It's honestly not so much a Christmas tree as a "red, gold, and food tree."

The reason for the season, after all. (I'm a Christian, but we don't celebrate religious holidays very seriously because we think they're superfluous.)

I should be asleep already and am not sure why I'm not except that I get strangely possessive of pain-free consciousness once a major headache passes. This may not be the most coherent post ever, but I would like to make a habit of coming here during these trying times.

Before the pandemic began to have an impact on local scheduling or anyone had really begun to process that it would have a nationwide impact in the US (because American exceptionalism), I was scheduled to do an interim teaching position from April 11th until May 13th. I worked for five days before the school let out in an effort to avoid large gatherings, etc. Tennessee trailed behind Virginia for about a week and used much looser language about it, but it eventually happened.

I got a text this morning that said that rather than possibly reopening on April 1 that we are now looking at April 27 as the earliest the schools might re-open.

Unfortunately, as a result of my being a substitute teacher who hadn't been in the interim position long enough for the teacher to run out of sick days, this basically means I get no income for the month of April at all. And I get it. I'm just exhausted with this happening over and over. And it has happened over and over to me.

And while I am somber about the impact of it on the planet as a whole and am blessed in a lot of ways, I guess what strikes me the most is how little this is any different from the same spring I had last year. Last year my father was healing from surgery, I was firming up plans to go to Japan, and I at least had a job. But before that I'd spent weeks at home and unemployed, too.

I'm feeling strangely homesick for Japan, though with things the way they are now, I doubt anyone is going anywhere for a long time yet. I want to be safe, and I want to do the right thing for other people. I just also don't really know what I am going to do about my credit card bill next month.

One thing about being home with my parents during this time that is sort of maddening is that we cannot go a day without several hours of CNN piping into the house. Thankfully my parents are reasonable enough to realize that Fox is nothing but a propaganda machine, so when my dad got a small digital cable package he got CNN instead, but they're both conservative people for the most part. It drives me crazy in many ways, but I know they're well-meaning. But damn, if the red scare doesn't have an impact to this very day. Some days my father will admit that Bernie Sanders might be the candidate who is best for my future, but between the "pro-life" issue and the fact that my parents have been taught all their lives that both communism and socialism are great evils, there is just no way they can actually support me not suffering under this financial weight forever and ever and ever and ever, as if Republicans give a damn about life, unborn or otherwise.

One of my friends recently mentioned that she felt like she might have to do like modern American ancestors' did and immigrate somewhere else to have any opportunity in life. And while she and I often have clashing lifestyle opinions, this particular phrase has really stuck with me lately. But who in the world even wants us [Americans who can't figure it out in our own country]?

The answer is, of course, SEA as English teachers if the world ever opens up again, I guess.

But yeah. My mother and I both just live in quarantine.

My mom literally lives a self-imposed quarantine.

And I just... go to work. Where I have no coworker friends who miss me right now or anything because I am always a temp. All I have here is my parents. And I don't know what to do, eventually, if I ever get the chance to decide again.

I fell off the wagon the past couple of days. Struggling emotionally to motivate myself. Feeling sort of bogged down by work and the vigilance it requires and had a killer headache last night. Anyway, here are some attempts at catching up on this list.

8. When I’m in pain — physical or emotional — the kindest thing I can do for myself is…

My first instinct is to throw myself into something, be it sleep or some activity or place where I have to stop myself from breaking down. But all that's doing is avoiding the consequences of pain. At this point, it would probably be just to let myself cry.

9. Make a list of the people in your life who genuinely support you, and who you can genuinely trust. (Then make time to hang out with them.)

1. My parents, especially my dad. (My mom just usually lacks the spoons for it and has her own untreated issues.)

And they're pretty much the only people I can make time to hang out with. Everyone else is thousands of miles away.

2. My close friends online are the other others I have, and I make an effort to spend time with them but feel like my ability to be engaging to them is shrinking.

10. What does unconditional love look like for you?

I think unconditional love is when you choose to honor your commitment to loving someone even when you don't like their actions. It is risking a person's ire in the moment for their long-term benefit. It is being selfless when it is genuinely helpful but also standing up for yourself when a person you love tries to demand or abdicate things that aren't helpful to your relationship or to them as a person.

Well, the first 45 minutes of the new year involved something of a brief devolution into crying and trying not to immediately shy away from feeling anything but numb. Trying to think and let it resolve without just choosing to wallow. I think that I have started to conflate numbing myself out without picking myself up off the ground, and it has done my mental health no favors at all.

In the past 45 minutes, I have been trying to think of anything that would be conducive to healthier patterns in the future or knowing what to do in the immediate future to make myself feel any better. I want to engage with stuff the way I used to, and I really don't know whether that is an immature desire for things to "be how they used to be" or if faking it until I make it is the mentally healthy thing to do.