Odyssey

I took the train out mostly because it was cheaper than flying, and also because the train station is closer to my house than the airport. And also because I wanted some time alone. It didn't turn out to be a great cross-country odyssey, though. On Friday night, I sat in my seat, whizzing across the countryside, eating the Subway sandwich my friend John thoughtfully packed and gave to me, and drinking. I drank two ciders while watching Breaking Bad on my computer.

I had a little shot glass in my purse. Dereck bought one two weeks ago-- yes only two weeks ago-- in the airport when we were flying home from Christmas with my parents. My dad had a year to live. I was planning to return in 4 to 6 weeks when he started chemotherapy.

It is still less than two weeks since I left.

The shot glass says, Eat, Drink, and Be Merry, for Tomorrow You May Be in Utah. My friend Michael, also from Utah, got me one on *his* way back. I guess it was just that kind of Christmas break.

Along with my shot glass, I had a bottle of honey bourbon, so I started filling it and drinking while I watched. I may have lost track of what I was drinking, there in the dark. I got off the train around midnight for a cigarette and realized I was tanked beyond anything I would have guessed when I didn't have to move. I was grateful, though, because it is hard to sleep in a chair on a train. I went back up to my seat, put my computer away, and passed out on a heap of down coat, train pillow, quillow, and travel bag.

Until 4am when I had to use the bathroom. Got up, went downstairs, used the bathroom. Went up. Tried to sleep. Went back down to the bathroom. I can't remember whether it was my second or third trip down that I knew I was going to throw up. I was hoping it was the kind of hangover where one good vomit will cure what ails you, and then you can sleep it off. Hahahahahahahahaha.

I went back up to my seat and was down again in that bathroom faster than I know how I managed it, in the dark, down a narrow, curved stairway, on a train. The movement of the train made me sicker. But, I tried to go upstairs again, ever hopeful. Again, I managed to get downstairs before I was really in trouble, but I had to charge into a different bathroom. This one was handicapped accessible, and a little bigger. I dry heaved for awhile, and then sort of sat on the floor and dozed between sessions of dry heaving. At around 7:30 a.m., I was able to make it back up to my seat, hope nobody had heard me upstairs, not care though if they did, and slept until nearly noon.

So, my plans to work on the train Saturday were officially over. I managed a little sprite and some pretzels and then later some pepsi. I watched more Breaking Bad. By 4pm, I was so sore from the train and sleeping awkwardly, and my little sojourn on the train floor that I was pacing in an empty car because sitting hurt too much. I signed up for a proper dinner, and just kept sort of walking back and forth, pausing to look at the beautiful Rockies whizzing by. Good thing I've taken this train ride before multiple times, or I would have been sorry to miss it.

At dinner, I sat with a nice couple who lived in California, but had been visiting their son in Denver. We talked about their careers, my husband's career (they never ask what I do-- just what he does, and I didn't really care, so I didn't bring it up), our kids, and sort of listened in on other table conversations about the awful train dessert options. I ordered a steak and baked potato, salad, and veggies. I knew I had to replace the electrolytes and calories I'd lost, so I also had two cups of milk. The glass of shiraz I ordered sat untouched. I ate half the steak. It was very good-- but my stomach was still Angry. I didn't even ask for a doggy bag. I didn't want to sit and have to smell it for four more hours on the train. It seemed so wasteful, but I let it go.

Then, I crawled back to my seat for more TV viewing until we reached Provo, where my brother picked me up.

It's disrespectful, but since my dad isn't home right now, and he won't be going into the garage much I bet, I've sort of set up a little station with my cigarettes, lighter, and an ashtray I made out of a plastic bottle filled a little way with water. It's better than smoking out on the porch in front of the neighbors, and not as cold. But it does stink up the garage.

My mother had been angry with me for a few days. I had been on the phone with her, had another call, and told her I had to take it. Last week was complicated-- my mother didn't see my father all week. It wasn't until Friday, I think, that my brother told her how grave my dad's condition really is. She is absorbing it all sort of like a sponge with a hole in it. (Yes, that's a joke, albeit a poor one). Some sections of the sponge get wet and absorb water, and in other places, the water just runs through and information never really settles in. When I got off the phone with her, though, she thought I was angry with her. We had been arguing because my aunt Susan offered to take my mother for a week (or a month) as a transition time before a nursing home (or assisted living facility-- she doesn't need a skilled nursing home yet). She didn't want to go, so when I got off the phone abruptly, she misunderstood, and I didn't remember to call her back. In fact, I avoided speaking to her a little because I was afraid I'd tell her over the phone that my dad is dying, and I didn't want her to be told that way.

When I woke up this morning, I knelt before her first thing and told her that I wasn't mad, that I had another call, and that I love her. Don't go thinking I'm a good daughter just yet, folks. I do what I can, but on and off the day, we also bickered. She is tucked in at night like an exhausting (and exhausted) preschooler, and I am sitting in the dark in the living room like the repentant mommy who thinks they are so cute when they are sleeping. Only my mother wears a breathing apparatus for her apnea that makes her look like an elephant, and it's way more irritating than cute when she walks around the house in it for an hour before she goes to sleep. She did that so she wouldn't have to interrupt my dad when he went to bed, though. I noticed that tonight she waited until she went to bed to do it. I was touched by the consideration she showed him when he was here. She wants me to sleep with her tonight, but I don't know if I can. The mattress is one of those weird, plush things that won't move when someone else gets off the bed. It's hot up here. I don't want to turn down the heat, because my brother is in the basement, and ever since his stroke, he gets cold and it's hard for him to get warm.

And it's my dad's side of the bed. I want to comfort her-- my grandmother wanted me to sleep with her too, when my grandfather passed away. But I can't sleep in my dad's place. Even though he is still alive. That part is so very temporary now. I could tell when I got to the hospital to visit him today that he wasn't sure I was going to make it, and I immediately felt guilty for not flying. He told me he worried about me all weekend. God. I just saw him for five or ten minutes. He gave me his hand. We were able to be in the room as a family and tell each other how much we love each other. He was wearing an oxygen mask,and it was hard for him to talk. He told us he wanted to sleep, so we left.

When we got down to the parking garage, I lit a cigarette. Matt and my mother didn't say a word. They got the car and pulled it outside, letting me walk, smoking, and wiping my face, to join them and drive away, leaving my father there.

Tomorrow, he will be transported home by hospice, and they will set up a hospital bed for him. He asked to be in the guest room. I think I understand that-- it's near the bathroom, and easy for him to call to us in the next room. I wonder also if it isn't that he doesn't want to die in the bedroom where he lived. I don't know. I don't want to ask-- it seems personal. I'm not questioning his decision. I do have a morbid curiosity though, and maybe I'll regret not asking, or just be my typical gauche self and ask.

We went to Red Lobster for lunch after the hospital, but we asked for the meal to go after all. It's very hard to describe a day with my mother. I need to read more about dementia because I don't understand the whole holy sponge thing-- why she gets that she needs to have a colonoscopy next week, but doesn't understand that when my dad comes home, she isn't going to be able to barrage him with questions about burial plots and finances. She is very upset because she wants to have a lot of cash on her. But she loses cash-- just shoves it into her purse with five lipstick tubes and seven half-empty bottles of eyedrops, and a bottle of Hydrocodone. She took four today because she was having a lot of pain-- that is the maximum dose in a day. I need to take that bottle from her and monitor that.

We explained over and over and over that she has a credit card. She has $73. We are here. She doesn't drive. In any circumstance in the world in which she would want to spend money, someone else will have to take her. She is arguing, albeit ineffectively, for autonomy she cannot have and we cannot give her. She is furious, confused, and upset. However, the simple fact is, her life is going to change in huge ways. She cannot live on her own. She can't even stay in the house on her own. I may sleep on the couch because I worry about her being upstairs on her own. She wants to move in with one sister, or move in next door to another. We told her that the first is a short-term solution, the second is out of the question. She insists that she is good with money and turns off all the lights before she goes to bed.

She is not going to make this easy for anyone.

Today when we got home from the restaurant, I pulled Matt aside and told him that maybe we just have to let her *see* that she can't function alone, starting with not getting out her food and fixing her a plate. Make her do it herself. We had to stop when she tried to pick up a hot pan without an oven mitt, just to move it aside. Fortunately, Matt was right next to her. But it's clear that she cannot even fix herself a place of food, get herself a cup of coffee, or wash a dish. She can use the channel button on the television to go up or down one channel. That is all. She cannot turn the TV on.

Every day is like a Heinrich Boll short story. She gets up, talks about how the pain is worse than it's ever been, and gets up and goes to the bathroom. She comes back, talks about how she can't find her eye drops. She sits down. She gets up and goes to the bathroom. She comes out and starts talking about being constipated. My dad's sister called. My mother wanted to talk to her. "How are you doing, Pat?"

"I'm not doing very well. I'm very constipated."

I finally asked her what I'd considered asking her at Christmas time. I know of one option she could try for that problem. She said she would try it. So, I took her to my little smoking circle of the garage and tried to teach her how to smoke. She wasn't bad at it, though she complained later that it upset her stomach. I think it did help a little too. I mean, come on. She is 70. What the hell is the point of not smoking now?

There are about four central conversations we have throughout the day: 1) she needs to get her hair done  2) the pain is worse today than it has ever been, and she cannot figure out why 3) she has to go shopping because she has had these shoes for 2, 5, or 20 years, and her feet hurt. She can't wear the new ones she just got, because... her feet hurt. 4) Is anybody hungry? Are you hungry? Are you? Until one of us just can't stand it anymore and gets up and makes food for her, because no, we are not hungry. We are sick at heart, we are hung over, we are away from our loved ones and children, and our father is lying alone in a hospital bed, sleeping away what little life he has left, while trying to breathe.

My brother finally cornered the doctor who kept spouting out bullshit like, "Two to three months," and the doctor confessed that he is the Pollyana of doctors and it's more like two weeks. Thank you, Dr. We don't want Lewis Carroll. Take off the fucking rose-colored glasses. You told us two weeks ago that he had a year. Just fucking tell us the truth. There are things that must be done. My father has been my mother's only caregiver. We must now step in and fill the role, figure out the medications, cancel his appointment with the cardiologist on Tuesday, and grieve while we are taking care of them both.

My sons are worried about me. I told them, "It's not like we sit around crying all day. We watch TV. We fix food. We bicker." But honestly, I have no idea where this day went or what I did with it besides manage my mother, alternately trying to be patient and then raising my voice. We raise our voices because along with the dementia, she also has a mean streak a mile wide. She told us from the backseat today that she wishes she had thought harder about having children if we were going to put her into a nursing home. I just laughed and told her, "Well, we'd both still be here anyway, so go right ahead." Adopted children can get away with that shit.

See? Not a very nice daughter. But honestly, she would try the patience of a saint. My dad would be gunning for sainthood for keeping her at home if he were so inclined to run.

I think some of what we are saying is starting to sink in... until tomorrow anyway. She asked finally if she could look at the facility before we just moved her in. Yes, of course. She asked if she could have her couch. Yes, of course. I don't know where this reluctance to go to a facility comes from. I guess I make my office from my laptop bag, and I make my life largely with my loved ones and friends and too much stuck-in-my-head time. Which four walls surround me don't make that much difference. I know I'm going to end up in a nursing home, and I know that I may eventually get dementia. She keeps asking us, "How would you feel?" and she loves to tell us that we do not know what suffering us. Not compared to her. Let me remind you that my brother had a stroke in November.

We tell her, "We know that this is very hard. We are not trying to abandon you. We are trying to do the right thing, and this is very hard for all of us. But the responsible thing is not to hand over the bills to you and let you live alone."

"But I know how to write a check."

The possibility of online bills is outside of what she can grasp.

How do people do it? How do they put their parents into facilities? If she refuses to go, then we will take the awful next step and have her declared legally incompetent. I mean, we will have to, because it's not fair to anyone to take her on full time. It sure as hell wasn't fair to my father. But my father made decisions in part based on his desire and ability to be the very best father he could be, and I support those decisions 100 percent. Life is hard. Love is not fair. She is having a very hard time dealing with what she considers to be the raw deal of her life. Who is this woman who raised me? How do I understand that life doesn't owe us anything, and she does not understand this? We tell her over and over, "Do you think we are happy about this? Don't you think we wish you could live on your own? Don't you think we wish it was different?"

Oh, but her neighbor lives alone, and her husband died. My grandmother lived at home until she died-- almost to the minute. She died in the car as my uncles were trying to rush her to the hospital. I can't imagine how horrible that was for them.

The hardest parts of all of this are the ones I can't quite articulate yet. Wondering how my dad feels, what is he thinking? Is he ready? He told his sister he is at peace. Is he?

My friend Chris lost his mother very suddenly on New Year's. He gave the sermon at her service, and he shared with me this quote from his grandfather, with his comments after:

 If I could have one wish for my children, and I’ve thought about this, it would be for each of them to experience, recognize, and appreciate one day of tranquility. One day. It would be too much to ask for that to happen to all of them on the same day,that would be a miracle. But, if I’m wishing…

That’s what he wanted for all of us. Of all the things he could wish for, that’s the one he picked – tranquility. That stuck with me. Later when I was in college and studying philosophy, the question came up: what is the highest good? In other words, what’s the best thing to hope, wish, or strive for? Do you know what Aristotle arrived at when pursuing this argument? Tranquility. Now, I’m certain Donald Hillis never read any Aristotle, but he instinctively and intuitively put his thumbtack in the same place on the map as did one of the most important minds in the history of philosophical thought. Granddad wanted tranquility for his offspring; more than happiness, more than confidence, more than success. That was his wish.

And I am sharing this here, not only because it's beautiful and eloquent, but because yes. Tranquility. I want my father to have tranquility. I want him to have peace. He told his former graduate student and friend last week that he has had a good life, but he was still wrapping his mind around all of it. It is happening so fast. I was happy that he told his sister he is at peace. It's hard for my father to talk about emotional things with the people he loves the best. The corollary is that I know if I were in his place, the hardest thing for me would be to leave my loved ones behind with their grief. So, I am trying not to show him how much this is affecting me and how much this is hurting, because it will hurt him.

The thing about most of us growing up and knowing that sometime, somewhere, chances are that our parents will not outlive us. But each death is impactful and important and significant, particularly when it is our parent, the person who has always been there to answer questions, provide reassurance, who has been there every. single. day. of our lives.

I can make myself crazy wondering if my father was happy enough, thinking about whether or not I believe in any kind of after life. What is awful is that I won't wonder about my mother. I know she has had a mostly unhappy life, filled with suffering, and that is going to be awful in entirely other ways.

It would be so comforting to think.... but I don't know. I don't know. I am not going to have a deathbed conversion when it isn't even my deathbed, and I'm not really sure what my father thinks. But I think he thinks this is the life we have. And if this is all we have, then what I wish for him most is tranquility and to be able to let him go.

Hospice

Wow, things are escalating so fast that I actually feel a little out of breath from the shock and surprise of it. As I told Heather on the phone earlier, "It's one thing to think words like 'hospice' and 'two-to-three months' and another to hear them said out loud-- or to find yourself saying them."

I have still not talked to my dad's doctor, but I got a nurse to tell me that they were planning to release my dad after the weekend... into a hospice care facility. I then convinced a social worker I knew a bit more than I do-- I dropped the word hospice and found out that my father asked about it this morning.

Then, I got hold of my dad. And I told him we are coming. And he is glad. Matt is driving out there as I type this. I just bought a one-way train ticket. He has decided not to pursue chemo because it's just a race now to see which organ fails first from the cancer. "It's a very fast-acting cancer" he told me when I said this was very different from what we had heard just two weeks ago. Apparently so. Well, Matt and I didn't really think a year was realistic, but wow. This is happening so fast. They said a year two weeks ago. They are saying two to three months now-- so, will I get out there in time? In time for what? How many times do you say goodbye exactly?

Of course, there is also the matter of my mother. And she must be freaking out right now. I am sure she does not yet know about hospice, Matt's visit, or the short prognosis. She hasn't seen him since Monday-- my dad was feeling awful and didn't want visitors. Our plans for her change daily or by the minute sometime, but we are all concerned with trying to mitigate her own fears and concerns and grief. I cannot for the life of me, given what I have learned, imagine why I am still in Missouri. Why didn't I know that I should have been out there all week? What was I waiting for?

However, let's not forget that I still have not spoken with the actual doctor. Things seem to be changing constantly. The only constant may be change, but does it have to occur so quickly?

Family crises are exhausting, Continued

Our sudden arrival in Utah seemed to drive it home to my mother that perhaps the news about my father is serious. He was waiting to hear more about his scans from his doctor, and got a phone call from the nurse instead: "We are referring you up to Huntsman Cancer Institute." Well, that was probably a year and a half overdue. The doctor ended calling my dad the day I left Utah to apologize for being out of town so much last year. I would like to pick out a few tall, male friends to come with my brother and I to pay this doctor a personal visit.

My dad wasn't feeling well-- very tired, nauseated, no appetite. He would sleep for most of the morning, get up and drink an Ensure shake, and return to bed for another nap. He'd be up for maybe 5 total hours a day. We finally got an appointment for HCI for the Wednesday after Christmas, which was Tommy's birthday. They ended up changing this to Thursday, when the weather was abysmal.

Christmas passed quietly without much event. The kids got an XBOX 360, so that helped them pass the time. We also did try to get them out a bit in the snow and to the nickel arcade and to play laser tag. However, we all spent a lot of time at my parents' condo. My brother arrived the Monday after Christmas with his family. Dereck and I met them at the train station at night and we stopped at the state liquor store on the way back to my parents' house.

While we were in Utah, we worried. We worried about money, we worried about my mother's dementia, which means she now requires 24-hour supervision, and about the fact that right now my sick father is her primary caregiver, and the fact that Matt and I don't live in Utah. Matt is exhausted, and I am absolutely determined, with class flashing, that he should not be assigned a caregiver role here. I need him to get well. I need him not to get worse. I need his body to repair itself, and for him to keep his blood pressure down.

On Thursday morning, there was a little discussion over who would drive to Salt Lake City from Provo for the appointment in the snow. My dad insisted he was fine. My brother offered, but technically he *still* shouldn't be driving. I finally insisted on driving. My dad was later proud of me when I successfully avoided two traffic accidents due to the weather by keeping my head, downshifting, and turning into skids. It was a long drive.

The oncologist says that Stage 4 Melanoma is considered incurable. However, the cancer is not directly attacking any of his major organs at this point, so they were going to see if he qualifies for a clinical trial of palliative treatment. Any treatment is aimed at quality of life, not extension of life, though. They are also measuring his lesions. We mentioned that my dad was sleeping a lot, and the doctor asked him if he was depressed by the diagnosis.

My dad did perk up considerably after his appointment. However, we had still not contacted insurance or put any plans in place for home care or assisted living or our mother, and my dad kept saying that they would take care of it. So, with nothing in place except the addition of my brother and I to their bank account, we came home after almost 2 weeks.

Last week, my aunt Ann came up for a day and stayed for most of the week. I talked to my dad and he was talking about having my mother in a nursing home in two or three weeks, while I had spun fantasies to myself that we would have her go to an adult daycare as a transition and then do home care and then keep them together at home as long as possible.

However, what's the prase? About God laughing when we make plans?

Burke kept in close touch with my parents through the weekend. Matt spoke to Tom Sunday night and reported that Tom sounds "done."

Monday, he was having some trouble with breathing, even though he is on oxygen at night. Burke came in and took my dad to the ER. They admitted him and that night he told me that they were looking at his heart. The next day the nurse told me that it's the cancer and Burke started talking about transferring my dad to Huntsman Cancer Institute. They moved him up there today, telling me that now it's his kidney functioning that is a concern. Tomorrow they are going to drain fluid from my dad's stomach. I don't know what is causing this.

Since my dad is in the hospital, and we don't know how long this will be, we have to figure out what the best course of action is for our mother. This is more difficult than anything else. Ann couldn't even convince Pat to spend a week out of town. My aunt Susan graciously offered to take my mom in Idaho for a month, but Pat called me today to tell me that that's not going to happen. She insists that she has to be home so she can "look at Tom every day." I assured her that a) she doesn't need to do that and b) she can't ask others to stay with her and drive her to him daily. She snapped, "I'm not asking!" I know she is grasping for her independence, but she cannot stay alone. Therefore, in light of the fact that she is unsafe staying alone, she is going to have to acquiesce a bit to the needs of her caretakers.

She thinks her caregivers will do the right thing for her and keep her at home, but I know she is flailing for remnants of control. She kept repeating that she couldn't find the checkbook. When I asked her what she wanted to write a check for, she said the monthly bills. Well, she can't be trusted with the monthly bills right now, either. And she gets upset when she reports that Burke has decided to come take care of this or that. It offends her status as eldest child, and threatens her autonomy. But how do you gently allow someone with dementia to keep their dignity when the simple truth is that their autonomy has been gone for a long, long time? I told Burke that when the time comes to put her in a home, I will come out. I told him that we have to be careful about how much choice she thinks she can assert about going to Susan's or home. I said, "It is eventually, for someone, going to be very very unpleasant. And I can be that person."  She thinks I'm in on it anyway. She calls accusing me of already knowing about things (like her going to Susan's).

She is on the phone with me now, talking in circles, not making sense. Burke called, so I got off the phone with her quickly.

Burke is ready for us to come out, at least for moral support for our dad. None of us really know what is going to happen when-- how bad this is, whether the cancer is worse than they thought, but we all agree that it's coming a lot more fast and furious than any of us anticipated. And maybe rather than trying to juggle my mother to Susan's, we just need to put her in a home now, so my dad can at least have some peace in his final days.

I cried so much the first few weeks of this, but now I don't even have the energy. I went to bed on Sunday afternoon for a nap and I couldn't get back out of bed for longer than a trip to get more orange juice and go to the bathroom. I felt dizzy, but just also so tired, just sick, so I just slept and slept and slept. I've been asking Burke daily to tell me when I need to come. I've been dreading and postponing it just for the sake of my own health. But now I better go and start looking at plane tickets. Matt will go out tomorrow.

Family crises are exhausting.

My dad specifically asked me to keep this off Facebook, so I have kept it off my profile and off my status. But I have to write about it somewhere, mainly because I use FB as a way to communicate to several people at once. The blog is another way to do that, and right now communicating about this with people is far too exhausting and time consuming.

I'm going to back up to July 2009. My father noticed a scab on his finger. He didn't think much of it, though, even though it kept returning because he was having some trouble breathing and with his chest. In August, he had a triple heart bypass.

When he had had a chance to recover from the bypass, he got his finger looked at. Last March, 2010, they removed half of the finger, his right ring finger, and 39 lymph nodes. He was diagnosed with melanoma. The doctor believed he had gotten all the cancer with surgery, so my father didn't receive chemotherapy or radiation, nor a referral to the Huntsman Cancer Institute. It turns out that probably all three of those things needed to happen.

My father started to notice black marks under his arms. But he was screened for cancer every three months, and his primary care physician did not think the marks were cancerous. Well, of course, he was wrong.

November 2010, my 39 year old brother, healthy brother has a stroke. It turns out that he has a congenital disease, very rare, called fibromuscular dysplasia. It causes a narrowing of the renal arteries, high blood pressure, and deterioration of the carotid arteries, which resulted in a stroke. Fortunately, apart from extreme fatigue and inability to work or focus for long periods, he has no deficits from the stroke. My parents drove to Colorado while my brother was in the hospital.

We were planning to have Christmas in Missouri with Dereck's parents coming out. We were going to go to Utah in the Spring, because Christmas is so difficult to travel during, and expensive, and exhausting. Friday December 18, my dad called me and told me that the melanoma has spread indeed to his under arms, and also to his liver and his lungs. Once it has traveled a "distance," like that, it is considered to be Stage 4 and incurable.

We were in Utah 5 days later, en famille, for Christmas.

To be continued.

I don't think I need to password protect my blog. The other night, I played around with new templates for awhile. If I am going to make a little home here again, I need to dress it up a bit. I really like CSS and blog design, but I don't want to get caught up in that right now. This is orange and swirly. That makes me happy. I really respond to bright colors.

But after it was all dressed up, I felt sort of paralyzed. So, I wrote one of the most maudlin and whiny blog posts that has ever been written. And had the good sense to realize early into it that I did not have to push that orange button that says PUBLISH POST. I could hit the soothing blue SAVE NOW button. So, that is what I did.

Yesterday morning, I decided to go on strike. "Against what?" Dereck asked me via IM. I thought I could detect a certain wariness in his tone (except that he was typing, so I was projecting). "Against the crazy," I told him. Not the crazy so much as the depression, the endless loop of frustration I've been caught in. When I wrote that blog post Sunday night, I didn't have any idea how I could get off the merry-go-round. But somehow, yesterday, I knew.

It was sort of a combination of things that revealed themselves. I closed the computer yesterday, determined not to spend all day either looking for jobs or sending off resumes or wondering what I was missing. I grimly assessed that if I were smarter or more creative, I'd have found a way through, out, or around this. I decided that every other person on God's green earth gets to spend time cleaning their house without fear of judgment because they are cleaning instead of searching for more employment. So, in that case, I could spend some time on hearth and home too. In fact, I think it's generally encouraged.

I vacuumed, and then I got a basket full of unmatched socks. I turned on the television and stopped surfing at 8 Rules for Dating My Teenage Daughter. I wanted to see Kasey Cuoco in it, as I like her character Penny on The Big Bang Theory. Of all the episodes to be airing, my introduction to the show was the episode in which the family deals with Paul's sudden death, which mimicked that of John Ritter, the beloved actor who died far too young. I sat and folded and sniffled a bit. With the second load of clothes, I got smarter and put on some Lie to Me.

While I was vacuuming and folding and sniffling and watching, I sort of gave my unconscious mind a break while I was awake and let it work on some stuff for awhile. A friend asked me last week if she could hire me to help her with some writing. I agreed, and she was happy with the results, and I got a little ego boost and a reminder that my lack of projects right now is not because I am incompetent. And by projects, I mean outside of my part-time contract here in town. But that contract is up on March 31, 2011.

So, as a result of doing this work and kind of calming down all day to take care of my home and things for my family, I found myself blurting out a small business idea to a friend. So, that's something I hope to launch soon. Last night at dinner, Dereck and I were talking about the permaculture center here in town. We were saying that it's hard to go backward in time and also standard of living to a permaculture kind of life. Maybe if we didn't have teenagers, we could consider it. Maybe sometime we will. But that conversation, paired with all the crocheting I've been doing, and a reminder that I make really good bread (I'm trying not to be boastful, but really. I have earned my stripes.). And suddenly it started to gel that when I had a much busier schedule as a medical writing consultant, I still got my paychecks from a number of different sources. It takes getting used to. Having a set monthly income is a gift, and I've had it long enough now to get soft. I have become dependent on it-- and despondent at the thought of no longer having it.

Wow. Need to get a grip.

Really, it's technology that we would have a hard time giving up. Both the acquisition of it and the monthly fees to sustain: internet, cell phones, cable, World of Warcraft, and so on. But how much do we *need*? What and where can we cut so that it is feasible for me to pursue things like writing a lot more while still putting bread (no matter who makes it) on the table? And why is it important for me to be able to pursue that right now? Because it's time. It's time for me to seize my career instead of waiting for it to come and invite itself in. And not just a way to make money. I want a career. And my vocation is that of writer. So, in order to have a career, I must write. And in the spaces in between, I will write grants and edit manuscripts, I will crochet hats and scarves, and I will bake bread, and do whatever else I can to bring in money. I want, but do not need, new shoes for Fall. I want but do not need to buy new books. Jen, meet Library. We have put our Netflix on hold.

And all of this is because I'm a freaking ant and not a grasshopper. If you looked at my bank balance, you might think I was being premature. However, I look at that and think, "Income in April. Okay, now think about May." Being an ant is hard. You are so small that every crumb you carry back to your hill or your nest or your hive or your swarm or wherever it is that ants have to travel to makes just a tiny dent in the amount of food you all need to survive the winter. I'm an ant making tiny dents, almost imperceptible to the human eye.

But what I have come to see this week, thankfully, as a way to preserve my own mental health and the subsequent happiness of my family, is that what was working before-- making my entire living from medical editing-- is no longer working. I need a different infrastructure, a different way of looking at how much money I think I need to earn, and from where I feel I need to earn it. If my primary identity and career are that of WRITER, then anything I am doing that is not writing is feeding my family. However, the WRITER will feed me. And frankly, I'm starving to death.

Hickory dickory dock

I don't want to think of this as a return to blogging. I don't know yet whether this is a solo post or a beginning-- I don't want to commit to it, because the commitment won't be genuine. I do need a platform that encourages daily writing, though. If I get warmed up by blogging, I'm hoping that will lead to more work on other writing projects I seem to have a hard time opening and working on.

One of the bad things about blogging over a period of years is that you can see when you haven't made any real progress in your life. For example, I'm once again struggling with not having enough work to keep me really busy, and that leading to depression. I start to think, "If you were smarter/more creative/better at what you do, then you wouldn't be in this predicament. This is all within your control, and the fact that you are attempting to control it unsuccessfully means that you are simply not good enough. Your all is not good enough."

Writing it down is helpful. It's easier to see on paper how ridiculous and whiny and self-victimizing that train of thought is. Dereck is really good at saying, "Okay, you've done your best, so just wait for a bit and see what comes of it."

I tend to think that consequences should be immediate. It was so easy for me to get new clients when I first started consulting that I grew to expect that. I could simply ask the universe, and I would go check my email and have a new project or a new client. This Fall, I've had three promising opportunities that I've had to halt in the middle of discussions because they required relocation on my part. This has been incredibly frustrating, because there are so few opportunities to earn money here, if this community is the sole source of that income. People are facing losing employment at the university. It's not just me who is facing this. In my case, it's just a shorter contract this year that has me in a dither, worrying six months in advance about what I will be doing in April.

I am a worrier. I cannot, now that I know this situation exists, wait until March or April to worry about April. In April, I will be worrying about August. I've always been this way. You can tell me that worrying is a waste of time. Well, so is playing Bejeweled Blitz, but I still do it. You can tell me that worrying isn't good for my health. I will point to the cigarette in my hand. I am a worrier. Some people are neatniks, some people are hipsters, some people are jocks, some people are geeks. I am a worrier.

I just re-read the word worrier as "Warrior" and laughed. I wish I were a Warrior! I admire warriors. I can be inspired by them for brief glimpses. I can be a warrior for others, on their behalf. I think I can calm people and bolster their spirits genuinely and provide a groundedness and support for them that I cannot bring to myself. You would think that in order to provide strength for others that I would have some kind of perception of personal strength, but it's really quite the opposite. I'm much more likely to experience self-loathing and feelings of personal uselessness.

On the one hand, worrying is useless, but if you're always doing it, people can't accuse you of ambivalence and apathy. So, I must be afraid of those labels. If I can't support myself when I've worried about it for six months, then it isn't necessarily my fault that I have failed, it isn't necessarily something I deserve. Wow, there are some really mean and vicious voices in my head. I was just starting to wonder where *those* came from when it dawned on me.

Writing really is great. I really have to start doing more of it just for my own benefit. Blogging has really spoiled me, I think. I have a hard time writing now when I am the only audience, whether it's journaling or whether it's working on a creative writing project I may someday want to publish. I like the immediate gratification of blogging. I like having readers. I like the feedback. I tried starting a paper journal, but I write so slowly with pen and ink anymore that I lose thoughts before I can write them all down. I am an extremely fast typist, though.

So, I've created password-protected documents. But I have a hard time opening and beginning to work on it. The password makes it seemed locked down. All of these interior barriers I've let my mind set up around any work I try to do. How did this happen? When I was young, writing was as easy and necessary as breathing. Now, I feel breathless. I can't remember what it was that made writing so easy: my own room? Lots of time alone? Taking my notebook and pen down to the basement to watch television and write? It wasn't just privacy-- I was an avid journaler in college when I was surrounded by roommates and other people.

Oh yes. Silly me. My journals were subpoenaed during my divorce. If that isn't enough to shut you down as a writer and make you afraid of doing it in anything but a very ALREADY public forum, then I don't know what is.

Any suggestions on how to get over this?

The most reassuring lie

She is sleeping too much. When I was here three weeks ago, I noticed it and thought she was tired from the week. She gets out of bed and dresses. Then she nods off in the leather recliner, her head tipped back, mouth open, snoring, audible over the impossibly loud volume of the television. In the winter, it's basketball; in the summer: baseball. She rouses briefly to drink an ensure at lunch time, then sleeps away the afternoon. She falls asleep in the car on the way home from dinner. This does not keep her from sleeping at night.

My dad and my brother silently pass sections of the paper back and forth. My brother points out a half-page spread advertising the book The Lonely Polygamist, featuring the author Brady Udall. I sneer. Brady and I were friends (?)/friendly our freshman year of college at Brigham Young University. He is part of the fabric of my memories from that time, that luminous time in my life. We went to a dance together (Sadie Hopkins), and sat on an outdoor grate in the dark with hot blowing air warming us. I think it was November, but it probably wasn't that late into Fall. I don't remember what we talked about. I still have old pics around somewhere.

I sneered because when I knew him, he was a reader, and I the writer. (As Dereck just pointed out to me, "Hey, he got out there and did it." True.) I remember walking through downtown Provo with him during the spring term of our freshman year, when the town had emptied as much as Provo ever did, and perusing used bookstores. He asked me if I had read Harlan Ellison. I still have not.

Now our roles seem to have reversed. I pick up his book at the airport and read the jacket, look at his largely unchanged face. Ah, men, since you don't carry other people within your bodies, you are so much less subject to change than we are. Then I set it down and buy a paperback instead.

Almost every time I come to visit, my mother persuades me (mostly through asking incessantly) to take her shopping. She buys clothes she regrets within 5 minutes, and my father is left to return them. This visit is different. My brother drives our dad to the doctor, so I spend the day with our mother. She really can't/shouldn't be left alone for longer than a half hour. On the rare occasions that she finds herself alone, she calls the neighbors and frets. She speaks of buying a bathing suit. I do not answer.

Instead, I drive her to the Senior Center. We ask about classes, buy a membership for $3. I sign her up for a beginning computer class that she has already failed. An oil painting class she will never attend, because it meets too early in the morning, but I am feeling sort of desperately optimistic. There is a chance she will attend one of the free handicraft classes. The woman at the desk says, "You can bring your project."

"I don't have a project," my mother tells her.

"No," I say cheerily, "but you have a crochet hook and yarn! And maybe someone can help you get started." Actually, I know from experience that this has about as much chance as the computer class. However, even if she can just show up and sit and not nap, that will be enough.

She repeats like a parrot that she wants the crochet class. I tell her that this is the handicraft class. She tells the woman at the desk she'd like to take an art class. I point to the oil painting class description on our brochure, upon which I have been circling classes and writing "Free" with arrows pointing to them. I ask for a stapler and staple all the receipts together to the brochure, to put on the refrigerator later. My mother bristles when I say about oil painting, "We just signed you up for this... remember?"

Next, we go to the art supply store. However, it's not for supplies for her class. There is a difference between paying $3 for a class and droppi9ng $100 on supplies I'll just end up sneaking into my suitcase on subsequent visits.

We get pastels, a coloring book of geometric shapes she picks out and hates 5 minutes later. We get some sketch pads and pencils for me. I get an instruction book on drawing Mythological Creatures for Sam, but dissuade her from buying a $20 water color instruction book. In the evening, she watches me make rudimentary sketches: circles with shading. A tree and some grass. She wishes out loud for an instruction book, but I am loathe to give her Sam's. She won't use it. And I have already told him about it. I bought a paperback the other day, and she immediately asked me if she could have it. I order chicken with goat cheese for supper when she gets the Marsala, and she stares longingly at my dinner and picks at her meal. She drinks half my beer, after asking for a "taste." She wants what other people have. However, as soon as she has it, her interest immediately wanes.

I get out the pastels and coloring book. She no longer likes the geometrical shapes, and claims she needs something more whimsical. She knows that I am worried because she literally eats, sleeps, and poops. That's it. She is in pain and depressed. She isn't allowed to drive anymore. But this sleeping bothers me intensely. It's pathological. Even if she colors like a child, it is better than the newborn state she has entered. My father says he'll consider... something when she is either incontinent or hurts herself or others. My brother and I hear the sound of inevitability and wonder why the consummate Eagle Scout is failing to prepare. My brother and I take a walk after dinner and discuss the issue. We fear our window of getting our parents to move to one of our states has passed. We envision continuing to trek to Utah to visit them in assisted living. My father is an immovable object. He is still cognizant, competent. I read a copy of his will. It takes a court order or two doctors to declare someone incompetent. My father is in no danger. My  mother is another story. I suspect I could find more than two doctors who would be willing to sign away the remaining remnants of her independence and dignity.

She looks at the coloring book she picked out and now hates. She says she is tired. She repeats that it isn't whimsical enough. For 15 minutes, she pleads to be let out of the task of picking one shape from one page to color. She says she will do it tomorrow. I insist, until she has colored 5 geometrical shapes. She pauses after the first square to ask if there are instructions somewhere for the coloring book. I stare. "Have we really come to this?" I say quietly. "Can you truly not do this?"

I mentally shake myself afterward. I give her the crayons and colored pencils I have brought with me. I give her two of the three blank sketch pads. I give her my unread paperback. I put my arms around her and tell her everything is going to be OK.