So Mother said I had to pay property taxes on the house, and they're due at the end of the week.  Also, because she's paranoid, she wants me to personally deliver the check to the receptionist at the county government building.  I would do that if I could get out of work in time.

Saw my schedule when I came to work yesterday/Monday.  The only time I get out of work early (and thus go into work early) is tomorrow/Wednesday ... and dammit, that's when I have to go to the United FC Match playing that evening.  Well of course I would be scheduled to leave work early on a day that I shouldn't.  I sure as hell won't schlep all the way up to the county building only to go back down, pass my workplace, and to the Match.  That's a lot of driving, and I am not going to drive everywhere, especially with gas as expensive as it is now, thanks, Trump.  Moreover, I wish I would've gotten my schedule before I left work on Friday.  Sometimes my boss is able to release the following week's schedule by then.  If she did, I could check back with her and ask to work an early shift on a day other than tomorrow/Wednesday.

Best thing I can do it push my workday tomorrow/Wednesday down a half-hour.  Assuming we'll be offered overtime to key, I could just flow from work to Allianz Field without worrying about excessive downtime, which is what I could be facing otherwise.

Oh, wait ... I'm talking about my property taxes, aren't I?  So yeah, I have no time to personally hand my check over to someone.  Best I can do is drive up there well after afternoon rush and drop my check off at a drop box.  Hope I can find this box.  And I hope Mother will understand, but she won't, so I'll lie about not handing the check over to a human being or something.

So I finally talked to Mother about the mail.  Niece's birthday is coming up, and Mother remembered that, and she wants me to get money from the bank.  So I'm going to have to line up at the bank this morning.

But that's not something that sets me off.  This sets me off: She says that she'll pay me back ... "when they get home."  GODDAMMIT, DON'T REMIND ME THAT YOU'RE COMING HOME!!!

I Need To Stop Worrying About Bad Things That Might Happen And Instead Celebrate The Good Things That Actually Happen

Had to call Mother last/Monday night because there were a lot of bills that came in.  There were also a couple letters I thought she needed to know.  One of them dealt with a credit card that is about to close if my parents don't use them soon.  She told me to put it in a bag for mail she needs to look at "When she comes back home."  And I realized that it's been three months since they left and, even though I believe them when they say they're going to stay out in Las Vegas a little longer than they usually do, eventually they are going to come back.  And that makes me sad.  Not only have I not done a damn thing in regards to going through all my stuff, but I like living here on my own, as I usually do when they're wintering.  Them coming back, whenever that is, truly feels like an invasion of privacy.  And I will rue the day when they tell me they're returning here.

But I get down like that even though I don't know when that'll be -- or, and maybe I'm thinking wishfully, if they come back.  I know I need to look at the bright side -- very bright side in the case of Michigan winning the NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament later last night.  That means I have won about a grand in this big bracket pool I've competed in for the past two decades.  While I always play hoping I would win, never in my wildest dreams would I think I could beat out almost 1,300 entries to place, get this, fourth.  Sure, I would have rather won and pocketed the five-figure jackpot along with it.  But I was much, much closer to the bottom for last year's Big Dance.  Honestly, I am more proud of myself for finishing in 4th place in this than getting my degree.

That's something worth celebrating, and if I celebrate hard enough, I'll forget that one day, and maybe soon, my parents will come back home.

So after work yesterday/Saturday I went to the drug store to pick up something for Mother.  When I got back to my, I noticed my phone was missing.  Damn, I knew I left it at my desk.  So I drove all the way down to grab it from my desk ... until not to see it.  So I made a more thorough search of my car, and sure enough, my cell fell over to the side of my seat.

I need to, at the very last, find a cellphone case I can see coming a while away.  I like the one I have because it's durable, but it's black, and I need a color to stand out.  Hmmm ... maybe I will buy it here!

My Sister The Proxy

So I told Mother that I got my passport book and card two and three weeks (respectively) after I applied online, and she asked for my help to coach her through the online application process for her and Father at a day I had time to help her with it.  I told her on Sunday that I could help her Monday evening.

Now, I've told all of you how much of a mental and emotional drain being on the phone with My Mother can be.  I think that planning a long phone call ahead of time, like it obviously was going to be when dealing with an online passport renewal application over the phone and not while I'm sitting next to her, helps remind me that I need to be patient.  What I didn't know, however, was that my sister just so happened to be visiting my parents in Las Vegas for a few days.  Awesome!  She basically became my on-site translator and extra set of hands!!  So sis, can you do the application process for the 'Rents ... and ooh, by the way, can you help me install a new modem and router in their condo, too?

This problem of theirs goes back at least a year.  Mother complains of dead spots, namely their dining room table, which is at the opposite end of the part of their condo where their old, slow, obsolete modem resides.  It needed a new one, I suspected, and then it needed something to boost its range and help the signal break through the condo's walls.  But I wasn't planning on going out there anytime soon, not as long as this Republican administration has the gall to snatch up anyone at the airport they decided they don't like, so I figured my folks would have to just suck it up.  My sister being there, however, changes everything.  I could tell her what the problem is and how to fix it.  So once I decided she could do this (and my sis made the online application process for both Mother and Father go so smoothly), I spent the rest of the night looking up the best modem and router to buy at an electronics store and bought them, then I texted her all the information for the three of them to pick up, bring home, and set up so Mother can finally stop bitching about their shitty wi-fi.

That part did not go smoothly.  First of all, the modem I bought for them has to be hooked up with a coaxial cable.  I thought every place had a coax, but apparently this condo only connects to the Internet outside via Ethernet.  My sister tried to see if the modem would work just hooked up through Ethernet, but she told me (on the phone Tuesday night while I was at the Timberwolves Game) that it didn't.  Also, the router I got for them was just one unit of those "meshes" or "pods" or whatever you call it.  I thought one would be enough.  I thought that if I bought them a second (which, presumably, would be placed as far away as the first "mesh" or "pod," which has to be connected to the modem, in order to maximize the range), they would complain that, like, "It looks bad," or something.  My folks can be that shallow.  Well, Mother complained (after my sis attached this new router to the old modem, which she had a bit of trouble reconnecting) that there still wasn't any range.

My sister was leaving Thursday, and there was no way my parents would even dare try hooking up this second router, so my sister got my brother to buy that second router, which could be delivered the next day (which was Wednesday) because he has Amazon Prime.  (This is where I expand the universe of this blog post by reminding you that after I got home from the Game, I saw that my thermostat didn't work and, ironically, decided to accept a free trial of Amazon Prime in order to buy the same brand of thermostat so that I didn't have to do any wire work to put in a different brand of thermostat, and get it delivered as soon as possible ... even though I put in a second different set of batteries which made the old thermostat finally work.)  My sister got this second router, she installed it Wednesday, and it ... well, I haven't asked Mother yet if the range is better.

All through this ordeal, I profusely thanked my sister for doing this favor -- for our Mother, because our Mother wanted it, but frankly, for me, too.  I don't think she had running to Best Buy and spending a good chunk of one afternoon installing new wi-fi as part of her plans while visiting my parents.  I recognize that I ask ... no, use my sister a lot when I want something done.  Most notably, when I feel like I can't talk to my brother about something I need him to know, I tell my sister and she tells him.  We were in Hong Kong for Grandmother's funeral several years ago, and we were not on speaking terms then, so we asked our sis to relay any messages we needed the other to know.  She recognized that; the night after the funeral service, when I took her to this bar I wanted to go to because I needed a drink, she told me she knows what both of us are asking her to do in order to keep the peace between us.  And she almost broke down crying.  The gravity of burying Grandmother had something to do with it, of course, but being the peacemaker brings its own anguish, and that is something we make her do.

She acted as if she didn't mind putting in a new modem and router, even though she had no previous experience.  Still, besides thanking her a lot for being my proxy, I wonder if there's something else I could do for her ... or does she have a favor I'll have to pay her in kind.  Either way, that's an obligation I should do for her.  She did this for me, after all.

So ****e cancelled on me today.  Said she has a bad cold.  I believe her.  This is the first time she texted me in advance to say that she can't do it.  There was that weird day where I came over and a man was there telling me she couldn't have company.  And there was another time where I let myself in, stayed for half an hour, thought she wasn't there, left, and then got a call from her, while she was home, saying she just had overslept.  (I had plans that day, so I figured I would just start them early instead of going back to her place.)

What can I do?  She's sweet, I like her, and she is the only person I know who will, uh, let me love her like I want to.  I just don't know the next time I'll be able to see her.  Hopefully soon.

In the meantime, I'm still, unfortunately, horny.  I have thought about asking one of my stripper girlfriends to come over.  But nah; instead, I'll eat or do laundry, and then I will exercise in the evening.  I'll keep it holstered for another time.

When Second-Guessing Is The Right Thing To Do

When I leave for work in the morning, I frequently forget something to which I need to shut down the car, open the front door to my house, and disarm the alarm in order to retrieve what I left behind.  It's usually my cellphone, so it's a pain-in-the-ass to do my steps backwards and then do them all over again once I find my phone.

This time around, once I turned my car on I forgot something else, namely an envelope Mother asked me to stuff with tax forms that had to be delivered here and not to my parents' condo in Las Vegas.  I wondered when I would have the time to get to a post office to send it.  We've been so busy at work that swinging by the post office close to me would be fruitless because they would be closed by the time I'm free.  I thought Sunday would be the earliest I could do it; I would be able to go down to ****e's place for a little screw time, then in the afternoon I could go to the post office at MSP before going home.

Two things wrong with that.  First, and I don't remember when I checked, that post office branch isn't exactly on the way back.  I would have to deviate east for a bit, then jog back west in order to head north.  Second, I would be downtown both last/Tuesday night (for a concert) and tonight/Wednesday night (for a Golden Gopher baseball Game).  The downtown post office closes in the evening, so if I get out of work early enough, I'd be able to go to the post office, mail the envelope to My Mother, then do whatever I want downtown because I'm already there.

In anticipation of that, I was going to throw that envelope filled with Mother's tax forms in my bookbag so I would have it with me if I had the time to send it.  But, alas, I forgot.  Oftentimes I would remember once I am more than halfway to work, and for those time I just mentally shrug and say to myself I'll do it tomorrow.  But once I remembered the envelope after I started my car, I just kept thinking that the moonshot of leaving work with enough time to mail the envelope and then go to the concert was a risk worth taking.  So, I turned off my car, went back inside, disarmed the alarm and picked up the envelope.

And good thing, too.  While I had to stay late at work, it wasn't late enough where I couldn't still get to the post office, pay to ship the envelope, find another parking spot, and walk for almost a mile to the club to get to the concert, which began at the strange hour of 6.  And so I did all that, and I caught the last couple songs of the first of three acts and the entirety of the other two (with a DJ filling in the set changes while stagehands haul off musical equipment).  Plenty of time.  Now, I think about how badly I would have screwed myself if I remembered the envelope before driving off to work but said whatever.  Glad I trundled back inside, because a sizable chore for Mother has been done.

Doesn't Take Much For My Fucking Mother To Push My Buttons

I needed to talk to her last/Monday night about bills that came in.  I thought everything was done.  But she called back.  First of all, she called back during the weather forecast I wanted to watch, so that perturbed me.  Second of all, she worried about some stupid detail that she told me to take care of, namely writing checks instead of going online and paying herself.  And finally, she insulted me by explaining something to me that I already know and was also not what I was talking about.  That is probably due to the language barrier, but also because this happens all the time, I naturally get defensive about her condescension.

And I was being a good boy food-wise up till then.  I didn't drink any coffee at work; instead, I had a hot cocoa (given to me by my former supervisor two or three years ago) in the morning and tea in the afternoon.  After shoveling the driveway, I went out to use a gift card at a really nice brewery for chicken wings and two 5-ounce glass of different beers (plus a half-filled 5-ounce glass for free ... er, double free!!)  I thought I controlled my eating yesterday/Monday.  And then My Fucking Mother talks down to me and I'm wolfing down Dot's BBQ pretzel sticks to fill the hole she punched into my gut, and I feel all fat again.  Goddamn her.

She wants me to write and send out the checks in the morning.  I'll do it later tonight instead.  Because she can fuck all the way off.

The Downside To Having A Neighbor Who's Looking Out For You

As I have told all of you, my sister's childhood best friend lives a couple houses down from me/us with her wife and their baby.  We text from time to time, but we have been in touch more since her mom passed in December.  I wanted to give her me and my family's sympathies, and then I wished her Happy Holidays, and then this fucking occupation from our goddamn Republican government began, and that is when I really started to text/bug her about sightings and, if need be, having each other's backs if the shit hits the fan.

She has a background in security, plus she has always been observant, so in the days when I got really scared about them patrolling our neighborhood and even our street, I felt, and feel, good that she will at the very least let me know if she sees something scary.  I have not been one to reach out and be friendly to neighbors, but if and when the time comes to band together, that is when it's beneficial, if not vital, to know who the people who live next and close to you are.

With all that said ... a man has needs, and for the first time since my parents finally skedaddled, I asked one of my stripper girlfriends, ******e, to come over and play with me.  She was late, of course, and this was when I came home from downtown watching the EPL after waking up early enough to see some soccer.  My body, with the help of the Bloody Mary I had, told me to rest while I waited for her.

I woke up to both a knock on the door and a buzz from my phone.  Naturally, I checked my phone first.  There was a text -- not from ******e, whom I asked to let me know when she was close, but from my sister's best friend.  She said she saw a car pull up to the driveway, and did I expect it.  And this is what I feared: Her doing the neighborly thing all too well.

I have, or had, kept to myself because I didn't want anybody peeping on my business, especially my illicit one.  And yes, I have known her for a long, long time, so it's possible that she has seen cars come up to my house before.  But I haven't asked her to watch over me in case people are taking me away until now.  And now I know for sure that she has been looking.

So I race down the door to open it and invite ******e in.  That's when I had to think of a reply, so I just said, "Yeah, I was expecting company," and then for some goddamn reason I went, "Don't tell anyone!"  Great, now I have given her reason to think I am doing something my parents don't know I'm doing.

Look, I don't think she'd tell my folks.  After all, my parents refused to attend her mother's funeral, even though they were home and the service was virtually down the street.  My folks made her mom egg rolls, and she loved them.  That's a connection that should be celebrated, or at least memorialized, as she was laid to rest.  But they declined to go, and Mother's knee is a bullshit excuse, even though Mother never raised it (and no, I didn't ask why they didn't want to go).

So that makes me think that there's no way my sister's best friend would just blurt out one day to them that I had a chick come over.  But, would she tell my sister?  Maybe.  And that's what scares me.  I hope she plays it cool and understand I'm an adult.  And I don't think I can now ask her not to look when a suspicious car drives up to my house; these assholes are still around.  But I don't think I am going to stop asking my stripper girlfriends to come over, either.  In fact, I think I am going to ask *****y to drop by, and then, hopefully, ****e* will have time the following week to clean my house.  Will she suspect something if she sees a pattern of cars drive up to the house?  And if so, will she tell?

It's weird to think that she might be thinking I'm having sex workers at my house, I'll tell you that much.

Another Snow Day!!!

Alright, now this is getting ridiculous.  I wake up at my normal weekday time expecting to come in.  I check my phone, of course ... and I see that there has been a group text created with my boss and co-workers.  I still didn't quite understand it (or maybe I just didn't believe it), but apparently the shipment was expected to be so meager again this morning that not everyone had to come in today, either.  This text chain started a quarter after 4 this morning, so obviously I was late to the party, but from what I picked up, it was determined that there was such little work that, like yesterday, one person could come in and do my job and another person's.  It looks as though one of my co-workers volunteered to do that, and, after I texted my boss and another co-worker to make sure I'm seeing what I'm seeing, I asked, and was granted, today off.

Woo-hoo!!!  Hell yeah!!!  But damn, how bad is the storm down there?  Given the work we get is important, I thought they would need Sunday to recover, then be back fully functioning, or at least get up off the mat, by yesterday afternoon so they could at least start getting caught up with giving us a sizable shipment (if not more than a full day's shipment) this morning so we could, you know, work.  Guess not.

So we might get two days' worth of work tomorrow morning, and tomorrow is when I have to cut open packages.  I probably (unless the mid-South needs yet another day to recuperate) will be opening so many packages that I'll get carpal tunnel syndrome.  But that's tomorrow.  I have an interesting (at least to me) dilemma right now: Whether to work out at my gym.  When I got the day off today, I thought it would be a good time to finally get out and exercise.  But then I fell asleep again from around 10 till a bit before 2 -- much needed, by the way -- and now, I don't know.  It's above zero, which is miles warmer than what it was before, but it's still pretty cold.  I just saw on the map that these motherfuckers are still here; they just took a Latina woman this morning.  Finally, if I surprisingly don't have to work, do I want to start up my car?  Do I even leave the house?  You know, I think I should take advantage of this serendipity and stay at home -- completely at home, a one-day lockdown, like the weekend.  There's a bike that Mother used as a clothesline, but started using as a bike to help heal her knee.  I should get on it and just exercise here.  Yeah, I'll do that.  And I'll go out to the gym this weekend.

Anyone Want A Water Filter?

It's not good that I can't track stuff that I've already bought.  I got water filters delivered because I know it's been about a year since it's been changed.  After I ordered some, I went into my storage unit and saw that I have about three left over from a previous order.  I think I will now have four extra once I get around to putting a new one in.  Oops.

Now, to be fair, I might have changed it in the fall and thus checked whether I had extra in my unit, but my parents were here and Mother had a bad knee, so I was preoccupied with that.  Also, maybe not in my defense, storing these in my unit makes for an "out of sight, out of mind" situation where I wouldn't've remembered ever buying these extra filters until I bought more.  Finally, for some reason, Father turned off the humidifier last year.  In fact, it may have been over a year in which he didn't turn it on.  However, inexplicably, it looks as though he turned it back on some time during my parents' extended stay back at home.  I noticed, and then I got around to remembering the filter needed changing when I got an alarm last week that water was leaking from the humidifier while I was at work.  I went home, opened everything up and, beyond needing to clean the apparatus of limescale and calcium deposits, the water filter needs to be replaced.  This was an instance of "out of sight, out of mind," but in plain sight.

Anyway, I have to change my water filter, then store the extras back in my unit.  Great.

Of All The Times I Needed A Half-Day ...

Getting yesterday/Tuesday afternoon off turned out to be a godsend.  I woke up from my evening nap Monday night at around 11:45 p.m., so I didn't get a wink of sleep through the overnight.  With my body dragging, me spending the morning cutting open packages and dealing with a particularly nasty leaked bag of piss, and seeing my city still being besieged by our own federal "government," I was so looking forward to not working in the same afternoon we were all supposed to walk out.  I was even assigned to data entry, but I didn't do it; instead, I worked on figuring out this new software we are supposed to know in a couple weeks.

And I didn't make much headway into that, either.  No, I was into doing ... nothing.  Well, I take that back; I had a lot of chores I felt I had to do.  I had to:

• use my haircut coupon before it expired;
• get my photo taken for passport purposes;
• buy groceries to hunker down for this cold, cold weekend we're about to have;
• finally drag some stuff out of my storage unit
• and do something for Mother at the bank

Now, come to think of it, I was really busy, and productive.  I didn't finish all of these things before 2 p.m., which was the scheduled time we were all supposed to "walk out," but around 2:30 I shut the door with no intention of opening it unit this/Wednesday morning.  I took a shower and then, while fully naked, settled into my bed because my body was finally tired.

And I woke up around 8:30.  Wow!  Five hours of hard sleep to reset my body.  Felt really, really good, even if this continues to throw my body clock out of whack.  And my "slangriness" has completely left me.  The anxiety over these people abducting me, however and unfortunately, remains.

Expenses Without Receipts

Starting from Saturday, January 17:

• We go back to Wednesday, January 14, when I summoned up the courage and went down to My Favorite Stripclub (Cover Division) to see my ATF, whom I hadn't seen in a while because my parents were in town.  Cover, tips, drinks for her and for me and 19 table dances that I rounded up to 20 to make the money exchange easier and I spent: $233.
• On Saturday the 10th I took my friend, who was in town for work, to my favorite speakeasy.  I feel like I need to impress people when I take them there, but I hope they like it.  I think my friend did.  There was a jazz band there and I wanted to tip them even though I mainly wanted to speak with my friend.  I tipped the band: $5.
• Tuesday, January 6 ... after I took my parents to the airport, I went over to ****e's place and fucked her.  She didn't go after my cock a second time in the living room like she did the time before.  But she seemed really enthusiastic when I finally got inside her.  Well, first I really ate her meat curtains, which looked really, really full.  Then, while I was plunging into her, she sounded really, really enthusiastic, like she really needed to be nailed.  I tried arcing her back (she was on the bed and I was doing her missionary style) and lifting her up and into me.  It probably wasn't smooth, but she acted like she loved it, and therefore I loved it.  Cost: $120.
• So now we go back to 2025, specifically Tuesday, December 23, when my parents paid me back for grabbing both Kentucky Fried Chicken and lottery tickets.  Mother gave me ten bucks when I came home that night with KFC, and either Mother or Father left a pair of $20's for me when I came back from shopping.  All told, this was an Infusion of: $50.
• Oh, and before I shopped I went downtown to make sure our watering hole was cool with us watching our Game down there.  With tip, I spent for a little snack and drink there: $10.
• To Sunday the 21st ... Father paid me back for more Powerball tickets I got for him.  And Infusion of: $11.
• And early that afternoon I went to my downtown watering hole (the same place I'd be going to on Tuesday) because I wanted to finally put in for new glasses with my new prescription, and I wanted to see the Vikings Game at a place besides my bedroom, and Warby Parker was just around the corner.  I was going to go to Warby Parker first, but I thought they would open at 11, and they opened at noon, which is when the Vikings Game kicked off, so I went to watch and eat first before ordering my new eyeglasses.  Anyway, with tip I spent at the bar: $38.
• To Friday, December 19 -- went to order in-person at Caribou a small ho ho mint mocha.  With tip it came out to an expensive: $7.38.
• Tuesday the 16th I had off because that's when I brought my car in for service.  Once it got a clean bill of health and routine maintenance was the only thing(s) it needed, I went to get it washed for all the snow, salt and gunk that had accumulated.  Charged the wash so the cash is for the tip only: $5.
• With my car being as brand new as it could be, I had the confidence (as well as the time; if there was something major that needed to be replaced, I would have had to spend my day at the shop) to call up *****y and say if I and my penis could make a house call.  She had moved to her new place close to the border, but my car could make it the morning after getting new oil and its tires rotated.  The apartment she shares with her son feels more like a cottage.  No matter; unlike the townhome she used to live in, where we had to hide in her bedroom, she wanked me on the couch in the living room, right where the front door is.  If the blinds weren't closed, someone would have been able to see *****y pull up her sweater to show her big tits inside her bra, me getting hard from seeing that, me slipping out of my jeans and her jacking me off.  I don't know if I would drive all the way to see her again, but maybe!  Total: $150.
• Later, when I came back home for dinner with Kentucky Fried Chicken in tow, Father paid me back for the chicken and for Powerball tickets.  An Infusion of: $31.

This list was getting long in the tooth, but I did this EWR faster than the past couple ones.  Good through January 17.

Oh, Just Leave Me And My Shit Alone

You know, giving me tea is OK, especially if it's sweet as the lemon-flavored one Father's given me a couple times over the past couple weeks.  But he gave the tea to me because he thought I was coughing too much.  The first time yes, the second time no.

And yes, I have thought from time to time that I could use a light cord in my closet so I could actually look through my clothing.  I didn't ask My Fucking Father for one.  Now I know that he went through my closet.  Why the fuck would he be going through my closet?  He would not know at all that I can't light the light in my closet without opening it and going through my shit.  So that scares the fucking daylights out of me.  I can't shove my cum towel in there anymore because one day, he'll see fit to look through my closet just because he has fuck all to do and see my cum towel.

All these two motherfuckers have done is break every boundary I have and done things within my circle of privacy that is up to me alone.  This goes beyond meaning well.  This is them thinking they can do whatever they want with me and my stuff because they have no respect for me.  I guess I could punch them, but they'll be leaving soon, so maybe I'll just say good riddance to their meddling asses.

(And yes, I take back all the good things I said about them in this blog post.  For now.)

End Of 2025 Thoughts

My now ex-boss ... yeah, he was a guy.  Not only did he announce he was leaving through e-mail the minimum two weeks before he actually leaving, today, his last day, he didn't stay the whole day.  And he just e-mailed everybody peace before he left for his car five minutes later.  We all made a goodbye and thanks card for him, but my co-worker had to run it out to him as he was about to leave.  I think I said this before: I would rather have him than a micro-manager.  But geez, this is the guy who hired me for my first full-time job.  He helped me turn into a responsible adult.  I would have liked to express my gratitude in a less shallow way.

---

My co-worker to whom I leaned up for much of my job left at the end of 2024, so in that sense, 2025 has gone full circle.  It has been a challenge to see my job, and thus me, change, mostly because people above me were leaving.  (I forgot that my supervisor left in the late summer; I still haven't recovered from that.)  We'll get by, only because we have to.  But I have no idea what this change will bring, and I don't like change as a principle.

I think the main thing that happened in my life, though, is Mother's knee surgery.  I am able to live much of my life independently, and for the most part I love living alone.  I haven't been able to do that for the past seven or eight months because of what Mother has to go through.  I always adapt, and I am glad that she got her knee fixed (even though she complains that it is not as good as she wants it to be), but some days it hasn't been fun having them around here ... and yet, I want to cherish the times I have with my folks when they're good, like when Father helped me clear the driveway of snow, or every night I get to eat a great dinner my parents made.

My neighbor's death a few weeks ago still weighs on me.  She is the person in my life I have lost this year, so in that sense, I have been quite lucky.  That's why I want to enjoy my time with my parents when they should be halfway around the world.  One year I will look back on the year with great, intense sadness.  I know it'll happen, and I don't want it to.

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I'm driving down to my friends' place after I get finished with this blog post.  Hope I survive the drive down and back.  It's a tradition I intend on continuing for as long as possible, as a signpost that, despite all the setbacks and wrongs and pain I might have incurred through the year, I made it.

Happy New Year, everyone.  Let's make it a good one.

OK, So We Have A Date My Parents Will Finally Leave ...

... and it's about a month from now.  Oh, well. ...

Thing is, they wanted to leave next week.  I would've loved it.  It just so happens, however, that was the same day of the memorial service for the family friend who died a week ago.  I asked my boss before I left work yesterday/Friday if I could take that afternoon off; even though it was short notice, he said yes.  And so I assumed that my folks would want to pay their respects, too.  Besides, it was going to be short -- an hour to mill around and say hi, and then an hour for the service, and I guess there will be stuff to eat afterward, but that's when we could just go home.  But Mother was looking for flights on that day because they were going to be as cheap as they would be before prices went up for the holidays.

Honestly, this was a dick move by them -- and not surprising.  They don't want to be here, especially in the cold.  And when Mother got the all-clear from the physician who performed knee surgery on her, I knew it was going to be a matter of time before they were going to skedaddle.  And still I thought they were going to listen to the angels of their better nature and go to the service.

Was I going to push this?  No.  Technically, the flight Mother was looking at was going to fly out around noon.  I could take them in the morning, come back, get dressed and go to the service by myself.  That would have been fine.  I think that if my boss let me go for the afternoon, he'd let me go for the whole day.  Also, I think it's important that someone from the family go to the funeral.  Ideally it should be all of us, but if my parents' friendship with her was fake, whatever.  What mattered to me was that I go to the service to pay my respects to the lady who lived just a couple houses down from us and who was always nice to us.

Now, I guess I could have headed this conflict off if I knew before yesterday/Friday that next week was the service, but I kept forgetting to check the date.  Also, it is a bitter irony that the day they were going to leave just so happened to be the same fuckin' date of the service.  If the service were the day before, it would've been perfect.  Alas, I am trying not to be angry.  This is about saying goodbye, after all, and this neighbor's death has me thinking about how my parents are still around, though not forever.

So, my ever-parsimonious Mother decided she would look for the next date with tickets as cheap as the one next week.  And that date is ... the first week in January!  Because of the funeral service, my parents will be here for another 3 1/2 weeks!  Like I said, I'm trying not to hate God for this.  There are some plusses to them staying.  For example, even though Mother has been cleared to get on a plane, her doctor advised her to continue walking because the threat of blood clots is still there.  However, the doc also said that risk decreases over time, so I want to think that the chances of her getting a blood clot will be notably less in January than next week.  Also ... well, I guess it's alright that I can be with my folks for the holidays, even though that wasn't their initial plan.  (When Mother bought the tickets, she said Father wanted to spend the holidays with me.  That's ... well, bullshit.)

OK, I can't think of too many upsides to them being here for the holidays.  I would like to them to be gone.  With my parents out of the state, I could go out to this bar on Christmas Eve, but that would be too weird now.  And I guess there are 3 1/2 more weeks of us starting a fight over something or other.  Whatevs.  They've been here since April, I think, so what's another month at this point?  Besides, and I hate to say it, I'm scared that another member of my family is going to fall ill this month.  If that's the case, and if they're off wintering, they'll just have to fly back home.  They might as well be here and save themselves the trip.

Oh, by the way, it looks as though Father will accompany me to the service but Mother won't.  That ain't her bag or some shit.

At Least We Go Through Less Stuff In The Bathroom Now

It's been a few weeks since my sister left, and even though the house is a little emptier and quieter, there is one thing I am clearly thankful for once she went back home: We go through less stuff in the bathroom now.

It is astounding how much a third person churns through.  While my sister (and Mother, who moved upstairs in preparation for her knee surgery) was using the upstairs bathroom, we seemingly used a roll of toilet paper every week.  I remember Grandmother going through rolls that quickly, but I only think she did that because she was using too much on every visit.  Also, we cracked open a bar of soap at a frightening frequency.  Worst of all was the trash.  Father put in a too-small trash can (with a lid you need to open with a foot pedal, and that should be a blog post in and of itself) in the bathroom, and that damn thing filled up, like, twice a week.  I had to empty that thing so often it got absurd.  And by the way, if I ever get an up-close look at used tampons again, it'll be too soon.

Contrast that to when I'm the only one using the bathroom.  I go through toilet rolls maybe once a month.  I throw my toilet paper in the trash, so it does accumulate, but not on a semi-weekly basis.  And if my parents ever leave, I will feel less pressure to actually cleanse myself.  I'm sure I've reached two months before getting a new bar of soap, and I miss that longer frequency.

Mother still sleeps upstairs because she loves it, so right now we're in a liminal state between the chaotic burn rate of three people and the tranquil stasis when I have the bathroom all to myself.  We go through toilet rolls and soap bars at a slower pace, but they're still too fast for my liking.  So yeah, I can't wait for the day I have the run of the house to myself ... if I ever will. ...

When You See Your Mother Scared For Her Life, It Changes You

So the weekend after Mother got her knee replaced, I was woken up by Father knocking on the door.  My sister, who was still home at the time, told him to wake me up.

When I got myself together and went to the dining room, I saw Mother sitting straight up but with her eyes closed.  My sister asked me to hold her because, according to my sis, she was feeling really dizzy, and she wasn't responding.  While my sister called the clinic at which she got her surgery, I started to hold her in case she fell over.  Mother continued to close her eyes, but all she could do was mumble.

Father thought she was just tired and needed to go back to sleep.  But after getting only the clinic's voicemail, my sister decided to call 911.  That's when, I think, Mother's mumbling started to get worrisome, like she was trying to tell us she was scared, but couldn't say the words.  Suffice it to say, I have never seen her like this before in my life.

The paramedics came.  They saw that her blood pressure was very low, caused by a combination of dehydration, constipation, and the pills she was taking.  But this wasn't a case where they give her some medicine and she'd be OK; they decided they had to take her to the ER.

Then, I saw something I'd really never seen before ... and something from Mother I had never seen before.  The paramedics needed her to get on this hammock they laid on the floor; from there, they would carry her into the ambulance parked outside.  We reminded them that she had just gotten her knee fixed; they knew, but this had to be done.

So, like ripping off a bandage, the only way to get her to lie on this hammock was to do it right in one straight shot, even though it would hurt like hell for Mother.  And it did.  Finally, Mother was able to speak, and loudly; in Chinese, she screamed, "Ow!  It hurts!"  (All this time she didn't speak English.  She must have been in some pain so deep that it made her revert to the long-term memory spots in her brain where she only knew Chinese.)  And she was really, really screaming, as if she was a little girl, howling for her suffering to stop.  I have known My Mother all her life as a domineering and even mean woman, oftentimes indifferent to other people's feelings.  But her she was, begging, even pleading for help, almost to the point of tears.  I've never seen her sound so ... well, helpless before.

---

We met Mother at the ER about an hour later.  Her eyes were open, she seemed awake and lucid, and she could even speak English again.  She was released several hours later with advice that she should drink water and electrolytes a lot more.

Mother hasn't been in that dire straits since, thank Buddha.  But the memories of that day are flooding back now that our family friend passed away unexpectedly.  While I was seeing her act like a little girl, I was thinking, "No, this can't be serious.  She can't be in real danger, can she?"  And while I don't know all the details about our family friend's death, I wonder if her relatives thought the same thing.  Maybe I haven't appreciated how close Mother was to the end.  But maybe her cries for help are something I have to heed if ... no, when the time really comes.  And that scares the hell out of me.  Because I am not ready for that, at all, and I don't think I ever will be.

The Light At The End Of The Tunnel?

So last week Mother was told by her physical therapist (she was taken by my brother) that she was progressing so well that she doesn't have to do any PT sessions anymore.  That's odd.  That is five total sessions cancelled because she was doing so well.

Therefore, what we were hoping for may still be true: Once the doctor looks at Mother's knee, if she gives her the OK, she is, for all intents and purposes, fully healed.  And, presumably, she is good enough to fly to somewhere warmer for the winter.

If so ... honestly, I have mixed feelings right now, but eventually, it'll be thank God.

So a family friend died yesterday morning.  She broke her leg a couple weeks ago.  She was in physical therapy.  Some more ailments piled up on her, but then she felt a bit better ... and then she didn't.  And now she's dead.

She lived just down the street from us.  We could see her house from ours.  Last time I saw her was when my sister and I were walking around the neighborhood for Halloween.  We stopped in her house to say hello.  She was a really nice person.

I'm still trying to process all this, but this death is really bothering me.  Mostly because of the suddenness.  My Mother was in physical therapy, and it looks as though she is going to be fine.  But this friend of the family never gets out?  That's not fucking fair, at all. ...