Love In The Asylum

Fuck this week. Fuck it so hard. I don't even -

I had three papers due this week. Or, two papers and a long creative essay. I tried to have good time-management skills, I really did. But my aunt came by on Saturday and we spent all afternoon running around town on a shopping expedition (we even ended up at IKEA, which was an epic experience for another day), and by the time I got home, I had a shopping induced migraine bad enough that I pretty much just collapsed into bed as soon as she shut the door. It kicked my ass hard enough that I was still dizzy and out of it on Sunday, when I had to go to work, and my shift just about did me in. So I really wasn't good for much of anything all weekend. Can you see where this is going? Three all-nighters in four days, what the hell. Most of this week is just a blur. I got everything done, which is a big step up, but I hate putting myself through this every time. And I hate being so exhausted I can't think straight.

The Marie Claire thing has my fat ass all angry and defensive about my right to walk across a room without people pointing and laughing. So of course the essay I've got to workshop this weekend for my non-fiction class is about how the obesity epidemic is killing our babies with deathfat!!!1!1! And I just, I read through it when she handed it out and I'm sure she means well, and it isn't even that fatphobic, but I cannot even deal with this. I don't know how to objective about this. It's not my job in workshop to school her on HAES and FA but I don't know how I can sit there and talk about style and not the fact that she's treating me like a medical condition and a moral failing.


And this should have gone first, because it's the only thing that really matters, but I can't even think about it. I can barely be coherent about it. My mom called me while I was eating lunch just now and told me my grandfather's girlfriend M, who as previously stated is the most awesome person in the universe, went into hospice today. They think she'll probably pass away tonight or tomorrow. I just...this is awful, and I don't know what to do. I can't imagine what this is like for my grandfather. My grandmother was first diagnosed with brain cancer in about 1990, and he spent fifteen years watching her get sicker and weaker and more confused until she died in 2006. I can't imagine what it's like having to go through that for a second time.

There's probably not a lot anyone can do at this point, but good thoughts/prayers for the two of them would be sorely appreciated. I wish I could be there.

People Who Are Pissing Me Off Today:

1. Asshole grad students who don't give back to their school and don't even have the decency to tell me no. I am so fucking sick of getting hung up on just because people think you are allowed to be a jerk to me over the phone. BE FEBRUARY NOW.

2. Idiots in the Democratic Party who don't know how to win elections, or what to do with the government once they've won after all. BE MORE INCOMPETENT DEMS. Also the idiots in Massachusetts who voted for Brown because Coakley doesn't know baseball players or what the fuck ever.

3. People on the internet trying to defend their experiences/pre-conceived narratives by de-valuing my experiences, dredging up a whole shit-ton of issues I don't even want to get into, except that it involves way too much of me being bitter about having internalized stupid things people said to me years ago.

ALSO IT WILL NOT STOP BEING COLD AND RAINY. FUCK WINTER.

(If it wasn't really obvious, today has not been a happy day. >:( I'm going to crawl into bed with Being Human episodes until I feel less like punching the universe in the crotch.)

Good Thing: My grandfather had the surgery and came out alright. No word yet on how the surgery actually went re: fixing his medical problem, but he was awake and talking and not dead so I'm counting that as a win. This was the hard scary part, now we just have to get him home. He'll probably be in the hospital a little while longer, and then back to the rehab center to build his strength up, and then home. It helps that even though my grandma is not physically capable of doing a lot of the assistance he's going to need (she's 5'0" and tiny and he was an Air Force sergeant), my uncle and his wife live with them, and they both are. So we'll see. I'd like to see him home, or at least medically stable, before I go back to school, but I don't know how likely that is.

Other Good Thing: we don't have to put our dog to sleep. Half the times I woke up last night I was having nightmares about my grandfather dying in surgery; the other times I was having nightmares about this. She's had a hacking cough all summer, and the last few weeks it's gotten worse, and yesterday she wasn't eating. My dad made a vet appointment for this afternoon, and I spent the whole day rigid with fear that even if they could find what was wrong, they would say they couldn't treat it because she's pretty old. But she's kinda sorta okay? I mean, she has an enlarged heart and fluid in her lungs. And she's old, and that's not going to change. But the heart and lung problems are treatable and we have her on medication now, and we'll have her with us a little longer. That's enough for me.

So yeah, today has been completely and utterly exhausting and I am spending the rest of the night watching TV and cuddling my Tigger and not thinking about ANYTHING, but. Things are going in a slightly more positive, less panic-inducing direction than they were? So, okay, deep breath and trying to move on from the Month of Epic Suck.

Just got home from the hospital. They were supposed to send my grandpa home today, but he got sick again last night, or early this morning, so they are keeping him at least until tomorrow. Possibly over the weekend - he needs to be seen by the physical therapist for a couple sessions before they will let him leave. He was on morphine when we were there, so he was drifting in and out while we talked, but he was mostly coherent and aware, so that's good.

It's been three years since his brain tumor, and I was at school this winter when he had a heart attack, and I'd forgotten how scary it is to see him in the hospital. In my mind I always see him as the strong, tough man I grew up with - the man who built my dollhouses by hand and taught me how to fish and worked every weekend in the soup kitchen at his church. Even now after the brain surgery, which left him less active and unable to drive, he still watches cartoons and makes stupid jokes and laughs when little kids ask him if he's a pirate because of his eyepatch. It's really frightening to take that man I know and try to put him together in my head with the man lying in the hospital bed looking so weak and sick.

I really hope they let him come home tomorrow.

On the other front, my mom's boyfriend is in the ICU now.

He had the oral surgery yesterday to get his tooth removed and the infection drained, but I guess it was more difficult than the doctors expected. He's intubated and heavily sedated and probably won't be even moved to a regular room until at least tomorrow. My mom doesn't think he'll be released before Tuesday at the earliest. She's still more mad at him than worried, since this tooth has apparently been a problem for TWO YEARS (opponents of a public option for health care: THIS IS WHY I HATE YOU).

I don't think he's in any immediate danger, and he's just my mom's boyfriend, it's not like we're close, but...she really cares about him. And this is the most stable relationship she's been in since she got divorced from my dad, and compared to some of the guys she's dated, he is a fucking saint. I like him, if only because I think he's been good to and for her. So I hope he's okay.

I really want to get some writing done, but I feel like it's taking all my mental energy just to hold myself together right now.

Call Center Milstone Achieved: Today I had a woman tell me that if I called her again, she would report me to the FBI.

a) I, personally, have never called you before
b) I really doubt the FBI cares that your alma mater engages in *gasp* fundraising. How dare we!

I probably handled that call less than well, but I tend to get rattled when someone starts yelling at me the second they pick up the phone. It did pretty much set the tone for my day, though. I was also treated to a concert across the street loud enough to rattle our windows, having to write very awkward emails to my advisor and my lit TA (HATE writing to professors so much), and my roommate throwing a crying fit about her boyfriend's evil lack of sympathy after she got hit in the face with a volleyball. The five hours of sleep I got last night probably are not helping my mood.

If I didn't have so much work to do this week, I'd just say fuck it and spend the rest of the evening reading Cable & Deadpool. Instead, I'm going to try to get as much of my reading as I can done early, and then maybe spend a little time on the Booster/Ted de-aging fic or the Hakoda/Bato fic about the meaning of tent sharing in the Water Tribe that I want to write now. Or something.