fredericks | Entries tagged with family

Yesterday I went to replace my phone (sigh) and saw True Grit. Once I logged into my gmail account all my contacts reappeared, and it turned out that Kindle archived all the books I purchased previously. Score for me! True Grit was a good movie, a nice way to pass two hours.

The drama lately in the house has been littlest bro's dismissal from college due to academic reasons. It's tough for him: my parents have always been lax when it comes to guiding him, and he doesn't strike me as having much drive or motivation when it comes to school. Of course, my parents would never consider that my brother may not be ready for college. Even though they themselves never completed it when they were his age (my father got his associate's degree six or so years ago). So it's been tense, to say the least. I feel bad for him for a number of reasons, but aren't really sure how to help him aside from trying to be a non-judgmental voice and guide. Don't know if I'm always successful, but I'm trying.

Great-grandma is in the hospital, working on her third week. She's 95 years old, but the reason for her hospitalizations are always related to her chronic constipation (when you see old folks on TV shows commenting on how glad they are that they've had a bowel movement, that's true-to-life and there's a valid reason for it). This episode is turning out to be worse than any I've known, and it's come to the point where nursing home placement is being bandied around by social workers in the hospital. I'm not a fan of nursing homes or prolonged hospital stays, knowing what I know, but I'm not sure what we can do with Granny at this point. She was able to walk when needed prior to her hospitalization, but once you're admitted and you're older and it takes more than thirty seconds for you to make it to a restroom hospital staff slaps a "Fall Risk" bracelet on you, make you stay in the bed, put you in diapers, and you become debilitated. Fact of life. Frustrating as fuck.

More snow tomorrow. Yay.

Current Mood: moody
Current Location: Under my heated blanket

Life's been crazy, per usual. I remember when I used to spend time pouring all that stuff on here. Nowadays I'm finding it harder and harder to invest the time and emotion. I'm turtling something fierce and it's not a good feeling. Anywhozit - what's happened in the last few days:

Monday my mother left work early in the morning, convinced she was having either a heart attack or some other cardiac issue. Bro and I took her to the hospital where we found out she was not actively infarcting, but was diabetic. Diagnosed on the spot after presenting with a high fasting glucose level and a huge glycemic index. All and all it's a good thing she wasn't in the middle of an event, because it took them almost a full hour to do an EKG on her. I mean, JESUS. She still occasionally has the cardiac issues that scared her (she says she feels like "[her]" heart is jumping out of [her] chest", and that it's been going on for the last couple of weeks), and I've been pushing her to follow-up with a cardiologist. As far as I can tell my father's being very insensitive about the whole thing, and that in addition to the influx of medical stuff (a prescription for Actos, learning how to use a glucometer and do fingersticks even when one detest needles, trying to figure out how to best incorporate exercise and a new diet [our meals tend to be carb-heavy: white rice and/or root vegetables, beans, and a token meat/fish]) and having to cope with it all has me looking very closely for another mental relapse. She seems okay so far. I mean, my mother's not overweight, but her glucose has been coming up elevated for the last year and her mother is diabetic, so you'd think it wouldn't be a surprise, but it's still a shock.

Tuesday I ended up cancelling an overtime shift to take litttle bro to D.C. for mom. He went to some Young People's Congress or some such - whatever the hell it is it strikes me as a bunch of money-stealing hokum, but the 'rents were enthused about him being "invited" and they paid the tuition, so whatever. I hadn't taken a ride on Amtrak since leaving school, and I enjoyed the experience. Across the aisle from us was a young man with a Liverpool accent and he was chatty as all fuck, telling everyone in his vicinity that he was trekking cross-country via Amtrak: New York to D.C., D.C. to Chicago, Chicago to the Grand Canyon. I was charmed, of course, and even the cynic in me found his tale nice enough not to tell him aloud that I thought he was a theater major from Julliard taking the method bit to a new level. Bro and I got to D.C. without a hitch, and rode the Metro to the vicinity of the conference which...okay, the Metro. It's, like, nothing. I mean, this is the shit I navigate every day. So why were we so stymied by the whole fare thing? It took us a good five minutes to figure out how much we should pay and how to purchase a card, then my brother ended up having to purchase another one when it only went through for one fare, throwing out the defective card. But you're supposed to swipe on your way out so that screwed me over and, seriously, what the hell is wrong with you, D.C.??? When we got to our destination I had to explain that we were out-of-towners to the station clerks and have an annoying man chastise me for no reason (if I *hadn't* realized I needed to keep the fare card do you think I'd come and tell you we'd mistakenly discarded my fare card and ask you if I needed to pay full-fare again? don't insult my intelligence). I dropped him off, made sure he was situated, then took the bus back to the Metro to start the trek back to NY while fighting sleep the entire way (I'd accompanied him straight off a shift).

The rest of the time's been work work and more work. The last couple of days have been rougher than usual, and I've barely managed to get home before 10AM. Thursday's shift had me so tired that after coming home and shoveling the sidewalk I tore off my scrubs and fell asleep without showering... which, considering all the bodily fluids I had to clean up during my time on the floor, is saying something. The intern I went to high school with shows up on the floor periodically and we chat. On finding out we'd gone to the same school and then finding out what college I'd attended some of my colleagues wondered aloud why I was I nurse. I'm sure my answer was as unsatisfactory to them as it sounded to my own ears. There are moments where I really enjoy what I do, and then there are big chunks of time where I wonder what the fuck's my damage. I have yet to run into a nurse on the job who doesn't project the idea that nurses and nursing in general is a job for those lower on the rungs. I think I need to surround myself with people who treat nursing as a profession, not just something you'd enter into because you didn't do well on the MCATs. Or, you know, take a vacation. Something along one of those lines.

Related to the above: 99% sure I'm going to Comic-Con (I requested the long weekend off), and 85% sure I'm going to Dragon-Con (trying to calculate a total cost at the moment). Two things to look forward to, at the very least.

Hope everyone is doing well. I'm trying to play catch up, and I apologize for the lack of comments.

Current Mood: awake
Current Music: I Never Came - Queens of the Stone Age

Hands-down funniest moment of the day:

The lot of us are packed into one of Pace's sardine tin-like elevators. We hop on at the 1st floor and ride it down to C-level then up on the way to our respective stops. As we hit the 1st floor again on the way up I'm looking around and thinking that, for a bunch of strangers, we're sure getting to know each other's bodies intimately. I opt out of making a quip, not wanting to waste precious oxygen on something we're all clearly thinking. However, as we pass the 2nd floor some dude decides to go with the wisecrackery and says to a semi-comely lass scrunched up next to him, "You feel soft". Now I get what he's saying (or trying to say) and I want to laugh but, again, oxygen conservation is in the forefront of my mind. Said lass turns to look at him - well, she doesn't really *turn*; she can only manage to crane her neck a little - and the expression on her face is priceless, absolutely priceless, causing me to realize how borderline sleazy his joke comes across. She stammers out "uh, thank you" in a way that makes me want to bust my gut. We're passing the 3rd floor now and dude looks chagrined while lass looks weirded out. The little murmuring that existed prior to that moment dies off. Everyone's avoiding eye contact with everyone else. We hit the 4th floor. Dude asks lass where she's heading. Lass answers 514. Silence again. Elevator stops on 5, lass gets off, dude is still avoiding eye contact. I fight the urge to push him off the elevator and beseech him to formally court the lass; as I visualize that happening I again fight the urge to laugh. We all get off on the 6th floor, and resume normal breathing patterns.

*

I'm surrounded by papers from my classes. Half of my textbooks came today, weighing 40 lbs. Daunting? No, herculean, baby. It's Day Two, my brain is swimming, and we haven't even gone much farther than class overviews yet. I have three group projects this term. Thanks to Brown's lack of core reqs, I've never taken a class that required work with more than one other person. I hate having to rely on others to keep up their part of a bargain (that's quite psychologically telling, isn't it?). I briefly chatted with a classmate as we were leaving for the day. She shared that she was overwhelmed and then said "I don't know how [the one year students] do it" (she's in the slower paced two-year program). I reminded her that we haven't done ANYTHING yet since it was only the second day of classes. I also don't have the correct textbooks to do tomorrow's required readings. *sigh*

"Do it! Do it!", I know. But I'm not a happy camper right now.

*
Mom was awesomely amazing today. She stayed up ALL DAY waiting to sign for my books. I mean, if I knew UPS was going to wait until 5:30 to deliver the damn things I wouldn't have asked her to stay up in the first place but still. She looked like a raccoon when I came home. Me = guilt. When she does things like what she did today it kinda helps me forget the crappy/shifty stuff she pulls/pulled. I'm gonna get her flowers or something tomorrow. And maybe a nice salad to take to work tomorrow evening.

Current Mood: melancholy
Current Music: O Green World - Gorillaz

Yesterday was normal, quiet, and more than a little boring. Last night was weird. Dad had another seizure in the middle of the night and mom sort of freaked out (understandable, I guess). It was only a matter of time in my mind, seeing he has refused to take his medication and continues smoking and drinking [my brother just came in and told me to "keep checking" on dad, who's lying down in his room...hmmm, okay]. That culminated in me being woken up by a frantic mom at 2:30, and then going with her to the hospital at 3:30 after the paramedics refused to let her ride with them. The oldest youngest brother, who looked sort of shell-shocked, asked me what would happen if my father died, meaning what would happen in a financial state, with us. My folks don't discuss money at all, so I figure they'll be royally screwed. I didn't bother to mention that to him; poor kid most likely wouldn't have been able to take it.

I stayed with mom in the hospital until around 7, lying down in the kid section with a TV that played The Disney Channel (too much That's So Raven in the early morning, programming people) and falling asleep on myself in uncomfortable positions. Dad was fine - he'd recovered from the seizure after a couple of minutes and was stuck in the ER waiting for the backlogged doctors to get around to him - so mom took pity on me and decided to take me back home. My mom is so very very awesome sometimes, freak outs and all. She dropped me off, grabbed some coffee, and then headed back. I tried to get some sleep but our house always seems to turn into the party line after 8:30; I'd start falling asleep, someone would call, and I'd have to run and answer it. Fun. Folks came back in around 3, after the docs gave dad a CAT scan (which was negative) and popped him a double dose of his meds. 11 hour wait for that. Oh yeah.

*

Some more news - the scholarship money FINALLY showed up on my Pace bill. Hopefully I'll get the extra in my hand soon so I can pay off Krishna's vet bills and get the rest of my supplies. The Hunter woman *claims* the fracking check is documented as being mailed on July 29th, and I smelled the BS through the handset. Why it's taken her so long to get back to me, after I've been writing her for at least the last month about this I don't fracking know. What I do know is that while I maintained decorum over the phone during the two times I spoke with her, when I hung up with her the first word out of my mouth was "bitch". Gah. HATE. She *says* if the check hasn't been cashed they can issue a "stop payment" and re-issue me a check. Watch she tells me the check's been cashed or she doesn't get back to me. Such a bitch.

Current Mood: productive

The parental units have returned, as has all the noise (DAD). Just when I was slipping into a lethargic oblivion they had to come and snap me out of it.

What I'm privy to again - Mom apparently misplaced/lost her digital camera (the camera that, incidentally, I bought her for Mother's Day and I'm STILL paying off), meaning either my brother (who's now in Staten Island) has it or it's somewhere in Florida. That being said, here are the reactions of people in the house-

Me: If it's lost, it's lost. If it's not, it's here. There's no point to tear through your bags for it now. Sit and relax. [looks through one bag futilely, then sits and relaxes]
Mom: ...Where's the camera? I swore I had it. [looks through bags]
Dad: You lost your CAMERA?!?! When I have something I put it in one place and I know where it is! Blah blah blah (ten minutes) [sits on ass and does nothing but talk]

I didn't miss all that. Nope.

I made Peanut Sauce-flavored noodles (+ a generous helping of Szechuan spices) with shrimp and vegetables. Only, since I was too lazy and broke to procure rice noodles or broad noodles I ended up using spaghetti. Yup, genuine Asian cooking right there. I thought it came out lovely, but mom thought it required "more sauce" (read: "more liquid") so she dumped some merlot(!) on it. Hmph. You don't mess with my dishes, people. Definite no-no. At least ask permission...so I can say "don't put no merlot in my food, fool!" Oh well. Turned out tolerable, surprisingly.

BSG was great tonight. Dr. Cottle was his usual snarky self (the quote that's the subject heading is his, as well as "Hypochondriac. One on every ship." Hee!), and the Helo/Cap!Sharon/Tyrol triangle has me gleefully rubbing my hands together. Sweet Lord, Baltar is INSANE. Makes him less annoying when he's being nutty and not so creepy.

Current Mood: listless

No one in my house says "I am sorry". No one. It's as if the words have been construed as confession of guilt and concession of one's stand, instead of a way to be contrite; and no one in my house ever wants to admit they might be wrong.

Case in fracking point - this morning's events.

My father let me borrow his unlimited monthly Metrocard (est. value - $80) so I could attend church Sunday. I used it and then dropped it back in either my wallet or my purse - since I was wearing a skirt I had no pockets to place it in (or try to place it in and then have it fall out of). Mother asked me to borrow said Metrocard yesterday, since she was heading out. Out of habit I reached into my wallet and gave her the first card I saw there. On her return she informed me the card I gave her wasn't dad's monthly. I said "fine", and last night gave dad another Metrocard from my purse, which I believed to be the monthly.

Nope.

Fast-forward to this morning, when I'm awoken by the sound of the phone ringing. I picked it up and it was dad, soundly highly disgruntled (then again, what's new?). Since he could never simply come out and say what's on his mind in a reasonable amount of time he went on and on about how I gave him the wrong card and what transpired when he tried to get on the bus this morning, blah blah. I'm tired, worn out (still), and disgruntled myself because, honestly, where the fuck could the card go off to?? He rattled off the serial number of the card and I told him I'd check around to see if I could find it. Ten minutes of searching came up with nothing besides a number of expired cards in my wallet. So, fine, I figure out how to solve the problem - I'd report his card lost, purchase him a weekly card as a replacement, and then hope his replacement card showed up before they returned from their planned Florida trip next week. I called him back in order to tell him my plan and to say sorry, because I was. Tried calling him and he didn't pick up; he returned the call a few minutes later. After saying sorry and explaining what I was going to do, I got more ranting and raving over the phone. All the time I'm thinking to myself "He can't treat me like an adult, can he?" It's bullshit to think that an adult wouldn't lose anything (and I still had my doubts that I lost the card), and it's bullshit to think that I have no "concept of money", as the parental units love to say. Blah blah, rant, he hung up after a little while.

Mom returned from the park a little while later and, who was on the phone with *her*? My father, also ranting about the monthly being missing. This is what kills me and honestly makes me damned close to hating my father - he treats my mother like a child. He treats her the same way he treats us, and it makes me want to just...grr. So, fine. He gets off the phone with her after a couple of minutes and mom asks me about (the conflict in the Middle East? gas prices? the effects of global warming on local temperatures?) the missing card. I tell mom I guess I lost it, because it's not in my purse, the *only* place it could have been. I also inform her that I told my father I was sorry and explained to him how I'd go about trying to replace the card. That, of course, was her cue to start ranting about how we kids have no concept of money (a recurring theme), how we're irresponsible, and (the mind-boggling part) how "fine, you're sorry, but sometimes a person is tired of hearing 'sorry'". I would have laughed out loud if I didn't think it would have been counterproductive. You see, as I said in the beginning, NO ONE IN MY HOUSE SAYS SORRY. NO ONE. Well, beside myself of course, and it's a new occurrence for me.

Out of curiosity I asked her "Well, what am I supposed to say?" She said something along the lines of I should be more responsible and not lose things. Point taken, but this is coming from the woman who loses and/or misplaces this as frequently if not more so than I do. I didn't point that out to her.

My brother made his way down the stairs while me and my mother were "discussing with raised voice" and he was stayed quiet until mom went on to say that she shouldn't be fielding calls and/or be subjected to my father's shouting when one of us do something that displeases the man. At that point he said "Yes, that's right, you shouldn't have to listen to dad's shouting, but you should be telling that to HIM not to us." A nice bit of logic there I couldn't find because I was too busy being pissed. We quieted down momentarily and then mom shared a little tidbit about what happened when she tried to use the card I'd given her yesterday (the card I believed to be father's monthly, recall) that led us to believe the card she had was in fact dad's card. My brother and I decided to drive over to the subway and check the card on the machine there to verify. I asked her for the card and she told me that it was in the purse in her car. I went to the car to retrieve the purse, only to find she went upstairs (to her jeans pocket perhaps) to get it instead. This from the woman who- you know what? I'm not even going to go there.

Okay, the absolute kicker - she places the card down on the table and says "this is the card". That's it. Naturally I assume she means "this is the card that you gave me that you need to check". I pick up the card and head to the car. When I turned the card around and looked at the back, lo and behold, it was my father's Metrocard. She actually saw me take it and leave with the intention of trekking to the subway and said nothing. I came back in, pissed some more, to have her tell me that "this is the card" mean "this is THE card". Sigh. I putted around the kitchen, stewing in my juices, wanting oh so badly to tell her that this was a time made for sorry, but I held my tongue and went upstairs.

*

Funny - while I was working on that last paragraph she called me downstairs to ask me to keep an eye on a pot for her...and to apologize. Her precise words "I apologize for that". And she sounded so awkward and stilted while saying it. Old dog, new tricks, things of that nature.

Current Mood: cranky
Current Music: Silver and Cold - AFI

Another scorcher round these parts today. I ended up attempting to fall asleep around 4 AM last night (it being an impromptu movie night for us we watched Constantine and then I did my usual dicking around on the PC for no reason) and got woken at 8AM by a call from my dad.

Me: ::doing a reasonable job of sounding awake and non-patricidal:: Hello father.
Dad: [Wiana], can you do me a favor and check to see if I took the - uhm - hot water bottle off the fire?
Me: ::eyebrow raised:: Hot water bottle?
Dad: The hot water bottle.
Me: ::slowly:: The hot...water...bottle?
Dad: ::sound of teeth being sucked:: Hot water bottle. You know what I mean.
Me: The kettle. You mean the kettle, right?
Dad: Yeah, the kettle.
Me: *sigh* Bye, dad.

He's a little brain damaged (aneurysm twenty years back) but the ass thing is that he'd never admit he's impaired, to the point where he's yelled at us when we don't understand what he means (usually when it comes to naming objects or things, although it's come to light recently that he undergoes conversational lapses, which explains a hell of a lot). I'd be more understanding if he wasn't such a raving jerk on the occasion. I love the dude, but he's NOT the easiest man to live with [insert the "omgwtfkgjh I have to get out of this house" bit].

So right. Get up out of bed and it's just...yesh! Sweat was running down my body, my clothes were sticking to me, my face felt like the Exxon Valdez spilled all over it during the night...not pleasant at all. No, father didn't leave the "hot water bottle" on the stove. Trudged downstairs, all icky, came back up, all icky. Attempted to go back to sleep. Of course, my alarm went off fifteen minutes later.
*

There's this huge expectation riding on me that I'll be something or someone "big and important". I'm feeling it more and more lately, particularly since I'm barely working and I've been scrambling in order to find some way to pay my exorbitant nursing school fees. I paid all that money for my education when I didn't need to. I'm saddled with all this debt and I'm only 25. I think it'd be okay if I had some life to speak of and a definite idea of what I'm going to do, but - drawing a blank. No blinkin' clue. I'm just fumbling from one thing to the next, trying to make sure I keep above water and don't screw my family over too much. Sometimes I'm bitter. I wish someone had pointed out what I was doing was idiotic and forced me to go to another school, or take time off after my first year to figure out where I was heading, but my folks didn't know any better. Really. My mother talks and talks about how I've messed up, but she had not a damn thing of importance to say when I needed her to say "what the FUCK do you think you're doing?" I mean, for my family I guess I'm not doing too badly: my mother had two kids and less than a year of college under her belt when she was my age. My sister has roughly the same, although she does have a swell state job under her belt. I'm just really confused and I keep worrying that I'm digging my hole deeper and deeper. And the only time you truly figure out how deep the hole is happens to be waaaaaaay after the fact.

That rambling piece of tripe came out because today I went for a pre-screener at the local Starbucks and signed for an additional school loan. The pre-screener happened in the Main Street Starbucks. I love Main Street: when I walked into Starbucks the first three people I saw were two Buddhist monks and an Army man in full fatigues standing next to one another. It struck me as funny. It still strikes me as funny, actually. The pre-screener was ridiculous, even for a pre-screener. They asked me the usual "what experience do you have?" and "why do you want to work for Starbucks?" (answers: "I have a Bachelors of Science in Psych and am grossly overqualified, seeing as I worked in the food service industry for five years, but hire me anyway because I so fucking need the money" and "I NEED MONEY, asswipe!" respectively ... in my head) and then "what do you like about coffee or tea?" So ridiculous. Like they give a crap what you say, they just want a malleable peon who can give the masses overpriced poison in a cup without fighting the establishment (I say as if I didn't JUST finish a tall sweetened ice coffee with cream). I gave them the answers I've been trained to give, and the guy wrote them down in handwriting that looked pretty damn illegible to me. He said if they liked what they saw they'd give me a call back whenever. I'm not holding my breath.

The loan - well, what can you say? A loan is a loan is a loan. My credit's not the best so I got slaughtered with the interest. I'm contemplating asking my dad to co-sign, but I'm hesitant because I don't want to involve any more family in my money problems. Eh. Hopefully I get a job as soon as I graduate making the 60G+ numbers I've been hearing RNs get in the city nowadays and I can pay whatever I owe back as quickly as possible.

Too many "if"s in my future for me. And, oh my God, am I SO tired of hearing the sanctimonious "nothing is certain" refrain and variations.
*

On a totally unrelated yet very cool note, on the Justice League thread I follow at Television Without Pity, one of the writers from JLU started visiting recently and posting stuff about the show. I got a silly thrill over him responding to a comment I'd made on the latest episode of the show. Television Without Pity - one of the best places to waste time on the web if you're into television shows.

Enough pimpage for one post.

Current Mood: cynical

Yay! to the Erasure concert on LOGO. Ba-da-ba-bab-baaa! I'm lovin' it. Andy Bell can sing his ass off, no doubt about it.

Something else I'm loving lately: ... uhm... ?

I have been taking in a lot of NewsRadio. I've finally made my way through the entire set and the bulk of the commentary. It's official - my Stephen Root love has officially surpassed my Dave Foley love. Root's just aged better, whereas Foley's exposure on Celebrity Poker Showdown has soured me slightly.
*
( More things here. A little long, but semi-interesting. )
*

I've had my eyes on this MP3 bad boy for a little while now. I figure it'll be a pre-school splurge, if my interning check ever arrives. Does anyone who's happened upon this entry have any words for or against it?
*

My brothers want to go see Fantastic Four on Friday. Gag. I'll go if a)we see it matinee and b)I don't have to pay. Jessica Alba makes me cry on the inside. So does that horrendous Thing costume.
*

I'd really like some Venture Bros. merchandise. Because I am a capitalist society's bitch. And that show makes me laugh and laugh.

Current Mood: listless
Current Music: Erasure Concert playing on the TV