Sorry!

So I restarted my journal and got right back into my bad habit of not writing in it. I’ve been in a pretty dark place this past month. I won’t go into all the details, but damn. Every single day has brought something new and stressful! WWIII has broken out in my family over my dad. He’s totally losing his sight AND hearing and my sister and I are being blamed for… what? Not having a magic wand to wave and make it better? for not being able to FORCE the specialist to see him any sooner? You name it, and we’re at fault for it. Every day it’s a guarantee that my phone will ring 8 times before noon with someone screaming at me. 

Dennis had to take a business trip to Pakistan, then Dubai, then Reno for the past 3 weeks. I’m usually okay with his trips, but this particular one came at such a bad time. I had no support whatsoever. In conjunction with all the family issues, I had an uncle who passed away, so it was just a family ambush. 

Oh, and whether it was the stress or something physical, I started getting vertigo attacks. I had a bad spell driving 80 on the highway right outside of Pittsburgh in traffic. Not good at all. I’ve grounded myself from any driving other than right in town. It only seems to be higher speeds and taking curves that sets me off. That, and rocking in a chair, and rolling over in bed. 

So, doctor appt for me this week. I’m so sick of doctors, hospitals, nursing homes, and illness that I could fucking puke. 

I’m a dumbass

I don’t understand it. Why supposedly intelligent people stop taking their antidepressants just because they’re feeling better. When I hear about it, I shake my head and say “they should know better,” all the while doing the same damn thing to myself. This has been a cycle with me since I was 18 years old — my entire adult life spent understanding what depression is all about and understanding the need for medication to balance out the brain chemistry. 

I think it was around the time I stopped writing my journal that my doctor diagnosed me with mild agoraphobia. Just to put it bluntly, I was a MESS. I didn’t want to leave the house, didn’t even want to leave the couch. Every trip away from home brought severe anxiety and panic attacks. My doc helped me get it all straightened out, told me point blank that I needed to be medicated for the rest of my life in order to prevent things like this. And I know this. I understand it. I agree with it wholeheartedly.

So, why am I off my meds? Oh you know, the usual. I felt fine, things were going well. Around about last fall, I just started falling off the meds. Forget to take them for a few days. Not get them refilled when they were due. After a month or so of that, I came to the conclusion that I unwittingly weaned myself off and was still feeling fine. So who needs ‘em? Not me! I’m a champ!

I’m a dumbass. Stay tuned.

Family Issues, Part Two or Where Did the Money Go?

Where I left off last time, we had put my dad in an assisted living home and were very happy with his care, feeling good about the whole experience other than various family members treating us like monsters. My sister was getting the brunt of it, because I was just letting it roll off my back. I figured, let them spout off their nonsense. They’re entitled to their opinion. But my sister was fighting back and calling them on their bullshit. I kind of admired her for that, while at the same time thinking it was a waste of breath and energy. 

Okay, here’s the part that’s difficult for me to put out there in public. I might type this up and then take it right back down again. 

Anyway, a few years before my mother passed away, she had my sister and me sign power of attorney papers for her and my dad. In her misguided attempt to make things fair, she made my sister and me equal POA. When my mother first got ill, my sister and I worked like a well-oiled machine. We were a perfect team! She handled the medical end of things — dealt with the hospital and nursing home, called the insurance company, spoke with doctors. I took care of practical things like making sure my mother’s needs were met, taking her where she needed to go and things of that nature. 

When my dad got sick, it all went downhill. My sister didn’t want to deal with the hospital and didn’t want to do any of that. Because of my dad’s MRSA, she couldn’t bring her son around my dad or risk spreading it to her family (which to this day I think is a huge crock of shit). She was constantly calling me to take care of more and more issues to where I was ready to lose my mind. 

At the same time, because we had POA, we had control of the bank accounts. Checking, retirement fund, savings. RETIREMENT FUND. Yes, that big chunk of change that was there to see my dad through his retirement. I took over paying his bills, so I had control of the checking account. Between his Social Security and a small retirement fund from my mom, it wasn’t quite enough to cover his assisted living, so we would take a little out of the retirement and savings to make up the rest until we could get someone to rent his house. Which, we did end up renting the house to Jonathon and his girlfriend — they do fine with it. Never late or anything. 

Summer before last (2010? I think?), my family went on a beach vacation with a friend of mine for a week. While we were there, my sister started calling me with great urgency, saying that she “needed” my dad’s retirement passbook to pay a bill for him. She was calling me every hour, just going nuts. I told her there was nothing I could do while I was away, and she kept insisting that it was an emergency. She finally got hold of Jonathon, who’d stayed at my house to take care of the dogs. I told him to put her off til I could get to the bottom of it, but my sister convinced me, against my better judgment, to go ahead and give her the passbook to take care of whatever emergency it was. I never did find out what it was. My sister is the master of vague and abstract. After talking to her, you’re always left more mystified than before. 

So here we are two years later, and I haven’t seen hide nor hair of this retirement passbook. It’s gone, spent, kaput. We have pressed her repeatedly for receipts or any kind of proof whatsoever where this money went, but she continues her vagueness, or even worse, pretends to not understand what we’re asking for. At this point, we’re just shit out of luck and spinning our wheels trying to make this work for my dad. We try to cover his needs out of our own money, but that is starting to spiral out of control. I still don’t know the full extent of the damage done because my sister was hiding her tracks by coming in and taking the mail every day. We eventually found that my dad’s credit situation is dire because he’s so overextended. Cosigned on a truck (my sister’s). Took out three or four personal loans (unsure whether they were for my sister or not, but we strongly suspect they were). My sister WAS keeping up with those loan payments, but when she stopped, the bank started taking money out of his account, which in turn cost US the money because we had to cover it. 

It’s just ugly and dirty and foul. We are finally in a position in our lives where we could live comfortably, but we’re finding ourselves struggling like we did years ago. I don’t know how long we can hold on like this, paying for us AND my dad. There’s no accountability coming from my sister, no shame, no remorse. I tried keeping these lines of communication open with her, letting her know how much help we need at this point, but she honestly doesn’t care. 

I still haven’t told my dad a word of this. He’s 80 years old and would be completely devastated if he knew how badly his money has been mishandled. And because of my mother’s concept of “fairness,” I’m just as responsible for the mishandling as my sister is. Hindsight is 20/20 and all that, but why on earth did I let her take control of the retirement fund? Why on earth didn’t I do more to force the issue?

I lose sleep every single night worrying about this. I hear my mother’s voice in my head, berating me and telling me how badly I’ve fucked up, what a horrible person I am. That voice isn’t hard to imagine at all, because that’s the way she was in life. I just wish I knew, is my sister losing sleep? Is our mother’s voice haunting her? Because I don’t know how much more I can handle alone.

Family Issues, Part One

This is going to be long, so I figured I’d break it up into more than one part, otherwise I’d be stuck here writing all day long. I’m not even sure where to start other than maybe with the relatives. On my mom’s side, she had three brothers. Two of them were pretty much out of the picture, living in other states. One, she was very close with, who stayed around here his entire life to care for their parents. He cared for them until the day they died and then was pretty lost after that. I’d talked about him before in my last journal and how much trouble he caused between my parents and how I wanted nothing to do with him. After my mom died, I haven’t taken his calls or seen him at all and I’m more than okay with that.

On my dad’s side, he has three sisters, two of which stayed in our town. None of them liked my mother very much, so they were pretty much hands off. My mother always tried to tell me that they didn’t like her and also didn’t care for me or my sister much, but I didn’t believe her and thought she was just being a bitch. 

When my mother died, the eldest aunt came out of the woodwork with her well-meaning advice and “help,” but also had her hand out for money. “For the church.” My mom and dad didn’t have much, but they were okay. Had a decent retirement saved up, some savings, had their funerals prepaid. Small life insurance. The aunt really started stepping on mine and my sister’s toes. Insisting that we force my father to move in with us (I offered and he refused). Telling us what we need to do. A few months after my mother was gone, she and her daughter went to my father’s house to root through all my mother’s clothes to sell at a church rummage sale. What an outrage! My sister and I weren’t quite ready to do this yet, and my dad told us to take our time and do it when we were ready because he never used the room that those clothes were in. 

Things have just been going steadily downhill from there and it seems like a neverending battle. It was getting harder and harder for my dad to take care of himself. At one point, I had two jobs and my sister had a job and a toddler, so what little we could do wasn’t enough. His house was a complete disaster like what you’d see on Hoarders. My dad wasn’t bathing properly and always smelled bad. We’d go in and try to clean the house, but he’d go right behind us messing things up again. His meals consisted of lunch meat and donuts. 

At one point, I don’t know if he fell or what happened, but he ended up with a putrid looking infection on his leg that turned out to be a pretty bad case of MRSA. He was hospitalized and the brief time he spent in the hospital completely wiped out his mobility and he then became incontinent. We hired someone to come help us clean his house, but honestly it was going to take months of hard work to make that house acceptable. 

After talking it over with everyone, we decided to put him in an assisted living center. It’s a nice place, very clean and bright with a lot of activities going on. He didn’t quite have enough money to cover it, but we figured what else was his retirement for if not for his own care? It turned out to be the most affordable option. Getting someone in the house to help him was going to cost triple what the assisted living was. 

Meanwhile, my aunt was screaming bloody murder. How dare we lock him away in that dungeon. How dare we not let him live on his own. How dare we not care for him ourselves. We were met with opposition every step of the way. Phone calls, confrontations, backstabbing. People at the home were telling us that she was there getting my dad upset, telling him we didn’t love him or care about him, that SHE was his only blood relation, etc. You could always tell when she’d been pouring it on strong because he’d cry and beg us to take him home. It was heartbreaking. 

As of now, my dad is doing well there. He has fallen several times, but there’s always someone there to help him and clean him up. He has help with meds and most importantly, he has help with hygiene. He eats three hot meals a day and has friends and a good social life. They have activities every day, church once a week, Bingo, exercise. My sister and I are happy with his care, but we’ve become the family pariahs because of it. 

That’s enough for now. Next time I’ll talk about the latest issues in this ongoing struggle with my dad. 

Groceries

Grocery shopping is a form of torture for me. We used to be really good about it. Dennis and I would leave the kids with my parents and would go once a week and buy everything we needed for that week. Every couple of weeks, we’d go to another town to the closest Walmart and load up on everything else. Ever since Jonathon moved out on his own, all that just fell by the wayside. Rhiannon makes her own dinner, and cooking for 2 or 3 seems SO much harder than cooking for 4. Now I end up running to the store 2-3 times a week to buy that night’s dinner, or sometimes we just say to hell with it and get takeout. We’ll go through these phases where either the cupboards are bare and we’re all whining because there’s nothing to eat, or we’ll have a ton of food that we’ll just plow right through because we’re not used to having choices. 

Speaking of shopping torture, Rhiannon is going to the prom and we need to start dress shopping soon. Just shoot me now. LOL

What next?

Okay, looks like the progesterone cream has definitely done its job! I want to do this whole lifestyle change one step at a time, so I’ll spend a few weeks with one change before moving on to another. I’m not ready for anything too drastic just yet, so something like cutting out all sugar or processed foods isn’t going to work for me. But that could be a future goal. I know someone who literally lost hundreds of pounds by not eating white (bread, sugar, carbs, etc). My goal isn’t really weight loss, but to just feel human.

Add fiber? Take a multivitamin? Find a supplement? Whatever it is, I want something that will make me feel different fairly quickly to keep this momentum going. As it is, my body is a mess. I’m in constant pain and I feel cold all the time (even when it’s in the 70s in my house). Just walking from room to room makes me dizzy and faint. Nevermind how I feel trying to get out to do stuff. 

Anyway, if anyone has any suggestions, feel free to throw it my way. I’ll continue my reading and let you know what’s next.

Rhiannon and Dotty (Jonathon’s puppy)

One week down

It’s been a week since I started taking progesterone cream. In case you’re wondering, it’s KAL Paraben Free Progesterone Natural Liposome Cream with DLPA. There are plenty of creams out there that are just as good, but this was all I could find in a store near me. I think the main things to look for in an effective cream is USP progesterone and it has to have about 500 mg per ounce. I bought a book by Dr. John Lee called What Your Doctor May Not Tell You About PRE-Menopause and he’s got a website, which I’ll link at the end of this post. 

Anyway, so far so good! I have been sleeping like a log and my period has considerably lessened. I think my next step is to work on weaning myself off the Ambien. No easy task since I’ve been taking it nightly for several years. I don’t care what they say, Ambien IS addictive. If I try to go a night without it, my brain just won’t shut down. 

Rhiannon’s going to hurt me if she sees this, but I have a pic to share of her and Jonathon’s new puppy. I swear it might kill her to actually smile for a picture, but at least she doesn’t do the duck face or kissy face. 

(Source: johnleemd.com)

Living a little more naturally

Well, I’m now 45 years old and some very weird things are going on with my body. I kind of feel like I’m going through a different sort of puberty. Most notably, my menstrual cycle is all over the place. So, a little advance warning that some of this may be TMI. Just be aware and skip this post if you don’t want the TMI. 

Still here?

For the most part, my cycles had always been extremely regular. Every 28 days on the dot, I started my period. Every 14 days on the dot, I ovulated.  A couple of years ago I started getting little hiccups. Instead of 28 days, I’d go 30. Instead of 14, I’d go 12 or 15. Then about 3-4 years go, I went a month or two without a period around about November, then BAM, had the mother of all periods for several months. We’re talking such heavy flows that I couldn’t be on my feet or leave the house while it was going on. Went to the gynecologist, had tests run, she put me on Provera (a synthetic hormone for progesterone replacement), and would be on track. Until the next winter. 

I’ve had tests run, I’ve had ultrasounds, uterine biopsy (the most painful thing EVER), thyroid tests, etc. All showed normal results.

But it just seems so odd to me that this only happens to me in the winter months! As of right now, I’m on about week six of a monster period. I was getting ready to call my gynecologist for another round of the Provera when I decided that this just wasn’t working for me and I’d like to look into some natural alternatives for myself. I know that internet research can be a crap shoot when it comes to ones health, but this is just something I’d like to try for myself. For now, I’ve started off using some Progesterone cream. I’m going to see how this works out for me, then I’m going to research some other alternative supplements and diets to see if I can’t get myself feeling better. 

Ideally, I’d like to get myself off as many meds as possible. I’m on too much crap. The Synthroid, obviously, will be with me the rest of my life. But I’m also on two antidepressants, Xanax, Ambien, Prilosec, and strong ibuprofen. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not against any of these drugs. Not at all. When they were working for me, they made me feel great! But it just seems like they’re not working for me. So, I do have my work cut out for me in trying to figure this all out. I don’t want to leap into this blindly. I think it would be a good idea for me to find a like-minded medical professional. 

I’ll update as I go along. Wish me luck!

Sorry

Bear with me while I try to find a template I like for this blog. I’ve been away from doing anything with html or other basic website maintenance, so I’m a little lost with it. 

I just uploaded a bunch of new pics to my hooker blog. 

Help?

I have no idea how to fix those pictures on my last post. Oh well, it’ll have to stay like that for now.

At a standstill

It always seems at this time of year that life comes to a standstill. January-March just seems so stagnant. Spring is just around the corner, but everything is still so dead and dreary. It all just throws me for a loop. I need to move somewhere warm and sunny, or I’d even settle for cool and sunny. Dennis and I have talked about becoming snowbirds, but that all seems so far away.

On a different note, birthday weekend coming up! Jonathon turns 21 on Friday and I’ll be 45. I typically don’t like making a big deal out of birthdays or having parties, but it appears that I’ve thrown a small one together. Dennis was supposed to be out of town, so I invited a couple of friends to come out with me and the group just seems to be getting bigger and bigger. I’m finding that the fun of middle age is rediscovering old friends. People my age aren’t quite as busy raising babies and beginning jobs, so we have a little more time and energy for one another. It would be perfect if only Zane could be around to enjoy it.

Took Laura and Sophie to look at some puppies yesterday. She won’t be ready to come home until March, but take a look at my new grandpuppy. SO SWEET! 

OKay, while we’re looking at pets, how about I show off mine. 

Zoey. She’s five and a sweet, lovey dog.

Haiku, my elderly girl. Ever read Marley & Me? Yeah, well she’s that bad, if not worse. 

Coco, just turned one. She’s the clown of the family. She makes me smile every single day.

And our newest kitty, Boo, nicknamed Skidmark because he has a black streak on top of his head. Not sure if you can tell in the picture, but he has one blue eye and one green eye. He’s pretty special — he would have to be to make this dog person fall in love with a kitty.

Next time I’ll put up some pics of the kids. Jonathon is tough to photograph. He seems to know when a camera is nearby and he manages to hide his face every single time. What a shithead. 

Not sure where we’re going with this.

As I mentioned on my last post, Rhiannon had a meeting with the D.A. on Friday. They spent a good two hours talking and Rhiannon filled her in on a few things that she was too embarrassed to tell us. I’ll just say, she’s handling it a whole lot better than I am. At the risk of making this about me (which I think I can do in my own blog, after all), I’m torn up about it from a few different angles. First of all, this is my baby we’re talking about. I’ve worked very hard as a mother to shelter her from just this very thing. I was NOT going to have her go through the things I went through when it could have been avoided by having a more protective mother. So, what happens the first time I loosen the reins? There’s a fucking pervert waiting in the wings, that’s what.

Then there’s the issue of it bringing up my own ghosts. The shame and the fear of being exposed. I was a nervous wreck all day yesterday waiting for our second appointment with the D.A. I had these images in my head of being blamed somehow. Being blamed for not protecting her enough, which is the obvious emotion to have, but also fear of being blamed for going through it myself. I was afraid anyone would just have to look at me to see my own shame.

But the point was all moot. Rhiannon decided that she needed to think it through some more and didn’t want to go to the meeting. I talked on the phone with the D.A. for a while and she said it was all fine and referred me to a counselor for Rhiannon. She says even if Rhiannon isn’t going through trauma, he might help her sort through her legal options and come to a decision about whether she wants to pursue this. At the most, she does have a case for corrupting a minor, but we have to weigh if it’s worth putting her through all the finger pointing and having this guy accuse her of being a slut and a tease. 

Whatever she decides to do, I just hope she knows that she has all my love and support. I’m so proud of her no matter what she chooses. 

Sad lesson to learn

It’s been a bit of a rough week here. I won’t go into too many details at the moment because my blog is public. In the middle of the night on Tuesday, Rhiannon sent me a text saying that she has to quit her job because the owner did something really inappropriate. He sent her into the bathroom to vacuum, then followed her in and asked her to expose herself to him, and gave her a $20 to “motivate” her.

 This was after a whole shift of coming on to her. Fortunately, a customer came into the restaurant at that moment, so she didn’t have to have a big confrontation. 

To make a long story short, we have a meeting with the DA today. We totally left it up to Rhiannon if she wanted to pursue anything and she does. The DA said not to expect anything to come of it, but what I like is that the douchebag is going to get the message that he will be called to the carpet for this behavior. And we have since found out that this isn’t his first rodeo, but it’s usually with older, college aged girls. 

What in the hell makes a disgusting old man like that think that young girls would want anything to do with his nasty ass? He went on and on to Rhiannon about how she wanted him and had been sending out signals the entire time. 

Naturally, this whole thing brings out my own demons. All I’ll say on that score is that I am so bloody proud of her for wanting to bring this to light by going to the authorities. Me at that age? I would have slunk away from the ordeal, not telling a soul it happened. I’m so thankful that she’s been better prepared and protected in her life. 

Anyway, that’s it for now. I’ll update more this weekend after we see how the meeting with the DA went.