Caterwauling

Just two days ago, I was out looking for a dress to wear to a wedding. Instead, I am looking for clothes to wear to my grandfather’s funeral.

It still looks weird, even when I type it. I keep thinking that if I say it enough times, I might believe it.

Mom jolted me out of bed today — I took half a bottle of sleeping pills because I cannot shut off my mind. And it seemed so impossible that only 24 hours earlier she was calling with the news that rocked my world straight off its axis.

The VA Hospital, even in death, is a clusterfuck. I am starting to accept the fact that my grandfather walked in there, unassisted, a month ago just to get his fucking meds adjusted. That was all, no more and no less. And today, Mom is pressing the suit in which he will be buried.

Makes you want to crawl right in the coffin yourself.

He’ll wear a Western shirt with his suit. That was him — a country singer/guitar player. Always with the shiny cowboy boots, bolo ties and just plain air of sweetness to him. Always a class act.

When he got checked into Presbyterian Hospital for three glorious days, I remember fighting tooth and nail with my mom, telling her to never, ever let the VA take him back. EVER. He had a real chance at Presby, and he knew it. He was eating and chatting and flirting and was downright jovial. He wanted nothing more than to get back to his pretty house and sit on the porch with a cigarette and feed his birds. He was so hopeful, so sure that he was finally in good hands.

The fucking VA took him back — literally, in the back of a jitney — because that’s what they do. They don’t want to treat you, but god forbid you get a taste of real care at a superb private hospital. I had a PCP over at Presby’s sister hospital, Montefiore, and I was trying to figure out how to get him assigned to her or someone in her unit so he wouldn’t have to go back to that rathole. But the thing is? You can’t work fast enough — stupidity outnumbers you.

I remember Mom telling the fabulous docs/nurses at Presby that it would take the VA Hospital one night to undo everything they did to make him better.

She was right.

If I haven’t said “That Poor Little Man” a million times yet, then I’m only four times shy of it. *sigh*

Mom’s been asking when I’m coming back to Pittsburgh and I’ll admit, I don’t want to go back to that empty house, that I’m only going to have to empty out in the next few weeks. Nothing’s paid off — the furniture, the car, the bills. We’re not even sure that the insurance policy has any value (although lord knows they paid MetLife out the ass every month, but recently they stopped because the bills just kept coming and the threats from MetLife kept coming that the policy was worthless if they didn’t find a way to shovel out $400 a month every month. Jesus. If we’d just saved that money over the years, we could have paid cash for this).

I give Mom a lot of credit. She decorated the house and loved it and lived — truly lived — in it. I’ve had my place since April and boxes are still everywhere. Although, admittedly, something has kept me from unpacking. I don’t know what, but at a moment like this, I’m almost glad that my life has had so little fuss about it.

I almost think I should move to Pittsburgh to let her keep the house, but my job is here. I have little else tying me to the area, but I feel like I’d regret leaving my new city for my old one.

What a mess.

Well, I’ll tell you the real mess. It’s that the incompetent twats over at the VA Hospital are just as incompetent when it comes to performing autopsies as they are at taking care of their live patients.

OK, so when you request an autopsy to be done, do they not just — oh, I don’t know — DO it?

Does it require 20 phone calls?

Does it require that horsefaced cunt of a doctor (Trang. Jesus Christ I hate that woman) calling my mom to first tell her that she’s not sure why Mom (allegedly) said to not autopsy his head.

HELLO? She never told them not to — and who the fuck would think to ASK that?

Another call came to say that the funeral director had picked up the body (gah) and that they didn’t have time to autopsy his head.

HELLO? The funeral director is a family friend, you fuckheads. And he wasn’t there — he was on the phone with Mom at the time and he was going to call when he was on his way to University Drive. JESUS.

A few more calls came, exhibiting the incompetence that the VA Hospital is known for. You know, we’re supposed to be fucking GRIEVING around here — is it really necessary to outline your stupidity step-by-step? Haven’t you hurt that poor little man enough — in death, can you at least give him some dignity? And maybe for once, respect the family for five fucking seconds?

I cried all day yesterday and moved furniture around. There’s room in my bedroom now for an extra bed, and I cleaned out a whole closet for Mom. (I love this place because of its closet space, I swear.)

I appreciate everyone’s calls and e-mails. I was in a heaving, wracking pile of goo every time the phone rang, so I spared everyone. I tend to run from death, when it happens to others. I don’t know what to say and I know it’s not going to be anything intelligent, so I steer clear. And now that it’s me, I don’t know what to say because I waver between “blubbering mess” and “so angry I could punch whatever’s closest.”

I wandered into work last night because I needed a hug (and got one — thanks D!). I also needed to do some stuff, because I’ve been dumping enough crap on people lately (actually, I love everyone for volunteering). One of the evening’s highlights was when one of my buddies and I started drop-kicking some plastic pumpkins and played pumpkin soccer down the longest hallway in the office. Then we jumped up and down on them and smashed their little styrofoam brains out. God, that was cathartic. Squashicide — the best distraction from grief ever!

My cousin told her son that because my grandfather is a veteran, we’re going to have a military funeral. Um, not really. The only ritual I will permit is a 21-gun-salute, only with the VA doctors lined up execution-style and the guns pointed right at their heads! (Again, I believe I’d see styrofoam brains come out!)

The thing I want to get from the autopsy is the real cause of the pain. The man’s always had back pain — he was a paratrooper and fought in the Battle of the Bulge, among others. He has an unsolid back fusion from two surgeries that didn’t take, not to mention the aches and creaks from old age in general. His nurse, whom my mom loved and whom I thought was an asshole, yelled at him the last night he was alive — she thought he was faking the pain and she told him, “I don’t like you anymore.” Whereupon he started to cry.

That’s something that’s always bothered him — he never shared his pain, the true extent of it, because a) the man’s got his dignity and b) he never thought people would believe things were as bad as he said. He’s always turned to me to say that I’m the only one who ever believed him. Of course I did — why do you think I fought so hard for him? Because he would have done it for me in a heartbeat; it was the least I could do to be his advocate.

When I called the nurses’ station yesterday to inquire about him (Mom just wanted them to make sure we could get his teeth — they talked over her like they always do when she asked), it was 7 a.m. I know the shifts change over at that time, but when I called to ask to speak with a doctor, I was told the doctor wasn’t there. And I said, fine, I’m inquiring about my grandfather Calvin. The nurse snapped, “Well, this really isn’t a good time.”

!

Yeah, because I was having the time of my own life, you whore. JESUS CHRIST. It wasn’t a good time for him to die, either, you goddamned cuntrag. I guess it inconvenienced your team to work on him too, huh?!?!

Christ.

I could go on and on (and on), but at this point, I need to go scrub my butt and be a good daughter and get my ass out of Dodge.

I don’t know how my Mom is going to survive this — she did everything to give my grandfather a good life. Both of them are very much about the little things — filmy, pretty curtains; adorable little accent tables, rugs and lamps; mobiles and tastefully cute decorations, with a different theme in every room; decorating the front and side windows for every holiday. Everything is “just so.” He loved it that way.

He loved her cooking (and who could blame him?) and complimented her a million times a day. He told us he loved us every opportunity he had, even if we were just running out to the store or going into the basement to wash a load of clothes. He always said, “My babies!” when we would come home to him.

My own father, I’d tap-dance on his grave. I’d take the bereavement leave simply to ensure that I could properly celebrate his passing. But my grandfather? Was, for all intents and purposes, my dad.

They say girls want to marry someone who reminds them of her dad. And I tell you, the guys who have some of my grandfather’s qualities are the ones who catch my attention. I met someone awhile back and remembered thinking, “My grandfather would approve.”

And now we’ll never know.

Someone told me yesterday that I’m a good person, I guess for whatever she saw me doing or the things I’m thinking. I don’t know. I wasn’t really feeling it at the time. But the only saving grace to all of this, as if there could actually be any, is that my grandparents may be gone and the family line stops here with my Mom and me, but they raised us right. They gave us everything they could and taught us to be the kind of people they were.

That’s all they left to us, and that’s what we’ll carry with us forever, as proof that they were once here and the world was once right.

It almost seems unfair when you lose someone you love (at the hands of others’ incompetence, which makes it worse) that the sun should shine. It should be rainy and miserable, just how you are. Because someone magnificent no longer walks this earth, and for that, the whole world should mourn along with you.

Last Christmas, I bought my grandfather a TV. It’s not that I had money to burn but I wanted to do something for him that he wasn’t expecting — something that he needed. Something that I felt couldn’t wait another holiday, another year.

Last Thanksgiving, he and Mom moved to their pretty little house that we have to give up after the funeral as money does not grow on trees. I remember Mom fretting that they couldn’t afford it (it’s a 3BR house that costs half as much as I’m paying in D.C. for a 1BR) and I told her that good times don’t need to wait any longer than they have. It’s that whole “if not now, when?” mentality. We’re always trying to wait until the right time to be happy, to start living, to show others what they mean to us.

I have nothing left right now. Tears, sure — I’ve got enough for the next three generations to see. But if there’s any small bit of comfort I can take today, it’s that I was good to him when I had the opportunity. I brought him here to see my apartment, I got him out of the house to meet me in Breezewood so that the months between me dragging my ass up to Pittsburgh wouldn’t seem so long.

But there’s always more I wish I would have done. Like getting him out of that piss-poor excuse of a hospital, that goddamned VA. I promised him that as soon as we got him out of there, we’d take him to a real hospital next time. No more morons playing doctor on him — no more half-assed care and negligence.

No more, indeed. *sigh*

I know I will be expected to give the eulogy. I always do. I have lost so many people — watched so many of my family members just die right in front of my eyes — that it comes second-nature to know what to say.

Today, I got nothin’.

I don’t know how to even pay for the services. Mom used to work for a funeral director so I’m sure we’ll get a break, but it costs per visitation, as well. Mom doesn’t want us to do any, but I reminded her that he was a well-loved man. He’s had the same friends for the past 60 years and it would be rotten of us to keep him away from them. Sure, I don’t feel like dealing with his brothers — he sat at all of their bedsides and I have yet to see their stupid asses, all of whom proclaim that if a brother needs them, they’re there. Yeah. So-called Christians. We wonder why I lose my faith, time and again.

I’m trying very hard to not be mad at God, to not give up all my faith like I did when my grandmother died. Who am I to demand a personal counseling session with the Almighty? I guess I’ll stick to my little candle rituals and believing in justice; it’s all I can do. Well, that and clean my house to welcome my mom down here.

I knew it was Russian Roulette what with the holiday season. We have a death on every holiday. Not only was it Thanksgiving, but it was also my grandparents’ 56th wedding anniversary. I can’t imagine that my grandmother was ready to have him back — she’s probably arguing with him to turn around already and get out of her hair for a little while longer. 😉

I still don’t believe any of this. It’s not right, it’s not fair and it’s not acceptable. I don’t understand how checking into a hospital is an automatic death sentence. I don’t get how we’re supposed to trust that our loved ones are being treated — and treated well — and that we shouldn’t expect that anyone other than a fucking funeral director is going to be the one to take them home.

I try so hard to find the life lesson in everything that happens, and today it’s just not coming. Maybe it’s that alternative medicine is the way to go. Maybe I should give up the health insurance and just go get my fucking Tarot cards read and find a good acupuncturist. Couldn’t hurt, right?

Anyone who has any ideas on how to heal a heart that’s been liquefied, however, I’m open to suggestions.

At 2:05 a.m., my grandfather lost the fight against idiocy, incompetence and obliviots.

He was found unresponsive; they say he had been showered and had sat up in a chair for awhile, but he supposedly passed peacefully in his bed. Which, “peacefully,” at the VA Hospital? Whatever.

Mom tried to call all night, but I’d tried so hard to get some sleep and I’d had the phone in another room. I didn’t sleep. I was awake even though I was exhausted. Somewhere around 2 a.m., I stared at the clock and shuddered uncontrollably. Aloud, I’d said, “Oh, God, I hope that’s not what I think it is.”

It was.

Upon my request, Mom ordered an autopsy. Which is to be done by the VA but I asked if we could have it done elsewhere. It’s free of cost when it’s done at the hospital that killed him but I’m trying to figure out where I can pull funeral expenses, autopsy expenses and moving my mom down here to D.C. out of my butt, because I’m all she’s got.

I hate them for decimating him. I hate them for ruining his life, her life. I don’t even know how to pay rent for her to keep her house through the funeral. I don’t know how to meet all MY bills in a month.

I’m bitching, I know. I just HATE how someone else’s hating of — or just ineptitude toward — their job (i.e., the doctors) can destroy lives so effortlessly.

I love you, Grampy. I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry. …

Random theater here, kids. The doors are locked behind you. We’re all doomed, so get comfy. Too bad the popcorn costs more than the movie itself and this is all the entertainment we can afford!

1. It took Eight. Hours. EIGHT!!! to drive from Pittsburgh to Georgetown. EIGHT. Gah. My ass hurts. Our beloved interstates 76, 70 and 270 were parking lots. Only the Beltway was moving, in an ironic twist.

2. I’m convinced the hospital’s just trying to kill my grandfather. Seriously. He walked in there a month ago and now he’s crying himself to sleep, he’s in so much pain. His doctor is a sniveling little cunt. And I probably shouldn’t have called her that.

2.a. “Well, he IS 80,” is NO excuse for abuse and neglect. Whore.

2.b. Picking a fight with my mother four times in front of me won’t win you any points, either. When I get to the point when I snap at you, “It’s not a competition,” kindly back away and go back to being inept like you were before.

2.b. explained:

My great-aunt M. (my grandfather’s younger sister) and her two sons D. and B., none of whom I’ve met in my 32 years but gawd, I was missing out on some great people, drove in from Ohio Friday only to see the same shriveled shell of a man that I had just met the night before. (How much damage can they DO in a week? Apparently plenty. Jesus.)

(Aside: My cousins? Are HOT. Holy shit, I wouldn’t even know I was related to them, as Mom and I look NOTHING like that side of the family. Gah. You could end up with someone and never know that you shared their genetics!)

We had a “family meeting” with the bitch of a doctor, who refuses to tell my mom anything otherwise. My aunt cried the whole time but stopped as I got into an insane discussion with the doctor and asking her how we came in to treat a bladder infection and now it’s dementia and end-of-life care that are the topics of discussion.

(I’m lethal when it comes to medical discussions — don’t act like you’re out-educating me because I’m educated, too, you whore.)

So anyway, dementia is a surprise to me, but thanks to the infection after infection that he’s contracted at those hellholes, it’s made the dementia advance. Thus, she says we should give up on him. I of course tossed in my two cents that maybe if they’d manage the goddamned pain they keep putting him in, maybe he would no longer be driven insane from it and PERHAPS he’d be normal again.

Let me say this. He doesn’t recognize me anymore. AT ALL. Dementia, as it were, is not an overnight-onset condition. It takes years before it’s even perceptible. It’s a gradual decline. How can he go from being my best buddy last week and this week he looked at me and called me two other names (caveat: when he wasn’t sobbing himself to the sleep that never comes)?

Let me also say this: I am not exactly the biggest fan of private hosptials, either. I can tell you stories about fighting for my own life and begging for them to not let me die. And when the assholes finally figured out I wasn’t lying to them, the cuntfaced surgeon came in to pat herself on the back for saving me just in time. GAWD.

In any event, in the meeting, we were all surprised by the dementia. The doc had first said it was caused by all the infections, but when I repeated her words back to her, she said, “I didn’t say that.”

Five people heard it, but OK, fine.

She backpedaled and said that it’s been there for awhile because it can’t just happen overnight, but that the infections aggravated it.

I’m feeling rather litigious right about now anyway; this gives me another reason to go visit my friendly neighborhood smart guy. Ah, Johnnie Cochran, we miss you. …

I asked about all his meds and he’s getting a pharmacy pumped into him, but what she wouldn’t talk about was dosages (yeah, 5 mg of pain meds? My backaches require about 300 times that, but OK. Whore.). She was reading his history to us on a computer and surprising my mother, who sits there ignored every day, just like him. He went eight hours without pain meds today and they think that’s normal? Christ.

Anyway, so later, the whore came into the hosptial room and snapped at my mother that she’d just seen in his records that he was diagnosed with the early stages of dementia in November 2004. Mom said she didn’t know that, and the whore said it was in the records that my mother knew it. Mom said something and the doctor kept saying, “You didn’t bring it up. You didn’t mention it. You said NOTHING in the meeting about it.”

That’s when I got mad enough to say, “It’s not a competition!” to the doctor. She’s got short-man syndrome — always has to prove she’s right, that she’s the one with all the power. I hate her. I said, “She’s not always allowed to be in the room when he’s examined — she doesn’t get all the information. You guys tell him things that he doesn’t repeat to her.”

Oh, was she PISSED.

Mom had a greater comeback — “Yeah? Around the same time, he got diagnosed with an enlarged prostate. When do you feel like getting around to treating that one, since you left the other neglected for two years?”

Heh.

The bitch stomped out.

Anyway, I’m horrified at the fact that he’s getting morphine twice a day and has to beg for painkillers every four hours on top of it when he can’t even speak. I can’t understand him and he knows we can’t understand him and he’s so frustrated that he’s becoming slightly combative. THAT’S NOT HIM. And holy shit is he strong, too. I had to wrestle him back into bed because he somehow polevaults himself out and he’s not allowed to get up.

Which brings me to brighter stories.

3. These yin-yangs keep saying he has no appetite, yet they give him appetite-increasing meds and then leave his tray four feet from his bed where he can’t reach it. The trays go back and they say, “He never eats.” Because he’s not fucking Houdini, geniuses.

Wobin, however, has raised hell and now he has a “sitter,” someone who hangs out in the room all day and makes sure he stays in bed and feeds him. Actually, the nurses are supposed to do the feeding but we had a great sitter who could work magic with him. He’ll eat if you tell him to. I fed him, too. I’m not good at it — he ends up wearing it when I’m at the helm, but those of you who have known me for way too long know I always used to say that “I always end up with more ON me than IN me.” Heh — holds true with food, too. 😉

So anyway, it was almost supper time and I said to him that it was almost time for dinner. So he turns to me, bright and clear, and says, “Great — where are we going?” And Mom said, “We’re staying here, Dad,” and he looked horrified and said, “Oh, no, we’re not going to eat here!”

LOL

I always tell him that he’s stronger than they are stupid. Which I think holds true for eternity but I’m afraid they’re the ones (not) pushing the drugs. *sigh*

4. More funnies — I think Grampy’s developing a lil’ jungle fever in his old age. When he’s a little more with it than usual, he’s flirting up a storm with the nurses. We love it. I’ve been wondering what he would say when I brought someone home who’s more apt to get a tan than me, but now I’m not so worried anymore. 😉

5. So Mom and I and her friend had breakfast at Eat ‘n Park this morning. (Go on, watch the Christmas commercial. We all need a good cry!) Per usual, the service was horrible and the food was delicious (perhaps only) because we were starving. Anyway, I was just saying how much I missed being around rednecks when some asshole walks past our table, clearly done with his meal, and belched so loud, the plants above my head rattled.

I was already pissed off from having to send my breakfast back twice and this did me in. I yelled, “PIG!” and he kept walking. I looked at Mom, who was at the end of the booth, and asked if he’d gotten anything on her. (That was a wet burp. Classless. Gah.)

6. Odd observation on the VA. Lots of doctors and nurses are from the countries these guys fought against. My grandfather doesn’t care — the man loves everybody and is grateful for everything (and nothing) — but a lot of his roommates are downright offended that they’re being treated by the Vietnamese or Chinese or Korean. It’s really weird to watch some of these guys react — like, that’s who they were told to kill. The flashbacks are readily apparent sometimes.

7. Mom says I talk in my sleep, talk in the shower, talk to my food, talk to my ass. I drive her crazy. She feels bad for my colleagues, who must want to shoot themselves when I’m around. She’s waiting for ME to be institutionalized!

8. My grandfather reminds me of the dad in “Hope Floats,” when “Birdee” goes to visit him in the home and he finally, finally recognizes her. Because when he does, he holds out his arms to her.

My grandfather did that for his sister — she was convinced he didn’t know she was there or who she was, but I understand his mumbling enough to know that he’d said her name 20 times. I told her to go closer to him because he suddenly can’t see or hear very well either (a side effect of the hospital, no doubt) and she said that she was there.

And in his thrashing pain, he stopped trembling, had the biggest smile and held out his arms to her. I don’t think I stopped crying for three hours after that.

9. From “Hope Floats” to “Steel Magnolias,” I get the end of the latter, when all the men step out of the room because they can’t take watching “Shelby” slip away. It’s hard. It’s terrible. I think the hospital system is fucked up and I think they’ve fucked him up irreparably, but I’m not ready for end-of-life discussions. I’m not — he deserves more than that. He deserves to be rescued from that dark, small place they’ve beaten him into.

He deserves to live be 100 and die of old age, not from others’ incompetence. (I’m looking square at the doctor — he’s got phenomenal nurses.)

Today I couldn’t go to the hospital. I’ve seen enough. I’ve seen too much. I couldn’t do that drive with all this so fresh in my mind. I don’t know how to save him. I just don’t. I feel like I can — that this is my chance to fix it. But how?

And will there be anything left of him by the time I figure it out?

So I slept in today. So I haven’t spent one single weekend in D.C. in two months. So I’m paying a comma for this friggin’ apartment and have yet to do anything other than scrub my butt and re-pack my suitcase every few days.

(For the record, I scrub my butt every few hours; I just meant that I leave every few days, not cleanse my cooter!)

I awake to Mom wondering where the hell I am. I’m tired, people. I’m in bed. So I say fine, I’m up, but I need to pay bills and scrub cat shit out of the carpets and whatnot. So two hours later (just now), I get the call to tell me what hospital and what room number my grandfather is in. I said, “You do understand I am still in Northwest right now? As in, not on the road.” And she gets all pissy and “Fine” and “Maybe you should stay there today and we’ll see you when we see you.”

Blah blah, she wanted me there because I always drive her to the hospital and she’s tired of the drive and drama and pain and misery blah blah blah. Because I just love neglecting my own life all over the place and putting no fewer than 500 miles on the car each trip (more like 750, with all the running in-between).

Sorry, I take that back. I know I’m the youngest and everyone depends on me, but I’d just like to know when someone, somewhere is going to lend me a friggin’ hand because I am overextended right now and scrambling to keep up. I feel like I have no ability to show initiative to the people who are expecting it from me because initiative would take more energy than I can generate right now.

I have to go to Pgh again next weekend, which is fine — a day I’ve been waiting five years to witness, actually. 😉 (And do you THINK my fat ass fits in any of the 17 semi-formal dresses in my closet? JESUS.) But I got an invitation the weekend after it for a party, which I’d love to attend, but it’s 100 miles in the complete opposite direction. Go figure.

It’s the inaugural tacky Christmas sweater party — how could you pass up something like that? 😉

What I had to explain to Mom is that Maddie? SHIT all over the pile of bills I needed to pay today. And not just shit recently — oh, no, she must’ve done it the day I left town last week. So I had to pick crusted fucking shit off of my bills so I could see the account numbers (I know, online bill pay blah blah blah I don’t trust the Internet). So a task that normally just sucks now stinks as well!

I am pledging to myself right now: Next year, I will be with, if not the love of my life, then a ridiculously great lay. And our happy asses will be in Hawaii, far away from rain and highways and that double-helping of guilt.

I was talking to one of my favorite people today (it seems the majority of my favorite people are at work. Please allow me to pause to consider this phenomeon!) about Thanksgivings past, and I remembered a great story about my mom. (“Wobin,” for the unfamiliar.)

It was years ago, when my grandmother was still alive and Mom cooked one of her patented 40-course meals (it’s been awhile. Mmm, stuffing balls. *drool*). The thing with Mom is that you don’t know where to be while she’s cooking. If you’re sitting on the couch, you get yelled at to help her already because she can’t pull off this goddamned feast all by herself. So then you will go try to make yourself useful, only to be yelled at for getting under her fucking feet already. But when you vacate, she assumed the orders she had barked out in a frenzy had been executed and you will, surprise, get yelled at for fucking up the process.

The neuroses? Yeah, they all start there. 🙂

So anyway, it was one of those times in which I’d been exiled and was seeking safety in the living room, where my grandmother was in her hospital bed that would confine her for seven years after her stroke. (Yay for the idiot medics who came when she had the stroke, picked her up off the bathroom floor, left her on the couch, LEFT THE HOUSE and had to be summoned back when she wasn’t as OK as they thought she was. Christ on crackers.)

Ahem.

Where was I?

Oh yeah, so Gram and I were having a rip-roaring good time watching Mom drive herself insane for — oh — FOUR of us (my grandfather being the fourth — he was hiding upstairs. Smart man). We’re talking turkey and balls and eight other side dishes and 72 appetizers and maybe a pie or two cakes or something also in process. And Rosemarino salad. I don’t remember after whom it was named but it involved pasta and whipped cream and fruit. That was our family’s version of healthy.

ANYWAY.

Gah.

(We’re probably grabbing Chinese on the run again this year, so forgive the digressions!)

So my grandmother used to be the matriarch who cooked for the masses. As an Italian mother/grandmother, it was HER kitchen and HER ways of doing things — if you fucked it up, she wouldn’t eat it. So, understandably, PRESSURE.

(Ask me sometime about the year she refused to eat the turkey and demanded — and got — a frozen Swanson dinner. My mother was scarred for life!)

SO.

We were cackling at Mom. (Easy target, trust me.) My sweet-natured, mild-mannered Mom, however, had HAD IT with us. So, she calmly opened a cabinet, found two boxes of something or other, and effortlessly hurled one at her mother and the other at me.

And that bitch? Has AIM!

We were so stunned silent that she would actually DO that. And Mom, without batting an eye, turned back to her 20 projects and completed them wordlessly.

And that was the moment in which you realized you DO NOT fuck with Wobin.

I was never prouder of her!

Later she did feel bad for beaning us, but I told her to shut up and not give up that moment of victory, as she had SO earned it. Yay Wobin!

Hey, we’re not having a traditional dinner for yet another year — let a girl slurp up some gravy wherever she can!

Chris Daughtry’s new album on iTunes

*searching for a mop for the floor beneath my chair*

“I ain’t settlin’
Just getting by
I’ve had enough so-so
For the rest of my life.”

— Sugarland, “Settlin'”

What a weird little week. Got promoted, went on vacation, got a new office. Fabulous.

Seven days ago, I was on my way to the MGM Grand and Mandalay Bay for an escape from D.C. And the one thing I learned is that just because people have enough money to stay at those over-the-top hotels, doesn’t mean they all actually step into the shower and take advantage of the complimentary toiletries and bath salts. 😉

While I was away, I didn’t do much in the way of touristy stuff, other than catching the Shark Reef exhibit, where I absolutely loved sitting in one of the two tunnels with sharks of all shapes, colors and sizes swimming overhead. In fact, as I learned my last night there, they have a channel devoted to a live webcam of the Shark Reef — it was freaking awesome to fall asleep to. (It’s available on a delay here.)

If you’ve ever stayed in Mandalay Bay, please be assured that you will never go outside — you don’t have to. The place is its own empire, complete with a beach and great restaurants (StripSteak, Shanghai Lilly, Rum Jungle, Wolfgang Puck’s, House of Blues, Red White & Blue, etc. — I recommend them all foodwise but don’t bother if you’re trying to get somewhere else afterward on time). Everytime I was in an elevator and heard someone saying they wanted to try one, I was striking up conversations, telling them what to order. 🙂

I’d wanted to catch a show or go to the Eiffel Tower again, but really, I breathed nothing but the oxygen that was pumped into the casinos. (Oh, gawd, there went the car payment!) Sad thing is, I walked around so much that I should have dropped about eight jeans sizes, but the yummy food more than offset THAT marathon! I swear, from my room to the restaurants would have been an $8 cab ride were everything laid out flat on the street!

I was joking with my colleagues yesterday that I was like a captor who had the chance to be free of her kidnapper, yet couldn’t go. I walked outside once — once! — and immediately stepped back into the revolving doors and went to the slot machines. People were looking at me funny, but then again, when DON’T they?!?!

The first day I was there and had some time to myself to go find breakfast, I turned on my little ROKR phone and the Sugarland song I quoted above popped on first. It was sort of an epiphany for me — that I CAN have good things and I need to go after them with all my might. They’re not going to just happen, y’know? I’ve worked really hard to get where I am and it’s going to take even more work to stay afloat and maybe go even further, but it’s doable.

I mean, I’ve settled for less than I’ve deserved for so long that I have had such low expectations of people, places and things that are just amazing. I’m starting to find that the world really is ours for the asking … and taking.

I was entertaining in my new office yesterday, and my buddy who made it possible was saying that, wow, just two weeks ago I was wondering whether there’d be any fallout from a random act of stupidity inflicted upon my superiors supposedly by me (but not). But all it did was remind everyone that I’m Web-savvy and I got a big fat invitation to develop/administer a Web portal and blog, since I’m so good at it in this very space. 😉 Talk about being in the right place at the right time! LOL. I love it. Just LOVE IT.

I also get to hire someone I respect very much. I mean, I always say that when bad things happen to me, the universe avenges my boo-boos and brings me out ahead. I tell you, I’ve spent my life being happy for the success of people around me, knowing that my day would come, too. It has, and I’m enjoying it more than I ever thought I would.

Don’t call it a happy ending, though. Call it the boost to keep me hanging in there to see what I can *really* do, when given the opportunity. I would never have had these chances in my previous incarnation — growth at my previous job was discouraged; now it’s mandatory. I’m thriving, and thankful for it.

So this holiday — a far cry from when I literally tried to slit my wrists two years ago (but I hate blood, so that ended that) — I’m giving thanks for everything that happened to tear me down, because it made me work harder on the way back up and I appreciate it 10 times more than I probably would have back then.

The American dream is on its way to being mine.

A-freakin’-men!

Along with the promotion, I’m getting a window office. Yes! Although it has been threatened that the windows will be painted because you usually find me in my little cubby, holed up in the dark.

I have five lamps and one overhead light, and it’s usually regarded as the terror threat alert system — if I’ve got all the lights on, that’s usually a “stay the hell away from Goddess” day. But with natural light? No one’s going to know when NOT to come and talk to me! 😉

(Just kidding — I’ve got a revolving door just in case there’s some good gossip coming ’round!)

It’s a tiny cubby of an office but one with a lovely little corner in which I can buy some cheap excuse of Swedish craftsmanship upon which to plant my ass — I’m already envisioning closing the door, kicking off the heels and doing some writing.

It’s a good day in the World of Goddess.

I wish I could say the same for my grandfather, who was forcibly ripped from Good Hospital the night before I left for Vegas and has been abused and tortured repeatedly ever since and I’ve been too heartsick to pick up the phone when Mom calls to report the latest drama. It seems like I’m the one getting all the good luck in the family right now, and believe me, I’ll take it, but I just wish some of my good karma could be shared with those who could use something to believe in right now. …

Going from a five-star luxury hotel in Vegas to a tiny apartment full of cat shit landmines? Makes me want to cut off my ponytail and hang myself with it. Oh well, it was nice to have a break from “litter getter” patrol!