Caterwauling

So Mom’s 67th birthday is coming up.

She will be forever 66. Young, beautiful, happy, sweet. Forever pretty. Forever loved and lovable and loving.

She deserved so much better than all this. She wanted to be here. She wanted to be my mom. She said she had so much more to teach me. She worried that I won’t be OK or know what to do in situations I haven’t encountered yet.

I mean, I’m 50. I’ll do the best I can. But, yeah, a girl needs her momma. Well, let me rephrase, given some of the mothers I’ve encountered. THIS girl needs HER momma.

I knew I would be a fucking mess. I am. I cannot hold it together and it’s fruitless to try.

So I booked a trip.

Come to find out that one of my staffers also booked a trip. Out of the country.

Our payroll system is strange, so we usually just input our days closer to the time off so we don’t go into deficit.

So when I looked and saw no one else was off, I was relieved and booked my week.

Well.

Person reminded me that they always take off around this time. Which is true and fair.

So I moved all my reservations to the weekends. Well, almost all of them. And I booked an extra four nights to do it.

I’m just going to keep saying well. Because, well, the nonrefundable, pet-friendly hotel just informed me that I cannot bring cats.

I said fine. My mom just passed and I have my cat AND hers, and I am going to need that money back to go someplace else.

Suddenly cats are fine! But you have to pay the dog rate.

Which, thanks to the extra-long stay is going to be upward of $500.

I don’t mind the working. I am the boss and all. And frankly I like my edits when I take over things that aren’t always mine to edit.

Also I am just grateful to have a job. My mental capacity is diminished. They give me all the rope I need to climb back when I’m ready.

But, maybe the whole reason why I cannot get my brain back together is I am not able to fully disengage.

Like our Cocoa Beach trip. It was supposed to be half work, half personal. Turned into all work. And that’s fine because I will get the tax break for it. And frankly I LOVED IT. Had so much fun.

But … I really really really wanted that day at the beach that I didn’t get.

At least with going away for a long time, I will at least have some awesome dinner options when I do log off.

And we worked it out that I will work for 80% of the week and she’ll cover the weekday I wish to be unavailable. Skipping that day’s meeting is vacation enough.

So, with the publishing of this post, I will release my annoyance.

I just needed to crab a bit about it first.

My plan was to tour some houses. Maybe this is all for my higher good that I can’t. Who knows.

I was reading some copy that someone in my company was about to put out.

I saw a glaring error. The dog-whistle, right-wing “Democrat candidate” bullshit.

When I said, hey, it’s DemocratIC when used as an adjective, I got this back:

“Oh, OK. We didn’t know it would be Harris when we wrote this.”

So, Democrat candidate if Biden but Democratic if Harris. Got it.

I cannot believe I have to go through life without my sweet, smart, kind, caring, beautiful, loving mother. Who would have been able to respond beautifully so I don’t have to.

And also, it was so nice to have a friend because I don’t know how to keep all this to myself without imploding like ReMorse does at the slightest perceived (and mostly manufactured) inconvenience.