Christmas Eve 2023

I'm feeling a twinge of Christmas spirit! Surprise! It's Jess. Doing everything to make Christmas happen. It's family. Hessalynn and Brandon are here for a week and Jenise will be back in town tomorrow, and Jeanette and the boys will be here, too. Lindsey stopped by yesterday and I have no idea where Jami is, but we are gathering for Christmas and it feels good. 

Last Christmas didn't happen with Jami in ICU and the year before was the worst Christmas ever, so This Is Nice. ❤️❤️❤️

I miss pen and paper

I really do. Now I have grandchildren who don't know how to write or read cursive because it's no longer taught. Outdated. And my handwriting has deteriorated until I sometimes can't read it. I had years of journals filling stacks of notebooks, almost all of them lost now. I doubt anyone would even want to read them but I wish I had them for Me to read now that I am forgetting so much. I realized today that I have no memory at all of what my nephew Joey looked like. Thinking of Joey grieves me greatly because he was lost to me but now he is totally lost to me. I imagine there are many, many people and memories lost to me. I am aware of some of it but positive I've lost far more than I can fathom. 

I have had this Online Journal for years. Still try to write in it but it doesn't feel at all the same as God old pen and paper. The feeling of thoughts just flowing out on their own is somehow lost in typing for me. I have no idea how people compose anything like this. How they can feel heart and soul pouring out. I can't. Of course, for me, there is also the despair that No One would care enough to want to read anything I write. These will hang online until they are deleted by Blogger Inactive after I die. 

I have little idea how I ended up mattering so very little in the world. I NEVER expected to feel or be like I am. 

My days are carbon copies of the day before. I'm pretty sure I would be diagnosed as "depressed" and maybe that's a correct diagnosis but I see nothing that can change it. I wake, I lay in bed, usually in physical pain, I eat food prepared for me, I mindlessly watch Netflix, Hulu and You Tube until I go to sleep again. Some says the wait seems too long and I take something to sleep away the day. I'm not suicidal but I feel like I have to stay alive so my income can take care of my family. They don't really want or need anything else from me. That's Not saying anything bad about them. It's just the truth. I have no advice or wisdom to share even if anyone wanted it. 

How are we at this point?

We look like we are about to lose everything.  My SSI is somehow going to be less than half what it was starting next month and our rent is going up $300. An impossible situation.  I have faced worse. But I always had this unwavering Faith that everything would work out Sonehow. 

I can't find that faith. 

I haven't had faith in anything for a very long time. Likely from my lack of faith in God. 

I think I really started losing faith when I looked deeply at the holocaust.  Looked at the suffering people who kept Faith throughout and then Still had faith after. After losing their families and suffering for years. Most of them were "God's Chosen" people biblically.  How??

Then science started knocking me around. It is accepted that we are not alone in the universe. So does each society have a God, a Jesus, and a Bible? 

I always felt secure in Faith because 94% of humans believe in God. What are the odds that the 6% are the only ones right? 

It is easy to wonder if man created God to accept life and death. That leaders needed a God of laws to ordain their laws. So many wars! So much death! Over religious beliefs!! 

How convenient that Belief is entirely based on Faith. There is no Proof. Needing Proof is sin, lack of Faith, condemnation for ye of little faith.

Then I wait for a lightning strike for such thoughts but there won't be one because that would be Proof.

I had Huge Faith. 13 years in "The Truth". No, I wasn't an ideal member. I asked too many questions,  I failed to totally live The Life. Then when all hell broke loose, when I found out our Elder molested my daughters and No One believed us. When we were excommunicated and run out of town I cursed God. Screamed at the Heavens that if He had a "plan" that it SUCKED and so did He I was still talking to, believing in Him. I just decided I didn't believe in the church. In any church. 

I often thought about Phineas's law in A Separate Peace, "Pray every night in case there is a God". So I did. 

Scopes

I had my upper/lower endoscopy yesterday, I'll get the results in 5 days. I'm afraid there is going to be some kind of cancer in the stomach or esophagus areas, about 80% sure there will be some kind of bad news. I can't see how I'm going to feel about or react to whatever the news is. I've been through expecting a Dr to find some kind of cancer several times. I Did have a small skin cancer a few years ago - and I knew that's what it was before I saw a Dr and had it removed. I also have precancerous polyps removed from my colon every couple of years the last 30 years.

My digestive system has been bad for a While. Terrible heartburn, unable to eat more than a few bites sometimes,  drowning in vomit at night, nausea, pain, not good stuff! 

I guess I wait 5 days to Know.  I dread that it might need a drastic procedure that causes them to remove my esophagus and/or stomach. Or parts of them.  Completely alter my life, make it even more difficult to survive. The whole possible death thing, I can't really see how that news would feel. 

Jeremy working on the Odyssey

He says it's easy, that he can do it,  but he is So Angry at the world today

I'm seeing him wrecking his car or breaking the van

Hope I'm Wrong!!!!!

4th of July 2023

We continued the tradition of going to 

for yhe 4th. Jeremy and I had Jasmine, Kira and Shy and Jessalynn and,Brandon are here for a couple of days which helped to get Jess and Nova to come. But then the ẃeather!! Steamy hot when we got there and pouring by the time the show started. Still, we were together. 

Just loved that ❤️ 

Journaling

It is Monday. Every weekend I think of all the things I didn't take care of the week before and say I'll start Monday and then another week Flys by. 

Saturday I got Catnis's first shots. Jazz got a hampster. Kira went to Funplez with Ban,  took Riley skating, picked up Kura and Riley and took them and Shy downtime with Emilio, took Riley home and then went back downtown to get the girls. Felt like all day in the car. Home around 1030. Yesterday I just worked I'm my garden.

May 2033

 Jessalynn, Brandon, Shy and Riley are here. Jeanette even stopped by last night. 

I love they are here but wish I could enjoy it more!!

I've been sick. Covid, then strep, then a parafluenza, then the Wreck and then RSV with a respiratory infection. 2023 so far.

I saw Death during the last illness. Woke unable to breathe, took a while to think to use an inhaler. Swore I would stop smoking. Still smoking. Right now in fact. I hear Mom all the time "Your father didn't love us enough to stop smoking". Maybe he did. Maybe near death he saw how damaging he really was to us and just let go. 

I get that.

I don't really understand how damaging I've been. I just know I have a family of damaged people and I am the common denominator.

EASTER 2023

 Jeanette brought a roast and some fixings, we made a couple things,  Jessalynn,  Brohan and Riley showed up. Lindsey, Jake, and Annabella stopped by but couldn't stay, and we had Easter Dinner.🙂😁😁❤❤❤❤❤

3/27/2023 WRECK

 Jeremy and I were on our way home from Fred Leroy when i slowed down, all lanes were blocked for an accident up ahead. I said "It looks like a wreck up ahead" and WHAM. First i noticed a terrible pain at the back of my head, then i realized we were headed fast into the car pile up ahead so I stood on the brakes stopping about a yard from the car in front of me. I looked and Jeremy was laying across his broken seat on the floor screaming that his hands were bleeding. I looked and they weren't so i tried to tell over him "YOUR HANDS ARE NOT BLEEDING! DON'T MOVE! YOU HAVE NERVE DAMAGE!!" Meanwhile I'm screaming too, I've never been hit in the head so hard and it made no sense to me because the head rest is padded. I looked in the rear view and saw a smashed white SUV with writing on the side and I told Jeremy again to STAY STILL and that it looked like a city truck, probably insured. We could see the flashing lights from police etc at the accident up ahead but they couldn't see or get to us. Jeremy was yelling WHY AREN'T THEY HELPING US?! so I called 911. A man opened Jeremy's door asking if we were ok and Jeremy started to try to get out so then I'm yelling at the man DON'T LET HIM OUT! When the first ambulance got there they were trying to decide who to get first and we were both yelling that the other was hurt worse and thankfully they listened to me and took Jeremy cursing them out for leaving me. I really didn't think I was injured badly but he was definitely most critical. 

Jeanette got to the hospital pretty fast. My head and neck hurt  very badly but even she didn't think I was badly hurt. She saw Jeremy, he was in the Trauma unit, begging to be put together. We were poked, prodded, and examined head to toe. I tried to sneak out of my room to use the bathroom and got caught and lectured but you could tell they weren't really worried about me either until my MRI came back. The room filled with people wearing dark blue and one said, We are taking over this patient! Why wasn't she taken to trauma like her husband? 

They found 2 bleeds in my brain - I guess that was why my head hurt so badly! I was admitted and moved to CCU. Jeremy was also admitted and moved to Step Down, I believe that means a step out of CCU?? 2 floors below where I was. His nurse brought me a phone and asked me to talk to Jeremy. That he needed surgery and was refusing it and demanding to see me. They told me he would be a paraplegic without the surgery so i calmed him, told him surgery wasn't really a choice. 

3am the second night they moved me to the floor Jeremy was on and wheeled me to see him. He looked so terrified and freaked out!!!! but was happy to see me. We only had part of that day near each other. They decided my bleeds could be monitored outpatient since they weren't spreading and I was sent home. I was back up there the next day for his surgery. The neurosurgeon and cardio surgeon were arguing about who should do what. Cardio explained that if neuro messed up and Jeremy needed a fast transfusion he would just bleed out because his aorta was too narrow to handle the blood volume. Neuro acted insulted, said they WOULD NOT make a mistake and that if cardio went first he might not be strong enough for them to fix his spine. I was 100% backing cardio but Jeremy flat refused the heart surgery. He was just so terrified!! They should NOT have argued in front of him and I don't think they should have listened to him - he clearly wasn't getting it. 

The surgery went smoothly,  finished in 3 instead of the projected 6 hours in spite of some complications. 

He was a mess.  Still is! He came home 3 days after surgery and later that day he realized the risk he took refusing the heart surgery. Had a full blown panic attack sure his heart was about to explode. Checked his heart and oxygen, pulse was high, but was sure it was the panic, gave him a xanax and he calmed down and slept.

Oh. Back to the accident. The other driver told the police he was looking at his phone and didn't see the accident ahead or me slow down. His vehicle went under ours which explains why we were rolling so fast after he hit us. It was not a city vehicle but it Was a company car, Ocean View Transportation.  I called Atty. Matt Knowles from the hospital and he showed up really fast! 

We got an Enterprise rental 4 days after I got home, a 2021 Malibu.

I went for a brain CT last Thursday. No one called me with results so I screen shotted the test and took it to Dr. Gold to read. He said it showed little bleeds all over my brain and told me to stop driving. 

Then who will drive the Malibu?? I'm the only one on the lease and Jeremy and Jess can't drive.....

Funny, the day before the wreck we found out Jeremy was approved for SSI. Our money problems were almost over!! Now we are also looking at a hefty settlement from this accident!!

We just have to survive to collect it 

"Home crap home"

A line from The Money Pit. I think of it a lot.

Our home has been an embarassing disastrous mess since Maple View.  Progressively worse with time. It is embarassing and mentally, possibly physically,  unhealthy. I can't fix it. I try. New Rule this week: I clean something every time I get up. Try to. Scrub a wall or a cabinet door or the bathroom shelves. It's not helping much yet. Jess tries but its overwhelming even without a mental illness. I know I screwed up not having the girls do chores. They will when asked but really, most of this mess is beyond kid chores. I feel deep guilt that I myself don't/can't do more. I feel deep anger that Jeremy won't.  In the "before" when he was working and I was able I kept it up by myself. When he stopped working I hoped he would try to keep the house clean. He does do dishes and sweep and mop the kitchen and living room a lot. Always angry he has to. If I ask him to do more he immediately says WHY ME. If I rare mention how much time he spends playing games etc he denies it and is outraged. When he could no longer drive he was enraged at "being made useless" in a filthy house.

The girls are embarrassed to have friends over. I am, too. Always terrified the landlord will evict us because the filth spills out of the house. The yard screams White Trash Live Here. Our home is the nastiest looking place for miles in any direction - and we live in the ghetto.

Jeremy

I still have no clue how to help Jeremy or to make him easier  to live with. He is so sad and depressed which he expresses with negativity and rage that is So Hard to live with. I definitely believe he would have had a better, happier, life without my family. But he is here with us about 20 years now. 

Jeremy spends most of his time sitting on the futon playing video games or down in his basement room. He'll do the dishes most days, angrily, playing and screaming to heavy metal, usually pretty foul stuff. I believe it is a punishment to the household, make sure we suffer with him, because he knows everyone hates it and he Could wear headphones.  He will sweep and mop the livingroom and kitchen and clean the cat boxes in the same spirit. It feels a lot like hate.

When I could I did all these things and more but I got something out of it I don't believe he does. That satisfied feeling that it's done. The pleasure in it being done. 

I know this atmosphere is unhealthy for ALL of us. I'm aware that Kira's anger issues are fed by this steady stream of negative rage. 

Jeremy hasn't worked since Covid. I encouraged him to apply for SSI with his epilepsy and aortic stenosis. Partly for his health. Largely hoping he can get it and have a steady income even if it is very small. When he worked I lived in anxiety that he would again get fired. It is very sad the problems he had working with men.  No One ever backs him if he makes a mistake at work. It never takes long for fellow employees to notice he is "different" and it is never tolerated. He can excel at his job but will Never get any recognition for it. Never. Add to that he does some pretty foolish things at work that get him in trouble and fired. It is incredibly sad and unfair but it is the world we live in. I've tried to help him, advised keeping to himself at work, just do his job, clock out and leave. Even if he could, the Haters would eventually find him, single him out, and punish him for being Different.

So he is home now waiting for SSI that may never go through. We live on the money I can bring in with my SSI and whatever government aid I can get. We are barely surviving. We live one unexpected disaster from being homeless. 

And we live in filth. Real Filth. It really got to me last month when the car tags expired and I can't afford to renew them so Jeremy can't drive because he has a traffic warrant and we might lose the van. He was angry when I told him, yelled "JUST MAKE ME FUCKING USELESS!" which Really Made Me Angry. Still trying to get over that! I look at our filthy home that extends to a trashy, filthy, yard and see all the ways he Could Be very useful!! I CAN drive. I can't keep up the house and yard. He could but won't. 

Insanity.

I live with grateful insanity. 

He is So Miserable but refuses to go get another life but instead tried to make everyone else Miserable because he is.  What a sad way to live. 

My Jess

I have already said what I think/feel about her. It just never seems to be enough. I want so much to make her life as beautiful as she makes mine! I so much want the whole world to see what I see!! Beautiful,  inside and out, for me she is the hope of the human race.

Jami visit

 She spent the night, already starting to want to go back.

She's skin and bones. Meth sores not healing on her face. 

I asked, to end the debate, if it was just Mike or the drugs that kept her with him. I believe it is unbelievably mostly Mike. She says it all Just Him. Actually said "But he kept me alive". Like I don't know anything about the story. 

I can't save her.

Today.

THE Headache

 It's back. The headache I had with the aneurysm.  Vision seems ok, face numb around eyes.

Obi died 2/22/23 7:45pm

 I am completely heartbroken.  Obi is the only pet I ever had that was 100% mine. I saved her when she was a kitten and then she adopted me. I love her so very much!! Every time I looked at her I was amazed, dazzled, by how beautiful she was and thought how I never dreamed I would have such a beautiful creature. To be fair, Kirk was the first person she let pet her but she chose Me to be hers.  I cried last year when she tested positive for leukemia but I prayed she would fight it off as some do, and then I vowed that whatever life she had left would be the best I could give her. She slept on me or beside me all of the time. I loved the feel of her near me!! When I was sick or upset she always Knew and came to me. 

I held her as she died. Felt her last breath. 

I will never stop loving and missing her. 

Thanksgiving 2 years ago

 I see I wrote about this Thanksgiving,  how happy I was we were invited, was surprised I only mentioned that I got sick and had to go home.

I was sitting at the dining table by Jeremy, dinner was over. Jeanette and David were sitting on the couch across the room. I stood up and Jeremy says my body convulsed before I fell forward. My next memory was laying face down on the floor and that I was peeing. When I raised my head Jenise was there. I said I was nauseous and she grabbed a bowl I threw up in. I told her I had peed, asked her to help me discretely get up. She mopped up as Jeremy helped me up. I was totally disoriented and dizzy. I asked Jeremy if he could get me in the car and he carried me out.

Two things. One, what the hell was that??!

Two, it bothers me, some days I obsess about it, that Jeanette never even got off the couch. I don't understand the total lack of care. Yes, she spent over a year telling everyone she hated me and worse, I still don't understand what either,  but I Always told myself that she loved me. And she talks like she loves me now.  I've spent a lot of time taking care of her the last year, but something is WRONG. She hated Jenise first, that was how I got on it. I know it was about me helping Jenise but still don't understand the hatred that followed. And now I see her with Robby. Well, Not With Robby. None of it makes sense. I want to help but have no clue How. 

Her life is disaster after disaster like the Universe is screaming at her to change course. I can't help because I don't know what change the "Universe" is asking for. If i look over her life I know her spiral started when she and Rob split up, but that isn't necessarily Why it started. Then she met Jon Ways, lost her eye, was indited, and has just been lost. 

I'm so scared for her. Afraid she will just give up. Afraid it's a mental or physical disorder. 

She is so heartbreakingly Lost. 

I'm going to go see her today. 

Pray.