adrift

KyLady has been adrift this month, so much so that it’s very hard for her to think in first person.  Life this month is nothing like her life has ever been.  Perhaps an alien presence usurped control of the KyLady Command Center (KCC), and KyLady acquiesced, becoming a casual bystander in her own life.  For the sake of this blog post, she will now resume control so that she may issue an account of all that has transpired.

 

One thing that writing does for me is that it forces me to think about what has happened lately.  It’s so easy to just go and do and never think at all, sort of like putting life in auto-pilot mode.  Perhaps it is a flaw to do that too often.  I am guilty, or just predisposed or somehow conditioned to do that (i.e. autopilot) whenever things get hectic.  It’s just easier to take the head-in-the-sand route.

My babies moved out and started college this month, Jack died, I started a new career, my real job is killing me, my alcoholic brother nearly died again, the house has fallen to ruin, Molly has become a different cat, Someone has changed into somebody I don’t know…there, it’s all said.  Who could blame me for taking the easy way out?  If I plod along long enough, all this will become the new normal.  It will; it always does.

 

Having Jack euthanized was a hard decision to make.  His tumor grew to the point where it was hard for him to walk.  We were giving him pain medicine twice a day.  Someone refused to be involved.  The girls tried but giving medicine to a cat is difficult.  They wasted a lot of it and the stuff was as expensive as gold (well, almost).  The drug was working well for him; giving it to him on schedule was the least we could do for him, but it was becoming a drag.  Then he developed an ulcer on the tumor.  It abscessed and that became the deciding factor.  The big, gaping hole was not going to get better.  Emily wanted to be present when we put him down, she was leaving for college that very afternoon, and if not that day, it would surely need to be done within a few days.  I scheduled the deed with our vet.  Someone, both girls, and I took poor Jack to the vet’s office and were with him through the end.  It was a very sad occasion.  Death of a beloved pet is never pleasant.  We buried Jack in the pet cemetery in our back yard.  He lays in eternal rest with Chewy, Max, Tiger, Nosey, Belle, Norse, Josie, Bubbles, James Dean,  and a host of other creatures whose names and species I can’t remember.

Rest in peace, little Jack

  

With Jack gone, Molly has become a different cat.  She demands much more attention and more food, and she is asserting herself more with Gracie.  It was always Jack who intimidated Gracie, now Molly has taken over.  Molly was a young neighborhood stray who adopted Erin just a few months after we adopted Jack.  We let her stay only because Erin insisted it was unfair that Emily had a cat and she did not.  Perhaps it was just the “crazy cat lady” in me that let Erin keep Molly, or Someone just wanted his daughters to be equally happy.  We have no girls here now but Molly remains a permanent resident.

keeping everything equal is IMPOSSIBLE

    

Erin and Emily are adjusting to college life and adjusting to living apart from each other, while Someone are I are adjusting to our empty nest.  My first instinct is to declutter the house and clean thoroughly, but alas there has been no time at all.  This is middle of Week 2 for the course I’m teaching.  Facilitating an online course has been way more time-consuming than I ever imagined it would be.  Still, it’s much more enjoyable work than my real job, perhaps because it’s all still new and I’m learning new things.  Thank heavens I didn’t commit to teaching two courses this semester!

My alcoholic brother became very sick with a bacterial infection in his blood and lungs.  He’s been in the hospital for 10 days so far.  I’ve visited him a few times just to see how he is when he’s not plastered.  There is just no hope for him; his brain is too damaged from drugs and alcohol.  No doubt his first stop out of the hospital be to the bank for money, and then to the liquor store.

Someone is restless with his girls moved out of the house.  He’s bored.  To make matters worse, a tree knocked down a utility pole in our neighborhood which eliminated our cable, Internet, and phone service for three full days.  Someone was a wreck with no TV because not only is watching TV his primary hobby, he must have a TV to watch while running endless hours on his treadmill (his secondary hobby).  Admittedly, I was not happy with no Internet.  I set up my phone as a personal hot spot to survive the outage.  Someone really REALLY needs to find some friends or take up new hobbies because I have enough jobs without adding entertainment director to the list.

So now, it's back to work for KYLady.  She has stuff to grade, student emails to answer, a report to run, a kitchen to clean, laundry to start, and cookies to bake for a bake sale tomorrow.  It must be true that a woman's work is never done.