Been gone

I have been doing a bit of off line writing which I may post later. It's been a heck of a month for any of you familiar with my mother's health issues. Hopefully I will have more later.

Projecting to the Future

The child and I played last night, one of our favorite games is for me to cover up with a blanket and to crawl around in the living room on all fours while he jumps on top of me. I feign injury and begin to crawl on my belly, still under the blanket. At this point he sits on the blanket and gets towed around, giggling his head off.

He's big enough now that I can let him ride on my shoulders without worrying about him falling off - A healthy respect for gravity is a good indicator for maturity.

I called home shortly before lunchtime and it sounds like the child is well on the mend. His rash (Reacted to antibiotics) is clearing, he is in good spirits and does not have a fever. This is all a very positive change from Monday, when he looked like a pissed off 102 degree strawberry.

Anyway I wanted to get some of this down because I have been failing to chronicle the child's existence and here he is over two years old. I'll never know what I was like as a two-year old, and I will certainly never know what it was like for my dad to be a 37-year old. The files are burned, the tapes are erased, the neighbors moved out with no forwarding address.

Who am I? Where did I come from? Where am I going? All good questions. I may never know all the answers but I intend to kill some trees in the attempt.

Helpless

I cannot think of a good starting point.

I have been trying to define my current emotion and I cannot do it. Concerned for my mother? Yes, even worried. But at her age and at this point in her life I know that her recovery depends on both her will and God's will, far more than the army of nurses and Doctors that are tending to her. Does that comfort me, or put me at ease? Not really. Firstly I don't know about mom. I get the feeling that she has about had it and is ready for the next step. I suspect that she felt like her number was up back in '89 when she beat breast cancer. 'Beat.' Ask anybody who has survived breast cancer (Specifically via mastectomy) and you'll know that you don't really 'beat' breast cancer. Even if they get all the cancer, once those lymph nodes are gone your life changes forever. Mom has had a good life and has been pretty much able to do whatever she wanted for most of it. But now with thetracheostomy it is like the curtain has been pulled back and everyone can see the remainder of her life laid out for her. Assisted living at best, quite possibly a nursing home. But that's assuming that she makes it through the pneumonia. But that's up to God. And mom.

My current emotion is "Helpless."

Boat Dreams

It's been unseasonably cold and rainy -- It's gonna be cold all weekend. Do I wish that I was going to spend it freezing my butt off in a boat trying to catch some walleyes? You bet I do. Whether it's the child growing up or my father-in-law finally getting over here from the Philippines, sooner or later there will be more male fishermen in the family and the wife will no longer be able to put the kibosh on fishing trips. In the mean time I need to obtain said boat. I'm pretty sure that my sister would sell me dad's old boat - I know that she isn't using it and plus she could use the money. The question is how/where do I get the money. I am caught in a paradox where I never go fishing because I don't have a boat and I don't own a boat because I never go fishing. But I do know one thing - Time is flying by at an alarming rate. I can feel my body aging right out from under me. I better hatch a plan soon for getting out on the water, and taking that boy of mine with me. Or else the next thing I know I will be 79 years old and it will be too late.

Mom - Out of surgery

Mom came out of surgery OK yesterday. She now has a tube that goes directly into her windpipe through the front of her throat. What I didn't understand before was due to ignorance and lack of observation. The woman's mouth was open for 10 straight days with a friggin tube going down into her windpipe - Some pretty uncomfortable stuff. When I saw her after the surgery I could see inside her mouth. The whole thing looked like one big wound. One of her teeth broke in the ordeal so there was talk of bringing in an oral surgeon to make sure that she doesn't have any infected teeth. Anyway she is resting today, still heavily sedated.

On top of all that I replaced the water pump on my truck yesterday. GM made it look deceptively easy - Just remove the cowl and the fan and you're home free -- Except that they made the hoses a real bitch by sticking them real close together. Plus the manifolds are obscured by the mounting brackets for the alternator and the air conditioner. I had to clean them off using a mirror. The whole job was so messy that I couldn't really tell if my work was leaky or if I was simply dripping some of the antifreeze that got everywhere while I was doing the job. This is pretty much why I never go into details when the wife asks me how my day went.

Speaking of the wife, she has a huge project launching at work and will be working late tonight, which means that the child and I will be bachelors.

Mom

Mom has been in ICU on a ventilator for 9 days now with no real change - Her lungs are still congested. Tomorrow at 4:30 she is going to undergo a tracheotomy so that they can get that tube out of her mouth.