Juggling Swords and Chainsaws - and an exceptional number of run-on sentences. Sorry.

I will not dwell on the issues I am dealing with regarding my mother. I will say that if my father wasn't already dead, I swear to the entire internets that I'd kill him myself today. I can't help thinking about all of the lectures I received over the years - right up until a couple of years before he died, when he finally realized that maybe I wasn't an idiot after all. My relationship with my father had been filled with tension, criticism, second-guessing my choices, and the endless, condescending lectures about being prepared and fiscally responsible and all that shit. Well ha ha, I have the last laugh, he wasn't as prepared as we'd thought he was. I had assumed that he had the right levels of insurance coverage in place, and whoopsie, no, he left a big, gaping hole in their financial safety net, simply because he was sure he was immortal and would never need it. If he'd been uneducated or in anyway impaired or even just a happy-go-lucky type who just never thought about these things, I might be able to shrug it off as "Oh, Dad..." and feel better about having to work my ass off to fix his catastrophically bad judgment now if I even can do it, but considering how he was for HIS ENTIRE LIFE, it's not amusing at all.

And I do wonder, when I have time to think, whether this has anything to do with my inability to commit to a new relationship. Ya think? The men in my life, so far they have brought far more work and stress and responsibility than sunshine and lollipops and puppies. I want vacations and puppies, dammit! I want to sit on the beach with an umbrella drink! I want weekend trips, and backrubs, and I want to hear those magic words, "Let me take care of this." Yes, I do. I swear I am so tired, I would welcome it. Yeah, just take care of it. Thanks, honey. There'll be a little something extra for you tonight.

So I have less than 10 days to get this crisis under control before starting my new job. Eventually I intend to be happy to have the new job, because it really is a good thing, but the timing of this mess could NOT have been worse or more complicated. I have been on the phone for hours today, trying to fix shit I DID NOT BREAK (which seems to be a recurring theme in my life) and wondering what my own blood pressure is doing these days. I'm afraid to look. My mother's health isn't stable, her doctor of many years has been virtually useless (again, I told my father years ago that he needed a new primary, but they never changed) and everybody passes the 82 year old hot potato to somebody else.

On the plus side, I'm sitting on the patio with a glass of pinot grigio and the scent of jasmine, and I got in a lot of exercise today, I actually do feel relaxed, considering, and I should sleep well tonight.



Knitting? Oh, yeah, I'm suddenly monogamous, just to tired to knit around. Working on Euroflax shawl. I like it. Photos someday.