I'm Numb and Broken.

A week ago, life was so normal. 

A couple of days ago, Eddie had an attack of extreme constipation. It arrived out of the blue: normal poop on Wednesday, nothing much on Thursday, by Friday he was straining repeatedly but couldn't pass anything. Still, his behavior was normal, he was eating and drinking and walking, so I added canned pumpkin to his dinner, which he ate with enthusiasm, and decided to call the vet today if he was no better. 

This morning (Saturday) it had gotten worse overnight, he was clearly in misery, so I called the vet as soon as they opened, and they saw him right away. No temp, no weight loss, just extreme distress and unable to poop. We were all thinking of some sort of obstruction, so the first step was an x-ray.

It wasn't an intestinal obstruction. Eddie has advanced lymphoma. It's in all his lymph nodes and in his spleen and liver. His liver is enormously enlarged, to the point where it's displacing his other organs.  It's too far gone for chemo to be worth trying. 

The "good news" is that the constipation sorted itself out with all the manipulation for testing and ultrasound, they brought him back to me in the exam room and the backup cleared itself all over the floor. I brought him home with prednisolone and fingers crossed that it will help the inflammation and give him good quality of life for whatever time he has left, but he's terminal, and probably has a couple of months at best, a couple of weeks at worst. 

When I lost Gidget I could at least console myself that she was about 12 years old, probably older, and was deaf and toothless and going blind, though she didn't let any of that bother her. Still, her only signs of "illness" just looked like normal dog aging: slowing down, reluctant to climb stairs, etc., and even then, the tumor on her spinal cord was a shock because she was fine until she wasn't, and when she wasn't it was really, really bad. 

 Eddie's only about 5, and had appeared to be in perfect health.  He had no symptoms of anything at all. He was fine, until he wasn't. 

Oh, and this is the second lymphoma diagnosis in the house: Ellie also has it, though hers is low grade and doesn't seem to be bothering her. Ellie is a cat of unknown age, at least 12 but could be years older. She's a skinny shadow of her former self at this point but her quality of life is contented old cat, so she's in "treat the symptoms as needed and just let her be" mode. 

So I'm heartbroken, numb, and resolved to spoil my best little boy every way I can, until he tells me he's done. He will be getting his meds in a spoon of vanilla ice cream, because fuck it, when you're doing hospice anything goes.  

We'll be spending a lot of time on the couch together, and I'll get caught up on all the movies I haven't gotten around to watching.  He'll like that. The couch is his favorite place. This was taken on Wednesday. 

Sooo....another month....

 Still not retired, because somehow hanging on to a job that keeps paying me feels like a really good idea at the moment?  ::waves arms in all directions::

Along with paying attention to current events: 

I've been half-assedly and lazily trying to learn tarot cards, and the weirdest freaking thing keeps happening. I'm doing this card a day study book by Writual Planner. I am doing it half-assedly, it's more like a few days of cards, then I forget, then I pull another.  It was an impulse purchase, not because I am a believer but because I've lightly dabbled in the past and love the art of tarot decks, and that watercolor deck just sucked me in for some reason, so I bought the deck and Decoding the Cards.

I'm about to sound kinda woo-woo, but it's the truth. When I remember in my half-assed way to do a card ( I only do one a day because an actual spread feels like work) I keep getting cards that are so ON THE GODDAMN NOSE it's freaking me out. 

Today's card was Seven of Pentacles inverted. If any tarot experts wander by they can chime in, but basically, it's about a lack of long term vision and scattered efforts about finances. Seven of Pentacles is about working toward long range goals. Inverted: You do not have your shit together on this matter. So far, every freaking card I've remembered to draw, when I remembered to draw it, has tied in really obvious ways to my retirement plans. 

This was not a one off, it's been so consistent. I don't get random cards that are NOT about security and finances. I shuffle the fuck out of the deck, cut the deck, do all the things, and I consistently get a minor arcana card that is very pointedly about money. So yeah, the cards (like I know what I'm doing) are telling me to focus on my plans and don't do anything half assed. 

Not that I was on the brink of that, but it's wild that I just keep pulling random cards that aren't even vaguely about romance or travel or any other topic, but like sitting down with a humorless financial planner. Yeah, yeah, I get it. I need to focus. 

So anyway, life trudges on, but it's not all bleak. 

The Prince turned two, and his mom planned a short and low key day at Animal Kingdom because it's already hot AF, and lunch at Tusker House, then the Lion King show.  The day was a rousing success!

 

That kid was born for Disney, I swear. We did the safari, wandered to visit the tigers and monkeys, dined at Tusker House (expensive because character meals are pricey, but the food is very good). He hugged Mickey, Donald, Daisy and Goofy, got a birthday cupcake, our charming waiter led everybody in a chorus of happy birthday, he got a card signed by the characters, then we did the Lion King show. 

I love that show so much I'd been waiting to introduce him to one of Grandma's favorites. I had a feeling he was ready for it, but he is barely two and it was hot and he hadn't had his nap, so I had my fingers crossed. 

No need to worry, he sat on Daddy's lap and just took it all in, awestruck and clapping and loving it.  

By the time the show was over it was 95 degrees and we were ready to GTFO, but The Prince was still awake, though fighting the nap he needed. He never had a moment of fussiness, he was up for everything, taking it all in, then went home and slept for hours. A born Disney Kid.

 

 

So, Was It REALLY a Sign?

 Yeah, I'd posted that there were changes at work and I had a new boss and I'm too old for this shit and I think I'm retiring at the end of June. And then I had a one-on-one with the new boss and...I REALLY LIKE HER! 

The first thing she said was, "I'm not going to mess with you and your relationships with your team." We ended up having a 40 minute, very friendly conversation: Y'all, SHE'S A KNITTER!! SHE'S A DOG PERSON! She brought both of those topics up, it wasn't one of those stilted, "So, tell me what you like to do for fun," icebreaker questions. She said she was a knitter and I of course squealed, "ME TOO!" and we were off and running. I swear we spent 20 of the 40 minutes discussing knitting and dogs and planned home improvement projects. 

We hit it off hilariously well - I'd suspected we would, I'd heard her speak at a meeting a couple of months ago and while she was talking about issues she wants to address I just kept nodding and thinking YES! like I was an extra at a church revival scene in a movie: "YOU PREACH IT SISTER!" I'm sure I will be retired before all the shit that needs fixing and updating is fixed, but I'm rooting for her.

So, yeah, I am not feeling any great pressure to retire by X date, but I still have the end of June as, if not THE DATE, at least the deadline to have my exit strategy in place. I'm going to be 68 and I'd really like to NOT be sitting in front of monitors and doing what I'm doing for another year. 

Meanwhile, the school year is wrapping up, and The Kid has the middle school version of senior-itis. 8th Grade-itis? She texted me in the middle of the day on, I think it was Thursday, asking if I could pick her and her bestie up at school. I asked why. She asked if I could, pleeeezeee? I asked why? She texted pretty please? I said no, I had a meeting, and why was she asking?

When would my meeting be over? Me: WHY?? 

Finally: They were bored.  Hell, so am I, but I can't just leave. 😂 

I did appreciate her honesty, she didn't claim terrible cramps or any other excuse I'd have used at her age, she just flat said 7th period sucked and she didn't really need to be there.  I'm sure they really were bored, they're both excellent students and on top of their schoolwork and are in the "OMG is this OVER YET??  end of the year countdown, but No, Darlings, Grandma is not that much of a soft touch. Save that shit for the last two weeks of school when you don't have exams scheduled, I might be persuaded to help you escape early at least one day. It's only the middle of April. 

We went to Epcot last weekend, and did small person hand-off for the rides one of us is too short to ride. I hadn't been on Test Track for a few years, and not since it got a refresh last year.  It was very fun. The Kid and I did it first and then collected The Prince from his parents and got slushies from a nearby spot while they rode. We sat on a bench sharing our treats with the small person, who waited for the monorail to pass by on the overhead track, so he could go "Whoa!" and get excited and yell "TRAIN!"  (I told his dad that one of these days we should just do the monorail loop, he'd love it just like a ride.)

So we're on a bench under a metal shade contraption, and the Prince inspected the environment and announced that we were under an umbrella.  Okay then. He'll be 2 next month. We have another very verbal little smart guy. His mom said his teacher told her how smart he is, they were reading a book and he named everything in the book. 

He's signed up for swim lessons, and we're doing a birthday lunch at Tusker House to celebrate turning TWO, so he can hang with his hero Mickey Mouse. It feels like he was just born, but yeah, he's already a kid who talks up a storm, loves Disney and Mickey Mouse, and loves the water and is SO ready to really learn to swim. Life comes at you fast, for sure.

 

And Then, I Received a Sign.

 So, yeah. I took today off to prep for the garage cleanout on Wednesday. My Garage Guy will be here Wednesday morning and I needed to get into the awful "workbench" thing to see if I'd left anything actually useful in there. 

I did not. 

I realize that other than being grubby my garage isn't like an episode of Hoarders or anything, so anyone stumbling across this backwater blog may be puzzled about why I hired a guy to deal with it.  There's some heavy, bulky crap I can't lift that needs to go, but it's mainly the tear out of that absurd "workbench" or whatever it's supposed to be. 

There's no shelving behind those doors. There's no power or lighting. It takes up space that could be used for actual sturdy metal shelving for actual useful storage. My shit has been sitting in boxes on the garage floor for years, and I'm finally going to do something about it. I've hated it since I moved here but always had other spending priorities. So it's finally going to go, and then I'll get shelving from Costco, and maybe even a smallish garage fridge. But enough about the garage.

While I was running errands I got a text from my boss, apologizing for interrupting my day off and asking if I could give her a call later, then later said she'd scheduled a team call for noon. So my curiosity was aroused, but I figured it was a corporate announcement and probably didn't directly affect me. 

So, yeah, it's was a corporate announcement. A "minor restructuring". I still have a job, but...without getting too much into the details, the boss I've had since 2015 is no longer my boss, and my new manager is someone I've never met in another part of the country. This is all effective THURSDAY, as in April 16th. I don't talk about what I do, but it's fairly specialized work and it's focused in FL, so yeah, it makes perfect sense to have me report to a stranger in another state who has never done what I do.

To clarify: this isn't just about ME, it's about the type of work I do, there are lots of us in several states. But the way we do it in FL doesn't resemble the way they do it in the other states, and vice versa, so this genius management move disregards the specialized knowledge we accumulated through years of experience and makes us all just "one team" that has nothing at all in common.  Instead of leaving us attached to the state level work we do, we're now reporting to someone detached from the specialized issues we deal with. Cool, right? 

Nobody's happy. There's really no justification for it that we can discern, my boss was pretty outspoken that she's NOT happy, but yeah, here we are. 

As I've said I've made no secret that I've been contemplating my exit strategy for a while, so when asked my opinion, I said this maybe the sign I've been waiting for that it's time to pick a date and stick with it. The entire team was just, "Yup." 

So, I'm going with June 30 as my last day, unless they piss me off further. I'm salaried, I don't even need to give two weeks notice, but I also don't want to leave the people I work with and genuinely like screwed over. But yeah, today was the sign I can't ignore. 

Nope, Still Not Retired.

 I don't think I have to explain why not, do I? 

As I've said here and told my boss, I'm on the quarter by quarter plan. I'll work another quarter and see where we are.  It's anybody's guess at the moment, but it ain't looking good. I have my 401k basically locked down in the most conservative options available, and it lost $2k last week. God knows where we'll be by June.

But hey, I had my annual review and it was lovely again, and I got the max raise available and the max bonus, so I'd be a fool to say, "Yeah, but I'm sick of this and I want to retire," under the circumstances. 

And I will never forgive the people Republicans who fucked up this country AGAIN. Jesus can forgive them if He wants, that's His thing. I'm gonna hold a fucking grudge.  I've come back from recessions and housing crashes and major employers going under and all the shit that comes from Republican administrations, but I'm gonna be 68 and I just don't have time to bounce back this time. So I did everything right, saw this coming, tried to warn about it, and I'm in the backseat of the car going over the cliff.

This country is going through some shit, and it's making it clear how much things we all grew up hearing, because "Everybody knows" were LIES. Just a single example of many: How many times were we told that Republicans were best for the economy, and Democrats were always "tax and spend"? Shall we review the decades of actual evidence that proves the opposite, or would that be rude?  Mustn't make terrible people who made terrible choices and chose fascism over democracy feel bad about themselves!  That whole "greatest country on earth thing"? Was never true, and is now just a terrible joke.

So, anyway...I'm focused on gratitude that I'm healthy and doing okay and not being forced to retire yet, and I'm still planning my exit from the full time job to a part time something more fun, but when it'll happen is anybody's guess.  

Meanwhile, the next house projects: the garage makeover and the shower fixing. I'll take before and after pictures, I swear. I know the garage sounds like a low priority project, but it's a lot of useful storage space going to waste, and I want nice useful shelving and a small chest freezer, not the useless mess that exists now. 

The shower - I had originally thought I'd have to tear it out and have it entirely rebuilt, but I think I found an alternative, a local company that can refinish the existing tiled shower. The tile is in good shape, it could use re-grouting due to the age. The shower head is ancient and I really want one with a hand held option as well as a standard shower head, and then Lowe's can send strong young people to install a new shower door. 

I've lived with a curtain and tension rod for years, since the old glass shower door fell apart in my hands while I was cleaning it. I can't remember if I ever told that story here, but yeah, I was wiping the glass doors when the frame holding the large glass panels just...let go. I felt it wobble and grabbed the glass as the metal frame around one of the two large glass panels just fell away. It was old and tired, and it just had enough, a gentle cleaning with a sponge did it in. That was fun. So I'm hoping I can get the local company to give it a facelift, then I'll get new doors and call it done. I don't want to live with rebuilding it if I don't have to, we shall see.

We had a very rare major freeze last month, and many of my succulents didn't make it. They'd been growing since 2020, when my daughter unwittingly turned me into a succulent rancher by giving me some tiny cute owl shaped pots for tiny plants. I bought teeny tiny succulent clippings on Etsy, thinking if even a few lived I'd have plenty of plants. They all lived and thrived under my benign neglect, outgrew the owls quickly and then two more sizes of pots, finally becoming large, other-worldly looking things on the balcony. The Great Freeze of 2026 killed several, but not all. I'm not terribly sad about that, and I'm starting over with a new batch of wee plants, also from Etsy. 

So the balcony is mid-refresh. I got rid of the dead plants and also the old folding bookcases that had been pressed into service as plant shelving on the balcony. I knew exposure would wreck them, but they'd had a long life of service in just about every room in multiple houses, so it was their last role before the trash. Tonight my son-in-law (and my daughter and the Prince) stopped by so he could haul them down the stairs to the curb for me. I might have been able to manage them, but I didn't want to risk screwing up my currently pain-free knee with awkwardly getting them down the stairs.  I'll assemble the new plant stand this week. I also want to add a ceiling fan and light.  

So they stopped by for a few minutes of son-in-law carrying shit down the stairs, not a real visit. The Prince climbed the stairs under supervision, saw me, said "Gamma!" and ran to be picked up and gave me a hug. Though really, I think he was more excited to see Eddie. Eddie was super well behaved with him even though he was very excited too. I think they're going to be pals this year. The human boy is nearly to the age when he can visit Grandma without me needing to call for backup. 😂

I've been thinking a lot about how people living through terrible times just still have to go about their lives and try to find joy where they can. I never thought we'd be doing it on this scale of awful, but here we are, and we must both resist and not let the bastards steal all our happiness.