stabLe_hips

 Yesterday, I started crocheting a hat for Bob.  It's a mess, and I'll have to do some of it over.  More frustrating is how my 52 year old hands ache - as if I was elderly.  It hurts to hold my coffee cup this morning.   Last night Bob was ill - and I often think of these things from my perspective -  the work involved to clean up someone who cannot move.  I was struck this time, though, what it must be like for him - immobile as his body rebels, laying in his own mess, forced to let the person he used to make love to clean it and him up.  Neither one of us is in a good place with this. I think that's the true struggle of caregiving - no matter how bad it gets for me - and it gets terrible sometimes - it will always be worse for him.  And while it isn't a competition, a caregiver feels invisible and unseen when all the focus goes to someone else.

 The day after boxing day is usually my favourite.  Nothing planned, the house mostly tidied, and some of the leftovers finished up.   Today I'm taking the 3 1/2 month old pup out for a "littles training" with some of her siblings.  Should be a nice time. Wow.  Christmas. This year we played "thiftmas" for our white elephant game, and the selections were interesting.  Bob won a pair of vintage trays - done in 70s colours and quite lovely.  We've used them in the kitchen for the coffee bar and they look amazing.  I won a cold brew caraffe, a cheese grater, and chocolates.  The gifts included puzzles, macrame, cups, bowls, teapots, a yeti, mugs and hats, and a popcorn maker with a side of porn.  It was fun - gifts had to be thrifted, regifted, or 'stolen'.  I don't think that everyone who came loved it - and I heard someone say "I'm getting the shitty end of this stick" which disappointed me and made me realize not everyone consi...

 Breathe. Last night Bob had an accident of the embarrassing kind.  I cleaned him up, then cleaned up the wheelchair, and rinsed laundry while I waited for the dishwasher to run its cycle before I started laundry.  I got to bed around 11 or so, after a very busy christmas day.   He woke up during the night, once.  He was fine.  The dogs were up at 5:30.  And as I was shepherding the dogs back into napping state post-pee, he asked me to get him water, when I had a moment.  I said, "I'm about to put my feet up - it will be an hour or so".  to which he told me he was super-thirsty and just needed water and I knew immediately it would not wait until I "had a moment".   So I did what every other exhausted wife would do and got him the water but said "fuck me" while I was doing it.  And when I walked in his room, I should not have - but I did - say, "this is exactly what I mean about not taking no for an answer". He was furious ...

 I was thinking today that 30 years ago was Jordie's first christmas.  I remembered the stress of having a new baby and needing to be at my mom's for 8 a.m., Judy's for 1 p.m., and a Packard dinner around 4 p.m.  Trying to see and please everyone, while feeding and caring for an infant was a lot.  Even for me. I remembered, though, that Peggy and my grandmother were alive.  And the joy a baby brought to them both - how nice it was to be welcomed into someone else's house and space, to smell food cooking and to feel loved.  How much fun it had been to pick out the baby's outfit for the day. Today I'm hosting with my 30 year old and 28 year old attending with their significant others.  I have a different husband in today's scene, and my parents are somewhere else with my brother and his girlfriend.  My brother's girlfriend turned into his wife and then his ex-wife and she's coming too.  My niece and nephew, her mom, my son's fiancee's mom and g...

 I'm almost certainly depressed.  Self diagnosis following a music background of postal service and dave matthews band.  I don't know of any more positive litmus test for depression than some 'crash into me'. I'm alone in my house with four dogs.  The fire is on, and I'm supposed to be doing homework, but I'm struggling with a crippling depression that I'm trying so hard not to have.  I'm the strong one - who broke in the summer and took 13 weeks off and returned to work on a mental health accomodation, losing the best job I ever had.  I spend 30 hours a week now, missing having a say, protecting my team, and mentoring others.  I do what I do, and all the while wish things were different.  "You can go back" well meaning people say, forgetting that the end of that sentence is "once Bob is dead" and that the role was merged into another and no longer exists.  It's another thing on the grief pile that I cannot deal with. I care f...