::pong

Clear skies and tangled brainstem. Constant shocks, these days. I think my most-used phrase lately is “Oh, shit!”

My great-uncle Jim died last week; I haven’t seen him in years — but I will always remember him as the *only* relative that drove down to Indy to attend my high school graduation. Granted, I have a small family. And now that I’m older, it’s certainly in more perspective. But at the time, I was so grateful that SOMEONE outside my immediate household had time to come and see me in my goofy square cap. He was a good man and made many people happy. I hope his afterlife is awesome.

My little sister is married and very pregnant. If I were a more regular and dependable blogger (do I need more fiber?) I would have written about this. It’s really weird, since in a lot of ways she still acts like the bratty teenager that I terrorized back in the day. Yeah, I was a bastard of an older brother sometimes. Anyway. Pregnancy has agreed with her — no sickness, etc etc. She’ll pop in another week or three. The freaky thing is…. she won’t tell anyone the name she’s picked out for the little girl. Mom and I are worried it’s going to be something really bizarre and uncool. The best I could wring from her is that it’s something she and her husband made up themselves. Uh-oh. I’ve just got to remember not to laugh when I finally hear it (after the baby is born), or Uncle Starhawk will probably get a post-partum fist to the nose.

Uncle Starhawk. Yeeeeeg.

Every now and then over the past few months, I’ve been debating about getting married to K. Kind of pawing over how I feel about that. What it would entail. Whether or not I’m ready. Et cetera. My feelings (about marriage, not about her) are really a little complicated and probably deserve a post all to themselves. Suffice to say, my concerns are not about her — they are about me. The nice thing is, nobody is leaning on me too hard about it. I guess they know my tendency to rebel when put under pressure — especially when it’s something I’ll probably wind up doing on my own anyway. Sooner or later.

K’s mom has been diagnosed with breast cancer. I’m not really in a poetic mood, so here’s my thought: that blows. She’s a wonderful old lady who retired last year (she was a doctor) and deserves another 20 years of living alone on her forested hilltop, 45 minutes from the nearest town. She’s a hermit and loves it.

Apparently, her breast cancer is Stage Two or Stage Three and is invasive. Which means treatment is going to be long, hard, and vicious. Chemotherapy and surgeries. Even then, listed survival rate is 75%-48% depending on the specifics of the cancer.

I didn’t grow up with this lady as my mother, but I love her as a person and I’d like her to stick around. A long time. She’s also K’s last parent and one of only a handful of “real” family members that she has.

K has been reading up on chemotherapy and what it does. She has realized that her mother — curmudgeonliness aside — is going to need someone in the house to take care of her. Whether it involves just doing the cooking and cleaning, or giving a hand up the stairs, sponge baths, whatever. Her mom is still of the opinion that she will be Just Fine, Thank You, and will just get a ride to her chemo appointments from local friends. We are both boggled over this.

The bad news (for me) is that K is dead set on moving away to live with her mother for as long as the treatment takes. Probably all summer. Not sure how I’m going to deal with any of that. Right now I’m playing wait-and-see, since K isn’t going anywhere until we browbeat her mom into admitting that she won’t be safe alone while the chemo is being administered. Guh. I want this all to go away. Where is my magic wand?

Let’s talk college. College is…. not what everyone says it is supposed to be. Of course, I am attending a commuter college and working two jobs. So, I’m not meeting anyone, not making new friends, not getting involved in anything, and not really doing much besides working and sweating to get things turned in by their due dates. I mean — I’m learning some cool tech stuff. I can code Visual Basic. I can set up databases. I’m learning SQL. I got better at web design. But trigonometry is completely whipping my ass. In every way. I just want to pull a B at this point. Guh. Trig.

I wonder if it would be wise to saddle myself with some extra loans and quit one of my jobs. I quail at the thought of $10k-$20k of debt — but I know the work next year is only going to get harder. And I’m going to need to take at least one extra class to get caught up (they cancelled one of my classes just before the first week this semester due to low registration). Need to remember to sign up for a summer class, too. Gonna knock out that dumb-ass Speech requirement. They should SO offer a test-out for that. I mean, really.

I have more that I want to blabber about. Sex. Writing. More details on school. Bitching about money. Talking about my jobs. But I gotta haul ass out of here, and get some food before the night shift at the airport. Sorry. More when I have time to breathe again.