Sorry for turning this place into such a cesspool. I don't mean to come here, dump shit and disappear, leaving behind dead and beheaded parcels like the feral, deranged UPS cat. I've always been a shit corresponder. Always mean to do better, and my ineptitude consistently betrays my care for the people I value most here and in 'real life'. Not sure what that is.

I've been existing at humdrum for a time now, it seems. Quitting my job has eliminated a lot of bullshit stress from my day-to-day, but I've also missed a lot of support in the forms of good friends and financial stability. I have a part-time gig that pays hourly what I was making after 5 years at my last job, but I need to find something else soon to make ends meet.

I don't know if I'll ever snap out of it. I'm a slug. I don't write, or art or music any more. Just dull, uninspired day-to-day work, eat, sleep, repeat.

My leg is mostly healed. It's one of those things like swirling salt into a wound that reinforces the fact you're not a normal person and even healing a broken leg presents a few frustrating, admittedly painful setbacks for someone with seizures. But, thankfully, being fairly young and previously fit, I've managed to slog through to the lighter end of the tunnel and, save for some residual strangeness, and more twinges than pains, i can walk a fine mile or two without a stick, and bike around town, no problem.

Wanna my sweet X-Rays?

The lines are the traction device. (It was not very effective, apparently.)

After surgery.
(Dr. added pen marks to show callus formation process whatever)

New leg! Said they used the longest rod they make.
Thank God not having to wait for a longer one on special order!

I even got my shit gathered and packed for two week-long river trips this summer, both of which I planned and organized and went off mostly without a hitch, miraculously, save for the one in my literal giddy-up. The trips had been my carrot during my femur recovery process and they were both incredible weeks in some of the most treasured places, but while I'd expected to feel rejuvenated after, I've felt nothing but flat. Like I stepped out of the boat and fell back on my face and just stayed that way. 

I don't really want to leave my house most days. Taking for granted a new leg, taking for granted any day that isn't FUBAR'ed by unseen and uncontrollable forces, but I'm depleted. Resigned. I feel so guilty for feeling so stuck, and letting it all pass by without due reverence, a heap of indolence, intentions and inaction. 

My mom has been helping me pay for counseling. I hear it's a slow process, but I'm hopeful. So I'm trying to work on things. Maybe I can make good and start giving back all the life I've sucked from the planet. Do more good, give more for a change, and be less blah, and debilitated by defeat and fear and hopelessness. I have so much. I know how lucky I am. Most viscerally. How glad to have it all return when it comes reeling back.

What is my fucking problem?!

Foof

Life can be such a gut punch.

My older cousin has had seizures for a while now. For one reason or another we weren't in direct communication at the time. I'd talked with my aunt in regard to things that had been helpful on my own seizure struggle bus ride.

Yesterday, my aunt woke up with two sons. When she got home, she only had one. My cousin died from a seizure while he was alone at work.

This is his 10 year old son.

Dang. Some days it all seems so exhausting and miserably futile. Why bother when the gremlins are set to pull the rug out from your feet again and again? Can I just stay curled up down here forever? Send puppies and kittens. 

Now for my Next Trick...

Geeze, what's up with this blog, guys? Got all the manure for the garden and forgot to plant the flowers. I really effed up this time. I feel like a dumbass. Too embarrassed to tell anyone outside my family yet, really.

I broke my dang femur. Clean in two. It was doing something fun, for a change. (Which isn't to say i don't get to do plenty of fun things, but that I didn't get hurt having a seizure or doing something stupid.) Naturally, my insurance doesn't start until March 1st. 

I still can't believe it. But it could've been worse. It wasn't a compound fracture. It didn't cause significant vascular damage or subsequent life-threatening bleeding. My pain threshold has been knocked up a few notches. My hospital experience was night and day better than my last one. They got me into surgery right away for some intermedullary femur nailing zaniness. We've asked, but have yet to see any x-rays, but it sounds like the surgeon is going to take more in a couple of weeks when i go back. Do you want, or should i hold off on the gory details? 

Foof, dear reader; who does that? 

Gram

Gram age 80 Hiawatha Trail Idaho

Oh Gram.

How lucky for us to have spent such a sweet and relaxing Thanksgiving with you, just the four of us (mom, little sister and me). I still can't believe we ever relented in our objections to let you cook a goddam turkey, not to mention your taking charge of biscuits, gravy and mashed potatoes. It was amazing as always.

Watching Lion with you the next day, bundled in two adjacent mounds of blankets in your living room, tears creeping out and plunging down the spillways of our cheeks while the rest of the family made the seasonal retail bender, is a memory I'll always treasure. How grateful to you for enduring more of my inquiries about your trying childhood, and filling in random gaps of family history. I'm so glad to have asked when I did.

I should have known. When we got the text you'd broken your fetching femur, we should've raced up there right away. It seemed sensible postponing the voyage over winter roads until the light of morning. But the call came. (Of course it did.) We were too late. 

My gram was spunky up until the end. She didn't languish. She would've hated that. She went out with Dilaudid on the hour. She was still living independently in her own home until the last day of her life, which, with any luck, was under a pleasant blanket of sedation.

My Gram was ornery, but mellowed with age (as with our mother). Her Fundamentalist Christian values and Fox News watching tendencies had toned down in recent years. She changed her own oil and executed basic repairs and matters of vehicular and home maintenance until she was 80. She was fastidiously clean to an obsessive-compulsive, even antiseptic extent, yet she took a loving to Olive, and often invited her beyond the barricaded section of linoleum we'd dutifully ensconced her in during our visits.

Jen and me pall-bearing with all our handsome cousins. I'm in the rear. Photo and caption credit to our aunt Tami

For all her fundamentalism, my gram was hep. She texted, she facebooked, she even Instagram'ed, i'm sure chiefly in to connect with us. Did I? Enough? Enough that my gram felt more loved than lonely? Probably not. I didn't visit or call on a sufficient basis. More shame I will carry. 

Is she watching me now, you think? Sipping hot tea up in the clouds and shaking her head as she looks down on my unkempt house, the paw prints, the dust and the piles. If she's thinking I'm lazy, she's right. I'm totally meh. Resigned. And shame on me. How acutely aware I am of the precious, ephemeral nature of all of this. How any sense and every second of fucking normalcy and every bit of fresh air and iota of autonomy is not to be taken for granted. Yet, here i am, just meh. Looking like it might take me all year to recover from one little swatch of last summer (physically, emotionally, financially...). 

Anyhow, this is really belated. My Gram died before Christmas. I have loads to post, but my grandma's death, and general insecurities at my given stage in life have left me somewhat deflated. I'm always thinking about blogging. I think of you all often. Please forgive my heaps of outstanding comments. I'm always reading, but sometimes I'm a little late in my catching up. No need to drop any sorries or sentiments here, just had to acknowledge the passing of a sweet soul, you know? 

I still suck at life, at least the requisite adulting aspects. Looking forward to updating some more, but at this rate, no one be doin any breath holding in the meantime, okay? I'm a shit friend. I regret it. I intend to do better, always, and then i don't. The scritching and rancor of cognitive dissonance. Oy vey. 

Thank you for being here despite my sporadic correspondence. 

Bowing to you in great deference and love. 

Warm regards from Idaho,

me