achariya

The other day my cousin sent me a photo -- it was of two graves in a military cemetery, my aunt and uncle.

"Visited mom and dad today. Hard to believe it would have been their 60th wedding anniversary," she said.

When I say cousin, aunt, and uncle, the words are imprecise because they are translated from Thai. Thai conflates those relationships because of families living closer together. My mother and her father's brother's daughter grew up in the same house in Bangkok, and mom called her "sister."

My mom was the chaperone on my aunt's dates with this military guy from Georgia, and she remembers conspiring with him to help them get together. Mom spoke about it at my aunt's funeral reception, and I could tell that the memory of the time was fresh for her, the old man sitting and listening to the eulogy was young again.

I got the text from my (second-)cousin, and stared at the pink and purple and white flowers in vases near the gravestones. I know that they were both cremated. There is a picture of me somewhere holding the box of my aunt's ashes; also a picture of me speaking at my uncle's funeral, reading from Ecclesiastes. There is a time for everything, and a season for everything under the sun.

My cousin sent me the pictures because there are a shrinking number of people who will remember my uncle and aunt -- the people who care enough to see beyond the stones to the stories beneath.

I guess I thought about writing this down because of the impermanence of memory, and these waves of history and biography that will seem like a humorous footnote someday.

Here's hoping that history remembers and forgets all the right things.

Fiiiinally after a rather annoying wait (nearly 2 months post-procedure), I got in to see the allergist.

The allergist looked through my records and said, "Yeah, sounds like you had a reaction to the Iodine -- you aren't allergic to metal, glue, or latex, so it is probably that," and wrote a note saying so.

This means I can send it over to Dr. Neurosurgeon's office and go through the fun process of scheduling up my next medical time off -- probably in January or February or (if he is really being an asshole) March.

Do I want to put my life back in the hands of a guy who doesn't like me because I dared to suggest his procedure wasn't perfect? I kind of don't, but my alternative is Advent Health, and those procedures were just painful and felt a lot less carefully planned or done.

Meh!

 Woke up at the crack of dawn and drove to Jacksonville. Had my pre-op appointment with the blood people and the anesthesia nurses — there’s a whole floor devoted to making sure people are healthy enough for surgery, which is nice and probably why their success numbers are so high. 

Wonder how many companies around this area cater to medical tourism, all us people stuck here for Mayo?

Anyway. They said my “numbers were fantastic.” I keep wondering why I’m so ahead of the curve on my fucked-up health issues if the rest of me is reasonably healthy.

I am not looking forward to my procedure tomorrow but at the same time I hope Dr. Tawk decides to get in there and start glueing shit (carefully) closed; I’ve lived with this fistula for enough time that I’d like the time bomb out of my head, no matter how “impressive” the neurosurgeons keep finding it.

:p !

Screaming in frustration -- Mayo still doesn't have my appointment on their books, and it's supposed to be next tuesday through thursday.

I want to plan my life, and _scheduling brain surgery with a nurse_ should not stress me out more than the rest of the shit on my plate. Especially when she had since September 30th to do it.

I called Mayo's "patient experience" number, and they opened a case for me. I don't know what else to do about it, and I don't know what, if any, escalation this will have. :|

 It’s been one of those screamingly frustrating years — all of the decisions that seemed excellent and positive and fun have ended up being Not As Sold.

* Rollins — despite all promises to get Alba a library job, we can’t — because we don’t qualify for work study aid. We have tried so many different ways to get Alba into that library job, via friends, via calls to the Rollins departments in charge of it, etc., and zero luck. The only way to get a job in libraries is to have prior experience, and this struck out hard. My email chains about this are massive and frustrating.

* Rollins — one of Alba’s professors has a type of aging disease that makes him forget (1) every assignment he gives (2) how to make a syllabus and assign it (3) how to use any of the necessary online tools for it. This is fully 1/3 of kid’s classes, the basic writing requirement class, and therefore kid is not learning much at all. It’s bullshit, and all of our emails to get kid a _different professor_ have been for nothing. Other classmates have also asked for it to no avail too. Huge waste of money.

* Off-campus kids are not encouraged to join activities. So for example, the Rollins library that kid wanted to join — nope. Can’t even make contact with the team that does the production work. The volunteer page on the website is broken. Tried to email the advisor and he has not been following through at all. This is all, basically, bullshit.

And so… what next? Kid has applied to transfer to a school in Tampa because it has more of the things that kid wants out of a college, including…letting off-campus kids enroll in language classes, and having a library/information science path.

I’m so annoyed we didn’t just do this school to begin with. I feel years behind now, although kid will transfer over with plenty of credits from the AA and the semester at Rollins. The waiting/arranging/preparing bullshit is FRUSTRATING, and it’ll be more expensive. But, c’est la vie, let’s see how this goes.

(It does change my plans for travel and moving out of Florida and stuff. I don’t know how long kid will take in school, now, but I guess it’ll be more fun for them. Sigh.)

Other stuff that’s frustrating: Mayo Clinic.

* My neurosurgeon’s nursing staff keeps _not scheduling me_ for the surgery i am supposed to have in ten days. I would like it scheduled so that I can get it fking done, I hate walking around with this potential bomb in my head, now that I know it’s there. 

* Plus I don’t know how many surgeries I’ll need. And this also changes things. Years of surgeries? Months? I want to plan my life, if I don’t have an aneurism first!

October continues to have the weirdest luck for me. Today I had a flat tire while trying to get to a cafe with Alba so that kid can do homework. And so that’s another 500 bucks gone, to replace the back tires.

(Flat is from driving through debris from the storm yesterday, but also the tires were old. I guess I’ll count it as excellent October luck that our house remained totally undamaged from the hurricane, without even a loss of electricity. W H E W. But Alba’s future college in Tampa is completely flooded, which is ridiculous bullshit too.)

Anyway, cheers and l’chaim to whatever comes.

In the middle of an exhausting week. Drove to Jacksonville and back yesterday for work.

Diving to Jacksonville tonight and staying the night so that I can have two MRIs tomorrow morning. (Here's hoping that the contrast chemicals don't give me a migraine, I'll have to drive home after the MRIs.)

Friday is Uncle Jack's funeral.

At least this weekend is relatively free and empty, I hope to swim!

[ insert work thing here ] it was so amazingly frustrating at this morning's meeting, i don't even know what to say. time off is not going to help me, i think, i'll be stepping back into an equally frustrating situation.

Still practicing the music for Elf Choir and Lantern Elves.

I played Kenny Loggins' The Last Unicorn just to see how it sounds, and my Spotify algorithm started me in on a deep dive of 80s themesong music and Billy Joel. That's more or less the vibe, and I was surprised to learn just HOW MANY themesongs Loggins was responsible for.

This in turn lead to finally reading a Top Gun fix-it fic written by someone who was likely not yet born when the first Top Gun came out.

Revvin' up your engine
Listen to her howling roooaaar.

Anyway, the Navy rating that is in charge of landing the planes has one of the highest mortality rates in all of the Navy, to the point where there was a congressional investigation, and all of the training was overhauled. Truly was the danger zone, the song was not lying.

~

Anyone got good suggestions on vocal exercises? I am finding it very difficult to hit the A below middle-C.

"I'm hot in here," I said, and turned down the house temp to 76.

(The air blows constantly because it's 100 outside.)

"I'm cold in here," I said, and put on a jacket.

"You realize you are cold because you set the temperature down, right?" Dave observed.

"Listen. It makes sense."

Pushing myself to live a little despite the scary brain thing, so I went to Metrocon on Friday. I survived pretty well -- although I was haunted on the drive there by the thought that any brain impact could burst something very easily. Car accident, hitting head, sudden death. Well, I guess there are worse ways to go.

Welcome, newest intrusive thoughts! :'D

Anyway Metrocon itself was fun. Saw people that I only see at conventions, because it's in Tampa, which has disney traffic in the way and I rarely desire to go there. I picked up a belt-holder for a flask -- for water, while I'm doing my elf singing at DragonCon. Yay hydration. (Am I terrified about the drive to DragonCon and back? A little. It'll be right before my first embolization.)