Catchy Name Needed

I had a new icon yesterday and I have another one today. I saved a few more so you may see some more new ones, eventually. I go poking around in my icons every December, because I have so many I don't even know what all I have. They're kind of a record of my years at Livejournal, really - baseball, Buffy (TONS of Buffy), Harry Potter, m15m, WoW. Kingdom of Loathing - that last one goes back a while, especially. I've deleted a few over the years - usually the ones that I most rarely used, anyway - but there are still lots of old ones there. (I saw "NaBloPoMo 2007" for one, and I doubt that that's the oldest one still here, either.) The first one I remember having as my default was one of the m15m Harry Potter ones - I think it was Snape saying "sit down and shut up." Actually if you look at my userpics page, they seem to have the current default first and after that they appear to be chronological, so if I'm correct about that, the Snape one IS actually the oldest, or the oldest that's still there, at least.

Anyway, I don't see anything Marvel in my existing icons. I suppose it's been so long since I was really a regular poster here that it was mostly before Marvel became a big thing. But I have been doing movie posts all year and if you paid attention to that you might have noticed that the bulk of the movies I've seen this year were superhero movies - a few DC but even more Marvel. There's a post somewhere in there that talks about what I read as a kid (Wonder Woman) and didn't read (anything Marvel, really). (Here's that entry.) I got gradually more into the Marvel movies as they came out, and then - as I mentioned in that entry - I started playing the Marvel Heroes 2016 game this year and that really got me even more into it because I'm gradually figuring out big chunks of backstory. Anyway, I figured it was time I had a Marvel icon and so I went and poked around again and Natasha here was the first one I found that I really liked. (I can't make a habit of spending time looking for icons, though, I have enough time-sucking hobbies already without adding more.)

If I'd found a good Daredevil or Jessica Jones one first, though, you might be seeing that instead. (I did eventually find a couple of them but half of them were Luke/Jessica and I'm not into it far enough yet to be invested in those two as a couple.) We just re-started Netflix a month or so ago after a LONG hiatus - like, a couple of years - and the main reason we re-started it was for the Marvel stuff (and Stranger Things for Rob, but we haven't gotten around to that yet). We finally got through season 1 of Daredevil last night and we watched enough of Jessica Jones after that to determine that we did in fact want to watch it. I was pretty sure I would, but I wasn't sure about Rob - then once we got really rolling I realized that this is right the heck up Rob's alley. It's practically a horror movie, or at least it's creepy-as-hell suspense. Anyway, we're only two episodes in and we haven't even really seen David Tennant's face yet, but we're pretty into it. We're both off tomorrow so hopefully we can get at least one ot two more in.

(Have I ever mentioned that my mom thought when we first started dating that Rob was some kind of serial killer or something? Because he liked horror movies and stuff about Charles Manson. Heck, practically every guy my age likes that stuff. My mom had some weird ideas sometimes.)

I hear Daredevil season 2 is not as good as season 1, which is disappointing because I really, really loved season 1. We may watch season 2 eventually but I figured it'd be nice to see if we could catch up with at least Jessica Jones & maybe Luke Cage too before any more Defenders stuff comes out.

I had the most lovely dream about my mother the other day, that's kind of stuck with me. Half the time when I dream about my mother she's fussing at me, in that way that mothers do. But this was a dream about wandering around a museum. I think she just kind of turned up halfway through it, and we wandered around the museum and then went shopping. My mom was always big on shopping, and we did a lot of that, in real life. And we also did a lot of touristy things like museums. And this dream was kind of the best of that, and it was kind of holiday-themed, too, like there were Christmas lights everywhere. Really that was the best of my relationship with my mother, right there.

I've been kind of slacking on Holidailies. Actually I've been slacking on the holidays in general. I've got to do something about Christmas cards. I should probably do that tomorrow, because I don't have the work computer so I have sort of an unexpected day off. I should probably take advantage of that while I can! Other than cards, I'm basically ok on Christmas - I have the gifts I need to get and so forth. I talked to my aunt today and we're all set on the family stuff, so it's just cards that are an issue. We'll see what I manage to get done tomorrow.

(Also, if you're interested, you can hear all about my big box of nail polish that I got in the mail today!)


holidailies.org

(The title is by way of a trigger warning, I guess. You can't say I didn't warn you.)

I was sitting in the bathtub earlier, thinking about what I was going to write an entry about - I was thinking about Livejournal keywords, to start with, but that will probably be a topic for another day, because my thoughts wandered then to my most-often-used keywords. I suspect that my actual most-often-used keyword might be "meme" although I haven't checked to see what LJ says (and the whole topic of memes might also be another topic for another day) - but certainly a couple of them, over the years, have been "family" and "mom." (My keywords are sort of partially broken, which was the original topic that I was thinking about - but that also means that the keywords you can see at the side of my page now are not necessarily reflective of what I was using back before they were broken.) I don't think I started using "mom" as a keyword until the last year or so of my mom's life, anyway, but if I had been using it every time I mentioned her over the years, it might be the top keyword hands down.

Background, for those of you who don't know this stuff already: my mom and I were really close. We made quilts together. I went over to her house just about every Saturday for many years - usually we had lunch and went shopping a bit and then worked on quilts, that was the normal itinerary, anyway. And well before I started journaling online, in 2001, she was diagnosed with cancer. Then in 2004 she was diagnosed with a different cancer (which might or might not have metastasized from the first one - that's never been clear). The second one was a brain tumor - I wrote a whole entry about the tumor one year as my introduction to Holidailies, which is partly why I assume that a lot of people know this story already. (It was an attempt at dark humor. I'm not real sure how successful it was.) Anyway, the brain tumor worsened kind of abruptly in the last part of 2006 and she died in early 2007 - and then I spent most of that year and into the next dealing with her estate, so that's another year-plus of mom-related entries. It's probably only after Hurricane Ike late in 2008 that I stopped talking about my mom constantly, one way or another.

My dad actually had cancer, as well, and it eventually killed him too, or so we think - he died last May of what was probably complications of prostate cancer. If you are a cancer patient and you die, it's assumed that the cancer killed you, not surprisingly, and autopsies are not routine, so nobody is really sure. My dad and I were not particularly close - his appearances in LJ tend to be more of the venting variety - and besides, by the time he was diagnosed, my mom already had the brain tumor and mere prostate cancer just could not compare. Back years ago when he had multiple-bypass surgery, I rushed to his side and hung around the ICU for days and all that kind of thing, so it's not that I entirely didn't care. But when you have a job and are 100 miles away, it's hard to hang around the hospital for months and years of radiation treatment. Both my parents were more into "years" territory there, and I didn't actually hang around for my mom's either, although I did go up to M.D. Anderson with her a few times. Luckily both of them had spouses/partners who were willing to shoulder the burden of the daily stuff, or I don't know what I'd have done. (I do have a sister, who was in another city altogether and was no help there. That's another topic that came up often in those years.)

So actually this is my first Christmas as an "orphan" - a 50-year old orphan, but an orphan nevertheless. I haven't spent Christmas with my dad for many years, and my mom has been gone for a surprising number of Christmases now - this will be six, I guess - so it doesn't make all that much difference, in an immediate sense. But it's still weird, no matter how old you are.


Added: I mentioned writing about my father in order to vent, and there's certainly a lot of that, if you poke around (some of the venting entries are still friendslocked but others are not), but I feel like I have to point out that I did my fair share of venting about my mom, back in the day, too. I adored her, but she was still my mom and she sometimes drove me crazy, as moms tend to do.

contents of Mom's wallet:


(What, did I just call you anal? Totally joking. I promise.)

My mother died this afternoon. I got there with about an hour to spare. Nobody had called me to say she was worse, and so I was "dawdling" around (i.e., eating lunch, calling the lawyer, etc.) and I would have felt terrible if I hadn't gotten there in time. It wasn't a pretty thing to watch, though.

I am exhausted. The funeral home guys (who turned out to be girls, as a matter of fact) got caught in an especially horrid traffic jam and took a couple of hours to get there. In the meantime I talked to everybody in the world on the phone - at least it seemed like it. Let's see, it was: Rob, my aunt, my sister (both of those two were loong conversations, too), my dad, my dad again, my nephew and my ex-brother-in-law. Oh, and the funeral negotiator and the lady from the church. And then at least two people came in to see my mom, not having heard yet that she was dead. That was sort of traumatic. I spent the afternoon veering wildly between calm, weeping, and cracking bad jokes. But oh well.

I'm going to be interested to see how I manage tomorrow. Right now I just feel tired and sort of numb. I just hope I don't have nightmares about watching my mother struggle to breathe. Tomorrow: more phone calls, meeting with the pastor about the funeral, etc. Rob took off work, for which I am profoundly grateful. He can be my chauffeur; I don't really trust my driving right now.


I guess somebody probably ought to post something on the two forums - TOG and TUS - and explain what's happened. Col or Falaria, can one of you take care of TOG? And I asked Anth to post something at TUS because she had PMd me today, but if she hasn't in the morning, will somebody take over that duty? I have been playing GW in a desultory way since I got home - I had to do something! - but I haven't spoken to a soul. I didn't have the heart.

I don't think that many people who read this are close enough to consider coming, but the services are tentatively set for Tuesday, at the Lutheran church in Nassau Bay, Texas. I will know more tomorrow.

Wow. Wow, wow, wow. Apparently Merck has been spreading its money around really wisely, because our ultraconservative governor just signed an order requiring girls to have the HPV vaccine before they can start 6th grade. Wonder how much of a shitstorm this is going to stir up.


There has been no further bad Mom news today, at least so far. Oh, I don't guess I told you guys yesterday's bad news, which was that she wasn't eating. The hospice nurse says unless she starts again, that means we have about 10 days. I probably should have gone up there this afternoon, because I have been having to restrain myself from calling to find out how she's doing. (Which would probably be fairly useless, because Art wouldn't be home and never keeps his cell phone on.) I am going tomorrow, anyway.

So (deep breath) we are now dipping our toes into the wonderful world of funeral planning. We have gotten as far as deciding on the basics: cremation, memorial service at her church, etc. She has a plot next to my grandparents, if we decide to bury her ashes, but it seems like something of a waste to me. We are going to see what options the cemetery will give us. (Apparently my grandfather gave very generously to the cemetery association, so hopefully they'll be appropriately grateful to his family.) I was thinking that planting a rosebush or something by my grandparents' grave and putting her ashes under it would be rather nice. Also, the hospice nurse gave us a phone number for a guy who negotiates with the funeral home for you, and I haven't called him yet, but I think I'm going to on Monday, because I sure don't want to be dealing with those people by myself. I told my boss that I was going to try to work half-time next week, depending on how things develop. I don't think I can just sit at Mom's bedside all day, anyway.

I think I (unwittingly) was very mean to my sister earlier - I had called and left a message, because I wanted to make sure she wasn't going to pitch a fit about the cremation thing, and when she called back I said what was on my mind about the funeral planning, and I forgot that she didn't know anything about the 10-day business or that we had started talking about funeral arrangements at all. She took it fairly well, but I think she's kind of quietly going crazy up there by herself. (And she was fine with the cremation. She said the same thing I always say, which is that embalming is gross. It's funny, now that she's been away from her superconservative ex-husband for a while, she's changed her tune about all kinds of things. I was afraid she would have some sort of objection of religious grounds or something.)

It's not good, as I expected. As a matter of fact, I correctly predicted more or less exactly what the doctor said. The weird thing about brain cancer is, you can see the effects plain as day. Art said she was starting to have trouble distinguishing letters and numbers when they were playing bingo. And her motor skills on her right side were getting worse. So to me that said that the tumor was mostly likely growing again, and I was right. And while the chemo she had after Thanksgiving seemed to help a little, it obviously did not have any really dramatic positive effects, and we already knew that that was pretty much the last-ditch effort as it was. So that means that we are out of options as far as any real treatment is concerned, and it's time for hospice. I thought they might keep her at MDA - I'm pretty sure they do have a hospice wing there - but they brought her back to The Pointe, which is where she has been, and that's probably best for all of us. Particularly Art, who goes to see her every day, and doesn't need the strain of the daily drive up to the Medical Center. The Pointe is only a couple of miles from the house. (Mom's, I mean, which is where Art is still staying.) And apparently what they do is they get the hospice people to come in and do their thing there. I don't think it's like with other kinds of cancer, though, where there's going to be a lot of drugs involved, because having your brain eaten away from inside is apparently not a painful process, at least not so far. And I have no idea how long they expect her to live, even now. Her oncologist has never been one to throw out numbers like that anyway, and I bet Art didn't get any out of him today - or at least if he did, he forgot to tell me. The hospice people will probably have a good idea, once they spend some time with her.

I cried some, but mostly I'm pretty calm. Dragging it out for months on end would be much worse than this. Up until a couple of months ago she was still fighting, and I was proud of her for fighting, but now I think she is done with that and ready to go.

I made a list this morning at 5:00 when I couldn't go back to sleep.

(This is not all stuff that had to be done today.)

1. Pick up packages at office. (I can't believe I was home all day for two days and forgot about this!)
2. Get gift for Alison
3. Wrap presents
4. Call my aunt - ask if there's anything I should bring (and tell her we're definitely coming)
5. Barb - lunch with Bridget?
6. Kaffe Fassett book for Mom
7. Make fudge for Mom
8. Go to Sam's & get Band of Brothers for Daddy
9. Figure out if there's any gifts I'm forgetting.

Things to buy:
Wreckers CD for Alison
cough drops
tea
stuff for fudge?
gift certificates: Parker, Art, Barbara?

Let's see, #1 is done - Rob picked me up at the front of the hospital so that let us get home a little earlier than we have been. The problem there is that the office closes at 5:30 on weekdays in the winter and it's hard for us to get home in time. I believe we had six packages waiting. Or it may have been 7. Amazon, Amazon, Amazon, Hancock's of Paducah (quilt shop), Exposures (photo doodads), and, uh, I forget what else. Maybe more Amazon.

One Amazon package was a book for my mother, and the quilt stuff was for her, too, which is good because Amazon screwed up the order I placed this morning and sent it regular shipping instead of two-day. Idiots. I sent them an indignant e-mail, now I'm going to be interested to see if they fix it.

#2, the Wreckers CD for my co-worker Alison, was a bit of a problem because Wal-Mart didn't have it - maybe I should've expected that since it's not new and not a huge best-seller. But I think I fixed that by buying an iTunes gift certificate instead, because I know they have it. I downloaded one of the songs off of it a while back. (And I didn't like it that much, actually, but that's Alison's problem.) Anyway, that one I did have to do today because we're exchanging gifts at lunch tomorrow, tomorrow being the last day we're working this year. (Hooray for that!) We go back on the 2nd.

3 & 4 on the list, I haven't touched yet. Actually, most of the numbered part I haven't. We did have lunch today with my ex-co-worker Bridget, which I enjoyed, somewhat to my surprise. (Long story, about exactly why I was surprised about that. I'm not going there tonight.)

I bought most of the other stuff on the list, except I didn't get all the fudge ingredients. I know I'm going to be going back to Wal-Mart at least one more time anyway, so I'm not worried about that. I got Wal-Mart gift certificates for my nephew Parker (he buys video games with them) and for Art (I don't know what he buys, but it's his preferred gift) but not for Barbara, my stepmother. She might be okay with a Wal-Mart gift card but I thought I would go for something a little more classy. Macy's, maybe, that's pretty safe. I still don't feel like I know her all that well.

So basically I'm down to loose ends, for the most part. Daddy and Barbara's gifts, but I'm not going to see them until up in the week next week. (I did talk to my dad today, and we couldn't even decide on a day, yet. "End of next week" was the closest we got.) Oh, I know one thing I forgot to put on the list - I have to go to Houston Garden Center and buy my aunt Linda a rosemary tree to take up there as a gift from my mom. it's funny, as sick as my mom is, she still manages to be demanding as hell from time to time. She demanded that I buy Linda AND myself one, actually. I will decide if I want one when I see them. I may ignore that part of the command if I don't like the way they look. (Also, it's going to be a very fragrant ride to Bryan with a rosemary tree in the car.)


I did actually feel pretty decent all day today. Didn't sneeze, didn't even cough much. Yay for small miracles.

I have started "preparing" for Christmas - that is, the tree is out of the closet and so are the ornaments, and I've addressed a lot of Christmas cards already - but I have no idea what we will be actually doing for Christmas. Last year was like this too. As I said yesterday, for some reason these things always seem to happen around this time of year. Last year my mother spent just about all of December in the rehab hospital (a different one, actually) and apparently this year is going to be about the same. A couple of weeks ago when my mother seemed really out of it, I was thinking that, well, we might just go up to my aunt's for one night and try to have a normal Christmas. But now my mother seems somewhat more herself, so I can't see leaving her in that case. Obviously we're going to have to play it by ear.

Last year we checked my mom out of the rehab hospital for the day, had lunch somewhere (Kelley's? Luby's? I forget) and went back to her house and opened presents. The year before that we went to Austin to my sister's and it was relatively normal on the surface, but we had the prospect of mom's surgery already hanging over our heads, and also Paula already knew that she was about to leave her husband, so things were definitely somewhat strained, although we ended up enjoying that Christmas, for the most part. Then there was the year - which one was that? - that my mother had a radiation treatment on Christmas Eve. (That was her first bout of cancer, which was unrelated to this one. It must've been 2001 or so.) And before that there was the year - 1999, it would've been - that my uncle was in the hospital at Christmas, and died a few days later. Really, it seems like there hasn't been a "normal" Christmas in my family for years and years.


(Later) We went to see my mom this afternoon, and - I'm almost afraid to say these words - she seemed better. Is it too early to think the chemo could be working? The oncologist did say we would see results (or not) fairly quickly, but three days? It may just be the good effects of lots of rehab in the last week, but still. She's moving her right side much better. Lately she hadn't been wanting to move her right arm or leg much at all.

The place she's in is kind of a hoot, and not really in a good way. I mean, it's nice enough, but it's entirely different from the rehab hospital she was in last year (which is just down the road from this one). That one was purely a rehab hospital, and this one is a rehab hospital AND nursing home, and boy, does the difference show. It's probably more noticeable on Saturday afternoon - probably the peak for visitors - when there were rows of little old ladies in wheelchairs parked in the lobby. (Or maybe they're there all the time. I don't know the answer to that one yet.) And some of her neighbors in the 300 hall engaged in a screaming match while we were there. I don't mean they were screaming at each other, either; they seemed to just be randomly screaming. First one and then another, like it was a contest. They didn't seem to have any particular purpose or be in pain or anything - it seemed more like a way to amuse themselves and maybe get some extra attention. Very weird.