Shouting into the void

(Warning:  This post is just something I need to get off my chest.  Nothing else.)

My father & step-family spent Christmas waiting for my Stepmom to fade to black in hospice after she suffered an absolutely catastrophic brain aneurysm that week.  Dad was adamant that I not interrupt my holiday with Mom.  Plus a bunch of airports were digging themselves out from under some dreckish weather.  The memorial service (read: scattering of ashes) will be sometime during the more congenial part of the coming year.  So home I returned without ever seeing anyone from that side of the family.

All this went down mere weeks after my father regaled me with the saga of the guest bathroom remodeling and plans for doing the same with the master bathroom in a few years.  At the time, I damned near danced because it meant that he & my Stepmom felt vibrant enough to see themselves getting the use out of the work for years to come. 

When, a few years ago, I called Dad with the details of my sister's funeral, he sounded old.   That was a new experience for me.  But when I called immediately after receiving the news about the aneurysm, he sounded old and beaten.

Then today a completely unexpected call from Dad.  Who sounded more chipper, I'll grant you.  But he was calling because he needed my "official" legal name, SSN, etc. to change the beneficiary info. on all his financial stuff.

Now let's get one thing straight.  To say that financial security is A Big Deal for my father is an understatement large enough to have its own gravitational field.  Otherwise, right now I would be climbing the f***ing walls at the possible implications of that conversation.

That being said...dammitohellalready--what a craptastic feeling to be schlepping around the rest of the day.  It's not what you think.  It's not like I haven't--intellectually at least--squared with losing the 'rents.  (Dearest has already lost both, so don't think that I don't appreciate that, either.)  Also, it's not like I've just been set up for some nasty inheritance fight with my step-siblings--they're all adults and none of them shallow.

It's just don't want to inherit anything, particularly not money.  See, I'm not at all cool with how he made some of it, and I'd prefer to keep my hands clean of that karma.  Okay, there are a few pieces of furniture that I wouldn't turn down, just so I can see them in my mother's living room again.   (There was some disagreement over that kind of thing during the divorce, but I'm sooooo done with sorting out the he-said-she-said; having the stupid things back would shut that up forever.  Or had darned well better shut it up, anyway.)

But I digress.

Mainly I just don't feel the need or desire to be provided-for.  Partly, it's the independent streak talking.  Partly because I inflicted a lot of grief on myself (and, let's face it, plenty of others) by holding onto the anger over that divorce.  I try not to mix "stuff" (including money) and my feelings for people.  (Note the use of the word "try"--no, I don't always succeed where my money shows no--or negative--return on investment.)  I don't believe that Dad does that kind of fire-walling.  So I can't shake the feeling that leaving me anything other than a few odds-n-ends (of sentimental value) is a pay-off of sorts.

In which case, "something" is actually worse than nothing.  Debts to the past aren't fungible.  And I don't want to pretend that they are.  This puts me between the Scylla and Charybis of hurting someone at the end of his life with my version of the truth, and having to compromise who I am.  And I can't see a way around that Kobayashi Maru.

Yet.  If the 'verse grants me a bonus shot of luck--and I've been far, far luckier than I will ever deserve already--I have years to figure something out.

Forward momentum

There's just something inexpressibly sad about packing up books. It's like telling friends that you don't have time for them right now, and honestly don't know when you'll be able to get together with them. Packing the dollhouse I've had since grade school is a bit rough too--that's become a de facto symbol of having roots in the ground.

I'm not sniveling, mind you. Not in the wake of taping up U-Haul boxes a week ago with nothing less than fierce joy. The pace of this week will be nothing short of grueling--with Dearest bearing more of the brunt of it than I. Then again, pound-for-pound, working for me and mine always spices the exhaustion with exhilaration.

One from the Dept. of Small Mercies

Immediate family has been cranking me off a lot lately. Mostly in the sense that I feel like I'm kept outside the loop even when I'm supposed to be in it. Which is enough fodder for crankiness. But this being pushed to the outside of the herd makes it that much more tempting to think that Dad might have actually had a right opinion or two all these years. Fortunately, all I have to do is remember that, even if he did, he did f***-all about it.

But in the grand scheme of things--in this case meaning my life--it does considerably ease the guilt of not sticking around. If the fact that there's no such thing as unlimited, unconditional love from me makes me a bad person...so be it. You might be, in some cases, less obvious about looking at me as the family moneybags. Or--in other cases--bother to live by the "values" into which I was indoctrinated. Or--in all cases--acknowledge that the lessons of the past apply to you.

In one sense, it's liberating to write that. But mostly it's just pathetic. Why? Because it took me so effing long to stop fooling myself that nearly anyone can change, given the right mix of incentives. And that's because the first step is self-awareness--something this branch of the family tree seems to be pretty thin on. Myself included.

Documents in Montreal

FedEx came through, and the package representing much collective effort (on my part and Dearest's) was delivered--so far as I know--without incident. I'm annoyed with the paralegal for not replying to Tuesday night's email asking him to skim the list of enclosed documents had any red flags. Will nag tonight. On to finding something else to fret about, be it a screw-up on my/our part or a particularly crabby CIC agent reviewing our app. & documentation or whatever...

Bulldozer tracks

I once quipped to a friend that the problem with setting out to bulldoze your past is that sometimes it bulldozes you instead.  I spent a chunk of this morning pulling old greeting cards and letters (that had just been pulled from storage boxes) from their envelopes and putting them into piles to be stored in a smaller box until after the next move.

Sobering enough to read the writing of those now dead, in some cases almost hearing their voices read the words.  And humbling--with the telescoping of twenty years or so--to see how faithfully cards had been sent at birthdays, Christmas, sometimes even Valentine's Day.  But, most of all, deeply shaming to realize how little I reciprocated.  A futile and utterly childish exercise, crying the way I did--wishing I could have those folks back for even a few minutes to tell them that I really did love them, despite being the selfish and self-absorbed @$$hole that I was...and still largely am.

So I guess if there's any point to this post other than sheer navel-gazing, it's to encourage my gentle reader to visualize reading each greeting card or letter they receive twenty years hence.  As much as I've avoided contact with Christmas, though, the experience has changed my thinking on digging out the boxes of cards and reviving the tradition of sending them out.  

D minus 131

Frabjous day, three sets of school transcripts arrived in today's mail, leaving only one of those in the "pending" state. Not that I'm feeling complacent--just a bit of gratification.

I couldn't help but notice, though, that the attorney's flunkie wouldn't give me a straight answer to my timeline question. Even more frustrating, the Canadian Immigration website won't release processing time estimates, purportedly because they don't have enough data after jacking around the process to jiggle the queue. (Ummm...I'm expected to do it, and with far more unknowns, folks!)

But even another baby step forward is encouraging at this point. I'm just hoping we make it out before the crazee gets too thick.

D minus 132

Yay, something to fret about! Dearest is missing one employment letter of reference and a diploma. So not quite everything is in flight, even after yesterday's jaunt to the post office for certified letter and money order. Oh yeah, and we still need the passport photos. So that's something else to take my mind off the exercise of wondering whether letters/checks were lost in the mail or are being ignored until the last minute by a bureaucrat (public or private).

You've no idea how badly the geek in me wants to plug all this into project-/bug-tracking software like Mantis...

D minus 134

Well, it seems my reputation for being the ever-so-slightly more organized one. Dearest emerged from the dusty-box spelunking adventure with the high school diploma and college degree; I only found the former. So it will set me back forty clams and 6 - 8 weeks to get a copy of my Bachelor's degree. Still more running around in the morning on behalf of other documentation that will cost only $20...but requires the nuisance of a money order.

Fortunately--in a silver lining sort of way--I already have to stop at the Post Office to send a registered letter to the afore-mentioned previous employer who, I suspect is the proverbial dry husk of its former self. The other real prize of my foraging among old papers and other memorabilia is more documentation for my time with that employer--things like performance reviews, recognitions, etc.--in the event that my gut feeling is correct and they will ignore all requests for documentation.

Hopefully, though, tomorrow will see the last of the requests going out the door. Between the processing fees Canadian Immigration, the extra we're paying the lawyer to help us dot "i"s and cross "t"s and the (partially self-inflicted) nickel-and-dime "incidentals," Permanent Residency is not a trivial expense. Canada had better be the Promised Land, I tell ya... ;-)

After tomorrow comes the hard part--a.k.a. the waiting. Actually, no--scratch that. We still need to have a handful of passport-style photos taken. Maybe I'll procrastinate on that so that it doesn't feel quite as though waiting is the only option. ;-) ;-)

D minus 137

Kind of mind-blowing, really, how much of the day just a few letters/forms can chew up. I'm sending out requests for school transcripts and getting the info. for Plan B, if things like degrees/diplomas/etc. can't be found in the boxes in the garage.

If I gave bureaucracies any credit for human introspection, I'd suspect that the paper-gathering required for this move is not only an attempt to weed out those lacking will, but also to force people to think about the past from which they are--geographically--distancing themselves. There's a bit of that, but it's the proverbial two-edged sword. Writing to my high school to request transcripts brings back fond memories of the playground it truly was (after the prison that was junior high), but also makes me feel chagrined at the disparity between the then-certainty that I would do something enviably remarkable, and the reality that is the latter-day workaday me.

But, don't they always say at commencement that every end is a new beginning? I can sip a of rejuvenative hope and perhaps even courage from that bowl.

And with that, it is time to send several pieces of paper through the printer and out the door...

Playing catch-up...

...and hoping that I'm not actually chasing my tail.

Huzzahs and handsprings, but the semester's done and the backlog is starting to recede a bit. Or at least it feels as though I can start to swim to shore after treading water for so long.

I had to go heads-down at work today to fill in for QA, and found myself listening to an album that I also had (on cassette, rendered off vinyl for that purpose) a quarter-century ago. And in realizing its age--and in consequence my own, arithmetic being implacable that way--I also thought, "Youth is overrated, but health is not."

So here's to looking ahead at a relatively unencumbered summer, with--almost assuredly--more breathing room for the things I love. Including writing for its own sake.

Of bumper-marks and puppy-noses

Earlier today, I felt like the proverbial puppy who caught the car it was chasing--the combination of exhilaration overlaid with "Now what?" The graphic artist who created some marketing images for me wrote to know whether I'd be interested in collaborating on a website that needs back-end code and database work.

Truth be told, I was hoping for exactly that scenario last Fall when I first commissioned the graphics from him. I can't yet afford to drop the day-job and freelance-fund larger projects at the moment. Having someone else pounding the pavement, drubbing up business seemed like a rather efficient way to build a portfolio before hanging out one's own shingle.

Yet--you knew there would be a "yet," didn't you?--while the work started out well enough, I had to prod the artist for its completion. Today, when I requested meeting to discuss the project, there was no response. Only this evening came a not-reply to the effect that he had somehow lost the client's phone number and didn't have an email address.

Not promising omens, any of them. So I did my due diligence and emailed the questions that had come to mind as I looked at the proposed website content and the example. But I fail to see how the gig will progress any further. A large part of me is straining at the metaphorical leash toward building a business of my own, so the disappointment is pretty palpable at the moment. The bounce in my step and glitter in my eye from this morning are gone.

So, if you'll excuse me, I need to go find them.

Part 1603 of "You know you're a costume geek when..."

...your go-to catalog is discontinuing its corset-making supplies and you're figuring out how many yards of stuff you can rationalize at 15% off.

Merry Mayhem!

This won't come as a shock to anyone who knows me, but I mostly loathe Christmas. Or, more aptly, I loathe the hyper-politicized, spiritually bankrupt consumerist orgy that eats its way further backwards in the calendar every friggin' year. (Silver lining: I actually look forward to New Years' now, a holiday that I found pointless as a kid.)

That being said, here's one of the handful of indulgences I do look forward to this time of year: http://www.albinoblacksheep.com/flash/snowglobe Keep your eye on the snowman--that's all I'm sayin'.

The other stuff:

1.) The Ref
2.) John Denver and the Muppets
3.) Elf Bowling v.1
4.) George C. Scott as Ebeneezer Scrooge

A grateful shout-out to Les Jenkins at Stupid Evil Bastard for finding that needle in the internet's haystack--"the Google" and I came up skunked the other day when we went trolling for it.

Black Monday at the office

We lost over a fifth of the staff at the office this morning, wiping out roughly a year's job growth. Ironically, the same day the pinheads at AIG got their bailout--presumably so that they can flush it down the same toilets that sucked up the private sector money. Sewers aren't known for for being picky that way.

But subsidize my (erstwhile) co-workers' rent/heat/groceries/health care/etc.? That would be a handout. You know: Socialism. And we dassn't have any of that in this country...

Domestic vignette 1

It takes three squirts of conditioner to bring my hair under nominal control, squirts that come out as squiggles. So I've been working on my technique: Swiping my hand quickly under the nozzle for a short, straight stripe, then wrapping it with squiggly strokes left and right. Pinch the pointy ends together and...voila! A trilobite!

Today's effort was passable enough that I called Dearest in from the next room to show off my new skill. Dearest laughed: "You're weird," and returned to the adjacent office.

Hmph. I'm not the one who finds trilobites funny...

w00t!

A message on the answering machine told us that the friend who's been tussling with cancer since last year is in officially in remission: Friend: 1, Cancer: 0. I try to keep it in perspective, knowing that it's Round 1, and she'll be looking over her shoulder for the rest of her life. No actual organs or other bits removed, but the price--in the coin of scarring and hospitalization and outright misery--was dear enough.

All the same, it's victory enough for me here on the sidelines. I can't begin to imagine what it's like for the survivor in question. And I hope I never have to.

In other life-accomplishments, Mom has achieved her 63rd birthday--all the more remarkable for what her brat-children put her through. And that's just the stuff she found out about... ;-)

Battery rechargers

I'm rebuilding a Windows XP workstation, triaging the hard drive content before wiping it. In the process, I found something I wrote going on three years ago. A friend had used the phrase "recharge my spiritual batteries," which prompted me to consider what things do that for me. At the time, the list--in no particular order--consisted of:

• To learn something new and worth knowing
• To fall asleep and/or wake up in Dearest's arms
• To create something from scratch, or even completely ex nihilo
  
• To earn the trust of someone or something gentle
• To touch history
• To fight a worthwhile battle, win or lose
• To experience art created with both skill and passion.
• To have a wide space of quiet time in which to think, dream and reflect
• To do something good for someone and slip away before they realize that it's been done or who did it
• To behold Nature's "bijoux": Spiderwebs, seashells, sheets of wild honeycomb, baby finches, etc.
  

None of that's much changed, two-years-and-change since. Although now I find myself more appreciative of friendship--and working a little more diligently to cultivate the perennials rather than indiscriminately sow flashy annuals. (Hokey metaphor, that, but you get the idea.)

Things that make you go "Urrrghff???"

A friend I've known since I was 17 has been part-sized at work: Downgraded from full-blown engineer to lab flunkie. (It was either that or unemployment--it subsidizes the search for the new job, if nothing else...) He's taken it well enough, for a museum-quality Type A raised with a 1950s American Dream work ethic. Better than I would have thought, truth be told.

But I'm starting to feel like an informal therapist--a cross between a counselor and the local bartender. Which is really wierding me out, because I've never had the impression that he's looked to me for anything practical, ever. In our twenties, he mistook me for a representative sample of females our age--thereby to peek into the collective head of my gender. But for many years I've had the impression of being somewhat looked down upon by him. Had it not been for the fact that he's been one of Dearest's friends--for even longer than I've known him--I would have discouraged the relationship years and years ago. In all fairness, the sense of deprecation has more or less evaporated in recent times: These days I'm usually not interrupted when I talk, for instance.

But on an almost subliminal level, I'm feeling ever-so-slightly used by this counselor/cheerleader role. As far as I know, Dearest doesn't get the blow-by-blow accounts of the job search and the sharper edges that corporate life holds for non-management. Not that I'll stop commiserating or encouraging or anything--I do actually like the guy. But I can't help but wonder how things will change after he's back where he thinks he deserves to be in the corporate world.

Wading in the Rubicon

Gack: I just authorized the expenditure of roughly a week's net income on a set of graphics for my forthcoming foray into indie software development. Which commits me to this crazy scheme in a way that a hundred bucks for domain hosting doesn't. I'm not gambling half so much as Caesar, but it still makes me slightly queasy.

37Signals' blog this morning has a bunch of General Patton quotes and the opening "pep-talk" clip from Francis Ford Coppola's oeuvre. Which I would have taken as an propitious omen, except I'd already given the green-light to the graphic artist. But, in a sense, the General is right. Holding our position is not an option: "L'audace! L'audace! Toujours l'audace!"

Hey, if you can't take inspiration from quoting George C. Scott quoting George S. Patton quoting Frederick the Great, where are you going to find it, really? [insert sarcastic eyeroll]

Two desserts

It's a full week, what with meetings, cheerleading a friend through her fisticuffs with cancer, remembering of Dearest's mother, who lost a much sharper skirmish with cancer ten years ago Monday, and fretting over a nephew hospitalized with mononucleosis.

But last night was a halcyon evening, mostly spent making dinner--specifically and pointedly a meal that Dearest's mom would have made--or enjoying it. Time enough to slip outside to watch the lunar eclipse at points in its progress. The bite of cold made those ventures short ones, though. I made the mistake of bringing the cat out on one foray, but he bolted once back indoors. (Somehow I doubt that the experience will cure him of whining to be let outside.)

So much of my world is defined by an LCD monitor (or, at work, two); it's good to gawp at a larger Universe once in awhile...