Happy might be too much to ask, I'm aiming for Okayish New Year

The past year, well, it's been challenging, to say the least.

I lost my bio-father to covid, because he refused vaccination even after he promised he would get it and I'm still angry about that. Also his wife & my half-sister & her family have apparently decided that my kids (and I) are non-existent so fuck those guys.

Yes, clearly I'm still struggling with rage issues about the whole situation.

Holidays this year have been bizzare and have left me with some emptiness in my heart, and then the empty fills with anger and off we go again.

I AM TRYING.
Also I really really hate being forced into membership with so many of you, in the Lost Parent Club.
What sucks is that once you're in, you're in for life, which is ironic because death is what qualified you to get in.

The dark-humored joke at my house is that hey, at least I've got a spare (dad).


In the past year...
I have been diagnosed with diabetes, lipodermatasclerosis, high blood pressure, anemia, hypothyroid (unshocking because I had Grave's disease and had to take a radioactive pill to kill my thyroid), and a few other little lesser issues.
I had to have an ultrasound on my heart and my legs.
I could not walk properly, it was like my thigh muscles had forgotten how to work. I had to use a walker or at least a cane just to move around the house.

Also in the past year...
I have brought my A1C blood sugar down from 9.8 to 6.6
I have lost 98 lbs.
My blood pressure has come down from redline stroke zone to pretty near perfect.
Dumped 2 of my blood pressure meds, cut down on my iron pills.
I can get around without a walker and only need the cane if I'm doing a lot of walking, just as a balance precaution

So as you can see, it's been a very uppy-downy, twisty-turny, rough and bumpy ride, with all the screaming and nausea you'd expect from the worst roller coaster ever.

AAAND to top off the Suckfest that is 2021, my girl Betty White just died - and she only could've timed it better if it was 11:59PM tonight.
RIP, you magnificent woman.


All the self-pitying bullshit aside, I do have a plan for 2020Too.
I mean mostly it's DON'T HEADSTAB ANYONE, but baby steps, right?

Now go forth and celebrate in small, safe groups, don't drink and drive, buckle your seatbelt, wear a mask, and GET YOUR GD VACCINATION and BOOSTER.
Don't die of stupid because I will NOT forgive you.

Have a very Okayish New Year!

Cemeteries and ceremonies.

I love visiting old cemeteries.
I love the peaceful feeling. I love to take photographs of interesting headstones and markers
I feel comfortable and calm in the midst of them.
I like to look at the names and the dates and inscriptions and imagine the people beneath.

But I never go visit my own lost loved ones.
In fact there are a few that I can't even remember which cemetery they belong to.
It isn't that I don't care, it's just that I can't seem to keep it fixed in my mind and that's weird because I remember SO MUCH STUFF. Useless, trivial, obscure stuff.
Maybe I block it out.
Maybe not 'remembering' makes me feel less guilty for not visiting.
I have no explanation.

Anyone else? No, just me then?

---

Speaking of cemeteries and such, many of you have been with me here long enough to know how my FINAL WISHES have changed and EVOLVED and how I've even written MY OWN SONG for the memorial.

So once again things have changed and yes, I still want to be cremated and yes, you still have to take a scoop of me with you when you leave, but the majority of my remains I want to be planted with a tree, so I can be the fertilizer. I mean everyone says that shit is the best kind of fertilizer and heaven knows I've been told I'm full of shit enough times in my life that seriously Ima have the best tree EVER and you can SUCK IT. I hope it's a fruit tree because it will have the most fruit, the biggest, juiciest, tastiest fruit ever, many people have said. 
Or it might taste like shit, to which I say HAHAHAHA HAVE ANOTHER BITE, SUCKERS.

ANYWAY. This is what I want: 

If for some reason this can't happen, my second choice is being put into a record (no really, a vinyl record that you play on a record player! YES THIS IS ACTUALLY A THING FOR REALS).

The album I want to be pressed into is, of course, Buckcherry's 15, and specifically the song Crazy Bitch. Alternate choice would be Carol Burnett's sign off song, because that would be appropriate.


So I would like the planting ceremony to be held at dusk, and wherever because why do I care, but I am going to need some hidden fog machines and speakers, because a nice ambiance with ground mist and spooky sounds, whooshes, moans, etc, is sure to freak some people out and make them check the backseats of their cars before they leave and if it's very successful, HAVE NIGHTMARES ABOUT ME. #SCORE!

MAKE THIS HAPPEN FOR ME OR I WILL EFF YOU UP FROM THE AFTERLIFE AND I JOKE YOU NOT, MISSY.

In Remembrance

I'm a little wrathful toward facebook's "algorithm" just now - it was two days after the fact when my newsfeed decided to show me a post regarding the passing of a special, sweet man whom I've known since I was about, oh, 16 years old. Then of course I felt like a jerk offering my condolences so late.

His name was Robert Zabel, and he was the husband of a dear lady who is a friend and my high school drama & debate coach, and he drove our drama/debate team bus.
Mostly my memories of him are simply of his presence, quietly waiting in the background...his thereness. He drove the bus to our tournaments and contests; he shuttled us to hotels and kept us fed and watered. Good weather, bad weather, outrageously early mornings and very late nights, he got us where we needed to be and put up with a lot of shenanigans - well, you can imagine what a busload of drama/debate kids was like, especially coming home after 3 days of intense competition. The jocks had nothin' on us for rowdiness, we were just a lot funnier and smarter.
Robert was patient and cheerful with us...he maybe barked at us once or twice over the years when we were really out of hand, but far less often than we probably deserved. Come to think of it, I'll bet he liked the early mornings on long trips because we would usually sleep for a few hours.

He was always there waiting patiently, and we always knew he would be. He would wait, and bring us home safely. Every time.

Robert had spent the last few years in some pain, I think - it seems as though every time the doctors could fix or control one thing, something else would happen and he was in decline. I can't speak for him, but perhaps it was some kind of a relief for him to let go of the pain and illness at last.
I haven't seen him in many years, but I feel his presence is still there waiting patiently, for his family, for those of us who knew him, to join him one day...and he will bring us home safely. One last time.

For the Zabel family, my heartfelt condolences. I share your sorrow.

'Til Death Do Us Part

I think about death a lot.

I mean, I don't actively worry about it, but I think about it. It hovers in the back.
Regarding my son - I've told you before about my Cher moment, every morning. You know in the movie "Mask", near the end when the school calls and says Rocky isn't at school and she looks at his closed door? That look is how I feel in the mornings before I step across the threshold of my son's room.
He wasn't predicted to live past infancy, then doctors said it was doubtful he'd live past 12 years of age, and then they told me he'd not make it into adulthood.
But he's 18 now and all I can do is pray for at least 18 more years.

I think about death a lot.

I'm not, in actuality, a morbid person, but I think about it. More aptly, the thoughts pop into my head and my imagination takes over to give me worst case scenarios.
Regarding my daughter - whenever I read something or watch a show about head injuries that can be the cause of death several years later, I remember rushing home from work because my daughter had gashed her head open on a branch & fallen off a pony. Took about, what, 10 staples, I think? I've blocked it out. But I worry over that. I had to wake her up every two hours that night, to ask her name, my name, the day, where she was...scary stuff. She never cried though, not the whole (4 fucking hours) we were in a cubicle in the ER, not when the doctor (FINALLY) started rinsing the blood away from the wound, not when they were stapling it closed. Not a tear.
But I imagine subdural hematoma and frontal lobe damage and all sorts of other calamities.

I think about death a lot.

I'm not really scared of dying, I'm scared of the unknown. And possible pain. Because I am a baby like that.
Regarding myself - mostly when it concerns me, I think about my final wishes and how you people better make sure they're carried out correctly. But when I worry, I think: I don't want to outlive my children. I don't want my daughter to have to be the one to find me. I don't want to be home alone with my son when it happens.
As a single parent, I have to think about these things. I mean, sure I'd love to fall asleep peacefully in my bed, but what if that happens and my daughter, my CHILD, has to be the one to find my body? Because EW. And also traumatic. And also I wouldn't be around to pay for her therapy to recover from it.
And what if she is gone - moved out, or on vacation or away for the weekend and I'm home with just Joshua? That worries me the most, I think. Because who would know? I don't have any "just dropped in for coffee!" kind of friends who would come over regularly. My phone is often dead or at least buried at the bottom of my purse where I can't hear it, so friends & family are used to me not answering calls or texting back right away.
Who would know? What would become of Joshua? It hurts my heart to think of him here, stuck in bed or his wheelchair with no one to feed him or give him juice or change his diaper or pay attention to him or turn on the TV or change the dvd for him. THAT, my friends, is a scary fucking thought.

I think about death a lot.

I don't brood over it, or actively seek out the thoughts of death, I don't plan my own (sometimes I plot yours, though)...but it's always there, that little dark cloud in the back of my mind.

PS: I also think up ways to haunt you. Because COOL.

An Original Song

Most of you have read here that when I die I want to be cremated...and I have some specific "funeral rules" that I want followed.
Just now I was getting my son ready for bed (which has nothing to do with anything, I'm just filling space), and I came up with an original song that I plan to pre-record and have played during the service.

It will be sung to the tune of that old "I wish I were an Oscar Meyer weiner" song.

Ready? ALL TOGETHER NOW:

When I die I want to be cremated
That is what I really want to beeeeee
And when I am a big ol' box of ashes
Everybody gets a scoop of meeeee.

Halleluja. Amen.

PS Some of you were totally humming the tune while you read that.

:(

My great-aunt (previously mentioned) passed away last night.
I guess the "good" side is that she wasn't suffering long and now she won't have to go through chemo.

Of course this means a funeral...I really really really really don't like funerals.
I mean, you guys already KNOW what to do when I cross home plate for the last time, but unfortunately not everyone is as cool as me when it comes to being laid to rest.

Of course in my family, some relatives you only get to see at funerals and weddings. I'll be the one who says something inappropriate (but probably funny, at least in my own mind), much to the mortification of my immediate family.

I actually feel worse for my daughter - see, I never spent too much time with my great-aunt when I was growing up, but she & her husband adopted a son late in life who is a couple years younger than me, and we hung out during the summers at my great-grandma's house.
But since she's been widowed, my great-aunt has been living close by with my grandma, and Aunt Alta loooved my girl. And my girl loooved her (great-great) Aunt Alta.
So I'm doubly sad when I see my girl sad.

Aunt Alta, I'm glad that Becca got a chance to know you and spend time with you.
We'll miss you.
xoxoxoxoxoxoxo

A mournful day.

There's this guy I know... we met on Twitter.com.

He's the pioneer of the podiobook, he's an engaging author, he's incredibly generous with his time, his knowledge, and his very self.
I'm speaking of Tee Morris.

He was a guest on my radio show. He has made promos for so many podcasters. He's given so much to the podcasting community.

Unfortunately, sadly, I found out today that Tee suddenly lost his wife, Natalie. My heart goes out to him and his young daughter, who he calls Sonic Boom.

Please READ THIS POST by Tee's dear friend Philippa and do whatever you can to help.
We podcasters need to take care of our own.

Dear Tee, I'm so very sorry. I wish I could do more to help.