Stop the world, I need to get off and get a drink

So you know, if I write a bunch of garbage about completing structural analyses and tuning probes and whatever else it was I wrote about in that last post (except the kids, because they were cute) then you know that life is going faster than I'd like it to go, and I don't exactly have the words to explain what the devil is going on. Plus it's February, the cruellest month, even if it had a most excellent lunar eclipse. That is not enough to pull one out of the giant blue funkorama that February is. I am positive that I am not the only person to talk about this, so I'm going to leave it be, although I had a rather down day and I'm sort of half-drunk now so if this turns into a blathering self-indulgent fest feel free to leave your computer for the mindlessness of HNIC. If it's still Saturday night and you're in Canada. If not, then the CBC is not in your reach and the internet will have to do you and I'm sorry because you won't be able to listen to the song, and the song is the thing that rings in Saturday night. If you're young, then it's sort of time to get ready once you hear the song, and if you're older then it's either time to put the kids to bed or else it's time to get some beer or it's time for tea or it's time for bed.....or it's time for that Saturday night thang, because by the way, you're older.

Okay, so this week bit those brass monkey balls. This week my dad almost died, but not quite, because he's my dad who's been cheating death for years now, and he's done it again. By Sunday, he'd not peed for three days.

That's sunk in, right? Three days? If it had been even 24 hours, would you not be begging everyone around you to take you to the hospital absolutely right now because something somewhere is not working and all the liquid in your body is pooling...in your body? Of course you would. But if you're my dad then you deny that this is happening. "I'm fine, this will clear itself up." Never mind that you only have one kidney. 72 hours and one kidney and no pee? Panic, and maybe a tiny bit of frustration. Perhaps you're feeling bloated? Oh no, not my dad, who says that he's seeing his own GP on Monday anyway, let's just wait and see what she says. Can I just remind you that my dad is a trained EMT? this helps everyone else, except him, because he will ignore every symptom in the book and then lie about the rest of them. Anyway, when he did see his doc on Monday, she sent him off to Emerg, and he went there, barely with the world.

He has apparently cheated Death again as I said, in that they've figured out that heart failure, not kidney failure, is his problem, but that the fluid that would have normally gone to his lungs and drowned him has instead just sat in his body, because he takes drugs to clear his lungs. Drugs that are apparently no good for the kidneys. Or kidney, as in his case. So now he's in the hospital still, and things are clearing up a bit, but he's confused and saying unusual things, which is new, and his body is mad because it's all screwed up, and my sister the ICU nurse is mad because his nurses are useless in her estimation, and my stepmother is doing what she does, which is coping.

We'll go and visit when he's home, March break I think, and with luck he'll last another six months or so before this entire mortal coil gives up its fight and we have to go for a funeral. I just want the kids to see him when he's up and available for a conversation.....they've lost two family members already in the last six months, they're getting used to the fact that people die. Still, they should see him.

Speaking of my dad and his one kidney, I have a new audiologist who is totally awesome and who is fitting me with hearing aids that are going to break the bank (real cost, $3100 each...but with extended health and OHIP, we cut that total number by $2K, i.e. $4200 for the pair.) but with luck I will be able to hear way more clearly. It turns out that the embryonic tissue that makes the heart and kidneys and the like also make the auditory bits. It turns out that it is very possibly an hereditary problem. Yea. Or yuck, since there's nothing I can do about it. I did surprise the audiologist, however, because during my tympanic test my results were not normal. I can take noise with masking into an ear, but the same noise blasted into the opposite ear is very bad and I get angry and rip the earphone out of my head. Same thing on both sides, which is apparently not normal and she'd never seen it before. I make no claim on normalcy and in fact, perhaps this indicates that my problem is not my hearing but my brain. This is no consolation by the way, because knowing that your brain is wacky just isn't a source of comfort, you know? Another weird thing is, and I have asked several people about this, and it turns out that being able to unfocus your hearing is not in the normal realm. What I mean is that I can be half-listening to something and let my brain shift it a bit, so that it sounds sort of like a foreign language even if it's English. I thought everyone could do this, like unfocussing their eyes. Apparently no, people do not "unfocus" their ears. Well, people don't. I do.

On top of the (full cost) $6200 ear things, I also will pick up my new glasses on Monday. These have "progressive" lenses.....those unlined bifocals. I don't really really need glasses, but I've been having a slight problem with seeing lately. Very slight. I can see in the distance, but I have an astigmatism and so I sort of don't focus well on anything in the distance, and then of course I have those "old eyes" that would prefer to have reading glasses, thank you very much. Progressive lenses are the two in one kind that take care of the distance and the reading in one. Oh happy day. Cost prior to extended health benefit: $500.

Welcome to my $6700 head, not counting dental benefits, which if I'd had braces as a kid would of course up the ante, but we will just not go there. As an adult, I should not need to spend so much money just to function day to day like a regular person.

Okay? We're up to speed now? My dad didn't die and I need all this expensive headgear. Other things too, spiritual and religious things did and didn't happen, but these are things I need to keep to myself for now. Regular life is a bag of dirt.

Oh, and I went to work too and people are saying remarkably good things about me. I mean, amazing things, where experts in their fields are coming to me in the hallways and introducing themselves and saying how pleased they are that I've joined the staff, that they're happy we'll finally get some real work done now. Yeesh. Guess I'd better figure out what it is that I do.