@saraha said, "I’m not sure what to do when she gets mad people don’t choose her offerings." It's not even like her offerings were homemade. 🤷

Hoo boy! I forgot all about the birthday card drama. Glad you are all taking it in stride.

Oh, we had the post-conversation conversation. I told her I was not up to it. She lives four hours away, so she is limited in the ways she can help.

So, my mother is in her mid-70's. She had my sister and I on pins and needles all yesterday to announce that she can't do Christmas because she is having intestinal issues that she is embarrassed about. She was having issues back in the spring. Apparently, none of it has resolved itself, and has gotten worse. She has diarrhea most of the time, and the doctor told her to eat bran flakes and drink Metamucil, which seems counter intuitive to me, but I'm not a doctor. It's gotten to the point where there is sometimes blood, and she can't lift a 5lb bag of sugar or take her dog for a walk without having to go right away. I asked her if she's called the doctor about it. No, she hadn't thought of that. She was just going to wait to talk to the doctor at her appointment in mid-January. 🤦‍♀️ In the course of the conversation, she recounted in a justified way, how she was snippy with the receptionist. Her cynicism and hostility toward the medical profession was considerable, which I totally get, but you don't take that out on the people you want to have help you. Receptionists are the first line in the medical bureaucracy and can help you out a lot if they like you. I can imagine that if they don't like you, you might not get as much help. For some background, my step-father passed away 20 years ago and she really hasn't been the same since. Ten years ago, she used to live 10 minutes away from us. Then she decided to move an hour away in a nearby city, (in a house where the only bathroom is on the second floor 🙄). So, we don't see her very often. If I want to know how she is doing, I have to call her because she very rarely calls us. She has social anxiety, even with family, and has an incredibly low sense of self-worth. She has been on some variety of psychotropics since her husband died, most of the time without any sort of counseling whatsoever. A few years ago, her GP connected her with a psychologist/psychiatrist? who would oversee her meds and give her counseling. She met with her and it was a great fit. She was upbeat and had a positive outlook. She saw her for maybe six months, and then one time, she made my mother sit in the waiting room for 20 minutes. And my mother left and never went back because "she shouldn't be treated like that". She has things to do, she said. The only thing she has in her life is an anxious dog that she uses as an excuse to not come out and see us. Even for her grandchildren's birthday parties. She has zero concept of how lucky she was to have the sort of help thousands of people can only wish for. A month ago, she said she was considering getting rid of her car, mostly because she is too stressed about what to do about the lease, which is up in the spring. She does not live in a city that has great public transit. She was totally fine with the idea of pretty much never leaving her house again. Which brings me back to her medical condition. I'm not even sure she wants to get better. Which feels like a terrible thing to say. And I feel like I should carry the torch and be her advocate, but I just do not have the bandwidth to save her from herself.

He's a software developer. We're in Western NY.

I talked to dh this afternoon about my stress levels, and he suggested I just stay home tomorrow. The proposed schedule I would have found to be a lot even before cancer, but now staying that busy for 11-12 hours in a day would wipe me out and take me probably two days to recover. I saw dd perform with the chorus last week; tomorrow is a second venue of the same material, so it's not like I'm completely missing it. I was able to make the dough this afternoon (a pleasant distraction from waiting for the phone call with my mom) and I can bake them tomorrow and wrap gifts without anyone at home. So, I feel better about tomorrow. I might even make it to the birthday party.

I just need to vent for a little bit. On the upside, we will theoretically have health insurance through the state come January. I am sooo grateful a person from the hospital was able to apply for us and get us through the hurdles. It took two days to do it, and at one point I was sure I was in a Franz Kafka story. As we were finishing up the application process today, the system crashed at least three times. This morning, I got a voicemail from my mother saying she needs me to set up a 3 way call between her, my sister, and me. My mother's mental health is not robust, and I can tell she is wound up about something. My sister works full time, and I texted her to see if she can do the call later today. I texted both of them proposing a specific time, and my mother has not responded. So, who knows? Maybe I get to sit with this dread of a shoe dropping for days, because... Tomorrow is chock full. Dd13 has a chorus concert in the city in the morning. Ds10 has music lessons in the city in the late afternoon. The evening is capped off with a niece's birthday party, and they live in between us and the city. We have family passes for a few museums and will bide our time there before our other engagements. We do church Sunday morning and the family cookie party is at 1pm and I am supposed to figure out how to bake cookies between now and then, and at this point, I understand I am just whining. I can get the dough made today and put in the fridge and probably something will work out for actually baking them. I am almost to the point where I buy cookies from the store because I just don't care. Things seem harder to me because dh doesn't want anyone to know he got laid off. We haven't told the kids. Nobody in our family knows. So I have to pretend everything is normal and ok, and I am honoring dh's request (well, except for here), but it is hard for me. Because if it was up to me, I would seek support and just blab it to everybody. I am not hanging by a thread yet, I probably have a good five more to go before I get to that point.

Not exactly. You can sign up for email notifications on different products. So that would be something. It's a nice service, but it's not the same as Amazon's feature and sometimes lags behind actual pricing.

I might not be quite as meticulous as this if it was just me decorating the tree, but I would have some of these things in mind. As it is, I just watch helplessly as Dh and the kids put ornaments on in ways and places that I just wouldn't.

There's always camelcamelcamel.com.

The topper is very much like what my mother presumably picked up in the 70's and had on our trees throughout the 80's.

Pattern practice with dd8. Then went to the basement and lifted some weights. I even did three sets. Next time, I think I will probably bump up the weight on several exercises because I wasn't really slowing down at the third set, though I definitely do not need to make squats any harder.

I'm with MercyA and voting for Casper.

There's a 12ft for skeleton near us that's been out since Halloween. It is now stringing lights made out of painted 2 liter pop bottles over a 10ft tall bush in the yard.

TKD class this evening. Dd14 is a black belt. She led the warm-ups. She has a reputation for making the class work. Today I learned that reputation is well earned, lol. No more classes for me until after the new year, as they are taking a two week break.

Lifted some weights this evening. It's been awhile. I put in two sets, and I think next time around I will go for three and see what happens. The last time I did this workout, I kind of felt it the next day.

I actually did get this for my mil. The box it came in is perfect! It just says "Merry Christmas!" and "Christmas Party!" on the outside. There is absolutely no indication of what's on the inside. ETA: I just wrapped it yesterday, and it does not say "Christmas Party!" It says "Merry Party!" which is almost better.

I have a meeting this evening I have to leave a bit early for, so I did not get a full exercise session in. Instead, I worked on learning my new pattern with dd13 and practiced my old pattern a few times. I got my heart rate up for a little bit, so that's better than nothing.

Maybe mark it as spam? So you probably won't see it, and it's a black mark on them in the algorithm.

I'm doing chemo pills at home, so my immune system is compromised. I got COVID in late August, and started taking Paxlovid maybe 2 days after symptoms. So far, I've had COVID about once a year. My experience is that it gives me a singular, miserable type of headache, and the Paxlovid stops the headache, which is a mercy. I was sick for about 10 days. As for the rotten grapefruit taste in the mouth, it tapered off after each dose. I would make sure I had eaten *before* taking it, so as to make the experience was as pleasant as possible.

There is a house in our area that usually has a lit up Santa peeing off the roof into the yard. Very classy.

Adding that my dad has it right now, and he is in his late 70's. First symptoms were Thursday afternoon. He felt really lousy yesterday, but is feeling better today. I think he's had both rounds of the vaccine.

Praying that it is mild and over with quickly.

No intentional exercise here for a few days. I have been really tired for some reason. We are hosting a board game day tomorrow, so I have been doing some intense cleaning seasons. Today, I will be making a large pot of soup for everyone, and finishing up the dining room, where most gaming will take place.

I'm glad to hear SIL's son is doing what he can to alleviate things. So funny the tractors only work for him. 😆