Where Has It Gone? in Thirty-Eight

Hey friends, well it’s freaking December and I haven’t written in like 3 months. Truthfully these last 3 months have not been great. It seems like every time we hit rock bottom, we’re given jackhammers. And the ones giving us the jackhammers to keep digging, are the ones who said they would be there for us no matter what. I don’t need THAT kind of support.

I am very tired of everything going on right now, so buckle up, because this is going to be a long ride.....

August
August was a lot of WTF. The day I got home from my Grandmother’s funeral, we lost Louis. My Big Cheese Boy. He was my biggest rat ever at almost 900 grams. He either choked on something or had a seizure/stroke and just passed. Not much else happened really. I got back into contact with someone that I have known for a very long time as well. It’s been an interesting and fun experience. He’s a lot older than I am....a lot. But I have known him my entire life and I am actually glad that I came back into contact with him. I’ve always found him attractive so it will be interesting to see what happens there. There’s no way for us to meet up at the moment for various reasons which I’m not going into, but we’re still trying to work that out.

September
This month wasn’t much to talk about. Got the ball rolling on my Actemra again, but this time with the Autoinjector Pen instead of infusion. More on that in a minute. We were trying to fix a leak we had outside and ended up breaking the hose bib so we had to have our water off for a week until the plumber could come and fix it. Thankfully that went off without a hitch and our leaks are almost 100% contained, but that meant our water bill was over $700. That was super stressful but the town had agreed to let me pay it off slowly. I had one of the worst Trigeminal Neuralgia flares I have had in ages. I almost considered going to the ER, but I knew as soon as I asked for the Morphine that would help, I would have the cops called on me. Thankfully got through that without much else happening.

October
I didn’t have the Gas money to get to the ISD office in time for the end of September so I had to turn my SNAP paperwork in late and a week later I got a letter saying they had closed my case (because I was 3 days late) and I had to reapply all over again. Got that done, but didn’t hear anything about my benfits in October. I finally got my Actemra approved and DELIVERED at the end of this month. Restarted the med and I have seen marked improvement since. The rest of the month was meh.

November
November was full of just trying to get by. We had to buy food again because still no word on the SNAP....which further pushed us backwards with other bills. People don’t realize that we literally cannot afford food. We already fall short on bills for the month without having to buy food, so adding that to the mix was pretty devastating. We didn’t do a whole lot else. I did some artwork and sold some pet beds, but we were still very short. Our gas almost got shut off.

We unfortunately lost Maddie and Gozer on the same day. Maddie was sick for a while. She had an abcess on her tummy and it just got worse, plus she had not been the same since Mama Kate died in May. Gozer had been dealing with Hind End Degeneration and had slowed down a lot. They (he and Egon) turned 2 on November 7th. I found Gozer hanging by his leg off of the bottom ladder one morning. I believe he either had a stroke or a seizure and fell. He ended up having a series of seizures that afternoon and passed. Maddie passed later that evening, I had planned to take her to the vet the next day (vet was out with cattle that whole day and not in the office) to have her put to sleep anyway, but she passed the evening before.

We celebrated our 11th Anniversary. I don’t even remember what we did or what was made for dinner because we still didn’t have food at that point. Then my brother, super late at night, like 9:30 my time (he’s on the east coast), texted me happy anniversary, but that sentiment came at the end of his long message telling me that I need to think about what I say.

He was upset because our relationship hasn’t been the best over the past few years since my mom got sick essentially. When she got sick and was dying at that point, he and our other brother traveled to see her in ABQ where my dad and I had been with her for the entire month. They spent some time with her, but spent more time with everyone else doing various activities, while my dad and I continued to be with mom when we could. We had been there doing that the ENTIRE month of May, and they couldn’t be bothered to spend as much time as possible with her.

So in July when they were here for my Uncle’s retirement party. We had a big discussion about things and I mentioned that fact. I also mentioned how neither of them had been to the house to visit dad in AGES. Those were my words. My brother took that as me saying that he didn’t do enough for our parents before they died. Now, he also said that he had ALREADY been having those thoughts himself. So hearing it from me (which isn’t exactly what I said or was implying) was devastating to him. He said that I need to think about the impact that my words have.

I told him it’s funny how I have to watch what I say to his face, but he has no problem saying shitty things behind our backs when he thinks we weren’t listening. I told him he had no problem talking shit about Randy mentioning his stroke He said “He’s STILL talking about that?!” when we were in Taos last year for my dad’s funeral, to my brother and godfather, not realizing I was standing right next to him and then at my Uncle’s thing Randy said something about it again while we were sitting around chatting, and my brother looked at his watch and said “What time did you guys get here?” and I KNEW immediately why he asked that....and I just said “a certain time ago” and got up and walked away.

He apologized later saying that his mind was all over the place (that’s when we learned about my grandma’s declining health). But then on my anniversary he said all that stuff. He said he came to NM in July to “fix” things between us all, blah blah blah. I told him listen....it sounds like what I said was something you were already thinking and it’s unfair for you to put those feelings you had on me, just because I confirmed something you were already thinking. I told him that sounds like something YOU need to work on with yourself. I told him that there are some things that can’t be fixed, because it being fixed for one person doesn’t necessarily mean it is fixed for everyone. Someone is always going to lose because it’s not exactly how they thought things should be.

I told him I FINALLY have a chance to get better. I would like to do that in peace, I fucking DESERVE that. That I know he has never agreed with out I do things, how I figure things out, but that is not HIS problem. That is MINE. I do what I have to do get through my days. Most days are impossible to get through, but we somehow still manage because that is what we fucking do. Eleven years of fighting just to live is what my husband and I have been through.

So I told him I need my space....I will talk to you periodically, but lets hope the new year brings us both the peace that we truly need. So I haven’t talked to him much lately. Just a few comments here and there on posts on FB. But yeah it’s been a whole lot of FUCK YOU lately because I am finally fucking fed up with people treating ME like I’m such a burden when they haven’t done anything but burden me with guilt for trying to keep my head above water.

Randy ended up going to Tucson for Thanksgiving. His family paid for the car to get reregistered and insured and for gas money. So that was good. I didn’t have the energy to deal with anyone at that point, and I needed to wait for my medication delivery, so I stayed home. I spent Thanksgiving with my Aunt and cousins. It was nice. My medication got delayed by a week due to a system switch over but I got my meds again the following week.

December
Onto this month. We’re only 8 days in. My birthday is in 2 days. I’m just not feeling anything right now. We are supposed to go to Tucson for Christmas but I’m not sure what all is going to happen there. Should be a clusterfuck. Thanksgiving was for Randy.....but yeah we’ll see.

We FINALLY got our food money on the 4th so the next day we went and stocked up on three months worth of food. We generally like to do all the shopping in one trip because we try to avoid the stores. So that was fun trying to get everything put away, but we did! It was nice being able to cook real food again.

My kitchen is a disaster though because I got so depressed during those two months without enough food, that I just didn’t even want to be in the kitchen. Its a shitty thing, but I’m slowly getting it all cleaned up. Especially since we have some mice in the kitchen, There’s several large holes in the kitchen floor in various spots because.....80 year old house....and there’s nothing under the floor, just goes straight to the ground outside. So they made their way inside and we’ve been trying to deal with that too.

Its really one thing or another around here. As usual, 8 days in, we are down to about $8 for the month since most of the bills got paid. So that’s fun. We had spent $200 on food on the 1st because they were months behind processing applications that I had no idea when we were going to get food money. So that was an unfortunate blow, and I wish I could recover that $200 because it would help immensely right now. Alas.....

Sunday is my birthday, we bought pork chops because that’s what I have for my birthday every year lol. Otherwise I have nothing planned. I have a few gifts on the way. A friend gave me $40 in amazon gift card so I bought a few things I’ve been wanting (well they’re sitting in my cart, I have such a hard time actually purchasing things for myself).

Anywho, I suppose that is all for now. I hope you all have a good rest of the year. It’s going to continue to be difficult for the time being. Oh, yeah, Randy got a denial letter from SSDI again. He tried every single day for three weeks to reach his caseworker and never got a phone call back so the denial is fucking bullshit. I’m so mad. But it is what it is I guess. Just very frustrating that that is how they run things.

Have a good one my friends.