Just Another Day

Well, my whisper campaign worked? We will be hosting a Celebration of Life for my mother in October. Not quite at the year mark, but close enough, I guess.  One interesting thing is that apparently my sister and Dad discussed it without me and then my sister just sort of informed me it was happening and on what date. And then I was expected to plan the majority of it.  Which. Is fine. I am currently not employed and my former job had me planning galas for 500, so this is definitely in my wheelhouse.  However, I just felt like old patterns were being repeated and not in a good way when I was not even involved in the discussions about the event and then just told about it. I mean, maybe I had made plans for that day! Maybe I had bought tickets to a concert or something! They would never have known because they didn't ask!  Many of my friends were outraged on my behalf, and I don't blame them. My sister may perhaps have, ahem, control issues. I think part of it may come...

I have determined that my family is...unusual. Well, I have always known this. The one year anniversary of my mother's passing is coming at the end of September.  We did not hold any kind of memorial service for my mother. For a number of reasons, I think. She was cremated, her death was so unexpected and fast, and it came right around a bunch of family birthdays and holidays. I think it felt at the time like we would be scheduling a memorial around a birthday or Thanksgiving and that just seemed like a huge bummer and we didn't want to do that to people. From August to January the majority of our family has their birthdays and of course all the major holidays.  But I do know my mother, and the Leo in her would want some kind of acknowledgment of her passing.  She would love to have a fancy room with beautiful flowers and people dressed up and speaking about her in glowing terms. I KNOW this IN MY BONES. She would be kind of insulted to just have nobody do anything at all...

I attended a Catholic elementary school here in SoCal back in the 70's. My parents were quite economically challenged at the time, and we literally lived in a rental home behind two businesses and next to a bar and a liquor store.  I didn't grow up with any kids or families around me, just adults parking in our "yard" to go to one of the businesses and me scheming constantly to locate spare coins so I could furtively purchase Abba Zabbas and Funyuns from the liquor store.  Because of the rich tapestry that is Southern California, the Catholic school I attended at the time was transitioning from what I assume was mostly white (based on the priests and nuns) to what the Catholic Church is today in California, majority Hispanic, with the majority being of Mexican heritage. I never thought about it growing up, really.  I didn't realize it until much later that the majority of my class was Hispanic. I am not going to use Latinx because I have heard from so many of the ...

 Ahhhh, this writing thing, it feels good! I had forgotten how much. When I say the last 12 or so years have been a blur, I really mean it. I think once I went back to work, it was on. Even though it was part time, having two kids, one of them neuro-divergent, just put me into a mental and physical overdrive that I am only now starting to come down off of. I didn't really realize how much until I just kind of stopped.  Did I mention I had to leave my job? It happened just back in March.  I won't get into the particulars of it, but let's just say I was given an interesting choice by my former boss.  A choice that pretty much any worker would find impossible to make, and I said, screw it, I'm out. It was only twenty hours a week anyway and it had kind of turned into the job from hell.  I had left my cushy government job to strike out into the non profit world where I was told I could work from home! Have more flexibility! Use my years of expertise to get out and w...

 Mutate is such a loaded word, is it not? It has a fairly simple technical definition but somehow mutate carries a heavier, more loaded connotation than the word "change." And if that is the case, then you could definitely say that my life has...mutated. It seems that I am the winner of a very specific type of genetic lottery and let's just say the prize isn't a good one. A month or so after my mother's death, my Dad received a notification from my mom's oncologist, stating that one of her biopsies came back with a gene mutation that may have led to her death and it is inheritable. They recommended testing for any children, and you know it's bad when Kaiser recommends genetic testing.  So, I go to get the testing done and lo and behold, I hold the golden ticket.  Now, it isn't the BCRA gene, thank goodness, which is much more aggressive and would have a much bigger impact.  However, this gene apparently can have its hand in multiple organs, not just b...

 Hoooo boy. Welp. This is awkward. More awkward than I thought it would be. I find myself agreeing with almost everyone that as I get older, the time goes by more slowly each day, but seemingly much faster in the aggregate.  I am still working part time, although with a nonprofit, not the government agency I was with for almost 8 years. So far, I am enjoying it, especially as I mostly work remotely. My oldest graduated university in December. He has interned at the White House and done another internship with an unnamable three-letter government agency in DC.  However, with the changes that are coming in the federal government, he will most likely be walking a different path than the one he expected. I feel badly for him, for who could have predicted? My youngest is in her first year of high school, which is crazy to type. She continues to be her kind, hilarious, empathetic self, and is a joy to everyone that knows her.  My husband retired from his old job, where he ...