Seriously, life has gone on. There was another blog, wait, no, two. They're gone. Due to a metric shit-ton of stress in my life lately, I've felt like I needed to get back to blogging and try to therapy myself by writing it down. I thought, "Let's go see what Blogger looks like now," and what do you know, All I'm Saying is still here. I really had no idea!
So about that stress: my dad is now in an assisted living center because he has dementia. It hasn't been pretty. We moved him in in December after a series of falls. He was diagnosed with the disease 5-6 years ago, but it was very slow moving. Then, this fall, it suddenly wasn't slow moving at all. Like many people with dementia, he remembers a lot of his distant past pretty well, but he has no idea what he did yesterday. He doesn't really remember being married to my mother (for 27 years), he doesn't remember his step-daughter, he often doesn't remember my daughter's name. Several weeks ago, he got in trouble at the assisted living because he had grabbed the bottoms of a couple of the female staff workers. (This sounds hilarious, but believe me, it isn't even remotely funny when it is your dad.)
There's so much to say about all of this. Right now, the key stress comes from the fact that I'm The Good Kid: I feel like it is my responsibility to make sure everything goes as well as possible for him. I have three adult brothers, two of whom live in town. Tragically, both of them are [expletive, expletive, expletive] narcissists. One won't even speak to my dad after what he perceives has been a lifetime of slights. The other owns a business and seems to believe that the entire planet will fall right out of place if he has to miss a single client meeting...related to data management. No, not pediatric oncology, not refugee work, not negotiating Syrian peace accords. Data management, as in, "How many external hard drives would you like to buy today, sir?"
Our dad had an emergency dental appointment today because he lost a bridge on his lower jaw yesterday. He was so panicked that he called me 5 times about it, not remembering that we'd talked and I told him that I would get him the first dentist appointment that I could. Unfortunately, the only appointment I could get was hard on the heels of a dermatologist appointment I had been waiting several weeks to go to. I thought I would probably be cutting it too close to do both, so I called my brother to ask him if he could pick Dad up and get him to the dentist, then I'd get there as soon as I could to relieve him and finish things up. "Uh, well, this is just a really busy time for me. I really can't make that work." After I (not perkily enough, maybe) said, "Okay, I'll just do my best to handle it, but you owe me," he said, "Tell that to my clients." I said, "No. You owe me." But I wish I'd said, "Okay, give me their phone numbers. Because I'll say, 'There's a minor family emergency and we need to reschedule the appointment. I hope you understand.'" How hard would that be, little brother? Hmm? Or I could say, "Hi, this is Douche-Face's sister and do you know that he's not willing to juggle his schedule even a little bit to help his elderly father who has dementia and his sister who has another doctor appointment? Great guy, huh? So listen, could you possibly tell him that you need to reschedule YOUR appointment with him so that this will all resolve itself?" Clearly, little brother needs to hire me as his secretary.
Three-hundred and sixty-four days ago, I was at the hospital with our dad while he was passing kidney stones. I was missing my daughter's 9th birthday party in order to be there, which was breaking my heart. Why couldn't Douche Face cover it for me? Because he had to go do his podcast. The one with 23 subscribers. If I'd said no, he'd have just left our dad at the hospital.
So maybe I should title this post, "I Hate My Little Brother With the Molten Heat of a Thousand Suns." I'll leave it as it stands, and I