On Dying

Hi. I've missed you all. All six of you (because at some point, my readership doubled. In my head, at least). Here is the long list of excuses as to what may or may not have kept me away:

Laziness
Business
Procrastination
Monster truck sized fire ants
The ballet
Day drinking
Real life responsibilities (family, work, day drinking, what have you)
My father dying

Most of these are probably true in one way or another. Though the only things I'm day drinking are coffee and water. I have only been to the ballet once and it wasn't recent (though I did go see Elvis Costello in April. The only thing that really has in common with the ballet is that they are both performances).

Before I delve into the sadness and complexities of grieving over a relatively estranged parent and explaining death to a 2.5 year old, I would like to start with good news. I earned a promotion at work! It's bittersweet because I've spent the past decade being a damned good trace metals chemist. I've always been a laboratory scientist and now I'm the QA/QC Coordinator for the metals lab. With great power comes great amounts of bureaucratic bullshit responsibility. It's been a big learning curve. But that also means that my time at work is spent working. Pretty much nonstop.

I'm also one of the representatives for my department on the City's team (kind of like a mini congress) that creates and informs policy recommendations to the actual people with the power to approve those policy changes and we are starting to offer 6 weeks of paid family leave to all permanent employees, paid at 100%! This is huge because, with Cthulhu, I was only able to take seven weeks off. Another six would have been perfect. And it stacks with family medical leave which means a new parent (for birth or adoption) could have up to 18 weeks off to bond with their child!

And now, sadness.

I don't really know how to grieve. I keep hearing there is no wrong way to do it, but it seems strange and complex when the person you should be grieving wasn't very close to you. My brothers have been writing all of these epic "You were my hero, the best father in the world" kind of things, but that wasn't my experience. I mean, he was all right. And he was my father. But my parents divorced before I was born and I never had the feeling my dad really wanted to be a father. At least, not more than the summer holidays he spent with us. A lot of stories and things come out after a death. What's done is done and a lot of the stuff seems petty to even write about, but I do have a better understanding of my dad, who died on Leap Day.

Some of you know that he had been diagnosed with stage 4 cancer the summer of 2014. He lost his hair, his teeth, his jovial youthfulness, his hearing in one ear and his vision in one eye to the cancer and its treatments. Watching him go through chemo and radiation and the bone marrow transplant helped me see why someone may choose to forego treatment when diagnosed with late stage cancer. I think his quality of life would have been better, though he possibly wouldn't have lived as long.

He was on maintenance chemo when this terrible bronchial infection swept through the valley in February. When my dad caught it, it turned into pneumonia and he wound up in the ICU at the veteran's hospital. My oldest brother came from out of state and we all gathered around his death bed. I think he probably liked that. He always wanted his family gathered around him. When death was imminent, the ICU staff let me take young Mr. Chumbercules to the hospital to see grandpa, who he was always asking about but wasn't really allowed to spend time with because of chemo and toddler germiness.

Before we went to the hospital, I talked to him about how grandpa's body isn't working very well and he won't be able to pick him up or hug him and he will be connected to machines and tubes and if Chumby gets scared, just to tell me and we can leave. I told him again when we arrived at the hospital. I left Cthulhu at home. My dad seemed glad to see Chumby. He held out his shaking hand and Chumb grabbed his finger and proclaimed, "Your body isn't working." because toddlers and young children have this beautiful ability to plainly speak the truth. And my dad died the next day.

Every day since then, Chumby has said, "Grandpa is dead. We can't see him anymore. His body stopped working." Which was much better than his initial question of "Who shot grandpa?" when I told him grandpa was dead.

We aren't a religious lot in our house, but the Little Miss goes to church with her mom and stepdad and I think she and Chumb were talking about death and grandpa because after one of her visits, Chumby declared, "Someone taked grandpa." And I looked at him, confused, and said, "No one took him... well, I guess the coroner did." And he asked if the coroner was a person and I said yes. So, the daily story changed.

It became, "Grandpa is dead. His body stopped working and the coroner taked him away."

Sometimes he tells me he misses grandpa and we talk more about death and the more involved his questions get, the more information I provide him. Mr. Adventure tried to talk to him about cremation, but I don't think we are ready to talk about burning bodies yet.

The funeral service, which happened in March, was nice. I was kind of surprised by the turnout. I didn't realize my dad had so many friends and had touched so many lives. His old commanding officer from the Airforce was there and spoke. Then there was a potluck back at my stepmom's house. We didn't stay long since we had all the kids, including the Little Miss with us. My younger brothers came, too, even though they have a different dad. Which was nice because I was able to make fun of my youngest brother, turning 28 this year, for still living with our mother.

So, there's that.

Cthulhu has his 9 month exam tomorrow. He is very different from Chumby as a baby. In addition to having a much smaller head and being smaller over all, he has hair. And it's dark. And he plays. Chumb never really played at this age. Not like Cthulhu does.

And this made me laugh yesterday.

And that's what I have time for today. I'll be back soon with updates on Cthulhu and life with two boys and how I never seem to be able to find the time to touch up my damn roots so I kind of look like Courtney Love's fat younger sister.

Hitch hiking and potty training

My mom used to pick up hitch hikers when I was a kid. She would do it alone, but she would also do it with us in the car. There were never any incidents that I recall. I used to pick up hitch hikers, too. I also used to get around by hitch hiking when I was a teenager. I found myself in precarious situations a couple of times. I wouldn't feel comfortable picking up hitch hikers with kids in my car.

When I was 13 or 14, my mom found a blonde-bearded homeless man somewhere. I don't know where he came from, but he came and lived in our garage. He got a paper route and started delivering newspapers in the neighborhood to make some money. My cousin and I used to mix concoctions of kitchen spices and encourage him to drink them. I'm not sure what our motivation was or whether or not he tried any of our drinks. I know we did.

I was driving to work this morning and I saw a man in a flannel shirt walking on the sidewalk on the right side of the road. He turned and looked at my car as my headlights approached, like he was expecting someone. And it got me thinking about hitch hikers.

Also, happy new year. And happy almost my birthday.

My boys are growing. Brown Sugar wants to crawl so bad. He hasn't sat up yet, but I've started calling him my magical teleporting baby because if I blink, he will somehow have turned 90 degrees and be underneath the coffee table.

I think the novelty of being a big brother is finally wearing off. Bed time has been hard. Chumby grabbed his brother the other day, temple of doom style. I think I'm going to try to swap their bed times. Get the baby down first then spend half an hour of Chumbercules time before he goes to bed. I always ask him if his brother can read stories with us and he always says yes and then asks for his brother to lay in his bed with him.

The Ugly Volvo has a couple new posts. You should check them out.

Also, I've fallen in love all over again. This time with a mom from across the pond (or should I say mum?). I want to be her friend. She writes Hurrah for Gin.

Things have been so hectic in the House of Adventure. Mr. A is back in school, taking evening classes. His earliest classes start at 4, which means I am under pressure to get in to work as early as possible so I can be home early enough to bathe before heading off to class for the evening. And his car broke down, so we are vehicle sharing. I've also been super busy with all these projects at work and have all these meetings I have to go to. I'm pretty sure the only purpose of meetings is to make people feel like they are actually making progress. 90% of what happens in meetings could be conducted via email. My birthday is Friday. I joined the Twin Peaks birthday club and I got a coupon for a free meal for my birthday. So, I'm going to make Mr. Adventure go to lunch there with me on Friday. Because I feel like Twin Peaks (aka Lumberjack Hooters) isn't really a place to be once it gets dark outside. I need to get Brown Sugar a picture with the girls there, anyway. Chumby already has one from when he was super extra tiny.

Chumb and I checked out both of the Cooperative Preschools in our neighborhood and I think I found one that will be an excellent fit. He seemed to really enjoy himself and their cut-off is October 1st, which is nice for my September babies. Oh! I forgot to tell you the super most exciting thing!

Chumbercules has been pooping in the toilet! I know it's cliche to get excited about the bowel movements of your offspring, but not having to change double the poo diapers is pretty awesome. He did it for the first time on the Little Miss's birthday. He had a stomach bug and had the runs. I think that's why he was able to so clearly identify the feeling that he had to poop. And he keeps doing it. We have to tell him to go sit on the toilet and try to poop at times we know he normally does (like right before bed). And he gets a marshmallow for doing it. There's only one jumbo marshmallow left, then he will be downgraded to mini marshmallows.

I know there's a lot more, because I think about what I want to write next all the time, but I don't remember what it is right now. So, happy my birthday to all of you. I encourage you all to go see Deadpool this weekend in honor of the 9th (?) anniversary of the 25th year of my life.

I need a nap.