The Struggle

So so tempted to rename this whiny ass blog "Sorry Side Up" with a photo of some janky fried eggs. The last year has just sucked so much, since the husband's cancer surgery in Jan. 2024. I haven't been posting for quite a while. I haven't much felt like it, yet I keep returning here to gripe on the regular. Just the short period of time of the current political administration has kept me busy writing at my Substack. If you're been watching the madness you know what's going on. The bit that concerns me that I keep returning to is the fact that the USA keeps sending deportation flights here to Central America where countries are in no way able to handle or accomplish what the administration wants. Panama is pretty much just turning them loose on the streets and telling them to 'self deport'.  Fly free my little deportees, fly free!! It's an evolving humanitarian crisis in this part of the world created entirely by Trump.

One of the things I've started doing is staying off news sites and social media visiting only once per day, reading more and doing more morning tasks and it's helped my state or mind. Which helps because I'm stuck in the middle of trying to arrange my husband to get chemo and radiation in the capital city here with our insurance. Yes folks the cancer is back. Having to look at renting a place on Airbnb for six weeks while he gets treatment since we live five hours away. Already lined up a probable house sitter and we've had the wall raised in the back of the property, plus had a pretty sweet camera system installed with alarms and the ability to talk to the miscreant trespasser from anywhere in the world.  

We're waiting for the insurance company and the clinic to finish with their difficult dance of what they will allow or not.  That's the only hold up or we'd be there right now with someone getting radioactive zaps to somewhere near the nutsack region. I shudder to think what the side effects will be this time.

Add in that the asthma has been crazy bad too and my sleep is all mixed up now. Some of this is my own damn fault. The other day I was starting to feel suddenly well again, I leapt up and started reorganizing/scrubbing my big fancy-carved closets. Pulled out the oil solution I try to use yearly on our furniture and I am suddenly extremely allergic to it. Mast cell crazy action. I've been in the bed trying to recover much of the week. 

Into this hot mess of a week tromps my mother, the same mother I have not heard from once since right after Thanksgiving, who has ignored all calls, gifts, messages until Sunday morn. Right now I'd laugh if I hadn't been crying for two days now. ~~snipped the dirty details of her saying hateful things~~ No one benefits from the rehashing of what happened. There are just lines you do not cross with others, she crossed them, peed on the lines and threw hands. In retrospect it was almost comical, but in reality it was one of the most painful emotional frailings I've experienced yet.

I have to think that my ancient aunties are right, and she's now lost the plot. It's time for a retirement home somewhere that she's fed, watched over and medicated if needs be. A place with a dementia care unit. I am in the first stages of requesting a competency testing. I do this even knowing it will spell the end our relationship, but she ended it first on Sunday with her words. I has disabled the phone number she calls me at for a few days. I need a pause to recover and have the emotional space to process what happened and what I am dealing with involving my husband. The flowers and gifts stop too. I am done. 

Please, folks, come up with an end of life strategy or policy. Write it down. Don't make your family chase you like a hyperactive goat on mescaline while you sow havoc. We all just end up frustrated and unhappy.