Ranting to /dev/null

Home again

I arrived at home at 9:30PM Saturday, August 1st. The drive was long, but I made the best time I ever have, due to a general lack of both traffic and construction (and also cops). What follows is an update on my status for those of you who seem to be inexplicably interested.

I arrived home to a pretty large mess, metaphorically speaking. But before I could really get into figuring out what the hell was going on, I was visited by a dear friend as we had arranged earlier. We hung out for a few hours, and I went to bed. In my brother's room. Which I will get to in a minute.

Sunday, I got up just as my family was leaving for church, due to the fact that the church of my choice (Calvary OPC, Middletown) begins at 10:15 instead of 9:00. I went to church, was pretty unfocused the whole time, chatted with some people for a few minutes afterward, and went home. Over lunch, I was brought up to speed on what's been going on all summer while I've been in Chattanooga. Here goes.

Topping the list of urgent problems is the fact that my maternal great-aunt, who from my perception has been slowly failing for about the past decade, suffered a stroke the weekend before I arrived. My parents will be driving down tomorrow for a family council in which life support decisions will be made. She will not likely live out the week.

This probably isn't going to affect me on a primary level to any significant degree as this is a person I've seen maybe once a year. But as my maternal grandmother's sister, it's really hard on that side of the family, especially my grandmother. Why? Because her husband, my grandfather, was diangosed with a terminal brain maglignancy right around Spring Break. They have since moved to a retirement community about 45 minutes west of here, and are setting his affairs in order. His vocabulary is failing rapidly, and recently his speech has started to slip into inscrutable neologisms and slurring. This combination means that my grandmother is having a really, really bad time of it.

So my mom is understandably stressed out right now. She's been helping her parents a whole lot this summer, and I believe she's been spending several days a week over there. On Sunday, she told me she's been having trouble sleeping, things, are getting so hairy. And regarding sleeping, things have taken a turn for the worse, but this needs explanation in and of its own right.

This spring, my dad was diagnosed with an exceptionally rare but seemingly benign tumor inside his spinal cord just below the skull. He has been experiencing odd neurological symptoms, mostly numbness and tingling in the extremeties. This is not as serious as it could be, for after consulting with top neurologists and neurosurgeons in New York, it has been decided that the tumor poses no immediate threat to health or well-being, and as such, surgery will be postponed until such time as it begins to be a problem.

However, as a result of his diagnosis, he has been taking various medications. One of the side affects of this is that he has begun to snore. Which means that my mom, already having trouble sleeping because of the family situation, can hardly get to sleep at all. This, in turn, means that she has appropriated my room. Which is why I'm sleeping in my brother's room.

To make things more interesting, my brother and sister, both of whom were homeschooled until last year, are preparing to do other things. My sister will still be technically homeschooled, but will be taking all her courses at local colleges (LVC and HACC for those of you who know and/or care). My brother, on the other hand, has enrolled in a classical school towards Harrisburg. He has been studying Latin and algebra all summer, adding to the general hecticness of life.

I leave in half an hour to go to Wal-Mart to buy some pants before heading to work and good, old Friendly's, where I will make ice cream sundaes for six hours.

In other news, I managed to get back online yesterday, with a decent home network to boot. I'm sending this to you over 802.11g, which is unspeakably cool, and a bit freaky. I'm still weirded out by the fact that there isn't actually a wire connecting my computer and the Internet, but it seems to work. Oh, and for those of you wondering about 802.11b/g, I'm only getting 11Mbs at the moment, so speed is highly relative. Still, that's plenty for my purposes, since Comcast only gives us 1.5Mbs.

I need to go get some breakfast before I head to work. I have more thoughts on Pennsylvania, but no time to compose them, so I'll try and get to them tonight.

Posted by ryan at August 4, 2003 08:31 AM | TrackBack