Home stretch
More updates over here, if you care to see them.
The surgery is in four days, and although I don't seem like it, I think I am getting rather anxious about it. It's going to be a bad time, and it will be long. I will find out more about this tomorrow when I finally get the details from the nurses and doctors.
I stopped working on August 8. I felt like a lot of crap that day and the next day. It was as though if I wanted to do anything, anything at all, it required that I move a 500-pound block out of the way before I could do anything. But when I woke up the next morning, I felt like a million bucks. However, something else happened to me. In my renewed independence, I could no longer tolerate anything that bothered me. I couldn't deal with it in any sensible way. I can count the number of times that I yelled or screamed at Rose on one hand, and two of them occurred that weekend. I would represent it mathematically as:
limx->x0d(x) = ε
For those that remember their first year calculus, this might make sense. For the rest of you, skip this section. x is the number of times that I have to deal with something that someone does really irritates me. x0 is the number of x's where I start to crack. It may have been 1, or 2. d(x) is the "ability to deal" function, that is, my capacity to deal with the x's. ε is an arbitrarily small positive number that is close to zero. In English it reads:
As the number of irritating incidents approaches some arbitrary but particular number that I didn't choose, my ability to cope in an appropriate manner approaches zero.
That's life calculus.
Anyway, Rose obviously rebelled against this and this caused five days of hell and malfunction. But then things got a little better, then quite a bit better.
Then the next thing occurred. Petunia is staying with us for a total of two weeks. This is the second week and she returns to her fucking arrogant, lying, motherfucker father tomorrow afternoon. We decided to go to the Fête des enfants for a day with and for the girl. What a fucking disaster. She simply would not behave and would not be satisfied with anything that we did. She doesn't have any limits, few manners and can be extremely hard to deal with. Rose was already stressed out about my upcoming surgery, school and other things and things finally came to a head at the end of the day. A bad scene. It repeated itself Tuesday evening when Petunia could not control herself after having been showered with little gifts by Rose's two spinster aunts. (I don't know if they are technically spinsters or not, I just felt like using the word). This week has been one where the mother and daughter fight constantly and take breaks by not speaking to each other. I do think, though, that better planning and more rest could have kept tempers down if nothing else. And I am in the middle of all this while having to go to the hospital each day for something or other. (My PET scan is in less than an hour.)
So the past two weeks haven't been easy, but at least I feel fine, except for a growing irritation in my gullet which could simply be more reflux.
Miracle of miracles! Both my parents and my sister and brother-in-law will be visiting me in the hospital next Friday! Mom and Dad will stay overnight in a hotel. This will be the first time in over a decade that my sister has come to Montreal to visit me. Keep in mind that Brockville is only two hours away. This will help both Rose and I greatly.
An annoucement: I and several other people will be at the Ste-Elisabeth bar Saturday night around 9:30-10, until whenever. Feel free to drop by for a drink and to say hello! It should be fun.