Things I'm thankful for today.

Humor.

A glass of wine with peach mango juice and lots of ice last night.

Fresh homemade buns from my neighbor, pesto/cheese.

My garden.

A dog that makes me walk everyday, or just about everyday.

The big guy.

My grandson.

Automatic washer and dryer.

Get to see Miss Katie tomorrow.

I had a lovely dream about Miss Katie last night.  We were in a barn and she was independent.  She wandered around, spent time with a couple of beagles, rode a horse with someone else, played with rabbits.  She spent time with other people, by herself.  She didn't have to be supervised.  She was independent.  It was a wonderful dream that left me feeling good even after I woke up.  

I'm going to hang my sheets on the line to dry.

And bake some muffins.

And spend time with my husband.

And listen to CBC radio.

What are you thankful for today?

One of the big guy's shots taken as we approached the iceberg that we saw out in Newfoundland.  Gives you a better perspective of how large it was.

I saw my counsellor this week because I've been feeling overwhelmed and depressed.  Mostly we talked about my son, an ongoing theme with me.  She pointed out that I should not be letting him disrespect me or be verbally abusive with me.  She also suggested I lower my expectations of him.  I expect him to tell the truth to me.  I find it disrespectful when he lies to me and then I get angry.  She suggested I meet him where he is, stop asking questions I don't want to know the answers to and accept that for now, he and I will not have a genuine relationship.

I hate being lied to.  My son's biological father lied to me about everything.  My son has a half brother who is only two weeks younger than he is.  Fortunately I didn't learn about that until much later.  When you to lie to someone you destroy your own credibility.  It makes a genuine relationship impossible because you have no idea of who they really are.  We all lie, usually to avoid uncomfortable situations or feelings and I get that.  I lie to myself all the time and maybe that's what bothers me too.

I tell myself that I'm fine, even when I'm not.  Even when depression is dragging me down into the black hole.  I hide my depression because it makes people feel uncomfortable.  Because it makes me feel weak, like I just can't deal with life and what the fuck is wrong with me.  Mental illness still carries a stigma.  According to Dr. Google, 5% of the Canadian population have reported symptoms of major depression in the last year.  I'm part of a group.

I work on not being depressed.  I walk.  I spend time outside.  I spend time with my grandson.  I ask the big guy for hugs.  I garden. I write.  And still it stalks me.

Anyway.  Enough.  I can accept that my son will lie to me.  There is nothing I can actually do about it.  It's his life.  It hurts me to see him flush his life away but there is nothing I can do that will change how he lives.  I always forget that I have no control how other people behave.

I need to change my perspective.

He who should be sleeping, because it's past nana's bedtime.

I'm not a young woman anymore and I'm starting to feel that on a daily basis.  My feet hurt all the time but they're at their worst when I stand up from sitting for awhile.  I have bone spurs on my feet and unlike Mr. tRump's, mine have not miraculously disappeared.  My back usually hurts, my eyes are crap.  I can't see with my glasses or without my glasses it seems.  That's not true but that's how it feels at times when I'm taking my glasses off and then putting them back on all day long, hoping to see clearly.  I have progressives but still it's a challenge to see clearly.  My left knee has started bothering me when I sit down or get up, or walk.  Getting down on the floor is way harder than it ever used to be and I've taken to washing floors with rags and my feet.

At work the other day, a young nurse I work with told me about electric mops and I was surprised;  one that they existed and two that they worked well.  She loves hers, although hers is a steam mop because as she put it, she is obsessed with germs.  I did a little research and on the way home from dropping the big guy off at work, I stopped by Canadian Tire and bought myself an electric mop.  I feel like one of those old grannies that used to talk about that new fangled fill in the blank.  

I took the mop out of the box, quickly took a look at the instructions and then proceeded to wash all of the floors on the main floor of the house.  My back doesn't hurt.  My knees don't hurt.  The floors are lovely and clean.  The pads attached to the mop were quite dirty and they're now in the washing machine being cleaned.  A good morning:)

It's been cool and wet here and this morning I finally gave in and turned on the furnace.  I don't remember ever turning on the furnace in July.  Good thing climate change isn't true.

On Monday we had a very scary patient.  He has bowel cancer that has spread and he is now palliative.  Apparently he had been seeing his doctor and complaining of blood in his stool for the last two years and the doctor told him that it was a hemorrhoid.  The man is sixty and should have had a colonoscopy but I don't know the whole story.  Anyway, he told the nurse, tech and doctor who were in with him while they inserted a central line, that he has paid thirty thousand dollars to someone so that when the patient dies, his family doctor, the doctor's wife and their first born child with be killed.

WTF!  The nurse with him was shaken up all day.  She has a year old baby and is still surprised at how fierce her love for her son is;  her first born.  She called security who told her to call the police which she did.  Later that day two young policemen showed up and took her statement, as well as those of everyone else who had contact with that patient.  Fucking hell.  I feel for the man and I would be mad as hell too but you can't do that.  You don't have the right to take the life of another.

Mr. tRump continues to appall me.  He is a despicable human being who appeals to the worst part of other human beings.  I continue to hope that he is defeated in the next election before his hatred can spread any further.

"Hope is a species of happiness, and perhaps the chief happiness this world affords"  Samuel Johnson

We saw this fox while we were in Newfoundland.  I have no idea if it's male or female but he/she wasn't bothered by me taking photos at all.

I've been feeling down since we got home.  It's so nice to be home again but it's been gray most days and I'm stuck indoors again working.  I miss being outside.  My son contacted me again about seeing his son.  No apologies for lying, more of a "we'll just pretend none of it happened" which is his motto I'm guessing.

I called him on his lies and he got angry with me, accusing me of using his son against him and told me I am a horrible person for not letting him see his son.  My exact words were, you can visit him but I don't want you here if you continue to lie.  He refused to admit he had lied to me about anything.  He's not allowed to go to Gracie's house because there is a protection order in place because of his behavior last November.  Gracie's parents don't want him at their place because he's rude, unreliable and unpleasant to deal with.  I don't want him here as long as he lies and yet he still continues to blame everyone else.  It saps me of my energy.  I'm guessing he's so defensive and angry because he's dealing drugs again.  He has no job but has a new car, new clothes and an apartment.  He must think I'm stupid or gullible and to fair, I am gullible but not as gullible as I once was.

So there's that.

I'm convinced I have dementia because I have difficulty finding words sometimes or forget things.  In fact I just did a dementia test online and didn't have a problem with it so I'm sure it's stress plus normal aging.  I'll look at co-workers I've worked with for years and have trouble finding their name inside my brain, same with objects.  I was telling the big guy about what happened in interventionals yesterday and couldn't remember the name for a sheath until later.  The doc had put in a central line but it was too long so she did an over the wire line exchange which I'd never done before but it went well.  I'm able to do my job well but just can't remember things sometimes.  My daughter has the same complaint so it's probably not dementia.

It was nice to get back to work, even though it's tiring.  I love my patients.  I had a gentleman yesterday who's had four major operations in the past seven months.  He's eighty years old with pancreatic cancer.  I can't even imagine going through that at any age.  He no longer has any pancreas left so his blood sugars are very volatile and his sugar dropped quite low while he was with us.  His eyes were tearing up when he was telling me that his family had been talked to by the doctor when he was in hospital about the possibility of him not surviving the surgery and it's aftermath.

Yesterday I also had a woman only a year older than me with metastatic renal cancer who had a stroke after her surgery to remove her kidney.  She wasn't sure why she had been sent to us.  I explained what had happened and that she was with us for staging and possible clinical trial placement at which point she smiled and said, "Oh yeah, I remember now."

And then a mother and father of a two week old baby, the mother a new patient.  I think it gets to me more than I realize, especially when I'm already tired of dealing with me son.  I had a bad dream while I was on holiday;  a dream in which I tried to avoid ever having my son.

I need sunshine.  I'm having lunch with a girlfriend today which will help as well.  We've known each other for almost thirty years.  He son is a drug addict and her daughter's partner is a drug dealer.  Both children raised in a loving home with good parents and still drugs.  I'm so sick and tired of drugs.

While we were away we drove past a church or a school that had Saint Monica in the name.  I never knew there was a Saint Monica so I looked her up.  She's the patron saint of disappointing children.  There is a patron saint of disappointing children!  Apparently disappointing children are not a new thing which is somehow comforting.

 
We're back home from Newfoundland.  I learned a few things while there.  Newfoundland truly is a rock, a really big rock.  There is rock everywhere with a little bit of soil covering the rock, or bog covering the rock;  a lot of bog which is not something you want to step onto, or rather sink into.  It rains a lot there and because it's a rock, there are lakes and rivers everywhere, catching the rain or sending it back to the sea.  Europeans started fishing the waters off the coast of Newfoundland five hundred years ago and fought wars over this Island.  Vikings used it as a temporary base for ten years for boat repairs and as a base for further exploration down into the Gulf of St. Lawrence a thousand years ago.  Who knew?

The scenery was beautiful and wild.  The people are lovely with a great sense of humor.  The villages are dying because of the collapse of the cod fishery in 1992;  there are empty and abandoned homes in small inlets up and down the coast.  Thousands of people left the island in search of work and many have never returned.  Thousands of those people now live in my own province, brought here because of the oil field work.

 Cape Spear, the most easterly point in Canada, enveloped in fog which later burned off and left us with a truly beautiful day.

And now it's back to reality.  There is laundry to do, animal hair to vacuum up and groceries to buy.  I have to deal with my son, again.

I saw my little grandson last night.  He's grown so much.  He's holding his head up so well, reaching for things, stuffing his hand in his mouth and talking.  Last night when I gave him kisses on his neck he was almost laughing.  He does my heart good.  Gracie and the little guy are coming over for lunch today so I get to seem him again today.  Sigh.  He's so damned sweet and easy going.  I have fallen in love with him.