Journal Archives from theDreamworld ... June 2007

Why am I still alive? Does anyone have any valid excuses for this? Anyone? Anyone? Bueller? Bueller?

I hate food poisoning. It's been five days since I got that bad food at lunch in Fremont that gave me food poisoning, and while I suffered that evening quite a bit, I felt in the following day and the day after that that, while I was uncomfortable and a veritable gas-making machine, I hadn't fared too bad. I had surely had much worse cases of food poisoning where I was in much more intense pain and suffering for much longer.

Here I am today, however, and while I can still say that I've had much, much more intensely painful experiences from food poisoning, I don't think I've ever had as lingering of a case as this one. I've had continued gas and stomach cramps and associated problems since Saturday's doomed meal, and I had hoped I was slowly seeing the last traces of whatever bacteria and such purged from my system, but today I truly doubt that. It could just be really acute indigestion, but I don't think it's that, and it could be a brand new case of food poisoning - but that seems rather statistically unlikely) - and I'm left thinking it must be the same problem that simply hasn't gone away yet.

I am able to bear the pain, and today (tonight) there is indeed pain, and it's not at all a pleasant experience. I've taken some TUMS to no apparent effect, and I've been making such regular visits to the toilet that I might consider just staying, but so far things don't get any better. In fact I'd go so far as to say things are getting worse as far as the pain goes.

Hopefully by morning the painful aspects of this will pass. Heck, I'd like for all of it to pass, but I'll accept the absence of the pain just fine, thanks.It's amazing how miserable this past couple of weeks have been, both physically and mentally. I'm not sure how much more I can take. Something has to give, and I wish I knew how to make any of this at all better. Wah. : (

I've still been somewhat depressed, tired, and just plain "off" today, but I feel like I'm better - at least better than I have been for the last week. In fact I slept more than any day in the last two weeks (although about seven hours of sleep isn't much to rave about), and I've felt a notably lower amount of anxiety than in the past week, but I have still been very depressed and have struggled with a complete lack of motivation and despondency which has kept me down no matter how much I've tried to get myself 'back in the game' as it were and getting back into a more healthy and happy routine.

Tomorrow is another day, and hopefully I can break out of the depression, at least to some degree. I feel miserable, and I hate it, but I'm not yet finding it possible to get above that. Hopefully that will change. I miss being 'normal', and being depressed again is just not a place that I want to stay.

After only a mere two days into this just-finished visit, my sister had already started outrageous arguments both days where she insulted me and not only denied that she was at all in the wrong but in fact blamed me for these and previous confrontations (namely when she visited for a few days at Easter) because she "and everybody" (as she put it) feel that I'm "full of rage" and explode every time I open my mouth. Of course only my sister has had these confrontations with me and only my sister claims I'm "full of rage", so I have no idea who "everybody" is besides her, and I'll admit that after she's gotten to insulting and demeaning me she does get my hackles up and gets me angry, but that, to me, seems hardly like any sort of "pent up inner rage" and more simple self-defense and even righteous indignation. Maybe it's just me, I mean I am just seeing this from my own perspective, and perhaps I'm not getting a realistic picture of everything, but it seems to me that anyone would be insulted by being told that:

Now I'll admit that I haven't held a formal job in some time, however, I have what most people would consider a full-time job, namely being a personal caregiver for my elderly grandmother while also being a custodian for her home, yard, and finances, all while overseeing any other aspects of her well-being. Oh, and I'm finishing up two bachelor's degrees while doing that. That's not even mentioning that I have never been unable to get a job when I've actively sought one out. Grandma can't be left alone for more than a few short hours at most, and certainly not for eight hours a day five days a week, or some similar schedule. and while I've occasionally looked for work-from-home jobs, they are not very common outside of the scam-jobs that make unrealistic promises.

It should also be clear to anyone, my sister particularly since I have mentioned it numerous times in the past, that while my sister, mother, and others seem to think that my living here is somehow all to my benefit and at the least a massive financial boon to me, that is the farthest thing from the truth. I made the offer to come her as a rare selfless act for my grandma's benefit, but few people seem willing to accept that. At the time I moved here, I had the best situation possible in a rent-controlled, utilities-included, low-cost situation that was half or even a third of the costs of even the cheapest, sleeziest efficiency apartment I might find in Toledo, and I had a very nice arrangement with rooms I'd restored in a secure hall where only two other residents lived other than me. My only utility cost was for my phone, and I kept no long distance service. I left rarely, as to keep down gasoline costs and wear and tear on the car, and I ate very simple fare that I bought in bulk during trips to the grocery only once every one or two months. I had to supplement my financial aid with credit card usage, but I was able to juggle my finances well and kept things well under control.

Things changed when I moved to Sandusky to help my grandmother. I paid quite a bit to move myself here, paid to repair and repaint the mess that had been left in the upstairs apartment, found myself with higher auto and renter's insurance costs (for no clear reason), saw my gasoline costs become triple to quadruple what they had previously been merely due to the additional distance, and then saw those costs triple again as gas costs rose, not to mention the additional wear-and-tear on the car that added thousands per year in repair costs I didn't have before. While I didn't have to pay rent any more, my rent had been negligible, and where I had next to no utilities, now I had a cell phone with double my previous costs for a phone, and I had much higher costs for an Internet provider than before. Furthermore, while my grandma paid for some groceries for me when we went shopping for her groceries every two weeks, I still ended up buying much food on my own, spending about as much and often more than I had when I was on my own in Toledo. On top of all of this, my financial aid only lasted through my first year here, and after that I had to cover any expenses from credit or cash-advances. Eventually my grandma offered a monthly 'stipend', I guess you could call it, but a couple hundred dollars was at that point only a fraction of what I had to pay in minimum monthly payments on my credit cards, let alone anything else. As time has passed, my debt in credit, student loans, and personal debts has ballooned, but rather than applaud me for continuing to help my grandma despite all of that, my sister can only see me as a leech, selfishly taking advantage of my grandma for her money because I, without having any plans for a employment outside of taking care of my grandma, 'can't get a job.'

Of course I'm just leeching off of my grandma, but hiring someone at great expense to do the same job I do, but without caring as much and while only doing so during weekdays and daylight hours - that's not only fine but definitely much more desirable to my sister. The fact that there are nothing but minimum-wage jobs to be had in Sandusky doesn't concern my sister who told me I could get a job in Toledo, regardless of the fact that the gasoline costs for a daily commute to and from Toledo would, with taxes, leave me with an income that would be quite negligible, all while some stranger would be telling my grandma what to do and making ten or twelve times as much as me if not more, all to do what I've been doing for the last four years. I must be really stupid, because I simply cannot find any way that that situation makes any sense at all (unless the only goal is simply to get me out of the picture).

And perhaps the whole idea is to get me out of the picture, because my sister even wants to make it seem like leaving was my idea all along. Of course the fact that I never said anything remotely like this seems unimportant to her. It boggles the mind to wonder why I would have even offered to come here at all if I planned to just leave after three or four years anyhow, consigning my grandma to the same fate (being forced to sell her house and live with my parents in Florida) at only a slightly later date. My grandma wouldn't be any better off, and I would have uprooted myself and rearranged my life for pretty much no reason, throwing away a better renting situation than I could ever get again in the process and having taken myself away from my network of friends for years for, again, no logical reason. After repeatedly pushing my sister on this one, I find that the root of things systems from my explaining (a number of times, in fact) when I first moved to Sandusky that my plan was to finish my undergraduate degrees by commuting to Bowling Green from Sandusky and then, in a year or two, after graduating, moving into a graduate MFA program through one of a few possible limited-residency programs where I would basically be able to stay at the house and take care of grandma throughout the year, working my MFA through e.mail, mail, and a couple weeks a semester during which I would make sure my grandma was visiting with my mom or my sister. That in no way ever suggests I would be 'leaving after three or four years' for anywhere, but my sister decided to hear what she wanted, regardless of the dozens of times I explained the limited-residency programs to her during the first year ort so that I was here.

And by harm, she means I provide health and safety and well-being to my grandma that she didn't have before or when she's not in my care. When you look at the facts, my grandma got terribly sick at least once or twice each year before I came to take care of her, and she didn't have a sin gle cold the first two years I was here. In the two years after that, she had a cold once while I was taking care of her, in the fall of the third year, and she got sick each time she visited my sister for Christmas because my sister would push her further than she, as a ninety-plus-year-old woman could stand without regular breaks and rest. This past winter she got so sick that she herself claims she has never been so sick in her life.

My grandma has, with my constant watching and pushing, taken her pills daily as prescribed and eaten well and promptly gone to the doctor when anything unusual came up. This is unlike the occasional days of 'forgetting pills because things were rushed' when she is away staying with my sister or my parents, and it is unlike the whole day my grandmother spent with massive chest pain with my parents in Florida without ever taking her to the hospital or even calling a doctor. But clearly i - somehow - am doing more harm than good to my grandma ...

My mother, and now my sister as well, feel that they should be able to call me at all hours, even if I'm asleep, taking a shit, avoiding some crazy person trying to crash into my car, or whatever else causes me not to answer my phone. They also expect me to stop eating a meal and let it get cold when they call, even though they call at exactly Noon or 6 PM or some other time that most normal people would be eating a meal. And they both expect me to answer the phone if I'm depressed and just don't want to talk to anybody, because I should at least talk to them and tell (they say) so that they know (which clearly defeats the whole idea of not talking to someone). Now keep in mind that they refuse to leave messages briefing me on what they want, refuse to leave a message about when they will call back (or if they claim they will call back, they don't call in any remotely close time frame to what they suggested), and they refuse to communicate through e.mail, which I have invariably answered within the same day, even when I'm severely depressed. They also fail to admit that I have contacted them both immediately when even the smallest concern has come up regarding my grandma. They're just pissed off that I don't want to talk to them about nothing or confirm exactly the things that my grandmother had told them on the phone in conversation with them the night before.

My sister accused me of not answering phone calls from my mom because I was "on some sort of power trip", but if anyone's on a power trip it's those two. Who calls thirteen times in one day, never leaving a message that says more than "I need to speak with you", refusing to communicate through e.mail, and having nor valid reason for calling once they do get through to you other than to ask you to give your version of everything that they had discussed with your grandmother the day before?

My mother, and now in these recent arguments my sister, feel that my mother is, in their words, "ultimately responsible for [my] grandma", and they believe I should take all directions from her (my mom). I have made clear to both of them that so long as my grandma is still sane, stable, and active, she is ultimately responsible for her own life, her own decisions, her own finances, and her own fate, and I will back her with every fiber of my being. Hell, that's the whole reason I'm here. My grandmother has in place a financial power of attorney and a medical power of attorney that lists all three of us (me, my sister, and my mom) as power of attorneys, but none of us is elevated above the other. In fact, since I'm here in the day-to-day, immediate situations, if anybody is ultimately responsible, it's me, and you can be sure that my sister and mother will blame me if I wouldn't immediately make decisions that save my grandma's life (which I've already done in a few instances). I suppose I could have fucked around and called my mom and waited for her to tell me what to do, but by then my grandma might have been dead. Oh well.

The bottom line for me is that I'm here for my grandma, not my mom. I represent my grandma's interests, and I back her decisions and support her best health. My mom nor my sister are here, and their track record for keeping my grandma healthy when she is visiting them are poor records at best. When, at some time in the future my grandma becomes too feebleminded or troubled to make clear decisions, things will have to be reevaluated and my role will surely change. Until that time, I represent my grandma, and if my mom and sister want to change that, then they need to bitch to my grandma, because she's the only one who can tell me that my mom is in charge, in which case my mom can move back here and do the 'responsible thing', ultimately.

This repeatedly-screamed comment was my sister's reasoning for why I won't call my parents house in Florida, ostensibly (as she believes) because I am 'afraid of my father.' Well - no.

I'll admit, I was afraid of my father as a child. When you're demeaned, threatened, terrified, and raped repeatedly by your father as a child, yes, you do become scared. It's natural. It's also natural that, as a mature adult, you want nothing more than to see your father dead for those offenses. Do I want to talk to him? No! Would you want to talk to someone who raped your or abused you repeatedly? Probably not. Personally I prefer to excise the man from my memory entirely, and I prefer not to even hear about him in conversation. Why the hell would I call him? To bring back old memories? To call and tell him what a fucking asshole he is and that he should do me and the world a favor and kill himself? Would that please my sister and mother more if I was honest and forthright in that manner rather than more diplomatic and reserved as I have been? Part of me is tempted to just suck up the anxiety and depression it would cost me personally to tell the fucker off, not even so much for the direct confrontation but to give my mom and sister what they think they want and then see how they feel about it. I won't, because I feel I'm a better person that to engage in such pointless badinage, but I have grown exceedingly tired of this ridiculous sympathy for my asshole father and this continuous condemnation and mocking of me for refusing to see or talk with the man. And as an aside, it should be noted that while my sister doesn't refuse to see or speak with my dad she might as well. He doesn't visit their home, and they at most visit in Florida once a year for a day or two. My sister also talks minimally to my father on the phone, and the calls are very rarely initiated by her. But of course this is all apparently about me, not about anybody else ...

Well there you have it. My sister is omniscient, so why even argue with her at all. She somehow knows what I want and what I think and what I feel. Quite amazing, really.

Now my sister has not only misquoted me but has taken me out of context. I said, during our big argument when she was here for Easter a few months ago, that "I've thrown the last four years of my life into taking care of grandma; you've had her for three or four weeks around Christmas where your husband, your mother-in-law, your kids, our mom, and even your neighbors watched out for her and took care of her while you worked or ran errands ..." and we argued back and forth with me defending my caregiving efforts against my sister bleating that I didn't take care of my grandma well.

Believe me, I have frustrations in this caregiving job. Any caregiver will tell you that this sort of work is complicated and difficult, and direct compliments and thanks are not the sort of rewards you should be seeking or expecting, but while I don't expect my grandma or my family to thank me and congratulate me and praise me constantly (and my grandma actually does those things now and again, which is comforting), but even if you don't expect or need the praise, you also don't expect to be demeaned and assailed for taking care of someone when they are the healthiest and happiest that they have been in years and when they gladly tell people that they're lucky to have you caring for them.

My sister is way out of line here, has misquoted me horribly, and has absolutely no idea what I want or what I feel. All of that is quite apparent.

And at the risk of repeating myself, I have to point out that my sister's psychic powers simply aren't the same since the Psychic Friends Network closed down. My sister has some idea (or ideas) in her head about 'what I want' or 'what I need', and they are suspiciously like the things she wants and needs out of life, and they just aren't the things I'm concerned about. Ironically, after over seven years of incredibly deep and difficult clinical depression, I had broken out of my depression in late January and had been quite content and increasingly happier with life in these past nearly five months than I ever thought I would be again. My sister completely collapsed that this past week, and I hope that I rebound back out of this depression now that she is gone, but at the point that she made this statement I was actually the happiest I'd been in years.

As for doing what I want, well, short of winning the lottery I can't really do what I want, namely set up a massive shelter and group care center for gay kids who would otherwise be living on the streets because of abusive or unaccepting parents. With that dream aside, however, I am doing what I want, namely taking care of my grandma, the one person in the world I feel deserves all of my time and attention and love. I want to do this for her, but I want, in a way, to do it for myself as well because it is the most redeeming thing I have ever done in my life, and it makes me feel very good about myself to be able to do this. My sister, of course, wants to take this away from me, so rather than "help[ing] me to do what I want", as she claims she wants for me, she is instead trying to take away what I want - and need. But she doesn't really care about any of that.

Lastly, in regards to the Internet comment, I would say that she is, at best, not using her observational skills very well and is making unfair judgments. Yes, I spend probably about three hours a day on the Internet. By some people's standards that's a lot, but let's think about all that I do with the Internet. While my sister may get the local newspaper and read it, get TV Guide to see what's on TV, go to the movies, go to concerts and symphonies, go to plays, go traveling on vacations, go out to eat regularly, buy or rent DVDs, go shopping, visit with friends who are sometimes many states away, and go out to a whole variety of events and activities that her kids are involved in, I have the Internet.

I read a number of newspapers online, partly because it's easy but mostly because I can't afford to buy newspaper subscriptions. I check e.mail (which she does as well, for personal and work). I look up TV listings on the Internet because it's easy and I can't afford TV Guide. I actually don't even look to ouT ube very often, but that's as cl.ose as I get to DVDs, movies, concerts, or whatever, with rare exception. I follow certain blogs for friends, political views, and gay isssues because I can't afford to travel to see those friends and I can't afford the time or expenses of being involved in political or gay organoizations (which, at the closest, would require me to go to Toledo or Cleveland to do anything or br involved). I also read quite a lot of stories on the Internet, which offers good fodder for me as a writer and which fits my budget of $0 available for new books. To my sister I am "sit[ting] all day surfing the Internet", but I really only surf for an hour or so in the morning and maybe an hour at night, possibly with another one or two hours spent reading new story chapters on a good day, and that is all of my entertainment wrapped into one. I would be interested in how much time my sister spends in all of her various informational and entertainment activities per day, not to mention how much sjhe pays for all of those things. Could I be spending more time socializing with real people? Sure! But that would cost money to drive, at a minimum, to Toledo or further, and I would have very limited time to catch up with people around their schedules and my travel times. I keep better contact with my friends via e.mail and occasional phone calls than I could ever manage to do physically travelling to visit them on my budget, and while my sister apparently has money to burn and throw around indiscriminately, I don't. I feel I've managed pretty well in keeping myself informed and entertained considering my cash flow problems, but as seems to be part of a pattern here, my sister sees me surfing the Internet during the 45 minutes when I'm shaving in the morning, and suddenly her assumptions have me spending my every waking minute with an Internet addiction or some such thing. It's really just not remotely realistic.

I should also add that many times when my sister sees me on my computer and probably assumes I am surfing the Internet, I am writing, either in this Journal or on a story or some such thing. That becomes additionally ironic when you consider quote #10, below.

Well, I'll admit that to a large extent I live day to day. I can't really do too much more than that while taking care of a 92+ year old woman because you just never know what tomorrow will bring. However, I do have plans for what I want to do in the next year, next two years, next five years, and even the next eight years should my grandma still be well enough that she wants and needs me here to care for her. I also have loose contingency plans for what I will do if and when something happens that my grandma dies or becomes too much for me to care for alone or within this house. Those plans are loose because I can't really have a job lined up if I can't know when it would start or anything. What company would just hire you and wait five years until you could start, some random day down the road? So while it's true that I don't have a detailed plan with bullet-point lists, I do have plans. The fact that I haven't discussed them with my sister is irrelevant, and honestly it's none of her business. But I do have plans.

Not to go overboard here either, but the near hypocrisy from my sister here is frustrating and ironic if you consider that in one moment she claims I have no plan at all and at another point in her argument (refer back to quote #3) she claims I had told her my plan for what I was going to do in the next few years. It seems less and less like my sister is basing any of this on fact or reality and is instead just pulling things out of her ass to try to demean me and piss me off.

10) "Just throw some shit together and hand it in! Just get it done! Finish your thesis and get on with your life!"

This last quote I found to be quite impressive in that it manages to demean me in so many different ways at once Quite amazing. It is amazing for my sister, who has been working on her doctoral dissertation for years, and who has herself claimed that she couldn't write any kind of creative writing if her life depended upon it - it is amazing that she can tell me just to "throw some shit together", bit it is revealing in what she thinks of my course of study. I'm sure if I'd been an engineer, like her, I would be expected to do more than "shit" and it would be understood that thesis advisers to such a qualified program as engineering wouldn't accept5 some "shit" that was just "thrown together". And of course none of that even takes into account any personal feelings or pride or self-worth that I would have invested in the final, permanent record of my final efforts for my higher degrees of education. Clearly it's all just shit that any fool can do, and nobody cares because surely the thesis advisors will pass anything ... or so my sister clearly believes.

Of course all of this also points to those values that my sister, mother, and everyone else in the family hold and ascribe to me as if they must be my own. While they are all determined that I have to get my degree and find a woman and have babies and do all of the other 'necessary' things to have a proper, accomplished life, I don't see any of it that way. I have my own goals, my own timeframes, and my own concerns, and above all I want to do many of those things - my college degrees in particular - on my own terms, in my own manner, and for myself and nobody else. The way my sister and mother (and grandma) have tried to make my college graduation into something that is about them has frustrated me and taken away much of what the degrees originally meant to me. My entreaties to just let me do my college studies and such on my own has, as usual, gone totally unheeded, to the point that my mother invited herself to my graduation a little over a year ago even though I told her I didn't want her - or anyone - to come, and I only got her to cancel her flight when I altogether cancelled my graduation plans on every level.

But then none of this is really about me when you get down to it. This is all about my sister and my mother and whether they feel they have control over me and my grandma. They would apparently rather see my grandma mistreated, sick, and possibly dead rather than here, healthy, happy, and in control of her life here in Sandusky with me as her caregiver. I'm sure there's more to this than just that, and I might even be interested to know what all else is going through my sister's and my mother's minds, but I really have no clue what has brought all of this on,and my sister and mother refuse to be rational and discuss things without trying to make this all about me.

So who knows what this means. Part of me expects that I'll be out on the streets any day now and that my grandma will be moved to Florida, her house and possessions sold for next to nothing without any regard for her feelings. All I know for sure is that if my sister said many of these things at Easter and repeated and expanded upon them now again, just this past week in repeated arguments, then this is not just something said in a heated moment of passion or some passing idea that got spoken without much thought. These are things my sister clearly believes and means to act upon, and none of that bodes well for the future of things here.

I've been insulted and attacked, and it has made me angry but moreso made me sad, depressed even. And I have a lot of anxiety from all of this, something that I haven't had for a while. Months of finally being free of depression apparently just couldn't last, and it kills me that my own family had to be the ones of once again destroy my happiness and do their best to make me and those I love (my grandma) miserable. Now would certainly be a good time to win the lottery, because I would certainly love to make sure that both my grandma and myself were safely outside of the reaches of my sister's and my mother's clutches. Time will tell where this will all go, and for better or worse I expect that I won't have to wait long to see which way the wind is truly blowing. Wish me luck in regards to all fo this, folks. It simply just doesn't look too promising.

My sister is gone, probably back in Maryland by now in fact, and it couldn't come soon enough. Demeaning arguments, migraines, food poisoning - my sister was just the gift that keeps on giving. And heck, why leave anybody out; my niece, keeping up to her usual standards of breaking one or two things per visit, broke one of my collectible figurines last night while running around like a sugared-up, unsupervised child (which is exactly what she was, thanks to my sister). This has, without a doubt, been the worst situation I have had in my whole life where I have had guests. Even the last ten visits from my mother - combined - were nowhere near as unpleasant as this past week.

I've picked up and cleaned up the house from the left-over evidence of the tornadoes, and I have a huge pile of laundry to be run tomorrow, so things are a bit more back to normal, but I haven't lost any of this lingering migraine, and I'm still quite depressed - and the depression bothers me more than anything. Hopefully the depression will diminish after a few days, but it's hard to dismiss all that my sister said and did during this visit, and she has fueled my anxiety to levels they haven't reached in years, so I don't know what that may mean. The food poisoning I got yesterday hasn't been quite as painful as it was yesterday afternoon and evening, but I've been in and out of the bathroom almost constantly with massive amounts of gas, and the cramps in my stomach have left me weak and tired. Hopefully that, too, will get better in the next few days. We'll just have to see.

I went to Perrysburg tonight to spend time with Steve, Steffen, Mark, and Paul, and while I was still somewhat uncomfortable (and spent an unnatural amount of time in the bathroom), it was a good idea to go and get away because it took me out of the house and away from the greater clarity of recent memories. The guys were great comforts and helped me not exactly forget my problems, but assuage them a bit.

Tomorrow I promise to write quite a bit about the nasty comments and arguments my sister made while she was here. I have started writing Journal entries about that stuff a couple of times but it has gotten me so upset before I even get very far that I have just saved it aside for later rather than work myself up too much. Now that my sister is gone and I have a chance to pull back a little bit, perhaps I can write about everything with less anxiety. But that will be tomorrow.

Tonight I'm just too tired and drained. All I can think of right now is sleep, and hopefully I'll stay asleep for a while rather than waking up throughout the night again and then be unable to get back to sleep in the morning after only a few short hours of sleep. That's been the standard for the last few weeks, and I'm getting progressively more exhausted. I'll write more tomorrow. Until then ...

A reader to Andrew Sullivan's website, in response to his recent posts about the unnecessary trauma of circumcision to baby boys, has the following things to say. I agree entirely, not only with the sentiments in regards to Andrew's topic of circumcision, but also as with the further observations as the reader expands upon her concerns that infants and young people are treated as having no rights and are carelessly and callously debased and traumatized.

This reader is completely on the right track, and I would go further. This is an issue that is near and dear to me because it should also be seen as speaking to the issues of commonly-accepted forms of child abuse and child endangerment that are treated as normal when they are anything but that. This issue also speaks to the idea of treating juveniles as adults in various criminal cases, even though the preponderance of scientific evidence shows that the ability to make rational judgments is the last part of brain development in all humans, occurring between ages 16-22, and treating kids that are 12 or 13 or 14 as if they are mature, reasoned adults is ludicrous at every level.

I applaud Andrew's reader for speaking up, and I applaud Andrew for publicly posting her comments. She is right - we need a new social rights revolution in this country, and we need it just as desperately as we needed the movements for racial and gender equality. In fact we need this revolution even more, because these are children who are being mistreated and overlooked. These are the weak, the innocents, the least able to defend themselves. These are the part of the populace who need more than just the occasional advocate for justice. These are the human beings who most need guaranteed equal treatment, protection, and choice in their lives. These are the future trustees of our civilizations, our standards, and our world. How we treat them as youths will have lasting effects upon who and what they become as they age, and we owe it to them - and to ourselves - to safeguard their rights in all senses.

My head's still achy, and I can't deny that I am clearly once again depressed (thanks to my big sis, yea!), but I was able to struggle through a bunch of errands, take my grandma to appointments, and do loads of weekly yard work (among other things). I suppose that should be viewed as a step forward, but considering I'm still not feeling well, I'm still full of anxiety, and none of the stuff I did today was for me nor did any of it benefit or please me, it's hard to see how my pain is balanced by someone else's gain.

So anyhow, I'm undeniably gaining back weight at a not only astonishing but disturbing rate, and I have no doubt at all that my return to depression as a result of this week's events is quite wholly to blame. Months of improvements are being lost in a matter of days. Take that, think about it, and see how that just adds further fuel to my depression. What a week, huh?

This week-long visit has turned out to pretty much be a bust in every possible way, and I haven't really gotten any enjoyment out of it at all, just a lot of extra work during and before-hand. I haven't even really had much interaction or fun with my nephew and niece this trip, and that's what I always look forward to. Add to the disappointment of all of that the arguments my sister threw at me and the nastiness she spewed, and this week's visit has been simply miserable and something I never wish to repeat again. I'm seriously considering making sure that I leave town of somewhere else the next time my sister visits. I honestly don't want to argue with her, and at this stage I don't see her being willing to accommodate me on that.

In the meantime, I will have a day with everyone tomorrow, presumably in Fremont to visit the Rutherford B Hayes. estate and presidential museum, so hopefully I can keep enough distance to make it through the day without another blow-up. My sister and the kids are supposed to leave Sunday morning, so there is light at the end of the tunnel ... but I hope the time passes smoothly up until then. I don't know if I can bear any more.

My head continues to pound, although it is admittedly better than yesterday. Still, I'm not at all pleased to have a lasting migraine. I had thought I was past this sort of suffering, at least for a while, and to have it all thrown back upon me is very unpleasant.

And it doesn't seem to bother my sister at all. She went off with the kids for the day to Soak City, the waterpark run by Cedar Point, and they spent absolutely the whole day. In years past I would have accompanied them to Cedar Point and to a day at the water park, but not this year. I certainly wasn't up to it, and my sister seemed unaffected by my inability to go along. And maybe that's the way it should be; this is her vacation and her kids' vacation, not mine, but it's disappointing that they all seem not to be at all disappointed that I haven't been up to going with them. Of course I shouldn't be all that surprised, I guess. Up until I cam e here to take care of my grandma four years ago, I only saw my sister and her kids once while I lived in Toledo, not a single time at all while I lived in Chicago, and my sister on came to Lafayette once while I lived there, within the first month I was there and long before her kids were born. If I wanted to see her at all, I was expected to visit her myself. Funny how she makes time every year to see every other relative, even obscure cousins and old high school friends she barely keeps in touch with, but her own brother doesn't rate very high on the list. Maybe that should say more to me than it has, and maybe I have been expecting (wanting) more than is ever going to come to me from her. Have I really blinded myself so much with what I want and failed to see what really is? Maybe so.

In any case, today was not pleasant from the discomfort of my head, and it was disappointing because I missed out on the water park, and it was disappointing because nobody really gave a damn, and it was upsetting and disturbing because all of the things my sister had so coarsely yelled at me on Tuesday night have still been repeatedly playing through my head and making me worry that my future is about to be totally uprooted and thrown into chaos. Nothing makes you feel quite like having your only sibling come for a visit, does it?!

So we'll see where this all goes. Tomorrow my sister and the kids will be out of town visiting my sister's friend from high school that she visits once every year. I, meanwhile, will be running my grandma to appointments, running errands, and doing work in the yard and around the house. Hopefully my head won't explode in the process, and while it has gotten somewhat better today, I'm certainly not feeling like this migraine is remotely done with me yet.

Oh man ... I have the nasty migraine from hell today. I didn't get much sleep either. My sister's evil ranting last night is quite unquestionably the cause of both, not that she seems concerned or anything. It's been with me since the wee hours of the morning, and rest, lying down, turning the A/C stronger, keeping things quiet, eating healthy food, taking more than the usual migraine medication - none of the usual solutions have really eased things. In fact this is not only the worst migraine I've had in months, it's the first migraine I've had in six months, and it's the worst I've had in a long time, considering it's not just making my head and neck and body ache, but it's making me light-headed and unsteady on my feet. Heck, I even felt nauseous this morning when I was shaving because the noise and vibrations from my electric razor felt like a jackhammer running near my head. So it's been fun times today, fun times indeed ...

My sister, my nephew, niece, and I were to go to Cedar Point Amusement Park today, and as you may guess from the above description of my condition, that didn't happen. It didn't cause my sister to hesitate at all, of course, but from what I gathered she saw no problem in taking the kids by herself and enjoying things just fine. More power to her. If I was having as much trouble as I was just moving slowly down the stairs to check on my grandma at different times today, I can't even begin to imagine how I would have felt on a roller coaster, had I gone. It makes me light-headed just briefly thinking about it.

So today has sucked. When I haven't been conscious only of the pain in my head and body, I have been mentally going back again and again to the upsetting things my sister said last night, and I'd be hard pressed to tell you which was worse, the migraine or the memories. I think to a large extent each of these things fed the other as I went back and forth from one to the other all day, and that surely did nothing to help me feel any better. In fact I haven't made any real improvement all day. I suppose I should be happy that things haven't gotten any worse as the day has progressed and I've gotten more tired, but I'm not. I feel like hell, and I don't feel like anything I do is making any difference for the better.

So that's all for now. Staring at this screen is making my eyes feel like somebody is trying to push the out from behind, and that's not making me feel any better at all. Hopefully tomorrow I'll be doing better and maybe I can write something more uplifting or interesting. I hope.

Well, I was going to write about the infuriating arguments my sister is causing with me - and in fact I wrote quite a bit about the subject before sidelining the whole rant because even writing about it was getting me so worked up and upset - but I've decided to write about something else - anything else - to cause myself less stress and aggravation.

It's sad, you know. My friend Chris is New Zealand is having a rough time because his close girlfriend of the last three and a half years, to whom he was engaged, left him and moved far away, taking with her her six year old son, a sweet little boy that Chris loved and who called Chris, sincerely, Dad. Another friend named Chris, this one in Dallas, was fired from a job he really liked (and did well) because of three female employees who apparently didn't like him who claimed sexual harassment while the four of them were away at a training session (and Chris is 100% gay and an incredibly sweet and sensitive fellow, so there is simply no doubt that he was innocent of any wrongdoing (I have a weak suspicion that this is on one or more levels because he is gay and in Texas)). Compared to the situations for both of these friends, my problems with my sister are, at least for now, not remotely comparable (although I fear that it is now only a question of time since my sister clearly has a bug up her ass). I feel guilty thinking about these ridiculous arguments with my sister when two of my dearest friends are really hurting and, well, feeling somewhat lost. I should be focusing on my friends, writing encouragements and just thinking positively and sending some good mojo their way - and I do try to do that - but my sister is really driving me crazy, and I simply just want her gone so that the stress she is causing in my life will leave with her.

I'm trying to cleanse my mind and find some inner peace, partly for myself and partly for Chris and Chris, so that I can be in a good place and thereby able to try to direct some good mojo their ways. I don't ask much from my readers often, but I'd appreciate a little help this time if you wouldn't mind: whatever is comfortable for you, be it sending some good mojo, asking the universe to balance the kharma, or praying for some divine help for someone, please try to direct some good will and kind thoughts to Chris in Coromandel, New Zealand and Chris in Dallas, Texas. They're good people and they need some spiritual uplifting right now, and I'm sadly not in a good enough place to send them what they not only need but what they deserve. Help me take care of them, just this once. It would mean a great deal.

I could - and should - write today about assumptions and disjunctions, assertions and desertions, assimilations and denigrations, confrontations and conflagrations, but this is only the first twenty-four hours of my sister's visit, and I have very little doubt that things can and will only get worse ... so why explore today's insanity when I can make a more broad comparison of a spectrum of assininity in merely a few day's time. Besides, an excellent essay has come to my attention, something much more deserving of public consumption and appreciation than rants about my sister's and my family's fucked up notions of how they are "helping" me.

The following public message was released last week, and it eloquently expresses the simplicity and logic of basic human rights and what makes people fight for them. This is a lesson that every human being should have learned long ago, and it is a lesson that must continue to be taught until all people see the how there are indeed basic, unalienable rights for each and every person, regardless of anything. These are the beliefs of theDreamworld, but we must strive to make them the beliefs of the real world as well.

Yesterday's laundry, cleaning, errands, and whatnot took me until 2 AM before I got to lay on my bed, and it took me until 2:30 AM to get to sleep. I was pretty exhausted, and I was more than willing to just sleep in late and enjoy it, but I woke up at 7 AM and simply could not get back to sleep. So after a half hour I just gave up and got the day started.

Even after all of my efforts yesterday, I still had all sorts of cleaning tasks and set-up stuff to do, and it took me until after 4 PM to get finished. After a nice, hot shower and some time with my grandma (who had been out to church and lunch earlier in the day, then on the phone most of the afternoon), I got going on prepping and putting together everything for tonight's dinner for me, my grandma, my sister, and my nephew and niece (the last three of whom are due to arrive any minute now). It took me until about 6:45 PM to get things together, and I'm waiting to heat and/or cook the last couple items once they arrive (the oven is all warmed up and raring to go, in fact).

I'm exhausted from not only today and yesterday but from the past two weeks, and this coming week of "vacation" will probably kill me. I both look forward to the time with the kids and dread it. RIght now I'm anxious to eat because everything looks and smells fantastic and I'm quite hungry. After that, and after getting my sister and the kids settled in, hopefully things will wind down, and maybe I can get a decent night's sleep. I haven't had a long sleep in a while, sadly, and I'm seriously missing a full nights rest and the way I feel after such a solid rest the following morning. This too little sleep thing has got to go. Tonight seems like a perfect time to start.

My sister was supposed to arrive (with my nephew and niece) for her week-long summer visit tonight, but things came up and she won't be here until tomorrow night. It's a good thing, too, because I'm still working on getting things cleaned up and together before they show up. I'm doing laundry still, after a whole day of doing other loads while doing numerous other things, and I've been still cleaning the last couple of rooms until about ten minutes ago, and I had to give up because I simply can't dust or clean properly without decent lighting, and I need sunlight to make it work.

I made a list of things yet to do, from cleaning these last two rooms to touching up with the vacuum and mop throughout the house to getting my grandma together and off to church to prepping and cooking and putting together dinner for everyone to watering all of the new plants outside and watering all of the inside plants as well to ... well, I'm sure there's something else I'm forgetting, too. It's just pretty clear that by the time my sister gets here around 5 or 6 PM, I might be done with everything, and I will surely be even more exhausted than I am now (which hardly seems even remotely possible, considering how I feel at the moment).

This week-long visit has every appearance of being a tiring and potentially frustrating experience, and as much as I want to see my nephew and niece, I'm not sure it's worth it. These things so often end up with me enjoying myself less and less and getting more and more put upon and tired and stressed and finally fed up with the whole deal. Surely there are better ways to enjoy seeing my nephew and niece - and even my sister - than to have to make every day they are here be packed with big events or one planned activity after another. Why can't we just spend a day watching TV or talking or goofing around? Maybe a few days like that, interspersed around the big event days like going to Cedar Point and Monsoon Lagoon and The Hayes Estate and wherever else we go. If only ...

Three and a half hours in a grocery store and another full hour just to get the damn groceries put away is simply unbelievable. If you read in the news someday that I killed my grandmother, check what day of the week it is, because surely it must be a Friday and my grandma insisted that she was up to going to the grocery and that she wouldn't slow me down at all.

Isn't it enough that I pretty much lose my day entirely to trash collection, taking my grandma to weekly trips to the YMCA, taking my grandma to the hair dresser's, and keeping her moving in order to make all of those things reasonably on time, but I also have to take her to the grocery? I wouldn't mind taking her to the grocery, even, but she completely becomes a space cadet when there, worse than anywhere else at any time, and she gets lost when she's just a mere three feet away from you, or wanders of randomly to look at something half the store away, or looks over the bananas for a full half hour to find the bunch she wants, picking up and putting down the same half-dozen bunches a dozen times each at least as if she had never looked t at them before. Yes, it's sad and upsetting to see this kind of behavior, but it's also a massive amount of stress on top of something which becomes more stressful when it lasts for three to four times as long as it should under normal circumstances.

I've come to hate Fridays. They are a horrible thing, cursed even, and the worst part is that the horrors of the grocery trip are the one thing that make Fridays as bad as they are.

Today would have been my grandpa's 94th birthday, had he lived. He was dead years before I was born, and neither my sister nor I ever knew him. Still, my grandma has cherished his memory her whole life and kept him alive for all of us,

In my grandfather's memory, I took my grandma out to lunch at Olive Garden and then took her to the florists to arrange a beautiful flower arrangement which we took to the cemetery and placed at his graveside. My grandma enjoyed the day very much (she said so repeatedly), but it was clear that simply having someone else share his memory lovingly today meant the most to her. I was glad I had made the plans to do this. I have taken my grandma to get flowers and head to the cemetery in past years, but this year when I took her to lunch and told her that that was what I was sure my grandpa, my namesake, Paul, would have done, she nearly cried on the spot and nodded her head, saying, "That's exactly right."

So today was, as a result, 'exactly right.' I wish I found the right things to say and do like this more often. Instead, I'm not consistently this insightful. But then, who is?

It's Wednesday, and that means my weekly weigh-in was this morning. Results were good, really, but they made me consider a change in the way I'm doing things.

First off, the details: I lost 4 more pounds, bringing me down to 172.4 pounds. Now considering that my goal had originally been 170-175, simplified to 170 as time passed, that's pretty good. Now keep in mind that when I started this weight-loss regimen at a hefty 260 pounds, I was starting from a full stomach, having been eating in my normal, sizable portions and without regard to calories or such. This morning, when I had my weigh-in, I certainly weighed at least a few pounds less simply because my body's been burning off just about everything I put into it, and there's pretty much nothing in my digestive tract. I've figured (guessed is more appropriate a word) that that accounts for about 5 pounds or so that will add on once I return to my more standard, substantial diet. That means I'm probably somewhere between 175 and 180. Still, not bad results for four and a half months - 80-85 pounds - it makes a difference. Heck, I went from wearing size 42 and size 44 pants to wearing some old size 32s that fit rather loose. I might even fit into size 30s!

So as you might expect I was pleased at the progress I've made toward my target weight, and considering I wasn't expecting to reach 170 until July 4th's weigh-in, I thought things were perfectly on track. But here's where I explain why this isn't quite as perfect as I would have liked. You see, when I started all of this my body fat percentage was at a horrible 32%. The "healthy" body fat percentage for someone my height and my age is supposed to be 16-18%, however I just turned 40, and that was the low age of the age grouping I was looking at. If I were just a couple months younger, my "healthy" body fat percentage would be 14-16%. So I decided early on that I wanted to shoot for 15-16% body fat, and that focused down to 15% over time. Last week, at my weigh-in, I was thrilled to reach 16% body fat percentage, and I didn't even pay much attention to the fact that I'd dropped 2% body fat since the previous week's results. This week, however, when I turned up at 14% body fat, I was more concerned about losing 2% body fat, not just this week but each of two weeks in a row. There is such a thing as overdoing it, and I'm afraid this is where I draw the line.

While I still feel that I have a tiny bit of belly fat to lose, it is clear that my normal regimen has to change. The body needs a certain amount of body fat, and I can't ignore that just because I'm being obsessive. So today I decided that I would start eating back at my old levels. I'll still keep exercising as I have been in my regimen, but there will no longer be any reduced caloric intake. This may mean that I stop losing any more weight, but I have no idea - I'll just have to see. My guess is that the worst case scenario is that I'll have to submit to doing crunches and sit-ups to get rid of that last bit of belly fat and tighten things up ... it's just that I hate crunches and sit-ups, and I'm hoping there's another way ...

One way or another I have to balance my body and get back to 15% body fat (or even 16%). I've achieved my goals pretty well, and my true weight and true body weight will surely be revealed during next Wednesday's weigh-in after a full week of eating normally yet continuing to exercise. I'm anxious to see the results already, you can hardly imagine.

In the meantime I have been eating like a fiend. I think that my ridiculous binging that I went through today, around working in the yard and around the house, will be a one-time thing that alleviated my pent up desires for food. As it is now, tonight, I feel overly full and very sated, and I can't fathom eating tomorrow like I did today. I will eat well, though, because I enjoyed having full meals today immensely. I just won't be doing the kind of snacking and eating of junk that I jumped into today. This, too, will play into where things are at next Wednesday at my weigh-in. It will indeed be a day of revelation, and I'm interested to see what the results suggest.

Today has been even longer than yesterday, running from 5 AM until now at nearly Midnight as I'm just starting to try to wind down, and I've been constantly on the go all day.

On the plus side the painters are done. Well, they're mostly done. On Thursday the head man will come back to do some touch-up on the staining of the back door and he'll do some touch up on some uneven spots on the ceiling of the entryway stairwell. Neither of these things will take more than a few minutes, though, and they are indeed just touch-up ... so the painters are pretty well done (and the results are very satisfying). I also managed to get a lot of cleaning done around supervising the work the painters were doing and lending a hand in a number of cases. I was also spending a lot of time waiting upon my grandma today, as she was a bit needy and tired today, so it's amazing I got any cleaning done at all. And in all fairness I did the vast majority of the cleaning after the painters left for the day around 3:30 PM. Of course I didn't get right to the cleaning because I had a bunch of errands to run, and even with making pretty good time, I wasn't ready to start cleaning house until almost 5:30 PM.

In addition to cleaning up my bedroom and kitchen fully during the time the painters were here, I also managed to clean and put everything back into place in my grandma's living space (the first floor) after the painters were finished with her rooms and had left. I only just finished the last aspects of that recently, but at least it's done.

On the down side, I still have much cleaning to do in my space (the second floor), and a brief cleaning role in the basement for one area I haven't finished, and I have a whole lot of yardwork to do tomorrow as well. All of this on top of some bills that need to be paid and some more calls to contractors that have to be placed. Tomorrow looks to be another busy day, but it shouldn't even compare to yesterday or today. The mere fact that I won't have to get up at 5 AM is a testament to how different tomorrow will be from these past two draining days.

Things are coming together, and once all of things are knocked out it should leave me some time to relax and focus on something more personal. That sounds good just typing it. Imagine what it would be like to experience it ...

The painting nightmare goes on. I was up at 5 Am to get cleaned up for the painters to arrive at 7 AM (although they didn't arrive until after 9 AM, which sucked, but I did get a bunch of stuff done that needed done while I waited). I was up and about all day supervising, helping, moving stuff, taking care of my grandma, pointing out missed areas in the painting, and being altogether busy. Oh, and I cleaned the basement and some stuff outside. That went on until about 6 PM when the painters decided they were too tired to go any further and left with the claim they'd be back at 7 AM.

I finished up some cleaning I was doing (particularly in the kitchen, notably sanitizing the sink since they had used it to rinse out their brushes), and I cooked some food since I didn't have time to eat all day (nor did I have access to my kitchen due to spackling, sanding, painting, and foot traffic). After eating I had to clean my grandma's bedroom and the extra bedroom of the plaster dust and bits of paint and stuff, put them back in order and get everything out from where I'd had them stored so that my grandma could have her room back the way it should be before she had to sleep. Then I had to clear out the bathroom, kitchen, living room, and dining room of everything but the largest, most immobile pieces of furniture so that the painting efforts will go quickly tomorrow (I did the same thing upstairs last night and did the same thing for the two downstairs bedrooms during the early part of the day today).

Then, at 10:30 PM, I ate dinner. After dinner I did some cleaning upstairs to get rid of lots of plaster dust and to get my bedroom back together enough to sleep tonight. Then I finally got to take a shower, since I hadn't had one all day.

And now, after applying Aloe Vera gel to most of my body, I am finally writing this Journal entry just after 11:30 PM. And I have to get up at 5 AM tomorrow so that I can get cleaned up, run through my exercise routine, and be ready to meet the painters and finish getting things set up for the day for them and for my grandma (and me). It would help if I wasn't so wired right now, so that I could go to sleep and get around five hours before I have to get up, but I have small hopes that I'll get that much sleep. Boo!

The hope is that a full day of painting tomorrow will wrap things up. I certainly hope so because this is really pushing me to a lot, and I still have a lot to do to get the house and yard ready before my sister arrives on Saturday. This week is really just not going at all smoothly, and I'm going to be exhausted by the time the visit begins. That should make things interesting, I suppose, but I don't know if that's a good thing.

Yes, I'm slightly in pain. I took a couple of hours yesterday to lay out at a local park, Osbourne Park, to try to relax and think ... and to get a little color beyond my mild farmer's tan. Two hours with my fair skin was clearly too much, though, and I have sunburn over large parts of my body. Blessed be the Aloe Vera gel.

I'll survive, clearly, and I've had much worse sunburn, even just earlier this year when it was pretty much just localized to the back of my neck, but it's never fun. And I look like I'm part lobster.

Hopefully I can keep it hydrated and soothed, and if I'm lucky the pain will die away in a day or two, and if I'm luckier I won't peel across my entire body like a giant snake. But we'll see. At least the first full body burn of the season is done. After this I have a better chance of not burning for the rest of the summer (I hope).

Painting has progressed splendidly, and while I'm disappointed that more isn't done (since there's a whole lot of painting yet to go), what has been done has made a huge difference in cleaning things up on the outside of the house. It's really a transformation. Tomorrow starts early to get cleaned up before the painters show up to work on the last couple details outside, on refinishing the back door, and starting work inside on the ceilings. Tomorrow will be a long day, almost surely. But progress is being made - and progress is good.

The painters showed up a little after 7 AM this morning and started work, planning to work through the whole day until dark or until completion of the outside work. I had a couple of other contractors in and out during the day (for the HVAC and the windows), who were done quickly, but the painters were the big deal. They made a lot of progress, and the results were turning out great. At 3 PM I had to leave, though, to head out of town for a number of errands leading up to getting together with Mark, Dakoda, Paul, Steffen, and notably Steve, whose 40th birthday is tomorrow (or today, I guess, since it's now after Midnight). One of my errands had been to pick up an individual personalized cake for Steve and a pan of brownies with about an inch of chocolate frosting on top for everyone else to share. The brownies were a hit, and Steve liked the cake, and we all had a pretty decent time, short though it may have been.

When I got back about a half hour or so ago, I was disappointed to find the painting had progressed hardly any further than when I left at 3 PM. With six hours of sunlight remaining after I had left I had expected them to finish the outside because they had made such huge progress in the earlier part of the day. Honestly, I have no idea what happened, and I had no call from them at any point to ask questions or say there was a problem. And I had called my grandma at 6:30 PM to check up on her, and the painters were still here at that point, albeit taking a smoke break. I don't get it, and considering that it's supposed to rain tomorrow and thereby preclude any painting, I am really wondering what happened. It was the painters themselves who had insisted upon the 7 AM to bust time schedule today, and I had been skeptical, but when I left this afternoon I was sure they would indeed finish by the end of the day, and now I am just left with no clue at all.

Hopefully tomorrow I'll at least get a call with a reason and a planned return day (although I suspect Saturday, depending upon how much things have dried out from Friday). I'm disappointed but also quite confused and curious, and it's not leaving me feeling particularly ready to fall right to sleep, as much as I want to do so. I guess I'll just have to be patient, though. All will surely be revealed in time. I just wish I knew now.

Today was another good weigh-in. I'd even go further and say it was a great weigh-in. I lost a full 6 pounds since last week, the most I've lost in any single week throughout this whole process, and that's really a huge amount. IT was a huge surprise and very satisfying since the past week has proven to be very tiring and quite a struggle to keep maintaining the same level of exercise and caloric intake. Clearly it paid off though.

Not only was the actually weight down a good amount, and not only does that leave me with very little weight left to lose until I'm where I've been shooting to be, but my body fat percentage went down as well, and I'm now at an astounding 16% body. That's pretty much where I want to be. I'm shooting for 15-16% body fat, and if I lose the few more pounds I want to shed I should easily be at that level of low body fat.

I'm on track to be able to switch to a new routine focused on just maintaining my weight and not on losing weight and body fat, and while I expect to have to exercise a similar amount every day as I am now, I fully believe that I should be able to go back to my old eating habits and eat pretty much without reservation. I'm looking forward to that, and I fully expect that for a while I might go overboard and nine a bit, but I'm sure that within a week or two things will balance out and I'll be able to strike a balance with the exercise that keeps me at a decent, low weight. Having kicked my metabolism back into gear and having dropped the negative physiological effects of my depression have been huge influences on my weight loss that will clearly continue, but how much exercise will be required daily is sort of a complete guess. I think I'll be fine at my current level, but I may need more and I may even need less. With the amount of weight I lost this week, and even the amounts I lost each of the previous two weeks, I wonder if I'll even have to do as much exercising as I do now. It would be nice to cut back, honestly, because exercise still is very much a chore and not anything I enjoy. If I could do things like play basketball with someone or bike somewhere with someone or go hiking with someone or ... well, do any kind of physical activity with someone, that would easily cover my exercise needs well, and I might not even need to exercise every day. Finding someone - anyone - to do anything like that with me is a lost hope, though. I've tried on and off for years to get any of my friends to do stuff like that with me, and it hasn't happened a single time yet. When people get into their late 30's they seem to give up on having fun or doing physically fun things (other than sex, mind you), and nothing you can say will change their minds about even trying. And none of those things are any fun to do alone, so I might as well just do crappy treadmill work on my own and watch TV while I do it.

So today started on a great note with my weigh-in, and all signs are that I will very soon have reached my goal and be ready to change my regimen a bit to just maintain things. I'm still thinking constantly about food, and I don't think that will change until I start eating fully again without limitation - once I reach my target weight. With results like today I find it a bit easier to struggle against my cravings and hunger. It's only a little longer now, and I have the proof of four months of continued success to spur me on during these last few short weeks. I can do this, and that amazes and pleases me every time I think about it.

Another tiring day has mostly passed, although not nearly as exhausting as yesterday (and that's saying a lot considering I was up at 6 Am this morning). It was a mixed bag with the contractors. One didn't show up, and this is the third time I've had to reschedule (apparently their offices don't communicate at all with their field people, and they've screwed this up repeatedly). Another contractor, who was supposed to repair a small portion of the driveway and then seal the concrete for the entire length of the drive ended up giving up by mid-afternoon because the clear weather we were supposed to have today never came, and it was cold and overcast every minute it wasn't raining. The plumber and electricians were right on top of things, though, and did excellent work in a short time. And my meeting with the landscaper finalized everything nicely, and the work is scheduled for a go-ahead in just a couple weeks. I even got my grandma to her massage appointment and ran all of my errands plus a few more all on time, and I made a couple more phone calls to finalize things with some contractors. It was a full, rewarding day, even with the two contractors who had to reschedule.

Tomorrow will be busy, too, but far less busy or complicated. I look forward to the idea of less busy and less complicated after today and yesterday, believe me. I may be tired by the end of the day tomorrow, but it shouldn't be too bad.

Pretty boring domestic stuff, huh? Well, sad as it may seem, it's almost exciting, and it's certainly rewarding getting these things accomplished. This is the closest I've been to doing the kinds of things I used to do as a manager, and I do often miss that role. So it's simple stuff, boring even, but it's been a good change of pace for me. By the end of the weekend most of this will be pretty well done, leaving just a couple contractors to come in and wind things up. I'll look forward to things being less hectic, but a part of me will certainly miss all of this, too. Part of me still longs to manage again. If only I wasn't needed here and I could get hired to manage an Apple Store ...

It's been a long, tiring day. Last week I arranged for a bunch of different contractors to come to the house and do various things to the house and yard and garage and driveway and ... well, pretty much a variety of things here and there. I had one guy out on Saturday to give me an estimate, and I even had one contractor out and working away already on Saturday as well. On Sunday I had another estimate given, this time for a whole laundry list of painting needs everywhere, and we negotiated a contract on the spot. Today, however, was the start of the real press. I had people come out early to pressure wash the house and garage and driveway, and they do a great, thorough job. I was helping and watching and following up with them for the more than three hours they were here, and I also showed around the guy from the glass company so he could get the measurements for some window panes I want replaced. I also met with a guy to repair a small cracked area on one corner of the drive and then to seal the whole thing. That's set for tomorrow (as are a whole mess of contractors: electrical, plumbing, landscaping, and more), and I still had another guy expected still after all of that (that's not even mentioning having to get myself together and having to get my grandma together and fed and such). As it happens, the final guy I expected never showed, and I found that one of us screwed up the day, and he was down for the same time but tomorrow, not today. That conflicted with another appointment for my grandma to get a massage, so I had to reschedule the contractor for earlier in the day, concurrent with three other contractors who would be working around each other at about the same time.

During all of this I didn't have any extra time to eat, exercise, take a shower, or anything else (although I did make a few more phone calls to arrange two other contractors and to find some rental information for getting a wheelchair for my grandma when my sister visits. By the time I finally did eat it was past 4 PM, and I was tired and weak. Still, I knew how busy the rest of the week would be, and I wanted to get some things done, so I pulled myself up and got to work cleaning all of the windows on all three floors of the house inside and out (Hey! The power washing leaves them all spotty, and it's a good way to finish off the totally clean look after pressure washing things). That and a few other small details took quite a while, and I didn't get my shower until well after 8 PM. Then I didn't even get to eat dinner until just after 9 PM. And here I am now typing away with my story of woe.

It's rewarding, in a way, to get all of these things done, but it is very tiring and wearing. This sort of thing where my whole day gets drawn out and screwed around when I have people do work is par for the course, but it's still exhausting. And my grandma nattering on about what she thinks is going on was pretty much too much for me today. I explained what one contractor or another was doing, and she would forget what I told her or, more commonly, make ridiculous assumptions about what they were doing that not only were in no way connected to what I had explained they were doing but which was completely ridiculous on its own. And my grandma was trying to ask me about all of the things the contractors yet-to-come would be doing and if they had prepared this or that or whether they would do this or that or ... well, let me tell you, she was driving me crazy, and she simply would not leave me alone, even when I told her repeatedly, point blank, that I was tired and just wanted to finish washing the windows in silence without her bothering me. If only that would have worked ...

Anyhow, the day is done. Still, I'm quite whipped, and I have to get up extra early tomorrow to get cleaned up before a whole list of contractors are scheduled to arrive in the early morning to work on all sorts of stuff all around the house, garage, yard, and drive. PLus I have to take my grandma to a couple of appointments and I have a few errands to run in various places around town as well. Fun times ahead, I tell you. The only positive thing is that eventually these things will be completely done and over with. That can't come soon enough, not by a long shot.

Damn, now I'm even thinking that marshmallows would be good, and I've never been much of a fan for marshmallows, certainly not more than a handfull - and after that handfull I usually don't care if I have any again for a year or more. Yet right now they sound fantastic. They're not the only thing; the list is quite long actually, but marshmallows are among the more unusual items that I'm not usually drawn to.

I'm going nuts because I want nuts! Peanuts! Cashews! Pistachios! Even sunflower seeds, which aren't nuts but are close in texture and flavor.

I'd have to say that this definitely beats having diamonds on the soles of your shoes.