Blogdeath

Yea, I've long suffered this whole blogdeath thing. In my ADD-laden brain, it's just easier to keep up with stuff on crackbook. I get instant grantification because of that feed on my page. Oh, and the stalker-feed too. I often miss blogging. My status updates get to a certain level of verbosity and my son comes to me and tells me I type too much on crackbook.

In the last few months, my workload has increased. Retail is busy this time of year, and retail merchandising is as well. I haven't seen much of my husband and kids because I've been busy, and then subsequently tired. I haven't even done my Christmas baking because the one weekend it was low profile, it was 80 degrees outside, and I was NOT about to crank up the oven in THAT weather. So, my supplies sit in the bin where I placed them so that my family would avoid eating my ingredients. Maybe I can bake for my birthday.

Right before Thanksgiving, my husband's grandfather finally gave out on us. He'd been sent home from the hospital to hospice care at the end of July because his remaining kidney was failing, and then it rebounded. He'd been waning steadily, and he finally ended the fight the Saturday before Thanksgiving. We went to Charleston for Thanksgiving with Devildog's sister.

Then work got real crazy.

But in all this, I was able to spend time with my family at Christmas. My Father-in-law came down to visit for a couple days with his dog. She's an awesome dog too, and if we had her as a pet, we would be spoiled at how well behaved she is. My dad preferred to eat at my house for dinner because my older sibling annoys him. The oldest sister had enough of her own going on, she didn't even have stuff at her house. More on that later. My youngest sister lives with dad, and had to drive him to my house because he can't find it on his own. He's 84 and relatively independent, but even 9 years ago when my youngest sister lived in this exact same neighborhood, he couldn't find his way over here. My youngest brother brought his daughter, his girlfriend and her son. They got called at 9am to cook her grandmother's dinner because they'd caught a cold and were too unwell to cook. Brother & company hadn't even gotten out of bed, nor opened gifts yet. They were all too happy to come here to eat food that had flavor. Everyone loved it. Good, because I busted chops for several hours to make it. And on about 4 hours of sleep (don't ask, I won't even go there).

My oldest sister has been dealing her own health issues, compounded with the year-plus long cancer struggles of her husband of 25+ years. They've been together since she was 15 or 16, and they got married when I was 8 years old. We celebrated her 50th birthday a couple years ago. I could go search the clerk of court website and pinpoint that detail but honestly, it doesn't matter. When the man you've spent your entire life with is wasting away, you basically just circle the wagons and go into survival mode. I can relate, except my stuff was work-related, not majorly-change-your-entire-f'ing-life stuff. Johnny had been in hospice care a few weeks and was sent home because he'd improved. I found out he was on his deathbed with a matter of time before the inevitable happens via my dad arriving for dinner and telling me.

So, really, in the grand scheme of things, my life is busy, but my sister's world is crashing down around her, and I was clueless. It really puts things into perspective.

Crazy?

I was crazy once.
They sent me to live on Sunny Hill


It has been just that. The pace we're keeping isn't bad, but at times it feels overwhelming. We spent Thanksgiving at my sister-in-law's and went to a Festival of Lights that the park does every year there. Clone wanted to climb the rock wall, and scaled it in less than 2 minutes, and got 2 feet from the top on her second try in the same amount of time. Her arms wore out and she didn't ring the bell a second time. However, seeing some little girl outdo them, set the numerous boys into a tizzy of "I can't be shown up by a girl!"

I am proud of her for doing it. Not only the actual DOING part of it, but the fact that she wasn't a chicken about it at all. She has her father's sense of adventure in many ways. And whoooo is she competitive! But that rock wall will probably be the highlight of the trip for her. I took as many pictures as I could, but they were mostly blurry. Unfortunately, my camera has taken too many hits and is no longer thinking as fast as it could. I need to get the battery door fixed so I don't have the jerry-rigged rubber band around it. But that is low priority, and I have bigger fish to fry at the moment.

So, does anyone know where Sunny Hill is?