Ramblings of a mental patient

But then, we already knew I am a rotten bastard

Sorry medical people, but between doctors and HMO’s I have had it with health care.

At any rate, I fired kat’s old doctor. Tomorrow she’s seeing mine. Its right across the street and they haven’t given me too much crap over the years so I’ve decided to let them exist a while longer. Big of me, no?

Unless I catch the creeping death from the wife who is bedridden with demons, I will be going to Ulana’s on saturday to celebrate my birthday. Much rum shall be consumed, and after midnight we will celebrate me being approximately 8. Kind of like last year, but I’ll try not to fall into the speakers this time. Actually, who am I kidding. Any time I don’t drive Kiki makes it her mission to get me as drunk as possible.

Obviously, I’m not driving that night and if Kat’s still sick I may need a lift from someone. I strongly suspect she’ll be ok by then. At least I hope she gets better soon. It’d be a shame to flake on my own birfday party…

The weekend was great. For the first time in weeks I actually got rest.

I had a second thanksgiving over at ’s place. It was good to see people I hadn’t seen in a while and eat/be merry and relax. Sometimes I look at myself and wonder how anyone puts up with me. Then the moment passes and I realize it doesn’t matter why. My friends are my real family.

In a moment of drunken clarity I explained my “No children, ever” stance to Lydia. Beyond all my family baggage, there’s the simple fact that I’m the pinnacle of millions of years of evolution. There is never going to be a Grand Lord Bastard 2.0 — I’m the perfect model of horribly fucked up, but fun to watch. Why fuck it? Besides, I’d be a terrible father. The cats are enough.

Tomorrow its back to the grind and I get to see if some fool choose me for jury duty on tuesday. I certainly hope not. Financially its a rotten time for it.

The funeral service was your standard heavy handed catholic affair. I pretty much just sat there and bit my tongue.

The moment of hilarity came when the priest was giving communion. Every time he said “the body of christ” in his solemn way, my brother would mutter “Cheap ass cracker” under his breath. I nearly laughed aloud which would have been bad, but it was funny… Guess you had to be there.

I respect everyones right to believe in whatever they choose, but I do reserve the right to mock it.

At any rate, at this point everyone has a sense of closure. I thought my great aunt Del was going to try and bait me into a religious discussion so I just stuck to short, vague answers to those questions and managed not to offend anyone further.

Well, today I say good bye to gramma and bite my tongue while services are read.

The trip up was a bit of a debacle, but then again last time I drove up it was me and Kat and I drove at stupidly high speeds. So, last night I unpacked mom, dog and brother and they’re staying at gramma’s. Between the two of them smoking I knew I’d wind up with a bad headache and crap sleep, so I made advance reservations. Unfortunately since I didn’t know the area well, and to be honest, Connelsville is kinda depressed, I wound up staying 20 miles away.

The room is nice tho. Not crazy extravagant or anything, but neat and clean with the stuff you’d want in a room. The room service guy was polite and the food was decent. I realized at around 9pm last night that I hadn’t eaten all day.

The hotel is quiet and internet access is included. I wound up talking to Kat last night via video chat on our macs. Cell phone service up here chews. I’m glad I brought my laptop. I even played WoW for about a half hour before I went to bed.

I live in the future now. I was on a video call with my wife It was pretty slick and I got to see the cats. They heard me but couldn’t see/smell me. I watched Beauty sneak up on Kat and try and climb over her toward the sound of daddy. It was a much needed moment of cuteness. I could see Snowbear trying to get Kat to make the feather go. Zsa Zsa planted her big self on the desk while we were talking. It was a little moment of home.

*sway* I love my wife….

Today I’ll make my way over to Ivan/mom at around noonish. This morning as I ironed the travel wrinkles out of my suit, I realized that I don’t suck at ironing. Our ironing board at home sucks. I mean, I’m not ‘good’ at it, but I did a much better job. So, when I get home I’m buying an ironing board. The fact that I just typed those words in that order depresses the hell out of me, but I accept what I’ve become.

Ok, time to go wake the wife and get the post-club report since I couldn’t go last night.

In a fit of drunken ‘optimization’ I decided to strip all the language translations out of the apps on my laptop last week. Space was getting tight. In addition to removing the languages I don’t know, I didn’t realize it but the utility also removed non-native architecture support from apps/libs. This had the effect of breaking rosetta and hosing a couple apps.

Tonight I finally got around to doing a system restore. Ah well, at least I had backups of (nearly) everything. The stuff I did lose was largely irrelevant with the sole exception of a couple ssh keys I’ll need to replace and a few apps I’ll need to recompile

Ah well.

My grandmother passed away this afternoon. She was ready for it and I had my time to talk with her at the end. I hope she found peace.

Last night my father called me. He finally heard about what is going on. I suppose Ivan told him. It was a pretty simple phone call. He was more sober than he has been since I’d last talked to him. He just wanted me to explain what was happening. It took him a little bit to understand it. Then he simply apologized to me and asked my forgiveness. He didn’t ask for anything out of it. No money, no requests to do something for him. He just said he was sorry we never got that close. That took some nerve to do, and I respect that. So, last night I made peace with my father. Who knows, maybe I’ll talk to him more frequently at this point. At least he reached out and that counts for something.

He told me he just had a chest x-ray and is all clear. He’s in pretty good health but decided to give up smoking (perhaps because of what is going on). I’m a little skeptical about that, but it was good to hear. He has a place to stay and the state is helping him out in a lot of ways so he’s fine.

I made it. I got there in time. It meant a lot to gramma.

On other fronts things aren’t so good but I’m too mentally exhausted to go into it. At this point I’m battening down the hatches and moving on. I’ve been judged by strangers and it doesn’t sit well with me. I’m glad I went for my grandmothers sake, but the rest of the family I never met is dead to me. I’m officially done with the entire dysfunctional lot of them.

On monday I’m getting back to work and back to my life. This chapter is over.

I’m considering a trip to the club tomorrow, but finances are sketchy so it depends. Either way, this is an end to the gloom on my journal for a while. I feel like a stronger person at this point and my conscience is clear. Thanks everyone, for your well wishes. Believe it or not, it did help.