2000-11-06 - 20:36:15
Of black sweaters, dark lipstick, and cloudy skies

*grrrrr* Every time someone downloads pictures from my computer over the local network, Netscape refuses to function. Don't ask me why. It'll open up, all bright and pretty, but no matter what or where I click, nothing happens. Of COURSE Internet Explorer still works. *Microsoft-themed grumblings*

Anyway.

I had bad news this weekend. Why is it that everything I run into lately reminds me of pain, death, and just how brief the "good moments" in life really are?

My mother has osteoporosis. Not the mild, let's-feed-you-extra-calcium-and-you'll-be-okay kind. She has the worse-than-severe, one-fall-and-you're-screwed kind. It was totally out of the blue. She had her yearly physical last week, and the doctor "got a feeling" and asked her to come back for a bone scan. Good thing the doctor did, before Mom did break something. But, shit, she's only 42!!!!

There's something extremely disheartening about the knowledge that my mother has to do exercises meant for women 80+ years old. That her spine is starting to compact. That she could be confined to a wheelchair before her 50th birthday. That she can never ski, bungee-jump, climb ladders, go outside on icy days, or lift heavy things EVER again. They're feeding her some medication that MIGHT improve her bones a little, but they won't even know if it's helping for more than a year.

My dad treated my mother carefully before -- I mean, he's a 6'4", half-Norwegian guy, and she's 5'6", small-boned, English-ancestry petite. Now he treats her like fine china. It's painful to watch ... and it makes me think about just how precious every moment with my family really is.

Life really is like a box of chocolates, I think ... random, messy, and gone all too quickly.

On a slightly lighter note, I think my friend Hildegaard is going to be okay. She called me at 3am Saturday to tell me what her plans were -- it looks like she won't be coming until January now, sometime in the middle of the month. She said her counselor is giving her some real help now (guess my suspicions were unfounded) and her friends out there took away all the cigarettes she bought last week. She's still bothered by nightmares and flashbacks, but the other night, as she was drifting off to a tense sleep again, she felt something invisible step between her and the nightmares. When she said "Who's there?" she heard a voice saying, "My name is Mercy," and she had a peaceful night with no dreams at all.

Which reminds me -- I spent awhile last night looking for some helpful Bible quotes to deal with the current chaos in my life. I ended up digging out my "Treasury of Religious Quotations" instead, and came across this gem: "Life is full of choices for which there is not a verse of Scripture"--Jerry Falwell

Ain't that the truth.