Not Another Flood!

Darling Husband (AKA DH) woke up before dawn yesterday because he had to go to the bathroom. (The joys of being middle-aged, right?) He heard the sump pump alarm going off and went to the basement.

Despite all three sump pumps chugging away, one well was full, and the second one was filling rapidly. He ran upstairs and woke me. That was at 5:44 AM.

I threw on a t-shirt, sweats, and my slip-on Skechers. By the time I got down to the basement, the full wells were spilling across the basement floor. We started taking stuff upstairs, but we couldn't outrun the water.

DH was running back and forth in his bare feet. I ordered him to stay out of the water because Goddess only knew what was floating round  in that crap. He stayed above the middle of the stairs and I handed stuff to him.

By 6:04 AM, I gave up. The water was at my ankles. My shoes were full. My feet were itching terribly from whatever was in the flood water. I took off my shoes, left them on the top step, and went to wash the gunk off my feet.

Poor DH had a bunch of his deceased parents' memorabilia and his old toys he wanted to keep in the basement. Stuff that we didn't have room for anywhere else in the house. Plus, all of Genius Kid's (AKA GK) furniture and home stuff were stored down there while he's stationed overseas.

Luckily, it was a weekday, so we had companies there almost as soon as they opened. A HUGE shout-out to the peeps from  EverDry Waterproofing, Bowers Heating and Cooling, and Service Master for responding as fast as they did. We're still waiting for the insurance adjuster from State Farm to come by, which will probably be Monday or Tuesday.

Thankfully, the water didn't go past the second from bottom step this time. But a 1400 sq, ft, open space filled at the rate of one inch every three minutes before the sump pumps could catch up. That's a hell of a lot of water to remove.

Despite all the precautions and upgrades we did after the 2021 basement flood, the pond in the subdivision behind us overflowed. Again. Yes, we're looking into our legal remedies. That's all I can say at this point.

This was not how I wanted my week to end. I was on a good frickin' role with A Cup of Conflict before all the shit happened. Losing two days dealing with the mess was not on my to-do list for this week.

But that's life, right?

It didn't help to learn a good friend's mother is in hospice. It's a matter of days. Which mean another funeral soon. This one I won't resent because this friend has always been there for me.

And life goes on...

I Should Not Write the Two Months After a Parent's Funeral

I was doing one last proofing pass on Invasion! before formally launching it. And I got to the last four chapters and wondered, "What the fuck was I thinking?"

When I checked my calendar, I realized they had been written shortly after my mother's funeral back in October. *facepalm* Seriously, there were sentences in there that made absolutely no sense. And none of this registered in my brain when I did the first editing pass back in November.

So I've spent the last couple of days, well, not really fixing the book. More like re-writing the last quarter of it.

I know there are times I don't hit the mark with readers. But despite some people's reviews, I do try to put out a quality product. This is one of those times where I needed to take a step back, kick myself in the ass, and fix the damn book.

It's going to be another week or so before Invasion! is released.

Three Funerals and a Wedding

I didn't get the post I'd planned for today done. One of DH's uncles died over the weekend. Visitation is today, and the funeral tomorrow. I find myself once again scrambling to wash my dress up clothes needed for the events.

That's the third death in the family within the last 365 days. We've only had one wedding. I'm getting to the age where that's the normal ratio, and it sucks donkey balls.

The Orgy of Death

When I was a kid, I read an Englishman's scholarly tome on Ancient Egyptian customs. One of his comments has stuck in my head. He regarded the ancient civilization as being obsessed with death.

The more I've studied over the years, the more I realize that statement isn't true. Talk about laying you own hang-ups at someone else's feet.

A lot of people think I'm obsessed with the subject of death as well. I do write about it, but am I obsessed? Not really. I acknowledge death, the inevitability of it, which is more than white American culture can do.

So why is this on my mind? My mother-in-law passed away on Friday, June 16, 2017, at 2:06 a.m.

We Americans are so very precise about our time, aren't we? In reality, that is simply the time on the paramedics' watches when they arrived at her apartment, and they pronounced her dead.

Because you see the process had started some time before that. Some would say it was five minutes before when the aides at the assisted living apartment stopped CPR because my mother-in-law had a Do Not Resuscitate order on file. Some would say it happened when she stopped breathing about ten minutes before the CPR ended.

Maybe it really started earlier on Thursday when she was at rehab and her blood oxygen level dropped even though she was on O2 at the time. Maybe it started with that last trip to the hospital this spring. Maybe it really started when she fell at their old Victorian back on December 6, 2015.

Or maybe it all started years ago when she tried to raise my son as she had her other five grandchildren, and I told her that being a grandma was a much cooler job than being the parent. However, the grandma job was one she never truly relished.

But when she was actually gone, and I looked at the corpse on the floor of her bedroom in the wee hours of Friday, it was done for me.

The first thing anyone will say as they read this is that everyone grieves in their own way.

And that's very true. However, what truly bothers me are two things:

1) that we no longer respect death, and to die shows a failure on someone's part, and

2)  that we, as a culture, now lavish that same excess to funerals as we do births, weddings, and quinceaneras.

Around 2:15 a.m. that same morning, I had to console the RN and the two aides. Reassure them that they had done the right thing by following the DNR and ceasing CPR. Even DH, in a moment of black humor that usually only I display, he said that his mother probably heard them call the ambulance, said, "Screw that!" and took off for heaven. Because she had been adamant after the spring stint that she was not going back to the hospital.

The medical team at the apartment didn't fail. The doctors and nurses at the hospital during her various admissions over the last two years didn't fail. This is about a woman at the end of her natural lifespan, not failure or success.

Since she passed over Father's Day weekend, that put a crimp in vacation plans since some family had already left town, so all scheduling had to be shoved back an extra couple of days. Add to that, selecting a casket, flowers, planning the ceremony, etc., etc., etc. Then there was the private family viewing and two sessions of visitation before the actual funeral on Tuesday. All of the added stress of putting together a major ceremony while dealing with grief? Why do we do this to ourselves?

It's traditional.

Gah! I hate that term. It's an excuse. Traditions can be and are changed all the time.

I've already put together my funeral directives. I die? Cremate me, take the ashes to Hawaii, scatter them, and go get drunk on the leftover money in my estate. In fact, DH has already picked out the bar in Lahaina on Maui.

Celebrate my life. Tell stories. Read stupid passages from my books. Save enough money for the cab ride back to the hotel.

But whatever y'all do, please don't turn my passing into a fucking five-day orgy of death. My ghost will not be pleased.