Nothing like the Sting of Disappointment

Have you ever wanted something so bad, even if you know it’s near impossible?  Have you ever ignored your head because you heart is screaming to be heard.

Yeah, me too.  And it sucks.  I’m paying the price right now.

Tonight my dad broke my heart.  Disappointed me.  Hurt me.  Disgusted me.

And I’m the damn fool who let him.

I should have known better.  I should have known that he would never change.  Yet, I hoped, prayed and even willed it to happen. 

What the hell was I thinking?

What the hell is wrong with me for even thinking that he might remotely care for my sister and me more than the bottle of liquor. 

Seriously, I’m a damn fool.

7 months without a drop of alcohol.  The pull is that fucking strong?

Stronger than me telling you that I enjoy spending time with you?  Stronger than having a decent relationship with both of your daughters for the first time in YEARS?  Stronger than your daughter actually picking up the phone to talk and enjoying it instead of letting it go to voicemail because she’s too afraid you’re drunk and doesn’t have the strength, energy or desire to deal with you?

GAAAAHHHH…I just don’t get it.  I know my dad is an alcoholic.  Hell, he knows it.  What I don’t get is how you can throw 7 months of rebuilding a relationship with your kids away just for what a bottle of jack and a can of beer can offer.

I knew he had started drinking again.  I could tell.  When you’ve grown up with it your whole life, you just know.  He thinks he’s slick and can play it off.  He can’t.  I’m smarter than that.

Tonight though?  He got shitty.  Again.  And I lost it.  I’ve given him 7 months of my time.  My heart.  My life.  And he threw it away.  I guess I should be thankful that I only got a ”Fuck You”.  It could have been worse.  It has been worse.

I spent weeks sitting by his bedside willing him to live.  I spent many more weeks visiting him daily, helping to pass the days while he was trapped in the hyper acute facility.  I took off more time from work than I can recall to be there to help him.  Hell, I’m still taking time from my life and managing his finances and trying to figure out his medical expenses from when he was in the hospital and let me tell you, neither of these are an easy feat. 

And his best friend?  The one he sits and drinks with?  Where the hell was she when the doctors didn’t think he’d pull through?  Sure as hell not there sitting with him.  Not like we were.  I even offered to pick her up and bring her to see him.  But she couldn’t handle seeing him like that.  Guess where she is now?  Yeah, you guessed it.  Sitting with him, watching him drink his life away.

Wanna take bets for where she is when he lands himself back in the hospital?

He’s going to kill himself.  He’s going to wind up back in the hospital, probably even in the intensive care unit again.  And I can’t do it again.  I won’t do it again.

I lie.  I probably will.  Because I’m a sucker idiot like that.

What does he think?  That he can continue to abuse his body and that his pulmonary fibrosis won’t progress?  Either you want to live or you want to die.  Pick one.  You can’t have both.

My dad has crossed so many lines with my sister and me over the course of our lives.  You know it’s bad when you have people THANKING you for being there for your dad.  The instinctual reply is obviously “well, of course I’m here for him.  He’s my dad”.  But inside, all you can do is wonder if he’d do the same for you or if he’d choose his friends and the bottle.

I really hoped that we meant more to him.  Apparently not.  Too bad he loves that bottle of liquor more than he does my sister or me.

I know my dad reads my blog on occasion.  And I hope that he’s sober when he does but even if he is, I sincerely doubt it will make much of a difference to him.  Isn’t that a pity?

Edit:  As much as I am disgusted and saddened by my dad, I’m equally upset (if not more) with myself for wanting to believe the best in him and allowing myself to be disappointed once again.  C’est la vie, right?  You live and you learn.  Hopefully I’ve learned.  But we’ll see.  Only time will tell.

Please.Stop.Dragging.Out.The.Pain

And…my yearly review got moved.  Again.  For the 3rd time.

Sigh.

Nothing like drawing out the pain.  Forever and ever.

But, it got moved to Wednesday, which is Administrative Assistant Day, so it has to be good, right?  Maybe?

The verdict is in…

I received the results back from a home mold test kit I did (I’m guessing there is still a mold problem in our spare bedroom because Mango is still picking at his chest and legs) and guess what?!?  It’s not too bad…

Every house will have some mold spores in it.  Mold is always present.  It’s just when there is excessive moisture that it becomes a problem. 

And an out of control lady turning a humidifier up ALL the way = excessive moisture.

So, from the lab report, I have 2 colonies of Penicillium and 1 colony of Rhizopus/Mucor.

To me?  This reads like 2 colonies of jfjkldniourengiuqrilfnqwejrnewuirf nernwejkrnjwqe;lkrne and 1 colony of aldfjweiqjrjfkqjehgkheqrkugjhqjrjhqweilrjqeoirj.

It’s not as bad as I was fearing though.  A friend of mine did a home mold test kit and she had 16 different types of mold.  16!  YIKES!

I’m still planning some major things for this room to eliminate the spores that might be aggravating Mango’s skin.  Next Friday, Saturday, Sunday and Monday will be fun times at our house kill me now.

I’m going to take all my clothes to the laundromat and wash them.  I’m going to rip up the remaining carpet in that room (which is in the closet), I’m going to wash the windows, walls, floor and baseboards with a detergent and water.  I’m going to vacuum the walls, baseboards and floors with my Dyson that has a Hepa filter.  And finally, I’m going to use a fogger and fog the entire room and closet with a product called Concrobium.  Most of this was free advice from a “mold guy” I talked to.

Now those 4 days will not be fun but if we can eliminate whatever it is that’s aggravating Mango’s skin then I’m good with wasting spending the time doing this.

And, if all goes really well, then I may even be able to find the time to get my bedroom painted.

Wish us luck!

My awful Weekend…

I’ve been meaning to write about my weekend but just haven’t gotten around to it, till now.  It was probably one of the worst weekends I’ve had in a very long time.

It started Saturday morning when I was walking out to my car to warm it up.  I’m sure you can guess what happened next.  Yep, I fell.  Slammed to the ground.  It hurt. 

I jumped up, hoped no one saw me and quickly got to my car to start it.  I hobbled back into the house where I got no sympathy from Jay.  I ended up cutting my hand and my ankle bone from falling – or in the words of Jay not from falling, but from hitting the ground.  Thanks.

After that excitement, Mango and I happily drove to Chicago for another vet appointment for him.  $155 later, we were heading back home with round 4 of antibiotics that he’ll be on for 17-21 days.  I was quite disappointed that we couldn’t make my yearly vet total for him reach $1000 by the end of the year – I’m only $250 away from this goal.

I decided that I needed to clean (I know, don’t fall over out of shock or anything) and throw some of Mango’s crap away that I’ve been holding onto forever thinking I’ll do something with but in reality, I’m just too lazy.  I start looking at the beautiful dark cherry wood trim and am now curious as to why parts of them are yellow.  I start investigating and realize that the floor near where the humidifier is located is quite damp and has mold growing.  At this point, I am devastated, disturbed, upset, mad, and every other emotion that falls in between.  I do what I can to rid the room of all the crap I was originally intending to throw out, and then some.  I’m scared to tell Jay, but finally realize I can’t avoid it.  At some point, he’ll wonder why I’m ripping the carpeting out 

          

Of course he’s upset.  I tell him to go get lunch, I’m not hungry at this point, and I’ll have as much stuff that I can gather, organized and ready to take the city dump.  I’d now like to pat myself on the back - I boxed up an entire bookshelf of books, moved a bookshelf outside, got rid of water in an old fish tank and moved it to our front porch and cleaned out the drawers of my dresser. 

We took as much as we could put in the truck to the city dump.  When we came back, I started to rip up the carpeting in the room.  Section by section.  Damn it was tedious.  Once all the carpeting was gone, I started to attack the yellow mold spots with a 50/50 water and bleach mixture.  I knew it would ruin our hardwood floors but at this point, didn’t really care.  I got about 1/3 of the way done and decided that I was exhausted and needed to get dinner.  I took a shower since I didn’t think my new perfume called eau de bleach was that enticing and we went for a couple drinks at our local hangout before going to dinner at our favorite Mexican restaurant. 

 As I was climbing out of Jay’s truck, you can only imagine what happened next.  Yep, I slipped, again.  Only this time, I caught myself and held onto the door of his truck. My extremely sympathetic husband told me that next time I need to be more careful and hold onto something other than his door because he would hate for his door to have broke.  Unfortunately, I didn’t walk away from this unscathed and now have a glorious bruise that is approximately 4″ long by 2″ wide on my left thigh.  The only thing I can come up with is that I must have been sliding underneath his truck and slammed my thigh on the bottom of the truck?  All I know is that it hurts and it’s really ugly.

This picture doesn’t even do it any justice

Sunday, I woke and continued with scrubbing the areas where it was yellow.  After I finished, I washed the entire floor and baseboards with a water and bleach mix (not as strong as what I used to “attack” the yellow parts).  Once it dried, I then used a hardwood floor cleaner.  The floor definitely doesn’t look great, but it’s better than it could be.

    

I just hope that I killed all the mold and we don’t have any future problems.  What I think happened is that I had the humidifier in this room WAY too high which caused the carpet to become moist which caused the mold to grow.  I did have a humidifier gauge in the room, but it was on the other side of the room.  The humidity gauge always showed there to be low humidity in the room so I kept turning up the humidifier, hoping it would help Mango and his skin problems.  All it did was cause me more headaches and problems though.  I’ve learned my lesson and am now even hesitant to even use a humidifier at all.