bummed.

This weekend has been a bit of a bummer.  Good things have happened too, but the bad things seem to be coloring my mood more.

I visited my grandparents in Hopland yesterday.  My 92 yr old Grandfather is probably "circling the drain", and my 92 yr old Grandmother does everything for him.  He can barely move, he can't eat much, he can't take a shit or pee on his own.  It's depressing, to say the least.  Last night he insisted on sleeping in the living room, so Grandma couldn't hear him when he was yelling "AUDREY" at midnight, and at 6am.  Both times I had to wake my Grandma, the first so that she could help him pee, and the second because he had to poop.  The second time, they called me in because Grandpa couldn't get out of the chair without help to make it to the bathroom, so I needed to help lift him.  Fortunately, he has his own pee bottle, so when he has to pee it's easier.

It's a tough situation for many reasons.  Lots of those reasons go back very far in time, probably to even before I was born.  I have two sets of aunt/uncle and two cousins (one with a wife and stepkids) who live on the property (about 1400 acres or so), and Grandpa has managed to alienate all of them.  This means that people don't like to come and hang out in my grandparents' house, which means that a lot of the burden of care falls of grandma.  Watching my 95 lb grandma pull up my grandpa's pants, attempt to sort out his medications, and spring to action every time he hollers "Aaaaauudreey" is a site to behold.

I wish that I could be less squeamish, and I wish that I could help more.  It's very hard being in the house though.  Grandpa can't hear what I'm saying, he yells at Grandma all of the time, and basically he looks like death.  He sits in the living room with FoxNews blasting all day long.  The volume is so loud that you can't even have a conversation with another person in the room.  Mostly Grandma and I hang out in the kitchen, and she fills me in on her life, and the lives of everyone else on the ranch.  I never stay long - it's hard, and I always feel so bad when I leave.  Not to mention that everyone always gives me grief about not staying long enough.  All of this serves to feed my feelings of inadequacy as a good family member.  I leave feeling sad and selfish.

I knot that this situation is pretty typical.  Western medicine + geriatric care + society's attitude towards old people doesn't seem to work for anyone.  Why do we extend lives when lives are no longer worth living?  The amount of money and time and energy spent on adding a few more breaths to someone's life...I just don't know if it's worth it.  But how can you just not do anything if you can prescribe more pills and do more surgery to remove cancer?  If there is something, anything that can be done to address the myriad failures in a human body, are we obligated to act?  Death is programmed into life.  After we have passed reproductive age, cells and the organs they belong to stop regenerating.  Shit just starts to go wrong; repair mechanisms don't work or are slowed, our reproductive organs senesce.  All sorts of fun is had.

Anyway, it gets me thinking about my attitude towards death and aging: I'm terrified.  The fact that I have MS and can look at people in wheelchairs that have MS is terrifying.  The thought of being slowed physically and not being able to do what I want to do is horrifying.  Of course, that sort of thing probably won't happen to me, but it might.  No one likes to be confronted with their own inevitable mortality and decay.  Bad times for sure.

I'd like to talk to some people who've dealt a little more closely with dead or dying people.  My only experience with someone dying is seeing my sister in the funeral home, and she was already dead.  I'm not particularly sad about losing my grandfather...he's kind of an old bastard, and grandma would probably be a lot better off when he goes, but I'm sad about the situation in general.  I get so overwhelmed that I try to avoid it altogether.  I'm even afraid to touch my grandfather, because he looks so bad.  His skin is paper thin, he's super skinny, he has scars from a recent staph infection, his kidneys are failing so his ankles are super swollen...  Some people can just get in there and do what needs to be done.  Apparently I'm not one of those people.  It's almost like I can ignore the fact that I am "sick" and getting older if I'm not around sick and elderly people.  I don't know.

I'm sure I'll write more positive posts soon, but this is on my mind.

2008 Latest Edition - Did You Know 3.0 - From Meeting in Rome this Year

pretty wild. Makes me wonder why I'm in school.

James is a RAD DANCER

Besides being a very nice person, James Lucas is a major BIG DEAL DANCER.  

Word.

Bugs and rock climbing

I stumbled across this website while trying to identify a spider that a friend posted on her Facebook page.  It's called Bugguide.net and it's pretty much amazing.  The photos are spectacular and the page is very well organized (which is difficult, given that taxonomy by nature is NOT organized, though it purports to be...but whatever).  I like the click guide on the left side of the page-I'd be curious to see how efficient it is to use.

In other news, I've been climbing a bunch at Gold Wall and a little bit at Jailhouse.  I need to find a new project at Jailhouse, otherwise I'm pretty bored and unmotivated there.  The climbing is definitely fun, but the vibe there is VERY serious, and my refractory nature makes me want to not take it seriously, meaning not give a shit.  Anyway, I think I might try Cell Block, even though the bottom is crumbly and gross now.  Oh well.  Hopefully I'll get psyched.

more beast on beast action

tiger vs crocodile

Fun in the Bay Area

On the 24th I was finally able to check out Mission Cliffs, which believe it or not got me pretty psyched.  Before climbing I met up with Lucho and we got chai and a bagel, and then I met up with Karl and Audrey for a sesh at MC.  I was a little skeptical about MC, but I think I went there on a good day.  There were no crowds at all.  I know it sounds silly, but I'm actually pretty psyched on gym climbing right now.  Partly because I suck at it, and would like to get better, partly because it's social, and partly because you can get a killer work out in not much time.  At any rate, it was pretty fun.  

After that Karl, Audrey and I drove around San Francisco looking for a place that was open on Christmas Eve.  We settled on the Jasmine Tea House, which was AWESOME!  Going out for Chinese food sometimes seems like a crapshoot, but this was a winner.  We ordered basil tofu, some special with portabello mushrooms and eggplant, and red bean fried sesame balls (whatever they are called - they are freakin' good).  After dinner we blabbed for a while about stuff, and then I drove to SFO to pick Sunsh up from the airport, and then to her parents' house in Redwood City.  

Redwood City was a lot of fun.  Sunshine's mom is super delightful - whenever she sees me she gives me a big hug and a kiss on the cheek and says "I'm SO HAPPY TO SEE YOU!!!"  It's awesome.  And she's pretty much the most laid back, supportive and happy mom I've ever met.  She also did the MS bike ride with Sunshine back in September (they did the 50 mile ride).  

Anyway, since we are Jew-"ish" heathens, we went ahead and ate the pies that I made for breakfast the next day (Christmas morning).  I made a chocolate cranberry tart and a pecan-pumpkin pie (sort of a hybrid).  The latter made an excellent breakfast.   

So after pie for breakfast, Sunsh and I went El Mercadito, which got me pretty psyched on cooking Mexican food...but it's Christmas, and heathen or now, it didn't seem appropriate.  So we bought some groceries and went back to cook dinner: stuffed sweet potatoes, mashed potatoes with caramelized onion gravy, Mexican Spanish rice (one of Rosa's friends is Mexican and brought rice over), polenta and roasted vegetables, roasted brussels sprouts (not my idea...), homemade cranberry sauce...and probably other stuff that I can't remember...oh yeah, and tofu.  I was psyched that another friend from Santa Cruz, Zoe, came over.  Post-dinner entertainment was a stroll around the neighborhood to look at the lights, and nearly get trapped forever in a local school.  People in Sunsh's neighborhood got pretty psyched on the inflatable holiday art this year.  I think I may have even seen an inflatable nativity scene?  Oh yeah and there was this creepy ferris wheel with Christmas themed snoopies, bears, santas, elves etc. on it.  Anyway.  After that we tried to watch Sukiyaki Western Django, but my attention span is way too short to watch a western in Ingrish.  I couldn't understand anything they were saying, so I got bored and went to bed.

Today we went back to Berkeley (after more pie for breakfast, of course) and traipsed around the Berkeley hills looking for mushrooms, but didn't really find anything except rosy russulas, which taste like shit.  Oh yeah and we stumbled across someone's creepy campsite.  It was a beautiful day though, so it was nice to hang with Zoe and Sunshine and take advantage of the sunny day.  Then we got dumplings and potstickers at some other tea house.  A lot of places are still closed for the holiday.  We tried to get juice and cupcakes first - dumplings were plan C.

Tomorrow I'll probably go to Gold Wall with Stanley, unless he decides that it'll be no good.  Maybe Bishop next week?  Honestly I could climb in the bay area gyms for the next few weeks and be pretty psyched.  HA!  Though I just found that a friend from Boulder might show up for a week or so, and he wants to go to Jailhouse.  So who knows.  I'm pretty easy going about climbing these days.

It's been kind of cool not spending every weekend away this fall/winter.  I'm still restless as hell, but it's nice to find new outlets and hang out with different people.  I got so tired of everyone last season.  Plus I get tired of talking about climbing all the time.  I think my favorite climbing partners rarely talk about climbing.  It's good to hang out with people who have a little bit of complexity.

Stuff

The end of the year always brings a lot of reflection for me.  Probably because the days are short and the weather is not so nice...seems to give me a lot of time to think.

This year has been really really hard.  So many bad things have happened.  I hate to focus on the negative, because many wonderful things have happened as well, but I think it's important to honor the shitty things too.  It seems like people like to ignore or deny the unpleasant things.  But we all know that the challenges tend to make us grow a lot more than the easy stuff.

Getting diagnosed with multiple sclerosis is a pretty big deal.  To this day, I still can't believe that when I write the previous sentence, it is the truth.  It still sounds like it's a lie - something that isn't really happening.  But it has and it is, and it will.  Things have calmed down since the spring when things were really bad, but my hand still acts up, the injections hurt, and I still go to the hospital once a month for a steroid infusion.  It still is.

My relationship with Alex was extremely painful this year.  There's not really any good left in us anymore, not even a friendship.  Of course it's nothing that anyone reading this hasn't gone through before.  We've all been there, which makes the fact that it's so fucking painful seem cheap and lame.  I'm just reflecting on the reasons that I hung in there for so long.  One time a friend of mine said that we all had to date one person who is mean to us.  Hopefully I've ticked that one off the list.

I've met and become close with so many wonderful people this year.  I finally feel like I have a community of supportive friends that I care about.  I think it's been really good for me to spend time with people who are genuinely nice.  Nice without wanting anything, and nice without worrying that you're going to try to take something away from them.  

Work has been mostly sidelined this year, especially with the medical crap that I went through.  However I did pass my qualifying exam, and studying for it gave me more inspiration and made me psyched on what I'm doing again.  I hope that I can sustain the passion long enough to get a lot done in the next quarter.  

So in the next year, I hope to do some healing, spend time with nice, well-adjusted people, repair the relationship with my parents, and get a lot of work done.  Hopefully I'll get some rock climbing done too.

Thanks so much to everyone who has listened to me, been there for me, and sent positive thoughts my way.