(no subject)
Oct. 17th, 2011 06:58 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
gwydion* Today I went and filed papers for the best of the apartments with stairs. I burned 80.00 of travel money on the applications. There are two layers of bureaucracy to get through to see if we can move there, and somehow we will need to raise about 1900.00 upfront to move, plus cover rent here about another month, plus whatever the actual moving will cost. A small portion may be reimbursed by the housing authority, but there's no counting on it. Mother was going to cover that plus rent movers, but there is no guarantee my sister will honor that as she refused to disburse the cash a couple weeks ago when mom asked her to, and probate will take rather longer than we have to close on this and move. The best thing to do is expect her not to given her attitude just generally. Assuming we get in, they will wait list me for next year's accessible housing in the same complex. I'm expecting to spend the next year mostly doing those stairs on my ass, which will be no fun in the rain. I simply don't have time and energy to look further and am pretty much out of leads. If we can't get this one we are screwed royally.
Greenwick is looking into a van. We'll need reasonable able bodied folks to help carry stuff, since I'm useless with anything requiring more than one hand to carry and Squirrel has a bad back. I could also really use people to help pack and clean, which does not require someone particularly able bodied, but it would help to have even one person with lungs that can handle cleaning fumes.
* Tonight there was Magic soup courtesy of Brightlion. What is the deal with the magic soup, new readers might ask? As most of you know I am a vegetarian (Initially for spiritual reasons as I am Buddhist, and because of food allergies, but also for health ones now). The one exception to this is once or twice a year, usually when I am being prepped for major surgery or am at least a month into a pathogen i can''t shake, I give in an invest in a container of high end chicken soup with galangal from a particular thai place. It was originally a suggestion from my acupuncturist/herbalist back when I was dying. The hot peppers clear sinuses. The galangal, garlic, ginger, and little strips of super lean chicken breast meat are good for fighting viruses. The extra protein is good for wounds. Yes, it sounds silly, but it actually works. The downside is expense and the whole, I have trouble digesting chicken thing. I trade a few days of queasiness for my lungs clearing up faster. I find it's usually worth it. The soup is strongly savory with relatively little fat and not nasty salty like American chicken soup. (I eat a naturally low salt diet. When my sodium gets to low, I get cravings and eat one of the short list of salty foods I can stand. I suspect this is why my blood pressure stays bafflingly low to the continuing surprise of health care providers.) I'll try to eat a little more later, and some more tomorrow, in the hopes I won't be coughing by the time I leave for Philly. Kinder to the folks I will share various airplanes and airports with, and a bit of insurance against all the other travelers will expose me too. I'm going to try to bring masks for on the plane, but I even odds I forget.
One thing of soup is usually three or four days, but I don't have that find of time.
* I used most of the rest of today's spoons on cleaning and other household stuff.
* Today I was thinking of my parent's dreams. My father wanted to work his way into the middle class. He was desperate for a house with a white picket fence and a garden and a lawn. he wanted a quiet home life, an intelligent wife who shared his intellectual interests, two daughters, and some grand children. (Why daughters? He grew up with lots of sisters and was more comfortable with little girls than little boys, who he was scared would grow up to be hellions like himself. Which I did, but that is another story). He had another dream though. He wanted, some day when there was time and money, to buy professional vocal lessons to train up to be a counter tenor. No really. It was not an impossible dream, as he was a good tenor with a good bit of upper range, but would have needed better training to fill it out properly. There was never time and money though, and then the cancer came.
Mom wanted to be a painter in her heart of hearts. She was still painting when I was small, but after my sister came, she stopped because two jobs and two young children didn't leave much free time. After my dad died, she started again, this time in water colours because of her lungs. She got good enough to sell a few pieces and people liked her work. They decorated the domestic relations office with them, and I have a few small pieces on my walls. Every time she came out here to visit, we'd visit art supply stores and go places where she could sketch things. She saw her first water fall in real life out here, and she loved going to the marina to look at boats up close, or to sketch them sailing out on the bay. After she saw what it was like out here, she knew exactly why I came. The beauty of the land and water out here, the laid back tone, the very air of the place. Originally she planned to come out here when she retired, but her lungs failed to soon, pinning her in place. When she asked my earlier in the summer, what I wanted of her things, all I asked for were a few of her paintings. Somehow, so much of her personality ended up in her landscapes, the quirky sense of humor, the warmth of personality, a particularity of eye. It is of much of her that can be held in the hand now that she is gone.
I never thought she would fade so fast, a few days from collapse to death. Each other time she nearly died, there was a week or two to prepare, and she really did seem so much better this spring. She has been in my corner my whole life, someone to fall back on when times were grim. I still remember her charging out of the house to chase the sociopath from across the street out of our yard. (We had the biggest yard of any family with kids in our neighborhood, and at our house everything was fair, and above all, the adults were safe. We wer a sort of refuse for kids in our neighborhood with dangerous parents or older siblings, so even though we had mostly beat up second toys and little in the way of play equipment, most days, a gang of kids would be all over our house and yard playing under her watchful eye. My dad was an involved parent, but he mostly just dealt with me and my sister and not the extended friend group. She was always working, sewing in the kitchen, upholstering on the porch, but she listened to the sounds of play and kept an eye out for the dangerous kids coming to throw rocks, or stab with scissors, or hassle the littles anbd/or the cats. Bullies were barred from our land, but their little sisters weren't, and now and then, they'd come to try to fight past me to get at my sister and her friends.
My Uncle John struggles for words and the only one he can find is courageous. I struggle even harder, because courageous isn't enough.
Greenwick is looking into a van. We'll need reasonable able bodied folks to help carry stuff, since I'm useless with anything requiring more than one hand to carry and Squirrel has a bad back. I could also really use people to help pack and clean, which does not require someone particularly able bodied, but it would help to have even one person with lungs that can handle cleaning fumes.
* Tonight there was Magic soup courtesy of Brightlion. What is the deal with the magic soup, new readers might ask? As most of you know I am a vegetarian (Initially for spiritual reasons as I am Buddhist, and because of food allergies, but also for health ones now). The one exception to this is once or twice a year, usually when I am being prepped for major surgery or am at least a month into a pathogen i can''t shake, I give in an invest in a container of high end chicken soup with galangal from a particular thai place. It was originally a suggestion from my acupuncturist/herbalist back when I was dying. The hot peppers clear sinuses. The galangal, garlic, ginger, and little strips of super lean chicken breast meat are good for fighting viruses. The extra protein is good for wounds. Yes, it sounds silly, but it actually works. The downside is expense and the whole, I have trouble digesting chicken thing. I trade a few days of queasiness for my lungs clearing up faster. I find it's usually worth it. The soup is strongly savory with relatively little fat and not nasty salty like American chicken soup. (I eat a naturally low salt diet. When my sodium gets to low, I get cravings and eat one of the short list of salty foods I can stand. I suspect this is why my blood pressure stays bafflingly low to the continuing surprise of health care providers.) I'll try to eat a little more later, and some more tomorrow, in the hopes I won't be coughing by the time I leave for Philly. Kinder to the folks I will share various airplanes and airports with, and a bit of insurance against all the other travelers will expose me too. I'm going to try to bring masks for on the plane, but I even odds I forget.
One thing of soup is usually three or four days, but I don't have that find of time.
* I used most of the rest of today's spoons on cleaning and other household stuff.
* Today I was thinking of my parent's dreams. My father wanted to work his way into the middle class. He was desperate for a house with a white picket fence and a garden and a lawn. he wanted a quiet home life, an intelligent wife who shared his intellectual interests, two daughters, and some grand children. (Why daughters? He grew up with lots of sisters and was more comfortable with little girls than little boys, who he was scared would grow up to be hellions like himself. Which I did, but that is another story). He had another dream though. He wanted, some day when there was time and money, to buy professional vocal lessons to train up to be a counter tenor. No really. It was not an impossible dream, as he was a good tenor with a good bit of upper range, but would have needed better training to fill it out properly. There was never time and money though, and then the cancer came.
Mom wanted to be a painter in her heart of hearts. She was still painting when I was small, but after my sister came, she stopped because two jobs and two young children didn't leave much free time. After my dad died, she started again, this time in water colours because of her lungs. She got good enough to sell a few pieces and people liked her work. They decorated the domestic relations office with them, and I have a few small pieces on my walls. Every time she came out here to visit, we'd visit art supply stores and go places where she could sketch things. She saw her first water fall in real life out here, and she loved going to the marina to look at boats up close, or to sketch them sailing out on the bay. After she saw what it was like out here, she knew exactly why I came. The beauty of the land and water out here, the laid back tone, the very air of the place. Originally she planned to come out here when she retired, but her lungs failed to soon, pinning her in place. When she asked my earlier in the summer, what I wanted of her things, all I asked for were a few of her paintings. Somehow, so much of her personality ended up in her landscapes, the quirky sense of humor, the warmth of personality, a particularity of eye. It is of much of her that can be held in the hand now that she is gone.
I never thought she would fade so fast, a few days from collapse to death. Each other time she nearly died, there was a week or two to prepare, and she really did seem so much better this spring. She has been in my corner my whole life, someone to fall back on when times were grim. I still remember her charging out of the house to chase the sociopath from across the street out of our yard. (We had the biggest yard of any family with kids in our neighborhood, and at our house everything was fair, and above all, the adults were safe. We wer a sort of refuse for kids in our neighborhood with dangerous parents or older siblings, so even though we had mostly beat up second toys and little in the way of play equipment, most days, a gang of kids would be all over our house and yard playing under her watchful eye. My dad was an involved parent, but he mostly just dealt with me and my sister and not the extended friend group. She was always working, sewing in the kitchen, upholstering on the porch, but she listened to the sounds of play and kept an eye out for the dangerous kids coming to throw rocks, or stab with scissors, or hassle the littles anbd/or the cats. Bullies were barred from our land, but their little sisters weren't, and now and then, they'd come to try to fight past me to get at my sister and her friends.
My Uncle John struggles for words and the only one he can find is courageous. I struggle even harder, because courageous isn't enough.
(no subject)
Date: 2011-10-18 03:20 pm (UTC)