It has been a wild couple of weeks here. It has been a while since I have written about my daughter and my Dad journey. But here it is. I haven’t need to be the Stay at Home Dad for a while now and have been working and letting things go.
My daughter had her second transplant in 2021 and it is doing well, but she still ended up in the hospital last week. For the whole week. Without a concrete diagnosis or anything real.
So we spent a week up in the hospital, doing tests, praying, and hoping for the best. Did we find out anything? Not really. Did they rule stuff out that was not causing the pain? Yes. I have to count that as a win. But she is still in pain.
I have some PTSD from a couple of years ago when it took almost a full year to figure out that her anti-rejection medications were causing problems. A full year of my daughter being in pain wasn’t a good thing at all.
So, now my daughter and my wife are home. They are here, and I like having my family together, excepting my daughter in college and my wayward son. I really like my family, and half of them up in the hospital sucks.
So now, we wait, and hope, and pray that the pain will subside and my daughter will get back to normal and the normal things that a 17 year old should be doing. I am still the dad, and as hard as it is to wait and see, as hard as it is to not just be able to fix things like you fix a car, as hard as it is to see my daughter in pain, I still have to make the best of things and try to make her as good as possible. I have to be strong for her and the rest of the family.
I just have to be there. And go fishing at some point. Lot’s of fishing.
You really thought this was going to be another boring post with me whining about not writing enough. Face it, you did.
Well, that is not going to be the case. This Blog is being revived because I am getting published again! Yes, I was chosen to be in my second anthology for the League of Utah Writers Infinite Monkey chapter.
This story is kind of fun. The first anthology had my story about a drunk driver.
This go around it was all about flash fiction. 1000 words or less. Mine was entirely dialogue. It was a fun exercise on a day I was bored and wrote the whole thing out longhand. A couple of revisions later and I am getting published again.
I have several partially finished, several barely written, and many many napkin scrap ideas floating around. It feels good to actually have one done.
I have learned by being a member of the League of Utah writers that I will probably never be a novelist. I am so much better at short stories, some may reach a novella length, but that is about all. I like to write more focused stories and not the sweeping arcs that I like to read. I don’t know why, I like a tighter, short story.
I don’t know what that says about me, but there it is. Sure there may be a novel in there somewhere, but this isn’t my career, this is a hobby. I will sit here and blog, write my short stories and continue to submit to anthologies. I may end up with a book of short stories someday, but we will see about that.
Now I make up stories for fun, share them here and there, and go on to the next. Maybe I will re-awaken the serial novel here on this site, that was fun for a while. I had Poetry Thursday and Serial Saturday at one point. That could be a fun way to do a first draft, I’ll have to see.
I sat here this morning and realized that despite all intentions, I have not written on here for nearly 4 years. 4 years of “I’ll get around to it.” 4 years of apathy. 4 years of slacking! I could come here an make all sorts of grandiose claims about posting all of the time now and getting a regular schedule, but the truth is, Why? Who reads this? Will any of those people that read my ramblings before still be around? Will subscriptions still exist, or will anyone still remember that this is even here? Some I know will not. Covid has taken too many.
I know I won’t keep the schedule. I don’t have all of the free time I used to when I was a stay at home dad. My life is as busy as ever, and the motivation just isn’t there. Sure there is plenty of free time to watch TV, and hang out. Sure there is time to sit and write, but have I taken advantage of it? Obviously not.
It was also back in 2018 that I got a story published in a League of Utah Writers anthology, and have not done much writing since. I have put words down, but I haven’t finished anything. I have thought about stories, but, as the kids say, Meh.
Cut forward to the train wreck dumpster fire that was 2020. You would think I would have tons of time to write….I didn’t write. I did work the whole time as my workplace was deemed an essential business. So Money wasn’t an issue. Just motivation. Things started to look up a bit toward Halloween, but then my Mom passed away and, well, crap. I wrote the obituary for her with my sister and damnation if that wasn’t one of the hardest things I have done. That was harder than writing the eulogy for my aunt. I still can’t read that obituary without tearing up.
Cut to 2021, my son decided that it wasn’t worth it anymore and ended up in a psych hospital due to suicidal thoughts, and then in another for an actual attempt. I am just now figuring out how to do the real author thing and take that pain to make a story. April brought my daughter her second kidney transplant which is a wonderful thing, but I was getting worked up to donate a kidney to her, and with the transplant I just hit a brick wall at 70 miles per hour in that. I wasn’t needed anymore. Well for the kidney at least.
May brought us a fun time moving when we got kicked out of our house because the new owners wanted to renovate and rent for more. No we were not behind on rent or anything, but we wanted to stay a bit longer, with a new kidney transplant and all. But anyway, we frantically searched for houses to no avail and ended up living in a friends house, where we still are….way longer than we planned on. But we are helping them get the house fixed up and repaired so it is good. But I still didn’t write.
I have made a lot of adjustments over the past couple of years, but it is finally at mid January of 2022 when I have actually got the bug again. Write Justin, just do it. This blog is called catharsis for a reason. Spew forth all of the crap that is going on in your head. Let the dumpster fire of your mind flow through your fingers to burn quietly in a corner of the internet and leave your head in peace. Damnit, just write.
So that is where I am this morning. Sitting here vomiting words on my shiny new laptop that Santa brought me. I will write here more. It won’t be on a schedule. It won’t be as often as it could be. Yet, it will be here. It will be real. It will be all me.
Oh the 3 things that should not be in combination in the hands of a 7 year old. I am writing this on my laptop, with an old keyboard from a desktop computer. Why, because water doesn’t make laptop keyboards work. At all. This is not the first time one of my kids has spilt on my keyboard, but this is the worst of it. The keyboard doesn’t even sort of work. Let’s take the time machine back a few hours…..
{time machine music goes here with some wavy picture that evokes going back in time}
Windows Key on black laptop keyboard. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Ok so here we are getting dinner ready for the masses, or trying to. My youngest son runs into the kitchen, “Daddy I spilled your drink on your keyboard.” “What keyboard?” said I, rushing to the electronics. “Your laptop.” he says and my brain clicks into overdrive, giving orders for towels and screwdrivers as I powered the machine down and dumping it upside down to clear the fluid.
You see we have a bench against the wall at our dinner table. I had the computer on the dinner table. My son had a few legos on the back side of the table and he was climbing around and over the table. Gravity took over and well the rest, and my keyboard, is history.
So after cleaning and drying the keyboard was dead but the computer works just fine, Albeit with another keyboard.
Cut scene to a week later. I bought another keyboard from the local thrift store that is about the size of my laptop so it is easier to take around, and it doesn’t have a cord. It does have the pleasing clicking of a mechanical keyboard that somehow gives great feedback to how fast you are typing. I kind of like it. Cut to a couple of week later when Ebay finally comes through and I get a new keyboard for the laptop itself. I took the thing apart again and installed the new one. A huge mess of not easy to do as it turned out. But I got it back together.
Well the new keyboard works, but not quite like it should. Sure all of the keys do what they need to, but it is not as secure as it should be so it is almost impossible to type on. I still have to open the whole thing back up and secure the keyboard. I just like typing on this other one so much I may not do it for quite a while.
To sum up, water and laptops do not mix, but for around $25 I got a new keyboard for the machine, and a wireless keyboard that I quite like. It is one of those things that turns out well in the end, but what a hassle overall.
