Friday, July 18, 2014

Fast

The girls have adjusted frighteningly well to the loss of the only grandfather they remember.  My father passed away while the girls and I were at a playground on the afternoon of June 2nd.  I called Mom at 3:00 while Charlotte batted a whiffle ball with a new friend and Maggie played on the swings, and my brother answered by saying he couldn't talk- Dad was gone and he needed to find the phone number to call to have his body removed from the house.  He hoped to have the body out of the house (Dad died at home) before my sister and her kids arrived, and they had just left the airport in a rental car... ETA about an hour, maybe two since traffic was bad that day.  My sister had come as soon as she could upon hearing that Dad was not going to last much longer, and she missed him by just a couple of hours.

It was a blur then, but I remember every detail of that afternoon now.  Charlotte and Maggie seemed unaffected by the news, but kept giving me hugs and saying, "I'm so sorry that your Daddy died."  We had visited the day before, and when it was time for us to leave, we each told my father that we loved him as he slept on a hospital bed in the living room. It seems surreal now.  I feel kind of guilty for having children so late in life that my girls have only one surviving grandparent now.

It's a strange thing, standing at a funeral and being told what a saint someone was, of whom you have countless unsaintly memories.  His public and private personas were polar opposites sometimes.  He was a good man, but not without flaws.  And it was enlightening to hear how some of my siblings felt about him (and about each other).  I can't believe I hadn't known just how damaged some of my family's relationships are/were.

The girls are wonderful.  Our mortgage has been modified to much more manageable terms.  C still has not received a paycheck, but claims to be optimistic that regular income will commence within this month.  I was promoted at my part-time retail gig, so now my measly income covers a little more than just groceries.  We have much to be grateful for.

Thursday, May 29, 2014

Rough patch

Nothing new on the parenting front.  The girls are 98% awesome 2% challenge.   They're best friends and love playing together.   They're obsessed with Frozen and can recite portions of the dialog verbatim, complete with gestures and inflections copied directly from the movie.
That's not where our difficulty lies.  The kids are fantastic.

Financially, we're struggling.   C hasn't had a real paycheck since December and my 3 1/2 year old layoff has caught up with us.   We've fallen behind on the mortgage and have been preliminarily denied modification due to our current lack of income.   C has been working for a couple of months, but hasn't been paid.   Sob story about the new company needing to complete certain milestones before they get paid and have the money to pay employees. I wouldn't be heartbroken if we short sale the house.  We're so underwater that it doesn't make financial sense to pay it off.  My credit score has already plummeted,  and won't start to improve until we somehow catch up on the mortgage.   Luckily, everything is in my name,  so C's credit is great.

Even our financial woes pale in comparison with some family health issues.  My father was diagnosed with prostate cancer last July and it had spread before it was caught.   Now, tumors on his liver have not responded to treatment.   The doctors have given up and it seems my father has too.  We have weeks, maybe a month or two if we're lucky.   It's not looking good.   My siblings and I will meet with a hospice nurse tomorrow.   We don't know how to deal with this.   We don't know what to expect.   I have no idea how to tell the girls that their grandfather is dying.   How do I explain death to them?  How much time do we have left?

Monday, February 10, 2014

still here

Blogging just doesn't cross my mind often lately.   These lovely girls fill my days, happily for the most part.   No time for details now, but here are a few photos to show how they've grown. 

Playing in the snow...

Charlotte's second movie (Frozen.  We loved it.)

Maggie's big girl car seat.  We finally surrendered the baby bucket.