Making peace with Thanksgiving

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving 2009. I’m sure I’ve mentioned on this blog ad nauseum that I am NOT a fan of the holidays.

This year, however, in the spirit of positive change, I’ve decided to TRY to accept the coming season amicably. To neutralize it passively. I don’t want to fight it anymore.

For the first time in YEARS, I have decided to have dinner at Aunt and Uncle Crazypants’ house instead of spending the day entertaining myself or going to friends’ homes. For most people, these sorts of holidays are normally spent with family, but… you have to know my family. Holidays are just another reason for certain members of my family to get sloppy, off-the-charts, boozehound drunk. Alcohol is a panacea for all my family’s wounds—used for both celebration and mourning as well as a cure for boredom—which would be great if it acted as a salve instead of salt.

The last Christmas I spent with The Crazypants (many years ago), they had gotten so wasted before I got there, they actually—literally—passed out in their food. I mean, total face plant. *SPLAT* It would be funny if it wasn’t so pathetic. I was horrified. For me, that was it. I walked out. I have since refused ALL invitations. I’d rather be alone than be exposed to that kind of drunken idiocy.

This year, however, is different. V-e-r-y different. My world is a changed place. I’m ready to mix things up, forgive old wounds, and try… just one more time. Providing they keep their bacchanalian proclivities to a minimum, we’ll have a good time. I also know that should they get out of hand, I have no problem giving them the finger and walking out. My one proviso to Aunt and Uncle Crazypants in accepting their invitation was that they CANNOT get wasted if I am there. Period. End of story. No negotiation. Any slurring or signs of overindulgence, and I’m gone.

I’m a hardass when it comes to these things for a reason.

My mother was a raging alcoholic when I was a teenager. Everybody that knows my family tells me what a wonderful, sweet person she was—my siblings do not remember her being an alcoholic at all and think I’m lying or exaggerating my experiences—so I suspect that Mom wasn’t a true alcoholic until after she’d had me and they were long out of the picture. Mom worked during the day, but after 5pm, all bets were off. When she got home, it was cocktail hour. From 5 until 8pm, she drank, and drank, and drank. Have you ever seen the drunks on the A&E show “Intervention”? Yeah, like that. Liters of vodka, gallons of wine, sometimes gin, and the occasional mixed drink just to liven things up. She became unreasonable. Belligerent. Angry. Depressed. Vicious. Nasty. Insulting. Spiteful. Argumentative. Paranoid. Illogical. Mean. Cruel. Totally at odds with her daytime, public persona.

And let me tell you something else—holidays were the worst.

On ordinary days, her excuse for drinking was “to put up with” me and my father. But holidays? Oh, that was the time when it was completely acceptable to get completely wasted because she’s “just having fun”. Alcoholics will find any reason to drink. Problem was, on holidays, I was odd man out. I was the only teenager. I stood out, too old to sit with my nieces and nephews, too young to drink with the grownups. So, I became the defacto babysitter and object of every drunken tantrum. In Boozeworld, everything was MY fault, so I tried to keep as low a profile as possible. Most of the time, I tried to hide in my room, or I’d go to the basement and work out on our exercise equipment—anything to stay out of sight and out of mind.

The one time I couldn’t hide was at dinnertime. I was expected to “perform” for friends and relatives like a good model teenage daughter. But the worst came after dinner. That’s when I got it.

See, my one and only real chore around the house was doing the dishes. That was exclusively my job. I didn’t ask for it—that’s just the way it was. If I wanted my three bucks a week allowance, I had to do the nightly dishwashing. But during the holidays, there were A METRIC TON of dishes. I guess in an NORMAL family, other family members would pitch in and make it fun. Not in my family. Whenever someone offered to (always an outsider, usually one of my brother’s girlfriends) my mother would insist that they leave me alone because I was such a lazy ass, there was no other reason for me to be there.

She meant it.

I never knew how weird this was until one of my brothers’ girlfriends actually stood up to my mother and called her on her bullshit. But that’s a story for another day.

Dozens of crusted-on, baked-on, slobbered-on sticky pots and pans, ten tons of silverware, fine china, crystal stemware, glasses, cocktail glasses—dear God, just name it. It was all there. It took HOURS. When relatives came and brought a dish to pass, I had to wash THEIR dishes as well. I often caught myself wondering if my family were using extra dishes and pots and pans on purpose simply because they knew THEY didn’t have to clean them. The entire kitchen—every countertop and table—was literally stacked with so many dishes, you’d think the 5th cavalry was living there.

Inevitably, my mother would get bored with her after-dinner conversations and wander into the kitchen to criticize whatever it was I was doing. She would stand over me and critique my washing technique. She would pour ammonia in my dishwater, add dishes to the soapy water while I was working in the sink, go through the cleaned dishes to find spots that I’d missed, then plop the whole pile right back in the water to be redone. I know drill sergeants that aren’t as cruel. All the while, with clinking ice cubes in her drink in one hand, slurring nonsense about what a worthless, horrible person I was going to turn out to be, and how I was never going to find someone to love me because I was such an ungrateful, horrible homemaker. Even worse was when some of the wasted relatives came in and chimed in their own drunken two cents—usually about how teenagers are so ungrateful, moody, and worthless, and how I was probably no different.

This scenario happened on a smaller scale every night—but on holidays, it was a full-scale production.

I have no good memories of holiday dinners as a kid. Not a one.

As an adult, I had a few. Especially, after I’d met M–. We had wonderful holiday meals—the kind I’d classify as “normal”. Yes, people drank, but they weren’t belligerent drunks. Friends gathered around a big table, laughing, telling stories. Nobody called me a worthless human being. Dishes done after the meal where everybody pitched in washing, drying—frequently a new device called a “DISHWASHER” was involved to do the hard jobs. I mean, small wonder I was so attracted to being happy. It’s FUN.

I am very selfish about my holidays. I patently refuse to spend a single solitary minute of my time with people who make me feel bad about myself. I guess that’s what upset me about my final year or so with M–, when everything went to hell. I wasted a couple of perfectly good holidays with him while he ruined them for me. But I realize I can’t hide from the holidays. Even if I don’t put up a Christmas tree, Christmas will come anyway. Even if I don’t eat turkey, Thanksgiving comes and goes just the same. I want whatever holidays I have left to be decent, and that starts TODAY.

If we are lucky, we get about 85 Christmases and Thanksgivings in a lifetime. I’m about halfway there now. I want ALL my future celebrations to be fun ones with friends and relatives who I allow in to form GOOD memories, not bad ones. How many nightmare Thanksgiving meals you’re supposed to have with relatives who drink and argue and fight? I’ve had all of my share and more—I’m done.

Happy Thanksgiving to you and yours. May you be peaceful and loving, warm and kind, and may those around you do the same.

Why can’t Johnny read?

You can tell a lot about a man from his shoes... for sale on eBay

[stepping up on soapbox]

In the past week or so, I listed around 50 items on eBay, of which, about half sold (told you it was bad out there!). Of those, several are still outstanding and haven’t been paid for yet. And the ones who haven’t paid? The eBay newbies. The ones with single-digit feedback who don’t know how to read an auction page, but somehow still manage to snipe the items at the last second. It’s the newbies that cause the most ire for me.

God bless the ones that pay quickly and ask intelligent questions. You guys are excused—I’m not referring to you. Happy bidding, and best wishes for a long and prosperous future on eBay.

It’s the other ones—the delinquents—I’m referring to.

Where more experienced eBay’ers know to read descriptions, the majority of newbies don’t seem to fathom that I am not a commercial entity like Amazon. I cannot offer free shipping on everything. I can’t upgrade your computer purchase with extra RAM. I can’t offer advice on whether or not the item will go with your decor. On eBay, you need to do your own homework. I accurately describe my items, I often take the time to find out extra information and include it in the auction description if I can. If there’s something wrong with an item, I say so. I take TONS of clear, large photos. I start the bidding at a reasonable price. I offer fair shipping charges, and I pack and ship the item within a reasonable period of time.

Don’t get me wrong; EVERYBODY starts with zero feedback and is a newbie at some point. I get that. I’ve been on eBay for, like, 15 years, so I have tons of experience with this and am very professional and patient with my newbie buyers. But these newbie buyers are really testing my patience. It’s like they’re breeding a very special kind of stupid these days.

I always welcome questions, but some of them are… well… judge for yourself.

Example #1: Some guy with one, single feedback bought my old computer, sniping it out from a more experienced buyer at the last second DESPITE the fact that it says (in boldface) on my auction page that I won’t accept buyers with feedback less than 10 unless they email me first to confirm their intentions. So, okay, I’ll just deal with it and hope he’s one of the good ones. He’s not. I’ve been inundated with weird, obtuse questions. First, he emailed to ask me if I could send him more photos of the computer. Keep in mind, he already bought it (though he hasn’t paid yet). I told him there were plenty of photos on the auction page (I took photos from every possible angle) and patiently asked if there was something specific he wanted a picture of. He thanked me for my response. Then he emailed to say he’d pay me next week for the item because “everything should be in place by then”. Uh… ooookay. Then he wrote this afternoon to ask whether or not it had certain features—features that were clearly outlined in the auction description that, apparently, he did not read before he hit “bid”. Really obvious stuff that anyone who knows these computers, or even looks at the photos, should know. I patiently replied that the computer comes as is, just as shown on the auction page, with nothing else included. I’m waiting to see if he backs out of the auction, which I’m betting he will.

Example #2: If I say an item is red, it’s red. Why are you asking me if it’s brown or tan? Look at the pictures. Read the description. It’s right there in the title: RED item. It’s not brown. It’s not tan. It’s RED. And when you follow up with, “is it brown, tan, and red?” Uh, no, it’s just red. (from an actual email conversation with one of my buyers.)

Example #3: If I say I ship to the United States only and don’t ship internationally, I mean it. It’s right there in the auction description in boldface lettering as well as in the shipping information section. Yes, that means I will not ship that $1 item to you in Tahiti or Mogadishu or Timbuktu either. That does not mean I hate your country or you. It means I’ve done this many times before and, sadly, it’s not worth my while to schlep to the post office with a $1 item and stand in line for an hour so I can fill out miles of paperwork for the privilege of sending an inexpensive item overseas. Sometimes I make an exception if the item is worth a few hundred dollars, but not for the cheap stuff, sorry. (I had so many of these questions, I simply started ignoring them.)

Further advice to newbie buyers on eBay: For God’s sake, READ descriptions. Everything you want to know is usually there. As a buyer, it is your obligation to be aware of what you’re purchasing. Ask questions a long time before buying so sellers have time to answer (don’t email three minutes before an auction closes). It’s also not my job to educate you on something. For instance, if you’re buying a computer and you don’t know what a gigabyte is or why you need one, you need to do a lot more homework before you buy my computer. Please don’t ask me that stuff. A quick note on shipping: Postal rates have skyrocketed—nothing is cheap anymore. Long gone are the days of $5 universal shipping at the post office, I’m afraid. That’s the way it is. Again, since I am not a big company like Amazon.com, so I don’t get special deals with any particular postal service. Yes, it really does cost $10 to ship that big, fat, heavy $1 item priority mail. I make no apologies for that—it’s not my fault. And, no, I can’t offer free shipping because if I ship that $1 item to you for free, I lose money. Even with regular shipping, between buying bubble wrap, boxes, ink, packing, paper, and postage, trust me, I DO NOT make money on shipping. Gimme a break.

Bottom line: buyer beware. Read. Understand. Know what you’re buying. Is that too much to ask?

Thank you, and good night.

[exiting soapbox]

Isn’t Thanksgiving supposed to be about giving thanks?

Use it or lose it

This is bullshit. I feel terrible again. I’m supposed to feed myself positive energy, but it’s in short supply, even on my Positive Self Talk Graffiti Wall. I can only write “You are a good person” so many times in the face of so much evidence to the contrary before the irony overwhelms me and I must stop.

I guess that means I’m human.

You can be skipping along, lalala, minding your own business and thinking things are looking up, then God comes along and smacks you with a curve ball to humble you.

A few days ago, I noticed my dog Blondie, who is a diabetic, was drinking a lot of water and had become fussy about eating. I’ve been down this road with him before and, working on the natural assumption that he’d eaten some rotten thing buried in the yard which upset his system, I chose to ignore it. Bad move #1.

The next day, he refused his breakfast altogether. That’s never a good sign. Shortly after, he started acting as if he had the worst bellyache in the universe. Classic signs of pancreatitis, though it’s been YEARS since he had an attack. Pancreatitis and I are old enemies—Blondie’s weeklong stint at the Vet’s several years ago taught me how dangerous it is, the result of which is the diabetes we now deal with every day. I know the signs of pancreatitis. It’s ugly. It’s excruciatingly painful. And he probably should have been hospitalized.

If it’s not too bad, and caught early and handled well, it can be managed. Total abstinence of water and food for at least 48 hours and watch for any signs of complication. I told myself that if it got worse or took an unexpected turn, I’d rush him to the vet’s and negotiate some kind of deal even though I didn’t have more than a couple hundred dollars to my name. So I watched him like a hawk all day long. It was horrible to see him in pain and not be able to do anything about it. The crisis followed the usual course for pancreatitis: first few hours of cramping, then several hours of extreme wave cramping and throwing up, then the cramping eases and the exhaustion sets in. The one aspect that was unusual was his extreme thirst. That hadn’t happened before, and it bothered me.

He was so thirsty that when I let him outside, he tried drinking frost off the grass. After he stopped throwing up as the afternoon went on, I began letting him have small amounts of water on an hourly basis, which he drank with a madness. He kept it down, so I let him drink more. I blamed his extreme thirst on some dehydration from the fever, but the whole thing was bothering me. This wasn’t quite normal for your average pancreatitic attack.

What if I was wrong?

So I went online and to my medical journals. I ran across a concurrent diagnosis I hadn’t considered: diabetic ketoacidosis. Why hadn’t it been on my radar screen? The symptoms are almost identical except for the hunched posture, classic of pancreatitis. What if… what if we had two things going on? By this time, we were at the 13th or 14th hour of this incident and I discovered the dog had developed a distinct smell. Not vomit. Nail Polish Remover. Acetone.

Classic Ketoacidosis.

Oh no.

Diabetics and families of diabetics dread this one. It’s WAY worse than low blood sugar…. way. worse.

So I decided to run a blood glucose on him. This was very hard for me to perform knowing he was already in pain, but it had to be done. I tried to clip one of his nails to get a blood sample for testing—the easiest and only truly reliable method for me—and, uh… unexpected results—no blood.

No blood.

What?

So I clipped closer. And closer. And closer. Blondie wiggled and complained. This was not comfortable for him. Eventually I thought I got something. But it wasn’t right. What? No. It was plasma. Yes, instead of blood, it was clear plasma.

“That’s impossible.” I said out loud. “That can’t happen.”

So I clipped another nail… again… again… a little at a time… which eventually resulted in a very pale blood sample. Tested it at 375, which is high, but not ketoacidotic high. But if the blood is that thin, that can’t be accurate.

“What the fuck?” I thought. I swear to you, I’ve seen some shit in my day, but I’ve never seen plasma come out instead of actual blood. That shit was weird.

By this time, it was about 8:00 at night. I weighed my options. If I took him to the emergency vet’s it would cost about $2000 and, to be honest, I don’t have that kind of money, and I doubt I could negotiate it down to something I could afford since these vets were not familiar with Blondie or me. During the day, I had put a flurry of items up on ebay in an attempt to make money as quickly as I could, but I wasn’t getting much in the way of results from my efforts. I’d made only a couple hundred dollars—far shy of what I would need.

The dreaded thought occurred to me that this could be it (even if I had the money to take him to the vet, there are no guarantees that I wouldn’t end up spending $2000 only to have to put him down anyway).

So instead, I decided to do whatever supportive measures I could at home and wait until morning. It was a judgment call. If he was still sick, I would take him to my regular vet and BEG for whatever services they could offer me, even if it was just to put him down. (I cry even as I write this.)

Blondie’s fever was running so high he was like a furnace in my arms. I got several cold packs out of the freezer and surrounded him with them. He was comforted and fell asleep.

A few hours later, we went to bed. He normally doesn’t sleep with me—nor does he want to—but I set him on the bed next to me on top of the sheets, and underneath I put more cold packs for him to sleep on. He didn’t resist or complain. He slept there all night.

He woke me up the next day bright as a button and ready to go as if nothing had happened. Dogs are amazing when it comes to recovery—no grudges, no worries. Just constant forward motion. His fever had obviously broken, but he still smelled like acetone, and something still seemed off. Now, dear reader, keep in mind that with pancreatitis, it’s VERY dangerous to feed them anything for 48-72 hours or else you risk irritating the pancreas and restarting the whole cycle. But given that he’d kept the water down so quickly, wasn’t dehydrated anymore, and was still in severe ketosis, I decided to feed him, provide insulin, and take the chance. He ate RAVENOUSLY and wanted more.

He’s been getting steadily better since. Knock wood. Today he seems like his old self. Only problem is, I am not. I’m still really upset. Not to mention paranoid. Every burp, every gurgle, every sleepy look, and I think it’s starting all over again. Is it? My own knowledge of the situation mocks me.

I now realize that what happened probably started as mild high blood sugar which I should have caught and managed. I didn’t see it. He may have gotten a mild case of pancreatitis from that, which set off a whole cascade of decompensation and dehydration. It’s a vicious circle—and one that I got REALLY REALLY lucky in fixing. Like pulling a pilot out of a nosedive, I was able to course correct and bring him back to level… but for how long?

I doubt I will ever be that lucky twice. It was raw miracle. It shouldn’t have happened.

And that thought scares me. See, the fact of the matter is, diabetes is a killer. I fucking HATE this disease (and said so many times that day). Blondie will, eventually, die from this disease. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, maybe not this week, maybe not this year, but eventually, this is going to happen and not me nor any doctor will be able to reverse it. It will be painful for him, and it will suck for me.

I got really lucky this time.

[IMPORTANT NOTE: I DO NOT recommend that anybody try to manage an attack of diabetic ketoacidosis at home. In case I didn't make the point well enough: I GOT LUCKY. If you want to read all the white papers and do the research, be my guest, but when you do, it will scare the crap out of you. There are a million complicating factors here that normally can't be managed at home. Hospitalization is the recommended course for a reason. You need an expert. Trust.]

Next week is Thanksgiving, and yes, I am thankful that my little dog Blondie is alive and well and no longer smelling of acetone. I am very thankful that some of my auctions sold so that I have a few hundred dollars in the bank (though not nearly as much as I’d hoped for). I am thankful for a few things like that right now, but I am more than mindful that life is only a tenuous string that holds this whole mess together. Easily clipped, easily lost. Sobering. I am very angry and bitter about that—and about the fact that nobody really knows, understands, nor cares. Unless I give them $2000 first, that is.

I have a lot of bad things on my plate right now, much of it my own design. The Positive Self Talk Graffiti Board isn’t getting much action today.