March 1, 2010

I just realized what the date is. It's already March 1. Two whole months of 2010 have flown by. I can't believe it.

So much is going through my head, and normally writing helps me get it all out. But sometimes -- rarely -- I am so highly emotional that I can't write anything. And that's how the last 6 weeks have been for me. Even now, I'm not sure how much I can get out.

On January 14, 2010, my daddy died unexpectedly. It was a Wednesday. No, really it was a Thursday because it was 12:32 in the morning. Wednesday the 13th, I got a call that he was going into the E.R. The flu he'd had since Monday the 11th wasn't letting up, and he was having trouble breathing.

Let me back up and say that my daddy was fine Monday morning. He sent me an IM saying he was on his way to his first class at IUK, and he'd call me when he was done. I sat there (my first class wasn't until 6pm) waiting anxiously for his call, to find out how his first day of college after 18 years away was. After several years of talking about it, my daddy was going back to school for a Bachelor's degree. He wanted to study psychology and become a counselor and work within his church to help others. Somehow, instead of all that making it easier, it only makes it harder that he's gone.

So, Monday afternoon I called him and found out he didn't go to school. He was very sick -- suddenly and awfully -- and couldn't come to the phone. My brother was at his apartment sitting with him, and he was worried. I got this nagging feeling that he needed to see a doctor immediately. With my daddy's bad heart, a normal bad cold or mild flu could land him in the hospital. But he wouldn't go.

Tuesday came and went and he wasn't feeling better. The bad feeling got worse, and I considered skipping school to go see him and force him to go to the hospital. I didn't, though. I would have, in a heartbeat, if I'd known that the next time I'd see him he would be unconscious, on a respirator, with a balloon pumping his heart because his body couldn't do it. Because I had this bad feeling -- one I couldn't shake but kept trying to tell myself was an overreaction -- I passed a message on to him through my brother. I told Daddy that he needed to go to the hospital, if not for himself, then for me and my brothers. And if not for us, then for school. Because he needed to know whether he had to withdraw, and if so, he had to do it early enough to get Ws and not Fs. And if he didn't have to withdraw, he needed to know so he could start catching up on his work.

Wednesday evening, when the rest of my anatomy class was listening to a lecture on blood, I was sitting in the ICU waiting room in Kokomo, where my mom told me that the reason my daddy conceded to get checked out was because someone had told him he needed an excuse for his teachers. I felt good about myself for a minute, knowing it was my words that got him to the hospital.

That good feeling didn't last, though, because the doctor said his prognosis was bad. Real bad. I got to see him, and tell him that he had to get better so he could come to my college graduation in May. I wanted that picture with me in my cap and gown, standing between my smiling parents. I didn't get it in high school, and now I won't ever get it because it took me seven years to get through college. I told my daddy that I still wanted him to walk me down the aisle, that I know I disappointed him by eloping and when I have the money I want a real wedding ceremony -- primarily so that he could do what he'd always dreamed off, and give his only daughter away. And I told him that I wasn't going home until he was better, that I'd miss all the school I had to to make sure I didn't miss anything.

Most importantly, I told him that I loved him and not to worry about anyone but himself. I guess he listened.

Three hours later, he started a series of cardiac arrests, and each time the nurse would come out to tell me his heart had started beating again, another would be on her heels to tell me it had stopped again. I got to watch, to see that they were doing all they could for him, but it was so brutal. CPR in real life is nothing like you see on TV. It's not a quick series of calm, small thrusts and a doctor with just the right amount of angst in his voice counting to 15. It's much more violent, and horrible.

At half past twelve, his doctor asked me to make the toughest decision I've ever had to make. The CPR wasn't helping, and they'd given him all the medicine they could give. He'd had five heart attacks, essentially, and we already knew that even if he came out of this he might have severe brain trauma from the lack of oxygen. He needed my permission to stop trying to resuscitate him.

At 12:31am, I agreed. The doctors didn't have to save my daddy. He was already with God.

At 12:32am, the doctor called it. At that second, my heart shattered.

I planned the funeral, I picked out the casket, I ordered the grave marker (which, by the way, doesn't come with the cost of the funeral itself), I picked out the flowers, I wrote the obituary, I bought an outfit, I endured the fighting between my brothers, I held my 14 year old brother while he made the worst sound I've ever heard, shaking uncontrollably, I explained to my 10 year old that Grandpa Bob went to be with Grandma Boots in Heaven, and I gave all PR responsibility to my husband. The poor guy, who was in his own right devastated, spent hours calling and texting my friends and family members. I love him for that more than he might know. And I love all my friends and family members who answered the correspondence at 1 in the morning, some of them even offering to come sit with me despite 8am work schedules. I met with the funeral director, I picked out his gravesite, I paid the bills, I went through everyone's pictures for the DVD (which Mike, bless his heart, made so it would be done right), and I wrote the worst poem I've ever written, both from an emotional standpoint and actual wordage. It probably sucks so bad, I'm embarrassed to reread it. But it was for my daddy, and he knows I anguished over every word, and read it with love.

In all of that, I forgot to eat, I couldn't sleep, and my nose ran so much I went through two boxes of Puffs with lotion.

It is now almost 6 weeks later, but it feels like I just buried my daddy yesterday. The wound is still raw, but I've managed to get a little of my life back. Enough to get caught up on my schoolwork and put together a collection of the poetry and songs my dad wrote.

I even took a shot at revising the novel we were collaborating on, but I couldn't do it. I will, but not yet. More on that later.

It's now 3:12am on March 1, 2010. But the date means nothing, because I feel empty. I'm counting down to graduation on May 9, but I can't get excited. Without my daddy, it won't be the same. And I know he's watching me, and that he'll be there in spirit, but it's not the same, and it never will be.

Thoughts

I just had a slight freak-out moment. I was sitting on campus, revising some short stories for my creative writing class, when I remembered the slew of campus-related short story contests with deadlines in February. This caused the following train of thought:

Speaking of February, Amazon's annual Breakout Novel Award contest is in February.

Holy shit! February! That's two months!!

I wanted to have IE ready for it in February 2009 but I wasn't ready in time. I swore to myself I'd be ready in 2010.

Holy shit, I won't be ready in 2010! This time last year I was at the same point in my first draft as I am right now in my 2nd draft. I thought I could do it, but I couldn't. There's no way I can polish it by February.

Another year. ANOTHER. YEAR. that I haven't met any of my writing goals. Another year that I have sworn to myself I'd meet a deadline and I haven't.

Another year IE isn't done, when the 1st draft was 75% done in 3 months. The other 25% and 50% of the 2nd draft I have done now have taken about 16 months to finish. And I still have the rest of d2 and at least another draft.

Why can't I meet my goals? Will IE ever get finished?

I love IE. I want to finish it!!

Arrrgggghhhhh!!!!!!!

.... and those were my thoughts. It's finals time, can you tell?

Finals and Writing

I'm making a small amount of headway toward finishing Providence. But to be honest, getting sick the first week of December and having finals the second and third weeks makes finishing a new novel tough. But I'm trying to work on it a little at a time so I don't lose momentum. Hopefully after my last final (A&P at 6pm on the 16th) I will get to finish it by the 31st!!

Finals... ugg. Any college student out there knows I don't even need to say anymore. But I will. Finals are actually going quite well. I have a portfolio for creative writing, a presentation and paper for linguistics, a non-cumulative test for A&P, and a website for web-writing. The website is due tomorrow so after I turn it in I can concentrate on Monday's presentation for linguistics then Wednesday's papers and exam. I'm loving web design, though I wish I had more graphics to work with from the company.

I'm also trying to finish my application to the University of Floriday graduate program and compile some pieces to send to IUPUI's literary magazine, Genesis. I'm working on a poem I'm calling Sophia's Song, which fans of IE will appreciate, and revising a short story I wrote two years ago that has been rejected by numerous magazines.

I'm getting caught up on bills since Mike made a fat paycheck on the 11th, but it'll still take us a bit to dig all the way out of the trenches of debt. It's hard keeping my head up, but I'm managing.

So that's the third week of December, 2009 in a nutshell. Wow, the year's gone by fast!!!

November

November 2009 FLEW by! I completed NaNo, reaching 50K words on the 28th, and am slowly working my way toward the end of my new novel, Providence. Finals are around the corner and I'm hunkering down to finish a web site for Insanity Pro Wrestling, a creative writing portfolio, a paper and presentation on the history of the English language, and get a smashing grade on my A&P final since I bombed the last test and watched my chances of getting an A go down the drain :( But hey, I wrote 3/4 of a novel, right?

Other things on my mind, in random order:

I ♥ Buffy.

I absolutely despise the little dog that lives in the house next door. I live on a corner so my backyard meets with three others, and all three houses have little dogs. They all meet at the corner (my dog included, when he feels like playing outside) and bark at each other. But, my dog isn't in the mix usually. And even when the other dogs aren't out, the one right beside my house is outside All. Damn. Day. And barks. ALL. DAMN. DAY.

I am getting over being sick. Monday was awful, and I thought for sure I had a severe flu. But by Tuesday it was just a nasty head/chest cold. Today, Friday, I feel much better, with just some sinusy stuff still going on.

Of course, I have to go pick up Austin from school in a couple hours, and I just found out that he has bronchitis and a sinus infection. ... Here's to being sick again next week!

Christmas is on the way but once again, we won't have the money to really do much.

Mike got a job!! Of course, we're still late on rent. But the landlord's pretty cool and says it's no big deal. And we won't be able to use any of his first paycheck for Christmas. It's just a bit too little, too late for that.

I ♥ Providence. ☺

5 months and 5 days til graduation!

I hate snow. I loathe it. It should be illegal. It hasn't snowed here yet, but it's going too.

Why Indiana?!?!

And I'm off to do some homework.

End of October

Tomorrow is Halloween. For the first time in a lot of years, I don't really care. I'm not dressing up, not throwing a party for the kids, and don't have any one to bring trick-or-treating. What shall I do with myself?

Well, I'll probably work on homework, since I have a 4 page paper due next Wed that hasn't been started, a whole website that has barely been started, and 2 chapters in anatomy that need read. Blah. Oh, and then I'll be getting ready for NaNo, which starts at midnight on November 1st.

Mandy and I have a midnight NaNo date ☺ Of course, midnight for her is 1am for me. I'll still be there.

I'll also be worrying myself to a tizzy about graduate school. Just when I thought I had it all figured out (psycholinguistics at the University of Florida -- go Gators!!) it was brought to my attention that a theoretical/research degree is only really good for one thing -- research. Oh, and teaching. Which is fun, but not necessarily good for a lifetime career. Possibly, but not necessarily. So, I've been e-mailing some experts at the U of F to see if there is something better suited for me. So far, I have thought about:

cognitive psychology
speech-language pathology
psycholinguistics

None of them are 100% what I want. SLP is the closest to a practical solution as I can get, but I don't want to be JUST a speech-language pathologist. Actually, I don't really want to be one at all. I just want to know some of the stuff an SLP knows so I can use it for research. If I could get a clinical license with cognitive psych, I might go that route, but it's even more theory-based than psycholinguistics. Oh, psh. Just when I thought I was set.... plenty more to think about.

Then there's my NaNo novel. All I know so far is that my protag, Quinn, is a struggling full-time romance writer who gets dumped by her long-term boyfriend and high-tails it to the ocean for inspiration, where she somehow runs into the paranormal side of life. I think my mMC's name will be Joss. I even had a last name for Joss, but I have forgotten it.

Oh, in good news, I wrote a poem. And I won 3rd place in a poetry contest! Which entitles me to a $100 gift certificate at Barnes and Noble! Wooo!!!

Maybe I should by some books about choosing a grad program/career....