Yesterday, in bullet points but not in order, went like this:

  • up early 6:30 usual
  • took new supplement regimen – L-Tyrisone, Creatine, L-Theanine, L-HTP along with caffeine at a lower amount
  • wake up, try to exercise, try to work through neck strain, very mediocre
  • Think about work
  • Try not to think about work
  • Think about work
  • Take care of Shelley in AM - walk outside long because impending heat would keep her indoors most of rest of day.
  • Went to Home Depot mid day for 20 minutes to grab storage bins – $40 for 9 good bins to organize basement Man Wire Mess that I have wanted to sort for years as I use most of the wires at least occasionally but can never find what I need so i sometimes order a new wire even though I know I have one in the rat's nest. No more. It isn't about the money, it's about the waste, I finally decided. I don't want to keep wasting things. I used to be better about these sorts of things when I was younger.
  • In a fit of inspiration, I worked on this blog for a while – at least three hours – in the morning. Fixed a bit of the templating in css. Imported six old journal entries from 2005.

No more bullets. Distracting. Need to comment.

The journal entries – I read them as I imported them. I had to hold myself back from editing them. My voice is the same. This is what always strikes me about my old entries – the sameness. Twenty years have passed and I largely think the same thoughts, travel the same mental trails. My situation has changed now. I'm married to – for all of our problems – a loving wife, whom I adore and want to be with for the rest of my life. I felt like I was excavating them from a dig site – I wanted to brush them off and start the restoration process. But I am fundamentally the same person with the same struggles – trying to be a good person, trying to deal with constant inner conflict and turmoil in mature ways.

There is a difference that I found myself to be proud of though. I don't drink anymore. I have an occasional glass or three of wine. By occasional I mean once a month and only socially unless I really fuck up. But I don't drink and my thoughts aren't occupied by drinking. There are lines in the old entries like "I only had five beers" and it's a weeknight and I'm going to work the next day and I consider it to be nothing at all. My twenty seven year old body took it all in stride.

Other than correcting a few spelling issues I couldn't stand, I left them untouched.

Penny went off to drive her mother to the infusion place in New Hampshire. She's doing some experimental treatment plan for Alzheimer's disease. I wish I could say I am happy about this.

I am happy that Penny is such a sweet person, trying to do anything she can to help her mom.

I am not happy that it costs so much. Seven treatments so far, 7.5K each after van rental: 53K or thereabouts so far. I asked Penny if we were done, and she said three more. I didn't bother to tell her that two treatments ago, she said "two more treatments." I remember because of the math. The numbers help me remember. So she's extended the plan without telling me. 53K goes to 75K. For her mom. Who is 78. Who will not beat Alzheimer's because nobody has.

At the beginning of the treatments her mom could not speak really.

53K later and Penny insists she is talking more. She still doesn't remember who I am. 53K for a few more words. Sunday, Penny said, her mother said that she feels alone a lot. Which made me feel bad, of course, what kind of person wouldn't? But 53K. Her mom is in a wheelchair and cannot toilet herself. She lives with a full time caregiver in her house. The costs are stunning and we bear them somehow. By "somehow" I mean raiding accounts that were supposed to be used for retirement. We pull about 200K pre-tax together, post is 160 maybe, and 53K – soon to be 75K – went to her mother.

I had the single worst year of my working life last year – 60 hour weeks regularly with nearly unbearable pressure on a project with an inflexible timeline and a co-worker (Alpo) who is a bully and is OCD on top of it – skilled yes, but extremely unpleasant to work with in close quarters – just a horrible, horrible year – only got a 4K raise for all of my staggering efforts – and I am shitting that out my ass for a woman who is essentially a zombie.

I will add that this woman, my wife revealed more than once, back when we were newer as a couple, back before Alzheimer's really took hold with her mom, that her dear mother used to call her "the girl" the way that masters call servants "the girl" and her mother would berate her and bully her and tell her that she expected "the girl" to take care of her in her old age. These revelations have not helped me to want to be particularly kind to "the mother in law" aka "MIL" and I cannot erase them from my mind.

I simply cannot get over it.

I didn't mean to write so much about it. This is what often happens when I journal. I start bulleting the day before with the intent to write a sweeping passage about my day and instead I obsess about a small thing.

What I was able to do was not argue with Penny about it on a tough day for her. I will have to bring it up again at some point – probably this weekend, when the endless set of obligations has been reduced to something that feels perhaps less endless and there might be a little room to cram a new thing on top, where the new thing is: Let's talk about how fucking insane this is.

I will stop this ranting before it becomes a screed. It does me no good. I was able to be kind to Penny on a tough day – I picked her up at the van place with my car, even though I needed to be working. Dog in car, AC on blast, 95 degrees out. She returned the van, got in the car, we drove the hour through rush to get home. I ordered sushi and served her. I made a peach smoothie with fresh peaches from costco and a few frozen strawberries to cool it down and add texture and a bit of variety.

Then we watched an episode of The Incredible Hulk – the one from 1977 – and went to bed.

I need to go run or I won't make it through my day. I have the cutover tonight again, the big one. I found a big bug yesterday – Big in terms of impact but easy to fix. I'll have to discuss it at the morning standup, then scramble to fix it, then the cutover itself is at 9.

I think it'll go fine but I've said that twice before already and been wrong. This is our third attempt.

The heat will lurk behind everything today like a villain in a movie that isn't in the scene you are watching – you know he's there in the background, doing his villain-y things, but the scene currently on display is somewhere else – the protagonist making love to his love interest, a side character being introduced. It will be 100 degrees and humid and if I don't go jog and then walk the dog now it will be so hot the pavement will burn her little paws.