What a BuzzKill

I received a call today from Sherise’s grandmother. She told me that the decision of whether or not to take Sherise’s mother off of life support falls to the oldest (adult) child of the patient. So the doctors will leave her plugged into the machines for up to a week before they’ll consider looking to the younger children (22 and 11, I believe) and the mother.

We still haven’t heard anything from Sherise. Nobody knows where she is or how to contact her. So this ordeal has become even messier.

It seems odd to be writing about this. I don’t know what else to do. It’s frustrating to see it happening from my perspective and I can only imagine it is even more frustrating and painful for members of her family who want closure.

_{This entry just wants it to be over.}

Sherise’s mother suffered a brain aneurysm on Monday, October 10th, 2007 at approximately 3:30 pm. This effectively ended her short life of 53 years. The many tubes and medications that the doctors had stuck into her did nothing to bring her back. Her pupils were unresponsive, she did not respond to any pain stimulus: her brain was dead.

Yesterday Rece and I went to the ICU to join her family in their time of need. Rece wanted to see the grandmother he never met. We went into her ICU and saw her in the hospital bed with tubes and devices connected to her failing body. He was sad, but it seemed as though it was in reaction to hearing of a death of somebody he didn’t know. I found that to be one of the many saddening things about the visit.

In a way I’m glad he didn’t get to know her. She was full or pride and hate and spite. She was physically abusive to her daughter as she grew up, then, as an adult, was verbally abusive until I stepped in and told her that it had to stop. And stop it did … she broke off all contact with us while Sherise was still 5-6 months pregnant with Rece. Over the years she made deliberate efforts to avoid us and exclude us from events where she would be present. In this effort she was successful. It was difficult for Sherise to deal with, but I sincerely believe it was for the best.

Sherise still doesn’t know that her mother is gone. On Sunday, while Rece was spending his every-other-weekend with her, she left “to run some errands” he told me. A few hours later he left to return to my home, as planned. Sherise had not yet returned by the time he had he left. When her grandmother called me about what was happening and tried to reach Sherise, I was unable to provide any additional contact information, so I immediately left work and went directly to her home. I was greeted by her live-in boyfriend who appeared very concerned, asking if I had seen Sherise. He told me that the last time he had seen her was when he left for work on Sunday, while Rece was there. She had disappeared … again.

He shared with me that a couple of weeks earlier he confronted Sherise about her unpredictable behavior (more disappearances). He said that she admitted to having a drug problem and that it was “meth” that she had been on. Undoubtedly this is likely the reason for her recent absence in her normal life. It is also the reason for her being unavailable to learn of her mother’s passing.

I’m shocked by the death of Amy Victoria McManama (Lewis) and the news of Sherise’s descent into the world of drug addiction. At this point my job is to provide the best home as I can for Rece.

_{This entry doesn’t quite know what to do with it all.}

This is amazing. Yep, this is another YouTube video.

[flash http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sptkTmF8Jgk]

This entry appreciates the talent of a good musician.

The next time you feel the need to grasp a fistful of fluffy wool and hear panicked bleating, just remember that ewe are one sick puppy.

_{This entry isn’t all there, is it?}

Just in case you’re wondering, my best friends are Quinn & Christine. I may not always mention all the stuff we do or how often we talk and such, but it does happen. So when I say “I don’t have any plans for the weekend” I very well might be hanging out with Christine at some point over the weekend. I just mean that I don’t have any formal or complicated plan that might get in the way of me trying to sleep in or having some quiet time to myself.

_{This entry wants to be sure that his introverted behavior isn’t taken the wrong way!}

It’s 10:00 pm right now. I’ve just started drinking my 3rd beer since 9:20 pm. Let’s see if I can get drowsy enough to fall asleep.

Update – 10:25 pm: I’m only slightly buzzed, but not tired. I’m going to try rum and Diet Coke (Plus) now.

update – 11:00 pm : yep, one double=shot bacardi dark and diet coke did the trick. I’m going to bed now

_{This entry just wants to catch a few more z’s.}

“What? You mean you’re not going to post another video today? Are you crazy? I live for that shit!”

Sleep is just something my body knows it should do, but doesn’t really want to go about, well, yanno … actually doing … enough. I’m finding myself completely awake much later than, say, 2 weeks ago. Last night I got around 4.5 hours of sleep. What’s especially odd to me is that I’m not even tired — which is and isn’t a lie, sorta. I mean I feel like I’m not getting enough sleep, but I don’t feel tired. Does that make any sense? The night before I got about 5.5 hours of sleep.

It isn’t because I’m doing anything that would keep me up that late. I’ll stop playing Lord of the Rings Online as early as 11:00 pm and still not be able to get to sleep 2 hours later. Drinking a couple of beers will make me a little drowsy, but when I get into bed, I can’t fall asleep. There’s nothing like wanting to go to sleep, feeling like you’re going to go to sleep, but not actually falling asleep. Huh? What? Exactly.

We’ll see what happens this weekend. I don’t have anything planned (except to get rid of my cat) and Rece will be at his mother’s for the weekend, so it may be possible to get caught up on some missing rest. So my theory goes, at least.

Yep, I’m getting rid of my cat. I won’t say how, but the cat will be gone. Okay, I will say that it involves a shelter, but that’s it. My apartment smells of cat pee and I’m not happy about it at all. Didn’t she read my earlier post about restroom behavior? Stupid cat.

Work has been very busy lately, thanks to an anti-virus software roll-out project for one of our clients. They have over 120 computers that need their anti-virus software upgraded. All but about 30 of them are at remote locations, on stand-alone workstations, with staff that barely know how to right-click, let alone attempt to install software on their own — well, except for Smiley Central … they always seem to manage getting THAT piece of crap installed. Oh, lordy, lordy!

The entire process is very repetitive. We convinced the company headquarters that this was the perfect opportunity to make sure all of their computers were up to date and operating properly. So on top of the anti-virus software upgrade we’re doing updates, patches, and general system maintenance/tune-up things. The entire process is very repetitive. One of the only complaints I have is that it gets boring rather quickly to do the same process over and over again. It’s like the bottle in your shower says, “Lather. Rinse. Repeat.” except that bottles don’t talk. But some computers do (“Shall we play a game?”). The entire process is very repetitive.

So, yeah, sleep. My apartment is a complete mess right now. To see just how messy it’s become, click the webcam link to the right. Don’t forget that the username is Webcam1 and there is no password.

The web host I use to host my website, this blog, and Quinn’s blog just increased my online storage from around 175 GB to 478 GB for free. I’m trying to figure out what to do with all that space, since at this point Quinn and I have only managed to use around 0.1% of it. Online backup? Maybe. I’ll have to figure out how I can secure what I put up there before that becomes a feasible option.

Right now I’m at the office working on a client’s computer that’s hundreds of miles away. Their office is out in the boondocks, so the only Internet service they can get that’s better than dial-up is satellite. It’s pretty neat, but the latency is a bitch! I’ll click on something and it’ll take a second or two before I see that it did it (or didn’t). What typically takes around 2-3 hours to complete is looking like it’ll take 3-5 hours. The entire process is very repetitive. Hey, it’s all billed by the hour, so who am I to complain? I know my boss won’t!

The good news is that I’ll have plenty of work to do for the next couple of months. The bad news is that it’ll be a lot of the same stuff over and over again. I’m definitely going to have to get the other techs working on this project so I can change things up a bit.

Can one really be poor when they’re rich? Fuck if I know. I’m glad you asked, though.

_{This entry thinks that the entire process is very repetitive.}

It’s still a video, though…

_{This entry wants to pluck Disco Duck!}

I haven’t been particularly inspired to write anything lately, but I do happen upon some funny things on the web … especially on YouTube. Here’s yet another video:

[flash http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=025FoqHpy3A]

(if the video doesn’t display, click this link)

_{This entry is peeling, like an orange or a banana.}

Yup, this pretty much sums it up.

[flash http://youtube.com/watch?v=zJM4EBuL82o]

Okay, there is supposed to be a YouTube video above, but something seems to have gone wacky with it again. I’ll leave it as-is and hopefully I’ll have time to figure out what’s wrong with it again. In the meantime, here’s a direct link to the video:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=zJM4EBuL82o

_{This entry wants to dance like a monkey!}