Oh man, brenda! Best to your dad as well!

My boss just cancelled our weekly meeting, forever. Now I have to try to find time "as needed." And his EA is about to take a different job. That should be fun...

Dad~ma to you too, brenda.

Consuela, Liese, love and strength to both of you. It's all so hard.

brenda, health~ma for your dad, and also some communication and go-to-the-flippin'-doctor ~ma. Dads, man.

I wish my boss would cancel the weekly meeting forever.

As I write this, we have had more customer cases than we've had on the worst days I've seen combining hurricanes and bad updates. I bet we will easily eat 2000 cases today. Fortunately, that's mostly people chatting in saying "I can't connect, is your system down?" and we say "Yes," and they swear at us and leave. Great for handle times, but kind of wearing on the nerves.

In better work news, there's a woman who used to be on my team, but switched to another, higher-stress/longer-hours team a while back. Now she's pregnant. I have been planning to try to get her back on my team when she comes back from mat leave, and she just said that exact thing to me! So that's something to look forward to in 6+ months.

Yikes, brenda, good luck.

Dad seems to be doing better today, but still no firm news.

Strength and peace to you and yours, Liese.

I don't know that I ever actually updated things in here regarding what happened after my mom died a few weeks ago.

My sister did, in fact, find a way to essentially write me out of the will and the family trust. So I guess that's done. I'm less mad about it and just sort of profoundly sad that this is the way it all played out. It's mostly what I expected, and she doesn't think that she's done anything out of sorts. In her mind, she came in to take care of mom, so it's all hers. The only thing she couldn't touch is what was left in an IRA which had a defined distribution that she was unable to get changed, and even on that she tried to get me to cash out my half and give it to her.

So yeah.

Family is hard.

Tim's diagnosis is very likely rheumatoid arthritis (his test results aren't conclusive enough to be 100%, but the other things it could be would be treated basically the same way, at least initially, so for all intents and purposes, it's RA). And I'm glad he has a diagnosis, so he can start treatment, but I'm telling you guys because I don't want to tell him, because I want to be supportive -- I *am* freaking out moderately about it.

I mean, it *is* good he has a diagnosis. Starting treatment now will limit the damage to his joints (and there is already erosive damage that can't be reversed). But Jesus H. Christ, you guys, the treatment is a fucking CANCER medication. It's a very very very low dose than is given for cancer, but still. (If it doesn't work well enough, then he moves on to an injectable drug that I'm hoping won't be ridiculously expensive. But one step at a time, right?)

And it's not just a chronic condition, it's an autoimmune one. That blows. I was really hoping for gout.

And in the category of Life Sure Is Funny, his ex-GF (the one whose daughter recently died) has RA. And since Tim and his ex are still friendly, I think she's going to be a SUPER big help to us as we figure all this out.

Good luck, Steph and Tim. You know what it is, and it's treatable. That's a lot.