Hi Bitches!

Suzi, what a heartbreaking situation. I hope he is somehow able to find peace and comfort.

Sometimes it sucks being the practical rock.

It is my natural state of being. I am sometimes perceived as unfeeling because my practical rock side kicks in powerfully when needed. I've only lost it a very few times. Don't like it, and it doesn't help, so I avoid it.

I am on partial work strike. I worked 28 hours over the weekend fixing a work catastrophe while DH was off coaching a basketball tournament. I told him it is all on him for a couple days while I ignore the support emails and calls. GoT and Elementary time!

Ugh, I think I may be confusing the kid who OD'ed with another kid from that side of the family. I tried to FB stalk him and he doesn't have much of a presence there but the one picture that I think is him isn't the face I had matched with that name in my head. Which breaks my heart even more because if it is that other kid - he never pinged me as someone dealing with addiction. Which, I guess, is part of the larger issue with addiction - you never know who is struggling.

But now how do I ask my dad - hey, is THIS the cousin who died? His wife's family is HUGE and I don't see some of them very often, especially since I moved to Colorado, so it is completely possible I have names/faces crossed up. No matter who, the whole thing is heartbreaking, but I still want to have the right person in my head.

Tragedies keep happening. Wish Death could take another holiday for a while.

Suzi, that's so awful. The poor family.

I'll be really sad to lose any of my cats, but when Leo goes, it'll break my heart. I try not to think of the inevitable.

Sometimes it sucks being the practical rock.

I don't think of myself that way, in my everyday life I'm far from practical or rock-like. But in a crisis I'm the calm and focused one who fixes things. I don't know how I came to be that person.

In my family DH and his namesake son are super emotional in a crisis, while younger son and I are cool, calm, and focused on the fixing. DH gets with the fixing, but with non-stop exclamations of "OMG This Is The Worst Catastrophe In The World", which makes me crazier than the crisis itself.

I texted my dad asking for a picture "because CJ isn't sure who I'm talking about". A coward's way of resolving WHICH family member died? But both Kelly and I are unsure now that we have compared notes on the males around that age in that part of the family.

Suzi, I've only got one cousin that I know by both face and name, so don't feel too bad!

Good idea, Suzi!

Sam Shepard died. ALS apparently. 73 doesn't seem old to me any more.

Dad sent me a picture. Not the person I thought. Which, now I feel horrible that I thought Awkward dude was an addict. And the kid that died is someone I remember as "he was so quiet and nice".

Just a big ole pile of UGH.

Ugh. My air conditioner wasn't working, so I texted my landlord, and he said that he'd call the air conditioning guy. Then, a couple hours later, the landlord came over without telling me that he'd be coming, and I was wearing pajamas (with no bra.) Then he looked around at my apartment and told me that he was concerned that the mess would attract rodents. (It's absolutely not food mess -- I'm really careful about that. It's mostly papers and some plastic bags and random stuff on the floor, which shouldn't attract any more rodents than books would, right?) But now I'm freaking out about that, and I told him that I'd called a professional organizer to help, and he said that was good. Which means I need to get back to the professional organizer that I emailed -- she'd emailed me back and told me to call her to discuss it, but I'm really terrible at phone calls, so I just emailed her again to ask if we could discuss it over email.

But, freaking out now. Because I really never learned how to keep a house clean, but I also definitely learned that letting anybody see a messy house is humiliating.