I received a call from the school nurse first thing this morning that ltc needed her inhaler and couldn’t stop coughing. So, now I get to spend the rest of my day worrying about her. The cough from the flu can linger for 6 weeks or so according to her pediatrician.

We're getting ready for the big storm to hit. Heavy rains, flooding and high winds.

We're on a bit of a hill so I'm not too worried about flooding, but our drain at the bottom of the back stairs got overwhelmed the other day and looked scary as it filled up.

Yikes. Good luck, Hec.

Work told us yesterday that our regular in office day tomorrow will be optional because of the weather. Which I appreciate, I don't like driving in storms! I apparently lost power in the last one but I wasn't home for it so I just got the notices from PG&E and wasn't inconvenienced at all. I'm in a "flood zone" in that I am required to carry flood insurance but I am on slightly higher ground than nearby areas that are really flood prone, so I'm not too worried about my house, but some of the streets around here are likely to be pretty well underwater

In diamond shoes news, 2022 decided to get one more kick in on its way out the door. The timeshare my mother has owned for 40 years and that I’ve gone to for vacation nearly every year has shut down. Mom missed the letter about it when Papa was dying. The deed was still in her name, but we were paying the yearly maintenance fee to use it, and mom considered it essentially ours at this point. I felt it was the last place really connected to my childhood with my childhood home, Papa’s house, and my friends childhood homes having been sold ages ago. I’m sad that we didn’t get to stay in our usual condo last year because of fire damage, and I’m sad that we didn’t know it was our last time to say goodbye to it when we left.

Mom originally bought it because she felt it was important for me to have a real vacation every year and because we could drive there and eat a bunch of our meals at the condo, it was cost effective. I liked it for the same reasons for ltc. We definitely can’t afford to take her for a week in Cape Cod without it, and we certainly can’t afford the elaborate vacations that her classmates take.

Mom is also selling the beach condo they currently live in this year to move closer to us and to Stepdad’s niece. Which is mostly yay, but our little mini vacations to the beach will also be gone, and it is another place we cannot afford to vacation at on our own means.

I feel like so many things ended this year, and I really hate it.

Sorry, I know so many people are dealing with so much worse right now.

That's tough, sj.

My friend lost their vacation place on Sannibel Island that they'd been going to for 18 years over the xmas holidays. The whole thing is just wiped away and there's no way to revisit it.

So that tradition is just ended.

Stay high and dry, Buffistas.

I'm sorry about the changes, sj. It's hard.

That's rough, sj. It's hard to lose things like that.

I may have told this story before, but my parents and I used to vacation on Sanibel in November, starting when I was about eight, so 1975 or so. So it was really only four years, because they divorced in summer of '79. But that's right at that age when I was making lots of memories and learning so much. Some of the very few times I remember my folks just being happy together.

It's been heartbreaking to read about Captiva getting essentially cut in half by a storm a few years ago, and now this latest round has done so much damage to a place I really cherished as a kid.

The world changes, and sometimes those changes hurt a lot. Please be gentle with yourselves. (Being gentle with each other is much easier, sometimes.)

Change is stupid.