We just got back from the cocktail bar, because now that she can legally drink hard liquor (here), of course she should.

Raising her right! 18!

Jim, I don't know how you just let your kids grow up like that all willy nilly. Now they're adults and probably don't appreciate the Archies as much as they once did.

it was Emmett who carried her up the long steps in his arms into the house.

Oof. That one brought more tears.

David, I know this is so hard on you but sharing these bits just makes me feel…I don’t know…feels. And more feels.

In that weird, Japanese term for bittersweet or poignant that is untranslatable. Setsunai

it was Emmett who carried her up the long steps in his arms into the house.

Damn allergies.

it was Emmett who carried her up the long steps in his arms into the house.

Oof. That one brought more tears.

Same.

Oof. That one brought more tears.

Yes.

And happy that Tim's incision looks good and he's moving a bit more easily. De-puff thoughts to the feet.

I'm in awe of the beautiful and raw fierceness and just hugeness of the love all of team Smay is weaving around JZ in front of our eyes.

And, while it should probably be a separate post but I'm that lazy, I'm kind of in love with smonster finally finding and moving in with the lesbian of her dreams!

Timelies all!

I came home today to find the downstairs toilet spewing water. It looks like the hose connecting the water valve to the tank came out/broke. I was able to turn the water off, but I have no idea how long it was running. There is water all over the place on the main level, but there are also leaks from the ceiling of the next level down, where the laundry room and Gary's office are. What a mess.

That story of Emmett carrying Jacqueline is... yeah. You all just built a hell of a team Zmayhem over the years with such love and dedication. I'm glad she's home. I'm glad she has all of you... that you all have each other.

Yeah, good for you.

In that weird, Japanese term for bittersweet or poignant that is untranslatable. Setsunai.

There is a lot of sweet in this process.

Let me tell y'all about two more people who deserve Fucking Champ recognition: Matilda's teacher Ms. Stuart, and Jacqueline's previous supervisor Tracy.

Tracy came to visit Jacqueline the first day after she was admitted in the hospital. She stayed with her for several hours while I had to run around, and when I came back she said, "If there's anything I can do, let me know."

Which is something everybody has said, but Tracy was in the unique position of somebody who could help me with an immediate problem by virtue of her being still employed at UCSF, and also being a super competent office bulldog who knows how to bend the branch of a bureaucracy toward mercy.

Jacqueline officially retired on August 1 (staying one day into the new month allowing her to collect a COLA raise which uplifted her pension a notch). And we had both noticed since that transition that while we seemed to have health care, we hadn't seen a bill since she switched from employee withholding from her check to retiree paying their own way.

As you can imagine at this point in time we did not want our health insurance to lapse through a bureaucratic fumble.

So I set Tracy on the task the next morning and I got a series of updating texts from her like: "I talked to the person who can't solve the problem, but their manager can and I'm going to have her call you before the end of the day."

And by mid afternoon I got a call from somebody in the retirement office who handles this stuff and he said it was all in progress and he was working to expedite the transition.

Which was good timing because about ten minutes later I got a call from the hospice coordinator to tell me that "we just called your insurance company and it said Jacqueline's coverage ended on August 1."

So I didn't have to freak out at that point. And, indeed, when I was leaving the hospital around 5:30 (after Matilda and JZ's brother Lukas took over) I got a call confirming that her health care was officially covered, backdated to her retirement with no break in coverage.

Not only did I not have the time or energy to fight my way through UCSF's bureaucracy, I didn't even have the first phone number to start. Tracy not only got it started, she pushed it through until it was completed that day.

When I thanked her she demurred, and said, "I don't have that much pull. It's just people looking out for Jacqueline here." Despite her demurral, she's absolutely a Fucking Bureaucracy Wrangling Champ.

Ms. Stuart has been Matilda's ceramics teacher since her Sophomore year, and they've grown increasingly close during the last year.

One thing that had been pressing on me was that I needed to talk to Matilda's principal and counselor to get some accommodation with her school schedule and lightening her stress. Wanted to skip math (11 grades seemed enough for a girl who has been crying over her math homework since Common Core in third grade), make sure she had ceramics and got her TA position with one of her two favorite PE teachers.

Ms. Stuart also runs the Blue and White (school colors) club which is basically a leadership group, and they organize the students who run orientation for incoming Freshman. So Matilda went in yesterday, to orient incoming students and Ms. Stuart pulled her aside and said, "This is your new schedule. I saw the schedule they gave you and I told your counselor it was too stressful for you this year, so I changed it." And my friends, it is the most cherry-picked schedule any senior could have.

Ms. Stuart anticipated my problem without me talking to her about it and fixed it before I had to make a single call. And that's why Ms. Stuart is a Fucking Champ.