My year has been another of changes.
When we last left off at Jan 2023 I was hopeful that there would be progress with my worker's comp and concussion stuff. I finally got a glasses prescription but worker's comp never authorized to pay for the glasses (and actually I still haven't gotten the prescription filled). There was lots of drama and back and forth and it came down to a settlement. The company I worked for wanted to settle and they also didn't want me working there anymore. I was disheartened by this, because although there were issues (especially with safety) I had invested 6 ish years and was paid decently and had a small bump in PTO. Plus I liked my job and didn't want to really change. I pushed back a couple of times and ended up getting about twice as much as what they were originally offering. I paid off my debt and have a cushion now.
In ironies I was supposed to be terminated in July but because of the worker's comp insurance's failure to communicate and my previous company waiting for some kind of information from them I wasn't terminated until Sept. I only hired a lawyer because I couldn't ever communicate with them and find anything out. I didn't actually find out this happened until mid October and by that time I was 5 weeks a way until my new insurance kicked in so I didn't have to deal with COBRA.
I got a new job. I work at Wal Mart. Not what I thought I'd be doing and I took a pay cut of about $2/hour. But benefits are cheaper so what comes out of my pay check for all my benefits (including 401IK) is less than what was deducted just for my health insurance previously. Although I was kind of optimistic and picked the mid range plan and I may regret that choice but I've been fairly healthy overall so I took a chance.
The positives about my new job: set schedule (although my days off are currently fluctuating due to someone leaving) I work 9-6 , am supposed to have the same days off AND I take my breaks at the same time every day. Which I like. We get 15 min paid breaks , which never happened previously. Safety is a big priority and I haven't found anyone at my current store who has been injured at work enough to deal with worker's comp (compared to previously when just in my team there was 4 of us plus a few other people in the store). Wal Mart also pays for college. I haven't decided what I'm goign to do with that. They do offer a short kind of intro to college set of classes that would be the first thing I did if I opted to do that...which I'm not doing yet.
I am still adjusting to working full time after 2 years of either not working or only working 12 hours a week.
In the summer I started volunteering at the creative reuse center which was awesome and I want to volunteer some more but my schedule hasn't worked out for that. I made a real in person friend, we share some crafty interests and were getting together several times a month to hang out and craft but unfortunately do the holidays and work we haven't been able to.
I've been slowly developing a relationship with my brother. He told me at Thanksgiving he was getting evaluated for ADHD and how much he's struggled over the years and didn't realize how bad it was when he was using me as a comparison. We don't talk or text regularly but it's more than what we had before and that's good.
Mom needs knee replacement surgery this year I think. She spent a lot of time in Florida dealing with my aunt and my cousin's son. My aunt got moved into assisted living and then ended up falling and breaking her hip. She had surgery but afterwards had complications and her health rapidly declined and she passed away. I wasn't close to her and she could be difficult and I was mostly relieved that mom wouldn't have to deal so much with her life, except now Mom is the executor of her will and dealing with all of that. My cousin's son went into a good foster home, then got kicked out of it, then went into another foster home and at one point a group home. He has the best start to the new year though-- due to some really movie storyline magic (including an accidental text) --he is now living with relatives on the other side of the family. My cousin's other cousin who is a children's rights lawyer. They took him to Dragon Con in the fall and now he is living with them and she has guardianship and so hopefully 2024 will be a good start for him.
M and I are still doing well. I think me going back to work and not having the stress of worker's comp and stuff has helped me which has helped things. M's mom fell and damaged her back (she had fractured it and I think refractured it) she was supposed to have surgery but that has been delayed. She's been more difficult due to her pain levels but she must be getting better because she hasn't been acting as badly as she was.
I've been doign a lot of creative things but not producing a lot of finished pieces. I'm trying to change that for 2024.
Hello all you gorgeous beings
Best wishes for a tolerable 2024!
I can't form a narrative at the moment but it's been too long since I told you all I love you and I'm glad you're in my life
Just in & reading all the 3023 wrap ups. It was certainly a year.
I found myself chased out of an apartment that upon reflection wasn’t good for me anyway. It was extremely damp. So damp it was moldy. Hopefully now that it is unoccupied the landlords will be dealing with it.
I kept falling behind in my meds so that even though I lost enough weight that my blood pressure dropped & I got taken off one of my prescriptions- my blood sugar went kerfluie & my doctor prescribed ozempic which makes me nauseous & lacking in appetite. Do I eat only when I feel hungry? Will not eating at regular intervals make my head swim? I don’t know.
The new apartment is full of light. Still completely disorganized. . . I am trying to not be discouraged by that. The light does make me happy.
I feel like I am still coming out from under depression & am trying to recover things that make me happy. This includes all of you here on our native board where I don’t visit nearly often enough.
Hoping that this Year of the Dragon will be a good one.
A new light filled apartment sounds great Sumi! I hope it is the start of other great things also!
That sounds like a good start to 2024, especially the part of seeing you more in these parts.
So great to see you her, sumi, and a light filled apartment sounds wonderful. And, as Laura said, seeing more of you around here will be fab! No pressure. But, you know, maybe a little pressure? Ha!
I keep thinking that I'll write a long-ish blurb in Word and edit it and everything, then not doing it. [Okay, editing for paragraphs.] So here's to extemporaneous posting:
2023 was overall a pretty good year in that I shook off the torpor that I'd fallen into during the pandemic lock down stuff. Being retired, it was easy to stay home and do nothing except swim and feel guilty for not decluttering and doing All The Things that I should've, could've, been working on.
Just before lock down, I'd offered to be the Administrator of the probate of the deceased neighbor across the street from my house. Both she and her second husband died within months of each other at the end of 2019. My interest was in helping the mom's adopted daughter with her first husband, who had mental health and drug problems, & it was quickly apparent that I knew more than the remaining relatives about dealing with a young adult with both issues. They thought they'd sell the house and give her the money. I wanted to make sure they knew to put it in a trust.
Everything slowed down during lock down. The daughter stayed with her father in Maui for awhile (he who used to own a condo on Front Street in Lahaina; yes, now ashes, but they & cats & some belongings got out) then kind of disappeared into Portland OR.
I'm still horrified that it took me so long to snap out it and really notice that no one was trying to find the daughter. I'd spent a lot of time investigating programs in OR for drug/disability people. OR has some really good programs by the by.
Once I had a housesitter, I went to Portland to try to find her. Buffista Laga had just moved across the Columbia River from Portland and helped me over two weeks as we went into homeless areas pretty much every day, handing out missing person flyers and talking to people. We, talked to people who knew her and went to places where she'd been but never found her.
I'd scheduled my last day at McMenamin's Edgefield to decompress and treated Laga to an overnight, and, um, don't remember board name, our b.org Portland resident came to meet us and we had a really nice day in a really nice place.
About 2 weeks after I got back, I got a call from a Portland Police detective asking me to contact their medical examiner. A few days of giving info, having them contact people who knew the daughter, then had to have the father talk to the medical examiner. It was her. She had died of an overdose 2 weeks before I got there, been dumped at an ER by people who left her and drove off.
I'm still kicking myself for not going sooner and have to & do take some comfort in that no one else was looking for her at all, not in her family, not the probate attorney, and if I hadn't gone to try to find her, we'd never know what happened to her. The medical examiner also said, "If it helps, I've reviewed all her medical records, and she was very, very sick."
We're now winding down the probate case. I handled the sale of the house and other related things.
The death of the daughter will always be awful. Except for that, I really enjoyed working on this. I may/will look into what are the qualifications to be a public fiduciary.
I continued to swim, and head up the pool committee at the local Elks Club. It's still unbelievable to me that no one before me (except contracted pool company on a regular cleaning schedule) had ever been in the pump house or bothered to learn about the equipment (thank you, engineer parents, & electrical contractor ex-partner, for knowing a little about mechanical stuff), OR quantified how many people were swimming and when, who was paying and how much.
Dec. & Jan., there was a lot of mechanical stuff that had to be fixed in the pump house. There are trees threatening to fall on the building that I've been trying to get the House Committee to do something about for years. Only so much I can do. I went up to the pool at 1 AM last night because no one had covered the pool on a night with a frost warning. Not enjoying being the responsible one on that kind of thing, since people knew I can't do the pool cover on Sundays.
Old dear friends moved to a new house for many reasons, one main one being, they wanted a space to create community. Starting during the pandemic, an elder friend and I have dinner with them every Sunday. It's become a very stabilizing thing in my life, since I live alone when not hosting friends and am kind of sort of estranged by choice from 2 of my siblings & the 3rd lives 3,000 miles away.
My beloved cat Lily had radiation treatment for cancer on her nose in summer then had kidney problems then failure and died at home in my arms the day before Halloween. I was lucky to have had Lily examined by a very good/compassionate vet who does end of life (and other) house calls.
I see my nephew, grand-niebling and grand-niece at concerts at the music school in Berkeley where the niebling plays cello. It's astonishing how good some of those kids are - clearly heading to careers in symphonies. The school is academic and strings only including piano. And chorus.
I lost 20 pounds in the stress of subQ fluids etc. etc. during Lily's 2 month decline. I was shocked to discover it. Now I want to know what meara's drug trial was, cuz I've put a lot of it back on. It reset something in my brain during that time & was really interesting to observe.
I'm not over here a lot but / and I think of you all and love you all from afar. (Instagram cat videos have taken my heart.)
Edit: one last thing - I paid off my house. I own it free and clear now.
That was a very full year, Java! I'm sorry about the emotional roller-coaster. What a delightful thing to have a debt free home!
I should have one this spring. Even if mine is like the house version of those bumper stickers: Don't Laugh, It's Paid For.
Honestly, sometimes it feels like trying to get excited about a free burial plot, even though there would be peace of mind there, too, of course.
