Saturday, March 17, 2007

Blinded by love

Such a hard week with such disappointing results. At least for some of us. My daughter, who had a stroke when she was born and has left side paralysis, lives in an apartment about three blocks from us. She is 27 and will be graduating in May with a degree is Social Work. When my husband and I got married, he bought her a ShihTzu, who turned out to be very large - by that I mean over 25 pounds...bigger than a cocker spaniel. Anyway, he has all sorts of health problems. They include a dry eye which develops a green snotty film over it every few days, severe food allergies, and all other manner of allergies that affect his skin and fur. She is living on student loans and has little spare money. To make everything worse, over the last two months he has developed large (cancerous?) tumors on his back - leading to hair loss and even more smelliness. We had talked with her all week about the fact that it might be time to let him go. He is affecting many aspects of her life - he cannot sleep so he keeps her awake all the time for hours on end. I love all animals, I hate the idea of killing an animal, I hate knowing she is hurting (she really has no friends to speak of, no boyfriends, Just us), and feels like she has failed in "raising" him. OH brother. Now we will have to go through this all again. My daughter-in-law asked me if my daughter understood why we thought it would be the right thing to do. I said, no she is blinded by love and cannot see anything.

In other news, I am almost caught up with grading. Since there are only six more weeks in the term, this is a good thing. It takes so much of my spare time, I wonder if it is worth it sometimes. But I enjoy working with the students. Next week is Spring Break so I hope I will get completely caught up. We will be so slow at work next week, but my boss will probably have plenty of Break projects and I will only have two students two days and then only one the rest of the week. And one other problem is that I am a basketball nut and it is March Madness from now until April 2nd. And another is that we plan to have a graduation party for my daughter and there are many things that need to be done in the house and backyard. I went to www.43things.com and made a list for us. They will send you reminders whenever you like...and let's just say, we are getting frequent reminders about our lack of progress on the list. At some point, folks will just have to get over it and see our house au naturale!

Struggling with two books for the Newbery Project - hope to get one finished this weekend.

Gotta fly,
Flusi

Sunday, March 4, 2007

Love

My husband is bipolar.

that sentence can stand alone because it affects every aspect of our life and sometimes is the bane of my existence and sometimes is the magic that keeps the world spinning - sometimes the manic and sometimes the depression - like Jimi Hendrix said, manic depression it touches my soul - the fight against suppression of personality and brillance for the sake of linear and singular thoughts - the desire for more - the self-medication to seek balance - the crawling away to lick wounds self-inflicted - the five radio stations playing in a brain that wants coherence - anger that will not abate for reasons irrational - blame assigned for self-preservation - love that cannot understand - friends who will not stay the course - marriages which fail in almost the 75th percent range - suicide for over 40% - and PAIN, pain of daily living which is only dimmed by strict adherence to medical intervention.

Because I love this man, and because I said I would be with him through sickness and health, and because I love him with all my heart - all of him - this is our existence. But let me tell you about the side which struggles to be free - he has loved four near adult step-children as if they were his own, he loves all animals and has brought pigs and dogs into our lives, he is Poppie to our two grandsons and is worshipped, compassion for the homeless, love for the Lord. He loves me. I love him.

Flusi

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