December 4th, 2022

[Dream]

So, apparently I haven't been here since April of 2021? That seems wrong to me, but timeline matches up.

Reason for my disappearance: Mark's mom got diagnosed with terminal cancer and I was doing Dr. appointments basically every week, sometimes two or three a week, for a year trying to treat it and do palliative chemo and stuff.

Reason I'm back: She died.

Took a few months to get back because we've been going through her stuff. I think I've mentioned before she was a bit of a hoarder? Well, we found Marks' grandfather's leg in a storage unit. (Prosthetic before anyone gets the wrong idea, lol.) and we found a court summons from an incident where she got into a fistfight with the neighbor Mark's dad was cheating on her with because the woman talked to Mark at the mall (He was like 12/13 at the time) so there was about forty years worth of her life packed away in storage units that we had to deal with. We're still sorting that shit out but we've got it down to two units, so there's that.

[Slaughterhouserock]

Welcome back. Sorry to hear about the mother in law. Hope Mark's dealing with it well.

[zombie]

sorry to hear about your mother in-law. i hope that you and mark are doing okay with all of that.

[Tiggnutz]

Sorry Dream wish you were coming back for a different reason

[Jmac Attack]

Yeah, sorry Dream

[DancesWithWerewolves]

Damn, that's a lot. My condolences.

[Dream]

All's good.

Thanks to her hoarding nature, we found out she cancelled the tests that would've detected the cancer sooner and given her a better prognosis for two years straight. So, yeah, don't put off any sorts of cancer screenings and if any worrisome symptoms pop up out of the blue get that shit checked out before you give it time to spread.

We've been exhausted dealing with all of the papers she kept. She had utility bills from the early 90s. Some of the stuff we want to keep (tin types of relatives and old post cards to her mother from family in Canada, mainly.) But most of it has been weeks worth of shredding and trash. One unit we haven't even gotten to tackle yet because it's outdoors and near a pond that is FULL of mosquitoes. We're planning on tackling that one over the next few weeks while it's too fucking cold for mosquitoes, lol.

Mark's handling it better than I was, oddly enough.

It's been odd settling into this new normal.We both kinda got used to her being there and needing things and now it's just us and a cat that we ended up with toward the end of last year. (A friend of his mom's needed to move into elderly housing and couldn't take all of her pets, so we ended up with one of her cats and she was able to take the other two with her.) But it's also been kinda nice to have this sort of peace about everything.

It's weird, but a few months after she was diagnosed with cancer, Mark's sister and brother-in-law also got diagnosed with cancer, throat for him and breast for her. Both of them are doing great though because it was all caught early and they responded really well to treatments and surgery.

Don't skip the cancer screenings!

I've kept up with some of you on Facebook, but man have I missed you guys. I kept thinking I'd get around to signing in then just never did because I started pouring all of my free time into writing as a coping mechanism. Then my computer crashed so I had to get a new one that no longer had my password saved and I couldn't be bothered while dealing with the lack of sleep during all of that to do the reset process. As it is, I went through three emails before I figured out which one I actually signed up with.

Oh, and I have a new boss at work as of the beginning of this year. I no longer have to do like five different jobs, just three, IT, night manager, and website management. I'm only qualified for one of those things but she hasn't seemed to catch onto that yet, lol. Oh, she also has me baking birthday cakes for the residents. My last one was carrot. My decorating skills are zero, but I'm at least trying to get better at it. I think she's pretty awesome so far, but best of all, she's competent and logical. She's basically gotten the board to implement 90% of the things I've been asking for over the past 19 years.

Hope all is well with everyone else?

[Reign in Blood]

Welcome back. Condolences, glad things are getting better though.