you don't smell like santa...

clearly, i am watching elf for the ZILLIONTH time this season.. it seems like a different christmas this year for all of the obvious reasons. the tree is up, and i've gathered some old time christmas things from moms house. so far, there is only one present under the tree.. the surprize gift i made for steve. honestly, besides that and one other gift i haven't quite finished yet, all of my christmas shopping will be done tomorrow. i've watched the grinch on VHS and spent alot of time in front of the christmas tree with various cups of tea and eggnog. tonight was a treat. my friend chris gave me a tin of hand-rolled jasmine dragon pearl tea.. it's so delish.. AND quite interesting to watch brew. these little itty bitty pearls open up into jasmine leafs and release this amazing fragrance.. it was quite a treat.

today was spent in western MA. i got to see krissisan for the first time since she left in july. i CANNOT believe how much she has changed since she went into the army. she is so happy and fresh that it makes me so gushingly happy for her i don't even know how to express it in words. ever since we were kids, she was never quite sure what or where she wanted to go. she always put her heart into everything she did, but was never excited about it. to hear her talk about it and to see the expression she has is just completely outstanding. she was even talking about going into active duty. this, of course, petrified me to begin with.. mostly because i was ignorant to exactly what happens to folks who are active in the military... she explained it and now that i'm a bit more educated, i think its the best choice she's ever made. i also told her yes.. go active and see the world.. it will give me a good excuse to travel to see you :)

i'm also looking forward to new years. as stephen is leaving for the south and nerdcon, my dates will be dave and nichelle. i couldn't be happier. so far the plan is to rock out around boston at first night and then catch the fireworks on the waterfront at midnight. i cannot wait. it will also be very strange to have the house to myself for a week...

things with the house seem to be moving forward, although at a very slow pace. january looks to be the dumpster rental time, we would have done it sooner, but holidays and a having to work so many hours have kind of put the kibosh on that. since being hired i've kind of been the low man on the totem pole which means i get the least amount of time off. while i really like my job in general, like krissisan, i'm really not very fulfilled. working with art supplies is awesome but the people that come to get them are generally douchebags. i'm hoping that i can get a lead with a local company with some creative folks through a friend in the nearish future.. i've been working my ass off on a website that will serve as my digital portfolio.. i've also been illustrating like mad to have a physical one as well.. slowly but surely, it's all coming together.

i hope everyone (whoever reads.. i never know because y'all are always very quiet) has a great holiday..

merry merry!!!

getting to know you

i've found secrets. not big secrets.. but interesting ones. they've come in the form of old love letters and lots of photos, items i haven't seen in decades.. some things i didn't even know existed. it's kind of exciting, and it kind of makes me feel like my mom's not totally gone and that i am getting to meet her in ways i didn't think were possible.

while trying to locate the ceramic nativity set my mom had painted many moons ago, i found buried treasure. to start at the beginning.. 15+ years ago, my mom painted these kitchen cookie-jar type things. they were in the shape of buildings.. or townhouses and shops. she had planned on putting our whole family into them. as far as i knew she only made 2. one that was "ellie's deli"/"deb's donuts" and another that was "tom's tavern". i always loved them and when i moved out here to boston about 7 years ago, she let me take them with me. by some freak stroke of luck.. they've survived all my moves.

these are them. the detail on them is the part i love so much. the "help wanted" in her little shops window and the kitties here and there always make me smile.



fast forward to the nativity search.. on top of the suspected box, i found another box (which believe me.. is a REAL trend in that basement). when i opened it, i found.. "trudy's trousseau" a dress shop. it was amazing. i didn't even know it existed. part of me is anxious to go through more boxes.. she always swore that there was another one somewhere.. and i thought she was bananas because i could never find it. the other amusing little detail.. is in the top left window is a lawyers office.



now they are in my kitchen in somerville.. together :)

i'll meet you there sir

i'm grateful for my many friends. they come from all over the place and they do many many things profesionally. one of my friends happens to be a social worker. she had met my mom a couple of times and been to the house a couple of years back. she knew what the sitiation was at the house and from my request never put her profession into play when it came to my mom.

until now.

after she passed, we spoke a few times. she had mentioned that she thought i should call an organization to file a report.. i originally thought that not much would come of it so i put it in the "to do at a much later date" mental folder. after i got sick, i started thinking more about the organization.. my main thought was.. if i got that sick after just 4 days over 2 weeks of trying to clean that house.. what the hell did it do to her over all those years? all the years of filth, smoking, dust, animal feces, mold and whatever the hell else was in there. what if that didn't have to happen to her? what if i wasn't actually crazy and stan an audrey actually weren't taking care of her? all those trips to the hospital with drastically wrong med levels. sepsis and infected bed wounds. pneumonia. bronchitis. the list goes on.

i called my friend. she gave me the number for the DPPC or the disabled persons protection committee. i filed the report on a monday and the woman i spoke with told me that i should hear from someone via letter in 3-4 weeks telling me if they think there is something to investigate. that thursday, i got a call from a state trooper (who are also a part of the DPPC) telling me that there was something to be looked at and that i would also be hearing from the ADA's office and a DPPC investigator.

they all called that day. not the 3-4 weeks that i had expected. clearly, i am not crazy.

i've answered hours worth of questions and sent all the photos i took "just in case". her medical records are being pulled from baystate, health south, and her doctors office. the nurses that cared for her all those times in the hospital are being contacted.

the week before thanksgiving i spoke with the investigator and he asked if it would be possible to see the house to see what condition it was in. i was leaving for the SkillsUSA fall state leadership conference, but i made arrangements to meet with him the following tuesday once the conference was over. my god i was so frigging tired. when i arrived in springfield, i found not one, but two people waiting for me. the state trooper also came along. to say that it was a little surreal being interviewed while by two quite stern looking investigators in my the middle of my moms living room is a complete understatement.

they commented on the smell.. i tried to explain that with the smoking, dirty ferret papers, overflowing cat litter boxes, and unemptied garbage and medical waste... they didn't know what a bad smell was. they were also shocked that DFS hadn't removed the kids from the home.. basically.. it was a long interview.

at this point, if things progress and the ADA thinks that there is an actual case (because really, in the end.. they might not be able to find evidence of probable cause) they could face criminal neglect of a disabled person to involuntary manslaughter (which while i believe they deserve that.. i doubt that type of evidence could be found). at the very least, it's already been put into the works to make sure that stan and audrey can never ever care for another person. not ever as an EMT, PSA, RN.. nothing. which is also mentally soothing to know.. they can never ever do something bad to another person. the trooper is also looking to have them thoroughly investigated by the department of family services.

i really can't believe that this has all happened in such a short period of time.. but.. there you have it.



so.. this blog shouldn't be all about doom and gloom.

i have to say. married life is fantastic. i don't quite know exactly when it happened, or what caused the click, but i feel like i'm back in this blissful state that i remember from when we first moved into the cottage on southbourne road. i mean.. people say that this is the honeymoon period, but most people don't seem to have a lot of the stresses we've had for being newly married. maybe it's the stress that's making us appreciate each other more?

steve seems to have changed. he now sends me little text messages sometimes during the day just to say "hi, i love you" when he never ever used to do things like that. when i go away to conferences he would usually just go into bachelor gaming mode hanging out in his underwear and eating out of cans. i wouldn't hear from him until i was leaving the conference and even then it was just to ask if i knew if we had anything to eat and was i bringing something home... this time he sent me daily photo emails telling me how much he missed me and what was i doing. it was wonderfully odd. i find myself watching the clock during the day not for when i can go home and veg out, but for when i can go home and hug steve. he wants to try new things.. helps me clean (moreso when he's trying to find a game he lost... but i'll take it either way), he is also trying to put a serious effort forth on learning how to cook. his reasoning? "sometimes you seem really tired when you get home. it would be nice to know how to cook something that real people eat." that i think was the thing that caught me most off guard.

it really has been quite fantastic.

it's odd. i hope that this is a preview of what is still coming with our life together.

:)

ill will.. and then some

i am a sick person.

this is new to me. aside from birth.. i've never been really sick. flu's, sure. colds, of course. allergies, yup. the basic, be gone in a week, not a big deal simple stuff.

not this time. this time, i'm sick enough to where i am going to have to rely on a prescription device to help me. forever. i don't like it.


i'll start at the beginning.

2 weeks ago, i was out working on the cleanup of my moms house. it's a ridiculously huge task as the people living there are human garbage themselves. on the way home from springfield on sunday, i started feeling pretty crappy. it took rain and i about 4 hours to get home because she was so exhausted from all the work, and i was feeling pretty sick.

the next morning i woke up feeling horrific. i had high fevers, nausea, aches, headache, sore throat, coughing like you wouldn't believe.. after about a day in this condition. i went to the hospital when my fever reached 105 only to be diagnosed with h1n1 (i hate the term swine flu.. ugh). i hibernated for a week on tamiflu and got healthy again. at least, thats what i thought.

fast forward to last thursday and friday. i went back out to springfield to continue the cleanup. in the 2 days, i pulled 13 bags of garbage out of the kitchen (the only real room i got to work in) and spent an hour and a half with a spray bottle of bleach, grease cutting lysol, and windex (separate bottles of course.)and a metal scraper, scraping hair and whatever the hell else it was that was making up the 1/2 inch or so of disgusting filth out of the bottom of the fridge. this does not include washing the drawers and shelves. i never got to that part. i was also able to wash most of 3 of the 4 walls in the kitchen and some of the wood trim. i finished all of that off with bleaching the bejeezus out of the floor. it was a crap ton of work..

i'm still not even completely finished with the kitchen.

saturday morning comes and i was headed to franklin for a skillsusa meeting. since the night before i had been having some wheezing and strained breathing. i assumed my allergies were just flaring up from all of the dust i was inhaling. by the time i arrived in franklin, i was nearly gasping for breath. i was told by several people that i was on my way to the milford regional medical center emergency room. i protested a bit as i'm not a huge fan of hospitals. the truth is, i kind of just wanted to go home and then go with steve. i'm grateful that my friend scott went with me.. am i thrilled that he got to see me in a hospital johnnie.. not so much.

the rest of the visit was tests and whatnot and in the end, this is what i learned.

-i have the following in my lungs: mold, mildew, animal dirt (since i cleaned up mouse droppings, ferret droppings, and cat urine/droppings that were many years old i assume this is what they meant), dust, and pollen. they said that all the chemicals i was fiddling with probably also helped to irritate my lungs.

the other interesting twist to all of this is that it precipitated to this point because 2 weeks prior, i was treated for h1n1, not the mold and other crap. had i not caught the flu, they probably would have detected the mold and it wouldn't have had the chance to kick around in my lungs for 2 weeks. the doctor said that the thursday and friday i spent there with the extra "dose" of the mold is probably what kicked it up to the condition i was in saturday morning.

all of this means i get to have the following treatments: daily trips to the hospital for the next 6 days for a 45 minute breathing treatment, 5 more days left of prednisone (which by the way, is WREAKING HAVOC with my system), antibiotics, 2 puffs of an albuterol inhaler every 4 hours, and i can't sleep lying down.

not to mention that they've discovered i have some scar tissue in the bottom of my lungs meaning that i will need to carry an inhaler with my for the rest of my life just in case i get short of breath.

my moms friend linda (who i get to communicate with now thanks to facebook, so awesome!) told me this.

"....don't let those creeps live rent free in your head, honey....let it go they aren't worth any more misery than they've already given you..."

but honestly.. every time i cough all i can think about it the anger and hate i have for them. not only did they mistreat my mother (much more on that at a much later time), but now their filth and just plain awfulness has permanently effected my health, and my ability to try and get this house into a shape where it can be sold or rented. they are making the future for stephen and i seem sometimes bleak and hopeless. they've brought the amount of work up to what seems to be an impossible crawl through a tunnel that seems to have no light at the end. it's overwhelming and it makes me feel really depressed.

i think it's safe to say that my next trip back to the house will just be to load things into totes (wearing a mask of course).. after that i was advised that i should probably hire someone to do the bare bones cleaning.

*sigh*

“the old rhetoric, it’s a burning wick and I explode, ‘cause my hearts sick. I don’t need this rock and roll, I just want to crawl back home to you. –

written on Saturday Oct. 3rd

First off…. I has no interwebs. Which means in order to get the thoughts that are in my head (now at 1:46am and post concert) I have to type in word.. which likes to auto-correct my poor-by-choice-sans-capitalization grammar.. which is a bit annoying. And the other truth is… I do need this rock and roll…

Tonight was fan-fucking-tastic. Bleu and Dear Leader played at the Paradise tonight. For Bleu, it was one of his swing back to the east coast shows and for Dear Leader, it was the record release party for their new album “Stay Epic”. I’m into song # 2 and already I can tell that this will be one of the CD’s I will listen to over and over until I drive myself nearly crazy. Then I’ll stop listening to it for like, a month, and then pick it back up. It will be one of those vicious cylces that Aaron’s music has put me into for many years now. Darn you Aaron and your amazing music!

It’s also night like these that make me to thankful to have such amazing friends, whether it be childhood, skills, girlscouts, and concert friends.. they are all amazing. These are the friends I don’t see very often.. mostly just at concerts. As Derek (and many others) like to scream every now and then for nostalgia… “WE ALL MET ON THE INTERNET!!!!” it was one of those nights where I stood shoulder to shoulder with derek, couirey, rachel, matty, bill b, kaarin, angela, alan, and a few others and feel like everything in the world was just as it should be. Nothing was bad.. nothing was sad.. amazing music was being made.. memories were chattered about.. songs were sung together in completely blissful screaming (aaron was doing the real singing.. we were mostly just belting out lyrics with him because…well. that’s just how we roll) The best part might have just been when Aaron acoustically sang “I’m a Believer” (which is a Sheila Divine song)in acoustic. At this point it was, I think, the second to last song or something.. we were all hugging and pretty much singing at the top of our lungs. Best. Times. Ever.

Family who reads here: as a reference, this is the group of people that pitched in together and send that enormously delicious edible arrangement to the cavalier. They are amazing.

I feel like in the past week, I’ve marked another chapter and gone through a change. I just over 3 feet of hair off and made the leap into obviously visible tattoos. Maybe it’s a change I need? Change is good.. I think that steve is a little traumatized by it all. Perhaps not such a great thing for a new marriage.. but life will move on and as he’s already told me “*sigh* it’ll grow back”. He’s said that he thinks the new ink is pretty.. but in his conservative mind, it’s not a good thing. For me and my artist nature.. its almost like therapy.. visible therapy with a lot of meaning behind it. Tattoos with an important story are a good thing.. but again… I have an artist nature. Speaking of the tattoo.. christ on a cracker I didn’t think I was going to make it through this one. Awesome Andrew (it’s what I call him since I have no idea what the man’s last name is) and I spent from about 2:15pm to nearly 5:45pm together. For him.. it was a light happy afternoon, his “Monday” he called it.. for me.. it was a battering. He decided to best achieve the shading he was looking for, to use a set of needles nicknamed “bug pins” and a mag grip.. For the non tattoo-speaking world out there.. this means I was stuck with needles that are about twice as large as normal tattoo needles, and a mag grip means there are more of them. Typically somewhere between 8-12. I didn’t bother finding out how many were involved. I just heard the speed he was using (a slower one, which of course, adds to the “discomfort”) took one look at the setup he had, and decided to best just hunker down and brace myself. I was chewing gum and drinking water like crazy and gritting my teeth wishing I could have found a leather strap or something to bite on. The shading is awesome, and looking back the pain was worth it. As another fun added detail.. (if you’re squeamish, best to skip to the next paragraph) when I was examining the finished tattoo it was possible to visibly see the puncture holes that the bug pins left behind. Not to mention, 2 days later, the area (basically my entire right wrist) is still EXTREMELY sore and a bit swollen. Tonight while all the hugging and grabing of friends was going on.. I thought I was going to die. Sooo sore. Pain is beauty!

I’m still finding it very hard to talk about or think about my mom without having some serious emotional issues. I still feel very lost. I still want to pick up the phone and call her to tell her about things I’ve done or seen.. or anything really. I just miss the sound of her voice and her way of offering advice about all the crazy things that run through my head. I am in the process of writing wedding thank you cards, and I know that I still have to write funeral ones.. I’ve tried on several occations to start writing them, but it’s just too hard. I find I can’t even get through the first one. The holidays are also coming.. yeah. I definitely think this paragraph should end… here.

So. In the quest for some life change.. I am looking for some new music. Dear Leader should last me about a month J send suggestions!

57

today would have been my moms 57th birthday. she had considered it a milestone and a miracle for every year past 50.

the wedding was beautiful. i don't think that i could have painted a more beautiful day. i felt beautiful in my dress, and steve was just so darned handsome. everyone seemed to have an amazing time... there is so much more to write.. but i'm so tired... and thinking about how much i missed my mom makes it hard to write.

things are ok, but i'm still in kind of a low space.

more soon i hope.

time is no longer my friend

where the hell did the last week go? i realized yesterday that it has been a week since my mom has been gone. i can't even begin to describe how much i miss her right now. everything is so fresh.. i see her name in my address book whenever i scroll by the L's. her voicemail from 7/15 is still on my phone. hearing her voice is like reliving the whole thing over again.. and to go back and think that i won't actually hear her voice again is completely devastating. it's actually alot worse than that, but i can't really think of a word to properly encompass exactly how this all feels. i've also been going through the guestlist marking RSVP's.. her name is the first name on my side of the family's list. to think ahead to september makes me sick to my stomach. everyone keeps saying (and i apologize if you are part of the "Everyone", please don't take this personally) that "she'll be there".. the part of me that's still really angry wants to snap "shut up, it's not the same".. and the reasonable part of me finds some comfort in that. i listen to the reasonable part most of the time.

the few days in between her death and the funeral services were horrific. i don't think i would have been able to mentally cope with them were my family not there. especially aunt penny. she stayed for the entire time.. right up until the end. the day after she died she came with me to davids bridal to have my final dress fitting. i certainly won't go into details, but i pretty much lost my shit standing there in front of the seamstress. i'm grateful i wasn't out in the main store, but in one of the back rooms where my freak out was contained.

i got home monday night, and with the exception of a brief trip to central square on wednesday, this afternoon was the first time i've been out of bed all week. i've just been sleeping. garcia has been my main company. man that cat is clingy.. and noisy come to think of it.

i have no idea what i really belive in when it comes to religion. i don't know if i believe in signs, and other funny stuff like that.. but i see and hear of odd things that have been happening and it definitely sets my mind wondering. the bumblebee on the photo, the rose of sharon in aunt trudy's yard, the ferret cap on the snapple, the weird little bee-looking bugs that have been in my "garden" this week... all of those little odditys led me to make a really fast and rash decision. i ended up getting a tattoo of the bumblebee that kept landing on the photo. i got it in a rather visible spot.. mostly becuase i wanted to be able to see it easily all the time.. and also quite a bit because i didn't really think it out. c'est la vie.. i have no real regrets on getting it though, plus i had rain and nicole to support my crazy decision. the detail on it is AMAZING.. so amazing that once again, i cannot find the words. it's fuzzy looking, has little bee antenae, gossamer wings.. it even has little bee toes. i'll post more pictures once it's healed.. the iphone really didn't do the work any justice..

along with sadness, last week brought alot of anger. mostly towards all of the complete lack of respect and bullshit that audrey and the family have brought to this time. .. more on that at a later blog..

back to work tomorrow. boo.