Pneity

Remember tonight. Not for the good like some of those nights in 2006 but for how strange the evening has been. Allow me to derail that thought a bit so I can bring it back around to the point, yeah?

So the last month has seen my country fall to fascism. My company ordered a return to office unless your offer letter specifically said remote. I spent three weeks having a nervous breakdown. I haven't had a solid stool in as much time. It's all big time stress. Lucky me, while going through the exemption process on account of me living an hour and a half from the office, HR came back and pointed out to me that my offer letter did indeed say I was already declared remote since I was rehired when they were really giving those out. Thanks for laying me off, I guess.

So I'm coming down from that. Today was the first day of me being remote while everyone else was recalled. I finished work late, after working an awful case a few minutes late.

I live with my parents and my mom is getting a colonoscopy tomorrow. She took her mandated laxatives and started drinking the laxative mineral liquids but something went way wrong and she sounded like she was dying from the bathroom. I've never heard her so distressed, and I've seen her very sick as a child. It was terrifying.

She managed to yell out to me as I paced across the floor, back and forth. Call my sister. She's a nurse so I called her immediately. She came right over and took care of mom. Mom had made her way back to the couch. She had some kind of attack in the bathrooom and was having trouble breathing, sweating profusely, and hurting to her core. She was doing a bit better and my sister declared it was a nerve reaction to all the work being done on her intestines.

I had to go to the local club at which my dad goes to drink to pick him up so he could take care of her. So I did that; got him off the slot machines and got him home quick. I went to get him and I some sandwiches and went to the store while I was out with mom's car since mine is kind of damaged at the moment. How convenient!

Enjoyed the sandwich while watching the last of a popular vlogger's year long Japan vlogs. Right as I finished the sandwich, a call came through the folks' phone. Dad's ex wife was stranded at a gas station nearby. She had run out of gas and did not have her purse. This woman has been through a lot lately, she needed my help. The only one who can currently drive with my mom down for the count.

I arrived at Sheetz and put my card onto the payment machine. She filled up her tank, I comforted her a bit and we chatted a bit about her broken phone.

I always want to help and often don't find myself in a position to with locals and family. But it worked out nice tonight. I have been more busy tonight than I have in a long time. But we're clear now. I'm resting. Relaxing.

So I completely failed to mention the three deer last post. My mind is racing and I can't keep up anymore. Let me explain.

On the 26th, I was driving home from a late night karaoke night to celebrate my buddy Jim's birthday. We closed the bar and I, fully sober, started driving home in my relatively new (3000 mile odometer reading) car. Being careful on the highway doing 70 mph, knowing cops would be out at that hour, I didn't see the three deer chilling in the middle of the highway until it was too late. I'd seen deer on this road before but it's relatively straight and open so I had always had time to stop, even in my old sports car days.

But not that night. I jammed the brakes and nearly got to a stop, but not before I hit all three deer. Pretty serious damage to both headlights and every non-rear panel of the car. Drove fine, but was visibly jacked up. I managed to get it home, file a report with my insurance the next morning. Two weeks of waiting for the appointment to drop the car off, a week to wait for an estimate, and now more untold time waiting for repair. I've been driving my mom's SUV for the little bit I've needed to get out.

I even went to Katsucon last weekend which I will make a full post of soon. Buddy picked me up on the way by, which was fortunately the plan from the beginning. That was a pretty fun distraction but I now have even more existential dread about my own ability to be social and in the moment.

Work sucks; we've been so busy that I can't even take advantage of the very cool and very fun software development learning project I was handed on a silver platter. I won an award for 2024 MVP of my portion of the company and immediately after start stressing about time management to the point of uselessness. It's really neat.

I'm tired. I've been tired. I've been watching Ghostwriter again which is its own neat story since I haven't really thought of that show since I was 7 years old.

I have literally no luck with dentists and no luck with my mouth. I had a dentist appointment near the beginning of February. One of the rare visits that I felt confident everything would be ok, I'd get a cleaning and walk out easy and fresh. But nope. Dentist looked at the fillings I got when I was a kid and didn't like it. Wanted to refill them all to prevent further issues.

So Monday, I got the right side of my mouth refilled. Two of them. I told the dentist that I have issues every time they do something and last time I got very lucky. He confidently said this was going to be fine. And it was. The numbing took a lot of effort but once they refilled things, it was all good. Got home, numbness went away and there was some minor pain and sensitivity but nothing I didn't expect. This one might actually have gone right!

Uh. It's been 4 days now and it still hurts. It's still sensitive. If I have to get a fucking root canal over this bullshit, I'm going to lose my mind. All this before the year's Japan trip. Why can't health things ever happen in May? Will there be some kind of horrible irony in me saying that? Stay tuned!?