Thursday, June 08, 2006

Current mood: down

I’m going through another of those time periods where I’m a little bit depressed, can’t concentrate, don’t get a lot of work done, and spend as much time as possible hiding out.

It started out with learning that doggie Alex has bladder cancer and probably won’t be with me by Christmas, but it seems to have become a more general topic of dealing with death, since my father died last June and it’s on my mind more and more. Last Father’s Day, my whole family was at Hospice, where my father lay loopy on morphine, rigid in final stage Parkinson’s, unable to communicate with us. It was a strange Father’s Day. We spent the whole day in Dad’s room, taking turns talking to him (I don’t think he could hear us), while my little niece played cards, my sister’s boyfriend watched sports on TV, and we tried to somehow make it a family day. Anyway, because Father’s Day is coming up, I keep hearing about it on the radio, on TV, seeing ads in the newspaper, over and over again and every time I think of Father’s Day, the visual memory comes back up in my mind. I also keep returning to the frustration I had with that Hospice; the staff there gave me a lot of resistance about pain relief for my father. He was there for two weeks and they didn’t really get him comfortable until the final 2-3 days. It’s odd, but in some ways dealing with actual death is easy compared to dealing with a loved one lying around in pain minute by minute, or day after day. Well, now I’m just rambling.

So, what I’ve been doing is the usual when I’m down, which is, I struggle to get work done, and then at night I hide in chatrooms (the current one being SecondLife).

Oh, and I heard from the IRS — they say my ex-accountant never filed my 2001 business return. I know that sounds really strange but you wouldn’t believe what kind of weird, weird crap went on for a few years with my last accountant — plus the IRS typo’d my address so for who-knows-how-long the IRS mail has been going to the wrong place… Anyway, my current accountant had cleaned everything up last year (bless him) and he had phoned the IRS a few times to ask about the 2001, and the IRS kept telling him “we don’t see a problem” — well, now they do, and the IRS wants me to phone with results on Monday, but turns out my accountant is on vacation until the 15th. His fax isn’t working and he doesn’t seem to have gotten my messages yet. I guess all I can do is phone the IRS and beg them to wait until my accountant comes back and can help me with this additional cleanup.

Things I think about right now to cheer myself up… last year around 4th of July is when we found Buddy Bear in the street and he became a part of our lives, so that’s a nice anniversary coming. Also, I got a phone message from my sister and she got a 90-something on her exam and just received her state certificate for her new career path. She’s had such a hard life, she so deserves to finally have things go in a positive direction. I’m so happy for her right now.