So, this is actually going to happen pretty fast, like in the next few weeks, which is good for her, because she is experiencing an inhuman amount of pain and is maxed out and can't take any more pain medication without seriously risking her life.

Unfortunately, this is also a very high risk surgery.  So much so that it has been put off as long as possible due to the potential consequences of the surgery.  There is an excellent chance that she will not be walking, or have much lower body function/control after the surgery.  Barrows is the best in the United States for this, but the nature of what's going on with her is going to make it extremely difficult to remove the tumor without doing major damage to her spinal cord.

The effect on the family has been fairly devastating.  She's the oldest sibling of the children in our family, and one of the nicest people you'll ever meet, and doesn't deserve any of this, and yet has taken it all in stride.  Almost as if it where happening to someone else and not to her.  For the rest of us, it's been very nerve wracking.  Literally.  Seeing her with her struggles to do the simplest of things, and knowing it's being caused by a cancer in her back that you can't do anything about makes me feel sick to my stomach.  

All I want to do is crawl into a little hole and hide, but, I can't.  I'm her younger brother.  The guy who has a house in Phoenix Arizona located less than 10 minutes from Barrows.  The guy who's making a room available to her in his house while she's not in the hospital.  The guy who's going to pretty much see this whole thing go down in a very up close an personal fashion.  The guy whose going to be right there helping her with whatever she needs because she probably won't be able to do it herself. I'm scared to death, and I'm not the sick one, she is.  Fortunately, I'm not alone.  Phoenix is home to most of our extended family, including our parents, so I will have a fair amount of help.  But still.  I'm scared.  I'm scared for her.

Oh, I've done things, and lived life, but much of it is routine stuff, like going to work, going grocery shopping, etc. etc.  The stuff I've covered on Twitter.

I've also done things worth blogging about if I were inclined to completely throw the notion of privacy out the window, however, I like my privacy, and much of what I do is off limits anyway simply because it involves other people that aren't keen about being blogged.  Since I'm not keen to damage and/or burn bridges, that is off limits.

Did I just say that?!? You mean I have a life outside of the online persona that the rest of the world sees?!?

Yes, I do.  And in fact, this may come as a shock, but I'm a pretty busy guy offline.  I do my best to provide appropriate exposure to what may be interesting, but there's a lot that will remain in real life simply because it will.

So, for all intents and purposes, the viewpoint my audience sees is I didn't do anything interesting or worth blogging about.

Why am I blogging again? Till next time.

My power company, SRP, seems to have some faulty equipment in my area that they aren't going to replace until it completely dies and won't come back online, because every time there is any kind of weather that is worse than no rain and no wind, the power goes out for at least a few hours, so with the storm that was currently rolling through, I had no doubt that the power was going to go out.

I went to bed, and fell asleep.  I woke up to a giant buzzing sound outside just in time to see all the electronics that generate some form of illumination go black. "Great, the power just went out". I grab my phone, and use it as a flashlight to get my flashlight.  I look out my windows, "Yep, it's not just me". Call SRP's outage hotline.  It's in my phones address book, that's how often I use it.  I report the outage, stumble around to light a few candles so it's not completely pitch black (it makes taking bathroom breaks much easier, I generally have a night light in the bathroom for nocturnal usage), and go back to bed knowing that it's going to take a few hours for SRP to respond.  This was at about midnight.

I next wake up to the dogs barking wildly at the SRP truck outside.  It's 3 something in the morning.  Thank goodness.  I'm frigid... "Why is it so cold? I have gas heat."  Then it hits me, I might have gas heat, but with no electricity to turn the blower motor, the heat will never kick on. I'm really shivering at this point.  I stumble into the kitchen and look at the wall mounted thermometer.  The air temp in the house is 58 degrees Fahrenheit, a solid 10+ degrees colder than the coldest setting I'd ever let the house get. "SRP is here, the power should come back soon".

I bundle up and get back in bed.

After much tossing and turning, I next wake up to the sound of silence and uncontrollable shivering.  The SRP truck is gone.  I still don't have power.  I look outside across the street.  Their porch light is on.  It's almost 5 in the morning.  I check the temp.  It's 51 degrees in the house and 41 outside.  I can't seem to warm up.  I call the outage hotline again.  They know I still don't have power, they're troubleshooting. There's a small cluster of houses down my alley that still don't have power.  I'll get a call when it should be back on.  I'm exhausted and can't stay awake.

I next wake up to my alarm on my phone.  It's 6 am.  Still no power.  It's overcast outside and really dark.  I consider taking a shower so that I can just go into work, but realize that it would be kind of difficult to do with no lights.  I consider making a cup of coffee, but realize that I can't because my coffee maker won't work without power.  I am still uncontrollably shivering... I layer on more clothes, trying to warm up.  It's now 48 degrees in the house.  I decide to go back to bed, so I reset my phone's alarm to 7:30 am, in hopes that it will be light enough outside to shine in my bathroom's window and make taking a shower easier, either that, or the power will come back before then.  I turn my bedroom light on so that when the power comes back, it'll wake me up.

I pass out.  My alarm goes off.  I am uncontrollably shaking.  All I want to do is go back to sleep. Still no power.  It's light outside, so I go into the bathroom and start the hot water.  One of the beauties of having a gas hot water heater, is it uses no electricity.  It's entirely self contained, save the gas line, and water pipes.  It has a pilot light (which didn't blow out with the storm, thank goodness, it's outside in a water shed), and as long as it's lit, regulates the water temperature to whatever it's supposed to be at.

The hot water starts.  I switch the water flow to the shower head, and start turning up the cold water until the temp is within the non-scalding range, which considering how cold I was, probably wasn't that warm to begin with.  I get in, and over the next few minutes, start turning down the cold water flow until I can barely stand the hot water.  Despite all this, I still feel frigid.  I feel my outer limbs starting to warm up, but at my core, feel extremely cold.  Since I still don't have power, my bathroom fan isn't running, and I have to say, it's amazing at how foggy a bathroom can get when you have no fan to suck out the freshly moistened air, from the fairly hot water streaming out of the shower head. I go through my usual shower routine to get clean, then just stand there under the shower head trying to warm up.  Every minute or two, I turn down the cold water a bit, and suck up the warmth.  Not much times goes by and the cold water is shut off completely.  The hot water temp has plateaued.  A few more minutes, and it's starting to cool down.  I shut the water off and get out and dry off as quickly as possible.  I throw 4 layers of clothes on because I'm still freezing cold, and head into work.  Outside, it's soaking wet, and freezing cold (for Phoenix).

I get to work, and it's freezing there as well.  Apparently, there was some power loss and no heat over night.  I'm really glad I put so many layers of clothes on.

At almost 9 am, I get a phone call from SRP, the power should be back.  I breath a sigh of relief.  I just have to get through the day.  I can't seem to warm up.

I struggle through the afternoon to stay awake.  The crappy night's sleep is really starting to take it's pound of flesh.

5 pm rolls around. Even though I got to work a little late, I decide to make the time up later in the week, and go home, hoping that the power really is back on.

I get home.  The porch light is on, I breath a sigh of relief.  I go inside.  It's a cozy 72 degrees inside.  I sit down on my couch.  The next thing I know, it's almost 9 pm.

I eat some dinner, jump on the internets, check my email, watch a few YouTube videos of some of my subscriptions, and decide to write this blog post.

I think I'll go take another nice warm shower simply because I still feel a little chilled at the core, then go to bed because I'm still really tired.

Tomorrow is a new day.

I was a little tired feeling, and had a slightly upset stomach, but otherwise didn't really feel bad. Once at work, I started doing my usual daily routine stuff.

That lasted for about an hour and a half.

I started feeling really green around the gills, and my stomach really started to feel like I had fed it something really bad.  A quick "Hey I gotta go home, not feeling so hot" to the boss man later, and I was on my way home, struggling not to completely lose my cookies in the car.

Once at home, it was a quick change into something not work related, and some praying at the porcelain throne.  I then started to feel the raging head-ache and roiling stomach.

I crawled into bed.  Next thing I knew, it was about 1pm, and I was feeling woozy and surprisingly hungry.  Since my stomach was still feeling a little raw, I decided upon some soup.

 After the soup, I felt a lot better, but still laid back down and passed out.

Next thing I know, Mom is knocking on my door.  She happened to be in the neighborhood and saw my car home in the middle of the day, so decided to check in.

We talked for a good couple of hours about stuff, dad, things going on, life, etc.  It was actually quite good.

After that, I piddled around the house for a little bit, had a really light dinner, and now, here I am typing this.  I'm not sure if I'm going to go to work tomorrow simply because I'm still feeling a little raw and have a head-ache, but tomorrow is a new day.

Maybe I'll go to Australia.

This happened right before I wrote this post.  I had just finished editing the latest version of Linux News Log Season #10 Episode #03, and was running some errands while waiting for my file to finish rendering out.

I had a few items to buy, had them in my cart and was standing in the express check out line, when two guys got in line behind me.  One was talking loudly and referring to everybody as "bro".  I was attempting to ignore them, since I was in a hurry.

The loud guy said "I should get my I.D. out and have it ready", which he proceeded to do, and laid it down on the conveyor belt.  The guy he was with said "That's a terrible picture of you."  The loud guy said "That's nothing bro, check this out!"  He then proceeded to pull out his Arizona Department of Corrections Released Offender Identification Card and showed it to his friend.  He then stuck it in my face.  "Check that out bro!"

I am instantly off-put, irritated, and angry.  Loud guy is acting like it's a badge of honor, like it is his "I'm a badass, I've been to jail" card, and that we should all worship him at his feet.

I do my best to act neutral and un-interested despite my near overwhelming urge to punch him as hard as I can for so overtly invading and violating my space.  It suddenly completely strikes me how into himself this guy is and how completely oblivious he is to his surroundings and the effect he's having on others.  You've been to jail.  Congratulations.  I hope we never see each other again in my lifetime. I hope some day you get the better of whatever disease is now your Dark Sith Lord and Master, because if you don't, it will kill you.  Believe me, I know from up close and personal experience.

I proceed to go through the check out process and leave Walmart as quickly as possible so I can try to slow down the seething anger and rage that I'm on the verge of losing control over.  Little does loud guy know that he's acting like a bad ass to somebody who knows way more about the inner workings of the jail system in Arizona that your average person...  He thinks it's impressive, but in reality, there is nothing impressive about it. Even though I've never been in jail, I am a son to someone who has, and despite way more therapy and treatment than I'm willing to publicly admit to, my childhood still deeply affects me in ways that sometimes prove to be volatile and unpredictable.

It all happened when I was in 2nd through 5th grade.  Dad was succumbing to his disease, there were five of us kids.  One night, dad didn't come home.  He got busted.  I won't go into specifics here, but suffice it to say that his offense was way more than just drinking and driving.  After that night, for the next few years, the only time I saw my dad was when Mom took me down to the Madison Street Jail here in Phoenix for visitation.  He wrote a lot of letters to us kids.  I still have them. I still vividly remember the screening process that the security guards at the jail followed to make sure you weren't trying to smuggle something into the jail.  As a child, it was really scary.  Then once we got through the screening process and got to the room where I could actually see my dad, we weren't allowed to come within three feet of each other and there was a big guard right there to make sure that nothing happened.  Unfortunately, it was enough of a disconnect that nothing really did happen.  During those years, Mom did what she could, but never really did make ends meet.  Despite all the assistance programs out there, when you have 5 kids, its never enough.  We spent a lot of time on the street while Mom was trying to make ends meet.  Even after Dad was released, he was not allowed to be within 100 yards of us kids without a court appointed supervisor present.  This went on for quite some time.  It wasn't until I was entering into Junior High that dad was finally allowed to stay at home and be with us kids without a supervisor.  That whole thing is a giant source of anger and rage for me. It still pokes it's head up from time to time like this evening when Loud Guy shoved his badge of dishonor into my face.

Fortunately, the judge and prosecutor had good enough judgement to order the entire family into treatment.  If it had not been for that, I would be much worse off today than I am now, and for that I am thankful.

Dad did eventually clean up his life.  All through my Junior High and High School years as well as early 20s, he was clean and sober and doing really good.  I cherish those years.  He was a dad.  He was my dad, and he was actually there and present and involved.  Life was great.

Then, he had a heart attack.  He had lots of heart muscle damage and had triple bypass heart surgery.  He never got the chance to ever fully recover from that, because shortly thereafter, his mother passed away.  Since then, he's suffered a bit of a relapse and is back in his disease of addiction.  He's also since had a multitude of heart and health issues over the past several years.  Even worse, he doesn't seem to want to get better.  Of all things, that is the most painful.  As a child, I knew what I wanted from him, but never really got to experience what I had missed, and now that I have, it hurts even more and has had the effect of throwing fuel on the fire of my own problems.

All the other kids have moved out of state, perhaps in hopes of escaping the inherent addiction chaos and starting anew.  I am the last remaining hold out so to speak... I see to it that I at least see or do something with him every week in hopes of encouraging him to get better.  My hope is that one of these days, Dad will once again be the dad he was when things were good, so he can then be a great dad to his children, and a grand-dad to his children's children.

Unfortunately, I fear that my time to help is nearing an end, as his condition hasn't done anything but get progressively worse.

I can only hope that he soon decides to best his Dark Sith Lord and Master, and when he does, I'll be right there to support and help in any way that I can be of service.