Originally posted on MySpace Saturday, August 19, 2006
Good grief... Where do I begin? Well, the bad things that have been going on include my uncle having cancer. He went to see someone about his nose being clogged constantly about a month ago, and they found a tumor. Unfortunately it turned out to be malignant. His reaction was, "Well I've had a good life." The rest of told him, "Oh, no! We're not done with you yet!"
To make this story short, the pathology showed that it was a relatively minor kind of cancer, with a very high survival rate. He had it removed, along with most of the surrounding tissue (when he breathes through his nose, the air always feels cold now) and is having a short dose of radiation therapy to ensure it's gone. He's doing fine. But when you hear that word "cancer" in relation to a family member or loved one, your heart stops, your blood runs cold, and you think the worst! My mother (it's her brother that has/had it) wasn't taking it too well for a good part of that, at least until the doctors were all breathing easy (um, so to speak). His wife also was not doing well, and probably isn't. But she's got her brave face on most of the time, and dotes on him constantly.
My cousins, I know, were also worried. But when you run a $3.5 million-a-year company, and are trying to expand that further, or when you live 3 or more hours away and have 50 hours of work to do a day, it's hard to find time to go visit and say, "I love you and I'm pulling for you!" even to your dad. So he got lots of phone calls.
To make matters worse, his wife lost her job, and is in her early 60's. I think they have a lot to deal with. And his second son is worried, because he wants so much (and has for a good while) to provide the money so his dad doesn't have to work anymore.
Closer to home, my nephew has hit puberty, his voice is cracking, he is diagnosed as ADD (like his uncle...), he is a Boy Scout, in advnced martial arts training, has 4 advanced-level classes, is in band, has asthma, and his ADD and breathing meds and hormones seem to be at odds with each other. He has been so good at doing his homework since going back to school, but Thursday and Friday he left it for one class or another at home. He's 12. Needless to say, he had a very emotional "episode" and I ended up having to take him home (I work 30 minutes away, but have the easiest time getting away from work).
A few weeks ago, my sister had gotten accused by a coworker of being a total incompetent at her job. For, like, the 100th time in 6 months. I can safely say, since we worked in the same office, run by my cousin and my mother, that it was NOT her fault. He is the screw-up. Anyway, she'd had enough of his bull----, and heard about a position with one of our vendors, applied for it, and now works for them. When she told my cousin, he was upset, but I think it was mostly because he was told one thing by the screw-up and is now finding out the truth. (There is SO MUCH MORE to that story, but I think I'll leave it for now).
On top of all this (and perhaps minor by comparison) my mom, my sister and I planted a garden. Well, it's more like 5 . We have planted over $300 worth of plants, I bet, with about $200 of soil, fertilizers and pest repellent, sweated for about 3 months trying to clean out the weeds repeatedly, and for what? So we can get int o a full-blown drought, with a month's worth of 100+degree F days and water rationing, so we can struggle like hell to keep it alive and realize we're not doing very well.
To switch to a happier note, our summer has been full of activity and fun as well. We went to see Phantom of the Opera in April or May - I forget which - and George Strait, Miranda Lambert and Tracy Lawrence. My sister found out that Les Misérables was coming to Dallas, the last tour ever, and started trying to find out about tickets. She found that for about $9 each per play, we could get season tickets. So we also saw Little Women, Bombay Dreams (Shelley, my sister, and I got so wrapped up in the song Chayya Chayya we learned the Urdu lyrics to it!), Les Mis of course, Mamma Mia! (which I wanted to see because all the songs are Abba songs, but it had NOTHING to do with Abba) and Brooklyn (A mild disappointment, but worth seeing once). We also went to see Journey an Def Leppard at Smirnoff Music Center in July. AWESOME concert! My mom went, and enjoyed the music, but was irritated because NOONE sat down the entire concert! My feet hurt for 4 days, and my throat hurt for almost a week!) The last of the musicals we're going to see is Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, which was also a movie. I loved the movie - Steve Martin and Michael Caine as con-men who bet on who can out-con the other over a rich lady - so I am looking forward to that as well.
My cousin (Also my boss - did I mention that?) asked me to start calling past customers and people starting in new offices to try and generate leads for his business (the company installs and services telephone and network cabling, LAN/WAN systems, now phone and internet services, and anything else you need to automate your office). It's an opportunity to expand the revenue base and get me some commissions. It's not going great yet, but I'm working on it, and I have high hopes...
There's more, but these are the high- and lowlights of the summer so far... I'll post more later.
Rock on!
Durham
