Autumn is my favorite time of the year. Harvest time means cooler temperatures, fresh apples (pie, cobblers, CIDER, etc), pumpkin EVERYTHING (that can be a bad thing...really), long hikes and camping. Well, normally it does. Right now we are flirting with 90 degree daytime (70 degree at night) temps and it sure does not feel like harvest season to me. Hopefully that will change in a week or two.
I wrote to my sister the other day and in doing so I guess I caught her off guard with the content. My sis and I are not super close (we text and e-mail as well as yearly visits) but our relationship is light years ahead of the one I had with our brother. It still pains me that we never were able to reconcile but I did try... however, I digress.
Sis wrote me back today, obviously a bit shaken by the tone/subject of my e-mail. In a nutshell I asked her to be the caretaker of my Google and Microsoft accounts and to make a "final"post on my Facebook account when the time comes. There is a lot of data out there in the cloud and I had hoped she would agree to be the administrator of that data. Long story short, she agreed and asked that I do a couple of things for her, which I will most certainly do. We are family.
I really hate to dump more on my sis...she has a lot on her plate: Married, children (one autistic), full time job, manages my mom's medical issues, has her own health concerns to contend with, lost one brother to cancer a few years ago and now stands to lose another brother within the next 5 or so years due to one of the most EVIL conditions a person can be diagnosed with, ALS.
I continue to have good days and bad days. Overall my energy level is much lower than it was a year and a half ago (I ran a half marathon in the spring of 2015 and did damn well for a sick dude...just a little over 2 hours for 13.1 miles) and while my left hand has always been severely compromised, my right hand is now beginning to give me more trouble. I am having difficulty with a lot of day to day tasks but so far I have found a way to perform them.
I also finding myself getting "weepy" more often now. Sad thoughts will cause my eyes to well up (like right now) with tears and I have to really pull myself together just to appear normal. It just ain't cool for a 51 year old man to being streaming tears at work.
Work still weighs heavy on my mind as the pending merger gets closer and closer. If I survive the layoffs I will be part of a new company, which will mean I have unwillingly changed companies 3 times in the past 14 years due to outsourcing, spin-offs, and mergers. It gets harder to do my day to day work if it involves much typing due to the decreased mobility of my hands. Company disability is becoming more and more appealing but the thought of living on ~70% of what I earn now is frightening. Things are tight now...on disability they will be almost unacceptable so I keep plugging along hoping for some miracle of finance to appear :)
I do a lot of voice (THANK YOU GOOGLE!) typing as well as "hunt and peck" typing which is not fast but it allows me to continue working. The down side to that is my hands are so tired by the end of the day I cannot hold much. I am not complaining...just stating a fact.
Welcome to "the new normal" of my life.
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