brimsd | Things and Stuff

outer_divide is scheduled to open next Thursday, March 1st. Which is awesome. I'm a little nervous about it in the same way I'm nervous about showing off new pieces of art. I think it will be a good thing for me. I've had the story kicking around for awhile and I wasn't sure where to put it. It should work well as a game.

Anyway. On the Real Life front. A recap of this month so far has been... not the best but not as bad as it could be. My Aunt died of ALS early this month. My Uncle(unrelated to that aunt) has aggressive cancer and it's... still uncertain. As some of you may remember my uncle getting cancer prompted me taking on my 98 year old grand mother. She lives with us and is in generally good health but it can be tiring. Like today, our usual aide called in sick and the replacement couldn't be here for an hour. This kind of thing has happened before and I'm... sadly used to it but it throws me a bit off my daily routine. Not terribly, it just means I need more caffeine.

I got the middle of the day as far as taking care of grandma is concerned and I sometimes take a nap after the aide arrives in the morning so I'm just lacking in that hour long nap. Not a big deal just all heeeeey I wanted to use that hour. Anyway, grandma is a little bit like having a child only she doesn't fuss or scream or suddenly run around the apartment screaming and pretending to be Superman. She has a fixed schedule she usually keeps to so that makes it easier to plan my time for work and fun.

I got married last month so things are a bit easier as a whole because there are two of us and we can trade off everything but the personal care stuff. If grandma needs help in the bathroom or with clothes that's my job. Jordan can help with everything else though. That is a huge relief because it has been very hard. I'm good at it but it's hard. Not hard in what I have to do but it's hard in terms of mentality. Not everyone is cut out to be a caretaker. It can be nerve wracking, especially if grandma chokes. It's happened twice since she's been here and only once did we need to assist her. Believe it or not that's an improvement. Her jaw has shrunk and her teeth don't fit that well. So that coupled with the natural weakening of the throat muscles as you age...? not so awesome. I'm just real careful about what I feed her and how finely it's chopped. ilu chopper machine.

One thing I don't like about this is I occasionally have to lie to her. She tends to fixate on things and warp herself out of shape over something minor. So I've lied to ease her mind, like she thought a bill was 500 dollars when it was actually 200 dollars. She would not listen when I told her it was less than she thought so I gave up and told her that the insurance took care of it. The thing here is she hasn't been the person in charge of her money for a long while. I'm not even in charge of it. I get a grandma allowance to buy anything and everything she wants or needs while the other bills are handled by a Aunt Jean and my mom who have the power of attorney.

My role is to be the person here to take care of her. In a way I'm paid to be here in terms of room and board. My job isn't to look after her money beyond what I spend directly on her behalf. I have a folder filled with receipts for everything a buy each month. End of the month I add it up and average what I spend on what and send that off to my aunt. The reason we gotta do that is we are in an government assistance program and we need to show them what we spend her money on. It's to prevent fraud so I don't mind. It also helps me keep track of how much we're spending in general with our own money as well as hers.

The situation here is a bit difficult but we caught a huge break here. I have time to work on my art and comics again which is what I really want to do.

I guess that's all for now.