the good, the bad, and the creepy

It’s amazing how you can have a hum-drum couple of days and then out of nowhere a massive amount go on in the span of half an hour.  So a couple of tid bits to share…

First: My Mother is back home safely with my grandparents.  My Granny has really deteriorated mentally and they had to take her straight to the nursing home in TN.  Apparently she was yelling and begging them not to leave her as they walked out….which really breaks everyone’s heart.  I volunteered to take care of her when we got back as I know that they can’t really afford the nursing home…but my Mom told me to assess it when I come back because she thinks she may be a bit too far gone for me to handle.  I think it would be great just to have her there for Thanksgiving and Christmas, but even that may not happen.  We shall see.  Anyway, it is good to have my Mom back home as I had not talked to her in over a month.  Now I’ve also got the added bonus of being able to talk to my Grandpa on Skype, which I am super excited about and currently have a skype date at 9:30am.

Now, on to the good news….Mat’s Green Card is here!!  Well, technically it’s in TN, but at any rate he is now a permanent resident for the next ten years.  Two years after we get back he can sit for his citizenship.  So yay.  Though its a little bit sad that now I know we have to leave.  Well, another thing to mark off the “List of things to worry about”.

And finally…for the little bit creepy…I’ve stumbled upon a psychic…or a few psychics actually on this parenting forum (so it’s just for fun).  I asked two questions.  One was about my Brother and one was about my student loan and whether we’d ever pay it off or have help with it.

I have a massive student loan debt that we are working really hard at paying off…do you know if we will stumble upon any help with this and if we will be successful at paying it as planned?

I am really feeling the stress and anxiety over this student loan debt I’m sensing there will be help from an older male in relation to paying it, I do not feel this will be a gift of money but more help in relation to a loan. He has a very financial feel to him and I’m seeing him in a suit. I feel with his help you will be able to pay it off as planned.

My question about my brother was pretty long….and I had several responses to it.  Basically I asked what he wanted to tell me from the text message he sent, whether his death was really an accident, and if he was looking after me.  Also about a dream I had before his funeral about a white light behind a bedroom door.  These are some of the responses I got:

I’m fairly new to tuning into things, however I couldn’t help but to reply. When I saw the title of the post and then you know how you hover your mouse and can see the first bit of the message? Well I quite clearly got a sense of sadness (not your sadness) and had to keep reading. 
I feel that your brother was feeling very sad about something that had happened or been said to him earlier that day, possibly work related, and wanted to talk to you about it but when he found out you were at work he tried to brush it off so as to not worry you. I do however also feel his death was an accident, that he took extra pills (after someone else once told him they did this) hoping to block out what was going through his head. He thought after a good sleep he would be able to take another look at what was bothering him.
I also feel that the bright light and things you felt were meant to comfort you and to let you know it’s not your fault, he wanted to show you he is happy now but of course it wasn’t your time so you were not able to see what was beyond that door. I think the person you are feeling is an older woman though.

I’m sensing he loved cars, I’m being shown a red race car and he’s using his arm to ask me to join him in the car. He does feel like a very lovely soul but he craved company and sometimes this craving couldn’t be adequately met for him which I think represents the sadness.
He misses your family a lot and does watch over you often. Do you have a son? Because I’m seeing a young boy he often spends a lot of time and he adores to teach him things, if this is your son you might find that he knows a lot of things that you often wonder where he would have learned them from.

My brother did love cars, have a red sports car, and send someone a text that night that he just needed to sleep and he’d feel better in the morning.  Make of it what you will.  No clue about the little boy.

What a crazy night.

the saga

My mom has been in TX since the Monday after Mother’s Day.  My Grandpa had been put in the hospital and my Granny, which I have said before, has lost her marbles and needed to be put into a nursing home.  Ideally, the plan was for her to go down there and bring my grandparents back to TN so she could look after them.  Seriously though, old people have had a lot of years to perfect the art of subborn-ness.  So one week went by, and then two, and three….and she’s still not home.  This wouldn’t be that big of a deal except for the fact that they JUST bought a new house because their old one was just no longer safe to live in.  The mortgage is 50% more and they had to make some major changes to be able to afford it.  Now my mom has had to take off work without pay all this time.  Not to mention the cost to drive down there etc.

She got my granny into a nursing home, but insurance was only going to cover it until August.  After that it’s $4,500 a month.  This is what really frustrates me.  I am in a country where if my granny was here, she could go into a nursing home for free.  It really breaks my heart to see my grandparents struggle.  Anyway, my Grandpa agreed to go to TN.  My step-dad would fly there and get my mom’s car, my mom would fly back with my grandparents, and they’d put my granny in a home in TN.  Well, my step-dad went to get the car, and then my Grandpa decided he didn’t want to go.  Now my mom is stuck there with him refusing to go to TN.  And now for some reason the nursing home has decided they won’t let me Granny stay past June 10th because it is not medically necessary.  WTF.  When did Alzheimer’s become “not” a medical necessity?  My mom’s job is in jeopardy (always good in such a fabulous economy with a new house to pay for), there’s no family left in TX to take care of my grandparents, and they refuse to leave the house.  There’s heaps more to the story, but some things are better in the dark than on the internet.

I’m feeling pretty helpless.  There’s not much I can do.  The plane tickets we’ve got to come back to the states are set…the dates can not be changed so we can go back early.  Even if we could, the baby is not a US citizen yet.  We’ve still got to get her passport and register her birth at the consulate in Sydney.  I’m also not putting an unvaccinated baby on an international flight for 20 hours.  We just can’t leave earlier than planned.  I don’t know how this is all going to play out…it’s just plain crummy.  I can’t help but think how much easier it would be if my Brother were still alive…though it wouldn’t be fair on him to expect him to take care of them either.  What a mess.

I must admit…when I first got word that my grandparents agreed to go stay in TN with my parents (where we will be staying for a bit upon returning), I was kind of excited.  Yes, they are much older now…and a little bit crazy….but I always dreamed of living closer to them as a child.  I wanted to really know them, and spend holidays together.  I thought about how great it was going to be for Tanami…she would get to spend some time with her great-grandparents.  Because Mat’s Dad is planning to come to the states for x-mas, we were going to have a big gathering for Tanami’s first Christmas.

Who knows what will happen…life has a funny way of unfolding.

dooms day: fail

Well, it’s the day after Mr. Christian Extremist’s proclaimed “DOOMS DAY”.  What a crack pot.  Only 2% of the population was going to be beamed up in the rapture anyway.  So what does that say about your God?  That he’s created everyone on Earth, but only loves 2% of them.  What a loving guy.

Australia is not very religious…at all.  It’s quite a night/day difference coming from the south where you can’t get from point A to point B without passing at least 5 churches (as well as 12 fast food restaurants and one waffle house).  It has the 2nd highest population of Buddhists outside of Asia…which I also find interesting because I’ve yet to see a Buddhist temple here, but can think of 2 in ATL.  Of course there are plenty of people here who believe in God, it’s just that I can only count 2 people I’ve met that openly do, but I can list heaps of people I’ve met who openly don’t.  So basically…when Mr. Crack Pot does get his prediction of the end of the world correct, most of Oz is going to be carrying on life like it’s just another day.  No worries, Mate.

So my mom has been in TX for the last 2 weeks putting my Granny in a nursing home (she was unsuccessful the last time she was there for that purpose) because she has finally lost enough marbles not to care.  It’s really a very sad and depressing subject for me, and I elect to continue believing that my Granny is the same old lady she’s always been and I love her to bits.  So my Papa is sick and he can’t take care of himself (he can barely see so he can’t get to the store and things like that).  We are the last remaining family and I can’t do much from the other side of the world.  However, the man is STUBBORN and he will not leave his home in TX to go back with my mom to TN – they would transfer my Granny to a nursing home in TN of course.  So in the mean time, my mom, who has a brand new super expensive mortgage that they can barely afford, has taken off of work and spent ridiculous amounts of money on gas to go there and drive him around everywhere and he seems content to just have her stay there forever.  We’ve pretty much put our hand up to move in with him and take care of him when we come back to the states.  It would actually work out great for us for a while, even though he lives in the middle of nowhere (seriously) and I have no idea where Mat would find work.  Not sure what is going to come of the situation.  Either he is going to go with my mom to TN, we are going to move in with him, or he is going to sit and rot in a house all alone.  Originally we’ve planned to stay at my mom’s when we come back until we figure out what direction we are heading with our lives, so it will be interesting to have three generations all under one roof if that’s the way it plays out.

Speaking of coming home….there is a tracker website we’ve been using for Mat’s immigration mess.  Its like a spread sheet where people list the dates of each step of the process and when they get approved.  We’ve been spot on with the timing of one of the people (their application was accepted the same day as ours, got the letter for biometrics and the appointment was the same time as well).  I’ve just read that their green card was approved on May 19th (US time).  This doesn’t really amount to a hill of beans for us, but I figure it means it won’t be much longer.  We haven’t gotten any request for further info, or an interview – always a sign.

recap

What a crazy emotional couple of days…(something you totally wouldn’t expect a pregnant woman to say, right?)

Saturday night I was having trouble sleeping and had a strong urge to check my email.  When I did, I saw that my mom had written me about 10 minutes prior.  She had titled the email: “Granny”.  My Granny has Alzheimer’s…we’ve known it for several years.  For the first couple of years I couldn’t even tell the difference…she still seemed like the same ol’ lady to me.  And then the year I graduated from college she had to have emergency surgery so Mat and I drove down to take care of her and my Pawpaw.  It was somewhere between her talking about goldfish swimming in her IV and spider webs on the ceiling that I realized perhaps something is wrong.  Since then, it’s been hard to have a phone conversation with her as she constantly has to ask my Pawpaw answers to the questions you ask her.  ”What’d you do today?”….”Honey, what’d we do today?”  Or “How’s the weather?”  ”Honey….what’s the weather like today?” You can’t ask her anything without her having to ask my Pawpaw.  For a long time my pregnancy stuck with her.  At times she couldn’t remember that Mat was my husband, or that I was my Mother’s daughter, but she knew that I was pregnant.

M mom’s email told me that my Granny had gotten up in the middle of a nap and busted her head open.  She had to have staples, and they were having problems controlling the bleeding.  My grandpa is 85 years old…quite deaf and almost blind.  He can’t take care of her…and really he can’t even take care of himself.  It has become unsafe to have my Grandma at home.  With my Brother gone, they’ve got no family around to take care of them, and they’ve alienated all of their friends from church.  As soon as I read the email I got on Skype – I obviously wasn’t going to get any sleep anyway.   My mom told me she’d be heading to TX a few hours later…she’ll be going there to help put my Granny in a nursing home.

Thank you, Alzheimer’s for turning my family upside down, for stealing memories that were not yours, and for taking away my Daughter’s opportunity to know her Great Grandmother.  Thank you, in advance, for all the times I will talk to my Granny and she won’t know who I am, for the mean things that she will say, and ultimately for causing her death.

I can’t believe my Granny is going to be put in a nursing home.  My Grandparents need each other.  My Grandpa will be all alone in a house in the middle of nowhere…he can’t drive to get to the store, he can’t see to pay the bills, and I know his heart will be broken without my Granny.  He’s too stubborn to sell the house and property and move to TN with the rest of the family.  I don’t know exactly what will happen while my Mom is in TX.

Sunday night I accidentally dropped my Brother’s iphone on the concrete and shattered the screen.  I was devastated.  I’m always sooo careful with it.  I spent hours online after trying to figure out how to get the screen replaced.  $179 was the going rate.  I came across a kit to fix it yourself, and that’s what I ended up going with..it was only $30.  I am my Brother’s Sister afterall, so I am quite tech savvy.  I figure if I can hack through a computer’s BIOS password, and fix the RROD on a xbox360, I can certainly change the screen on an iphone.

On a positive note: Hubby is home!!!  And with him he brought:

diabetes!

Along with a massive box of Lucky Charms and a suitcase of baby clothes that I’m pretty sure the baby wouldn’t be able to fit into before we get back, a bear that plays sounds from the womb, and bottles that you can’t get here in Oz.  Oh, and some make-up from Ulta….though he accidentally forgot the two most important things I sent him there for.  Most importantly, he got his Driver’s license, international driving permit, and biometrics taken.  Apparently he slept most of the time he was there, so it hasn’t been too terrible for him to get back into the swing of things here.

Nothing exciting going on this week….we are just trying to get back into our normal routine.  Birthing classes are over, and we’re down to 8 weeks till our due date.  Yikes!!!  While I am not sure I am ready to be a mommy, I am sure ready to get this baby out of my belly!!  Sunday is my baby shower – the only day of the week it is forecast to rain ;p  This wouldn’t be a problem except for the fact it is going to be held outside at the lake.  Fingers crossed that the rain is gone by the afternoon!

what best friends are for….

If you can’t go home, they will send some home to you.  Some things are worth waiting 2 months for.  <3 my bestie!!  Now…what kind of Aussie surprise can I send back??  Hmmm…