Strap in

No, not another lame reference to the Awesome Strap...

Hope everybody enjoyed there Monday morning coping beer yesterday. I also hope your employers understood your dilemma when you showed up at work smelling like beer. If you need a note from home let me know, and I'll see what I can do.

Anyways...

Last weekend was the culmination of months of family drama. Not quite the kind of drama that would be worthy of airing on TNT, and probably not even high enough quality for a daytime soap opera, but definitely the kinda drama you don't want taking up 100% of your free time either. Over the weekend my core family unit (The Pie, The Boy, and Fajita) drove up to Ohio/PA to nab my mother and bring her down to Charlotte to live. "Nab" is a strong word since she came willingly, but it's more fun to use than the phrase "pick up". I got the honor of soloing home in a Budget rental truck that smelled like beer/bile vomit with my Mom's cat to keep me company. My mother (AKA Sara) traveled with the family in the Dirty Little Box so they could help her at rest stops and such. I guess I never mentioned it before, but my Mom has MS and has been in a wheelchair for quite some time. That has added to the fun of getting her down here and situated, but it seems we've solved a majority of the problems already, and we just have some nits to pick to get it all worked out.

So my Mom now lives around the corner in an independent living center less than five minutes from my house. Ideally she woulda moved in with us, but life is never ideal, is it? It will be nice for Fajita to have some relationship with another member of our family. We're the only ones down here habitating in the South, so this will be good for the both of them.

So that's where my brain has been lately... actually it's been there for months now. Conversations with family members playing over in my brain (conversations that happened or ones that I was preparing for) took away from whatever creative component I had working for me in the past. It's hard to imagine just how tumultuous this past year and a half has been for my Mom after losing her husband and her mother and also multiple moves around the Northern corners of the OH/PA area. We're hoping her life settles down and becomes just as normal and boring as everybody else's... the kinda of boring life people complain about being too boring, but are too ignorant to see just how good a boring, stable'esque life can be.

There's been one aspect of all this that has been the most consuming. Although when it comes to my own life I sometimes let things fall through the cracks, I'm alright with that because I have pretty low expectations. The problem is when it comes to doing stuff for others I hate to disappoint people, so I tend to worry and sweat the details just a bit more when other people's happiness is swinging in the balance. Now add to that the person here in question is my Mom, the human being responsible for putting me here on earth and raising me for 18 years... that's a hard favor to repay.

With boxes all over her apartment and scattered throughout my house I have a feeling my spare time is going to be not so spare for awhile. The blogging may suffer, so I suggest you invest in a twelve pack of your favorite autumn brew as things may be bumpy around here for awhile.