Sigh

Can't sleep. Got leg twitches. Am waiting for some Vitamin B to calm that. And took Advil PM to ensure would sleep at a semi-decent time tonight... the first official night of daylight savings time.

Last week, talked to my Mom. She told this very sweet tale about how Dad comforted her through a heart attack recently, by holding her close and telling her funny stories from his childhood. She and he laughed hysterically. Her chest pains went away.

She's done the emergency room thing a bit too much, I guess. She's been having chest pains that she just rides out instead of going to the hospital.

She has an appointment to see her pace-maker guy, and the nurse of her new cardiologist, on April 10th. Asked her to please be sure to bring up the recent incidents of chest pain. Would like her to know if she can safely take aspirin (she's on alot of meds as it is), or possibly have some other medication on hand for when she's having a chest pain incident. Thinking of those movies where the guy grabs his chest, asks for his meds, and some kind soul goes to grab the meds and water so he can take them. [Unless of course it's more of a murder-mystery situation, in which case the victim usually doesn't get his meds in time!]

Hoping she'll be given a prescription of nitro or whatever to have on hand for the next time she once again refused to go to the ER.

My husband is on travel all next week. He's bummed on that. And Sunday afternoon we found out his uncle passed away Friday evening.

I feel like shit about it. My husband and I took some awesome pictures of his uncle and aunt's 50th wedding anniversary, at which they renewed their vows. I think this was back in 2002. I put the pics up on one of our websites, and then tried to spread the word to our family about their location. When I went to talk to his aunt and uncle, found out that their internet connection was dialup, and that their computer was fairly ancient as well... so perhaps it would be the bottleneck instead of their internet connection! I don't think they even tried to look at the pics.

A friend of my Mom asked me early last week for some doggy pictures... she wanted to frame one and give it to my Mom for her birthday, which was last Wednesday. I went to Costco to get some printed up. And it occurred to me, while I was there, that I really should finally get those 50th anniversary pics printed out for my uncle and aunt in-laws. You know, it had been 4 years... it felt like it was definitely TIME!

Shit. Too damned late. This task basically got lost in my bottomless todo lists. And I let it go.

I had a chance to maybe get this to them in time before my uncle-in-law passed.

I SUCK.

So, Monday am plotting the following tasks:
1. Finally get the 50th Wedding anniversary pics printed out, put in a nice album, and specially blowing one of them up and framing it. Delivering all, with a card, to my aunt-in-law, with flowers and heartfelt sympathy from me and from my husband.

2. Tattling on my Mom to the people in charge of her heart health. Maybe they will say that it will be ok, that it can wait until she goes to visit them on the 10th. And that they will be sure to bring it up if she doesn't, so they can suggest either medications she should have on hand... or slap her on the wrist for not going to the ER!

3. Taking funny movies over to my parent's place, and watching them with Mom, and hopefully also Dad if he isn't too tired. [He is 83 and still has to work in order to support the two of them! They've had terrible financial upheaval in their lives. :P]

Mom is 77. I know she's had a good run. But I'd really like to see both Mom and Dad stay on the planet for another 5 years at least!

Anyway, have been a little rattled of late. Done some bit of crying. Done some bit of regretful thinking. And worse: I keep running scenarios in my head where I've just heard that my Mom has died.

[No thanks to watching way too much Law and Order, at least one of those scenario's involves me finding out Mom just died because I'm being arrested for her murder! And no, I have no desire to kill my Mom. Throttle her senseless for not taking better care of herself and for ironically how she over-mothered me, but otherwise no desire to commit matricide, thanks.]

Is matricide the right word? I know patricide exists, and am 99.999% certain it means killing your Dad.

Thanks to my Sister's continual reminders, since 1990, that "this might be their last Christmas", I got to the point of finally ignoring my Sister's warnings. I just wasn't able to maintaining that high level of anxiety right around Christmas every year! Christmas has to be perfect each year because this one might be their last? Having that thought re-iterated for the past 16 years? No thanks. But this year, she might be right.

I am SO not ready.