What’s Been Happening

I posted this on my Patreon, but I wanted to share here so you all know why I’ve been so radio silent. The picture, btw, is a horse I managed to paint sometime in November. I haven’t really managed to paint since, except as I mention in this post.

The News:

It’s been awhile.

Just before Thanksgiving, my FIL took a fall, and on November 30th he passed away. He and my husband had both a loving and contentious relationship, and my husband’s siblings are useless and totally and completely uninvolved to the point of not talking to his dad for years.

What followed was us (I’m the Trustee of his Trust) clearing out his apartment up here, trying to figure out his financial affairs and so on, and traveling to California to try to clean out his house down there.  He was a child of the Depression and tended to hoard some, plus hide money in weird spots, and he’d lived in that house for more than 60 years.

We ended up not clearing out the house. There’s just so much and it’s so hard for my husband to make decisions and we can’t travel down there as often as it will need to get rid of things and also get it sold. I’ve had a notification that the house will lose insurance April 1st, so I have to figure that out or preferably sell it before.

We met with an estate sales agent and arranged to have an estate sale in February, which should let us take out anything necessary before. We also found out his house taxes had not been paid (they were due just after he died) so we took care of those.

One of the hard things is that he was a paper hoarder. He hadn’t gotten rid of so much paper and I have to go through it all and see what’s important or not. I’m not even sure I’ve located all his bank accounts. I have to check with one to see if it’s still active, and I think that he might have a live insurance policy with another place. He had a bunch of little policies that I’m slowly tracking down.

During this time, my mom had a recurrence of skin cancer on her nose and they had to do Mohs surgery again. It was rough and the resulting removal took hours and left a really nasty wound. She had to have a graft done, and she’s still recovering. I hope that the graft took, but it’s a case of looking a lot worse before you know. The top layer of skin of the graft is likely to die and turn black, basically. Which it is.

She’s also had repeated colds. I got her vaccinated against flu and Covid, but she doesn’t mask. I don’t mask near enough. I forget even though I carry them on me.

Writing has been really up and down. I have so much I need to do and yet I haven’t, plus I have things I need and want to send out to many or all of you.

Christmas and Thanksgiving went as well as could be expected, and we had a number of people gather including friends of my son’s, plus some of his fiance’s family. I like having people in so that was nice, but I haven’t had time to even think about taking down what decorations I managed to get up. I put them up the weekend after Thanksgiving before we realized that my FIL wasn’t going to improve.

His death was frankly odd and a blessing for him. Let me explain. He was in semi-poor health. He had type 2 diabetes for many years, and had developed cirrhosis, kidney issues, had had prostate cancer, and was on oxygen. He also had AFIB. When he fell, they figured they were going to manage the pain and send him home. But two days later, he was in worse pain. They’d done a variety of tests already, but decided to run more intensive tests and discovered he’d broken a T vertebra. It was cracked horizontally.

They didn’t feel he’d do well with a surgery and decided to try a back brace. They got it on him, and wanted to Xray him to see if that had stabilized him, but, and this is where things started going downhill, he was losing coherence. They pulled back on the pain meds, but it didn’t help. He was still having a hard time waking up and focusing.

It took several days, but they got the Xray and learned that the break had worsened and he had bleeding in the area. In order to fix it, he’d have to have a minimum of a four hour surgery and they did not feel he’d survive. His breathing had turned very labored. We had to decide if we wanted to push forward or go with comfort measures and we went with comfort. He was 88 and even if the surgery worked, he’d be in a lot of pain and there was no guarantee he’d be able to walk or use a bathroom. He’d hate that. Plus they still didn’t know why he wasn’t waking up at this point. He was essentially in a coma.

He died less than 24 hours after we started the comfort measures. I felt he was in a lot of pain from the way he was moving in bed. We weren’t with him. We were on our way to see him, actually. I’m not sure if that was better or not for my husband, but he’d had a chance to tell his father he loved him when his dad was coherent.

Oh, the paint pictures. I have been feeling overwhelmed and completely out of pocket. Just can’t seem to do all the things that need doing. I have been playing a little disc golf to try to destress. Our son got us playing a few months ago and it does help me relax some. I haven’t been sleeping very well. Anyhow, I also haven’t been painting. So last night I decided to paint three horses black so I could try out these chameleon paints that basically need a black canvas for the colors to really pop.

This morning, I got out my first bottle of the chameleon color and shook it up real good. I decided to squeeze out a few drops to see what it looked like before loading it into my airbrush and apparently there was some sort of clog. The whole top popped off and I got paint on my clothes, my arms and hands, my desk, the floor, my face, a couple of the horses…. Yeah. Relaxing, right? LOL

So now I need to try to write more. And I want to do some Zoom meetups here. This week we meet with an attorney to talk about the trust and what I need to do to properly take care of things. I also have to go to Portland to pick up a couch for my son and my husband and I and son’s fiance have to move it in to their apartment and put it together. Why won’t my son help? Because apparently the stomach pain he’s been having is a hernia. He goes in tomorrow to see if they are going to operate and when.

I am sorry I haven’t been here. I miss you guys and I will get back to it. I love the idea of the Uncanny Valley. I so want to play in that valley. LOL.

XOXO

Di