Lessons in looking on the bright side
Dec. 29th, 2012 11:33 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jianantonicThis has been a VERY bad week. I'm ready to put it all behind me and hit the reset button. But some of the muck has upside, at least.
I had a dream last night that I overslept and missed my flight to Reno. The dream was very stressful and involved fighting with gate agents and all that fun stuff. Then I woke up, breathed a sigh of relief that it was just a dream, and checked the clock. Guess who overslept and missed her flight to Reno! GAH. After going over several untenable options with the United agent on the phone, we found a flight tomorrow that works. I have to pay the difference in cost, but that difference is -$300...so they're paying me. Sweet. And that $300 covers the damage I did to my car when I had yet another garage fail on Thursday morning. And I'll still get to Reno in time to play all my scheduled sessions of bridge. I'm still mad at myself for fucking up, though.
I decided a run would be healthy and cathartic, so I put on my gear and set out for the park with the trails near my house. Every time I've run there (3x), I've failed to find the main path that leads to the larger network of trails, and I've ended up looping around a very short system of trails right by the entrance before giving up and running home. Today I found the connector trail, which was a good thing in theory, but then I was completely unprepared for how extensive the trail system is once you get to it, and I got myself good and lost. After a half hour of running in circles and backtracking and utilizing the process of elimination, I finally made it back to the right trail, and eventually made it home. I had planned to run for about 30 minutes, but instead ran for an hour. So, getting lost was shitty and stressful, but hey, bonus exercise. And I don't feel all worn out now, either. Yay being in shape.
The other bright side of missing my flight is that I can take Dave to the train station and hang out downtown with him for a bit, so that'll be fun. Most things have gone very much not my way lately, but at least nothing has gone catastrophically wrong.
One sad development from this week doesn't really have a bright side, though. Virginia Page, my grandmother's long time closest friend and a very close friend of our family for 60 years, is in the hospital and not planning to make it out. She is 94 and hasn't lost a bit of her mental faculties with age, but she has been in a rehab hospital with a broken leg for two months now. This week, she developed pneumonia and was taken to UVA hospital, where she has declined treatment. She's in the palliative care unit, which is where they keep you as comfortable as they can without fighting whatever ailments you've got. She's ready, though, and my brother is there with her, by her request. Things are happening on her terms, and that's the best you can ask for in this situation, I suppose. It's possible her body will fight off her illnesses on its own, and WT says she doesn't seem like she's dying, but she's certainly of the opinion that this is the end for her. I feel like will has a lot to do with survival, and if her will is to go, then that will probably happen whether she is capable of recovery or not. She has been another grandmother to us, and losing her will not be easy to swallow, but we have years of happy memories, and I am grateful for that.
I had a dream last night that I overslept and missed my flight to Reno. The dream was very stressful and involved fighting with gate agents and all that fun stuff. Then I woke up, breathed a sigh of relief that it was just a dream, and checked the clock. Guess who overslept and missed her flight to Reno! GAH. After going over several untenable options with the United agent on the phone, we found a flight tomorrow that works. I have to pay the difference in cost, but that difference is -$300...so they're paying me. Sweet. And that $300 covers the damage I did to my car when I had yet another garage fail on Thursday morning. And I'll still get to Reno in time to play all my scheduled sessions of bridge. I'm still mad at myself for fucking up, though.
I decided a run would be healthy and cathartic, so I put on my gear and set out for the park with the trails near my house. Every time I've run there (3x), I've failed to find the main path that leads to the larger network of trails, and I've ended up looping around a very short system of trails right by the entrance before giving up and running home. Today I found the connector trail, which was a good thing in theory, but then I was completely unprepared for how extensive the trail system is once you get to it, and I got myself good and lost. After a half hour of running in circles and backtracking and utilizing the process of elimination, I finally made it back to the right trail, and eventually made it home. I had planned to run for about 30 minutes, but instead ran for an hour. So, getting lost was shitty and stressful, but hey, bonus exercise. And I don't feel all worn out now, either. Yay being in shape.
The other bright side of missing my flight is that I can take Dave to the train station and hang out downtown with him for a bit, so that'll be fun. Most things have gone very much not my way lately, but at least nothing has gone catastrophically wrong.
One sad development from this week doesn't really have a bright side, though. Virginia Page, my grandmother's long time closest friend and a very close friend of our family for 60 years, is in the hospital and not planning to make it out. She is 94 and hasn't lost a bit of her mental faculties with age, but she has been in a rehab hospital with a broken leg for two months now. This week, she developed pneumonia and was taken to UVA hospital, where she has declined treatment. She's in the palliative care unit, which is where they keep you as comfortable as they can without fighting whatever ailments you've got. She's ready, though, and my brother is there with her, by her request. Things are happening on her terms, and that's the best you can ask for in this situation, I suppose. It's possible her body will fight off her illnesses on its own, and WT says she doesn't seem like she's dying, but she's certainly of the opinion that this is the end for her. I feel like will has a lot to do with survival, and if her will is to go, then that will probably happen whether she is capable of recovery or not. She has been another grandmother to us, and losing her will not be easy to swallow, but we have years of happy memories, and I am grateful for that.
