May Contain Traces of Tree Nuts

That was the warning on the side of the box of chocolates I bought today... tree nuts...

Anyway, it is currently 3 am and I am one sleepy lass. I didn't feel good last night so I didn't get much sleep. And then I had to stay on apartment manager guard duty in the morning, because they were coming around to check our smoke detectors and I didn't want him to know that I have pets. Even though he has a cat that likes to roam the halls.

I went away last weekend to the valley. It's nice to be out of the city and in a place where people really don't care what they look like. Sure, I may live near a mental hospital where the people think they're tigers, but it's still a city and the people be vain.

Speaking of people, I'm all for customer service, but what is it with teenage boys at grocery store check-outs? I understand why one may put a bottle of pop and a bag of chips in one bag, because those things naturally go together. But the cans of cat food and a glass bottle of salsa? My mild salsa became extra chunky... with shards of glass!

Moving on... I was in the valley last weekend. Twas nice, I had berry pancakes at Smitty's and bought a fresh flow fountain for my kittens. And what else? Oh yeah... I found out my grandmother has breast cancer.

This is the scene. We're sitting at the dining room table listening to that dang clock tick away the seconds, and she picks up a pamphlet on the table, telling us that this is what she's been studying. In the mid afternoon gloom I made out the words breast cancer... Neither myself nor my brother and sis-in-law knew about this until now, and at that point I wasn't even sure that the pamphlet was for her and not one of her quilting cronies. Anyway, I'm eventually able to round-aboutly ask the question and it turns out that she's known this for a year, and will be going in for major surgery as soon as they can get the team together.

At first I was a little confused as to why this kind of information hadn't reached my ears since it's been a year and all... But seeing as how my family's reaction to stress/badness/conflict/sadness is immediate avoidance/denial, it really isn't that surprising.

So, in light of that fact, by the end of the visit she's treated this whole thing so non-chalantly that I start to feel like it's no big deal. But then I get in the car and it starts to sink in... It's a big deal in that she's 78 and major surgery is not kind to 78 year-olds with poor health and a pacemaker. It's a big deal in that my grandfather is (going) crazy and someone has to be around to do everything while she's in recovery. So the coping mechanism of complete avoidance and denial is really only going to get us so far.

And in the spirit of avoidance, I have to go do laundry and watch TV shows about addicts, because that's what Youth Care Workers do at 4 in the morning. That and write blog posts with the words "tree nuts"...