Category Archives: Pour My Heart Out

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PYHO – lessons i’ve learned

Don’t Tattle

When I was young, I would run to the nearest AIC (Adult in Charge) and tell them all the tales of what I saw my cousins doing.  I thought I was doing a service, showing those in charge how my counterparts were behaving badly, or were taking advantage of the system.

And I never understood why nobody wanted to play with me.

Then one day, my Aunt pulled me aside and explained that nobody likes a tattle-tale.  And, much to my surprise, she already knew about everything I was tattling on, and she mostly didn’t care.  Because, while I thought the wrongs I was witnessing were a big deal, to the people that mattered, it really wasn’t that important at all.

Tell the Truth

Growing up, I lied for a multitude of reasons – to make myself seem better/smarter/tougher than I was, to get something I shouldn’t have and, mostly, to get out of (or not get in to) trouble.

But after catching me in one lie too many (and somehow, she always caught me!), my Mom sat me down and told me, quite earnestly, that once you get caught in a lie, people start to question everything you say.  You lose their trust.  She finished up by saying that she will always be more angry to find out that I lied to her, than she would be to find out anything bad that I may have done.

And I always wanted to do whatever made my Mom less angry.

As a bonus, telling the truth is also a handy defence against tattlers – its hard to get someone in trouble when they are upfront about what they are doing.

Be True to Yourself

All through school, I wanted to be liked SO BADLY.  I would tell people whatever I thought they wanted to hear just so they would like me.

It never worked.

Then, when I met Wilzie, we resolved at the very beginning of our relationship that there would be no weird mind-games that couples play with each other to get the upper hand.  Amazingly, we kept that promise; and that resulted in us showing each other who we really were - I didn’t laugh if his jokes weren’t funny (though they usually were) and he didn’t pretend to not be staring at my boobs.

Through our relationship, Wilzie has taught me that who I am is pretty darn good; and then I started accepting myself, and showing people who I really am (in all my crazy), and then I started making some really good friends.

Take People at Their Word

Maybe its naïve, but because I have learned the above lessons, I like to assume that everyone else has too.  So when I meet/talk to people, I assume that they are who they say they are, that they won’t lie to me, and won’t run around trying to get me in trouble.

Yup…that is pretty naïve.

Chew With Your Mouth Closed

When I was little, and would be sitting at the kitchen table watching my sister hide liver in her sock - she would relish smacking me upside the head and yelling at me to “CHEW WITH YOUR MOUTH CLOSED!”

Her methods may not have been subtle, but they were very effective.

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pour my heart out – maintain the perimeter

When I was 18, my Mother told me “Never count on anyone else because they’ll only let you down…”

I had gone out with some friends and they were supposed to give me a ride home at the end of the night, but by the time my curfew rolled around everyone was far too drunk and I was left, stranded, and waiting for a cab.  When I crept in the house, long past my curfew, my Mom was sitting up waiting for me.  And when I explained what had happened, that was what she told me – “Never count on anyone else because they’ll only let you down…”

And the saddest part, is that she was pretty much bang-on.

She taught me that nobody has my best interest in mind except for me.  She also taught me, “Never put your trust in someone because they will just end up hurting you.”

Sadly, she was kind of right about this too.

But where my Mom was perpetually focused on the negative, I do try to focus on the positive and see the good in people.

Sure, someone I counted on might let me down, but people are busy focusing on what’s best for them and can’t always worry about what I want/need.  And that’s how it should be.

And while that’s true – Mom’s words still stick with me.

I’ve always been kind of loner, which is for many reasons – I am very awkward and uncomfortable meeting/talking to new people.  I have always struggled with self-esteem and thought that nobody would like/remember/care about me anyway.  And I always thought that I was the only person who would never let me down.

I think that’s part of the reason why I blog – I love the connections that I make through blogging, and I love how I can truly be myself and am accepted for it…but its also nice to have that disconnect.  I never really have to deal with anyone face to face.  I don’t have to worry about being awkward, or people not really liking me, because its just over the internet.  And the only way people can let me down is by not posting.

When my niece, B, was little, she was terribly independent – and anytime someone tried to help her do something she would yell, “I can do it my-own-self!”.  And I have since adopted that mantra – I can do it my-own-self*.

And since I was 18, I have never really counted on anyone but Wilzie.  And he always comes through. 

He comes through in ways I never realized I needed.

And it’s because of him that I know it doesn’t matter if the whole world shits on me; I know that he will always have my back.

And that’s all I really need.

*I try not to focus on the fact that I live my life by the petulant rantings of a (then) 4-year old, I prefer to think that she was wise beyond her years…

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pour my heart out – step away from the salt

I’m linking up today with Shell at Things I Can’t Say – when you’re done here, check out what everyone else there has to say.

~~~

I think my dad is sick.

Like really sick.

He’s actually been sick for a long time, but he  mostly “felt fine” so he ignored the problem and, like problems do, its only gotten worse.  Now his health can no longer be ignored, and it is past the point of being able to fix it.

Approximately 15 years ago he had a heart attack in the middle of the night – just a little one and he wrote it off as heartburn.  Because it wasn’t anything serious, he never saw the need to change his lifestyle or his eating habits.

He and my mom would fight constantly over what he ate.  My Dad was a truck driver, so it was hard for Mom to monitor his meals on the road, and when she asked what he ate, he would lie.  When he was home, she tried to cook him healthy meals, but he preferred to go out or would snack on butter and salt through the night.

He always said he would rather live his life the way wants and die happy than live a longer, healthier (but unhappy) life because he couldn’t eat what he wanted.

I’m worried he is getting his wish.

The Christmas before last, he was in the hospital for a quadruple bypass.

He was eating take-out pizza in ICU 3 days after his surgery.

After that, I tried to take up Mom’s cause and help him eat better.  I showed him tools he could use to track his fat/calorie/sodium intake, and offered alternative foods and recipes to his favoured high-fat foods.   When I asked him about his eating he told me the same thing he always told Mom…soup, salads, snacking on carrots.  But when I didn’t “ask”, he would tell me about the steaks, and the burgers and the ice cream.

He doesn’t fight with his new wife over what he is eating – she cooks him the steaks and the burgers.

Now it seems like every time I talk to him, there is some new bad news to report.

> The arteries in his legs are 100% blocked and he has aneurysms in his abdomen.

> He got up to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night and passed out.  The doctors found that his blood sugar levels were off the chart and he has now been diagnosed with diabetes and is hoping to be able to avoid taking insulin shots.

> He hasn’t been able to eat much lately (this has got progressively worse over the last year and a half), and after a round of tests, the doctors have found a couple of “blockages” in his stomach.  They are trying to identify what it could be.

> He repeatedly mentioned that the doctors are concerned over his high blood pressure, but he kept confusing that with his elevated sugar levels.

> He is often confused.

> He has lost over 30 pounds in a little over a month.

I know its natural for children to watch their parents die – that’s the way it should work.  But it doesn’t make it easy.  And as a child, it is very difficult to watch my father neglect to make any changes that could provide a significant improvement to the quality of his life.  It is even more difficult because I have already watched my Mother (and Wilzie’s Mother) fight with everything she had against a disease that wouldn’t take “No” for an answer.

I am not the best daughter.  I don’t talk to my Dad very often, even now when I now I should be savouring every minute.  I don’t visit as often as I should, even now when I should be spending as much time with him as I can.  But seeing how sick he is make me sad.  Watching him drown his roast beef in gravy frustrates me.  Knowing it could be different makes me angry.

Maybe I’m being a fatalist.  Dad seems to think that he will have some miracle surgery that will make everything all better.  Maybe he’s right.  Who am I to say?

I guess all I can do is try to remember that he’s a grown-ass man who has somehow managed to get by this long without following my every “helpful tip”, and to just be there with my love and support when he needs it.

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pouring my heart out – sweet nothings

I am pouring my heart out this week with Shell at Things I Can’t Say.

There were many times growing up that I wished I didn’t have to listen to my Mother.  Like when she was singing Glory, Glory Hallelujuh (Elvis’ version, thankyouverymuch) for bazillionth time to prove she was a better singer than me, or when she was screaming at me that it was time to wake up (and she kept on screaming until I actually got up), or when she was lecturing me about how not to conduct myself around around boys.

But my Mom has been dead for almost 4 years now, and I would love to be able to listen to her go off on a non-sensical tangent, or heave one of her massive sighs.  I would even settle for one of her patented silent treatments, beacuse at least I could take comfort in knowing it would eventually end and we could talk again.

After she first died, I hated calling the house to talk to my Dad because he didn’t change the answering machine and it was still Mom’s sing-songy “Hi.  We can’t get to the phone right now, so leave your name and number after the beep and we’ll get back to you as soon as we can.  Thanks.” because hearing her voice just hurt so bad.

But I realized the other day that I no longer remember what my Mom’s voice sounded like.   And I would give anything to still have that electronic version saved somewhere so I could refer back to it.

I remember my Gran’s voice.  I remember Wilzie’s Mom’s voice.  I remember things my Mom would say…I just can’t quite recall what she sounded like when she was saying them.

And it is infuriating!

It’s not like she’s been gone a very long time, and she didn’t die when I was very young - it was only a few years ago and I had over 30 years of conversations to memorize her tone and inflections.  How could I have forgotten?

And what makes it worse is that I feel like its right there…on the tip of my brain.  Just out of reach.

I can picture what she looked like with ease.  I can recall how she smelled like I just saw her yesterday.  It takes no effort to remember how soft her skin was or the feeling of her hand resting on mine.  But her voice is just…gone.

Since I made this realization, I have been driving myself crazy(er), reliving past conversations with my Mom.  Remembering the laughter and the screaming matches and the heart to heart chats, but its always my voice I hear.  And just when I think I’ve got it, the sound vanishes and I’m left with another silent memory.  The harder I try to hear her voice, the farther away from me it slips.

And, damn, that makes me all kinds of sad.

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pour my heart out – maya pup-aya


I am linking up, once again, with Shell at Things I Can’t Say for her weekly feeling-fest.  If you’re interested, head over to her blog and check out the other bloggers that have something heart-felt to say.

When Wilzie and I started dating, he was in the market for a dog, but he worked long hours and all kinds of weird shifts so he felt bad about bringing a puppy into that situation.

So he got a rabbit instead.

His name was George (“I’m going to love him and squeeze and call him George“), and I hated that fucking rabbit.  We litter-trained him , but he preferred to use the carpet as his personal toilet.  He even developed such an attitude that he would flip his litter box over and poop on top of it!  That little asshole was farm-bound after a month.

At which point we upgraded to our cat, Maverick.  Maverick is my schmoopy-poo, who loves to cuddle with him Mama, as we gaze lovingly into each other’s eyes.

a face only a Mother could love

But Maverick wasn’t enough for Wilzie…he needed a dog.  So we started our search for a puppy (after we got Maverick, I couldn’t bear to leave him, so I just moved in).  We spent a long time looking for just the right one.  Wilzie tortured himself by going to the SPCA every day, but we just couldn’t find the right puppy for us.

We had just made the decision to get an older dog – since our luck with finding a puppy hadn’t yet awarded us with a furry friend – and on our very next trip to the SPCA (to look for an older dog), we fell in love with a little German Shepherd/Collie cross puppy (funny how things work out).  She was just standing there, so calm among the chaos of barking/yelping/jumping dogs, looking at us inquisitively through the chain-link fence, her front paw firmly planted in her water dish.

This was our Maya Pup-aya.  She was perfect.

Except, we found out, not quite so perfect.  Maya had lice.

No big, a few baths with special shampoo and she was fine.  Perfect, in fact.

And then at 9 months old, she started to cry a lot; whining and whimpering almost constantly.  We noticed that she was moving slowly and gingerly, even more so after a walk.  We took her to the vet; something was wrong with our baby.  We were told that she had hip dysplasia – one of the worst cases that the doctor had ever seen.  Instead of her hip-joint cupping around her leg bone like a ball and socket, it was almost perfectly straight, so only the muscles around her hips were keeping her femur from sliding freely up and down and out of her joints.

a normal hip joint

moderate dysplasia

We were told that, without surgery, we would probably have to put her down by the time she turned 4 because she would be in so much constant pain.  That night, after her diagnosis, we went for dinner and brought her home our leftovers.  As she laid in the backyard chomping away at this forbidden treat, the snow falling and turning her golden fur white – I sat in the house watching her, and I cried.

She is now 9, and with medicinal management, she is just fine…well, she is getting along.

We also discovered that she is prone to urinary tract infections when she spent almost a full year with recurring bladder infections.  I would wake up several times each night to the sound of her whining at the door to go out because she just couldn’t go a couple of hours without watering the grass.  And she is possibly the worst pill taker there is – in that year, we hid her medicine in everything from peanut butter and cheese to bread smeared with jam, and she would gulp it all down, and then spit out the capsule.  We finally settled on a prescriptive dog food that balances her pH levels in her urine, and she has been managing ever since.

Almost perfect.

Except, of course, for her temperamental stomach.  Because when she eats more than a small bite of anything out of the ordinary, she spends the night vomiting and crying.  And if she drinks too much water after she eats (because her specialty food makes her very thirsty), she will throw it all back up and look at me, so sad because she just wasted her precious dinner.

She is kind of sickly and pretty sore, and it makes me sad to see her shake as she slowly lowers herself to the ground.  We have her trained to sit and await our “OK” before she eats or gets a treat, but now we let her stand, just to avoid putting her through the painful movement.  When she squats to pee, she can’t hold the position for too long, and often stands up and starts walking before she is done – which makes for a very pee-smelly hindquarters.  Her 2 greatest loves are (NOT me and Wilzie) her “walkies” and food (she may or may not take after me in that aspect…), but her walks are limited and are often very short to minimize the pain they cause, and she can only eat very little to keep her as thin as possible to avoid extra weight on her joints.

I don’t know how much pain she is in, but I can guess.  We will eventually have to make a decision - we can get her a double hip replacement – which, the vet has told us, doesn’t come with any guarantees that it will improve her quality of life (and could actually make her worse).  That surgery will cost us about $7500.

Per hip.

Or we can let her go.

It is not an easy decision, and one that I am dreading having to make.  If we do decide to put her down, how do we know when its the right time?  Dogs have extraordinary coping mechanisms, and I am worried that I won’t be able to tell the difference between kind of ouchy and holy hell this fucking hurts!

I hate seeing her suffer, but I just can’t imagine ever being ready to let her go.