• Dear OPW Lazyweb: I accidentally clicked the "Hey! I don't wanna receive these anymore!" link in the automated OPW digest email. How can I turn that back on?

Also:

• Matt Casarino started an OPW post on 5/30 but just made it public yesterday because he just finished it. So, if you're interested in reading his brain-pickinz, go scroll back a week. (or, click here.)

Also:

• I watched some of the Comey testimony today. I love Comey so much and wish he was my neighbor and I want to bring him chicken cutlets and a lasagna. He just seems like a genuinely GOOD person.  John McCain, whom I respect, sadly seemed doddering and confused and like he was genuinely struggling to make sense. It made me sad. 

• In other news, come to the Bellefonte Cafe (804 Brandywine Blvd, Wilmington) on July 1st from 8-10pm for our annual Hot Breakfast Summer Concert of Happiness. Good food, no cover charge, all that. 

• Lastly, please send good vibes to the Moskosteins... JD is not doing well (he's a very old boy) and they all need some good juju. 

Hi all!

We've been up at my folks' place since Sunday. We were eating dinner and I got a text from my dad that he had to call an ambulance to bring him to the hospital because he blew out his knee and couldn't put even a toe's worth of weight on his right leg.  I called him and he was TERRIFIED, and absolutely convinced this was "the fall," meaning the injury an old person has in their late 70s that begins the rapid decline to death.  I kept trying to tell him not to order the headstone quite yet, but he was really, really upset. By the time he got out of the ER and back home it was 11:30PM, so we all agreed Matt and I would get up to NJ on Monday (the 13th).

So, apart from snowcamming (which is now over), I have been almost entirely offline since we've been up here. I haven't read OPW or LJ; I've done maybe 10 mins max on Instagram and Twitter.  I'm sorry I haven't been more responsive.

So yep, we're still up at my folks' place taking care of them since my dad blew his knee out on Sunday.  Strangely, Mom seems to be doing MUCH better. I'm thinking with my Dad down for the count, Mom realizes she needs to step it up a bit, and she has! She isn't nearly as forgetful.  Maybe the extra responsibility is good for her.

Since we've been here, we let my folks handle their own breakfast as a test to see how their mobility is for the day... but then we wind up handling lunch and dinner plus all chores (laundry, cleaning Mom's bedroom commode, cleaning/prepping her CPAP, meal prep and serving/cleanup, shopping, snow removal, med checks, laundry, washing the kitchen floor, cleaning the kitchen and bathrooms, etc.)

Yesterday (Thursday) I took my dad to the orthopedist to figure out what's broken on him and what the prognosis/path forward is.  Diagnosis: Torn meniscus, but luckily it's not an entirely fucked meniscus. It should heal with some PT and TLC in a few weeks... he's already markedly better yesterday than he was on Monday when we arrived, but he absolutely still needs a walker, which means he can't carry anything.  My mom can't carry anything either... so the small "care-related tasks" like dumping and cleaning my mom's bedside commode is impossible for either of them to do... let alone carrying food to the table. So as much as we want to get home and get our lives back, we need some kind of plan to have these small tasks handled. I cannot rely on my brother or sister-in-law, which is sometimes frustrating but understandable. My parents' neighbors have offered to help out, but cleaning a chunky pee-filled commode isn't something you ask a neighbor to do... that's a family job. (Sorry for that visual.)

Matt has been so good anxiety-wise lately... the CBD + Xanax combo has been working miracles. However, yesterday was a Very Bad Day and a reminder that he is not "cured," and a reminder he mustn't get cocky and not take his meds.  Caring for my mom, caring for my dad, and caring for plus worrying about Matt yesterday made me wonder how people with kids care for several people every day of their lives with no break whatsoever. I was wiped out. 

My parents have been very kind and appreciative this visit, and they keep telling me how truly grateful they are that we're up here and able/willing to help.  I'm very happy to have been up here, too.  In the evenings once we're done with dinner and all of our tasks are done, my dad and I (and sometimes Matt)  wind down by binge-watching Nurse Jackie.  I've been enjoying it. When I asked him why he chose that show as opposed to the other million things on Netflix, cable, Amazon, etc., he said, "I like Edie Falco, and I wanted to watch something without explosions for a change."  My dad? Watching something without fast cars or explosions? WEIRD. :-D

Selfishly, I'm also happy to have ridden out the storm up here with my folks because Delaware got a ton of ice and apparently Arden and north Wilmington lost power for a good long while... parts of which didn't get power back until yesterday (Thursday) with crews from North Carolina helping out the local power company workers. I know our house lost power at some point (even if just for a moment) because I tried remoting into my home computer yesterday and couldn't, which tells me it turned off unceremoniously. (My computer stays off if the power gets cut.)  So I have no way to know if we'll come home to a freezer full of warm, stinky food or what. (Though Joe Trainor just stopped by our house a few minutes ago to return a soprano sax we rented for the sold-out Billy Joel show we did on Saturday night down at the beach, and he was able to use the garage door OK, so the power's onbviously on now.)

Today is Friday, and I'm not sure when we're going back to DE. We really wanted to go to a concert on Saturday (tomorrow) night, and Matt has a final rehearsal on Sunday afternoon for an Able Arts skit they've asked him to be a part of for their show next week.  We may just go home for the weekend and come right back up here.

It's actually been pretty OK being up here. I feel very appreciated and useful. 

Anyway, I promise to be more present online when I can. I'm sorry that I can't be a better or more responsive friend now... right now I need to keep focusing on being a good daughter and a good partner. 

Love you all.

I taught from Monday through Thursday (today) at Wharton Business School (at Penn) this week. It felt good to get back in the saddle.  It's Penn's spring break this week, so we were able to snag one of the really nice classrooms in the basement of Vance Hall, which is on the corner of 38th and Spruce.  There is no cell signal in that there basement, so if you need to send/receive a text you have to go into the stairwell that leads outside so you can pick up just enough signal to send/receive a few characters.  Plus, I'm not on their WiFi/network, so I really am cut off from the world from 7:50am - 4:30pm. (I should add that by the time I get home from teaching all day, I am 100000% out of spoons, so I don't even get online, really. I'll check my work email via my phone, and that's all I got. LJ/OPW/Twitter/Instagram? Nosiree.)

Anyway, the last time I taught at Wharton, I had Delaware Express Shuttle drive me to and from Penn every day... but at $130 EACH WAY (yes, really... $260/day x 4 days, that's over $1000 just to get to and from work each day.  Granted, it also involves the least amount of hassle, and since Wharton is paying a pretty penny for this training, I didn't really feel all that bad about spending that money (crazy as it sounds).  

So, this time around I decided to take SEPTA for the first time in my 18 years of living in Delaware.  So I had Delaware Express drive me TO Penn in the morning, and in the afternoons I would walk to the University City station and ride SEPTA to Claymont for $6.50.  Much better than $130.

Yesterday (Wednesday) the train schedule was such that by the time I ended class, I'd have to wait over an hour before my train would leave, and I wouldn't be home until 5:45pm. We had a Billy Joel tribute band rehearsal last night, and I desperately wanted to take a nap between teaching and rehearsal, but I knew I wouldn't be able to fit a nap in if I took the train.

Anyway, after class yesterday I grabbed my backpack and walked down Spruce St. towards the University City train station, and I'm weighing the pros and cons of taking the train as planned for $6.50 (even though the train didn't leave Philly for a good 75 minutes. I also considered calling an Uber to see if they would just drive me home thanks to the miracle of credit cards... and then I decided, "Screw it. I'll take a cab, then. I wanna get home, I wanna lose this heavy backpack, I wanna take a nap... but most importantly, I wanna see my guy."  As my eyeballs scanned Spruce Street for a cab without passengers, a car beeps next to me... and it's a green Mini Cooper with Matt behind the wheel!  Apparently he had texted me 7238 times asking if I'd like a ride home (messages I never received due to the location of my classroom); and when he didn't receive a response, he decided "Screw it.  I'm gonna go get her."   What makes it nuttier is that Matt doesn't 'normally' drive up South Street / Spruce Street to get to Wharton (the whole ONE other time he's been to Wharton), and instead he'd normally take some weird back streets... but something made him take Spruce, and we like to psychically believe it's because he somehow "knew" that I would be walking down that road at that time.  So I jumped in his car.  We kept saying, "Oh my god! This is so crazy! What are the chances I'd be walking on this street at the same time you decided to drive up it?"  Boom!

As if that wasn't amazing enough, today I finished up my class and a few students wanted to hang out and chat, so I did... all while covertly keeping an eye on the clock because I didn't want to miss my noon train... which I did.  No worries though... after I said goodbye to the students, I gathered my stuff and walked out of the building, and onto Spruce Street... and suddenly Bobbi Block is standing in front of me, fresh off the plane from New Zealand, and we are staring at each other, totally baffled and excited and giggling to be seeing each other so randomly and unexpectedly (not to mention out of context).  We kept saying "Oh my god! This is crazy! What are the chances of us walking this way right now?"

I love when cool stuff like that happens.

On the night of the Tony Awards, Matt heard that they had released a big block of Hamilton tickets, and by some miracle, they weren't eleventy-billion dollars. Matt nabbed two, and we're going this Wednesday night.

Matt and I are the only two living souls who have never heard a single song from Hamilton. I can't quote any lines, I can't tell you what it's about other than what I remember about Alexander Hamilton from history class, which ain't much.

We've kept the fact that we have tickets (NO Autocorrect, not "rickets") quiet, because we got tired of people telling us, often quite forcefully, how we should prepare for attending the show. 

• "Make sure you listen to the whole show a bunch of times and read the lyrics simultaneously, because you'll never catch it all in the theater."
• "Absolutely do NOT listen to it beforehand. Just peruse the lyrics so this way when you hear them you'll recognize them and you'll understand it better."
• "Read the plot synopsis online!"

• Etc etc etc etc etc.

So we decided that we would go in totally cold. Lin-Manuel Miranda wrote it for people to enjoy on opening night, before there were cast recordings and Wikipedia entries and obsessive tumblr accounts.  So I will attend with open ears, hoping to catch as much as I can, knowing I won't catch it all. I will trust that the creators created something I can follow.  I will trust that the director directed it well, and I will trust that the actors will have good diction.  

"And dat's eet."

      (-- Mike from The Ham Fam.)

​​​​​​​

(x-posted to livejournal.)

Haven't blogged in eons. Life has been whizzing by.

Matt's super-active, fashion-plate, socialite grandmom (age 95) was diagnosed with aggressive stomach cancer about 3 months ago, and it's shocking how quickly she went from vibrant and happy to a shell of a human, just withered and weak. We all rotated vigil and visited pretty much daily, keeping her company, playing cards, BSing, and keeping her spirits up until she no longer had the energy. About three weeks ago she seemed to stop fighting, and she left us on Monday (exactly one week ago). We had the wake yesterday (Sunday) and today we buried her. I will miss her very much; we had brunch together nearly every Sunday since Matt and I got together, and I will never forget how she accepted me into the family without question. In her final weeks I painted her nails so she felt a little more human. She told me she didn't like my new hair color, which made me happy she'd tell me. :-)  I loved her very much, and it's hard to believe she's gone.  Her ex-boyfriend-turned-dear-friend Harry will also be missed, as I imagine I won't see him around any longer. I'm not lying or exaggerating when I say I have a pretty good crush on Harry, all 89 years of him. 

Music-wise:
Played in two Eagles tribute shows (the band, not the team) a few weeks ago, which were fun but bittersweet since it was In The Light's first tribute since losing Christian (our bass player) so suddenly in the accident this summer. 

Played in a huge tribute to the 80s this past Saturday at The Queen as a fund raiser for City Theater. I sang a few songs but was so, so pround to be in the band. I sang backing vocals on every song, and got a Roland Handsonic electronic drum kit and programmed and played the crap out of it (or played actual hand percussion) for almost every song... even played some sax. That band was a true Dream Team of every instrumentalist I idolize, and it was an honor to be the weak link on that stage. 

Between Grandmom support and the tribute shows, Hot Breakfast has taken a bit of a back seat which happens from time to time but I don't like. Now that our obligations are over for a bit, we are focusing on getting our Christmas EP recorded and released in time for our December 17th Very Dorky Christmas Show at The Queen. We plan on turning the upstairs stage into a cheezy living room (complete with fake fireplace and couch and front door), and our Narrator will tell the audience how Hot Breakfast just doesn't have the Christmas spirit this year... as random musicians "stop by and knock on our door" and cheer us up by playing a song or two. It should be a really fun night and a cute homage to silly late-70s variety shows. (If only we could get Charo.)

Anyway, we buried Grandmom today, and after the repast we all went home for naps, and the core Casarinos got together for pizza. Betsy's sister and brother and their spouses came to town from Connecticut and California respectively, so it was nice to talk to them. We got on the topic of "Have you ever had a relative or friend visit you after they died" and that led us to talking about Edgar Cayce which led me to now have three Edgar Cayce books on my nightstand. I love my second family so, so, so much. 

Right now I'm laying in bed as Matt is playing guitar in the other room. There is nothing I love more than hearing the sounds of Matt's creativity echo through the house; the music he writes resonates with me so deeply and so perfectly, and I can't believe how lucky I am. I feel very loved and so warm and snuggly.

We'll be at my folks' place for a week starting this weekend... my dad is going to Asheville, NC to visit his sister, and my mom can't really be left home alone, so Matt and I are going to keep her company. We're bringing up some recording equipment so maybe I'll be able to lay down some lead vocals on the Christmas EP this week while Mom snoozes. (Mom likes to snooze. Luckily the back room where Matt and I stay is clear on the other side of the house.)

I'm sorry I haven't been very present online... I have been reading LJ and OPW but just not having the energy to respond. Caring for Matt's grandmom every day plus work travel and rehearsals was taking every brain cycle and every ounce of nurturing energy I had... and ultimately I ran out of juice.

(Speaking of which, it's probably time for an iron infusion soon. I should get my labwork done.)

Life has been insane, but as of right now, it is finally calm. It is bittersweet, this calm... but as always, life goes on. Everything continues. The leaves are changing color and starting to fall, and soon we'll nestle in for the winter, and with any luck will put the house up for sale this spring.

More soon.

originally posted at xtingu.livejournal.com