Baachan, oyasuminasai

Grandma passed away tonight (May 24th). She never truly regained consciousness after the stroke.

Goodnight Grandma. Rest in peace. We'll miss you.

Updates

The plumbers are coming on Tuesday to begin the overhaul of our house. All the pipes are being replaced. We're also getting new toilets and a new shower downstairs. Cha-ching. Our house is going to be in complete disarray (more so than usual) for months. This stresses me out tremendously.

And, today I got the news that the doctors have pretty much given up hope that my grandma will regain consciousness, so the family has decided -- I think rightfully so -- to give her comfort care but take no extraordinary measures for her. In other words, hospice care until she passes away. We've already dismantled her apartment and moved stuff to storage. Now they are starting to give stuff away. Losing hope is a hard thing. She isn't dead, but she's definitely gone.

I am tremendously sad today. Maybe watching the final three episodes of Grey's Anatomy^* today wasn't such a good idea?



_{*where everyone dies}

Damn. Enough already!

Let's see, my past few months have included...
* bathroom leak that flooded the kitchen (February 12th)
* molar pregnancy and ensuing procedure (February 13th) while the baseball remains to be dealt with
* kidney transplant for Dad (March 31st) and follow-up care (ongoing)
* various car problems (ongoing)
* chipped my front tooth (May 3rd)
* ruptured pipe in ceiling that flooded basement (May 3rd), necessitating an overhaul of our plumbing and redoing pretty much the entire basement (it's gonna cost us a chunk)

And now, the worst thing yet.  My grandmother had a very serious stroke on Thursday last week (May 14th).  She's in the ICU.  At first, they didn't think she was going to survive, but she did.  And I had hope that she'd recover.  Maybe not fully, but at least functionally to some degree.  Before the stroke, she was completely lucid and active and lived independently.  Now, she meanders in and out of consciousness and has moments of partial lucidity.  But she spoke every so often and even opened her eyes.  She responded to stimuli and our voices somewhat.  And I had hope.

But it's been four days now, and the doctors are saying that they don't expect her to recover any further.  And I'm feeling a bit crushed.  I could deal with her condition well enough when I had the hope that she'd fight through it ('cuz she's really tough), but now I'm thinking my hope is futile.  And I am so. very. sad.  Grandma was so vibrant that it's hard to fathom that she isn't likely to recover.  There was no gradual decline.  She went from life in the fast lane (for a 94-year old, that is) to stop.

::sigh::

We'll find out more tonight.  But I don't feel so optimistic anymore.

Saturday in the 'burbs...

Empty.

Our basement, that is. The carpet is out.  The padding is out.  The ceiling and parts of several walls are also gone.  Devoid of (almost) all furniture -- and hopefully, all water.  We're hopeful that the smell leaves soon too.  But who knows?   It's been raining so much that nothing seems dry these days.

Photos to come.

The high cost of weddings

Not for us, but rather going to one out of town. Here's the breakdown:

$379.80 -- airfare for two (so that's $189.90 each)
$30.00 -- airport parking for a long weekend
$30.00 -- luggage fees (one checked bag each way)
$390.03 -- hotel (two nights room and parking)
$105.00 -- car rental
$934.83 -- total

This doesn't include the present, gas, food or other incidental fees. AND, if only one of us had gone, then the cost would have only been reduced by $190 (one airfare).

E-gads. About $1150 when you add in the present.

Although I have attended a number of out-of-town weddings, I never did this math before and didn't realize how much weddings cost for out-of-towners who have to fly in, stay in a hotel and rent a car.

But, no regrets. We're glad we went.

New plumbing for our house...

My past three days:

Sunday -- chipped my tooth; got home around 11:00 PM after being away for three days to find a pipe burst in our basement, spurting everywhere. Water was covering the bathroom floor and had pretty much soaked the carpet across the entire floor. Wedding presents, law books, photographs and gawd knows what else was on the floor. So, after we figured out how to turn off the main valve to the house, SM and I started digging out. We put towels down and pulled out our fans and dehumidifiers. The towels got soaked instantly, so I had to run them through the spin cycle of the washer and then stick them in the dryer. And repeat and repeat.

We managed to get a lotta stuff out of the basement, which is a huge disaster area. Sadly, my junior high and high school yearbooks took a big hit. All of them are damaged. ::whine::

Monday -- took off work to clean up some more. Got the plumber in there to do the quick repair so we could get our water back on and take showers. Figured out that the pipes had burst before (saw an old repair) and were likely to burst again (lots of rust). Ahh, the joys of owning an older house with original plumbing! Got the boss plumber guy in to do an estimate to re-do all the plumbing in our house. ::sigh::

Then I had a doctor's appointment. After I had been sitting there waiting for half an hour past my scheduled time, I asked when I would get in. Turns out they (someone) had cancelled my appointment. They said that I had called in to cancel it. Um, no. I had to wait another half an hour before seeing the doctor. Boy, was I pissed. This office screws things up all of the time like this. Unfortunately, I like the doctor, so I don't know if I'll switch providers.

Today -- taking the morning off work to get stuff cleared out of the basement. I got the area rug up (which was sitting on the wall to wall carpet), and now it's outside on the deck. I'd say it's out there to dry, but given the humidity, I doubt any drying is going on. At least it's not sitting on the other carpet like a petri dish.

Fun times!