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I'm Not Depressed...
Jan. 23rd, 2023 08:15 pmI have a doctor's appointment on Thursday. The series of questions they always ask is designed to find out if you are depressed. "Do you have any interest in things you normally like doing?" That sort of thing.
And... I'm not depressed, I think. OK, to explain, I think about this every single time. Am I actually depressed and just don't realize it? And right now I am, understandably, going through a blue period. But I think I am ok.
December was hard. Just... Hard. Mom died on Dec 29th. My friend's toddler's funeral was also the 29th. And #3 was projectile vomiting. WHich meant I could not go to the funeral. Which is probably better overall.
But... I am understandably blue. Most of the time it is fine. Sometimes, it is not. I probably need another crying jag.
So. Mom fell over Thanksgiving. Around the middle of December she was taken to the hospital. Sometime around the 22-23rd, she had a massive stroke. I got a call early morning the 24th to come down to say goodbye and make decisions. Not that Sis and I had not already made decisions. But...
Talk to the doctor on the 24th. Mom was not going to get better. She woke up enough to say hi to me. I do not think that was in my mind. But she was... Even when she was "awake", she was not there. So... DNR, with a move to hospice planned.
Hospice did not exactly go as planned. I think she finally got to hospice on the 28th. The one the doctor wanted to send her to said no because she was not in pain or respiratory distress. Which, weird. I don't know their particular metric. I had never considered that a hospice would be that specific. Some time on the 27th, she started showing signs of pain (grimacing) and trouble breathing. Yay morphine and yay hospice. And then she died early on the 29th.
So... Yeah. End of the year sucked ass and that takes time to recover from.
Doing shit like having to pour my MiL into bed on the night of the 25th did not help my attitude at all. I get that retiring is a major life change. In her drunken state she confessed that she had used the church to replace her husband and therefore retiring was akin to killing him herself. Which... OK...
It's not any more off the wall than anything else she has ever said.
About a week or so ago, she said something at dinner to SiL about how what our current priest (Fr C) had done to her, how he treated her, would have gotten him shot by her male relatives 50 years ago. *blinks* And that her old priest (M G) told her to send the email that Fr C had sent her to the person who decides where priests are stationed for the dioceses and that Fr C would never be a pastor of a parish again. *blinks*
OK, this is a woman who basically dismisses pedo priests as being an issue because obviously they are all gay and gay men love beautiful things, like "unripe" little boys. And was sad that a former priest suddenly became a sexual predator after suffering from encephalitis. (So she says was the issue.) What the HELL could Fr. C have said that was so evil?
And... I could dismiss my next actions as worry about the state of our current priest and his actions. But... Well, I was pretty sure she was being ridiculous and making a mountain out of an ant hill. And I'm a nosy bitch.
So, remember back in August the post about our dithering Organist telling my MiL that she does not control the church and to quit treating people like kindergarteners?
At about the same time, Fr C sent her the email in question. It was a long, very polite email. It started with an offer of a stipend to make up her gas cost and wear and tear on her car. Then continued on to set boundaries for her. Fr C cited specific grievances he and other people had. Like ordering the church secretary around and expecting her to hop to, drop whatever she was doing, and deal with whatever MiL asked her to. Or the volunteer who came in to fix a specific maintenance issue but kept getting a list of other things that needed to happen RIGHT NOW and therefore was reluctant to come back if MiL was around because he could not get his work done. Or from Fr C himself, who coordinated with volunteers of specific organizations within the church to get something done or planned, only to follow up and find that MiL had told them to do something completely different, which stepped on the toes of a different volunteer organization, which he had been trying to avoid doing. Or her constant interruption of conversations between himself and parishioners after Mass, oftentimes abruptly inserting herself and her opinions about whatever the topic of conversation was.
There were other examples, but those are the ones I can think of off the top of my head. It boiled down to "these people don't work for you and you are not in charge".
Her response was literally "Keep your prostitution money. I am devastated."
Mind you, this email was filled just as much with praise over what areas Fr C wanted her to stick to. Flowers, sacristy work, etc.
So, yeah. I'm a nosy bitch.
Three people are taking over for her and she is "silently" crowing that they will not do as good of a job, that Fr C will have to start paying $400/week for flowers (or $200/week, depending on who she is talking to), that the church will not run half as smoothly as it did before.
When, really, people who had to deal with her on the regular are probably very happy that she can no longer be a petty dictator.
Of course... Now she is going to spend a lot more time around the house. She's already planning on more elaborate meals and how to rearrange all the plates and silverware to match our current lifestyle better. Which she seems to think means using the sterling silver instead of the silver plate utensils. Which... I get it. Life is short, use the good china. (Only don't, because I don't want to hand wash that shit.) I just... Why? If she wants to use something that looks in better repair than the current silver plated stuff, I have a whole set that has barely been used. Let's just use that.
Hopefully it will warm up soon and she will spend time in the garden.
And... I'm not depressed, I think. OK, to explain, I think about this every single time. Am I actually depressed and just don't realize it? And right now I am, understandably, going through a blue period. But I think I am ok.
December was hard. Just... Hard. Mom died on Dec 29th. My friend's toddler's funeral was also the 29th. And #3 was projectile vomiting. WHich meant I could not go to the funeral. Which is probably better overall.
But... I am understandably blue. Most of the time it is fine. Sometimes, it is not. I probably need another crying jag.
So. Mom fell over Thanksgiving. Around the middle of December she was taken to the hospital. Sometime around the 22-23rd, she had a massive stroke. I got a call early morning the 24th to come down to say goodbye and make decisions. Not that Sis and I had not already made decisions. But...
Talk to the doctor on the 24th. Mom was not going to get better. She woke up enough to say hi to me. I do not think that was in my mind. But she was... Even when she was "awake", she was not there. So... DNR, with a move to hospice planned.
Hospice did not exactly go as planned. I think she finally got to hospice on the 28th. The one the doctor wanted to send her to said no because she was not in pain or respiratory distress. Which, weird. I don't know their particular metric. I had never considered that a hospice would be that specific. Some time on the 27th, she started showing signs of pain (grimacing) and trouble breathing. Yay morphine and yay hospice. And then she died early on the 29th.
So... Yeah. End of the year sucked ass and that takes time to recover from.
Doing shit like having to pour my MiL into bed on the night of the 25th did not help my attitude at all. I get that retiring is a major life change. In her drunken state she confessed that she had used the church to replace her husband and therefore retiring was akin to killing him herself. Which... OK...
It's not any more off the wall than anything else she has ever said.
About a week or so ago, she said something at dinner to SiL about how what our current priest (Fr C) had done to her, how he treated her, would have gotten him shot by her male relatives 50 years ago. *blinks* And that her old priest (M G) told her to send the email that Fr C had sent her to the person who decides where priests are stationed for the dioceses and that Fr C would never be a pastor of a parish again. *blinks*
OK, this is a woman who basically dismisses pedo priests as being an issue because obviously they are all gay and gay men love beautiful things, like "unripe" little boys. And was sad that a former priest suddenly became a sexual predator after suffering from encephalitis. (So she says was the issue.) What the HELL could Fr. C have said that was so evil?
And... I could dismiss my next actions as worry about the state of our current priest and his actions. But... Well, I was pretty sure she was being ridiculous and making a mountain out of an ant hill. And I'm a nosy bitch.
So, remember back in August the post about our dithering Organist telling my MiL that she does not control the church and to quit treating people like kindergarteners?
At about the same time, Fr C sent her the email in question. It was a long, very polite email. It started with an offer of a stipend to make up her gas cost and wear and tear on her car. Then continued on to set boundaries for her. Fr C cited specific grievances he and other people had. Like ordering the church secretary around and expecting her to hop to, drop whatever she was doing, and deal with whatever MiL asked her to. Or the volunteer who came in to fix a specific maintenance issue but kept getting a list of other things that needed to happen RIGHT NOW and therefore was reluctant to come back if MiL was around because he could not get his work done. Or from Fr C himself, who coordinated with volunteers of specific organizations within the church to get something done or planned, only to follow up and find that MiL had told them to do something completely different, which stepped on the toes of a different volunteer organization, which he had been trying to avoid doing. Or her constant interruption of conversations between himself and parishioners after Mass, oftentimes abruptly inserting herself and her opinions about whatever the topic of conversation was.
There were other examples, but those are the ones I can think of off the top of my head. It boiled down to "these people don't work for you and you are not in charge".
Her response was literally "Keep your prostitution money. I am devastated."
Mind you, this email was filled just as much with praise over what areas Fr C wanted her to stick to. Flowers, sacristy work, etc.
So, yeah. I'm a nosy bitch.
Three people are taking over for her and she is "silently" crowing that they will not do as good of a job, that Fr C will have to start paying $400/week for flowers (or $200/week, depending on who she is talking to), that the church will not run half as smoothly as it did before.
When, really, people who had to deal with her on the regular are probably very happy that she can no longer be a petty dictator.
Of course... Now she is going to spend a lot more time around the house. She's already planning on more elaborate meals and how to rearrange all the plates and silverware to match our current lifestyle better. Which she seems to think means using the sterling silver instead of the silver plate utensils. Which... I get it. Life is short, use the good china. (Only don't, because I don't want to hand wash that shit.) I just... Why? If she wants to use something that looks in better repair than the current silver plated stuff, I have a whole set that has barely been used. Let's just use that.
Hopefully it will warm up soon and she will spend time in the garden.
