black_sluggard: (Default)
black_sluggard ([personal profile] black_sluggard) wrote2017-05-12 09:13 pm

(Journal) Recent Events, Dreamwidth and Digital Spring Cleaning Hell

So, like many I've finally made the effort to migrate myself on over from LiveJournal. This is actually my first proper post to Dreamwidth directly, though I'll be crossposting onto LJ as well for the time being.

(For as long as I remember to, anyway...)

I've been going through the imported posts and cringing at the number of broken links I'm going to have to fix. I had all my formatting for fic posts and especially for the chapters of fics, and fixing it is just going to be a nightmare... At least my anal retentive tagging practices are going to make that easier than it might otherwise have been. Yay me.

I'm going to attempt to post regularly. Again. Maybe it'll stick this time. Who knows. Going to try to do it on at least a weekly basis. Even if there's nothing to write about. If I can't think of anything I'll just talk about my dog or spiders or something.

Anyway. There are a few things that have gone on in the time since I last made a post of any substance. Some good, some bad, mostly scary in one sense or another.

Back in May of last year, my best internet friend (see tag "my bff z") became my roommate. He came all the way from Maryland to California. He had been living at home, just as I live at home, and his parents were losing their house to the bank. He had wanted to move out to California, like so many do. It was a huge thing. A lot of anxiety working up to the event, a lot of emotions for him after, but it's worked out well so far.

My cousin briefly moved to Texas to live with his birth family, but it didn't work out and he wound up moving back after less than a month. While it sucks that it didn't work, I'm somewhat guiltily glad he came back to Cali, because I really would have missed him.

Perhaps a month later, my sister made an announcement that she was expecting a baby boy. My parents were both ecstatic. They had been wanting grandkids for quite some time.

Unfortunately, my dad never got the chance to meet his grandson. At the end of November he went into surgery to correct a valve issue in his heart. He wound up contracting pneumonia after the procedure, and from there suffered liver and kidney damage that he wasn't able to recover from. He died on December 17th, just two days after his 57th birthday.

During his stay in the hospital, my grandmother broke her leg. She had been getting ready to go down to visit him and tripped over boxes in the hallway, landing in the bathroom and fracturing her tibia. She wound up with several screws in her leg, and was unable to see him before he passed. 

I wound up spending the first few days with her after she got out of the hospital helping her get around. It was rough wanting to be there for my mom and for my grandmother but not having a car I couldn't be two places at once. But my mom had her friends and my sister and my cousin on her side. My grandmother, at the time, only had her worker and her own cousin who lives in the same building. At the time she and her cousin were on the outs (as happens from time to time). She had also lost a love and her brother in the two previous years, so she really needed someone to be there.

It put my bestie in kind of a rough spot too. He knew how to be there for me, but he wasn't sure how to be for my mom. Still, he did his best and I have to give him that he wasn't half bad at it. Of course, that was when life decided to shit on him... Only a month or so after my dad's death my friend found out that his best friend back home had died in a car accident. So, tables turned, I got to be there for him. It just sucked all around...

The bright spot has been the arrival of my nephew, who was born in February. It was good, but also hard, because my dad had wanted to see him so very badly. But life is what it is. And I'm already in love with that little sucker. He's a joy.

So. All of that.