Basket Case
Good afternoon, my Lovelies!
Let me just take a minute and thank you all for following along with my insanity. I know this blog has been all over the place, but if you truly know me, that tracks. If you're new here, welcome! Jump right in, take a seat, and get comfortable. Sit back and open yourself to my personal brand of crazy.
So, how ya doing? I ask this question quite often but rarely get responses. I promise you guys are allowed to let me know what's going on in your lives, too!
I'm going to take a moment and recap here just to catch everyone up on the constant stream of 'what the fuck' and 'oh, my God' that has been going on in my life over the past year or so.
In May 2023 my father became ill. I took off work for a little over three weeks to go to Kentucky to see if I could help with his care and to look after my mother, a stage four cancer patient. We thought he was on the mend and in June I headed back to Delaware.
As it turns out, he was not getting better. In fact, he was getting worse but getting very good at hiding it.
In October my husband passed out for unknown reasons, fell, and hit his head. We spent quite a few hours in the emergency room for them to tell us they could find nothing wrong.
In November, my father fell multiple times. The last time, in trying to help him up, my mother fell. They were both pretty beaten up and had it not been for their next-door neighbor, who knows how long they would have lain on their garage floor.
It wasn't long before we really started seeing signs of his mental health declining. By the end of November he had been hospitalized with COVID. His body shut down and did so quickly.
When he died, I left my family in Delaware and moved in with my mother in Kentucky so that I could provide care for her and help with handling my father's estate.
In January, I got food poisoning. I've never been more fucking miserable in my life. I've had two children by C-section and I swear to God I would take a C-section over food poisoning any damn day.
April 30th I came home to attend a book signing event in Baltimore. I was a bit more than halfway through my 900 mile drive when I got a call from my niece that my mother had fallen and broken her hip. Her cancer was so advanced at that point there was no way surgery would have been feasible. The best we could do was to make her comfortable.
She passed away on May 2nd.
I went back to Kentucky to handle her estate and begin the lengthy process of going through 55 years' worth of memories and belongings. It took me the better part of two months and it was a mentally, emotionally, physically, and spiritually draining process.
At the end of June, I came back to Delaware, and because I was quite simply in no shape to return to my job, resigned my position, and took on the daunting task of trying to be a full-time author.
A little over a week ago I got a call from my oldest child (who is away at college) and knew immediately something was wrong. After much discussion and a trip to the Emergency Room, it was discovered that an emergency appendectomy was needed. My husband and I drove three hours up to school, managed to arrive just in time for release from the hospital, and after gathering a few essentials, drove the three hours back down so my child could recuperate at home.
During ALL of this, I've tried my best to keep up with everything. For a while there I was trying to run two households 900 miles apart, keep up with the kid in college, and the one in high school, get my mother to doctor's appointments and chemo treatments, cook, clean, do laundry, handle estates, and finances for two households...the list goes on and on. But on top of all of that, I was still trying to write, organizing things for events, attending events, and just trying to breathe.
I also got several more tattoos and piercings and went for late-night drives all over Western Kentucky by myself. I even went on several dates (yes, my husband knows).
Somehow, I was managing it. Now that I can finally breathe and have time to write, I can't seem to get my brain to work.
The stories are there, but I'm having the hardest time getting them out of my head. I'm trying though. I promise. And I'm going to keep trying. Hopefully, once I get past a couple of the signing events I have coming up, things will start settling down in my brain.
I'm determined to get these stories out and to make it as a full-time author.
Maybe I need a break... It's coming. Our annual girls' trip to the OuterBanks will be here in October and with any luck, it will be warm enough that we can all hang by the pool and drink ourselves into oblivion.
Okay. I think that catches everyone up. Sorry for the rehash for those of you who have been hanging with me from the beginning, but I wanted everyone to know that my insanity and lack of concentration are quite justified.
Until next time and as always,
Much love and healing from me to you,
Shelly (a/k/a Dawn Love)
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