Things are in a holding status. We continue to try and get Houdini to drink his formula and meet his minimum fluid intake requirements, as well as trying to meet the minimum calories intake with the help of whatever solids he will tolerate. It is an understatement that those are far easier said than done.
I have come to regard pretty much all doctors and medical personnel with contempt and loathing. My parents and sister, who are all doctors, fully support me in this mental assessment.
Work is so unbelievably stressful, but somehow it seems like nothing compared to what is going on in my personal life. December 12th is our deployment date for our applications and we still don't have clean code; these are applications that are critical to our business revenue so they have to be successfully deployed. Not having them loses us business to the tune of ~100 million dollars the first quarter next year, and that's without counting the cascading loss effect it will have on future accounts. This is the biggest project I have carried by myself, to date, and I don't know how I am doing it, but somehow I am.
I just concentrate on each day, right now, and getting through meeting Houdini's requirements that day, then getting through what I need to get done for work, then getting through what my parents need to help them help us, and then providing moral support for my sister. At some point, I hope I can get to focusing on this one week at a time and, who knows, one month at a time.
Notice that anything doing with Lemel, or Lemel and I, or just me is missing from that list. Things are unbelievably bad between us. I won't go into all the gory details; basically, our polar opposite approaches to handling problems are complimentary when they are something that we can ultimately control, but cause our relationship to implode when it is something beyond our control. I guess you could say that doesn't reflect well on my character or his, but I don't think of it that way. It is what it is, and we are who we are, and that's that. I was sad about it for a while; however, my emotional reserves are so tapped out, I have no room for sadness for something about us. I am pretty sure that if and when we get Houdini to an acceptable weight and have him maintain--maybe that month to month focus deal I was talking about earlier--we'll find ourselves talking about separation or something along those lines. I am not sure how we could do that without impacting Houdini, though; change is something we have to avoid as much as we can with him, to ensure him continuing on any positive tracks he is making. I don't do therapy, so we'll have to figure out what we can do to maybe make things a bit better. Otherwise we will go from not liking but still loving each other(which is where we are right now) to not liking and not loving each other and, well, it's pretty pointless to stay together, then.
I'll worry about that later.
What does make me sad is that I think to around this time two years ago, and I remember how happy, how very happy I was: Lemel and I were in couple heaven and the envy of everyone we knew; my parents were making the transition to being here at least half the year, since my grandmother was still holding her own and my aunts could pitch in while my mom was gone; my sister was doing well, healthwise at least, and she had finally reconciled herself to how her marriage would be for the next few years, until KR goes to college. I am glad that I knew I was happy, and that I wasn't dooming and glooming about pointless stuff as I've been known to do. I am glad that I had that time when things were really and truly good for not just me, but everyone in my life. I am just so incredibly sad because I don't think I will ever get back there again.
Then it's time to calculate mid-day calories and fluid ounces and thankfully, I suppose, I get to stop thinking about the past.
