Spinning Wheels

Good news, bad news, sorrows in the family yet again. Where to begin?

First, the good news I guess and that would be that with the 4th chemo treatment I had this past Tuesday, my oncologist made the decision that I don't have to have the last two treatments that had been scheduled! Now that news is the kind of stuff I don't mind getting nor do I mind telling everyone and anyone about that too!

The bad news though came this morning when the daughter of my cousin who passed away quite suddenly almost four weeks ago now phoned me to tell me that her Dad died too -this morning. What a blow for this young lady and her two brothers to now lose their Dad so closely after their Mom's death. It's one of those things where you really don't know what to say, what to offer to help and what does the family need right now -other than prayers and more prayers, really? He had been in very poor health for several years so it didn't come as a huge shock but still, and all, it is a shock after all, isn't it?

My son is going through a very rough time right now -unemployed and because of a screw-up last year when he lost his job with the unemployment office, now he can't even sign up for benefits. Somehow, that doesn't seem fair to me to punish him when it was a mistake on the part of his past employer on the paperwork but that's how that cookie crumbled ya know. He's not happy with me right now because we had words this evening about this whole situation and I think he should make arrangements to go back to work for the gas company he had been working for most recently although to do that would mean he would have to leave home and go to North Dakota and spend the winter months working up there in the great outdoors!

I told him I don't really want him to go there but my reasons for not wanting him to do that are selfish as I want him to be here, to be near his sisters and me. However, if that is the only job available to him that would pay him a reasonably decent wage, then perhaps it would be best if he'd "suck it up" and go there! ]

He seems to think I don't understand about taking a job, just to have a job and not really being happy with the work, etc. Boy, is he ever wrong on that count!

I tried to explain to him that the bulk of my working life was spent in employment that barely paid enough to get by on and then, working a second job on top of that most of the time too. He forgets that after I finished college, I couldn't even get an interview much less hired for a job in the field I had studied and as a result, I ended up taking the only full-time job I could get then -working as assistant manager at a truck stop restaurant in the same position I had held prior to my going to college and I hated that job, that place with an absolute purple passion. But sometimes, you do what you have to do to survive, whether you like it or not.

Sometimes, over the years since I graduated and took that job (again) I thought working there made about as much sense to me as it would for me to go to Florida for a Fort Lauderdale car rental while living here in Pennsylvania. Go figure, huh?

I'm hoping something comes along and very soon too so that maybe my son will get a job here or fairly close to home, but if it doesn't, then he -along with his sisters and me too -will just have to "suck it up" and head to the great outdoors, freezing temperatures and blizzards of the prairie land of North Dakota.

Life happens to all of us and often brings consequences along with it too that none of want to deal with but you do what you have to do, regardless, don't you?