A shitty decision to make is: “should I go home soon while my aunt is still in moderate health, and miss the funeral, or wait until the funeral.”. Stage IV pancreatic cancer, more or less a death sentence. She was supposed to retire this fall. Hopefully she won’t suffer too much through this. I am very disengaged from work these past couple of days because of this. The cancer/retirement timing is just awful.
Go now. Miss the funeral. You can mourn in your own way at home. You can't be with her again once she's gone. So sorry you have to make this decision. I've been there. You need to prepare yourself for when you leave from your visit. You know it will be the last time you see her, and you want to put some thought into how you want that interaction to go. Be genuine. Be honest. Be true. Honor the person by giving yourself fully to that moment. They will appreciate it, and you will carry it with you for the rest of your life. So sorry...
Thanks goobster. Appreciate the advice and well-wishes.
One last thought... when you get to see her again, the conversation can't be about what YOU are losing... your loss... your hurt. She can't do anything about that. Do not make your suffering/pain/loss an additional burden for her to carry. She needs to hear about your happy memories of her. What she has taught you that you will bring forward in your life. She doesn't want to vanish, forgotten. Spend the time with her remembering the fun, the good, the lessons she taught you. When someone is facing their demise, their visitors tend to make it about themselves... what they are losing... how their life will be worse when the person is gone. How much they will be missed. The dying person doesn't want to be burdened with that on their death bed. They want to know people will remember the good stuff... the happy stuff... and have some laughs together. That's the greatest gift you can give them.
Counterpoint: back when I was spending every weekend with psychiatrists who worked with the homeless, one of them asked the other how best to address one of her favorite patients, a stoic who had terminal cancer. The more senior of the two observed that letting the patient see her grief was the best gift she could give on the basis that we gauge our lives by the impact we have on others. Knowing others are mourning us permits us to know we are worth mourning. Being remembered for the good stuff is not the same thing as being mourned for the potential good stuff we will never contribute.
We deployed two satellites in space today! (now the next challenge begins)
We’re pleased to announce that we have successfully communicated with both YAM-2 and YAM-3, and on the first opportunity! This is a huge step forward for us and our Cockpit Mission Control team, and we’re just getting started. We have contact!
I was dating someone for about two months, and it ended about two weeks ago. She pointed me at attachment styles (before we split up), and the quiz I took came back that I'm avoidant while she's anxious. I don't know if this is pseudo science, but reading more on it, it seems accurate. Basically she wanted a baseline of being together while I wanted a baseline of independence. Or a little more harshly, I felt smothered while she felt I was uncommitted. I'm disappointed it didn't work out, but I'm not disappointed it ended because it wasn't going to work out.
I'm in Erda, Utah right now at my wife's family reunion. Being able to work from anywhere is fantastic - I count myself very fortunate. And yes, by "work" I mean browse hubski. Yesterday afternoon when I was done with "work" we spread 12 yards of "fines" (a.k.a. gravel), expanding his driveway substantially. Something about working on a farm is so rewarding. Every time I come out here I am almost overcome by my "farm dream". This morning I am achy, but oddly invigorated. There are spreadsheets to build and data to analyze and people to manage.... but my heart would rather be setting fenceposts and moving sprinkler pipe. My kids are spread out everywhere on floors and on the trampoline and in hammocks enjoying endless cousin time. We're normally an early to bed, early to rise bunch - but this week it's play until you drop time... and they are. Family reunions basically suck for adults... but oh man - watching my kids have this much fun is amazing.
If you want to live your farm dream vicariously through an overly wealthy asshat, Jeremy Clarkson from Top Gear released Clarkson's Farm about him running a farm for the first time ever at like 60 or however old he is. It was really well made.
Heatwave in Seattle ... blah blah blah ... but I did learn about measuring temperature via the "wet bulb" method. Basically it is a measure of how well your body can cool itself through perspiration at various temperatures/humidities. Most human beings cannot function when the wet bulb temperature is between 90-95 degrees Fahrenheit, or 35C. Which is where you die, because your body can't sweat to cool itself down. It was 113 here two days ago. I can't seem to find the WBGT (wet bulb globe temp) for the last three days here in Seattle, but we were apparently well within the death-zone, with greater than 60% humidity and air temps in the hundreds. (WBGT is measured in the sun. Heat Index is measured in the shade. So they are very different.) And now you know a bit about wet bulb temperature measurement. The wet-bulb temp is a thing I think we 'normal people' will need to know and track pretty closely over the next 20-40 years. When I was a kid, nobody heard or cared about UV indexes or pollen counts or air quality indexes. *(Even in LA in the 1970's. There were just days where we were supposed to stay indoors, because the air outside was "bad". Like... where did they think the air indoors came from...?)* I suspect the grandkids being born today will track wet bulb like we track pollen counts.
Yeah I learned I got some real, genuine PTSD around heat. I started freaking out last Tuesday, with some real feelings of existential dread. It does not help that my wife is an avid follower of a semi-pro meteorologist who called "110s" for Seattle well before anyone else. When my wife asked where these feelings of dread were coming from I rattled off "well it could have been the multiple day-long hikes at 8000ft in the desert in July with 12 oz of water for the whole family of four and two dogs or it could have been a field trip six mile hike in Bandelier where it was so hot half the kids chose stinging nettles over direct sunlight or maybe it was that time they made us march through La Cienega in hundred degree heat and didn't let us drink anything until 1pm and the only thing I had was a warm ginger beer or it could have been that time I high centered off-road and had to overland sixteen miles through the Sonora Desert with no water and I didn't make it out until 2am but at least I was carrying the spinal column of a deer that wasn't as lucky as me or it might have been that time it was 122 at Universal and there were homeless people lying prone on the concrete in the shade like squirrels and my phone started stuttering like Max Headroom and then for the next two weeks all the alliums and half the jasmine in the Valley died off..." Of course I have a lovely birth center with two beds and double air conditioning. And of course we were hosting an instructor who stayed there Saturday and Sunday night so we couldn't. And of course she's been voluntarily choosing to live in fucking Tucson for the past fifteen years so she delighted in calling us all a bunch of pussies the entire time she was here while also turning the thermostat down to 68 while I tried to get my kid to sleep when the house is 92 at 10pm. Heat is the universe coming at you where you live, denying you of escape, and willing to kill everything around you just to make you suffer. According to Consumer Reports, 75% of American houses (and 90% of new construction) have central air conditioning. According to the Seattle Times, 44% of Seattle homes have so much as a window rattler. We've got a little portable guy; I was able to keep the delta between inside and out at sixteen fuckin' degrees until it starts hitting the south wall, at which point things start climbing eight degrees an hour. By the time the sun sets inside and outside are the same and inside will climb for another two hours before equalizing and eventually sinking back down to "outside plus ten." by then the floorboards are hot. You can smell the roof tar in every room in the house. And the ghost of every dog that ever peed in the corner comes out to stink at you, despite replacing $9k worth of subfloor. I planted 500 bare root plants six weeks ago. I left the soaker hoses on for three straight days. It may have saved half of them. Was on a zoom meeting Sunday. Old fuckers. TO A MAN they had central A/C, 44% be damned. That's about when I realized that if I was successful enough to retire at 44 I'm fuckin' successful enough to never goddamn be hot ever fucking again. Second bid is here Tuesday. No fucks given. I ain't putting up with this shit ever again EVER. I told my wife that I would legit move to the ARCTIC CIRCLE if it meant never enduring triple digit temperatures. It doesn't tho. Hope it was worth it, boomers.
I have none of your personal history, and yet I would still have a fit in your circumstance. Although my empathy does fuck all for you and the other Hubskiers suffering along with you, I nonetheless want to express it. The kid who can't sleep in that living hell is the shitty icing on a shitty cake. I hope it ends soon.
My wife is on parent groups where new moms on Welfare were trying to get people to donate hotel rooms because the kid crying because he's too hot? Yeah he ain't cooling himself doing that. So many people fared so much worse. I guess this was supposed to happen once every few thousand years. They said that in 2009, too.
By the way Calculated from here and here, peak shittiness at 3:32PM monday was a WGBT of 100 F in the sun and 87F in the shade in your neighborhood. You have me beat with 95 and 86 (I measured a peak of 108.1). It's a pretty gnarly calculation. Your average bullshit Costco "internet" thermometer has a temperature and a pressure gauge. I've got the real McCoy because I've been an old man for fifteen years at least and mine has a properly sited temperature gage, an anemometer, a pressure gage and a rain gage. If I wanted to be able to calculate WGBT I get to add a $200 solar radiation sensor to my $700 gadget. And I mean I'll do it. But not even any of the software packages I've used (and I've used five of them) will give you WBGT.It was 113 here two days ago. I can't seem to find the WBGT (wet bulb global temp) for the last three days here in Seattle