I ended up not driving back to Eastern Iowa Friday after work because the weather was pretty awful.  Instead, I drove up Saturday morning which was good from a safety standpoint but bad considering it cut some time out of being home for the holiday.  My mom’s spirits were pretty high after the surgery but was still pretty sore and tired a lot.  It was strange seeing my mom walk around her place hunched over and wheeling around a pole with a feeding bag on it.  She just looked so frail and old for only being 50. 

The weekend was honestly kind of frustrating for me.  I found that, while I’m good at being there for moral support and to help out in any way, I’m sometimes a little impatient at times.  My mom would take naps at all times during the day which would cause her to be up throughout the night.  This wouldn’t have been much of a problem had I been sleeping in a bedroom.  I was sleeping in a pullout couch in the living room, though, which meant I would be woken up several times in the night while my mom would wheel around her device in the kitchen to get a drink of water, get things from her purse, etc.  I ended up averaging about three and a half hours of sleep each night as a result, and I’ll be the first to admit that a sleepy Bradical equals a cranky Bradical.  I’m also a complete wuss when it comes to medical-related things.  My sister was awesome about it, though, and had no qualms about helping out with feedings and whatnot. 

As for Christmas Day itself, the three of us opened presents in the morning before my sis and I headed off to church.  We showed up at church to find the place completely empty and the doors locked.  The sign out front said church started at 11 as did the bulletin from the previous week.  Oh yeah, the answering machine at the church office said it started at 11, too.  We had to turn around and go home instead thanks to those big jerks and their lack of communication.  Bah humbug to the First United Methodist Church in Clinton, IA. 

As for gifts, I got quite a few things I was hoping for.  I got a Garmin since I’ll be traveling a lot for my job, some awesome pillows that are half foam and half memory foam, a stereo that lets me connect my mp3 player to it for work, some cologne, and a bunch of other random stuff like energy-efficient light bulbs.  To top it off, my sister spent all of Christmas day baking cookies, and I was able to take a boatload of treats home.  Seriously, after seeing how good my sister was with taking care of my mom and seeing how dedicated she was to making Christmas goodies, I gained a whole new level of respect for her.  It totally made up for the fact that, as her older brother, I want to punch her in the face sometimes (kidding!).

During dinner one night, we got into a big debate about which fake animal you’d like to have as a pet.  The correct answer that we all unanimously agreed upon was Snuggle Bear.  Seriously, who wouldn’t love to come home to a living Snuggle Bear every day.  Life would be pretty amazing if that were the case.  My mom threw out Curious George which blew my mind.  Clearly, my mom’s doctor was causing her to overdose on her medication because Curious George would be awful to live with.  The Pillsbury Doughboy would be alright, too, but I would think you could only poke the little guy in the stomach for so long before it got old real quick.  After that, the P.D. brings nothing to the table.  If anyone can prove our theory wrong, please let me know.  Until then, Snuggle Bear is the clear winner.

I’m leaving tomorrow with my sis to head up to my mom’s for Christmas.  Like Thanksgiving last year, it will just be the three of us celebrating, although this year will be quite a bit different than those in the past.  I’ve contemplated not mentioning anything on this site about it, but I figure this is supposed to chronicle my life so I shouldn’t leave it out.  Before my sister and I make it to my mom’s house, we are staying the night in Iowa City because my mom is having surgery to get a feeding tube put in.  She hasn’t been able to keep food down for a long time now, and the surgery is more or less the only option anyone could come up with to try to allow her to gain back some of the weight she’s lost.

My personal medical knowledge is pretty sparse, but I’ve always had the impression that having a feeding tube is normally for people who are in pretty bad shape.  Hopefully I’m wrong about that.  Either way, if things don’t turn around and get siginificantly better, it basically means that my mom may end up never tasting food again.  That’s just something I can’t quite wrap my mind around.

So yeah, I don’t really know what to expect from this Christmas break.  I don’t know if it’ll hurt when she laughs, if she’ll have energy from actually having food in her system, or if she’ll be fatigued from everything that is going on and sleep the whole time.  It’ll at least be good to relax at home and try to help in any way I can. 

As evidenced by the lack of posting, I’ve been in this odd funk when it comes to updating my blog.  I think a lot of it is due to me just being too busy with things associated with this time of year.  Some of it, though, can be attributed to just not feeling up to blogging at the end of the day.  I’m finding that I have yet to get on much of a routine since being a permanent Kansas Citian, and I’m still working on finding the best way to balance everything out.  The blogging will become more frequent, though.  It always does.  It just may not happen as much during the holidays until the dust settles.  And I’ll admit, I’m kind of looking forward to it.

This past weekend was pretty awesome, I must say.  I haven’t really had the chance to go out in KC much on the weekend in a while so I ended up going out both nights.  On Friday, we headed to Ernie Biggs, the new piano bar in Westport.  I’d been wanting to check it out since it opened but never really had the chance.  I was first turned off a little by the whopping $7 cover charge.  That’s officially the most I’ve paid to get into a bar in Kansas City.  Once inside, though, I thought it was a pretty fun time.  The guys on stage kept playing songs that most everyone knew.  They even played “For Whom the Bell Tolls” which totally rocked.  I’ve never been a big fan of performers at piano bars substituting crude lyrics to songs which they did at times.  The place is pretty big with two bars, a giant sitting area, and a stage that had people dancing on it throughout the night.  They also have a giant fake piano on the ground.  Andrew and I decided to try to play it like on Big.

We then headed to Kelly’s.  It seems like it’s been forever since I’ve visited that place, and I really do love that bar.  Somehow, we got on the topic of thumb wrestling which lead to arm wrestling which somehow lead to pinkie wrestling.  This is obviously a territory that has yet to be discovered so we were eager to try it out.  I touted myself as the one with the clear advantage because my pinkies are naturally hooked inward.  Josh and Andrew went first:

After some others competed, the final showdown was against Josh and myself.  I taunted him with my crooked pinkie:

Once we locked fingers, it was on…

We each tried to get each other to laugh to gain an advantage.  Josh even stuck his thumb in his mouth.

About one minute and one sore pinky joint later, I was defeated.  My pinky-fighting career was over just as soon as it started. 

The next night was Matt and Kysa’s Christmas Sweater Party.  It seems like pretty much everyone has a sweater party anymore, but I was still pretty pumped for it.  Not only are they really cheesy, but I found out a few friends who live in Des Moines (Brad, Brent, and Ross) were making the trip despite the bad weather to attend which made it twice as awesome. The second I showed up and saw Brad, I cracked up laughing.  He dressed as Uncle Eddie from Christmas Vacation, complete with the black dicky and everything.

Brent didn’t disappoint either.  His poinsettia sweater and matching wig were outstanding.

I hadn’t been to Matt and Kysa’s place since they had gotten married, and I had the opportunity to meet the two additions they had to the family.  I normally can’t stand cats but really thought they added to the whole event.

The rest of the night included games, both on a table and in a spare bedroom.  The game in the bedroom was a new one we invented call “Wall Ball” (really original, I know), and it consisted of a ping pong ball being thrown against a wall while Brad and Josh jumped on a blowup mattress to catch it.  They were each sweating by the end of the game and covered in bruises by morning.  We also all got a picture by a giant, three-story tall inflatable Santa in the neighbor’s yard but my camera took too dark of a picture.  Pretty amazing. 

This weekend, I have a friend that is going to be in town so I’m sure it’ll be another active weekend.  It’s good to be able to do things around here and not have to leave for out of town after it’s over.  I can definitely get used to this.

I’m definitely noticing that, now that I’m not traveling, I’ve been soaking in finally getting to have “home time”.  The newfound ability to relax in my own surroundings coupled with some of time constraints associated with my new job has more or less kept me away from updating things on this site as of late.  I had to take an exam in order to start making money at my new job, and I’m happy to say that I passed this past week.  The test was pretty difficult, I must say, and I was pretty unfamiliar with half of the material prior to studying for it.  It’s great to have that out of the way.

During one of the trainings for my work, we had to do a personality test.  I’m normally not a fan of them at all because I’ve always felt they end up pigeonholing you into a very specific category.  This one wasn’t like that, though.  Instead, it broke you down into three sections based on Maslow’s hierarchy of needs.  It would first show you your basic level of your personality.  The basic one basically described what you were like deep down and is also what you revert to in times of stress.  The second one showed your socialized behavior, and the third explained how you were when you were at your most comfortable.  I found it really interesting that my basic traits and my third, self-actualized traits were pretty much complete opposites of each other.  When I’m at my highest point on the hierarchy of needs, it showed that I love information-rich roles that allow me to build relationships with others.  At my basic level, though, it explained that I get somewhat short and distant with others when I’m stressed and am constantly looking for ways to resolve the situation.  I had never really thought about it before, but I think it’s pretty true.  Even in relationships, when there is a disagreement, I want to work past it before I do anything else.  When I was studying for this exam, I would keep any phone calls short or just not answer my phone because I didn’t want to be distracted.  I also made a point to shift my priorities to minimize activities that weren’t all that necessary (i.e. writing on this site).  It’s pretty interesting to think about.

It’s weird to think that, with the exception of traveling for the holidays, my nights are pretty much free to do anything I want at home.  I haven’t had that feeling for several years, and it’s a liberating feeling.  I’m also noticing that, with the location of my new job coupled with earlier working hours, I’m feeling a bit more sleep deprived than I normally do on a regular basis.  As a result, I’ve decided to change up my night and morning routines.  My morning routine has typically consisted of getting up in the morning and heading to the computer right away to read news, check fantasy sports, read email, read blogs, check out the latest daily batch of music reviews/news, etc.  Some people wake up with a cup of coffee to get their eyes open, but I’ve relied on the bright glow of a computer screen.  So I’ve decided to cut some of that morning time in half so I can do that at the end of the day or possibly even when I get to work.  I am also now going to make sure I am in bed by ten at night if at all possible.  This includes even turning off my phone so I’m not tempted to answer and stay up late.  Just last night I saw I had two phone calls after eleven.  That just can’t happen if I want to keep myself from being tired the next day. 

So yeah, this whole new phase of live has taken some getting used to.  I’m really looking forward to it, though.

No, I haven’t given up on this blog.  Things are just kind of hectic, and I’m having to focus my efforts elsewhere for at least a couple more days.  I’ll be resuming back to normal here soon.