this punchline is a joke

This weekend was sad. My boyfriend’s grandma passed away after a long battle with chronic illness. I attended the funeral to support him, and it was a reminder of how recently my own grandma passed. So, hug your grandparents if you can. And send some good thoughts his way, guys.

Update: 

There are 6 days left in the funding campaign. I’m blogging this again because things really haven’t changed, unfortunately since the original post, and on top of everything else, my grandma died last week, so we’re dealing with added funeral expenses. It’s really tense and stressful right now, and my paycheque was short because of unpaid vacation time I had to take off. So, anything would help—if you could donate/spread the word, I’d be eternally grateful. 

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This is really tough for me to do, because the purpose of me being on tumblr was never to share my personal life, but to just surround myself with likeminded people and reblog entertaining and meaningful things I liked. But now I’m desperate, and I need help—more importantly, my family needs help. 

My parents and younger brother live 200 km away from me because I moved away for work. My parents lost their jobs 5 years ago, and my mom had to go on government disability for her depression and bipolar. She can’t work right now. My dad is a general labourer and has moved around trying to find work, but there is no one hiring permanently, full time. His last job laid him off in April 2012 after 8 months because the economy sucks and the manufacturing industry is horrible. His unemployment ran out in December and their drug benefits were cancelled—which is a nightmare because my parents require heart medications, diabetes medications, and my mom is on an antidepressant that costs $150 for a 30 day supply, and isn’t generic. Right now, they’re struggling to pay the rent because my mom only gets barely enough to pay their rent, with maybe $80 left over a month, which is supposed to pay for their car, groceries, bills, medications…obviously you can see the issue here. 

My brother just lent them $600 and I lent them $450 yesterday to pay the rent because they were behind and in threat of being evicted. Every time they fill out the paperwork for an eviction notice, they charge you $170 to do so. 

I am relatively new in my job and because I’m still being precepted, I don’t have the opportunity to take overtime. I am sending them what I can, but I have my own rent, car payment, student loan payment, insurance, groceries, etc to take care of. 

My brother had to give them the $600 he set aside in savings for his textbooks this semester because he had no choice—they need a place to live! His student loans did not give him enough to cover his tuition this semester so he is short on that as well. He works, but the restaurant that he works at is slow right now and so he’s getting few hours.

My parents have always struggled financially and when I was home I worked full time through school as well to help them as much as I could. My poor brother is trying to work as much as he can and go to school, but he’s so stressed and you know as well as I do that he can barely concentrate like that. He wants to drop out of school to work to support the family but I don’t want him to do that. 

My dad is working sporadically through a temp agency, but it’s so unpredictable and unstable—he might work for 2 weeks and not work for another 3, so my parents struggle again with paying bills. 

I go to work every day sick to my stomach worrying about my family and their living situation. They have exhausted all of the possible solutions like social assistance—but social assistance says they make too much to be eligible! 

So I’m begging you and turning to complete strangers feeling like I’m going to throw up, because I don’t have any better ideas. I’m setting up an indiegogo account to raise donations if possible. Anything is better than nothing.

The link to the indiegogo account

If a picture of a string of lights and tulle can get over 800 reblogs on this tumblr, then you can take 2 seconds to at least reblog and spread the word. Thanks, guys.

The viewing and funeral were Friday and Saturday. It was a long two days. I don’t really know what to say, except that we’ll have to see how it goes with my grandpa. I don’t think it’s really sunk in yet. I also saw my grandpa cry for the first time in my life, which absolutely broke my heart. How do you say goodbye to the love of your life for the last 46 years?

If there is a heaven, she’s there now. She would be the perfect person to be an angel.

Yesterday morning when I was at work I got a phone call from my brother. I posted a couple of days ago about how my grandma was sick, and yesterday morning she died. She wasn’t in pain and went peacefully, and the nursing home staff were so wonderful in her care, so we are grateful for that. I am home now with my family—the funeral is Saturday. If you can, keep my mom in your thoughts—she and her sisters and her dad are really struggling right now. Thanks.

I may go AWOL for a bit, guys. My mom called, and my grandma, who has Alzheimer’s, among a myriad of other health problems, has really deteriorated rapidly in the last 6 months and it looks like…we’re towards the end. My mom and aunt spoke to her doctors and nurses at the nursing home where she lives, and they’re pretty sure she’s dying. I’m basically going to be spending the next little while waiting for a phone call for me to go home. Shit. I feel awful being away from my family at a time like this.

When it rains, it fucking pours.

Christmas was lovely because I got to see my family, and while I’m not usually homesick, this time of year made me miss them more than usual. I also got to spend time with my wonderful boyfriend, who I miss so much every day. 

There is also enough chocolate and food in this house to put me in a diabetes coma. See: I had cake for breakfast. But I’m a grownup so fuck you. Oliver is fascinated with the tiny tree my parents put up and keeps trying to eat it and chase Hershey’s tail. We tried dressing them both up with jingle collars and hats…but that didn’t go so well. 

Anyways, I hope you all had lovely holidays. I may try and go poke through the mall today to see what boxing day sales there are but I don’t know if I’ll get trampled to death or not and if life insurance covers that sort of thing. Hurr hurr.

Love you all!

The number one thing that I hate is when people tell me not to freak out.

“Don’t freak out, but…”

Of course I’m going to freak out before you even tell me anything because by the time you’ve finished those 4 words I’m already preemptively freaking out. So my dad says this to me this morning, followed by, “I’ve been having chest pain.” So immediately I smack him because he tells me it started last night, and I jump into my whole mini assessment thing which makes him side eye me, and I drag his ass to the clinic, where the doctor freaks me out more and tells me to take him to the hospital. My dad has a history of cardiac disease, so I’m trying not to panic and ignore everything I ever saw when I did my cardiac rotation. Long story short, after 7 hours and multiple tests, thank God he didn’t have a heart attack, which was my first thought. Just stress induced chest pain from the heat and exertion. So they hopped him up on drugs and sent him home. But he scared the crap out of me. I knew he was feeling better though when he used this experience to guilt trip me into buying him a big gulp at 7-11 on the way home when I stopped to get gas.

and a couple days ago, I found out I have a job interview(!!!!!!!!) at a hospital in Hamilton, about 3 hours away from me in a week and a half. AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!

I’m so excited and nervous I want to puke my brains out while dancing. MY FIRST REAL RN JOB INTERVIEW OMG.

so that’s what real life has been like lately. also, I’ve been doing nothing but working, studying for my american boards and working. and harassing the canada post guy to see if my canadian board results have come yet. it’s been 4 weeks today since I wrote it…so anytime now.

*resumes stalking post in bush next to mailbox*

how the heck are you guys?