(Mini) Weekly Update #183

tl;dr: lots of shit happened, basically took last week off without meaning to, didn't get to post anything but LDQ, and in exchange won't take off the second week of December as originally planned to make up for it.

Now for a warning, the rest of the post is a whole bunch of personal drama shit. Because typing up my feelings here is therapeutic and I feel like I owe it to my patrons to explain what happens when I'm not able to post my stories like normal.

Alright. So, I kind of accidentally ended up taking last week off. That means I'm not going to take the second week in December off like I originally planned to. Instead, I'll just try to write that week's chapters in advance so that I can still technically take it off, but still post chapters during it.

Anyways, this past week has been... not that great.

It started off fine for the most part. I took a couple of days to just relax, and then I found out my dad died from Covid. Now, for anybody who has ever heard me talk about him before, you would know that's not really a big deal to me. I've never had a good relationship with him, basically cut ties when I was 18 after trying one last time to make things better between us, and all of the really bad shit that happened to me as a child was from his side of the family. So, I'm sure it's going to sound fucked up to some of you, but I'm not really upset about him dying. I would genuinely care more if any of you died (or unpledged, heh).

But then a few different feelings hit me. One, even though I wasn't close to him and didn't really care about him... I still wanted to, you know? If that makes any sense. We weren't close, but I wished we were. I tried many times in the past to get closer to him because I really did want a dad. But I was never given the opportunity to get closer. Then again, maybe I should have expected that. He hardly cared when he found out about the sexual things that happened to me while I was staying with his side of the family, and he never blinked when my older step brother would beat the shit out of me. It was just "brotherly affection." Not to mention repeatedly left me with people who would be group smoking indoors while I had asthma.  So yeah. Probably shouldn't have ever expected any reciprocation from him once I was old enough that he didn't need to pay child support any longer.

Funny-not-really story. When I was 18, I got his email and typed up this whole fuckin' essay to him about my feelings, how I was sorry for not trying better to stay in contact with him, how I missed him and wanted to get closer to him, etc. I fully caught him up on my life and everything. Poured my heart out to him. Never got a reply. My mum messaged him on Facebook a couple weeks later asking what gives and he told her that he planned on getting around to replying but didn't have the time to yet. Guess what? Never got a reply. Then like... five years later, what do I get? I get a postcard in the mail from my step-mom, not my dad, with a picture of the new kid they adopted while talking about how wonderful he is. So, that was kind of a huge slap in the face. Couldn't even bother replying to his first, biological son's email at any time over five years, but had the time to go and adopt a new kid.

Anyways, now that he's dead, that door is permanently closed. I also feel really bad for my other grandparents. I was actually close to them, and now they just lost their son who was only in his forties a couple of days before Thanksgiving. I feel more bad for them than myself. I can't even begin to imagine what they're going through right now, and that kind of fucked up my mood (and thus my writing ability). It also tore my mum up a bit. Even though she was the one who divorced him and couldn't stand him, he was still her first love and responsible for helping to bring me into the world.

And that was only the first half of the week!

Wednesday night, the night before Thanksgiving, my grandma started shitting blood. It was even worse in the morning, so she had to go to the hospital while I was in the middle of cooking Thanksgiving dishes. So, the house smelled like shit, there was blood all over the bathroom, and my mum was gone all day to deal with my grandma in the hospital, meaning that she missed the main meal. I wasn't exactly happy and enjoying my holiday. I spent 12 hours in and out of the kitchen cooking, and that was how Thanksgiving was spent.

My grandma is fine now, though. She had to spend four days in the hospital to be monitored due to how low her hemoglobin level was (due to, you know, shitting out her blood). I forget the name of the condition, but it's some relatively common thing that happens to the elderly with cysts/ruptures in their bowels or something. Nothing life-threatening. She's back here now and is acting just like normal. Well, acting as normal as anybody with Alzheimer's/dementia does.

By the time Saturday came around, I was still trying to convince myself I would be able to write everything for the week. That was why I posted LDQ.

Hah. So much for that.

Me and my girlfriend were supposed to go to the medieval fair 2 weeks ago, but that was when my mum got shingles again and we couldn't go since there would be nobody here to watch the dogs and my grandma. Then we didn't go last weekend because it was going to be in the 80s which is too hot for walking around for 4 hours near a bunch of other people, especially when the next weekend (aka this weekend) was going to be in the low 70s. So, after posting LDQ, I had to get ready for the medieval fair. It was two hours away, we spent four hours there, and then had to drive two hours back. By the time we were back, I was up for 24 hours and utterly exhausted. Then I was barely able to get any sleep after that which resulted in me just being tired all day and not able to concentrate. So, on Sunday, I decided, "fuck it." Slept from 9am to 3pm. Got up. Ordered Five Guys. Ate a burger and fries. Went back to sleep from like 5pm to 1am--until my body naturally woke up on its own after getting enough rest.

And now here I am. The Monday of a new week with only 1 chapter from last week being written. That's why I'm just going to count last week as an impromptu week off despite that it wasn't supposed to be one. To make up for it, since I would feel way too guilty otherwise, I'm not going to take the second week of December off like originally planned. So, only going to take one week off in December instead of two.

That's all for now. Thanks for putting up with my shit. Life has just been kind of shitty this past year, both figuratively and literally. Hopefully next year is going to be better.

Now, as long as I can type up two chapters for each story this week, I can still effectively take next week off to no-life the FFXIV expansion. But if I don't manage to do that, then that's alright. The worst case scenario is that I'm, oh no, forced to take a bit more of my time with the new expansion. How truly horrible.

Anyways, that's all. Sorry again for the unplanned week-but-not-really off.