The Business of Busyness | Tragic Comedy

My mother has Alzheimer's and dementia. She'll be 80 in a few months. For the last decade or so, her partner Andy has been taking care of her, but he's 85 himself and not able to continue. Since last summer, I've been taking on more and more of the daily responsibilities of taking care of my mother's needs, financially and legally and medically. And holy hell is it time-consuming. I had heard that it gets like this but I really had no idea.

I spend about 80-90% of my free time taking care of my mother. I'll frequently stay up until 12-2am answering emails from Andy, sending requests to her caregivers at her assisted living facility, scheduling appointments and companions for her, filling out forms and legal paperwork, placing orders for various things that she needs, and blocking out time in my work calendar for time that I'll have to take off to be in the room with her various doctors when she sees them. I'm on a first-name basis with her caregivers and lawyers. I keep a constantly-changing list of her medications and specialist doctors. I have come to dread checking my inbox or glancing at my buzzing phone because it's going to be more demands on my time and attention.

With Kelly dealing with her own recent medical crisis (3 surgeries and 15 days in the hospital so far), and a stressful work project that has me working overtime to meet difficult deadlines, I have been stretched really damn thin. It's gotten to a point that I have never reached before in my life, where I'm just failing outright to get things done. I pass out at midnight, unable to finish tasks that need to happen that night, because I just can't do any more. I reached a point this past week where I just surrendered and said I'm going to get done whatever I can and not stress any more if some things fall by the wayside because I'm human and have limits.

I have no idea how parents do it. I couldn't imagine trying to juggle all of this with kids on top of it. And my mother doesn't even live with me; being physically and immediately responsible for her needs would be even harder.

I'm saying all of this to illustrate why I've been absent from Funeratic for nine months and counting. I have so far been able to keep up with making goos, and I'll answer messages and concert challenges when they come up, but I really haven't had anywhere near the amount of time that I'd like to have to work on this website and interact with people here and add new content and do any of the numerous projects that I still think about. Funeratic is still big in my heart, but it gets a tiny sliver of my time because that's all that I have been able to give lately. Like I said, I'm trying to set more realistic limits starting this past week (and I'm trying to push more of my mother's care onto her very expensive professional caregivers where it belongs), so maybe I'll be able to make time for the site, but I certainly can't promise that.

Thanks for continuing to stick around. I'm not done with Funeratic.

Logical Operator

The creator of Funeratic, Scott Hardie, blogs about running this site, losing weight, and other passions including his wife Kelly, his friends, movies, gaming, and Florida. Read more »

Gingerbread Office

I don't often join in Kelly's craft projects, and it's even rarer for her to join in one of mine. But that's what happened last week when my company held a gingerbread house contest, and Kelly pitched in to help the team that I signed up for. We decided to make a "north pole branch" of our Sarasota office. Go »

Normal Paranormal

This will offend believers in the paranormal, so read at your own peril. Socially, I've tried to keep it a polite secret that I don't believe in any paranormal phenomena, including the everyday sort. Several of my local friends practice feng shui, buy healing magnets, size people up based on their birth signs, and go to dieticians who tell them not to eat foods of certain colors. Go »

March 14, 1977

I hope this doesn't set a precedent for doing this on everybody's 30th birthday, or I'm going to be busy writing these for the next few years... Top Ten Reasons Denise Sawicki is Awesome 10) She wore red on her wedding day, and she looked good. 9) She doesn't just send the DVD as a surprise birthday gift. Go »

Something Comes Along to Intervene

I've been enjoying "Meddle" and "Remedy" by Little Boots, two great electropop songs with catchy hooks, perfect for summer. But I didn't really take her seriously as an artist until I heard "Stuck on Repeat." It's pop music on acid, like Kylie Minogue produced by Captain Beefheart, and the unlikeliest hit song of the year. Go »

Pandora

[This post wound up being very long-winded and self-absorbed, but that's what blogs are for, I guess.] For years, I've gotten increasingly picky about how I listen to music. Sometimes I just want to listen to everything I have on shuffle, but sometimes I want to get more specific like only music from one genre on shuffle or all songs by one artist in chronological order, and sometimes I want to get really specific, like songs about dreams or artists from Michigan or recordings featuring violins. Go »