2018.01.04

Happy New Year!!!

Raise your glass to end of a year that, by all rights, should have been worse; and your middle finger to the coming year that most definitely WILL be worse. Probably tragic.

Because Huntington's Disease is relentless in its ravaging, and the calendar is its weapon of choice. In an HD house, nothing gets better - only worse. Everywhere I look I see decay. The thrum of a heavy-footed death march is constant in my head. Sleep is rare, but so what? The waking hours are nightmare enough.

Four days in and here's what 2018 has given us so far:

December 30th: some of MW's friends who were visiting from out-of-town changed their plans to meet up with her - pushing the event back and hour.

This egregious inconsideration sent MW into a cycle of anger/depression; alternately cussing everybody out, then weeping inconsolably. She refused to meet with them and spent the next two days - New Year's Eve and Day - sad, alone and miserable. We both did.

January 2nd: MW calls me around 11:00 at the office. She is confused because she just took a shower in the upstairs bathroom but still hears the water running. Is that normal? I take a guess and say it's the heater refilling itself.

Two hours later she calls again, this time upset to the point where I can't understand a word. I calm her down enough to get the story: she'd left the water running in the tub and it leaked into the kitchen's box light, causing a panel to collapse. The entire kitchen was flooded!

She needed me to leave work. She'd come pick me up. And I'd have to take tomorrow off as well.

And now I'm depressed. Work is my escape from the madness. And just like that, the pain of these brutal holidays is being extended indefinitely.

MW picks me up, but she has to get food first, so we don't get home for another two hours. Upon entering the kitchen, I see one of the box-light's panels has indeed fallen, but it didn't break and there is no standing water on the floor. Just some damp spots.

It must have all evaporated, MW explains.

Also, the tub itself didn't overflow. It must have been something with the pipes. Two hours of water flowing through them caused or exacerbated a crack or leak. Good news/bad. Good is the damage really isn't too bad - some water stains on the ceiling is all; bad, a plumber needs to be called.

The immediate mess, however, is something I could clean up in thirty minutes. Ha! Right. It took two days and over $1,000 to recover. See, the water must have been toxic so anything that it might have touched needed to be thrown away. Basically every dish, pan and utensil exposed in the kitchen - even if they were nowhere near the box-light and showed no sign of being wet. Then the floor needed to be mopped with bleach to kill the poison. Then again with laundry detergent to wipe away the bleach. One last time - scrubbed down with baby wipes because if baby wipes can clean poop....

Anyway. After all the shopping and cleaning, we were $1000+ poorer and well past midnight. The next day was more cleaning and moving things around for the plumber - who, of course, can't be trusted. Everything must be hidden and locked away. MW even wanted to hide the TV; but I was able to convince her that TVs are so cheap these days - nobody is going to kill us both just to rob a 55 inch.

Alas, when the plumbers did show up, we couldn't use them because they were black foreigners. MW doesn't trust black foreigners.

That's it for me. I'm out. I explain firmly but gently that I can't quit my job to stay at home and wait for a white (or Hispanic - because they work hard. But definitely no Asian!) plumber to show up. She want's the upstairs show fixed, she's going to have to handle it herself.

Done.

Bring it, 2018. Let's see just how low we can go!