Frightened

I just banged my knee again on my desk. You would think that I would learn how not to bang my knee. But I haven't. It has been happening all weekend. It's frightening the dog. It's happeneing because there have been some changes around here.

A few weeks ago, I scored (SCORE!) a nifty piece of office furniture which my co-workers call a credenza. I have no idea if that's the proper name for it. My gut instinct is that isn't the proper name. That's not just me being superior (I am a writer, you know). To me, credenza sounds like a dance, an energetic, elegant dance. This bulky, blocky piece of furniture just doesn't seem like a credenza. It doesn't seem like a dance. It's immovable (or nearly). It's a stance.

But it's in the corner of our "den" now, waiting to be filled with important papers, my extra cds, and various other office accoutrements. (By the way, I'm supposed to be finishing my income taxes right now, but I just can't face it. So instead, I decided to check in on my friends' blogs, and just read Meladuck's superior week-in-review.) We had to shift the furniture around to get the credenza to fit. The desk got shifted down the wall. You wouldn't think that moving the desk no more than a foot would make that much of a difference. But it does. I keep knocking my knee on it. The noise is quite loud. It's frightening the poor dog, who is quiveringly afraid of fireworks. Any little bang gets him shivering.

He's pretty gun-shy these days. He's very jumpy. The parents are spending too much time together. Neither one is even close to being happy. It has almost come to a contest between the two of them...which one is worse off. There's no denying it. They're both in rough shape. Neither of them are cured of their cancers (I just typoed "cursed" for "cured"...Freudian slip?). The best either can hope for (or the worst), is some sort of reprive. But as a former friend (as of the moment I read her email) just told me, we're all terminally ill. We're all going to die. Nice. I guess that I'd better just suck it up and carry on.

But most of us (especially this friend), haven't been bombarded with so much in the last few years. I have been sucking it up and carrying on. But it's getting harder. My mother has developed pains in her head/ear which she thought was an earache/pimple. She has also been struggling with pronouncing words. And she has been sleeping a lot. I'm very scared.