So, let me tell you about my summer!

🌞

So far, Summer 2017 has involved medical foo, home renovations, surprise!funeral and not-a-surprise godbaby.

Medical Foo I have blogged a bit about in That Was Spinal Tap and That Was Spinal Tap Two.  I’ve also fic’d and freewrote about it in Diagnostic Machine and Just A Little Structural Rot.

The long and the short of it: After more doctor visits, blood tests, and spinal taps than seems reasonable or even probable (and two MRIs), I have a diagnosis and will start drug treatment soon.  It’s not a thrilling diagnosis, but, to quote Arnold, it’s not a tumor. (It’s not a baby either.  I don’t think they’d need a spinal tap to tell that one).

I now have three weeks without blood draws or doctor visits, and if my dentist calls, I’m going to tell them I’m out of the country for a while.  Or something.  No more co-pays kthnxbai.

Did I really just say kthnxbai?  Please forgive me.  

Anyway!  I know what’s wrong with me (ha, medically) and now I can get back to my life. Specifically my bathroom renovation.

Bathroom renovation!  One of the great things about medicine, in this case Duloxetine (Cymbalta), is that my brain isn’t getting nearly as in the way of me doing things as it used to.  So we have ripped apart our bathroom own to the studs(planks) (in some place, down to the cardboard), and now we can begin putting it back together, first by ADDING studs in places where they are missing or need to be changed, then by getting someone to drywall it, and then cabinet etc.

Right now, it’s rather like showering in a barn, but Pinterest tells me some people spend good money for that look.

We decided, due to there being approx. ONE option easily findable for six-foot tub and surround, to save buying installing said tub and surround until 2019.  We’ll replace the tile at the same time and whee, then the bathroom will be DONE.  In the meantime, the bathroom will be much much better than it had been.  Heck, the “barn” look is better that it was before, albeit drafty.

Surprise Funeral.  Yesterday, I went to a funeral for a relative — my father’s stepfather — who I had not seen in over 20 years (My father had a long and drawn-out fight with his stepdad and his stepbrother when I was a teenager).  In the processes, I saw a whole bunch of relatives I had not seen in decades, either.  

I’m glad I went.  He may have been dad’s stepdad, but he was my grandpa.  I’m sad I didn’t get to talk to him before he passed — when I tried last year, I learned that he had late-stage dementia — but I am glad I talked to my aunts, my uncle, my step-uncle, and even the step-uncle that caused the whole fight.

One note of… interest?  My grandpa sold Birchcraft (brand name) cabinets for several decades.  His ashes will be interred — with full military honors — in a box made of Birchcraft cabinet door and drawer front — including drawer pull.  Really. 

Not-so-surprise Baby!  Capriox and Mr. Cap *cough* Talikan had their lovely TNG baby just after tha eclipse (See Whole World Whispering) and I am a godmamma.  Yes, of course, a fairy godmamma.  She is lovely, adorable, loud, and tiny, as suits such things.  And I am absolutely thrilled.

So that, ladies, gentleman, and sundry, is my summer in a capsule.

TL:DR:  I have a diagnosis, the renovation is going slow but steady, my father’s estranged stepdad passed, and babies are awesome.

And you, my friends? Good, bad, stinky and rose-smelling?  Beautiful and ugly and everything in between?