Not to get all Mormo on everyone...

... but the overflow is a bitch. I'm usually not late to church, but today I was. In fact, I'm here now and it's hell. 

The overflow at an LDS church is the peanut gallery of evangelical posturing. It's where the parents with 8-10 kids under the age of 5 go so their kids can run, yell, and drool all over the basketball court while someone at the pulpit is blubbering through some nephite reader's digest about how some mo-tard gained acceptance by being kind. (Even though everyone was nice to them afterwards, they were being patronizing and we all know it.)

It's where to go to stare at your phone or iPad without judgement. Where mothers and fathers hold crying children rather than taking the little shit out into the foyer. Where the newlywed couple goes to grope each other or fight quietly about towels or some other "problem", like how he forgot to say good night the night before or some other idiotic, fool hardy errand. It's where the outcast go to be weird and the late comers walk to be unnoticed. Well, they are noticed but only by the weirdos in the overflow. No harm, no foul. 

Geez, just saw a young toddler with a short skirt and thigh high socks. She looks like the most adorable whore. Good going, Mom!

I'm usually not this late, usually I can get a place to sit near my parents. My entrance today, however, was very much late and left no recluse with family. 

Three children, one after another, just fell. All around me. Each child's cry more loud and annoying than the last.

It's a battlefield here and the battle is not to say anything about someone else's awful parenting. Because you certainly wouldn't want to do that. That would be rude. 

It's been a rough week with a weekend that was full up with family staying from out of town. Yay. I had been running around doing a bunch of stuff to the extent that as I as trying to get to bed last night, my back was in such dire straits I could hardly breath without struggling in pain. Now I know back pain, after being in the construction trade for 10 years. It wasn't a slipped disc, this was too high. It wasn't physical damage, the pain wasn't constant. No, this was just a simple pinched nerve, but it was a bad one. Quite painful but nothing a hot shower and a quick neck pop couldn't fix. Although it did fix it, I was left with an incredibly sore back from the pinch in the middle of my back. So Vickie, being full of medication herself, offered me a pain killer. I didn't want the two she offered so I just took one and it knocked my ass to the floor. I didn't wake up until about 15 minutes before church started. Which is fine by myself, but with two little kids who hate getting ready for church is a freaking chore. So here I am. In the back of the church. 

Of course the reason for the back pinch really wasn't because of running around. It's just a stressful time. So close to the end, just three more treatments and it seems almost torturous to be so close and have so much more to go. 

Oh well, that's the way it goes. 

Oh good, the speaker is done. I do have to say I am pretty impressed with the way he could 'liken' (I hate that term, ugh) the story about a kid being bullied and how his older brother made him feel better by talking about it, so some great service was given. Yeah, because talking about stuff solves everything. Bullies love nothing more than words. Buh.

The unrelenting poison

Chemo is indeed poison. It is a poison that kills you just enough. It is introduced to the body in an intravenously way and makes its way through the blood stream. It attacks all in its path, hopefully the mutated cells that make up the cancer, then backs off enough to let you live. You know, with no immune system, in bed in pain, taking an assortment of pain killers and anti-nausea pills and generally feeling quite awful. Like after listening to a Coldplay album. 

It gets worse after time. The body can take the poison all right for awhile, but there is a breaking point where the body throws its arms in the air and waves the white flag of surrender. Writing this it seems like chemotherapy is less of a medical remedy and more like a dare concocted at a trailer park. Vickie has been taking in the chemo "medicine" every other week. She would feel pretty awful until the next Sunday after a treatment and by then she could function a bit more. One week bad, the next week tolerable. But it doesn't do that anymore. Now it's just two weeks of feeling like you've just attended a Brad Pitt film festival. (I know a lot of you might think that wouldn't be a bad time, but come on, when was the last time you actually wanted to see one of his movies? Like a thousand years and counting) It has made life different, as you would guess. 

I feel that now I'm more of a caregiver than a husband. More of a babysitter than a father. And worse yet, I feel like a Mexican washer woman down at the creek washing a load of clothes for a few pesos each, only to come home to a dead beat, drunken husband. The man who takes those few pesos physically from me to go down to the bar for some tortilla soup and tequila shots, just to come home late and drunk, smelling like another woman's perfume. I won't take it Carlos! I won't!

Okay that went to a weird place, but nevertheless the sentiment is still there. 

We are getting a lot of help though. From our church, from our family, from friends, from the cancer center. The list is plentiful and willing. It has been very nice, but does seem sometimes we are out welcoming our stay a bit. Trust me, I wish we weren't. I would give anything not to have to lean on so many, but all I can be is grateful and all I can do is reciprocate the service in some capacity later on in life.

Still, there's fun you can have with is all. Every time Vickie does anything I always tell her how 'inspiring' she's being. When people ask how she is I get to say "she's dying inside, OKAY." Then act all indignant and huff away. The other day I told someone that my wife having cancer was the best thing that happened to our sex life, just to see what they would do. They ended up saying nothing and walked away. I laughed until I about pitched up a lung.