A Self-Indulgent Post

It's my blog, right? I'm gonna take a post here to write about some personal happenings, so hopefully you'll indulge me. If you find it utterly boring, just hit that "Next Blog" button and I'm sure you'll find something with boobs, or maybe an advertisement on enlarging your penis. Y'know, whatever.

Life is characterized by change. Life is change. If things didn't change, life couldn't take place. It's a natural part of our existence, and it's one of the most wonderful and yet horrid things at the exact same time.

Today was filled with bad news. I'll talk about each item separately.

My mother told me today that they will probably euthanize our oldest dog sometime this week. I asked if they could wait until this weekend to do it, so that I can go home and say good-bye, but my mother doesn't know if she'll make it until then. Casey, our 12-year old labrador, has stopped eating and can't control her bladder anymore. My parents have had to keep her outside because she just can't control it. She's cold out in the garage, especially because she ends up sleeping on a wet bed.

I knew it would happen sometime this year. Bigger dogs tend not to live much past age 10. Still, I'm not entirely happy about it. I helped raise her from a puppy; I don't want to have to say good-bye. I wish, too, that there were some way to help her, but I don't want her to suffer. Does it make me a hypocrite that I find physician-assisted suicide immoral but I'm okay with euthanizing my dog? Or perhaps I should ask why philosophy and ethics are the first things I think of when life brings such changes.

Announcement number two today was that my father and his siblings have convinced my grandparents to move out of their house and into an assisted living center. My grandfather has Alzheimer's disease, and has recently started using a walker because he has back pain. Every day he gets a little worse. I'm not sure what's worse, seeing the confusion and anger in his face when he can't remember things correctly, or seeing the pain in my grandmother's face because she has to deal with it every day. Since I don't see him very often, it's been easy to pretend that the problem doesn't really exist. With the announcement of their move . . . to me, it signals the end. I keep hearing my parents say that they just don't know how much longer he'll be around. This really does seem like putting the foot in the grave.

I know that they have better things in store for them on the other side of the veil, but I'll be selfish anyhow and wish that they didn't have to go, and that things didn't have to change.

The final event involved my girlfriend. Since practically the time I received my acceptance letter to Northwestern, we'd planned that she would move up here after finishing her Associates degree so that we could be together. Not getting married, and certainly not living together, but she has to finish her degree and, well, I'm not really enamored with the dynamics of long-distance relationships. She's set to graduate this summer, but now she's saying that she might be staying put another year.

I'm trying not to be selfish. She needs to do what she has to in order to finish her schooling and follow her goals. I don't want her to be so far away from me, but I'll endure it if I have to right? That's what I'm supposed to say, anyhow. I hate having to be an adult. Sometimes I'd rather just scream like a child until everything went exactly as I wanted it.

I'm just afraid she resents me, sometimes. My being at Northwestern locks me into place here for quite a while. Sometimes I wonder if she feels held back, like I've stolen her ability to choose her own path because I've limited it to this place. I know she'd say that was silly, that she chooses me because she loves me and that she would do anything to be with me. Still, being one of such low self-esteem, I ask myself those questions anyway.

I don't know what's going to happen. With her, or with any of this, and that's both exciting and frightening at the same time.

Anyhow . . . thanks for indulging me. Blogging will resume normal form. Whatever that means.