Whew. 37 years of being on this earth.

_{In a row?!}

Yay I guess. Honestly with all the crap going down in FA lately I'm not in too much of a celebratory mood right now.

_{Waking up with a leg cramp less than half an hour ago sure didn't help that mood.}

Hope everybody has a good early June.

Yay? My throat is still a bit achey, but otherwise I'm fine.

(It's pretty uncomfortable in general though.)

I'd been feeling sick the past few days, with a sore throat and bad cough, as well as general restlessness at night. I figured it was just a head cold, since I get those often.

At the suggestions of some others, I got a home Covid test and used it. And the results came back positive. >_>

I don't really know what to do about this.

I know it's noontime now, but this birthday has been, well, the most positive one in a few years, so that's good!

I do hope everybody is still doing all right in the midst of the chaos that's been going on.

I admit I kind of forgot about telling people about this, because...well, the mood lately has been awful. _{Though that could qualify for most of the past few months too.}

Oops. My bad.

Well at the end of 2017 I said 2018 would most likely suck.

I was right. Pretty much. Not that much hope for 2019, though at least I'll be using a new computer and will actually be able to game on it. So maybe I'll be able to improve friendships? I don't know.

I totally didn't just do this now in order to get the old journal off. Shush.

I honestly forgot for a while to put this journal up, so...yay? I guess

If you can't tell I've been very sad as of late

It sucked.

2016 sucked.

By pattern recognition, 2018 will more than likely suck.

Here's hoping it doesn't.


I'm still not good with wording things.

Okay that's enough of being reminded of how much 2017 has sucked whenever I go to my userpage. Today's my birthday, so hopefully it marks the start of the year being good!

This is one of those things I've been both preparing for for years and have not been prepared for at all... Well, what happened was, near the end of 2016 my dad was diagnosed with a form of cancer. It was something I initially worried a lot about (I was reminded about a Robot Chicken skit with the same 'plot', if you will) but my brother told me he would be fine. And indeed, he was all right.

Until about two months ago.

Coming off of my mother breaking her wrist when she was about to retire, dad calmly came up to her and said that he wanted to go to the hospital. Turns out that he had been hurting for the past month or so and finally decided it was bad enough that the hospital would need to step in. He underwent a chemotherapy session. This began a month-long attempt to keep him from aching too bad through medication and use of a walker, though he kept having to return to the hospital when he lost the ability to walk and was too stubborn to get help. Eventually he ended up staying for an extended time at the hospital, due to the chemo affecting him too harshly - he had a bad liver from a poor diet and lack of exercise for many years...and this is where I feel doubly bad about it because I never actually tried to get dad to go on walks outside with me.

About a week ago, he made a decision - to not do another chemotherapy session and simply let nature take its course. The hospital provided us with a bed to let him rest in at home as well as morphine and nurses to visit him daily and make his passing comfortable. At first he kept trying to get out of bed and remove the equipment, causing both mother and myself a lot of distress with how he didn't really seem to understand what he couldn't do...but I think he just wanted to keep living. Two days ago he could barely talk and didn't even try to get out of bed any more, and yesterday after he was barely responsive. My sister and brother stopped over to talk with him and reassure him that mother would be well taken care of, and they also reminded me to be there for him. Today mother told me that dad's sisters and brothers would be coming in from Maine to see him and talk with him, since it would be the last time he'd get to hear their voices.

They didn't get here in time.

At 9:15 AM EST, on May 24 2017, my father passed away.


...

I'm a bit perplexed as if I should consider the current console generation (WiiU/PS4/XB1) to be pretty much over now or what.

I managed to completely forget to write down that my birthday was today. Crap.

I find it kind of funny that a journal only meant to make people checking my userpage not mistakenly think it's my birthday got more comments than anything else including my birthday journals.

I'm fine. No need to worry. Well, as fine as I've ever been. Eventually I might actually put stuff on this page, but that's likely a long ways off.

......

I kind of forgot to say right away, but today's my birthday. Yay and stuff?

I still don't have the most optimistic outlook on this particular day but so far it's been good!

I'm kind of surprised that I reached 100 watchers, especially considering how empty this is.

Apparently one of our cats - the one who's an outdoor cat - hasn't been seen for several days now. He's pulled a vanishing act for a couple of days at a time, but this is going on a week now. I talked with my parents about this earlier and they pointed out that we hadn't seen a lot of the outdoor cats around either - normally there's an orange tabby who likes to hang out with our outdoor cat, as well as a tuxedo cat that likes to fight with him. Neither of them have been seen around recently either.

My mother thinks that a coyote or other predatory creature might have killed the outdoor cats in the neighborhood. It's certainly a possibility, since I personally haven't seen many outdoor animals around either... I'm still hoping that we'll see him turn up at our back porch, wanting to be let in and snuggled, but...

So I went back to the dentist and got both root canals done with. It took about an hour, and I can't close my left eye for a while yet due to anesthetics, but it was surprisingly easy going...though I do still need to go back in two weeks for the crown fittings. Also my mouth smells funny.

So the other day my teeth started to hurt a lot, and upon informing my family I was told that I'd have to wait until tomorrow to go to a dentist. The pain ended up preventing me from really sleeping, but a couple of hours ago I went to a dentist. Apparently two of my teeth needed root canals and I needed a third extracted, so they did the extraction today. Lots of Novocaine, gauze, and blood later, the tooth is out, and I have a regimen.

If it's the tooth I'm thinking of, I figured I'd need it extracted since I noticed a while back that it was about half gone...

The root canals will be done in a couple of weeks. For now, though, just the extraction.

So my birthday's in a few days. The past few birthdays I've had have been meh to horrible, so I am hoping this one is at least more tolerable...

Am I alone in this sort of thing?