Adventures in being me
One evening in mid-November, Teresa tried to say something to me, and it came out as fractured phonemes, broken language, the kind of thing that says "get me to an ER without delay." TL,DR: It wasn't a stroke, but we may have averted one by getting her to the ER as fast as we did. She was in the hospital for several days. We still don't have a full diagnosis.
In late November, my youngest brother (I'm the eldest of three brothers) died in a hospice after years of hard living, age 52. We weren't close, but he was my brother. I was...knocked off balance by it. I'm 59 and this was the first time I lost a close family member. To those of you who've been through this particular one-way door at an earlier age: Respect.
In December I got shingles. I'm still not completely over it, but as far as I can recall I spent late December and most of January in a haze of pain and dissociation. I was out of the office for the better part of four weeks, and I still haven't completely caught up. Life advice: Don't get shingles.
In early January we learned that our landlord of nearly 14 years was, at long last, selling our building to someone who wants to make it a single-family home. Our deadline for getting out was the end of March.
In early February we found a terrific apartment in a much more pleasant Brooklyn neighborhood. But while it's not tiny, it's smaller than our current place, so we've been in WEED OUT ALL THE THINGS mode for about three weeks now. Our lease on the new apartment begins today, and we aspire to be actually living there by the second half of March.
And in the fullness of time, today this happened. It's a lot of change, even more than this was, back in 2016.
What can I say? I'm fortunate in my colleagues. I'm even more fortunate in my employees. Also, watch this space.