12.18.03 - 9:14 a.m.

I'm looking at a winter wonderland through the office windows. It wasn't this snowy when I came to work, early this morning, although there was some snow on the circular patches of ground that surround the poor trees lining the streets downtown, snow on the grass in my neighborhood, and tracings of snow on the cars. There were also a few flakes - no more than that - drifting down from the sky, just enough to graze your cheeks and hair with damp, feathery little kisses, but no more than that.

Now, the snow is falling more quickly and the edges of my elliptical view of the Ohio River valley is shrouded in graywhite. The far end? No: more than that. I can see a little more than ten blocks away - the lights from the stadium, maybe some steam rising from one of the factories beyond the stadium, but no more than that.

Don't get me wrong: it's not a blizzard. It's just a meager little snowfall. There's nothing on the roads, and nothing on the sidewalks, even if the roofs of the buildings below are festively glazed with a fine coating of snow, like a cake where one ran out of icing - only the top gets a taste.

I haven't signed the papers yet, and although I didn't sleep well last night, I am feeling better about signing this morning. The only problem is that my Christmas bonus (NOT a Christmas bonus: just a bonus. A-hem.) has been delayed. We won't get them until the end of January. I didn't count on getting as much as I received last year, but, well, I was counting on enough to pay for the earnest money and the home inspection, since I (heh) just spent money on new glasses, new clothes, and Christmas presents.

We learned this yesterday afternoon. Oh, I'm not happy. I guess I'm not unhappy, either. (Oh, okay: I'm really freakin' unhappy! But what good does it do? None. Whatsoever. No one else ever really cares if you're unhappy. Or, if they do, it is only reflexively, and to the extent it impacts something in their own lives.)

So. Now what?

Well, now my mother has crashed after her high from those high-dose steroids they give you before and just after chemotherapy. On Monday, she was all hyper. She'd done everything. She thought I was perfectly capable of ripping out old insulation from the rafters, putting in new insulation, and hanging SHEETROCK (which is also, apparently, drywall. WTF? Why 50000000000000000000000 names for the same damn thing), when two weeks ago, she thought me incapable of holding a paintbrush for more than three seconds without managing to drop it. So, I'm glad she's no longer delusional, but not so happy about the state she's fallen into.

The chemo really hits her 3-4 days after receiving it, when the steroids where off and all that is left is her reeling body. Her white blood cells and red blood cells are very low, so she received an injection yesterday. She also has another bladder infection and a cold of some sort, and is having trouble drinking enough water because it tastes funny.

She sounded really, really bad last night, and even though she went in to work yesterday, she's staying home the rest of the week. Fortunately, Dad's off for a while. He turned in his grades on Monday, and is footloose and fancy free, more or less, for the next several weeks at the least.

I've found that exhausted Mom is easier to deal with than just-enough-energy-to-yell-about-things Mom, even if she's not yelling at me. Either way, she's still sick, and when she's not yelling she's just my mother whom I love. When she's yelling (Sunday, at David, relentlessly. I remember the yelling, but no longer remember anything he did to cause the outbursts), she's also my Mother with a capital M and a heckuva lot of baggage, in addition to being my mom who is dealing so suddenly with such an acute betrayal of her confidence in the functions of her body. We live here. They should keep working. They should work right.

I wish I could get more sleep at night. It's only 9:30 and I'm already tired. I've been up since 6:00, when I woke up and couldn't go back to sleep. I went to bed at 11:30, but it took me a while to fall asleep. I don't like these ups and downs, although at least the sore throat I was developing yesterday has gotten better. I'm suffering through my second cold in three weeks, nad I really haven't had a period where I've felt well, especially considering the sprained ankle last week and the various aches and pains after climbing into grandma's attic 10000000000000000000000000000000000000 times while we were cleaning out her house last weekend.

It's all very meh, and now the snow is clearing, so I no longer have a winter wonderland, but rather a flat, white-gray sky in the near-distance, much as we've had for the last several weeks. When the fucking hell will I see the sun again?