The Week After Christmas (repeat post)

Rereading my blog, it bothered me that I had all of this in one post. So, I am separating it out. 

The rest of the week (after Christmas Day) was not as exciting. We had another (mostly) relaxing day on Tuesday. Thomas and I went out in search of wrapping paper and we took Luke to the batting cages. 

Wednesday we all went to Lakeland to visit my dad and to work on moving some of his stuff. After Lakeland, we went to Winter Haven to visit with Marta and Frank. We got to meet their new, giant dog, Buddy, We played Uno, shared gifts and had pizza. It was a good visit for all but Luke. He was playing outside with Buddy, when Buddy got a little rambunctious and knocked Luke over and then mouthed his arm (as puppies do). Luke, justifiably, felt like he was being attacked and let out a terrifying, blood curdling scream. The surprised puppy got banished behind closed doors for the rest of our visit and Luke eventually recovered from the traumatic encounter. While I know Luke was never in any danger (Buddy was clearly playing and the mouthing didn't leave any marks), I can only imagine what it felt like from Luke's perspective and I am sure he will be more careful in how he plays with Buddy in the future.

A big Buddy.

Kara wants a dog like Buddy and even devoted an instagram story to him.

Thursday was another day (mostly) at home. I did have a bit of mental breakdown. On Wednesday one of the things we moved was my dad's tv and somehow we broke it. I don't understand how, because Thomas literally took it off the wall, wrapped it in a blanket and used a dolly to wheel it over to his new room where he remounted it. But, somehow the internal screen got cracked. My sister sent the text to tell me, so we had to buy him a new tv. This was frustrating for a multitude of reasons. One, I didn't want to spend that money. But, two, it felt so demoralizing. All the effort to help and do the move ourselves and I broke a door in his apartment that we will also have to pay for and then the tv. It truly felt like no good deed goes unpunished and I kind of lost it. Fortunately, my dad will never know my reaction, but Thomas, Jack and Anna sure got an earful. I hurt my foot kicking a box, cried, and carried on like a crazy person for about 10 minutes. I would have loved to just hire movers, but we didn't even know what would fit and we had no plan for the furniture we couldn't take and as mentioned in previous blogs, a very, very short window to get him settled. Pretty sure my reaction was the result of all that stress. But, it was still over-the-top.

Friday, I spent the day in Lakeland finishing up the move with Kim. We thought it would take about 4 hours, it took 8 (well, 7 since we took a lunch break). Then, the drive home was miserable. I really hope it is all done, but it may not be. I am sure everyone is sick of reading about this and I am tired of writing about it, so I won't go into details, but I kinda sorta exchanged some words with the business office over the protocol for vacating his old apartment. In short, we didn't do it properly, but my response was they should have returned my numerous phone calls and then maybe I would have known better. We will know next week if it is all resolved.

Now, it is 430am. I went to bed at my normal time and then woke up at midnight and never fell back asleep. I had three Coke Zeros at lunch, so that is probably the biggest reason why, but I am also still stressed about my dad. We have to liquidate his investment accounts and I am worried about how that will work and making sure it is done on time to pay for his care. It is almost $6000/month for where he is living and I had to sign the agreement as his power of attorney. I did not agree to financial responsibility, but I still feel responsible for making sure he has a place to live and I am worried about what will happen if we can't liquidate in time to pay for upcoming months.  I am so tired of trying to manage this (and to be clear, my sister is actually doing most of the work).