Home to the cats and my Master

I'm back home for a tiny bit of R&R.
Two full days, with a travel day on either side.
Time for sleeping in my own bed.
Time for feline conflict resolution.
Time for working on my taxes.
Time for saying Kaddish on the occasion of my uncle's Yahrzeit.

Time for serving the sadist.

Saturday.
He thinks he can arrange a visit for Saturday.
And my orders are to recover from my trip so I can serve him with perfect focus.

We've been having problems again. Misunderstandings. The dangers of e-mail communication are well known. It's hard to get the right tone, the proper inflection, to clearly interpret what the other person has said. Still, it is rather ironic that two people who care for each other at whatever level and also care so much about language and specifically the written word should be so prone to misunderstandings.

I suspect it is precisely because we do care for each other. We are both very intense people, and I think it is too easy for each of us to believe that we have been rejected in some way. However we may see that manifested, it all comes down to the same thing. Believing that we've been rejected. Believing the other doesn't care enough. We may call it everything from lack of focus to disobedience to disapproval, but it is all the same thing.

And most likely to happen when life gets in the way.

Speaking of which... my dad is doing phenomenally! I can't get over it. Two days after the surgery, after having his chest cracked open and a bit of his heart replaced (yes, that tiny reference was deliberate), in an operation that lasted hours and hours and him having just turned 93... well, they had him up walking today! With a walker, but still!! He has been sitting up in a chair since yesterday. Today he is being moved out of the ICU into a regular hospital room and probably by Monday will be in a rehab facility.

I am so impressed!

The one we are worried about is my mom. From various causes, she has been showing signs of dementia (not Alzheimer's, though) for the past couple of years. And now it was looking worse. My sister and I aren't sure if her confusion and forgetfulness are being exacerbated by stress over my dad or whether it really has gotten that bad. So that both added to our worries and made our job harder. My sister is staying there till Sunday morning. I'll be returning Sunday night and remaining till next Thursday, but can't keep doing that. Neither of us can, and my folks do live in a place that can provide more care. The question is, at what point do we arrange for that, especially while my dad is recuperating. He will probably be home in 3-4 weeks, with some home care after that, but won't be fully recovered (meaning better than he has been for years) for 3-6 months. The stress of caring for her - worrying about her - will be hard on him.

Being with them, and with my sister, is hard on me. And hard on the sadist, and on the relationship, because even though I do always feel surrounded by him, and being owned by him makes me stronger, centered, contained, and happy, I can't give him as much of me while I'm with them as when I am on my own.

Still, we somehow make it through every upheaval.
And in spite of it all, and maybe even because of it, I end up loving him more.