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2003-1-19 - 5:57 p.m. OK, here we go... I'm not sure how much of this I'll actually get through, but I keep meaning to start and haven't so let's see. I'll start chronologically - In June I left the law firm. I had asked to be switched from my job to go back to just being a secretary. I had too much going on to be working crazy hours and I needed to concentrate on things besides work. They said that was fine, but that I needed to stay in my current job at least until they hired and I trained a replacement. Fine. That seemed reasonable. Except that two months later they still hadn't even interviewed ONE person. They were filling other positions, but not mine. I felt like I was never going to move out of that job, so I left. Yes, just like that. Nope, I didn't have another job yet. I figured, what the heck, I can type 70 words a minute on a good day, there's no way I'm not going to get another job lickety-split. Uh huh. As I knew I could, I landed a job almost immediately. It was a temp job, but at least there was no gap in paychecks. It was the most boring job in the world. I asked the temp company to puh-leeeeese find me somewhere else to temp. They did. It was one of the best places I've ever worked. It is a corporation that is routinely noted as one of the best places to work in the area. This job was to last at least until the end of the year. This was July, so I figured I could find a permanent job between July and December 31, right? Uh huh. In August, my father had his right lung removed. He was supposed to stay at the hospital for a week or so after that operation and then be home recuperating for three months and then be able to start to resume his normal activities. He did come home from the hospital after a week or so, but just walking from his bed to the bathroom got him winded. Four days after being home from the hospital he went back in. He couldn't even sit up by himself. He had no strength at all. He kept his sense of humor the whole time though. He would joke with the nurses all the time. About three weeks later, they said he wasn't sick enough to stay in the hospital, but being unable to even sit without help, he wasn't going to be able to go home. [During this time, I moved to another house. Just about a mile away from where I was before. (Crazy landlord, etc. I think I went into this in an earlier entry, but I’m trying to stay chronological).] They said he was going to a "rehabilitation center" which was a euphemism for what normal people call a nursing home. He hated it there. They kept trying to get him to do breathing exercises and he felt like no one really understood how difficult it was for him. I used to go after work almost every night and sit there with him and just talk or watch TV. Mostly he’d complain about the place. Worst of all, the cable system in the “rehabilitation center” didn’t get Fox News Channel, so he couldn’t watch The O’Reilly Factor. The Washington Redskins opened a Redskins Store in Tyson’s Corner Mall so I went to their opening and got him a football signed by Darrell Green. I got one signed by Rick “Doc” Walker also, but that wasn’t quite as big a deal as the Darrell Green one. He would show everyone who came in his room and tell them that I got them for him. My mom also took a leave of absence from her job at sat with him every day he was at the nursing home. Basically, she sat there every day and I sat there every night that I could. Three weeks later, my sister called me at 7:30 a.m. I was getting ready to leave for work. She asked if I knew where our mom was. I assumed she was either at home or en route to go be with my dad when he woke up. She said she was getting the baby up when her phone rang, and didn’t get to the phone in time, but the number on the Caller ID was from the hospital. I called work and said I wouldn’t be in. Through the whole time, my temp job was more understanding than the law firm would have been. We eventually found out that my father had had trouble breathing in the night and was rushed by ambulance back to the hospital. This is where I left off in the last entry. I just went back to see that short little entry I wrote on October 8th of last year. My father died on October 10th, 2002. I need to take a break now, but there's a start. I'll pick up from there during this weekend. I hope.
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