Sunk Cost Fallacy

 I’ve made it through Hump Day; in many ways feeling as if I’m barely hanging on… Folks, this has been a rough month & we’ve still got one more week to go!

§ swirling marital drama with the kids: I should not allow it to affect me to this degree, but I can’t help getting sucked in (right now they are reconciled; Zach started seeing his own therapist so I suppose “no news is good news”) Ironic laugh related to all the years I offered to pay for his therapy, but I didn’t expect it to turn out quite like this!

§ poor lil’ Tina Fea has developed acute glaucoma in her left eye -I’m no ophthalmologist but I suspect her lens has become dislocated. I’m struggling to keep her comfortable; her appetite waxes & wanes - I’m torn between taking her to a specialist for a consultation**, but if the globe is blind & painful my only option may be surgical enucleation. It’s just been a week for sad/tragic cases - my lil’ waif is the least of it! But speaking of sunk cost fallacies, the time is probably going to come where I decide it’s best not to subject my tiny, frail, elderly dog to any more medical or surgical interventions. 

** I could easily invest a couple more $K in surgical intervention for her glaucoma, although as I said, if she is irreversibly blind it seems pointless to keep the globe.

§ My body is slowly & irrevocably showing me what it needs: cut out the junk food, do some yoga, give ye olde carcass adequate rest… I made an appointment with a cardiologist which isn’t until next month -good thing it wasn’t anything “urgent”, as I struggle with worsening shortness of breath & what feels like a constant weight over my sternum. At my lowest points, I wonder what I’m even doing wasting time & resources hauling off to New Mexico in 2 short wks, where I may not be able to complete my rides? But this gal’s gotta do what I desperately want to do - or at least make the attempt “one more time” before I hang up my chaps…

§ & this weekend will mark DH’s big 6-0; our neighbor is hosting some sort of luncheon on Saturday “the day itself” so I won’t shoehorn onto his event - instead I’m scheming to throw him a surprise party on Sunday afternoon. Unfortunately all of the steakhouses & BBQ joints which I know P would like best are closed on Sundays, so I made my next best selection. Let’s hope the Birthday Boy likes it…

Up & Down the Scale

 I lurched out of bed this morning in a frantic race to get to the toilet; my stomach had been unsettled all night. Straight to the shower for a thorough washup & there went today’s plans for any sort of ride - BTDT!

Probable causes: lapses in dietary judgment topped off by yesterday’s Braum’s cheeseburger. Doors seem to be closing off to me - Chick-Fil-A, Mickey D’s, now Braum’s. Of course it’s “good riddance”, all that fast food crap is no bueno… 

Z let V back home under the humanitarian flag of illness - staying out of it (of course) w/only one ironic comment about this being the “in sickness” part of his vows. Z called me Friday night to report that poor Adela (V’s grandma) had been hospitalized with a UTI & pneumonia. Like a good little drone**, I headed across town yesterday, planning to visit her in the hospital, only to find that she had been discharged! Thankfully, it was not very far out of the way so I just proceeded on to Andy & Adela’s house to deliver my flowers & fruit, & a small care pkg of brisket which P had smoked… I dropped by Z’s to deliver his last belated birthday gift: an AI art-replica book of our dear friend Charles; I thought it was something special. “The power of advertising”, I suppose.

** I consider Andy & Adela family members now, no matter how things turn out between Z & V. Adela called me last night to thank me kindly for the brisket; she said it was wonderful! (which it was, even though I could take no particular credit for that: you should’ve seen all the hopeful doggy eyes when P was carving it up, looking for scraps!)

Z expressed an interest in attending the Buddhist temple - I said I would be glad to accompany him, but I didn’t hear anything from him this morning. I made P a poached-eggs-on-toast Father’s Day brunch which he seem to appreciate. Thankfully my own GI tract seems to have settled down. I read Mayim Bialik’s miserable account of her experience with GLP-1’s & count myself lucky to be part of that black-box warning (medullary thyroid cancer). It brought back echoes of when I was misdiagnosed at age 25: part of me envisioned becoming an ethereal waif on chemotherapy. Yeah, thanks but I’d rather be alive! While diarrhea is one of the hallmarks of my disease, I blame my mishaps on dietary indiscretions & my own souvenir of childbirth, a third-degree perineal tear…

“Weeks after I took that single shot, I found myself frantically pulling off the 405—to my law-abiding son’s horror—to lock myself in a convenience store bathroom for an indeterminate amount of time. “

A Day of Rest

 Absolving myself of the guilt from lazing around yesterday - treating Sunday like a true “day of rest”. My sole accomplishments were laundering my bed clothes (including the mattress pad) & clearing the kitchen counter of junk mail so it’s actually a usable surface. My subconscious rewarded me with a pleasant dream about my mother early this morning (I awakened at 5 AM but stayed in bed dozing lightly since I didn’t want to disturb mah little dogs!), even as the guilt over my increasingly rare visits towers over me like a tidal wave…

Z’s relationship seems to be in the ICU after what he described to me as “cheating”, which he later explained was “emotional but not physical” on V’s part. That roller coaster whipsaws around the tracks - they went on Z’s mini-birthday trip back to Vegas (6/06 - 09). Z had to hop a plane for a business trip to Midland Wed & Thurs, but started texting me as he was boarding his plane Thursday evening that he was “done”; he was coming home to evict V & be done with it. Yet they reconciled & immediately took another tiny staycation at a downtown Dallas hotel Fri & Sat. I met them for an early dinner Saturday to give Zach his belated birthday gifts - but most of all I wanted to see him with my own eyes to assess the situation. Z looked pale & haggard, but in a few brief moments I got w/him when Ms V went to the ladies room, he swore things were alright & they were trying to work it out.

Barely four months in & this prognosis appears grave to me... Of course I cannot fix these issues for my son, all I can do is "be here" as a semi-neutral sounding board. I carried on with my plans to ride w/Julz at the beautiful Wyatt Ranch Sat morning. I can only pray that Zach might experience the therapeutic benefits of a nice ride sometime soon.

                                           A slightly different perspective on Ye Olde Rugged Cross

Wasted Days & Wasted Nights

 (Subtitled: “Val pays the toll for peer pressure”)

My trail-riding crew had a campout planned for last weekend - “Return to Ebenezer”, a nice campground on the shores of Lake Sam Rayburn deep down in SE Texas… however, I originally was not planning on going since tomorrow shall be my son‘s 28th birthday; I had vague hopes that we might do “something” - at least dinner if not a day trip? (Z keeps speaking about the sights he’s been seeing during his travels for work, to which I have replied there are many day or short weekend trips we could take around N Texas to see & do some things! Hope springs eternal & all that)

My friends were all urging me to come on the campout, so I figured I could ask Dr W & let him be the deciding factor - when he asserted that he could work for me, all seemed well. Then the ominous weather forecast started piling up like thunder clouds: my fair-weather riders canceled! My Trail Husband Sam & I wound up hauling to LBJ Grasslands for a day ride Friday - I drove through one minor shower going up there & the rest of the day was just fine. The big storms actually didn’t come through until Friday & Saturday nights.

On Thursday I had the lagniappe of having a late lunch with my son when he was in Ennis to service equipment at one of the manufacturing plants; he was taking Monday & Tuesday off for his birthday (must be nice! I never had the luxury of taking a day off for my BD!?!) & he & his bride would be celebrating with another mini-weekend trip to Vegas. But then Friday evening, I fielded a disturbing series of phone calls - there was trouble in paradise. Z was in tears by the time we finished talking, but he declined my offer to come over - V was due home from work soon. Obviously they settled their differences since they boarded their flight to LAS Sat morning. V sent me a couple of photos last night, apparently Z pulled a few winning slots! Let us hope he is as lucky in the marital lottery...

Here's my friend Jonni's lush green photo of the Red Trail at the Grasslands which she took last Wed. If only I could stay out in the woods & avoid the travails of civilization! Gotta get on with my workday so I will suspend my whinging for now...