At the upper edges of Whelmed

 I'm still not overwhelmed. 

   Oh, I'm whelmed. I'm in reaching distance of overwhelmed now, I think, but I'm not sure. So far I haven't started knocking hats off heads when I am mildly vexed, so there's still time, but I am definitely eyeballing hats. 

     I got ONE watch free of existential dread after getting back to work. One. 

 On my second watch back, a phone call from my doctor. Not something I'm going to get into here but truly serious business. Alarming enough and scary on its' own, but following the nonstop bullshit of the past 6 weeks, I'm starting to feel... something. Oppressed?   

   Well, 'starting' is a lie. I'm kinda bummed out. Life and shit both happen, right?  

     It's the timing more than anything. The financial and legal mess that comes from construction in the 3rd world, a passel of dead loved ones, sick loved ones, struggling loved ones, wife's stressed and burning out at her job, I'm throwing money around like Jack Ashore... and a bunch of other whining complaints. 

 I'm not at wit's end. I'm not even overwhelmed... just... whelmed, Really, really whelmed. 

   I look at blogfriends who are dealing with real shit, serious life-limiting, life-threatening and life-altering things, and I feel silly for feeling like God has been pissing in my cornflakes of late.  I'm OK, truly. But I've never been a guy who tolerates a whole lot of OK. Feast or Famine is more my speed. 

       I am enormously grateful for friends and family, truly. While I was home I participated in an online drinking session with 4 of my childhood friends, a circle of constant companions present for almost my entire life. We video chatted and laughed and drank a little too much for 3-4 hours. It was healthy, it was relaxing. It was exactly what I needed.  

                     Along with that, I had a little time with my own blood family, while we were dealing with my sister's hospitalization and release, and I'm grateful for that too... and my wife, my second self, we didn't have enough time together, but we did have time together. 

 I got people. As is my habit, I don't got a lot of people, but the people I got are the best people. I need to remember that.   And even at work, I have Big E and B, two great friends, as close as brothers, and the mutual support there. 

    So, one more shit sandwich has been added to the platter, and the table is starting to groan. My writing here has been less about cool maritime stuff and more a gay-ass Dear Diary, which is not cool. I'll be OK. 

        Last night, when I was in a serious brown study, I had one of the most productive and professional ships' engineering crew I've ever worked with. The container ship "COLUMBO EXPRESS" deserves all the gambling and hookers (currency for sailors), for being so professional, efficient and easy to work with on a day when I was really feeling sorry for myself. They were on the ball, truly, setting a pace and performance that I have rarely seen equaled, especially in that the transfer was moderately complicated. 

 I wish they could all be like that. 

Lemons, lemonade

 OK, well, the larder is still stocked with shit sandwiches here at my house. 

 Oh, yeah, crew change was today. I am still at my house.   Hurricane Milton is coming to deliver clusterfucks and headaches for all the people in my area, you see. 

        I'm not cool with leaving my wife and kid to ride out the weather on their ownsome, so despite the fact that I have missed waaay too much work this past month, I had to stay here. Thankfully my employer is OK with taking care of family, despite the fact that I KNOW they had to do some major crew shuffling in my area last week even before I took myself out of the roster. 

        Me being, well, me, there wasn't much prepping that had to be done. Pull a few things out of storage, top up the inventory of things that are good to eat and drink if we lose power for a bit, etc etc. About the only thing that I was low on was Jamison, and cheap yet reasonably tasty whisky is essential for mental health. 

   So, yeah, I had so much shit to do around the house for maintenance in my scheduled time off, and my wife's work issues requiring my help, and my sister's hospitalization (she is doing well and starting recovery, and cooked us all an insane spaghetti and meatball dinner the other night with my nephew's help), this time off just sucked ass all up and down the block. And then I had to cancel my flight for crew change, only to have the rebooked flight get canceled and rebooked for Saturday rather than Friday. So I have yet another day I'm missing at work, which is a hit to the wallet I didn't want. 

    But you know... I've been running around like a cat trying to bury a turd under a marble floor, and this unplanned time off?   I'm done with my planned chores, and I have a couple of days off.  That's not a bad thing in most senses. I kind of need the break. I came home to rest and didn't get any after all. So maybe this isn't a bad thing. 

    I'm far enough south that if the hurricane sticks to the predicted path, we should be able to ride it out pretty well. 40-60kt winds, some gusts around 70. We'll probably lose power at some point but so be it. 

   I'm more concerned with the guys in the predicted path. The Tampa area looks to be in for a real fucking.  Guys like BCE, Borepatch, Beans and others are there. Gotta remember to say a prayer for them. 

 

The Beatings will continue until morale improves

 Holy shit, I'm getting my ass kicked. 

    I came home for some rest, simply because I wasn't getting better and recovering from the cold/flu bug I had with me for almost all of September. At home I can eat, drink, be merry and loaf... except none of that has happened. 

It's been shit sandwiches all the way down lately. I am feeling like I got a Kick Me sign taped to my back. 

      So, with the decline and death of my mother-in-law culminating in a near-ruinous trip to Brazil, coupled with the cold/flu that would not go away, I was feeling like the ant in the driveway when he sees a kid with a magnifying glass on a sunny day. 

      I don't talk about Inappropriately Hot Foreign Wife's job here because it's a very serious job and this is not a serious blog, but she's an Alzheimer's nurse, and specifically she's self-employed as a care manager for families dealing with a loved one in need of 24/7 care for Alzheimer's or end-stage dementia, who want their parent or spouse to live and die in their own home.  Her particular gifts are boundless empathy and insane organizational skills. Over the years she has attracted like-minded women who make up the care teams that she manages. 

     I'm very proud of her, and as I have said for the last 20 years, she's just as beautiful on the inside as she is on the outside... unfortunately about 24 hours after I got home this time a medical crisis broke out that was both deeply upsetting and stressful, though thankfully that ended happily enough (for values of happy, anyhow), but which turned the week into a 100-hour workweek for her. This coming just 2 weeks after we buried her mother, the timing sucked, and my own complaint, that of having to impotently watch someone I love suffer, continued, which I personally find distressing. 

    But as I said, things resolved well- everyone lived this time and things even went back to the pre-funeral state, more or less, in our lives.    So a few days ago, after the first day of things going back to normal(ish) my wife calls me, and asks to go out for dinner and a glass or two of wine. 

         At the same time I get the check from dinner, which was good, and more importantly, relaxing for her, I get a call from my brother;  my sister's going out in an ambulance, looks like a heart attack or a stroke. So we got... 3 hours free between crises? Perhaps as many as 4.  

   So that was this past week. . My sister's story is her own, and happily here a few days later, things are improving.  But for me, I'm a bit cooked.  My sister's the kind of person who will apologize for inconveniencing everyone by getting sick.  Since I'm pretty sure she reads this occasionally, I'd feel terrible if she felt guilty that she got sick. 

    Still, I'm about ready for a day without something scaring the crap out of me, or something stressing the shit out of my wife and family here. 

  Oh. 

   

   Guess who's got a little sumpin sumpin coming overhead the day he's supposed to be going back to work? 

        I guess I need to be positive here. Yes, we're apparently going to get hit by a hurricane next week. But on the upside, I'm already home. At least I don't have to find a flight to rush here... 

Home!

 I'm home, all is well. 

 BRB

Almost the whole watch off

With just two days to go on this tour, I finally got a watch to myself. Most of one, anyhow., and even better, the annoying tasks that have to get done before my relief show up are all done too, so I got to have this time to myself. And really... to myself.  Partner B, who has Crohn's disease (now in remission) and hadn't taken a solid dump since the first Obama administration,  got hisself constipated, which is... well not humorous, but surprising... And painful apparently, as finally the floodgates opened and B went to bed as soon as his watch was over, on account of his backdoor looking like the cigarette lighter of a car when you hold it in for 5 minutes and don't let it pop back out. 

     So I have had the HQ to myself most of the night. We're at a lay berth, the real lay berth, where we go when we have more than a few hours between jobs, over by Brooklyn Bridge Park. 

    I'm not feeling sick, either. Oh, I'm a bit congested but I've improved greatly in the past 24 hours. It was nice to sit down to a meal tonight, and not have to eat it one handed while writing or typing with the other for once. All in all, things are better than they were a week ago for sure. And the prospect of going home is uplifting. 

 I got a call from a good friend, the first friend I made when I came to my present job, in fact. He's a rock solid dude, a damn fine tankerman too. He left my employer last year after almost 20 years here, after having been done brown by one of the shoreside staff, and his wife sadly being diagnosed with terminal cancer, and our insurance being fairly well shitty and cheap compared to Blue Cross/Blue Shield, which most other maritime companies offer, including the company he moved to, who are famously bad but pay OK and have great insurance which his wife needs...  anyhow, said friend got an offer he couldn't refuse from the highest-paying tug-and-barge company on the East Coast,  (who also have BC/BS).  So he's headed there for his last few years before retirement, which will also enable him to work shorter hitches and have more time and more money for his wife's care.  I'm really happy for him. And while I didn't need the temptation, he promised that he'd make me an offer to whoever recruited him, and fuck me that's tempting.  I don't like blind jumps, though. I don't want to go. Not yet, anyhow. It's not a good time to do laundry in public, but I appreciate the offer for a new job and a new company, but am hopeful that good things are coming. 

Still grinding

 Not much to report, really. We're working every day. I haven't had a watch off since I came aboard about 10 days ago,  not a whole one, anyhow. I had more than half my watch off, 3 days ago, which felt nice. 

 Healthwise, I feel better in terms of my energy level and focus. I am still 100% congested and I believe this is day 21 of me gorging on Dayquil. I can't take Nyquil at work on the off chance that something happens and I need to operate some heavy machinery. I mean, the entire HQ is heavy machinery, a young boy's fever dream of hydraulics, cranes, engines, pumps, piping to climb over, under and around, and ropes of every sort and color. The HQ, if I added a slide, was 7 year old me's dream playground. I guess we need a fireman's pole to get down into the forepeak now to round things out. 

 But yeah, my flat, absurdly high pitched and sadly nasal speaking voice is still worse than normal with my sinuses being full of what feels like cement. 

   It's the weekend, though, and tonight's watch, which was busy from 1730 to 0130 -we're underway to a lay berth where B, the lucky booger, gets to have a watch off when he wakes up, whereas I will get about 3 hours. Still, 3 hours free is nothing to lament, as it's as good as I can expect for now, and It's the end of the watch that will be free, which means I can probably wind down and relax and watch a show or something, maybe read my book.  All good things. 

 We're bucking the tide HARD tonight. I thought we were close to our lay berth in Newark, but we're only making 4 knots, lol. Still only halfway there. Looks like my break will be about 2 hours. Bummer. Better than 1 hour, though, and maybe we'll pick up speed when we leave the Kill Van Kull, which we're presently transiting, and which is a narrow tidal bore at Bergen Point where the Bayonne Bridge is. As the channel widens out after the bridge, perhaps we'll pick up a knot or more. 

           So with the prospect of two weeks at home, the honey-do list is forming up. The list this time is formidable. Lot of mindless labor in there. It's time for the annual pressure washing fest outside, which is a multi-day orgy of being damp for 8-10 hours while hunched over and trying not to get eye damage. This is along with some painting, water sealing, and the usual last minute additions that my wife can think of. 

 I dunno, I'm looking forward to it. I haven't been able to get into the zone around the house in a while. 

channeling Eeyore

    

      I don't like admitting weakness, but I'm  just not feeling it this month. 

          I have a cold or sinus infection that came in the wake of the flu I took with me to Brazil and back. It hit right as I was going back to work last week. 

     So, between hospital bills, funeral expenses and last minute international plane tickets, I had unexpected expenses somewhere north of $35,000 so far this month. Now, my salary is munificent compared to, say, what I was making when I got out of college, but it's a sailor's salary, and 35k is enough to really  take the lead out of my pencil, as it is to anyone. 

  

      The prospect of collecting OT for working overtime for a few weeks, not flying home and back to work, not eating and drinking and engaging in high living (by which I mean buying wood, power tools, paint and such) and putting my helmet on and my head down and starting to get out of the hole that just got dug for us,  well, that's just the start of smart decisons I'll need to make for the next little while. 

             This stupid cold of mine is disheartening, and it won't leave. I've been sick now for several weeks nonstop and I don't seem to be getting better. I'm not sleeping great, which I think is most of the problem. I'm simply run down. 

 So it's probably not the smartest decision I can make financially, but I'm going home next week for a few weeks of downtime. It's my scheduled time off anyhow, and I feel like a bag of smashed assholes,. I've got 9 watches to go, including tonight.    We're steady busy here on the HQ, pretty much doing somthing every watch, but the gap between the last job and this one  is about 8 hours, of which 4 are on my watch, so I get to sit at my desk and catch up on papers, write this post, and shortly, precook tonight's dinner, which is a low-effort meal-  4oz of steak, onions, peppers, pea pods and mushrooms and garlic pan-roasted and wrapped up in a big low-carb wheat tortilla. I throw a 50/50 blend of oyster sauce and hoisin sauce on top to church it up, and it's a decent meal. It'll build a turd for sure. 

        I figure some down time will help. I gotta get my ass up and moving when I get back, might as well rest while I can... and hopefully sometime in the next week this stupid fucking cold will let go.