Ho Ho HOEBAG

I'm in a stoooore and I'm singggiiiiiing!

75 mph wind gusts in cheery Buffalo NY today...that's hurricane status folks. The uprights at the Bills game were bending, lol.

This has been a wonderful, busy, stressful vacation back to my happy little life in the woods. The night that I flew in Amanda came over and we spent hours reading old online journals (from 11th/12th grade ...i'm such a blogging whizkid, watch out) and laughed ourselves SICK.

My life has changed so much and so many people have popped in and out in the 5 years since I wrote in that blog. But remarkably enough, reading through all that nonsense I realized that I have not changed very much. I'm about 150% less dramatic, and I don't get into fights in the chorus room. Other than that I'm still 17 year old Hanna running around hating boys, not giving herself enough credit when it's needed, and giving herself TOO much credit when it's not.

My Uncle Jim is at ECMC in the trauma unit, and has been since a week ago. He missed Christmas and is in a drug-induced coma. He had a bad stroke and fell down my Grandma's basement stairs. Now there's a tube coming out of his brain to drain any fluid, and he had to have a tracheotomy to remove all the fluid from his chest/throat because he had pneumonia. I'm not close to him; he's a Vietnam veteran and has since turned crazy and dangerous. He never had a wife or children. He used to really hurt my mom and aunts and I'm not even sure if he knows he did it. But it poses a problem for about 6 different reasons:
1-- My grandma is hopeful. And in all honesty....she shouldn't be because he probably is going to die soon. But how can you possibly tell a mother not to hope for the best for her son? You can't.
2-- My grandma is going to the hospital every day to visit but no one wants her driving around Buffalo by herself, so Aunt Holly has been taking her. Every day. And she's been staying with her too, which is incredibly stressful for both of them.
3-- My mom feels guilty for not being able to help because she's in Franklinville and this is going on an hour/hour and a half away, but is having a hard time deciding what to feel because this is a man that she had almost completely removed from her life because he hurt her so much and so frequently.
4-- They didn't expect him to make it through the initial surgery to drain fluid on his brain. But he did. Now, he's not taking in food, even through a tube, and they don't know if he can breathe on his own. And they say it may be 6 months before they see a change. This is going to go on for 6 months??? It's a very scary thought and is going to be so, so hard on my family.
5-- Even if he does make it out alive...he's likely going to be a vegetable. And my Grandma has a heart of gold but just cannot take care of him 24/7. She's not eating as it is. And none of us can afford it/have room/have a schedule that permits us to take him in. And I'm not sure anyone except Grandma would want to anyway. I know it sounds harsh but I'm talking about some very serious, scary, bad things that this man has done. He's not alright.
6-- This is already a very hard time on my Mom's side of the family, because my Grandpa died on my Aunt Holly's birthday (the day after christmas) a long time ago. Grandma has already had to say goodbye to her husband and one of her sons, and now there's another member of the family that's headed down that road.

Very stressful. I'm just trying to listen to my Mom when she seems like she needs to talk, because I don't know what else to do. My dad's not really the listening kind...I am just so thankful that I could come home while this was going on and give her someone to count on because she truly needs it.

Enough sadness. Christmas night I went to OB's and saw a ton of Franklinville people that I haven't seen in a long time. I love celebrating in my hometown! Friday I went to JBs and did some serious dancing (and so did Adam, hahahahahahahhaha). Saturday I ended up going out to eat with Missy and Franny and then headed to Cojones Cantina in Olean. There was an absolutely FANTASTIC two-man band covering Steely Dan and Pink Floyd and Steve Winwood and others...it was truly one of the best live acts I've ever gone to see. Who would've thought it would be in Olean?

Can I just say how ECSTATIC I AM that I will be back in NY for my Dad's 50th bday, my Mom's bday, Maple Festival, springtime in general, Thursday at the Square, ugh. I have such an incredible amount of stuff to look forward to. I told a good portion of my family that I was moving home today, and instead of being disappointed that I'm not sticking it out longer or worried about me going home to a bad job market, they are just so excited to see me happy and back to my normal self. I feel awesome.

And...I cancelled my New Years Eve flights to see GPN play in Vermont. Lets just say....something came up =)

when you feel your heart overflow

Oh, the state of elation that this unison of hearts achieved
I had seen, I had touched, I had tasted and I truly believed
that the light of my life
would tear a hole right through each cloud that scudded by
just to beam on you and I

I feel like life opened up last night! Had a conversation with the bossmen that I had wanted to have for over a month but just couldn't bring myself to do because I kept thinking "I just need to get past this week and then I'll feel better and won't want to bring it up anymore." WRONG!

wrong wrong wrong Hanna!

I was wrong. I relied on the arrogant assumption that I was unbreakable for the first 21 years of my life, and then met my match. I am most certainly NOT invincible. For me, it took a ballsy and hasty move 3,000 miles away to realize I was being an idiot. And I must say, I hope you don't ever have to feel the way I've felt throughout my realization of it. I know it has been incredibly hard to listen to me, but you all did (over and over) and I am saying THANK YOU from the bottom of my heart. Especially Franklinvillies/Fredonians that stayed up late with me, bought plane tickets to come see me, texted me every day to make sure I was doing fine, and mailed me totally pointless cards once I had an actual address. I will never meet another group of people like you.

No more beating-around-the-bush, I'm MOVING HOME IN MARCH! I celebrated last night and felt totally giddy. And met a man at the bar from Buffalo (I was introduced to him as, "a bigger bills fan than him" which is so untrue, but whatever haha) that hugged me and kissed me and said, "I've never met anyone here that was as awesome as the people I know from Buffalo." There is some sort of weird alliance that Western NY forms. Haha we get picked on for being poor and ugly and cold and WE LIKE IT. And you know why? Because we have Mighty Taco.

My mother is so excited she can't even handle it.

Possibilities on where to go and what to do are very wide open right now and it feels great! Buffalo is not the plan forever, but will be the immediate solution. Laura and I are going to move in together, we already started looking at apartments. Did you know that for half of what I pay now, I could rent a 3 bedroom house on a residential street? How AWESOME IS THAT. Especially cause I'll probably be flipping burgers to make a living for the next year cause Buffalooove has a terrible job market HAHAHAHA. Not really. I'll just live in a box on the street.


Life is back to being p e r f e c t =)

MP3 [Spin Doctors - Jimmy Olsen's Blues]