If someone's life falls apart and there's no time to LJ about it, does it make a sound?

The point of keeping an LJ and setting up the website was to force me to write regularly.  When life fell apart, the first thing to go was the regular updates.  I extend my deepest apologies to those of you who stop by regularly looking for new stuff. 

When I say everything fell apart, I mean entropy parked itself on my couch for six weeks and ate everything in the fridge.  Every aspect of my life got screwed up in some way.  I know why it happened: I'm gearing up to take my second degree in my coven, which is the equivalent to painting a target on my chest and yelling, "Hey, Universe!  Take your best shot!"  There's a lot in my life that needed resolution and it seemed everything would get resolved *right now*. 

My health went to hell in a handbasket around the holidays.  I've written already about getting my tooth fixed and having plugs put in my tear ducts to alleviate the dryness.  Turns out that was a symptom of another problem that crept back up: my endometriosis. Endometriosis is a lovely foible of the female reproductive system that's debilitating in every way imaginable.  I had surgery for it two years ago but showed symptoms again, so flew to Atlanta for an exam by my specialist.  He believes my body is rejecting the medication I've been taking to prevent recurrence, so I've stopped taking it and any second now I'll have my first menstrual cycle in two years.  I won't say anything more than 1)I'm glad it's not recurrence, 2) I'm looking forward to menopause, and 3) I'm starting to remember how much I hate having a menstrual cycle.  I've also been contemplating the huge issue that is my fertility--should I consider hysterectomy, should I have a baby, do I even want kids, and what might it mean as I grow older if I don't? 

The Husband's wishes are a little tied up in that, obviously, but he's had crap of his own to deal with.  A few months ago he was diagnosed with a form of depression called "dysthymia".  His natural state is a low-level depression, augmented by the occasional plunge into deep depressions that are very hard for him to get out of.  He didn't want to take medication and instead chose a course of therapy, but as job pressures increased it became pretty obvious he couldn't handle things by himself.  He’s now on an anti-depressant that seems to be helping, and in a few months he hopes to be cutting back on it and eventually be off it completely.   

Watching someone go through depression is about the most painful thing you can do apart from watching someone die.  Death, at least, gives an ending.  Depression just *sits* there, thick in the air and with no reprieve.  There are still some days when I’m afraid to say anything upsetting but at the same time there are bills piling up and dishes to be washed and I've got my own job that's in its most hectic point in the year, and he can barely get out of bed in the morning.  I try to be sympathetic and helpful and take care of everything because I know he can't right now, and I assure him it will be all right and it will get better because we both need to believe that.  There are days when I am so tired of being his wife/cheerleader/mother/office manager and I think I absolutely can not do it one more day.  And then he'll hold my hand or say my cooking smells good or make some outlandish movie reference that only I would understand, and I can't help but smile and love him.  Is that what they mean by "for better or for worse"? 

While the personal life went to hell, work got busy.  My main client holds an annual meeting where they get all the executive teams from the North American branches together, and my job is to plan it.  This would be pretty straightforward, except the client decided roughly 4 weeks before the meeting that they also wanted to have a small convention of their top manufacturers to coincide with the other meeting events.  It effectively doubled the size of the meeting, and made my life a logistical nightmare.  I had little support staff for planning this meeting, though I did have help with assembling materials and the on-site running.  The client contact, who I had to confer with to get approval on nearly everything was incommunicado during most of the planning.  I couldn't get decisions made quickly because he wasn't in the office and couldn't be reached on his cell phone.  (Let's add to the event planner's stress, shall we?)  Despite the logistical problems and last-minute hairiness caused by vendors who wanted to bring 147 people from their companies, the event went fairly smoothly, the client was pleased, and I was completely incoherent for a week.   

But I'm not the only one physically suffering.  My grandparents have finally decided to move into an assisted living facility due to the deterioration in my grandfather's mental faculties.  He has no memory any more and my grandmother can't  watch him constantly.  She has asked my mom for help finding a facility, and my mom gets to go through the gut-wrenching process of putting her parents in a nursing home and cleaning out their house to sell it.  They've been in that house since my mom was in college, accumulating a lifetime of possessions and memories and my mother can not handle cleaning out by herself.  I have it comparatively easy: I get to hate what's happening to my grandparents from a distant city, but Mom has to deal with it up close and personal.  I've already offered to gather up as many of my friends as possible and help her clean out their house when the time comes. 

My niece is also suffering from an as-yet-undiagnosed developmental disorder.  She'll be a year old in a week and she can't sit up by herself.  Her muscles are limp and she doesn't follow objects with her eyes.  She's been through a barrage of tests and hopefully we'll get the results soon. Her mother is being a typical mother in a situation like this: waffling between strength and terror in the face of the unknown.  This will be her only child and I pray that the condition is something curable.   

Top it off with my being pushed into a leadership role in my coven and the update is complete.  Because of some personnel changes in the group, I've had to take on more responsibilities, one of which is finding a new place for rituals.  The place we'd been using was sold recently, so now I have to find a new place that meets everyone's specifications: outdoors but with an indoor option for inclement weather; close to the city but not inside it; secluded but not completely isolated; and free or low-cost. 

Um.  Sure. 

So that's why I haven't been writing porn or book reviews lately.  Things are settling down a smidgen, and I should have some great updates for you over the next month.  I've got honking stack of books to tell you about, new icon sets in the works, plus two Teen Titans stories drafted and various other porn to finish and post.  I hope this will make up for my unexplained absence. 

If nothing else, this should teach a lesson to all the pagan kiddies out there.  Never, ever go for your second degree.