Ladies and gentlemen, Journey.
I wanted to open this post with a song that was a little more upbeat compared to what I opened last month's post with. Plus this song started running through my head towards the end of last month for some reason. I also just like listening to Journey at this time of year. It's probably because I first really started listening to the group back when my late mother had her first open heart surgery, which if I remember correctly happened in the spring. And on that note, I'm going to start off by talking about how my dad's heart surgery went.
So my dad's surgery happened on the first of this month. Basically what they had to do was replace his ascending aorta, which had developed an aneurism. They also had to perform a bypass on my dad during the same procedure, because during an earlier examination that was done as part of preparation for the surgery. Anyway, the surgery went incredibly well, and every time I visited my dad in the hospital he had less stuff plugged into him. He's since returned home and is I'd say about ninety-five percent recovered.
The day of the surgery was certainly an ordeal though. My dad had to check into the hospital at 5:30 AM, and because the hospital where this procedure was to be performed was a forty-five minute drive from where we live, we had to leave at about 4:45 in the morning. The damndest thing is they didn't finally take him down to surgery until about 7:30. The actual surgery took about four or five hours. I had an aunt waiting with my during the surgery, and once the two of us had gotten word that the surgery was done and had gone well, the two of us went and had lunch in the hospital cafeteria.
Before my aunt and I could visit my dad in his hospital room, we had to wait until they could remove the breathing tube they had jammed down his throat as one of the life support measures for the surgery. It was during this time when I had been reminded of how hospital waiting areas are a special kind of purgatory where time has no meaning. To pass the time in the waiting room I had brought the fifth volume of Sword Art Online Alternative Gun Gale Online as reading material, and I had also brought with all three volumes of the yuri manga, Strawberry Fields Once Again to serve as backup reading material to have in the unlikely event I finished that entire volume of AGGO before leaving the hospital. Not only did I finish all of that AGGO volume well before leaving the hospital, I also finished all three volumes of Strawberry Fields Once Again (which is a series I highly recommend, by the way). Fortunately my aunt and I were finally able to visit my dad for a bit shortly after I had finished the third and final volume of my emergency manga.
It was about 6:30 by the time I finally left the hospital and drove home. Once I returned home, I had dinner, watched a few Star Trek reruns and went to bed at about 11:00, which is kind of early for me, but at the time I was operating on only three and a half hours of sleep and way too much coffee. I wound up sleeping for a good ten hours or so. Since I had the day after my dad's surgery off from work too, I used the day to binge-watch the first season of Tokyo Mew Mew New (I both seasons of the series on disc). Later that afternoon, I drove out to B&N for some manga and visited my dad in the hospital for a bit. At the time I was feeling the most relaxed I had been in a month.
That only lasted for a day.
The next morning at about 9:00, I was awakened by the phone. It was my boss asking if I could come in and work an extra shift. While I did have the option to say no, I found I didn't really want to because they had kind of short-changed me on hours that week. Plus my current workplace is located near the hospital where my dad was at, so I felt like I might as well work some extra hours since I was planning to drive down that way anyway. Of course working that extra shift did sort of screw up my plans to watch the second season of Tokyo Mew Mew New, but I found a way to make it work. The rest of that weekend didn't go much better.
I had the following Monday off, which also ended up being the day where I had to bring my dad home from the hospital. It's pretty mazing that my dad was only in the hospital for four days, but then he's in crazy good shape for someone his age. Anyway, I ended up feeling a little stressed that day because I had read the news about Trump's proposed movie tariff on ANN. In fact I did a post about this topic a few weeks ago.
If you missed that post, click here.
My recent search to get a new job has caused me a good deal of stress during the course of this month too. Last month I did have a job interview over the phone, and it had gone pretty well, but in the end they had decided to go with someone else. This month though, I had actually gotten a job offer via Indeed from that Enterprise car rental agency to be trained as a manager for one of their rental places. Now the pay looked good and the job offered nice benefits, but in the end I decided not to take it because it just didn't feel liken it'd be a good fit for me. I'm looking for a job that has decent pay, good health benefits, and would also allow me to keep pursuing my writing.
I spent the better part of the night I had read the offer agonizing about whether or not take the job though, because it initially seemed like it would've been a good solution to a lot of my current problems. Of course right after I turned down the offer, I ended up having a wretched day at my current job. It was so bad, I ended up having a mild anxiety attack. I still think I made the right choice though. I mean I would've just been trading one hell for another.
Then today, as a matter of fact, I drove out of town to interview for a promising shipping clerk position I had applied for, but the place I had driven to turned out to be some sort of temp agency, and the job I thought I had applied for ended up being nothing like what had been described online. In short, I had been conned. The most unbelievable part is I had found this job listing on Indeed. I'm not giving up on the job search though because well...I really can't.
That about covers what's been happening with me this month, except for one little event from last week. I wrecked my car.
It had happened last Tuesday. I had just gotten done with work for the day and had driven out to B&N to get the latest volume of the I'm in Love with the Villainess manga. I ended up having to go to the customer service desk to have them pull a copy of the new volume from the back, but while I was waiting I found a couple of cheap books that might provide good reference material for future stories. Anyway, I was feeling pretty good as I was leaving the bookstore, and was also looking forward to the day off I was to have the next day. Unfortunately when I got on the road, my attention wandered for a brief moment and I had failed to notice that the traffic light ahead of me had turned red.
I hit the breaks too late and ended up rear-ending this SUV that was in front of me. The other car received minor damage to the rear bumper, but mine was totaled. My dad had to give me rides to work, at least until I finally got a new car yesterday. Of course while I do have new transportation, it did cost me seven-thousand dollars. The car actually cost ten-thousand, but my dad paid for part of it.
So yeah, that about covers my entire month since my last update post. And I thought last month had been bad. Anyway, thanks for reading if you did. I know this post ended up being kind of a long one, but I ended up going through a lot of shit this month.
Until the day we meet again. 
