Can only get better

(she says, knocking wood)

Tonight has sucked. At least primarily. Sparky's home for the holiday, so that's excellent. And my reservoir of "Don't Give a Flying Peanut" is full to overflowing, which might be good for tomorrow.

But one of our sweet guinea piggies died tonight, after a few days of being sluggish and just weird. And that precipitated a fight with Beast who felt it was up to him to hold Ruka till he passed, even though he (Beast) was cratered on painkillers and nerve-blocks. And because he was cratered, he wasn't capable of being lucid or seeing reason about going to bed rather than sitting and dozing hunched over a dying guinea pig. So then he wanted to argue, which is a losing proposition for everyone when he's in this situation; I know this because this situation happens easily once a week. That's an improvement on when he was drinking a fifth of vodka--or more--every night, but dealing with it is exactly the same: he's mean, nasty, incoherent, argumentative and just generally a big asshat.

So Sparky comes home, and once again gets to watch his parents fight. We can go weeks when he's gone without even raising our voices, but it seems like when he's here, Beast needs to prove he's The Man and...yeah.

It's officially 6 weeks now that he's been in pain nonstop. We've gone several rounds with multiple doctors, had 2.5 MRIs, taken 4 or 5 different meds...and still we are just now (yesterday) reaching the action stage. He goes in next week for a cortisone shot directly into his neck near where he has a herniated disk, and then since we're pretty sure it won't fix anything, he'll schedule an appointment to talk about surgery with the same guy who did his lumbar surgery about 4 years ago.

I'm at wits' end. He's a lunatic, emotionally/physically/psychically all over the map in any given moment. He goes from fully adult to age 4 in 20 minutes and I don't always know which person I'm dealing with at any given moment, though I'm remarkably good at judging his mood. By and large, we've been ok, but tonight--and to a lesser degree last Sunday night--just about did me in. He's pissed that I made him go to bed to be rested up for company all day tomorrow. So he went to bed...but when I went up to wake him for his last pill of the night he was still awake. Still steaming. No intention of going to sleep. Because that will show me who's in charge here. And tomorrow he'll be miserable and crabby to the 11 people coming for Thanksgiving. Perfect. Because I wouldn't let him stay up till all hours holding a dying guinea pig and ruining his sleep and his body.

I am, indeed, the Evil Queen.

R.I.P. Ruka.

Ruka (rt.) in happier days