conner/august

My dad abruptly entered the hospital a couple of weeks ago, went into hospice, and died last night. I was fortunately able to be with him when he went, which I am VERY grateful for. He was very well cared-for while he was there, and died completely peacefully. My boyfriend and I hung out with him for a few hours until the body donation people came, and walked him out.

I am now dealing with figuring out what this does to me financially, because nothing helps grief like dealing with the SSA, and MASSIVE family drama over the inheritance, and trying to get bills put in my name when I have no money for deposits. Nobody knows what's going to happen with probate but it's looking like it's going to get really, really ugly.

We had JUST learned about special needs trusts and had begun the paperwork of creating one for me, to protect my inheritance, and dad went into the hospital just days before we were to sign and never regained the capability to do so. I am absolutely gutted. I was going to use that to help get us out of this hellhole state in a controlled fashion. We have to pay the lawyer for what he was able to do, which is get the house in my name.

So yes, good, the house is in my name now, but if my dad's bank accounts have been drained, I have no idea if I will inherit enough to be able to pay the mortgage, which is half my SSI income.

So we are going to need to ask for help, possibly a lot of help. Hundreds of dollars at least. I think around $400 for utility deposits, if nothing else.

My boyfriend's PayPal is [email protected], if you want to help and can afford to. I'll be putting up a sale link for his shop later, and if I can manage it, a post breaking down our expenses that we currently know about.

Right now I'm just...exhausted and sad.

“Say the planet is born at midnight and it runs for one day. First there is nothing. Two hours are lost to lava and meteors. Life doesn’t show up until three or four a.m. Even then, it’s just the barest self-copying bits and pieces. From dawn to late morning—a million million years of branching—nothing more exists than lean and simple cells.

Then there is everything. Something wild happens, not long after noon. One kind of simple cell enslaves a couple of others. Nuclei get membranes. Cells evolve organelles. What was once a solo campsite grows into a town.

The day is two-thirds done when animals and plants part ways. And still life is only single cells. Dusk falls before compound life takes hold. Every large living thing is a latecomer, showing up after dark. Nine p.m. brings jellyfish and worms. Later that hour comes the breakout—backbones, cartilage, an explosion of body forms. From one instant to the next, countless new stems and twigs in the spreading crown burst open and run.

Plants make it up on land just before ten. Then insects, who instantly take to the air. Moments later, tetrapods crawl up from the tidal muck, carrying around on their skin and in their guts whole worlds of earlier creatures. By eleven, dinosaurs have shot their bolt, leaving the mammals and birds in charge for an hour.

Somewhere in that last sixty minutes, high up in the phylogenetic canopy, life grows aware. Creatures start to speculate. Animals start teaching their children about the past and the future. Animals learn to hold rituals.

Anatomically modern man shows up four seconds before midnight. The first cave paintings appear three seconds later. And in a thousandth of a click of the second hand, life solves the mystery of DNA and starts to map the tree of life itself.