Thank you all so much. Seriously, you guys are the nicest group of people here. I appreciate all of you. I'd like to take time to respond individually. I find myself a lil too short on time to do you all right in that way though.

I've been trying to keep myself busy in the day and give myself room to process and 'just be' at night. But then come 8pm I'm so freakin exhausted, I just pass out and get up at 5am and start all over again. Heh. My groggy self has not yet mastered the fine art of effective communication at 5am. I need about half a pot of coffee in me before that happens.

I guess I just wanted to drop an update here. Right now, I have managed to get up to see her once. I don't have a car, but my youngest daughter wanted to go see her so I rode with her on the one day my dad said my mother was ok enough to see her. Dextox has not been easy on her. My dad is hoping today will be the last of it for her. She was mostly out of it when we were there, but she wasn't trying to crawl out of her skin or anything, so it wasn't really bad the day we were there. That day was the easiest for her, today is day five, I think. I dunno, maybe six. The days blur on me.

Right now she still has to get through detox before they can figure things out... is their brain damage from this, and if so, how much... has the internal bleeding really stopped or is it slowly building up? She's just not there yet. More questions than answers, but at least blood is not showing up right now. That's a good thing. No one can say either, if she will choose to be sober once she leaves or choose to drink herself to death. That's on her.

At this point, my dad is rejecting the idea of putting her in an assisted living facility, which is what the doctors have said he should do. They don't even know if she will be able to eat on her own with the thickening stuff added to food at this point. She's been struggling with choking when she does eat. Anyway... He's younger than her by almost ten years, but he has MS so he can't do a lot for her on his own. In home, hired help is going to be a reality, how much in home help is anyone's guess at this point.

I don't know how my dad is holding up right now. He's not much for talking about emotional things. He did get rid of all the booze in the house except the beer he rationed out for himself for what he figures will be the duration of her hospital stay. I forget sometimes he's a drinker himself... his alcohol consumption always has paled in comparison to my mothers...

As for me, now and then I get angry, then back to nothing. It's not setting me off too much, I'm not getting triggered all over the place. Still me everyday, all day. I'm not spacing out or having times where I feel like I'm 'walking through saline'... I'm counting that all as a win. But it does remind me of little bits and pieces of being a kid and hating what she does and how she lives. It's also a brutal reminder that no matter what, my mother just cannot seem to love anyone or anything more than she loves her damn booze. Addict mentality, you know. And while my dad is busy reminding himself not to get mad at her and take it personal, it's her sickness... I do get mad and cannot seem to get myself to be all like, oh yeah, don't be mad at her, be mad at the addiction. No. I'm mad at her. I know she doesn't love herself, my dad, or me enough to quit. That I accepted years ago.

Now I might have to accept she doesn't love my one daughter enough and her great grandson enough to quit for them. My oldest daughter doesn't like her grandmother, my mom. My youngest though, she and grandma have been close over the last five/ten years or so. Back when she was a tween she would call grandma to talk and get advice and since they moved back closer to our town, my daughter has driven out to visit with them on a weekly basis for years now. She's 21 now and her son loves grandma and grandpa. He's 4. How do you explain this crap to a four year old. That's some heavy sh** right there that he can't comprehend and my daughter has just been crying off and on over the last week.

And I have no hope in me that she will choose to stop drinking even now and no hope my dad will choose to not go buy her more wine when she starts in screaming at him and falling all over the house trying to find some booze that isn't there. I've lived that crap one too many times with her on the times she would quit for a day or three or even a week. The junkie mad scramble to find some hidden booze somewhere before going out to get some and spiraling out of control on some relief/guilt binge. I mean, the choice to drink or not hasn't even been made by her and here I am looking into my imaginary crystal ball of doom knowing she will make the self destruct choice. I do that a lot... live life bracing for impact. This whole experience has helped me understand how very much I do that. That's a positive, I guess. Insight is a good thing.

Oh. I talked longer than I wanted to. I'm supposed to go swimming today with my daughter and grandson. Lil man is excited about the pool and yesterday he was here hanging out and we picked out his lil swim trunks and everything. Lol. He's freakin adorable. But yeah, I don't have friends or people I talk to or confide in in my day to day life. To say I keep people at an arms length is an understatement. I think I needed to talk and I appreciate all of you and being able to do so here. Thank you that.