On 2022-12-12 21:40, Randy Young via groups.io wrote:

[TECH]
... it's been a true Hell of a past couple years.
Quick recap. Cue flashback...
In April 2020, ... telework ... 12-year-old daughter starts
having near-psychotic episodes ... COVID-19, and it was terrible.
... cellulitis in my lower left leg ...-

Snap! Lower right for me. (Eeek! Sorry ... Go on.)

-... that part of my leg is still discolored and there's an actual
dip you can feel along the shin where tissue was consumed by the
disease and will never come back. Fun.

Right! So, THAT'S what happened. My doctor has never explained it to me, but I have the exact same thing. He just sent me off for an ultrasound to check for "pockets of residual bacteria". The tissue is also really ... like it's a graft, it's not normal skin. And it's thin and easily breaks, too. I have to be very careful if I scratch it. No fingernails permitted!

... got our then-13-year-old daughter into counseling ... virtual
school year ... major fight and a complete break between us and
Kelly's mom and stepdad. Years of verbal and emotional abuse ...
their increasingly far right politics ... Kelly's last remaining
aunt died ... because we "don't care about the family anymore"
and we "don't deserve to know."

Families, aye? Who'd want them? (Sorry, it's just a similar thing happened in our family.)

... (more) COVID-19 ... new boss at work ... new boss' boss

Yeah. Bosses. Refer above comment about families. I presently have a very controlling one, right now. Micromanager. Don't make decisions, Mike, *I* am the decider. I don't care if you have thirty-years experience in this field and I have, well, none, *I* am the decider, so I will take that decision and task off you, make the decision in view of all the upper echelons of management (after making a right fool of myself in front of people who have a clue), and then delegate my decided task back to you, in worse shape than when you were about to make a decision.

"Yay! I managed!"

Sorry, again, please go on.

... oldest daughter ... colleges ...

While ... Wait, what?! YOU have a college-age daughter?!?! How the ... When did THAT happen?! Didn't you and Kelly just get married, like, a couple of years ago?!

Yeah, there was a whole in-game thing about the Zartanian foreign minister getting engaged ... Alright, so, maybe it was like five years ago. ... ?!

... Kelly's dad ... upper respiratory infection ... coughing
up blood ... great spirits ... cancer on his liver ... terminal
... spread ... four lymph nodes ... about 3-4 days left ...
Breaking it to the kids was one of the hardest things we've ever
done ... just after midnight that night, he was gone ... Kelly
still breaks down crying ... 9-year-old son (nightmares) ...

Yeah, that whole paragraph sucked. I am so sorry for your wife that her Dad was taken so suddenly from her. And a Grandad, too. I know her pain - but, one word of compassionate advice, if you'll accept it (though I am sure its redundant): she should, regardless the pain, force herself to face it. Cry every tear, breathe every anguish, wallow in every depression. Only then, months later, can she joke and laugh with the kids about "Grandpa would do this, if he were here" and "Grandpa was like that" without being unable to face it. She will never cease to feel that loss, but, this way, it will lose it's power of desolation in time. </personal-experience>

... second floor bathroom flooded ... living room ... loan ...
repairs and renovations ... death #3 ... aunt... found dead ...
psychotic break ... homeless shelters ... Kelly's dad ... Kelly
... genetic mutation ... guarantee ... eventually catch up to her
... kids now has a 50/50 shot at it, too. Yay. Talk about a great
year for us, huh?

No.

No, not in the slightest. That sounds like a positively shit year, to be quite frank with you.

I doubt any one of my library of Facebook-style, silly platitudes could possibly do you any good at this time. I could offer my "thoughts and prayers", but that might sound positively insulting.

What I will do is keep you and your family in mind when my knees do sully the floor, and, once more, remind you -- as I think I have done before -- that these meagre considerations:

... no possible way for me to concentrate on doing anything with
Zartania, Caledon, or any of my other territories ... I apologize
so much for leaving Vexillium hanging like I have ... Thank you
all for bearing with me and putting up with my countries' virtual
isolationism ...

... require NOTHING that remotely resemble apologies ... for anything of the sort.

We welcome your return, we look forward to it -- even if for no other reason than it means fewer bathrooms are flooding downstairs! -- but don't you ever dare to think or feel that you have in any way, shape or form "let us down". Life is no picnic, as your past few years appear to amply demonstrate, yet, life's demands, your wife's emotional support, your daughter's care, your family's well-being ... these things FAR exceed the value of some fiction we delight in.

Do what you need to do, Randy. Thank you for your apology for it means you do still care, but please don't let it weigh on you in the slightest. (On the presumption that it might have.)

And, yeah, fwiw, really DO look after yourselves.

Mike