Reply ID: bbbb
July 12, 2015; Noon
Listening to "Messed up World" by Pretty Reckless

Dear Hari,
Hi, nice to hear from you again. No need to apologize for the delay. You get busy, you have a busy life. I understand. I had a woman write to me on this blog before, and she signed her name as #ThisGirlCares, was in the middle of getting married, very busy life. Made promises that she never kept. But people get busy in life, they forget.

Well, you spoke to the gambler movie. I would love to see it, but sadly the rules in here are they do not show any movies that are above a PG-13 rating. If they are above that, you must wait for it to come on regular basic cable TV. So it'll be awhile. I love good scary movies, but most are rated R so we rarely get to see them. :(

I would have loved to have seen the UFC title fight last night with Connor McGregor winning the title. They said the entire Ireland was cheering for him. I try to spend as much time as they give us outside. I literally spent almost five hours in the hot sun working out with just shorts on. My whole upper body is fried from the sun. But a TV is a necessity in here. There are plenty of days when we have no outside time at all, and you would go mad in here staring at a wall 24-7.

Wow, you must be really smart and motivated to study for anthropology and law. That's a lot. The only thing I know about anthropology is what I see on the TV show Bones. Me and my nonna (grandmom) would both watch it, and then we'd talk about it in letters and phone calls. She loved that show, so that's why I started watching it. I haven't watched it since she died.

As for my mom, I'm very frustrated with my family. My mom went in for chemo and, to make a long story short, she had to stay an extra day for extra chemo. They did bloodwork and she said she had another type of cancer as well as the AML. But this is my problem. Why am I just learning about this now? Weeks after it happened? Why is no one from my family going to the hospital with her and writing anything down?

I asked Mom, what do you have, what is it? She said, Robby, I don't know. It was like 15 letters long, and I can't remember. My mom has very bad short-term memory from the seizures. I wanted to ask someone to look up her cancer doctor on the website to see if he is even a good doctor, but no one can even tell me his name. How does no one know the name of the doctor who is supposed to be saving our mother's life?

I think my family has already given up hope so they are not invested in this. You can't just hide from this and pretend it's not happening. It won't go away. It frustrates me even more because when I bring this all up, I'm told that I am not there so I can't say anything. I asked them to at least contact the social services department. At the hospital and get my mom a patient advocate, so that way when she is going through something, this person can ask questions, write stuff down, help my mom understand.

My mom is only 59, and there isn't much that scares me. Losing the people I love and spiders—that's about it, I think.

One thing I find joy in is feeding the birds. I collected extra pancakes today and those little guys love them. But they seem to love any food. I give them breakfast cake, toast, pancakes, French toast, an apple once, they eat it all. The bigger ones bully the little ones so I throw half the food to the left for the big ones, while they're distracted I throw the rest to the right and the little ones come in to eat. I've always loved animals and there isn't much joy or shit to make you feel happy or good about yourself in here. But something as simple as feeding little birds makes me enjoy that time.

Well, it's about time for mass so I must go. Take care of yourself. Did you see my two puppy dog photos I sent in for this blog? I love dogs. If not, they are on the Facebook page my brother put up. Just punch up my name, and they should be there. Hopefully, it's not three months before I hear from you again (just teasin'). I'm sure you're swamped with homework.

God bless, ciao.