[NTLK] Frank's still here, although but barely

[NewtonTalk]

Hi folks,

thanks for inquiring about me. That's what friends do, and it felt really
nice. 

Pawel was right when he said that I'm very busy, but that's not the main
reason for my silence. I've been very busy since I've started to think,
which was about six decades ago. That never kept me from taking care of
Newton issues.

The reason for my silence is sheer physical and psychical exhaustion. My
mother died last December, and I was left with resolving her "legacy". I
spent almost three months turning a 160 square meters hoarder household into
something that might have a fraction of a chance to be sold without
potential buyers puking onto the driveway when they see it. This house is
still inhabited by my mentally challenged sister and my mother's mentally
challenged partner, who don't have enough income between them to pay at
least for the running costs. I spent almost 1500 bucks on having garbage
disposed of. About 70 cubic meters of garbage, to be exact, every single
piece of which had to be checked manually by yours truly before throwing it
away because important documents and family pictures were all over the
place. This family never really grasped the concept of organizing or filing
things, or keeping one's dwellings clean, or throwing things away that you
no longer need. I brought another 50 cubic meters of usable things to misc.
charitable organizations. Not exactly an easy task, if one's car is the
smallest model Toyota offers...

My mother's partner is a really nice fellow, but he's a bit like a child.
You need to tell him what to do, and he does it. Sometimes. Sometimes he
doesn't. Sometimes he does things you never told him to do, causing huge
amounts of additional work you didn't expect and don't have time to do.
Although this guy is only eight years older than myself, I had to find a
retirement home for him that he can afford and that's nice enough to ensure
a halfway dignified way of spending the last years of his life. 

My mentally challenged sister, unfortunately, didn't cope with her mother's
death as well as I had hoped. When one day I drove there to check on them,
she sat in her room, talked nonsense, didn't know when she had eaten the
last time, and her personal hygiene left a lot to be desired. So I called an
emergency doctor, who committed her to a mental hospital as an emergency.
Visiting her there wasn't really fun, because in her world I was the one who
brought her there. She's been released meanwhile, but nobody knows if she
will be able to face life on her own. Will she be able to keep her job? Will
she be allowed to continue driving her car? Nobody knows. The doctors in the
hospital said that she will get someone assigned to her who has the same
right of decision as herself, and who ensures that she won't do things that
might harm her in any financial, medical or other way.

This stupid house must be sold ASAP to get the funds that'll ensure decent
living for the two of them. Guess whose job this is...

I do have three brothers that could help, but they don't. I won't go into
this here, but they simply don't. The majority of what they do doesn't
really help. Sometimes it causes new problems. And I'm under the impression
I'm about to make enemies of them because I try to handle all this
thoughtfully, thoroughly, conscientiously and in a way that won't require
doing it again in the future, keeping the long-term well-being of my sister
and our mother's partner first priority. Sometimes I'm under the impression
they had hoped to resolve all this within a week or so, and are really angry
that everything takes so long.

Before all this started, my life was... well... not exactly without duties.
I have two relatives older than 80 years that rightfully expect support and
help. And the fact that I have a wife and a child, who all live on 2000
square meters property, in a house much too small and 110 years old, doesn't
help very much, either.

My To Do list is getting longer by the minute. All this is exhausting both
physically and psychically. My own health leaves one or two things to be
desired at the moment, regularly requiring a lot of my time to keep me
operational. Most times when I turn my computer on, I only take care of one
or two of the ten million queued-up issues that absolutely MUST be taken
care of. After that, I hardly ever find enough energy to address anything
that has the word Newton in it. There are days when I leave my car and go
straight to bed.

I sincerely apologize for leaving people who wanted to purchase Newton
hardware or required other forms of Newton support out in the rain. I
promise y'all that you're not forgotten. One of these days I will definitely
get in touch again. But this might still take a bit...

Cheers

Frank

-- Newton software and hardware at http://www.pda-soft.de