This is another big long one, but I’m keeping the urgent/immediate need portion at the top of this and as brief and to-the-point as possible.

We are currently at the end of various ropes, and I need to communicate as much as I can as quickly as I can.

If you’re new here, reading the first four installments (one, two, three, and four) of this newsletter will get you caught up. The first one covers the backstory of what has been going on since February 2025.

As for why it is suddenly and urgently back from hiatus?

Mom and I are both facing eviction this week.

I’ve spent every month since she moved into assisted living juggling potential eviction for her, with late fees and so on stacking up that they finally insisted on having paid or they’d evict her over just those.

I did not pay my own August rent on-time to prevent her eviction from those stacked up fees, and my landlord is understandably out of patience nearly 3 weeks into the month.

Additionally, the assisted living has sent a final notice insisting on payment of mom’s overdue August rent in full. We have been late pretty much every month since she moved in. If they do not get it by this Thursday (8/20), they say will begin eviction and collections procedures.

Mom has no idea any of this is going on.

Using the Zelle QR code below is the most direct and immediate (and fee-free) way to help. Otherwise, it’s PayPal/Venmo or signing up for the Ko-fi.

The amount I am trying to come up with all told is in the thousands. If you have the means to help substantially and don’t already have my phone number, I have push notifications on for emails to [email protected]

This is all of the most mission-critical stuff, read the rest further down when you have time.

Former Paying Subscribers Should Have Gotten an Email

If you were a paying subscriber, you should have gotten an email from me pointing you to my Ko-fi account for making recurring monthly or one-off contributions to my mom’s care. If you didn’t see a separate email about that, let me know.

Due to an extraordinarily frustrating wrestling match with AI-based payment processing support, none of you should have seen charges since the first week of May.

I’m working to re-integrate Ko-fi and the card processing account attached to it here, but I am focusing on not-breaking things above everything. The newsletter has no “hard paywall” and never will, just a tip jar if you can afford to help.

Good News, Despite Dire Straits

Rita started reading again. How much is she actually retaining? I could not possibly care less, because as far as she’s concerned, she feels like she has regained her favorite thing to do.

She started by working her way through rereading James Clavell books she hadn’t read in 40 years. She has now started devouring new tomes of similarly grand, epic, and escapist scale. She also fills her leisure time watching nature documentaries since watching all of Yellowstone and Heartland (two extremely different “ranch people” shows) was enough “narrative TV” for a while.

Mom’s also made yet more progress in her 5-days-a-week physical therapy. She has made enough progress in doing things for herself that she has “graduated” from being rated as needing “two-person assist” to “single-caretaker assist” on many daily needs.

She is getting stronger, and according to her physical therapist, progressing toward more assisted walking with the use of a standard walker.

She does her own in/out transfers with her wheelchair completely independently now, and is making legitimately solid progress. Even her handwriting is getting better.

She’s also gotten more into watching soccer, starting with the World Cup and now (yet-more obsessively) our local club team, Austin FC.

My Mom the Austin Soccer Reporter

Ever since her near-fatal fall in early 2025, I’ve been keeping Rita apprised of the progress of Austin FC, the local Major League Soccer team. Mom has never been very big into sports, but she likes these guys. I’ve finally navigated getting mom used to “finding” the games when they are live since I’m usually at the stadium or elsewhere when they come on.

She has a small collection of their jerseys that she has worn on and off during her lengthy and difficult physical therapy journey. She’s processed the highs and lows they’ve had since early 2025 alongside her own peaks and valleys. When I stop in to see her after home games or watch away games with her, I generally find her take on what went well and poorly to be sharper than my own.

She’s chosen favorite players without needing my help, too. She’s adopted them as “her boys,” from her “Capitán el Catalan” Ilie Sánchez to her “smiling Irishman” Jon Gallagher to her “querido [beloved] Colombiano” Christian Ramírez.

Her favorite player by far, though, is Albanian National Team striker Myrto Uzuni. She likes how “locked in” and focused he is for every second of the game. She has admired his perseverance through adversity, both on and off the field. His wife remained in Spain to give birth last year, and he only met his son Prince for the first time during a very brief layover when returning from international duty in Europe.

Myrto’s performance on the field was affected by that absence alongside general team performance and connectivity issues last year, but this year has been very different for him. His wife and son being here and settling in at long last, combined with various changes within the team itself have helped. He has turned around many fans, and validated mom’s longstanding faith in him as one of the hardest workers on either team in any game in which he appears.

She loves seeing him interviewed on the broadcasts after victories. If you follow them, you understand her joy when he says things like “I see everything” and “I am so happy”with the deadpan clarity of early career Arnold Schwarzenegger. We all need more of that sort of laser-focused joy in our lives.

Late-Night Replay

Due to issues getting lost in the menus of the Apple TV interface one night, she completely missed seeing the recent game against Puebla live. Fans of the team already know its significance as the game in which Myrto scored the second hat trick in club history, the first in just shy of 4 years.

You can see all three goals in 60 seconds on YouTube.

When I got in to see her very late that night, driving straight over from the stadium, I was momentarily crestfallen that she had missed it.

Then I realized that instead, I was going to get to watch her see it happen, since it was all new to her. I loaded up the full replay and we sat and watched the first 35 minutes of the match.

She kept asking me “what happened? Nothing bad I hope?” and the like.

“No, just…watch. It’s all good mom, you’ll know.”

When Myrto scored the first goal, she said “oh he scored a goal? That was pretty fast! Well good, but…I’ve seen him do that. You were practically having kittens when you walked in.”

“I don’t want to spoil it…just…keep watching.”

The second goal went in, and she brightened up a bit more “oh well it isn’t every day you score two goals in a game. Wow, that was a good one too, who was it that made that pass to him?”

“Your belovèd Colombian, Ramírez.”

“Oh good! Well it’s getting late, you better get home—”

“No mom, we need to keep watching.”

“Honey it is already after midnight, we can watch the rest of the game tomorrow…”

“We don’t need to watch the entire match mom, just give it a few more minutes. Trust me.”

When Myrto knocked in his third goal of the night, she blurted out “Oh my god that was incredible, who was that? Was it…Uzuni?”

A short conversation about the significance of the performance, the meaning of the term “hat trick,” and what the events of the night meant to Austin fans later…she understood all of it. What she understood more than anything was what it all must have meant for Myrto.

“He’s been through a lot, so I bet that felt good. I hope his family got to see it.”

“Oh they did, and I was one of the last couple folks left to interview him after the game. His wife and son were with him.”

“Well, now he just has to keep it up and stay focused. They’ve still got a lot of games to win.”

“Oh, he said a version of exactly that, that he has had many doubters, but that it’s on him to keep proving them wrong.”

“Good. I don’t care who scores the goals or even if they win every time, as long as they’re all working together as a team and trying to help each other. Tell him I said not to worry so much and to just keep being himself.”

“I will, mom.” and I did, a few days later.

“Now get the hell out of here and don’t get in a wreck on the way home. I’m finally going to drink this Dr. Pepper the next time they play.”

Since her fall, she has been strictly limited on her sugar intake, especially due to drinking too much soda and not enough water. With the dementia, she often doesn’t remember what she had for her most recent meal, generally misremembering it as what she had the day before or a week ago.

She asked me to get her a Dr. Pepper (her favorite) that she could crack open for the game following the next time the team did something really special.

When I walked in a few nights later, coming straight over after Austin’s win against “titans of México” Club América, the empty can was sitting on her tray table.

“Now THAT was worth the Dr. Pepper!” she said. “That was the young man you said you like a lot, the one who scored our goal?”

“Yes, Ervin Torres. He’s the first player in Austin history to score for the Academy, reserve team, and first team.”

“He reminds me of one of my elementary students the year I taught that. Do you know who I’m thinking of?”

“I do.” and I did. He liked to play soccer too.

I’ll include her ongoing commentary in future newsletters.

Doomsdays Deferred

We almost hit the wall in late May.

I got the dreaded threat of eviction and the subsequent “we will post eviction and begin collections tomorrow” notice. Thanks to a generous friend who covered the entirety of her rent that month, we were saved.

The next month, the same wall approached at the same pace. Putting off my own bills into a danger zone of their own, combined with unexpected help from my Aunt saved us once again.

I’m confident that somehow, we’ll avoid the worst. Asking for help is what has saved us in the worst of moments.

The good news is that provided we get past this, I’ve got around 40% of her monthly care costs ($5050) figured out starting in September.

The bad news aside from the obvious is that I’m past a breaking point of my own, beyond the financial.

Crisis of Infinite Crises

I’m not dying or starving or dodging loan sharks or anything like that, but I’m exhausted, both mentally and physically.

I’ve drained my own financial resources (savings and otherwise) and run out of places I can think of to ask for help, and that has its own psychological effect.

Going back to the rollover wreck in February of 2025, I have needed to start PT and OT and treatment otherwise of my own. Aside from some massage therapy appointments, I haven’t done any of that.

There just hasn’t been time, alongside the combination of keeping my mom alive (during the initial 12 months) and now keeping her in the managed care that will keep her alive.

This isn’t sustainable and hasn’t been for a while.

I can’t expect a friend to unexpectedly swoop in and save us singlehandedly month to month, and the psychological toll has been especially terrible on me over the last 60 days.

I’ve had a lot of trouble switching spoken languages (English and Spanish) since the wreck, and it’s getting worse. Something is definitely wrong with my neck and my dominant arm.

Finding a Sustainable Solution

I had a thought a couple of weeks ago that is part of the “Hail Mary” I am hoping somehow comes through this week.

Most of what I’ve done for a living for the better part of 20 years has been selling sponsorship placement, from event corporate sponsorship to podcast advertising.

I don’t have a conventional “product” with “demonstrable audience” to sell, but I do have something unconventional and useful to offer up, were I not filling every day of my week trying to put together my mom’s monthly rent.

I’ve told you previously about mom wanting to collaborate with me on a children’s picture book about her Year Of Hell. I can’t reasonably set any expectations or build out a Kickstarter or whatever for that at the moment. As long as I’m in Triage Mode, I can’t set myself up for failure in ways I know for certain that I can’t deliver on right now.

I will get there though, not if, but when we get past the current crisis. I’ll know I can start thinking about that when I’m not answering every “how are you doing?” from friends with “more stressed out and anxious than I’ve ever been in my life” or a reflexive “completely f***ed and I feel like my world is ending, but otherwise…good?”

So…What Then (and For Now)?

I’ve accumulated a lot of experience managing the unmanageable over the last year and a half, and I’ve been documenting everything. I’ve previously written about wanting to compile that into a set of resources for helping people dealing with the sudden “what do I do now” when their elder parent does not die, but suddenly needs someone watching out for their every need and otherwise parenting the parent.

It may end up being using this newsletter as a first draft (of many) in translating useful information into a free PDF (or twelve). Maybe it’s that and a podcast, or those things and short form videos. I have no concrete idea and no time to figure it out right at the moment, and that’s fine.

Staying accountable to just getting this out once a week for now is something I finally know I can do going forward… so long as mom and I don’t end up getting evicted, that is.

I have started and stopped writing “next installments” of Office Hours multiple times every week since you abruptly stopped seeing emails.

It would’ve helped my mental health had I been able to hammer this thing out weekly over the last three months.

I just couldn’t, and as much as I have beaten myself up about that, that’s ok.

The biggest thing I didn’t anticipate or get my head around was just how hard of a fall off of a depressive cliff I was facing. Trying to climb to the top of Mount Doom every month was, in fact, a lot more impossible than I convinced myself it was.

What a shock, huh?

To keep mom alive against way too many odds, and on the other side of all that still face potential failure?

This sort of self-overloading is the kind of thing to write an entire newsletter or podcast about.

I’ll get there, but I can only do so many things for now.

And…that’s ok too.

What You Can Do To Help

Whether you can contribute financially or not, please be my associate publicist. Spread the word, far and wide.

Like I said above, send people the first newsletter and this one that links to the other three.

I am trying to get my head right to post a video “on the grid” on my Instagram that can be shared around, one that is like the first newsletter and tells folks “the story so far” and one that is “here’s where we are today.” Please watch for those.

I don’t use Twitter anymore and the “engagement” over there by actual humans is practically nonexistent despite what its current owner says. I will post on BlueSky and Threads, so please boost these links and what I post over there.

If you know someone or an organization or company with the means to contribute substantially toward my mom’s care, just email me ([email protected]) if you don’t have a more direct way to contact me.

My focus is on avoiding as many processing fees and middlemen as possible, as well as ensuring that funds generally just go directly toward my mom’s care.

I want nothing more than for next Sunday’s installment to be titled “Doomsday Averted.” I may not know how we will get to there from here, but I have faith we will somehow.

More than anything, do me a favor and do your best to take care of yourself. It’s advice I wish I could have made land on myself more often over the last 18 months.

Here’s to a better tomorrow, whatever that ends up needing to be for you.

-Moisés Chiullán