Thursday, March 17, 2011

Let’s Play “Beg That Question”

You forgot to remind me to put my teeth in before I went to the barbershop.

Your sister-in-law in Florida calls moments after you sit down with a lemongrass and ginger tea martini. She says your mother-in-law has fallen down trying to make it to the bathroom ahead of her diarrhea – unsuccessfully as it turns out. Mother lives two rooms away from your martini.

The hospital social worker calls at 21:30 to say they want to discharge your mother-in-law tonight after 2 hours because, though she had fallen and been taken to the emergency room dozens of times before for durations averaging 36 hours, this time she has diarrhea.

She put her dirty diapers in the cupboard next to her clean bath towels to cut down on odor.

Your spouse and his mother engage in a confusing dialogue about a plant on her dresser that has been rat-gnawed and/or rat-infested, after which he reports back, and then you ask if he placed said pot outside, and then he replies that he was going to but blah blah blah, and then there is much consternation at your precipitous action to take the fucking pot and put it outside the fucking door.

Before you tossed the rat pot, did you determine whether the rat was in it?

Is this all part of your diabolical plan to murder your wealthy relatives in cruel and lingering ways and to live in luxury thereafter on your ill-gotten gains?

At what point did you realize you were living with hoarders-in-waiting, and all that stands between you and a public spectacle in which the term clinically insane appears in lurid headlines describing your psychotic break and subsequent killing spree are the following: your medical marijuana card; your excellent cooking; your adorable kitty; and the happy place in your mildly morbid imagination?

Before I go on a magical quest to clean her commode and commode chair, I want you to see that this is actually chocolate ice cream in this large plastic tub I intend to use to put in the wash water to clean said appliances.

She objects to being told she has to spend an indeterminate number of days in a skilled nursing facility because her roommates are too ill to clean up her shit, by which I mean her shit.

1 comment:

Martha in Michigan said...

So, did she go? You guys are getting too damn old and tired to do skilled nursing care. It's hard with someone you love but must be excruciating with someone who is slowly killing you. Spoke to L on her BD yesterday and she and B get to spend their weekend going to Pittsburgh to clean up and ready for sale the home of the great-aunt he inherited. Seems that, by 101, you actually outlive your public pensions. Who knew? Anyhow, she needs the $$ from the house to live on. Wonder what it will bring in a terrible market in a dying rustbelt town after having sat empty for several years? Reminds me that I have GOT to clean up and pare down so my kids don't have to go through too much grief after I'm gone. As for you, I am counting on you to stick it out, dammit! This cannot go on much longer. Honest.