What I Said In My Head

A New Version of Phone Tag

2012-02-11T12:13:00.000-08:00

DOB was moved to a nursing home 2 weeks ago after falling twice in four days. When she goes down, she goes down so hard she bounces, and the following days she is sore and bruised like, say, a victim of senior abuse, which I hasten to add, is not what is happening, mainly because it’s completely unnecessary when she’s doing such a good job of that on her own.

It was either a nursing home or rent a forklift so we could return her to her vertical position without calling the EMT service for what is graciously called “lift assist” every time she uses her walker without watching and catches the edge of an area rug and keeps lumbering forward unknowingly, gradually bending the rug it up until her next step lands on it, toppling the whole edifice over like an unbalanced crate of rocks and spilling all over a loading dock.

I should also mention that she is now also too stupid to figure out how to answer the cell phone she’s had for about 5 years. So, it’s always entertaining when TCG phones her to check in because he’s too lazy to drive the 1.5 miles from our door to hers and actually visit her.

TCG: Hello?

DOB: Hello?

TCG: I’m not coming today be—

DOB: Hello? Is anybody there?

TCG: Push the speaker button, it’s the one with a picture of a little green sp---

DOB: Hello…. I can’t hear you yet… (Electronic beeps as random buttons are pushed)… hello?

TCG: Can you hear me now?

DOB: Hello?

TCG: Press the little green speaker button, and then turn up the volume by using the little button on the side near the t—

DOB: I thought the phone rang but nobody is here. Hello? I’m not he—(phone cuts off as she finds the disconnect button).

Repeat this same conversation twice, but turn up the volume on TCG’s end in the vain hope she’ll figure out how to put the phone to her ear and hear his step-by-step instructions about using the speaker. I should mention she has to use the speaker function because she’s forgotten how to hold the phone to her ear.

Then TCH calls his Senior Deadbeat Sister in PA who calls DOB multiple times daily, sometimes even connecting and having what passes for conversation with her mother. I get to hear the entire conversation because TCG thoughtfully puts all his calls on speaker and mutes the volume on the news program I’m trying to watch.

TCG: Have you talked to mother today?

SDS: It took five attempts before she discovered the speaker button…

WISIMH: Surprisingly, exactly where she’d left it.

SDS: …but yeah. She’s too sore to get up today.

WISIMH: Surprisingly, exactly like every other day.

TCG: The new “senior friendly” phone I ordered her should arrive today or tomorrow. Then I go to AT&T to get the sim cards switched, and she should be up and running with her new phone the same afternoon.

WISIMH: Which should be a laugh riot because a new learning curve is always something that DOB responds well to. Think how well she has mastered the procedure to disconnect calls on her current phone.

SDS: I’ve asked them to put a landline in her room by her bed and they just don’t do it.

WISIMH: Possibly because your whinging and argumentative attempts to care for your mother via nagging disrespectful phone calls to “the help” somehow always fail to win over the people you try to abuse into doing what you mistakenly think is their job. But I could be wrong. Maybe they just don’t give a crap either.

TCG: (To me) And this is easier how, than having her in the back room?

UCC: Certainly, because I don’t give a crap what happens any more. (Which is perfectly safe to say out loud because TCG is chronically unable to listen, particularly after he asks a question for me to answer. He is usually too busy interrupting whatever I’ve started to say.)

WISIMH: And, plus I don’t get bothered by her son who is too lazy to walk back to see her in person when she doesn’t answer by the third call, and thus don’t have to don my Hazmat suit to go to her room and check in person to see what entertainment she has planned for my day. (Note: it always takes at least two calls for her to find the phone and begin the fumbling/answering process. His general rule is only to become concerned when the third, fourth, or fifth call is missed. I shit you not.)

Taking Care of Family Business

2011-12-23T11:22:00.000-08:00

Well first, there’s the MediCal application process which is like a Kafka story but without the light humorous touches or big bugs. Although I understand DHS regulations that say proving residency is best accomplished by showing a paycheck stub, the fact is that this particular 93 year old dementia patient doesn’t work as a greeter at Wal*Mart and hence doesn’t get paychecks. So, sending copies of old driver’s licenses, photo IDs, and even handicapped placards from another official state agency (DMV) which, no irony intended here, has a lot in common with the state Department of Human Services, in that both are apparently staffed by chimpanzees, is so non-compliant that it doesn’t even bear mentioning by the DHS when they tell me to verify residency again and again.

Then, there’s the screwup with my own pension check that has been wired to my soulless mega bank run by Greed Inc. In September, I opened a new account with a credit union. In October, I informed my retirement system to wire the pension to the new credit union account. In November, I closed the old account. In December, my paycheck vanished. While waiting for my credit card bills be become overdue, I learned that Bank of Greed, aka Chase (as in “we have your money now see if you can chase us and catch up with it before we spend it on fees”) had not only received the pension and deposited it into the “closed” account, they had failed to advise me of this, and even made a programmed automatic payment that I’d already paid from savings. Meanwhile, my credit cards became more overdue, I had to take money out of my TSA to cover bills and pay my share of household expense late, resulting in a lovely cascading effect that the Regan boys used to call trickle down, only with poverty not with wealth.

But this is a story about DOBs vast wealth: her measly life insurance. She’s been paying on a $5k face value whole life policy for over 20 years. You can do the math yourself to see what the ROI is on a $30/month payment. When I finally researched it a few years ago, the value was about $12k and I advised her to stop sending them money, and just let it sit there and wait because it was fully paid up. She continued to send them money, of course, because she’s dumber than a sack of doorknobs, and what do I know with my law degree and all.

So, when I had to revisit this life insurance “liquid asset” in the course of applying for MediCal, I discovered she still listed her estate as beneficiary, which is something only an old sack of doorknobs would think made sense. So, following more free legal advice, she decided to change that, and name her three adult children as beneficiaries. And by decided to change I mean decided to expect me to change that without so much as telling me, to let alone thanking me either for the free legal advice or the services. Here’s how that went down:

Senior Deadbeat Daughter: (Calling me on her cell while TCG is taking one of his six or so couch naps so I have to answer the fucking phone even though I’d rather turn into a cockroach than converse with SDD) I was just talking to Mother about her life insurance policy and she said she can’t find the paper saying the beneficiaries are now her three kids instead of her estate.

WISIMH: What is this paper of which you speak? Perhaps when DOB gave me such clear written instructions (hilarious) the insurance fairy appeared and said: this is not the insurance paper you are looking for.

UCC: Ahhh, paper. Let me explain. Mother couldn’t find a paper with both hands and a flashlight. She can’t find her own ass to change her own diapers. Cutting to the chase, could you be telling me that I should change the beneficiaries?

WISIMH: Because nothing is done directly around here, like communicate, when indirection and passive aggression are so much easier and more fun. Fortunately for all of us, the unpaid legal consultant slash laundress had registered online and I can change the beneficiaries online. What a nice convenience for me! Thank me very much. I’m welcome.

SDD: Ok, I guess that’s what Mother meant.

WISIMH: Which – guessing what Mother means – is one of my all-time favorite pastimes especially when I’m high and it becomes a game of who can repeat the same four or five words over the most and see if they make more sense by repetition than they did when you just repeated them once or twice. Sometimes it’s more fun to just fill in the blanks myself with words that make even less sense. But I digress.

UCC: So, I guess that’s what you want me to do?

WISIMH: Is there any other free service I can provide for you while I’m at it? Want an itemized and indexed list of the other shit I do for your lazy ass family?

SDD: Yeah, that.

But this story doesn’t end here. It gets better. If by better, you mean more Kafkaesque and redolent of the Stygian Stables after a three-day weekend and beans, beans, beans. It turns out that in order to change beneficiaries online, you need their names, addresses and social security numbers. What an unexpected surprise - for anybody with less than a 4^th grade education and/or an attention span longer than it takes for bread to toast.

TCG texts Junior Deadbeat Daughter (because she’s even more fun to converse with than SDD) to get her social security number and mailing address, so I can make the online change of beneficiary which will result in her getting money for nothing. The following conversation took place via text messages, punctuated by my own profanity-laced spoken comments as TCG read it aloud.

TCG: Need your SSN and address to add you as beneficiary in DOB’s life insurance policy.

JDD: I won’t give that information out without first receiving a written accounting of current cash value and other policy information. I'll need an annual accounting of the cash value too.

TCG: Really? You don’t want in on the potential free money?

JDD: Wait! Is Mommy dead? How much money do I get?

WISIMH: You irresponsible, deadbeat, neglectful, oblivious, bottle blond, trailer trash, vulgar, greedy, lazy piece of crap, second-guessing my care for your unwashed demented mother and demanding that I perform more free services for your convenience, you idiot piece of worthless shit. I’ll send you a brick in a blanket with my best wishes that you swing it at your own empty greedy head, you cretin, you douchebag, you narcissistic waste of air. (I could go on, but let’s acknowledge that I can’t be almost endlessly creative with profanity when directed at these selfish, clueless, worthless idiot offspring of DOB who have an arguably greater obligation to care for their dear mother than I do and yet somehow feel as much obligation to do so as they have to change the oil in my car.)

UCC: Tell her I’ll send her an annual accounting all right. It will itemize the free services I provide to her fucking mother and thank her for all her fucking helpful advice about how I could be doing a better fucking job caring for her fucking mother, and just how much my share of the fucking insurance would be if I charged fifty cents an hour for my time for these past fucking 25 years, the fucking overweight, unwashed, fucking tramp.

TCG: No, Mommy is still kicking and being a general pain, and the payout could be in the millions for all I know.

JDD: Well, get me the information and I’ll get back to you.

I think it’s a good idea for me to stop here because by the time the texting was over there was blood coming out of my eyes and my ears were filled with the thunder of high blood pressure and rage and there was smoke billowing out of my mouth and possibly flames.

The next day, TCG relayed an edited account of his discussion with JDD, and DOB said then just put the two of you older children on as beneficiaries. So I did, thank me very much.

But let me just say, it’s typical of this family that nobody bothered to tell JDD about this decision, so unless she discovers this when she sends me a notice that my annual account report is overdo, it should be fun, if I’m still alive and sane when DOB dies, and JDD finds out she doesn’t come into millions of free dollars after all.

Trojan War Redux

2011-12-02T15:27:00.000-08:00

When you think of epic battles, you think of stories like the Trojan War. So, now that I’m fighting my own Trojan War, that’s how I frame what is happening in my own war-torn life. When fighting for my life, I amuse myself by thinking of heroes like Achilles and doomed Hector, and how their intertwined fates were governed by the gods who carelessly sported with their very lives. Applying for MediCal – the California version of Medicaid for poor and disabled and elderly people – is like that, only funnier.

Well, maybe not funnier, but with the same sense of helplessness to control your own fate while you are tossed about at the whims of remote gods no more concerned with your fate than they are concerned about the yellow leaves caught in the vortex of the leaf blower outside my door as I type. So not funnier then.

The first application, aka SAWS 1, was painfully researched, downloaded, completed and signed. This took months. The attachments to document residency, poverty and stupidity were carefully scanned in, printed and attached. The precious package filled with my hopes and fondest dreams was then mailed and promptly vanished into some divine haze never to be heard from again. It took two weeks for me to determine that it was MIA.

So, I applied online: carefully, painstakingly, playing a kind of death defying game of wits with the application form when it came to attachments. You need about a dozen and it takes half a day to figure out what. The system of the God, Cisco, will only accept a certain limit of megabits, which eleven attachments exceeds. But Cisco coyly declines to tell you when you reach the limit or anything helpful like that because the gods are above the petty concerns of even the most entertaining mortals. So send the application in several separate messages and hope they join up on the desk of the god assigned to determine your fate.

Merely following the clues about attaching documents to a screen where you can “choose” a file and clicking the “attach” button to attach the file is a challenge worthy of any heroic soldier. In fairness, the button should be labeled “possibly attach”, or even “possibly attach, but most likely not”. That took an entire afternoon, the patience of a god, and the fortitude only wine can provide. There were tears. There was profanity. There was heroic striving-and-failing. There was the uncertainty that constitutes the fog of war. Perfectly Homeric in a perverse way.

Meanwhile, back in the Greek camp, like Achilles sulking in his tent while the Trojans kick the Greeks’ asses, the “Client” on this application sat amid a miasma of piss and paranoia in her room trying to figure out how to answer her cell phone. Ever trying, ever failing, like a Beckett character once mused. If she had a heroic persona her heroic flaw, her Achilles heel, would be her ability to form coherent thoughts and then put them into remotely meaningful words. Every document she is asked to sign is a further nail in the coffin of her proof that I’m trying to kill her, only more slowly than I could do with a sword forged by the gods.

So the online application goes. Weeks pass. At lease online you can verify it was received. Which does as much good as Achilles’ Mom Thetis petitioning Zeus to protect their son against the chilling machinations of Mrs. Zeus who favors the Trojans. The system calmly assures me it will take up to 90 days to process an application, so I keep calm and drink wine in my tent.

Next we come to the part of my story that is like where Patroclus dons Achilles’ magic armor and only gets himself killed by Hector. I am not allowed to directly inquire about the status of the application because, although I’m the only person on the planet who has the foggiest idea what is going on, I might be, I dunno, blogging about the sorry ass state of the Client and/or the Kafkaesque state of the State. The gods genuinely intend to protect the privacy of dementia patients who can’t remember the last time they changed their adult diapers. Otherwise we might all descend into chaos, or cross the Styx into the underworld, or sink into drunken stupors in front of our TVs.

We have to submit a declaration form, aka MC306, wherein the Client appoints an “Authorized Representative” and by we I mean me. This of course, requires more signatures and attachments and painful struggles against the Trojan Wall of the online presence of The State DHHS. In the interests of trying to empower the client to not think I’m trying to kill her, we (meaning I) have to complete the form wherein the client’s son is authorized to communicate with anonymous bureaucrats instead of me. This adds another hilarious element to the process since the client’s son is as comfortable using his words as Patroclus is using Achilles armor: meaning not at all. It’s like the gods don’t give a shit.

One afternoon, we return home from a visit to Agamemnon’s camp to hear a voicemail from - - - - to call him about the application: more unspecified information is required. Of course, you cannot understand the person’s name. It’s like he – we think it’s a he – is covered with mist and is invisible. Like Priam when he ventures through the frontlines of the Greek army to Achilles' tent to claim Hector’s dead body: nobody saw him because the gods enshroud him in mist. After returning the call three days in a row and getting Zeus’ voicemail, the authorized representative is carefully coached by the true hero of this epic to leave voicemail asking - - - - to send us e-mail telling us what the fuck he wants if he’s not going to return our fucking calls.

So here’s where we get to the wooden horse part of the story. We get e-mail from DHHS (possibly from - - - - but not signed) saying we need more verification documents, let’s call them A and B. The very same day, we get a letter from a different bureaucrat saying we need more documents, let’s call them B and C. So, now we’re dealing with two different agents, via two different channels, for two different sets of demands. Is it any wonder the Trojans lost the war?

If this isn’t enough, the list of things that constitute verifying documentation of A, B and/or C takes a four page attachment to the written letter. Which would be helpful if only the list corresponded with the category of documentation required, which it almost does, but the with an element of whimsical uncertainty where you have to guess or pray that you match the item required in the letter with the proof to satisfy it in the attachments to the letter. The Client can’t simply apply to get welfare, she has to have adequate paperwork to support her worthiness due to her poverty, stupidity, and incontinency.

For example, we are asked in writing to provide “Liquid Asset verification” (again). Like a true Homeric hero, I am not distracted and do not kill fatted calves to the gods bearing messages that we havesubmitted verification - twice. It’s best when the gods speak to listen even if they’re mumbling. The closest category on the 3-page “ACCEPTABLE VERIFICATION SOURCES LIST” is something called “Property/Resources” followed by a quarter page block of text which, among other things, specifies in no particular order: bank/Financial Inst Stmt, Bank Statement, Cancelled check, Cancelled check, Life Insurance Policy, Insurance Policy/Statement. Do these people even read their own crap? Like some immortal gods playing with mortal soldiers they toy with us.

So, now let me digress in this summary to provide some detail about the attempt to comply with this divine order. Authorized Representative has to ask Client if she has a birth certificate. This takes several days because Authorized Representative has the attention span of a toaster with a broken sensor that keeps popping up before the bread even gets warm. Then, Client needs several more days and reminders and free food and laundry service to get to her file drawer and begin looking. So, after a week, here’s what happens.

Achilles: Did you find your birth certificate?

Client: To a certain extent.

What Achilles Said In His Head: Who knew or even suspected that there are documents that officially certify birth to a certain extent? Certainly not this doomed hero.

Achilles: What?

Client: (waving at a pile of documents on her side table with a pile of documents in her hand and nearly knocking a pile of documents out of the portable safe where she keeps documents that are important to a certain extent) What?

Achilles: (After waiting a suitable time to see if any of the documents in any of the piles offer an explanation. They do no.) Did you find your birth certificate?

Client: I found Authorized Representative’s Father’s Birth Certificate, and there’s some stuff about Mom and Pop. I still can’t find the Prudential Insurance policy.

Achilles: Ahhh. So that’s what you meant when you said you found your birth certificate to a certain extent.

Client: What?

WASIHH: Tell me then Muse, hast mine fate ever been dictated by the gods before my birth? I am destined to die young, but at least heroically? Strangely, I find this little consolation.

Authorized Representative: The Prudential Insurance policy is in the folder in your top dresser drawer. I think this diversion is relevant to our conversation because I always find it helpful to distract you from your own plight.

Achilles: (Interrupting Authorized Representative whose conversational gambit is the equivalent of waving a conversational raw steak in front of a figurative starving polar bear to distract her from attacking) Did you find-- oh never mind. Give me the papers that document your birth to a certain extent.

Imagine my surprise when the papers included Client’s original yellowing and crumbling birth certificate from 1918. It has come down through the years in about the same shape as the Client only smelling much less like pee.

So yesterday, I anointed myself with oils, fortified myself with wine, and donned my armor consisting of wrist braces to minimize the carpal tunnel pain, and submitted myself to the psychic pain of facing the proprietary web-based secure e-mail channel to importune the gods of the bureaucracy. I spent the morning scanning in more documents, converting them to .doc format which is marginally more successful at attaching to email than .docx attachments. I faced my destiny as bravely as any hero except maybe Paris.

In a mere 5 hours, I was able to engage the on-line application and attach the carefully labeled and titled verification documents to establish A, B and C. In this time, I also copied, labeled slightly differently and attached verification documents for A, B and C to be mailed. I know I risk the wrath of the impersonal gods by giving each slightly more than they asked for. But the birth certificate validating immigration status was just too good to waste on only one god. This gambit is as likely to forestall further inquiries regarding Client’s immigration status as the aspirin I just took to forestall the tension headache.

In what I hope was not a dramatically foreshadowed picture of my own doom, we mailed the forms when we were en route to the Wal-Mart adjacent Red Lobster in the nearest mall to celebrate the Client’s 93 birthday with cheesy biscuits and watered down cocktails. The staff at this place is perfectly attuned to people that come in for dinner at 15:00 and early bird specials on cocktails. Two-thirds of our party entered on walkers. Good Times. Our waiter Mitch was delighted to know it was Client’s birthday bless her little heart, as was his own personal busboy, at least two manager types and the waiter who actually brought our dishes. What seemed like this relentless parade of restaurant employees clearly determined to accomplish their mission to have happy customers insisted on telling us how glad they were that we shared this special fucking day with them. At least I hope they were restaurant employees.

Like The Iliad, this story began in the tenth year of a war. Unlike the Iliad, the current war has yet to conclude. I cling to the dubious comfort of knowing that once we wrap up the Trojan War, Ulysses can start his odyssey home. Another ten years and one Cyclops to go.

Counting Crows

2011-10-17T11:18:00.001-07:00

Last night, we were watching a PBS show about how smart crows are. We’d seen it before, but the alternative was to converse, and we can’t have that, now can we?

UCC: We’re coming to the part where there is a crow with white on her wings. She dies before the research experiment ends.

We come to that part.

TCG: White wing dies, right?

UCC: I may have mentioned that.

WISIMH: I may have a hearing impairment but you have a listening impairment.

A Midsummer Comedy in Three Acts

2011-07-31T11:13:00.000-07:00

Act One - Mid-May

UCC: Did you know that DOB’s truck has three flat tires?

TCG: Yes. It’s been like that for a while now.

UCC: Well, I just noticed it because I was working in the front yard. Why don’t you inflate the tires?

TCG: Well, I can’t start it because the battery is dead.

WISIMH: Non sequitur altert!

UCC: Which means the tires won’t hold air? Who knew?

WISIMH: Battery died because you can’t manage to run it for a few minutes each month like you used to do.

UCC: Then either get it running or get rid of it. We already have one derelict vehicle crapping up the carport. I won’t accept two.

TCG: OK. I’ll take care of it.

UCC: I’ll depend on it.

WISIMH: There is no longer any point to this. It’s as far beyond my waning powers of imagination to envision a scenario where you will actually accomplish something as complicated as inflating some tires as it is for me to imagine the dawn of a day when the urine smell from DB’s room will not waft violently down the hall like screaming banshee on a flying broomstick when the door to her room is opened. It’s breathtaking - and not in a good way – to actually venture into her room when I have to pick up her dirty laundry once a week. Inevitably, posted by her doorway (where it will have maximum effect as an air unfreshener on my side of the house) is always a garbage bag waiting for the trash gods to take it outside. TCG will take care of the trash too, eventually. Don’t put off until tomorrow something that you can put off until next week are the words we live by here in the Fortress of Attitude.

Act Two - Mid-June

UCC: Can you give me an Estimated Time of Action on the truck tires?

TCG: (Checking his day planner on the iPhone) July 27.

UCC: Be still my beating heart.

WISIMH: By which I mean: Dear My Blood Pressure, Please stop pounding so heard it feels like my head will explode. My right arm is going numb again, and I was planning on using it to beat someone senseless with a chair. Fondly, UCC.

Act Three - July 30

We managed to get to the store yesterday where TCG bought an electric plug-in air compressor to inflate the tires. En route home:

UCC: So, did you talk to your sister J2 about giving her the truck since she needs a vehicle and we don’t need more than one derelict car in our yard at a time?

TCG: (Non Sequitur Alert) Well, you know I talked to DOB about this (since the car was technically registered to her before he stopped bothering to renew the license tags making it impossible to drive on the street even if it didn’t have a dead battery and flat tires).

UCC: Yes, I was there. That was last month. Have you talked to your sister?

TCG: (Second Stage Non Sequitur Alert) That would be a good idea. Let me get the tires taken care of first.

UCC: Sure.

WISIMH: And let me have another evening trip to the ER with chest pains. Another good idea since we’re on the subject would be to save a date for actually inflating the tires. And then, since we all know the car won’t start, setting a date for replacing the battery. By the time all this happens, in the event it doesn’t just happen in my fucking dreams, J2 will have left town again to live with her daughter in Lime Disease, MO for several years or until she again needs to move back to her spouse’s gun and ammunition stocked trailer to use his health insurance. So I ask myself, why do I bother? The side effects from my latest heart medication make me feel like a crack whore who has been beaten up by her pimp, but without the preceding crack high. It’s actually not dreadful hyperbole to say I’m losing the will to live here. A stroke might be preferable to being squashed to death by a poorly balanced pile of hoarded crap while threading my way between the teetering piles trying to get to the shower before being overcome by the poisonous fumes from the DOB’s lair. Or suffocating to death by the CO2 from the large volume of scented candles necessary to permit me to use the shower - a mere two rooms down the hallway from the entrance to said lair. Or being led away in handcuffs, blood-soaked and laughing manically to a nice quiet room painted in calming institutional green and smelling like pine-scented cleaner instead of piss. Alas, what stinky fools these mortals be.

The Dark Side of the Spoon

2011-05-09T10:07:00.000-07:00

So SIL visited for 2 weeks. You might imagine those initials stand for Sadly Insane Bitch, but actually, I refer to my sister in law, DOB’s daughter, who is bossier than Sister Alice Maureen, passively aggressiver than a delusional middle eastern dictator - but without the endearing cult of personality, and has forgotten more about whatever you’re trying to do than you ever tried to learn.

DOB, whose powers of rational thought rival those of a detoxing hobo with end stage Parkinson's, typically reverts to nap-deprived stubborn 2-year-old mode when requested to do more than lift her own spoon. SOL is maliciously depriving DOB of alcohol, which is one of her meager remaining pleasures. Did I mention: cranky?

At a recent Chinese dinner with SIL, DOB and TCG, I made the executive decision to order a third bottle of crap white zin to give me the divine inspiration and strength to keep the conversation from veering into side roads with signposts such as Angry Drunk Avenue, Change Your Diaper Drive, Why Am I Alive Avenue, and Leave Me the Fuck Alone Lane. And don’t get me started about How Being 92 Doesn’t Entitle You to Be Nasty You Stupid Fuck.

So that happened.

When a DNR is Not the Answer

2011-04-06T10:46:00.000-07:00

Notwithstanding your DNR, it is becoming increasingly unlikely our friendly neighborhood EMTs would be able to determine the precise point you stop weaving in and out of polite, not to mention rational, discourse and actually slip into unconsciousness wherefrom we can then elect not to reanimate your corpse.

Let’s Play “Beg That Question”

2011-03-17T14:08:00.000-07:00

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.

Why I Won't Own a Gun

2011-03-15T15:39:00.000-07:00

In other news, I spent my 64^th birthday in a place with room service. Had breakfast in bed the next day. Then lunch. Then, I paid my $50 co-pay and was discharged.

I had gone to the emergency room the evening of my birthday with atrial fibrillation. They kept me overnight, so someone in unfortunately patterned scrubs could wake me up three times in the night to be sure I was getting a good rest. Although I would have preferred to return home and sleep, I was discharged in time to attend the weekly sushi lunch/torturous conversational feedback loop with TCG and our demented roommate.

I returned home from the hospital with a case of intestinal flue that kept me running between the bathroom and bedroom for the next 24 hours, and wishing my Mommy was there to hold my forehead to check my temperature. So, I got a thorough intestinal cleanse as a free birthday bonus.

Of course the same bug then felled TCG, only he suffers much more dramatic symptoms, and prefers to have a sympathetic audience for his distress. When I am sleep deprived, my shoulder and neck muscles spasm and clench. It feels like a pit bull is gripping me by the back of my neck. I spent my first night back from the hospital sleeping on the couch - which was preferable to being awakened by TCG’s frequent noisy trips to the toilet. Thank Allah for vicodin.

The second day of TCG’s “24-hour” illness, this happened.

TCG: (Dialing DOB’s cell phone for the third time because he’s too contagious/lazy to go and see how she is doing. Wrt/phone, she usually can’t react quickly enough to answer on the first try, but mostly manages to figure it out by the second) Figure it out and answer your damn phone.

UCC: You might still be contagious, want me to go check?

TCG: (Dialing the home phone intercom) Hello? Hello? This is your son. Are you ok? Why don’t you answer your cell phone?

Pause, while we all assume DOB is trying to process a reply but succeeding only in babbling some repetitive phrase that might as well be: You have reached a non-functioning brain. Please re-think what you’re doing, after first disregarding any lingering assumptions you may harbor that the person you are calling can exercise any cognitive task more challenging than blinking while drooling.

TCG: I have to see DOB.

Pause, while the earth spins silently on its axis, and me and the cats hold our collective breath for the next shoe to drop. Finally TCG huffs and puffs his way back to our side of the house.

TCG: (Waving his hands to indicate he can’t speak yet, but being sure to get my full and undivided attention while we all wait.) She found where the rat is that’s been reportedly visiting her in the night… That plant J sent for some unexplained occasion? That’s sitting on her dresser? You know, in the basket. That plant…

… There’s a nice neat hole chewed in the back side and a nice burrow tunneled into the dirt and roots of the plant…

WISIMH: And she got you up from your sickbed to show you this? Is she insane or just thoughtless? The incoherent warp of her babbling begins to sound like a wind chime in a zen garden. You're still at the semi-cogent state that remains intermittently coherent. I receive a blinding insight: O wait. She’s insane AND thoughtless. You're almost as bad. (Two insights, actually.)

TCG: … That’s where the rat has been…

UCC: So you put the plant outside, right?

TCG: I was going to, but I was laying (sic) on the floor because I was out of air.

UCC: Jaisus in heaven. (Going to DOB’s room, confirming which is the rat’s basket, opening her door and putting it outside)

DOB: You put the plant outside?

UCC: Yes. Is that ok with you? (Not waiting for an answer, closing the door on the smell of fresh urine and returning to the kitchen, bringing the full garbage bag that has been sitting by her door waiting for a magic spell to take it outside)

TCG: I was going to take the plant out. I couldn’t breathe. Why did you take the trash out?

WISIMH: Because the likelihood of you doing so is about as remote as Miskatonic University in Arkham MA is from this hellhole full of loonies.

UCC: Are you shitting me? Because garbage attracts rodents. Rodents in the house are not ok. Then, there's the smell.

WISIMH: Ya gotta draw the line somewhere with these hoarders. They think nothing of leaving crap on any horizontal surface that holds still longer than it takes TCG to start pissing. I am slowly losing the battle to remove accumulative hot-spots like the coffee table adjacent to TCG’s lazy-man recliner with the broken spring that sheds lumps of yellow crumbling foam to mingle with the potato chip dust and cookie crumbs marking the perimeter of TCG’s territory. The infected coffee table is likely to spread its clutter elsewhere if I leave it, but I’m just so fucking tired of living in a cluttered house that smells of only urine on a good day.

TCG: I was going to do it as soon as I caught my breath.

UCC: The absence of initiative in this household is daunting.

WISIMH: The absence of initiative in this household is inversely proportional to the irregularity of my heartbeat. It’s more daunting than flaked coconut stuck between back teeth. “Lisa, you’re tearing me apart!”

We all managed to get to the eye doctor the day before I got sick, and I got a new prescription. Problem was that I chose to leave my good frames to get the new lenses, so I’m trying to wear a pair of backup specs from at least one major prescription away. The result is that I suffer from major eye-strain and am unable to escape into a book or three by reading to distract myself from things than my real life. My nearsighted life is less like a soft focus slow mo over new age music, than a blurry jumpy confusion of light and shadow. Or then again, maybe those two brownies for breakfast are talking.

Yesterday, I made some killer soup in the crock-pot with a smoked pork shank and some cannellini beans. Today I went to my primary care doc for the hospital follow-up, who referred me to cardiology after an irregular ekg showed I have a long qt interval. Today, DOB has come down with the same shit we had, so I’m bringing her juice and bullion. I have refused to perform any shit-cleaning duties in DOB’s room, claiming my heart condition and general unwillingness to perform any task the futility of which is comparable to rolling a stone up a hill and watching it roll down, over and over. So, unless there really is a magic fairy looking over us, the shit smell is sure to spread across the DMZ of the back hallway and into the room where I sit and type. Go. Save yourself.

Postmaturation

2011-02-09T13:18:00.000-08:00

There’s premature, and immature, but I’ve discovered a new kind of mature. Actually it’s a new kind of lack of maturity. I’m calling it postmature.

Postmaturie is a behavioral pattern adopted by elderly sufferers of intermittent dementia and chronic forgetfulness, often accompanied by belligerence and paranoia. Onset and duration of symptoms are exacerbated by alcoholic consumption in public.

Diagnosis: Aberrant behaviors observed include: making faces, repeating “no!” and behaving generally like a nap-deprived, ill-mannered serial tantrum-throwing brat. Advanced cases include additional symptoms of incontinence, staggering and falling down, crossing arms across the chest, lowering the chin, and other body language of unreasoning defiance.

Undisciplined young children, the self-absorbed, the mentally challenged, those with a very weak sense of situational awareness, weaker powers of reason, few inhibitions, appalling manners, and those with few redeeming or endearing characteristics are all at risk of Postmaturity.

Caregiver Qualifications: Must be a survivor, not a victim. Self-medication is a survival skill. Being deaf is a blessing. Hiring preference to those with other sources of intelligent conversation. Qualified applicants will demonstrate a well-evolved inner life, excellent imagination, creative craft hobbies, and/or one or more adorable cats. Postmature Persons’ Caregiver status qualifies for prescribed Medical marijuana by prescription in California.

Making And/Or Keeping Promises

2011-01-13T15:51:00.000-08:00

So, DOB fell again. Not once all of 2010. Well, once, but we were able to pick her up because we discovered her pretty soon after she fell.

Sunday’s event began sometime in the wee hours of the morning, when, as near as I can reconstruct from the only eyewitness whose mentis isn’t very compos lately, she went outside to hang a wet towel to dry because I would be in to pick up her dirty laundry. Wait, what? She wanted to dry a towel before I picked it up to wash?

So, I enter, unsuspecting, around ten am to pick up her laundry…

DOB: Blah blah (the minute I open the door. Never mind that she knows I can’t hear when she whispers)

UCC: Yikes! You fell!

DOB: (from the middle of the room where she is sprawled in what can most generously be described as an unladylike pose) I pulled a boner.

WISIMN: No shit. Now, you’ll repeat incoherent snatches of a story of how you came to be where you so gracefully are.

DOB: I don’t know what happened….

WISIMH: Bless your little heart, you never do. Do you, dear?

DOB: … I opened the door to hang a towel on the rack outside… where towels go to dry?... must have fallen. Don’t know what happened, except that I fell outside when I went to hang up a towel. Or something. Anyway…

UCC: Stay right there, I’ll get him.

DOB: Ok, I pulled a boner when I blah blah (trailing off as I leave the room to summon her son)

UCC: Take a hit of abuterol. She’s down.

TCG gradually, with much huffing and puffing and what?-ing, trails me as I return to where I left off in DOB’s conversation, fortunately not missing any important plot twists or story recounting.

Scroll ahead an hour later, as we give up after trying to explain, then demonstrate, then listen and repeat trying to get the old lady on her knees so we can flip her butt up into a chair. She can’t fucking figure out how to do that, amid babbling about the towel and the open door and the boner she’s pulled. Ibid. Ibid. When we actually did get her in the right position at one point, and then we tried to lift one under each arm, she goes all passive resistance and dead weight as soon as we ask her to heave ho.

TCG has called his friends at 911, explaining calmly that we need “lift assist” and this is not a medical emergency. Then, I walk down to the street to meet them and walk them up to her room, explaining that she seems fine and TCG has COPD.

Of course, despite having discussed this at some length before their arrival and decided when they made the inevitable offer to take her to the ER to be sure she didn’t have a fucking stroke we would graciously decline, she of course, said yup take me in to the hospital.

WISIMH: Why did I not see this coming? These people have the follow-through of a broken toaster and slightly less initiative and cognitive powers.

After sitting in a corridor of the ER watching them bring in stretcher after stretcher of old homeless men/women who probably only needed a meal and a warm bed and a nap, and realizing they were VERY busy, I came to a stopping place in my book and finished my thermos of coffee and ate my apple, the later only after moving several chairs down the row from DOB’s wheeled chair, far enough to diminish the smell of ripe urine enough to swallow bites of apple. Then:

UCC: We don’t have to stay here, you know. Mother may be hungry, and may need to change her diaper, and may feel just fine now, and besides the day’s half over and I didn’t get the first load of laundry in and several more ibids and ibids while we gravely considered our options and checklists.

Rolling out DOB in the wheelchair while TCG tags along in his walker so I have to open doors, I leave them on the curb and walk a few blocks to where I parked after dropping TCG at the ER door. We get home.

DOB: I don’t know what happened, ibid, ibid and fucking ibid.

TCG: Huff and puff and glad we didn’t stay.

WISIMN: Yeah, now I can get back to the laundry, after I make lunch for DOB, make sure she takes her pills, take my own pills, and perform the standard checklist of one-on-one attention TCG requires after stressful event like this. Note: the checklist doesn’t include a reminder about how we agreed the next time she goes to the hospital, we’re not bringing her back into our house. Oh, wait. I remember now. You will conveniently ignore that with the same degree of expertise you ignore anyfuckingthing else I ask you to actually fuckingDO.

House of the Holy

2010-10-22T21:01:00.000-07:00

House of The Holy

TCG has a form of ADD with an added element of senior forgetfulness that makes it hard to conduct a conversation. He interrupts very very frequently. Add to that a tendency for him to even interrupt himself, and toss in an almost total lack of ability to listen to anything else for more than about 30 seconds.

I have to not only tell him to do anything that requires him to bestir himself from his chair, I have to provide detailed direction.

Now, when you add to that his needy clinging and dependence on me to provide all his socialization, cooking, cleaning, and laundry for him and the 92 year old crazy mother who, on a good day smells only like piss and who increasingly smells like shit, it's a plate full of crazy.

So, here is what I'm thinking...

Saint Blaise was a martyr who had his flesh torn by wool carding combs and then he was martyred by being beaten and beheaded. He is the patron saint of wool combers.

By this logic, I will eventually be the patron saint of incontinent dementia-sufferers, and hypochondriac drama queens.

What will survive of us is love

2010-10-14T18:37:00.000-07:00

Wisimh: I feel better than I have in years. While my home life is dreary sad and depressing I am not depressed as I had increasingly become these past 3 - 4 years. I feel stronger and able to survive my duties as caregiver. I suppose, as with the final stage of death and dying, I accept my life. How fucking mature of me.

If not cause for actual celebration, I'm no longer on homicide watch (like suicide watch, only different). Threat level green. Whew.

The title quote is Philip Larkin.

I Feel Like A New Man

2010-10-11T18:22:00.000-07:00

UCC had an angiogram and two stents were inserted in a cardiac artery.

UCC: I feel like I have been born again. No chest pain and walking on the treadmill is much easier. I'm not fatigued, depressed or in pain. I have NO indigestion and feel like I can breathe much easier and deeper. No arm pain.

TCG: Maybe you'll enjoy sex more.

WISIMH: Douche.

Focus!

2010-10-06T15:24:00.000-07:00

Fate Worse Than...

2010-09-29T22:30:00.000-07:00

I'm married to Grandma Wright. On Christmas.

Fair Trade

2010-09-28T11:31:00.000-07:00

TCG: I'm so tired of not being able to breathe.

UCC: COPD will do that.

TCG: If you'll donate one of your lungs to me, I'll donate one of my livers to you.

UCC: Sweet.

Tales of Toenails

2010-09-27T15:07:00.000-07:00

I could so put the ass in assisted suicide right now. To paraphrase Homer, if the Bible has taught us nothing else, and it hasn't, it’s that old people are a drain on society’s resources. Please don’t think I’m saying we should discard old people when they become useless. Useless is ok, it’s neutral wrt/draining society’s resources, and I fully support uselessness. We don’t have to actually kill old people until they become sucking piles of selfish need that smell like piss.

And yes, in case you’re asking who should decide. Yes. I could totally be a death panelist, or even chairperson. Not only do I know Roberts Rules of Order, I once helped a stranger off a bus, so I’m not totally devoid of compassion.

My main qualification to be on a death panel is that over the years I have developed an uncanny nose for all kinds of piss and related bodily smells. I can distinguish more than 17 levels of unwashed human ass before puking, which only puts me out of the game for as long as it takes me to get a martini buzz again.

DOB’s home health aid dropped in this morning to ask if I had some hydrocortisone she can use on DOB’s latest rash. I gave her some, plus a tube of Benadryl. Neither worked on my own facial rash in June, but then my doc prescribed an anti-viral because he said I have face Herpes. Charming, eh? But face herpes doesn’t stink. Turns out DOB was using an ointment for sunburn which – guess what? – was apparently exacerbating the skin rash.

Also was informed that DOB ripped out an entire toenail trying to cut her own six inch thick toenails. That’s right: not long, thick. Since she only wears bedroom slippers anymore – even when we go out – one of her toenails was curling back dangerously. After I relayed this to TCG, he talked to her about seeing a podiatrist and also about the questionable wisdom of self-medicating. For her self-medicating, not for me.

TCG: She’s adamantly refusing to see a podiatrist to get her toenails cut.

UCC: So that’s it? No podiatrist? Maybe it’s time to start treating her like a recalcitrant 2-year-old in need of a nap since that’s how she behaves. Hell, maybe it’s even time to talk about moving her somewhere where they’ll treat her like that.

TCG: Yeah, no. That’s not helpful.

WISIMH: And would it be helpful to observe that you sure as shit aren’t going to cut her toenails. Today’s lesson: if at first you don’t succeed, give up. Brought to you by clean and sober UCC whose current dose medicinal herb has not yet kicked in enough to make me censor what I say. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have bothered to state the fucking obvious only to have you shut me down without discussing it. “First Do No Thing” is the family plan for being prepared for life’s slings, arrows, and piss-soaked laundry.

I mean, why do something when there is no god, or heaven, or hell. In fact, the heat death of the universe is a mere blink of an eye away geologically speaking, so why bother? Why not help entropy do the fine job of decaying it has been doing since the Big fucking Bang.

UCC: Ok, then remind Mother to return my hydrocortisone and Benadryl when she’s done.

TCG: I’ve already put them on my shopping list. I’ll get you new ones.

WISIMH: You know, don’t you that she has more money in the bank than we do, if you don’t count our modest retirement annuities? You know that I know you subsidize her substantially, and that doesn’t even count our time and energy she sucks up. You know that I think you should stop that.

He knows something's wrong because it turns out last night I yelled at him after I’d spent a hot day doing household laundry, making dinner, and picking up the house. Picking up means putting away shit he leaves out as part of our silent war to become/not become eligible to appear on the Hoarders reality program. There I was, trying to sit still after taking my second nitro pill and get a good blood pressure reading. He started talking to me about a mistake I’d made and I simply opened my eyes and screamed at him to shut up. Without using the f-bomb, even. He is so clueless about when and why I might need some of his care, compassion, or even scant attention. It’s not like the impending signs of my frustration weren’t visible to anybody with half the sense of my retarded cat.

Oh, right. The signs of my building frustration weren’t apparent to anybody except my cat. He blinked in surprise when I yelled. Then he said: “Calm down. Shit,” which, surprisingly, was unhelpful advice.

CSI My Yard

2010-09-26T19:45:00.000-07:00

Today I was working in the backyard where I shelled and ate peanuts yesterday. TCG came out to say he was getting mail and check to be sure I had my cellphone in case he needed a ride back up the driveway.
TCG: (seeing scattered peanut shells) What happened here?
UCC: Yikes. Foul play?
TCG: It looks like a lot of peanut shells.
UCC: Good guess, Grissom.
WISIMH: Could it be that the Planter's Peanut guy was ambushed here? Wait! Is that a smashed monocle?
TCG: how did the peanut shells get here?
Ucc: I wish I knew.

Guess What?

2010-09-16T10:38:00.000-07:00

TCG: Here's something to brighten your day. We got an e-mail from X with an attachment. It looks like it might be some kind of form to fill out?

WISIMH: Did you read it? Did you print the form? Can you do even the tiniest little thing that involves exercise of initiative? Do I need to give you detailed instructions for even the most simple task?

WISIMH: No, no, no and yes.

What’s Worse Than Dying During Sex?

2010-09-07T12:29:00.000-07:00

TCG: The yard guys are here. Were you going to tell them something about using the blower to remove the dropped birdseed from DOB’s door where it attracts rats?

UCC: Kinda busy here, and plus I’m shy, can you do that?

WISIMH: Since it’s your mother and her rat problem that is only made worse by her failure to sweep up dropped birdseed from immediately outside her door?

Time passes

TCG: I told them about the birdseed, but now they may not do the patio…

UCC: What…

WISIMH: …the fuck?

TCG: Well, maybe I wasn’t real…. About the…. They may not use the blower at all? I’m not sure.

Sure enough, they’re starting to rake the patio outside the window where I’m trying to do e-mail. I go out and explain - using actual words - that they can use the blower as usual, but please to get all the birdseed and blow it downhill from DOB’s door instead of merely moving it into my part of the patio. I’m speaking to two guys, one of whom doesn’t have very much English and they seem to understand me better than TCG. Language is not the only barrier to comprehension here in the Fortress of Attitude.

WISIMH: I need to master the ability to release a little steam from my ears like cartoon characters who are pushed to the brink of insanity by unreasonable behavior of other cartoon characters. This would presumably keep my head from exploding when I am confronted with the increasingly common communication snafus. Until I do master this steam-releasing trick, I mentally review the Catholic Popes who died during sex.

First, there was Leo VII (936-9), who died of a heart attack; then John VII (955-64), who was bludgeoned to death by the husband of the woman he was “with” at the time. Then another John XIII (965-72), who was also murdered by a jealous husband; and last in this line was Pope Paul II (1467-71), who allegedly died while being sodomized by a page boy. Thanks to The Google, I’m saved again.

Martinis and Lemon Merngue Pie

2010-08-26T13:44:00.000-07:00

DOB is having trouble with the seatbelt in the back seat. She can’t see to reach it, can’t see to clip it on, and can’t figure out how to gently pull it out so it doesn’t catch and freeze too short. A while back, TCG fixed it. He put a paper clamp on the seatbelt at the fully-extended position. Now, it doesn’t contract before DOB can find the clip. Now, it doesn’t contract at all. Now it leaves a long loop of loose seatbelt which DOB generally sits on and then can’t manage to untangle. So, we are trying to teach her to pull the entire seatbelt outside the door, enter and sit, then reach and pull it across her girth and latch it. It might be easier to teach a cat to quack, but who’s to say?

In the following dialogue, I can only report what I hear, and between my hearing impairment and DOB’s tendency to mumble and drool her words it’s entirely possible that I am doing her conversational contributions an injustice. Then again, when I do manage to hear an entire sentence, I’m reminded that the definition we learned is that a sentence is a word, or group of words that express a complete thought. DOB is successful at completing thoughts as she is at performing rocket surgery, albeit slightly less accomplished than a detoxing drunken hobo with advanced dementia.

Backing the car out of the carport, and waiting until the worst of the struggling and mumbling in the back seat subsides

TCG: How’s it coming with the seatbelt?

DOB: Can’t quite get…. Dat dere thing… lemon meringue pie…. Ooof, ugh

UCC: Need a hand?

DOB: The whasaname? can’t find it. Adlai Stevenson... thermonuclear?

TCG: (In an undertone to UCC) Remember the airline steward who, in giving the seatbelt demo, said “If you don’t know how a seatbelt works, you shouldn’t be permitted outside the house on your own”?

UCC: Sadly, yes.

Tried to get this weekly show on the road early because I have a docent meeting tonight, the only one I never miss each year: Cadillac margaritas and pot luck. This theme of making me late is an undercurrent to today's Sushi Wednesday lunch.

TCG manages to place our sushi order without even going through the motions of asking DOB to order. Way too many obstacles to overcome to get her to read a menu, select a dish, and remember it long enough to tell the waiter, let alone to actually understand what the words on the menu mean. Or recognizing what she ordered when it's set before her.

DOB: What are you drinking?

UCC: An apple martini (which is to an appletini as an ahi salad is to a Mrs. Paul’s fish stick) Wanna taste?

DOB: (crickets amid puzzlement)

UCC: (Handing her the martini glass, safely sipped down to a level where she won’t slosh it all over the table) Have a taste.

DOB: (Taking martini glass and raising and sipping – all in slow motion) No thanks, I have my wine. Slurp, glug… while my guitar gently weeps… Mmmm….

WISIMH: Wait. What? Your guitar? Have I suddenly learned to understand DOBonics? Like I’ve heard people who immerse themselves in a foreign language report sudden bursts of clarity? This is a stage of growth I never anticipated. Might I also then be able to speak DOBonics?

DOB: (who has apparently been “talking” the whole time I’m musing with a metaphorical lightbulb over my head)… Mom never suspected it was eel…. Punic War… told her it was whitefish…. Res ipsa loquitor… slurp, glug.

WISIMH: Decoding the language doesn’t impart comprehension. The map is not the territory. The words are not the meaning. The single martini is not nearly enough.

After a few glasses of wine, the conversation between DOB and TCG takes on the familiar passive aggressive heat, burning the edges of their words in acrid smoke which is not concealed by their obligatory “heh heh” which is supposed to indicate you don’t really hate each other because you’re just kidding when you say hateful things.

TCG: If you want more wine, perhaps you’d like to consider buying lunch one of these days. Heh.

DOB: Yeah, huh?

TCG: I am a good son to take such good care of you. Make sure you tell J.

DOB: Oh, wise guy, huh? N’yuk n’yuk. I shot an elephant in my pajamas.

TCG: Angry bitch. Heh

DOB: Lamentable tragedy of the plot of Lost… more wine. What are you drinking?

UCC: The dregs of my dreams. Wanna taste?

DOB: I don't know why I'm still here... Prunes decimal tick tock.

The drive home is always the best, because of the broken-record quality of the conversation. DOB usually settles on a single question and repeats it a dozillion times. One week it was did I get enough to eat or drink, for whatever the fucking good her plaintive concerns would do me if I was still hungry. Today’s is concern for my general malaise.

DOB: Are you ok, UCC?

UCC: I’m fine mother.

DOB: Is UCC ok?

TCG: Well, she may have just voided her urine, in which case she may better now?

DOB: Ok, well… legend of sleepy hollow… matchstick pantsuit… ok?

UCC: Well, it may be not so much recently voided, as previously voided and now marinating on a hot back seat that is 99F in the shade today.

TCG: Roger that.

DOB: Then again, can’t get the …. Oofff, ghughh, ahhh… before the floorwax harvest Pinkerton. And whatnot.

WISIMH: She’s as smart as paint, only she smells worse when she dries. And of course, I am late for my meeting, stressed and pissed, with TCG saying sushi with DOB is only once a week for shit sake and can’t I just do what he wants and me explaining it’s just once a fucking year for this meeting dude and your quoty hands compromise consisting of doing exactly what you wanted in the first place hasn’t really established your generous and compassionate love so much as it confirms your complete obliviousness to what is going on here. You ask me what I want to do, and when I spell it out in perfect and simple detail (e.g. go somewhere else for lunch where the wait isn’t so long) and then you say what you want to do and then we do it your way and then you say well I asked you what you wanted to do like why am I always pissed and whatnot. Lemon meringue pie mother fuckers.

DOB: (Apparently feeling the heat radiating off my fevered brain) Are you ok dear?

Report from Senility Base

2010-08-24T12:42:00.000-07:00

DOB: I took that there..... uh.... with the ummmm... and need to...

WISIMH: Boy howdy.

The maid service declined to clean DOB's toilet today because she repeatedly and badly misses the target when she poops and in two weeks the accumulated caked-on fecal material has made some impressive stalagmites in the general vicinity of the toilet.

The lady who comes 2x/wk to bathe DOB had a family emergency, making this a week when only one "bath" will be administered. That also means maybe at most, two changes of clothes.

In fairness, she does change her adult diapers daily (when she remembers). In yet more fairness, she puts used diapers in a plastic trash bag that she leaves with the top open to facilitate use. Since she doesn't take out her trash any more, it sits by the door leading to my side of the house, where it's maximum olfactory benefit wafts my way. She either has her heater on too high and too long, or runs the ac with the adjacent window open, metaphorically cooling Silver Spring.

DOB doesn't change into pajamas at night, and does not sleep between sheets, but instead collapses on top of bedspread covered with an afgan. The never-slept-in sheets are nevertheless changed every two weeks by the maid service and washed and folded by me. The filthy bedspred and pillow cover may make it into the wash 3 times a year.

There is shag carpeting in most of the bedroom and a flat carpet in the kitchen area of DOB's room. Between remnents of stinky old dog and long term and serious incontenence, you would not want to take a carpet sample to a lab or see a report of pathogens colonizing in the shag carpet. Don't go there in bare feet.

TCG is barely better. I have to remind him to bathe twice a week (sometimes once), to put on clean trousers, to get a haircut, to shave. What is it about personal hygeine that so befuddles these people?

DOB has a mind like a steel sponge. Walt Whitman said he didn't care if he contradicted himself because "I am large, I contain multidues." Now, imagine that these unwashed multitudes make lots of meaningless noise, have advanced dementia and yeast and/or urinary tract infections. Imagine that instead of using emoticons when they e-mail, they converse by making inscrutible facial expressions in pathetic attempts to communicate without using specific nouns or verbs. And by "converse" I mean they don't listen - even to whatever you'd call coming out of their own mouths.

DOB, at 92, is the healthiest person in the house. TCG, at 68 can't walk without a walker, makes huffing and puffing sounds ALL DAY LONG, with an "holy shit!" thrown in periodically to see if I'm listening. He really plays to the audience too. Ahhhhh.... Laugh -and the world laughs with you. Rant - and the world laughs at you.

But I get money for nothing, have good books to read, a garden to tend and controlled substances when I can't otherwise forgive my roomates for using my air. Plus, I have a kitty who loves me, friends and family who provide support and encouragement, and a healthy fear of being caught that deters me from contemplating homicide. Also, I may or may not have an immortal soul.

And a mystic once told me that before I died, I'd have a moment of absolute clarity when I would understand the entire mystery of the universe. So, I've got that going for me.

Timing is Everything

2010-08-18T14:14:00.000-07:00

My unwritten rule of blogging here is that I can only say things in fun, not in anger. That’s been increasingly hard to do lately, so I’ve shut the hell up. But there’s funny and then there’s funny. I have some kind of cardiac problem. I’m getting a test today and another in 2 weeks and maybe somebody will believe me. Meanwhile, here’s some stuff that’s funny, but not really funny funny.

I’ve been out in the yard in the 90 degree heat and I wrenched my lower back. I come inside, tell TCG that I’m going to take the tomatoes out of the oven, turn it up, make a complicated meatloaf recipe, and then take a shower. So I do all but the last step. The kitchen is as hot as outside, but smells delicious. So, then I repor to TCG again, because if I don’t check in every hour or so he worries that I’m getting too much quality time with me and insists I listen to him ignore me….

UCC: Meatloaf in oven. Heading into take a show-

TCG: Come here and let me take your blood pressure. I’ve figured this new cuff out.

WISIMN: Yup. He’s on send. No point in trying to send a message about how hot and tired I am and how much I need that shower.

He puts on the cuff, explaining that the machine will do shit that takes a long time.

TCG: So, it does three measurements and then displays the average. Takes about 5 minutes. Have you done it that way?

UCC: No. But I’m not supposed to ta-

TCG: Blah blah? Repeated several times and ending in an interrogatory.

UCC: Talk later, not during measurement.

Fucker kept it up the entire 5 minutes, which did things to the final reading that made it high.

I hear DOB’s microwave when I step into the shower. I take long showers. It’s still humming. I know what this means: the dreaded discombobulation about setting the clock and setting a cooking time.

UCC: (Trying not to show my degree of pissed off and save face) I can hear a buzz in by the bathroom, can you find it?

TCG: Walking back and nodding.

Time passes. Lots of time. Setting the clock on the microwave is a 3-step process a monkey could learn. DOB can’t learn.

This morning. Same story.

TCG: I have to make some signs for DOB

UCC: Meaning, I have to get off the computer?

TCG: When you can.

WISIMH: She can only break instructions into tiny pieces and can’t sew them together again. Even if you write it on a sign with letters three inches tall. And think! We’re off to our weekly sushi/too much alcohol lunch. All three of us. In and for salvation for my potential victims.

A True American Hero

2010-08-02T12:47:00.001-07:00

Every Wednesday we go to lunch and get sushi and 2 martinis for UCC. All attempts to maintain a volley of conversational exchanges with DOB bounce off her like a tennis ball tossed at a brick wall, but without leaving a tiny tennis-ball scuff. During a single lunch, she will ask what is on various plates 4 or 5 times for each item. She has a short term memory like a leaking boat and you can’t bale fast enough to keep from slowly melting into the surface of the placid lake, leaving no imprint except ephemeral expanding ripples, soon gone. Here’s a sample:
UCC: What’s that?
TCG: Jicima. Wanna taste?
(crickets)
UCC: What’s that?
TCG: Still jicima.
UCC: What’s that?
DOB: No. I don’t know.
UCC: Either Jicima or a copy of your resume, last updated in the middle of the previous century.
DOB: I don’t know. No.
WISIMH: Letting my hearing aid batteries die with dignity before we embarked for lunch, and thus softly suffocating the sounds of reality like a pillow on a sleeping face. That was an inspired decision.
UCC: Nobody knows. No.

Later that same generation…
UCC and TCG have just come from the butcher and I’ve loaded the groceries but am still rooting around in the tailgate, going through the recyclable grocery bags to find the one I take out at our next stop at the Farmer’s Market because it has pouches to separate vegetables. I can’t find it. TCG is standing there watching me, clearly waiting to get my attention so he can speak.
UCC: I can’t find the canvas sack with the separate partitions. I want it to--
TCG: No. Did you get the receipt?
UCC: --take to the farmer’s market. And yes. I’m going to write the debit amount in my check---
TCG: No. The point is, did she give you the amount to write in your checkbook?
UCC: (waving receipt and checkbook) No, the point actually is that I was looking for the grocery sack. And didn’t find it. And yes, I have the debit amount on the receipt she gave me: $94.15.
TCG: Then what did she give me?
WISIMH: A rash? A one-way ticket to Crazytown? An enigma wrapped in a mystery, stuffed into a small canvas sack full of rocks, and tossed over a bridge into torrential waters? The latest excuse for failing the test of time?
UCC: I don’t know, dear.
TCG: (Looking at the copy of the receipt he retrieved from the grocery bag.) Did you write down $94.15?
UCC: (waving receipt and checkbook, where I’ve been doing just that as he could see if only he wasn’t intent on putting the car into reverse and leaving it there while we have this discussion, so the entire conversation is accompanied by the beep-beep of backup) Yes, dear.
TCG: Look! A squirrel! (or, that’s what I think I hear when he’s busy interrupting his own interruptions, but it may be that when he makes my ears bleed everything sounds like that.)
WISIMH: Your attention spans are as long as a red wool scarf sliced into femtometers and boiled, and don’t ask me why the scarf is red. It’s about concealing the bleeding from my ears. Lucille Ball once said: I’m not funny. What I am is brave. What she said.

Joy Riding Around

2010-05-18T14:18:00.001-07:00

DOB and TCG are going out. For her to do some banking. She just had her visit from the home healthcare giver and had bath, and her wet hair is plastered to her almost bald scalp.

UCC Are you ok to go out with your head wet? It’s cold out.

DOB: Feeling her head, finding it wet, acting like a sleepwalker abruptly awoken. Saying, in surprise: I’d forgotten about that.

WISIMH: Of course you have, bless your little heart. It happened more than 2 minutes ago.

UCC: And do you want a hat?

DOB: Feeling her head, finding it wet, acting like a sleepwalker abruptly awoken. Saying, in surprise: I’d forgotten about that, or words to that effect.

WISIMH: And had you forgotten that the popularity of Jell-O peaked in the mid 1960s, and was often made by incorporating real and artificial dairy products. Had you forgotten that these days, gastronomic experts consider Jell-O déclassé. , the war on poverty, financial meltdown, the GWOT, or the madwoman screaming in the attic?

UCC: Blah, blah, hat?

And, accompanied by the sound of crickets from both DOB and TCG, I got my gardening hat and handed it to her, but finding her too dumbfounded to take it, putting it on her fucking head.

UCC: … there ya go.

Much huffing ensues as the party departs from the front door.

Two minutes pass.

My cell phone rings.

UCC: Yellow.

Pause, sound of fumbling, hang up.

Cell phone rings.

UCC: YELLOW!

TCG: …know if you could you go into Mother’s room....

WISIMH: Blah, blah, could YOU provide a bit more information? For example: relating the funny story about, say, WHY the fuck I should I go into DOB’s room? Is there an Improvised Explosive Device waiting to send me to Allah?
Sadly, I understand, you are incapable of using too many words at once. You are running out of your words. Increasingly, you are relying on me to supply the fucking context you no longer can muster. What happens when you begin to run out of thoughts, in addition to running out of words to express them?

UCC: In breathless anticipation: Ok, I’m there.

TCG: Can you get her phone on the table?

WISIMH: I’ll buy a clue, Alex. Which of the three tables in DOB’s room?

(Crickets)

UCC: Got it! (on the third table, honestly.)

TCG: Can you bring it to us?

UCC: OK, I’ll wait ‘til I hear the driveway alarm bell.

TCG: We’re here. We haven’t left yet.

WISIMH – although I may have said aloud: What the fuck?

Sushi Wednesday

2010-05-17T11:47:00.000-07:00

Our weekly outing as a family. Here's a sample of the conversation driving to the restaurant.

TCG: There’s one of those trees from the south… you know… marigold?
UCC: Magnol-
TCG: Magnolia! Is this the street where we turn?
UCC: No, I think it’s past that light ahea-
TCG: And there’s more of that funny orange bougainvillea that Mother loves.
DOB: Ugh! Look at that car. What a horrible shade of blue.

Something about bright car colors aggravates her, but it’s usually taxicab-yellow.

TCG: Is this the turn?

Time passes like cold molasses dripping down a tree in Vermont, in February. When I regain consciousness, we’re at the restaurant.

DOB: What’s that?
UCC: Crunchy tuna roll
DOB: What’s this?
UCC: That’s the teriyaki chicken bowl you ordered. Is it good?
DOB: Yes. No. Not the broccoli. Or the carrots. Are you using that?

Pointing to my tiny saucer I’m using for dipping sushi in soy sauce and ignoring her empty saucer adjacent. Not waiting for my answer, she begins stacking her broccoli on it. Not uneaten broccoli, mind you. She can’t see what she’s eating, so she shovels amazingly large bites into her mouth and begins to pre-chew – pre gum actually – things. Then she is able to remove things too al dente (being nolo dente herself) by rummaging around inside her mouth with a finger, pinching lumpy things dripping in saliva daintily out, and placing them carefully on the reject pile in my soy sauce saucer. Carrots, she can mostly see, so they’re stacked, mostly unmasticated, among the broccoli.

DOB: What is that?
UCC: It’s my crunchy tuna roll.
DOB: What’s in it.
UCC: Crunchy tuna mostly.
WISIMH: But it also has a bit of wasabi and sesame seeds, and the barest hint of bitter regret at the breakdown in social discourse. When I eat it, the crunch makes a barely audible cri de coeur that sounds like faint mourning for all the lost opportunities for assisted suicide.

DOB: Oh, more broccoli. I can’t chew broccoli, even though I’m getting a new tooth. Right here, see?
WISIMH: Jesus Christ cosigning on a foreclosed mortgage, we don’t need to fucking see it every time you eat.
UCC: Yes, I see your new tooth. What is that? (pointing at her teriyaki bowl)

Blank look. Like the expression on the face of a dishrag crumpled in a corner of the sink. In fact, with miscellaneous peices of chicken and rice stuck to her chin and the front of her shirt, very much like a dishrag.

UCC: It’s your teriyaki chicken bowl. Is it good?
WISIMH: You’ve got some stupid on your face, right there, in the corner of your mouth. No other side.

Time Travel

2010-04-30T16:34:00.000-07:00

DOB: Time keeps going backward!

UCC: On you microwave. Yes. That's how it works when you're cooking something in the microwave, right? Wait. There's nothing in the microwave.

DOB: I have spent 30 minutes trying to set the time, but the time keeps going backwards.

WISIMH: Jesus Christ in a spaceship! Do you have more than 2 brain cells that You could rub together to make any heat?

UCC: So. Umm, do you have the directions for setting the microwave clock?

DOB: Yep, but they don't work.

WISIMH: That's ok, neither do my superpowers in special education, my ability to see in the dark, or my ability to make time run backwards, but what the he'll.

UCC: (Following the seemingly idiot-proof 3-step instructions. Sucessfully!)
Well, wadda ya know, time has stopped running backwards. And the microwave is not cooking air.

DOB: Fine, but now it is standing still. It says 10:44. If it stays that way, so be it.

UCC: Well. It will stay that way for a minute. Most working clocks will advance about a minute per minute.

WISIMH: Except when I converse with you. Time slows to a glacial creep when one attempts to communicate with you.

There follows about a hundred years of profound silence as we watch the microwave digital display intently. Then, eureka! 10.45!

DOB: Looks like it may be working. For now.

UCC: Glad I could help.

Deja What Now?

2010-04-23T10:33:00.000-07:00

Someday we'll look back on this and laugh, and burst into tears, and choke up, and break down into hysterical, uncontrolable maniacal laughter.

Solitude

2010-04-11T17:56:00.000-07:00

Women are expected to create the entire domestic space. When men are left alone, they fall apart. Cats wonder the halls mournfully

Recurring Thoughts

2010-03-23T15:32:00.000-07:00

I'm dreaming of zombies again.

Laundry and Passive Agression

2010-03-21T11:41:00.001-07:00

Sunday is wash day. I used to do three loads by separating light, dark and medium. A while back I figured a labor and power saving alternative. I now dump all of DOB’s wash into the same load and do it first, and separate mine and TCG’s stuff into a light and dark load. I still have to do hers in hot water, but I can do the last do my two loads in cold. Also, the same three loads, but I don’t have to hand-sort through the urine-soaked clothing first. The down side is that all the Kleenex left in miscellaneous pockets is concentrated in one load of wash. This means that when put into the dryer, the careful paste of tissue is dried and thoroughly spread in shreds and globs throughout the clothes, and all of that crap in a single load jams up the dryer filter.

So my passive aggressive response is to carefully gather all the Kleenex lint and carefully tuck it down the inside leg of pants, fold it into bath towels and other laundry and otherwise recycle it in her clean clothes. My justification is that upon seeing this, she will be more careful not to leave tissue in the pockets next week. Last week was particularly tissue-loaded. There was enough residual Kleenex to be dispersed throughout the subsequent loads of my clothing. I’ve got a solution for that too – I carefully leave it on TCG’s clean laundry as I sort and fold it on the bed for him to put away. It’s not like I’ve never tried to ask DOB to remove tissue before putting clothing in the wash. Dear god, I have, back in the old days when I still believed there was some cognitive function remaining. Which is about as effective as an XXX adult diaper left on 24 hours at a time is in stopping odor from seeping into every article of clothing in the adjacent area, including her chair and bed.

Why, just this morning…

UCC: (coming to DOB’s room to collect her laundry) How are you this morning?

DOB: I was just getting the laundry ready for you. (Standing in front of the hamper and holding a bunch of clothing and being frozen in place because she’s unable to talk and do anything else concurrently, like, say, getting the hell out of my way.)

WISIMH: What? You were carefully placing tissue in all the pockets?

UCC: Here, I’ve got it. (Trying to reach around DOB to access clothing still in the bottom of the hamper – way out of her reach – and having a bit of difficulty because DOB is still standing in front of the hamper holding some dirty clothes at the maximum olfactory level for me to appreciate). Did you have a good night?

DOB: No. I kept waking up.

WISIMH: What? You were tossing and turning and trying to remember today is wash day and you had yet to insert the requisite tissue in your dirty clothes? I can imagine that would keep you up. That, and plus your dog who also sleeps all day and then barks half the night at invisible things outside, and who never shuts up when you yell his name 18 times to make him stop.

UCC: (Holding the dirty laundry and trying to breath through my mouth to avoid the aroma of unwashed granny and urine). I’m sorry to hear you didn’t get a good night’s sleep. Maybe you can make up for it today by napping in your chair.

DOB: I hope so.

WISIMH: Yeah, me too. Otherwise, you might be confused and stupid upon waking tomorrow after yet another sleepless night.

UCC: Yeah, me too.

Authentic German Sausagefest

2010-03-12T16:00:00.000-08:00

I got DOB some authentic German sauerkraut and canned sausages for Xmas. Back then, she was surviving on saltines, Velveeta and powdered milk. Except for the days I’d make us all dinner, or the things I’d tell her clueless son to add to her grocery list. She still had a tooth back then too, and we all still pretended she was independent. Since then, she’s rediscovered the joys of TV dinners and other prepared meals, liquid protein shakes and snack-sized sugar-free pudding. She has a refrigerator that actually chills colder than the cold water faucet, a microwave she uses correctly most of the time, and somebody who makes sure her shopping list gives a minimal chin nod at nutritional sufficiency. She keeps talking about making dinner for all of us, but is apparently waiting for some body to wind her up and get things going, I’m not quite sure how that works.

Yesterday I got a new German pressure cooker that kicks my old leaky-handled 35 year old pressure cooker’s sorry butt. It came with a cook book. I proposed to make German sausages (locally made artisan burgundy pork sausage with sage and warm potato salad with caraway seeds), assuming I’d make this together with DOB’s bottle of sausage and glass of sauerkraut. You know what they say about assuming. There’s no “i” in assuming, mother fucker.

Note to self: Next time you buy her food to cook, pick something you actually like, regardless of the fact that the pressure cooker will cook anything to the masticatory consistency of oatmeal.

UCC: Tonight I’ll do the German meal in the pressure cooker…

TCG: The what now?

UCC: … that DOB has been talking about wanting since Xmas.

WISIMH: And the one we talked about last night from the new pressure cooker book. And the one I was reading to you last night. And the one you got the burgundy sausage yesterday to use. And the one that I all but carved on your forehead in the blood of a freshly strangled white peacock, backwards, so you could read it when you looked in the mirror.

TCG: German Meal? No, no, no, no. SHE wants to make dinner for US. (Pause to deliberate) Iuppose it would be ok if you’d make the potatoes in your pressure cooker.

WISIMH: Give me a fucking break. You don’t know how this is gonna go down? Oh what the hell, I’ll play along.

UCC: That’s cool. Talk to her about it to confirm she wants to do it tonight. I’ll need an hour to put together the potatoes and get the tv tables set up and wine poured et. al.

TCG: Great. I’ll get back to ya.

(Insert time passing by focusing camera on institutional clock with the hands turning about an hour.)

TCG: Know how we said you were going to cook the potatoes and DOB was going to do the sauerkraut and sausages?

UCC: Yup.

WISIMH: I know where this is going, but if I was to attempt to cut to the chase, he’d be left half a lap behind, puffing and blowing and being kafluffled all to hell. In the end, it’s easier to wait it out.

TCG: And how we said we’d time it to all come out together and then she’d come over here so you could put things on the same plate at the same time and serve them to us at our chair by the tv where we’ll sit and wait and drink the wine you thoughtfully poured?

Ok, I made that last part up.

UCC: Yup.

TCG: Well, what do you think about putting it all into the pressure cooker using the nifty trivet and steamer try to separate the layers and whatnot?

UCC: That’s actually what the recipe I read to you and discussed in some detail actually calls for. Coincidently, it’s what I proposed both last night and just now.

TCG: Then, let’s keep the option open, and I’ll check with DOB.

(Insert scene where that institutional clock creeps ahead about ten minutes while I gouge my eyes out with an antique pin and blood pours down my silently screaming face.)

TCG: (Returning from visiting DOB’s room) Here’s the sauerkraut and the sausages. Can you do the whole thing and we’ll call DOB when it’s time for her to come over and gum dinner with us.

UCC: You betcha!

WISIMH: Didn’t that work out best for us after all? Kinda like we wouldn’t have had Camus’ masterpiece “The Plague” but for that pesky little yersina pestis? Some would say it’s karma. I prefer to say it’s a healthy shot of butterscotch liquor in my pomegranate juice.

Discombobulation:

2010-02-12T17:44:00.000-08:00

A state of disconcerting confusion

It’s been cold lately. Ok, for So Cal, cold. We’ve had unseasonable precipitation lately. Ok, not snow, rain. Not a blizzard or even a flood. But still. I asked TCG to make a fire last night.

We had two presto-logs left: a five hour and a two hour. He lit them both. In the fireplace. At the same time. Together.

TCG: It’s 6 pm. We’ll have a nice warm fire til midnight.

UCC: !

WISIMH: Actually 2 + 5 = 5 hours of fire if you start the two logs together at the same time. You could have started one, and at the end of its life, put the other in. Had you done so, that would have given us consecutive fire instead of concurrent fire.

UCC: Great. Thanks for the fire. It’s getting smoky in here.

TCG: Yeah, it does that in the beginning. Until it warms up.

UCC: Maybe if you didn’t turn on the blower until the fire caught…

WISIMH: … you moron.

(The blower is set of six 2” pipes bent in a “C” shape to hold the wood in the crook of the C. The blower is a fan that takes air in from the bottom and blows it out the top. If there is smoke in the bottom, it is heated, atomized, and blown into the room in a fine fog. Not something wise for a guy with COPD. )

TCG: But then you don’t get the heated air, and I’m freezing.

WISIMH: It’s more than choosing my battles. It’s choosing whether to invest any of my dwindling patience in an attempt at communication about something. It’s a communication triage: what do I really need to communicate, vs. what might merely be nice to communicate. Besides, I like inhaling smoke as much as the next guy. Coping mechanism or cry for help. Besides, he is cold and he wanted a quicker, hotter fire.

UCC: I do appreciate you being around.

TCG: We have it pretty good.

UCC: Yeah (coughing) we do.

Lights Out

2010-01-21T10:58:00.000-08:00

Could be the worst storm in almost 100 years (1916) on the way. National Weather Service says two storms, local forecaster says merging into one mother of all storms, just about to get underway. We’re no better equipped to handle monsoons in So Cal than most Floridians are to handle snow, or than most bunny rabbits are to handle corporate lawyers.

So, I started this time yesterday, filling oil lamps, cannibalizing 4 dirty old lamps to end up with one working lamp. Found all the candles and matches. Laid out crap on dinning room table to get ready for the dark, including pliers, WD40, scissors. Washed the oil lamps, covered with dust and very old termite sawdust. Power went out just before 14:00 yesterday, resumed at 23:00. Ahhh, but what adventures we had when the light were out.

Thanks the gas, we had a stove, although the water heater and furnace stopped because both are operated by electrical controls. I was able to keep my Italian wedding soup simmering on the stove. TCG took DOB to the lab for routine tests, getting caught in the slow-motion nightmare of trying to get DOB from car to building at the nano-second that the skies opened up and dropped raindrops the size of Volkswagens. Can’t you picture TCG, huffing and puffing to get her moving, and saying, in that slo-mo deep movie guy voice: “N…Nnnn…ooo… ooo!!!” as Perverse Nature laughed in the background? Good times.

So, anyway, after they get home, just about at dark, having stopped for Italian food because after several abortive attempts to use his iPhone w/ Bluetooth in the car, there was enough confusion in the air. I simply gave up trying to convey anything about light situation to TCG, because he was stuck in Send mode. He and DOB went out to late lunch on the way home, so they arrived just as the last light left the sky.

Fortunately, I had lights outside the front door and immediately inside, including several configurations of wax candles and those battery-operated tea lights. I could hear incoherent babble from DOB, concurrent with the urgent inarticulate cry for help from TCG before the door was fully opened. Finally, I was able to impress upon them both (yeah, right) we needed to review lighting options immediately.

UCC: (TO TCG) I set out candles and oil lamp on the dinning room table. You need to proceed there, sit the fuck down and shut the fuck up. It’s getting dark. See if you can get some of the other oil lamps going--

TCG: (Talking over me) Here, these are the leftovers from Centifoni’s. Mother had lasagna and I had angel hair pasta with blah blah…

UCC: (Patiently taking the dripping bag and walking in to kitchen. Dripping? Because have contents shifted? Well, yes. Wiping off container and placing it dark refrigerator) Muttering.

TCG: …. we got soaked at the lab. The rain started the instant we got out of the car, one v-e-r-y long parking space away from the building entrance.

UCC: Focus! You need to think about whether she can be trusted with live flame, which would be risky even if she had the sense of a retarded caveman. Think how flammable our house is. Think how stupid she is. Think---

TCG: (Talking over me) There were only two people ahead of us at the lab…

UCC: I’ll get DOB into her room, changed into dry clothes and explain her lighting options. Meanwhile, you check out the oil lamp situation.

TCG: Blah blah, blah (because I’ve walked away to get DOB out of her gape-jawed stall, parked on her walker in the middle of the room listening to me trying to get TCG to the dinning room table and her into her fucking room to shut that whining dog’s pathetic cries, so I don’t actually hear what he continued to say.)

DOB: We had angel-hair pasta and some…. oh, you know, that…

UCC: Lasagna. (Pointing to the 3-candle candelabra, alight on her kitchen table). It’s getting dark, let’s get you out of those wet clothes. (Trying to get DOB to walk quickly, even in dry weather, is an exercise in attempted violation of the law of thermodynamics about biddies (sic) at rest wanting to stay at rest) See the candles?

DOB: (Gazing solemnly in what can most favorably be described as a bemused and baffled look; but which veers closer to the slack-jawed blind-gaze-of-the-terminally-comatose end of the scale).
(…Crickets…)

Then, she begins this pornographically postmodern striptease attempt, gracefully slowed not by skill, so much as inability to lift her fat arms over her fat head.

WISIMH: Ok, I’m not so much captivated by this, as I am vomiting in my mouth. There’s not much to do except help her disrobe and pretend to understand her lunatic raving, muffled by the shirt over her head. Don’t even try to communicate in any meaningful way. Breathe. Wait, belay that! The room stinks like sick wet dog and stale urine.

So later, TCG goes out in the car looking for oil lamp oil, wick, and it goes without saying, some candles and matches; which however, since it went without saying it went without thought. Wait until you see what helpful stuff he DID get.

TCG: (returning to the house, beginning to speak to me before even registering where I might be, like, for instance, bleeding out on the floor at his feet, where he would still be talking as he tripped over my dead body) I went to A, the then to B, and finally, someone at C told me Dixiline had lamp oil and wicks. I went there, but they were closed.

UCC: Did you get some more candles or matches?

TCG: Oh, no, you didn’t tell me that!

WISIMH: You broke the chimney on that lamp! You spilled lamp oil all over the fucking table trying to consolidate limited supply in working units! You left other unspeakable mess behind, and god help me if you’d think to get your own fucking tools or clean the fuck up after yourself.
And now, for something completely different.

UCC: So what DID you get?

TCG: I almost got those oils you get to stick in aromatherapy bottles, with the sticks?

WISIMH: Thank goodness you didn’t do such a bonehead thing, you charming man.

UCC: What…

WISIMH: ..the fuck…

UCC: DID you get?

TCG: Tiki Torch Oil! (spoken triumphantly, with no more trace of irony than the trace of a grimace could be detected on my own smiling face.)

WISIMH: Aggggh! I’m going blind! Tiki torches are alcohol-based and burn like gasoline. This would not be appropriate for indoor use by people who had, let’s say, average competence and common sense. Imagine giving a Moltov cocktail of an oil lamp to DOB. I gave her a fucking battery-operated tea light earlier, showed her carefully how it wasn’t a real flame, and how the switch on the back could turn it on and off. When I returned later, upon smelling smoke, she had carefully placed the electric teal light safely in a cereal bowl, presumably to be fire-safe and catch melted wax.

The smell of smoke? Turns out she too, has 2 oil lamps, which haven’t been used in 20+ years, and are thus caked with greasy dust and fossilized termite droppings. Did she clean them before lighting? Seriously? Do you know what that lamp would smell like when lit in a room already damply redolent of the dying dog’s pustulant sores, and her ventilated diaper pail? If you don’t, good.

Later, having tried unsuccessfully to start a dura-flame log, TCG lights a homemade tiki-torch in the dinning room. Did I mention that TCG has COPD? That candle smoke bothers him? That he is an idiot?

TCG: There! How’s that instead of oil lamps?

UCC: (Hurrying to the site of the conflagration, now smoking and with flame a foot high.) That doesn’t work inside, too much smoke and CO2. Put it out.

TCG: Blah blah, putting it out, blah blah. WAIT! I have a bloody nose!

Spontaneous nosebleeds are TCG’s latest symptom, lovingly cultivated and dramatically performed, replete with plenty of red Kleenex, which he keeps in a flat sheet to dot with blood like some insane performance artist with only red paint. Despite needing a rapt audience for the duration of the nose bleed, it is dutifully interspersed with much apology and insistence that everything’s fine just fine. All suggestions one might make – for example: to do as web-MD advises and pinch nose closed for ten minutes – are declined with much patiently and regretfully sorrowful disappointment at one could be so wonderful and yet so dumb. Sadly shaking his head no. Ahhh….

Now look. I could attempt to recreate the evening’s conversational journey, lexically noncompliant and without context, but last night in the dark DOB was there too. In candlelight, plus the light of the fire I finally started instantly by the simple expedient of following the manufacturer’s instructions. I am reminded that LBJ once said someone was so dumb they wouldn’t know how to pour piss out of a boot if the instructions were written on the bottom. TCG wouldn’t know how to follow directions for lighting a dura-flame log if they were written in huge 3-step process on the log wrapping.

So instead of trying to commit the scintillating conversation to memory, I just kept drinking. I do recall one exchange during this 15-minute episode of Nosebleed Theater (audience will absolutely not be seated once the show has begin!) It exemplifies the quality of the discourse:

DOB: Aunt Hilda used to get nosebleeds all the time.

TCG: Yeah, but she was a bit high-strung, (spoken in an ominous undertone that hints of dark Freudian complications, most likely having to do with The Change)

DOB: But she was skinny. Hilda’s bloody noses were nothing like yours.

TCG: I’m skinny too. I now weight more than you. I’m the fattest person in this house.

WISIMH: Which makes as much sense in the middle of a nosebleed conversation as Biblical references do stamped on American weapons in the GWOT. It is a Good Thing that, in addition to the lights, I had the forethought to put out the jug of generic Baileys Irish Cream and a couple of glasses. And plus, I had the foresight to drink an entire glass before you guys got home.

I refilled my glass twice more during the entertainment portion of the evening’s show. He can’t start a fire. He can’t fix a lamp when all he has to do is fill it with the fucking right kind of oil. He can’t be trusted to think of anything on his own and now he can’t even competently follow directions. I’ve confronted the demon of having no intellectual stimulation or meaningful communication with either of them. Now, I’m beginning to suspect there’s another demon around the next corner. I’ll have to do everything. Who will check to be sure I don’t burn down the house? On second thought, that might be a mercifully brief way to end the pain.

On third thought, I think I’ll stick around. I’m beginning to see our times together here in the Fortress of Attitude as like those black and white episodic shows I saw on Saturday morning at the movie theater when I was a kid. Each episode ended with a cliff-hanger. The plot moves forward slower than an old lady on a walker in a rain storm. The hero walks into ambushes. The helpless heroine gets into trouble and has to be rescued. Repeatedly. Her father, the scientist, can save us all. But the bad guys get to Daddy and drug him and he doesn’t make any sense. Taken thusly, this happy home isn’t such a bad place to stick around, even in the dark.

Good Riddance, first decade of the new millennium

2009-12-30T12:13:00.000-08:00

“It is this deep blankness is the real thing strange.
The more things happen to you the more you can't
Tell or remember even what they were.

“The contradictions cover such a range.
The talk would talk and go so far aslant.
You don't want madhouse and the whole thing there.”

- William Empson, Let it Go

More things keep happening to me. I’m sitting here in the madhouse trying to decide whether to enumerate my resolutions for the new year and/or decade, or to make my predictions about what mischief will happen next. Then again, perhaps, I’d do better to predict what won’t happen next year. Here goes.

DOB won’t remain on her feet through January. I foresee another fall in darkness, a midnight call, another rambling tale that begins with “I don’t know how this happened…” a trip to the ER, and too much hospital vending machine coffee.

TCG won’t exercise, walk, take any preventive measures to forestall his own mental and physical decline, and accordingly, the gathering dark will increasingly envelop him and threaten me.

UCC won’t make the cut to appear on my new favorite reality show: Hoarders. This is apparently a recognized clinical condition in which the hoarder turns to the accumulation of stuff as a means of clinging to happiness. Which actually, gives me an idea for a resolution. I hereby resolve to use the stuff I have before buying more stuff for the same purpose.

Whatever compassion I may have for the mentally ill, I find I have none for losers diagnosed as hoarders. I have the opposite condition: crumbs on the kitchen counter, clothing draped over doorknobs and even doors themselves, and the alluvial clutter accumulating on side tables and other flat surfaces. These things drive me crazier than I should be, faster than anyone should be driven.

One hoarder on a recent episode was found to have not one, but two dead cats buried beneath the 5,000 pounds of garbage stacked three feet high in every room. Flattened and mummified to resemble cat-shaped pancakes covered with cat hair. Please. I live with roommates that would soon become eligible for this show if it were not for my heroic – but ultimately doomed – efforts to throw out the trash slightly slower than it accumulates. Isn’t there a law of physics that decrees everything is returning to dust and mummified dead cats?

In fairness, it’s two to one here in the Fortress of Attitude. As the inhabitant with the most compos in my mentis under this roof, I am the driver of the clown car that is our lives, struggling to keep this freak show on the road, veering more precariously toward the abyss on either side of the mountain of our collective lives. Picture that early Disney cartoon in which Mickey and Goofy are driving a car pulling an airstreamish trailer.

I think as we age, darkness at the edge of our vision creeps slowly in, narrowing the focus of our thoughts the same way that twilight shadows gather at the end of day, narrowing our vision into a gathering darkness. We can’t think as fast, or as broadly as we did in youth. Our awareness shrinks to exclude first the “complicated” plots of Law & Order episodes, then our ability to distinguish between actual “news” on TV and the garbage that spews from the talking heads purporting to be “opinion.” Next, we can’t distinguish between news and infomercials for exercise equipment, or Big Pharma ads for the latest prescription drugs to cure us of invented diseases like restless mouth syndrome. We have to have things explained at least twice. We gradually lose the ability to pursue imaginative flights of creative and interesting fancy to such heights as those we scaled with youthful energy and vision. In the end, our universe shrinks to fit the surface of our own bodies like a loose fuzzy bathrobe: we lose all sense of charm, ability to make pleasant conversation, all consideration, grace, not to mention habits of personal hygiene and polite table manners.

Eventually, we can’t talk or even remember what happened. We talk aslant, we contradict, misremember, and are overtaken by blind paranoia. We are reduced to the status of roommates in the same madhouse. So, happy new decade everybody. Let this decade go.

Breakfast of Champions

2009-12-28T12:31:00.001-08:00

UCC: Did you test your fasting blood sugar this morning?
DOB: Yes, of course.
UCC: What was it?
DOB: I don’t look, I just write it down. I don’t remember.
UCC: Well. (checking) it was 97 today, and also yesterday morning. Do you know why you take your blood sugar?
DOB: Yes…. To write it down. Sure.
UCC: Actually, you’re supposed to pay attention to what it is, and more importantly to eat something if its below 100. Did you eat any breakfast?
DOB: No. I don’t usually have breakfast. Just a cup of coffee, and maybe some toast. But I usually get up around six to feed Sandy. He’s a good boy. Then I take my second nap…
WISIMH: …And the first would be when you slip into a coma caused by low blood sugar?
DOB: …. Then I might have some coffee or maybe a piece of toast.
UCC: Diabetics aren’t supposed to skip breakfast. Here, drink this juice. Remember we talked about this before…
WISIMH: … about a million times. You are a champion idiot. But in all fairness, I’m an idiot too for continuing to be surprised at your surpassing stupidity. And speaking of the stinking undead, I’ve been dreaming of the zombies again. I don’t always escape when they chase me, but I’m beginning to think that might be for the best. Last night, I dreamt I won a spelling bee and the word was exsanguination. That makes us both champions.

Where’s a Half human/half bull when you need it?

2009-12-20T10:56:00.001-08:00

Here’s what I have done for the past two weeks. It feels like I’ve been lost and wandering in a maze, while suffering from sleep deprivation and too much caffeine.

Our latest adventure began with DOB’s latest trip to the emergency room in the wee hours of the night. DOB is now safely back home and in the embrace of her loving family, where her caregivers now spend our “waking” hours each day stumbling around in a walking coma feeding her, negotiating her moves from bed to chair and back, emptying a commode chair in which most (but unfortunately not all) of her piss ends up in the bucket, coordinating with a gang of home health people checking her blood sugar and blood pressure (which, of course, we now do before each meal, so who needs them?). In my free time, I try to negotiate the maze of federal, state, regional and community “resources” for either in-home “personal care” (i.e. changing 3X adult diapers, and providing personal hygiene services that would be burdensome enough if the patient was an anorexic dwarf, but which in this case involve a patient whose flab and folds equal the mass of approximately 3 morbidly obese dwarves.

Prior to our recent venture into the dark, I elected not to do any of this in advance, preferring instead to use my energy to plead that TCG pay closer attention to managing DOB’s blood sugar (he didn’t), or to lobby that he take her ailing 80+ pound dog with the open sores on his appendages to the vet (he didn’t).

In retrospect, this was stupid of me. Now, not only do I have to do all the research, record-keeping, and bureaucratic wrangling, pre-paid funeral arrangements, etc. I have to do it while TCG huffs and puffs in my ear and tells me how much he appreciates my help. The fact is that I’m better at this than he is, but the prospect is more daunting than trying to negotiate King Minos’ labyrinth. At least in the labyrinth Deadalus had the delightful prospect of eventually encountering a minotaur who might mercifully tear off his head and slurp his neck like a popsicle, thereby putting an end to his suffering.

Thanks to the magic of Medicare and Secure Horizons we have all these worthless home care services like a nurse who can take blood pressure and blood sugar readings twice a week and copy down from our three times a day log of same. Nursing services we need like a hobo wino needs a glass of chocolate milk. We now also have a physical therapist and an occupational therapist twice a week for the next two weeks. Like DOB is going to be able to get into her shower stall and actually clean between her fat folds as a result of such therapy. What we do need, and have desperately needed all along, and asked each health care professional who stops by, is somebody to bathe her and change her clothes a couple of times a week. But although rumored to be afoot, we’ve seen no evidence of yet. Thus, the funky unwashed smell continues to marinate and evolve almost to the point of self-awareness. Wait: maybe this is how zombies are made.

Should I succeed in completing the application in for Medical (aka Medicaid in California), and should she qualify, and should we then spend down her savings to the point of impoverishment, we might be able to find a Skilled Nursing Facility (which Medicare and Medical might pay for if we assign the facility her entire Social Security check, and if her primary care doc prescribes as medically necessary) or an Assisted Living Facility (which they apparently won’t pay for, but which ironically is actually cheaper than the SNF and more appropriate to her needs) me and TCG might get a life back and our marriage might survive. Otherwise, let’s hope there’s a minotaur there somewhere, maybe back behind the stacks of new adult diapers and plastic-lined bed pads, or behind the trash can that contains said products after marinating in urine for a day or so.

As it is now, I’m stumbling through the waking nightmare my life has become and wondering how much longer I can keep my actual emotions and thoughts shut down enough to keep from screaming “shitfuck” while hitting my roommates upside their heads with a shovel. Last night, after making her dinner and serving it in her room only to find out all she wanted for dinner was another pain pill, she began for the gazillionth time to demonstrate where the pains were and how they were moving around from front to back or whatever. Without thinking things through first, I said “I don’t…” and almost finished what wanted to say “…give a shit”. Instead I managed to finish: “…think it matters where you pain is. The vicodin will find it”. I then drank too much coconut vodka, had an unsatisfying fight with my husband, and went to bed.

Yup. Need that minotaur.

Swing and a Miss

2009-12-16T10:45:00.001-08:00

DOB fell over the other night. We awoke at 2:30 to the sound of her air horn calling us for help. We called 911 for lift assist.

It took until about 3:30 for the ambulance crew to persuade us to take DOB to ER for an x-ray, and for us to persuade them not to also take TCG because of his breathing, gasping, chest-clutching and general dramatics.

Me and TCG finally left the ER about 8:30 the next morning, having taken the doctor’s advice to admit her for further tests to figure out why she fell. Of course the irony here is that stupid isn’t a valid medical diagnosis. Nor, it turned out over the three subsequent days, does it show up on an MRI, a Cat Scan, or in a blood test.

Three nights (four, if you count our vigil in the charming ER suite) in a hospital room turns out to be not only the max her insurance covers, but it’s the minimum needed to disconnect her from any remaining semblance of reason, sanity, continence, coherence or awareness of anything but her moving aches and pains. The x-rays show a broken rib which is probably new, a tiny fracture on T6 which is probably old, and some tiny blood clots in her "brain", evidence of TIA events that are probably also old. Her stinky dog, staying in our side of the house during these nights, had kept TCG up with his whining and crying. As for me, I took a vicodin and slept like the dead.

We’ve been back home for 3 nights. First night, she speed-dials TCG at 12:30. Assuming she’s fallen again, we rush in to find she just wants another vicodin. (Note to self: find out if you can somehow hook a “clapper” up to deliver pain pills on demand.) Between calls to/from doctors, hospital follow-up, and social workers, physical therapists (!) and pharmacists, I went through some of her files to find evidence of regular payments to two different insurance companies, with no information whatsoever about coverage.

Calling for copies of policies, information on claims and surrender values is interspersed with grocery shopping, cooking her meals, testing her blood sugar before each meal, changing her clothes, and emptying her commode chair bucket has taken up the three days since she’s returned home. We’ve also had visits from the home health care nurse and a “placement specialist” who told us we’re pretty much SOL for getting her admitted to a skilled nursing facility or an assisted living facility based on the amount of her Social Security check. I overrode TCG’s offer to subsidize her check by about $1k a month to keep her in a facility. I may have to work for free, but dammed if I’ll sacrifice a big chunk of our meager fixed income to pay for somebody else to wait on her.

Turns out my strategy to expect TCG to take care of these matters was a mistake I’ll be paying for by having to empty her bedpan and change her diapers until the next time she hits the floor. We also learned that she doesn’t use the shower any more because she can’t step over the four-fucking-inch ledge. She gives herself a sponge bath using the kitchen sink and dish sponge and presumably the dish soap, but you’d be forgiven for guessing she doesn’t use soap based on the stench she exudes. And don’t throw up picturing the dish sponge washing her fat folds because the evidence shows she probably doesn’t actually use the dish sponge to wash her dishes anyway. The home health care nurse asked me why I didn’t give her sponge baths and check her diaper rash, and I said it isn’t in my job description. At the time, I was on my knees, trying to pull up DOB’s diapers after a rash check, but I don’t think the nurse appreciated the anger in my voice. I’d rather pick up the used toilet paper DOB drops on the floor after using the commode chair: this apparently is in my job description.

The silver lining is that I learned that the next time she falls over, we will get her to the ER immediately, insist that she be admitted to the hospital, and then simply refuse to take her home. Because I didn’t ask the right questions, make the right noises and/or wear socks that match my sweater, we missed a great opportunity to get her out of the house. I’ve got 2 weeks in the unofficial poll for the next time she falls. Tell Santa I’ve been a good girl.

American Sign Language of Prophecy

2009-12-11T10:59:00.001-08:00

Brushing crumbs off your chest can be reversed into the ASL sign for “happy” by brushing up instead of down. If you always make a practice of making your last crumb-brush in an upward direction, you will be telling all deaf people in your line of sight that you are happy. And, I propose that this will make you actually become happy in some sort of self-fulfilling prophecy kind of way. It might also make you less concerned about the crumbs that always end up on the front of your shirt.

Philosophy of Plumbing

2009-12-09T11:43:00.001-08:00

TCG: Just to let you know, I stopped up the toilet this morning. Pretty impressive.

UCC: Ahh, thanks. I think.

WISIMH: And here I was, just musing about Jacques Derrida’s speculation that civilization is not so much about sameness, but about difference, and hello, you come along and gobsmack me with a report about plumbing problems that makes me lean my head sideways like a confused dog trying to translate your meaning when what he hears always sounds like blah blah blah.

Anti-word of the day: heterogeneous
Composed of parts of different kinds; having widely dissimilar elements.
You like ka-ka conversations which makes us a heterogeneous couple, since I prefer existentialism and philosophy.

Fondue and Fon-don’t

2009-12-04T13:59:00.000-08:00

DOB is wasting away, if you can consider short and somewhat less fat wasting away. She says she has no appetite and no longer cooks. Her blood sugar was again in the range of 68, about half of what her doc says is a good place for her. So, instead of making and serving her more soup – the only kind she wants is mush, but I’m tired of blended butternut squash and blended leek and potato soup. Instead of more soup, I made fondue.

DOB: What’s this? (holding up a bite-sized piece of broccoli)

TCG: Broccoli. You put it on your fondue fork and dip it in the cheese fondue, and eat it.

DOB: (Tasting some and finding her single tooth (#23) is not up to the chewable challenge, sucking all the cheese off of it, daintily fishing it out of her gob and handing it to TCG) Here, I don’t like broccoli.

TCG: (Taking the de-cheesed broccoli.) Ok

UCC: Careful. She’s already tried and rejected that piece.

TCG: Maybe the dog will eat it. (He re-forks it and re-dips it in the fondue. The dog too, sucks all the second coat of cheese carefully off the broccoli and then rejects it) Then again, maybe not.

WISIMH: Gaaak! Is there no line of manners and civilized eating you people will not blithely cross?

UCC: (I then watched in a sort of heart-stopping horror as DOB speared two pieces of bread, dunked and swirled in fondue pot, only to remove and eat one piece. Looking inside the pot) Yup: there’s a few orphan bread and veggies in here.

TCG obligingly rescues the lost veggies and bread from the now-steaming fondue pot with his own fondue fork.

DOB: What’s this?

TCG: A piece of sausage, like a slim jim, only bite-sized. You may have trouble chewing it.

WISIMH: And I may have trouble watching you spear and dunk it in the fondue pot, gum it, drool, fish it out of your mouth, re-dunk it, and feed it to your dog. On second thought, that’s probably better than watching you try to get TCG to eat it after you have failed in your attempt to do so. Any food cooked “al dente” in this house is doomed. What was I thinking serving raw veggies? She can’t even chew a mushroom. On the bright side, perhaps this is the foolproof diet I’m looking for. I have somehow lost my appetite.

DOB: What’s this?

TCG: It’s broccoli, you stick it on your fork and…

WISIMH: I must not listen to this blather. Their unique table manners put the "eck" in eclectic, and their eloquent and informed dinner conversation (sic) inspires in me the most inarticulate musings about what can be done with a piece of raw broccoli. I meditate about whether there might be some action I could take that could awaken in them the same unblinking, train-wreck-watching horror I experience sharing fondue with them and the smelly dog. What could inspire in them the equivalent disgust-provoking flights of fancy about my own table manners? Let’s see. How about if I took my own fondue fork, rotated it gently it in my ear to collect earwax, then speared that hapless, pre-chewed piece of broccoli and dunked it in the fondue pot. As Homer Simpson would say, “Earwax and gouda fondue, mmmmm.”

Happy Birthday DOB

2009-12-01T14:12:00.000-08:00

"Mother, let me congratulate you on
the birthday of your son.
You worry so much about him. Here he lies,
he earns little, his marriage was unwise,
he’s long, he’s getting thin, he hasn’t shaved.

"Oh, what a miserable loving gaze!
I should congratulate you if I may
mother on your worry’s birthday.
It was from you he inherited
devotion without pity to this age
and arrogant and awkward in his faith
from you he took his faith, the Revolution.

"You didn’t make him prosperous or famous,
and fearlessness is his only talent.
Open up his windows,
let in the twittering in the leafy branches,
kiss his eyes open.
Give him his notebook and his ink bottle,
give him a drink of milk and watch him go."

Yevgeny Yevtushenko

Thanksgiving: The Grateful Undead

2009-11-28T12:12:00.000-08:00

Ah, thanksgiving. When we tell our family members we really love them despite their passive aggressive behaviour and their level of stupidity which surpasses the stupidity of my toaster oven. DOB had diarrhea, which I know because I was grooving to my iPod and working on my doll house when she wandered in asking if I had any Keopectate. No wait, Immodium. Whatever.
The next day was thanksgiving, but she didn’t want to join us for dinner. Here’s how that went.

UCC: We’ll be eating about 4 o’clock. Will you be able to join us?

DOB: Actually, no. I can’t get up, or else I just go like (moving both hands down and away to the righ quickly). It just comes out like water whenever I even stand up.

UCC: Thanks for the detailed report. Maybe if you stood up, it would all come out and be over rather than rolling around inside your gut. Would you like me to bring you in a plate of food?

DOB: No, because whenever I stand up, I…(hand motion, but this time down and to the left) and I haven’t eaten anything all day, except I’m drinking water.

UCC: Hmmm. Nothing going in but liquid, and nothing coming out but liquid. I wonder how you could go about remedying that? You say you haven’t eaten all day? You should at least drink some juice so your blood sugar level doesn’t get too low. Remember how the doctor said diabetics shouldn’t skip meals?

WISIMH: Remember any good knock-knock jokes? Ahh, yes, the one about what happens whenever you stand up. Reasoning with you is like trying to explain the second law of thermodynamics to my cat. Reasoning with you when you have low blood sugar is like trying to explain the second law of thermodynamics to a dead cat.

So, I reported this to TCG, but he took no action despite my concern about how when her blood sugar gets too low she tends to fall over and foul her diaper. Later, he took her a plate with some butternut soup and a gob of mashed potatoes smothered in gravy. Later:

TCG: She took her blood sugar and it was 64. So she took a sugar pill. Wasn’t that smart?

WISIMH: And then you did another blood test to see if she’s still in the stupid zone and encouraged her to eat and/or drink? Told her not to take insulin which would bring the number down ever more? Told her to eat something solid, like, say, fiber? No, of course you didn’t you moron. Much better if we wait to see how this all comes out.

TCG: Well, isn’t that good? We can’t do anything right?

UCC: Don’t go there.

WISIMH: Do something right? Do you really want me to answer that honestly? Ok. I wanted her son to take charge and implement some common-sense measures that will prevent the need for me to wipe shit off her fat ass later, and consequently, the need to increase my prophylactic dose of alcohol.

TCG: Seriously. You’re mad when she doesn’t take your advice to eat, and then when she eats a bit of food and takes measures to raise her blood sugar, you’re still mad. What do you want from her? What do you want us to do?

UCC: You need to drop this subject now. You don’t want to be asking me what I think we should do with your mother.

WISIMH: Breathe. Breathe and keep your mouth shut. And visualize a Spring meadow covered with yellow flowers, a starry night sky, a deep dish of apple cobbler with vanilla ice cream, anything but that hand motion about what happens when DOB stands up. And whatever you do, don’t waste your breath trying to explain how whenever DOB does something stupid, TCG frequently makes it worse. Breathe. Happy Thanxgiving, everybody!

Here's to Good Times

2009-11-11T14:15:00.000-08:00

Tonight is Kinda Special.

We're all about supporting small local businesses. Passionate. We're at the Greasy Chinese food buffet next to the Days Inn Adjacent to Route 8, with rows upon rows of tables with steam trays filled with three kinds of pudding next to the macaroni salads, or anorexic crab legs next to grey dough balls labeled dim sum and six kinds of fried rice. Our fellow diners look like they shop at Wal*Mart and/or live at homeless shelters. We fit right in, even though English as a First Language is hella optional here and we're not wearing beer paraphernalia or sleepwear or anything marking us as cowboys.

DOB: This food is good, they have everything I like.

TCG: And it’s cheap too, about $25 per person, including this amusing little $20 bottle of cooking wine labeled Pis Du Chat '02.

DOB: Yeah, I don’t know why people go to more expensive restaurants when you can get this kind of good food so cheap. And you can get as much as you like. We could spend the whole day here.

WISIMH: (Contemplating the prospect )And that’s not even taking into consideration the scintillating conversational topics which include such old favorites as how good your mangy dog is, how you were up all night, and how we “need to go to the store” for you (which we "need" like we need an ice pick in the ear. As much as I like the crab legs, I also enjoy chicken wings coated in dark red 30-weight sweet grease, and fresh spring rolls that you could also use as chocks to level your motor home on your front yard. And plus, I like to eat at restaurants where they have tablecloths).

UCC: How’s J? (your daughter in Florida who calls every day) Has she called today?

DOB: Well, she’s tired at the end of the day, so she usually just comes home from work and gets into bed before she calls me. Sometimes she’ll go out with one of the other girls for a sandwich.

WISIMH: (To myself) This is conversation #4. You already know the script, why do you do this?

WISIMH: (Back to myself) Well, because the other options are equally disappointing. We could have had conversations:
#1 - Sandy is a good boy…
#2 - I just tell him I’m going to the store and he lays down by the window to wait for me…
#3 – this food is good. They have everything I like…

WISIMH: Yeah, but there’s always the chance you can spark The (always entertaining) Mystery Conversation. The one where she tries to talk about some news story she saw on TV but which ends up as a game of 20 questions as you try to figure what the fuck she’s talking about.

(Begin dream sequence in Vaseline focus with scary music like a disco Star Wars medley or barely recognizable cover of Cindi Lauper’s Time After Time in a minor key by Alvin and the Chipmunks)

Rod Serling Voiceover (RSV): The mystery conversation usually begins something like this…

DOB: J said we’re wrong about shootings in Florida. Fort Hood is in Texas…
Or
He was trapped on an ice flow with three polar bears and a condom. In the day room eating prunes. If I had a knife, I’d cut you...
Or
Garlic mashed potato recipes from the Civil War have always been a matter of great curiosity to me, which I can trace back to the food I enjoyed so much as a child at the dawn of the Age of Fast Food: the best nouvelle cuisine fusion of What Mexicans Who Have Scurvy Eat and Pan-Asian-Thai smug things with too much msg, on vegatibles and fruits in suspiciously tropical varieties, with a sprinkling of roasted garlic. And why, accordingly, today, many patriotic citizens see gay marriage as a threat to the institution of monogamous marriage between a hypothetically straight man and a (ditto) woman as exemplified by some of the best fallen christian preachers. Salt to taste of your own tears and top with a sprinkling of majnoon (crazy) …
Or
As Antigone said, to Electra, on Oprah, you can bend over and kiss your ass goodbye, Bitch, or was that what Oprah said to You? I’ve put up with your smartass crap with as much patience as I can muster between diaper changes, and what do I get? More smarmy ironical bullshit, pardon the execrably bad pun. I’m old and senile. I get it. Let’s move on…
Or
If our intertwined lives together had a subtitle, I nominate:
An Ordinary Life in Extraordinary Times with Some Wackjobs
Look Who’s Fallen and Can’t Get Up And I don’t mean Lily
You Need to Do Something for Me. Can you guess what? Me neither.
We put the fuck you into dysfunction
The Story of the Founding of Duchebagonomics by the Family that Personified the Term
Who ARE These People Anyway?

You get the idea.

RSV: But mystery unravelling isn’t the only fun. Try to cover up the smell of piss with too much cheap perfume, have dinner where this fragrance marries with the odors of a saltwater tank of Garabaldies, seafood just beginning to go off, and burnt trans-fat-laden oil byproduct and corn syrup. Hilarity follows as the sea follows the moon above. Well, not quite so steadily, you understand.

(End Dream Sequence effects)

Insert standard ‘Goodnight-John-Boy’ scene and fade out to happy ending. Get your mind out of the gutter.

Name That TV Show

2009-11-09T14:30:00.000-08:00

TCG: (Walking in from the TV room) Thought I’d visit you.

UCC: (At computer) Well, hi.

TCG: There was a commercial.

UCC: In what?

TCG: In what I was listening to.

UCC: What were you listening to?

TCG: So I didn’t have to listen to it.

UCC: What TV show were you listening to before the commercial?

TCG: Oh. Heavy metal something like.

WISIMH: Duck! Here comes Abe Simpson’s gathering darkness. Such diminished conversational capacity that it could probably rise to the level of a successful defense against a charge of acting with premeditated passive aggression. We still make each other laugh, but that doesn’t make up for provision of mutual solace and support as we approach the scary door. I wish that that which will not kill us will make us both stronger.

“My Whaa?” A Scary Tale in Two Acts

2009-10-31T13:03:00.000-07:00

(Dinner at Iraqi restaurant named for a Quintessentially Southern American city in Georgia, with upscale Current Gen Martinis with sweet liquor added for the little ladies. A handicapped parking space steps from the door, dinner for 2.5 people.)

TCG: Did Mother tell you about her memory?

DOB: My whaaa…?

TCGL Your memory. How it’s been improving.

DOB: Oh yeah? Oh, yeah! I’m making more sense than I was, before, you know, after, when I fell and hit my head? Much better memory oh yeah.

WISIMH: Hyperbole is such an overused word these days. It’s a shame, really because then, when a situation comes along that seems to advance the very postmodern definition of “memory” as including the brain as some epheremal sprite, which tends to desert us in old age and whatnot. And such as. Query: Is another overused word passion? As in, “I’m passionate about my new French manicure,” or “About my new diet that starves your shrinking oxygen-starved brain into a tiny walnut-shaped shell of its former self?" Amid such existential musings:

TCG: … It could be the vitamins your taking too, right?

DOB: My whaa?

TCG: The supplements from Life Extension?

DOB: Oh yes! My Vitamin 12

TCG: Right! Your Vitamin B 12

WISIMH: Seriously? That’s the best ya got? My vision is blacking out at the edges, narrowing into a hallucinatingly alternative universe where there was liberty, and justice, and Vitamin 12 For All. Under frickin’ god. And I’m an atheist.
Query: They say there are no atheists in foxholes. Which, of course, they’re wrong. But notwithstanding the foregoing however, staring insanity in it’s cold and trembling watery eye before the first martini kicks in? Would that make an atheist pray for god, for death, for those Japanese knives on QVC? Personally, I’ve found my own god. I’m a Frisbeetarianism. I believe that, when you die, your Soul flies up onto the roof and gets stuck there.

A (not so) Cynical Look

2009-10-05T12:51:00.000-07:00

“In conversations I more and more often catch a puzzled expression on the other person’s face, an eyebrow raised questioningly, a slight frown on the brow. I am increasingly obliged to stop and add a footnote. “I was joking. Sorry…”
There are two possible causes of these misunderstandings:
a) I have changed, alas, and I am slowly moving towards the pathetic prospect of an old age spent making boorish and foolish social gaffes;
b) I have not changed, but the world around me has, so my message increasingly misses its target, or at least so it seems to me.
Both possibilities equally threaten my relation to the world. And if that relation is not improved, my position may soon become completely isolated.”
- Dubravka Ugresic, Thank You for Not Reading, “Come Back, Cynics, All is Forgiven!” (1997)

Neither possibility frightens me. I have stared into the abyss and it has stared back and spit in my face. My relationship to the world is deteriorating. Look World, I need some alone time. It’s not you, it’s me. Isolation is not unwelcome most of the time – Mommy likes her alone time. But sometimes it gets lonely in here, mainly when my roommates are in particularly challenging manic and/or depressive states.

But what the hell. It’s only life, and mine isn’t so bad here with the L’Stranges. At least they’re not robbing liquor stores, conspiring with terrorists, kicking dogs, babbling ominously, writing screenplays, appearing in police-chase videos, or setting fire to their hair. And if some might say that is cynical, I prefer to say po-TOT-o.

Trash Crusade

2009-09-30T14:43:00.001-07:00

TCG: I’m going to take a couple of trash cans down to the curb. I wanted you to know, in case I didn’t make it back by Tuesday.

UCC: Don’t worry. These days, the trash is picked up early Tueaday afternoons. There will be plenty of daylight for them to spot your body.

WISIMH: Ooops. I said that out loud.

Moby Dick and Lemon Drop Martinis

2009-09-28T13:56:00.000-07:00

Dinner w/DOB and TCG at fancy sci-fi place decorated like the bridge of the Enterprise, lots of gauze curtains with gold thread. Wine, who wants wine with dinner? Give me a raspberry lemon drop vodka martini, and give me some bread and butter, and make it fast.

DOB: mutter mutter, mutter.

TCG: We can’t hear you. You’ll have to speak up.

DOB: MUTTER MUTTER. MUTTER.

UCC: That’s better. Thanks.

WISIMH: Hurry up with the martini, Brittney.

TCG: (To Brittney, as she hands UCC her martini) I could take you away from this: dinner, a movie, a weekend in Acapulco.

Brittney: (To UCC) Does he always do this? Hit on the waitress?

UCC: Yeah. Why do you think I wanted the martini so urgently? I’ll take another martini, please. (To TCG) Best waitress reply, ever.

WISIMH: Have I ever mentioned I hate when you hit on women when I’m sitting next to you? Oh yeah, only about a zillion times. You dick.

DOB: What do I want for dinner? I’m not really that hungry. I want spaghetti and meatballs.

TCG: They have macaroni and cheese.

DOB: I’m not really that hungry, mutter mutter….

UCC: (Reading menu) How about chicken parmigian? You can get a side of macaroni and cheese.

DOB: Ok, but as you probably know, I will have completely forgotten this by the time Brittney comes back with the bread and butter, so you’ll have to remember, and when she asks me what I want, I’ll look at you completely mystified and that will be your signal to order for me.

OK, she didn’t really say that. What she actually said was lost in the spittle and dribble, as she daintily sipped her pink wine, and stared in hella surprise at the bread and butter that had magically appeared out of nowhere. Let’s see now, whose diarrhea shall we talk about first….

TCG: How’s Sandy?

DOB: He’s a good boy. I just tell him I’m going to the store, and he goes to his bed and lays down to wait for me to come home.

WISIMH: Ahhhh, THE scintillating dinner conversational topic. It’s not like we haven’t covered this ground a million times either. Why does my life totally feel like Groundhog Day?

UCC: What do you think about the symbolism for homosexuality in Moby Dick? Does the very book’s title suggest a phallic preoccupation, do you think?

Brittney: Here’s you (second) martini. And no, I don’t think the title foreshadows the many men-on-men relationships. I think it refers more to Ahab’s fatal obsession, and how there’s a tipping point where the classic heroic flaw, e.g. Achilles’ heel, overtakes a man’s soul and he goes over to the dark side.

Busboy: (removing my first empty martini glass) Actually, I think it’s an allegory about the conflict between good and evil, with a bit of an oral fixation involving Ahab’s pipe that might suggest either fellatio, or a dependence on tobacco to face the ugly reality of a one-legged whaling ship captain’s life. In my Master’s thesis, I focused on Melville’s treatment of race and class, and concluded that the author wasn’t a fan of racism.

TCG: (To Brittney) You’re working very hard. Here’s my 25% off coupon, but be assured, your tip will be based on the pre-discount value of the meal.

Brittney: Oh, be still my beating heart. What a good man you are. Your wife must be so lucky to have you.

Ok, I made up most of the above conversation. I maintain that the world inside my head is often more interesting, lively, stimulating, and funny than the stuff that happens in the actual world, even after two raspberry lemon drop martinis and a glass of pinot noir. I also admit I haven’t read Moby Dick since high school, although I’ve been halfway through re-reading it since, approximately 2002, but I can’t seem to overcome the inertia to get back to it.

The Circle

2009-09-24T08:18:00.001-07:00

What’s worse than waking up in bed with a blurry black and white photo of a one-armed man, a post-it note that says “Warning: zombies will eat your br---” four feet of braided twine with a tin can on one end, and a handicapped parking placard?

I’ll tell you what’s worse. Waking up with a premonition of doom, opening your eyes and staring into the green eyes of a cat who is invading your personal space, smelling your morning breath, and purring ominously. How can a cat’s purr be ominous?

I’ll tell you, how a cat’s purr can be ominous, and by the way, remember that my mom says cats don’t have souls. Purring cats are ominous only in retrospect when, at the end of the day, you realize the cat’s blank eyes dramatically foreshadowed the subsequent realization that your day turned out to suck worse than a draining bathtub when only the hair-infused grey soapy scum is left.

My day also included the near-death trip du jour, with a driver whose skills are declining sharply. This was after a dinner or waffles in which TCG poured 4 Tablespoons of HFCS on his waffle. Did I mention, he’s hypoglycemic. Usually his post-dinner sugar crash coincides with is post-dinner nap on the couch and no harm is done. Last night, it happened like a kick to the back of his head, halfway to Spring Valley to pick up eggs. Clammy sweats, woozy head-shaking that could easily be mistaken for a swoon of love. He made it to our destination. I drove home, amid rumblings of diarrhea .

I went to my happy place where there were no conversations about practicing my skills at fellatio or other metaphors about sucking. I made myself mad crazy cranberry vodka martini with enough tomato juice to make me feel like a youthful werewolf, at twilight, drinking the blood of a young virgin goth boy, with facial piercings and a blue-hair dye-job that would outdo my Grandma’s blue hair circa 1965.

We must have had angels on our bumpers as I drove home in the dark with only the light from my white knuckles reflecting TCG’s shiny face, scrunched into a rictus of cruciatas curse. Kidding. We do have the saving grace of growing old together, still making each other laugh, bugging the crap out of each other, and getting the heck over it. Whether it is for better or for worse, we’re in this together. And what could be worse than that? I’ll tell you what’s worse…

Putting the “Say What?” in Conversation

2009-09-23T11:52:00.000-07:00

TCG: (Returning home after ~~smoking his daily cigarette~~ running his daily errands). They wouldn’t give me the certified form when I went there.

UCC: A foolproof plan? An airtight alibi? A Little context? A fucking clue what you’re talking about?

WISIMH: As Jane Austin might say, I have not the pleasure of understanding you. As Herman Melville might say, No smoking in the parlor, and no suicides. As Sister Merciful God in Heaven might say: why have I wasted my life as a bride of Christ when I took a vow of chastity and masturbation is a mortal sin? As Raymond Chandler might put it: Your ramblings make as much sense as a frightened chicken in an orange jumpsuit. As I simply say in my head: what the fuck are you talking about?

TCG: The hearing aid people. They need you to come in first.

UCC: Ahh, you’re saying they won’t give us the hearing aid insurance form unless they can see and inspect my aids to be sure they exist before they insure them against loss.

TCG: Touching the tip of his nose with one hand and pointing to me with the other: What you said.

Counting the Interruptions: An Amusing Game

2009-09-18T12:19:00.000-07:00

Yesterday morning I decided to play a new game. Here’s how it began:

UCC: Good mo-

TCG: Come here and look at this….

The game is to count the number of times TCG interrupts UCC in a single day. Let’s play along. This should be fun, particularly since we had to go out in public to run some errands, and that is always its own form of adventure, albeit often with some creepy details best left to the imagination of someone like Clive Barker.

Driving often provides opportunities for interruptions because there are so many shiny things to catch TCG’s attention. To try to catalog each interruption du jour would have required either a tape recorder or a court reporter, both of which are against the unwritten rules (query: since I just wrote the rule, is it now no longer unwritten?) of WISIMH. Some typical examples will have to suffice.

UCC: What does Jamacha mean in Span-

TCG: do you realize that building over there has a red roof?

…

UCC: When we get home, will you pl-

TCG: When we get home, I’m going to take a nap.

Now, UCC has a strict policy of never resuming an interrupted sentence once the interruption subsides. I could give you several reasons for this, such as it’s not worth the trouble to try to have a conversation, or I was just trying to make small talk to get TCG to use his words, but mostly this policy was instituted because I was pissed and remaining silent avoided what might be considered felony assault no matter how justified.

UCC: I’d like you to glue these dog refrigerator magnets onto so-

TCG: They’re broken, right? Here’s one of the missing parts.

UCC: (Yeah, I know about the rule not to resume, but I actually need him to do something, so I persisted) Indeed, that is the missing part of one of the magnets for one of the refrigerator dogs. Notwithstanding the foregoing however… (when I was a lawyer, that was one of my favorite verbal flourishes) …as I was saying, I want the dogs glued to something else, not to the missing magnet that would enable them to resume life on the refrigerator door.

TCG: Why didn’t you say so?

WISIMH: That’s already the fourth interruption of the day, and I haven’t even made coffee yet.

UCC: I might have said so if you had refrained from interrupting while I was trying to explain.

By the end of the day, I had cataloged 17 interruptions. Exactly two of these required me to violate the (now written) rule about not resuming when I’m interrupted. The first exception is set forth above. The second involved reminding TCG of one of the stops on our route of errands that he seemed to have forgotten:

UCC: You just turned right. Don’t we want to go left to get th-

TCG: I’m just trying this shortcut because I have to pee.

UCC: Good to know. However, I thought we were go-

TCG: I told you I had to pee when we left the grocery store.

UCC: Thanks for the updates re peeing. But I thought we were going to swing by the post office to mail the Netflix.

TCG: I wish you’d told me this before I turned right back there.

WISIMH: I wish I had a nickel for each interruption. I’d probably make ten bucks a day. I also wish I’d learned the Rule Against Perpetuities in school, but I could never get past the Doctrine of Contingent Remainders. Had I done so, my life might have been filled with joy and peace and bunnies, instead of becoming a shipwreck that left me beached with you amid the empty packing crates once filled with all my dreams.

If I Ruled the World

2009-09-17T14:14:00.000-07:00

WISIMH: These days, you can’t take two steps without tripping over another war being fought by one or another global schoolyard bullies for ideologically stupid reasons. Now that the aging populations of the dying global superpowers are so last-century and decadent, we no longer have ideologies worth fighting and dying for. We can, however, send our own poor and uneducated cannon fodder; or fund client states with younger and stronger populations to fight and die on our behalf. That we got rich from raping them and their resources is just one more factor that tips the balance from sad to genocidal.

So, I was pondering these heavy thoughts this morning over my iced coffee with lots of heavy cream. Then, I sat down to detail my cogent observations about how the world is going to hell and how I’d fix these problems if I ruled the world. You may be asking yourself, what makes me different from millions of other bloggers with opinions and idealistic plans to solve problems ranging from climate change to road rage. (Or, maybe you’re asking yourself how did I get here?, but that's another post). Well, me - because, I’m special. If only I added my advice to the world about how to solve problems, things would be better, trust me.

Here’s an example. If I was in charge, the lady in front of me at the green light yesterday wouldn’t have kept her foot on the brakes and waved a car out of the ahead of her from the freeway exit to our right. I would have explained to her that right turn on red thingie still gives us the right of way if we’re going straight and our light is green, you imbecile.

But, here’s the thing. If I was in charge, the world would only be better if I had some enforcement authority to back up my sage advice. You can’t just issue advice (let alone fatwas against bad drivers) and expect people to listen, particularly if you do so on your blog, Facebook, or if you tweet the deet. I mean, who listens to Aston Kucher already? Heck, people don’t even pay attention to Suzanne Summers since her mansion burned down.

I heard somebody deny they were racist and call Prez Obama “uppity”. That’s like claiming to be a Christian and killing abortion doctors. Crazy, right? I think the world needs me to mediate disputes between those who fear and distrust facts and those who rely on them to operate. I think I should have been entitled to walk up to that lady’s car, open the door, smack her on the back of the head, and tell her to think next time. And notice how I haven’t mentioned she was Asian. That would be, well, racist, which, of course, I’m not.

Here’s another example. In surfing the innernetz the other day looking for signs of intelligent life, I stumbled upon a random blog that explained in the “about me” section, that among other jobs, the blogger had once worked as a “domestic violence advocate” which doesn’t seem to me to be something you should brag about. It’s like including the info that you’re a registered sex offender; a retired porn star; or a racist, or bragging that you drive like an Asian on Ambien. (Apologies to all my Asian friends who can drive. Wait… never mind).

WISIMH: If I ruled the world, I’d make everybody grow and eat at least one vegetable per growing season. I’d make an exception for AIDS orphans who are too busy keeping the flies off their baby siblings’ eyes and boiling muddy water for dinner. Wait, I’d probably solve the problems that led to them becoming struggling orphans living in a house made of mud. Then, I’d tell them to stay in school, not do drugs, and raise and eat at least one vegetable per growing season.

Or, in the alternative to fixing the world, I thought I could go back to bed, pull the covers over my head and sleep for another hour. Tough call, but as you can probably tell from the way the world is still fucked up, I opted for the extra sleep.

Famous Last Words

2009-09-16T11:08:00.000-07:00

The purported last words of Karl Marx were: "Go on, get out. Last words are for fools who haven't said enough.” This is a particularly rich contrast with the purported last words of Pancho Villa: “Don’t let it end like this. Tell them I said something.”

Given this, it’s advisable to have something ready in case you realize in a sudden moment of clarity that you have only moments to utter your own last words. I’ve given this some thought recently, and I have a pretty good idea of where I’ll end up. My last words are probably going to be something like this:

"I got a new bracket for my oxygen tank yesterday, mounted on the wall of the trailer near the plasma tv. The best part about it is that now I won’t risk knocking the tank over on my can of diet Pepsi every time I reach past it for some nacho cheese doritos, and plus, there’s room on the bracket to balance my ash tray so I don’t have to worry about starting a fire by flicking my ashes into an adjacent trash bag. Best of all, my cats also seem completely uninterested in climbing on the wall bracket and marking their territory, deterred most likely by the barely audible hiss where the hose doesn’t quite snap tightly into the tank. So, now that my life is perfect, I’ll just sit back, tune in Oprah, and light up this here Cigarillo…"

At least my loved ones can console themselves by saying I died doing what I loved.

The Ship of Fools Hits a Submerged Reef

2009-09-13T15:15:00.001-07:00

I was roasting tomatoes to can. TCG left ~~to smoke a cigarette~~ to get lunch. I was in the process of grinding up the lovely sticky mess, which has to be done in batches in the food mill. (Note: this stage in the process also involves a glass of red wine: I self medicate during happy hour) The house phone rang. I almost didn’t get it. But, I did. It was about 4 PM on a lovely September Sunday afternoon.

UCC: Yellow.

TCG: Will you please go check on DOB? J just called me in the car. She has been trying to call DOB all day but she doesn’t answer her phone.

UCC: Hold….

WISIMH: O my god the stench in here is overwhelming. The white wale is indeed beached, rolling on her side on the kitchen floor. The beginning of a lovely Sunday September evening.

UCC (As I return to the kitchen phone, iTunes playlist, apparently having evolved the iPod shuffle option into some interactive Artificial Intelligence, is playing Ship of Fools. Ahhh, Jerry.)

… Oh yes. She’s down by the kitchen sink. Seems to be ok but pretty incoherent. I’ll get back to her. Assume you’re heading home. Bye.

DOB: I don’t know what happened, I was trying to get up to go to the… but I didn’t make it.

UCC: Not too important about the fall. Pretty obvious about the not making it. What happened after that? Where did you fall? When? How long have you been down?

WISIMH: (During the following game of 20-questions, in which we negotiated some version of what actually might have happened, I had plenty of time to go to my happy place inside my head, from where the following musings took place.)

And why did you crawl across the room, leaving your freaking cell phone by your bed where you first fell, not to mention why is your walker halfway between you and the bed? And see those pressurized air horns strategically placed on the floor by your bed and your dresser? You had to crawl past two of them to get over here to the sink where you decided to spend the day. The emergency air horns were placed around the floor so you could summon us if you stupidly didn’t use your walker, and stupidly fell, and stupidly couldn’t reach one of the 3 house phones, your cell phone and couldn’t, it goes without saying, pick your own fat ass up. Or why didn’t you use the air horns to summon us several hours ago, like if you were a teenage boy at a high school football game, or a new Associate of Arts in Risk Management at your community college graduation ceremony.

UCC: (Slurring her words like a sloppy drunk or an incontinent old woman with a blood sugar it later turned out was 210, and by the way, that’s after not eating or drinking all day, which means it was probably much higher when she fell)

I don’t know what happened. I was over by the, over there by the, and I was going to g…

(insert what, if you understood it to be a thoughtful pause, you couldn’t be more wrong)

And the next thing I knew… I didn’t make it. That was after I started to make my breakfast. I don’t know…

WISIMH: ALL TOGETHER NOW:

UCC AND DOB: …. WHAT HAPPENED !!!

WISIMH: I can smell the didn’t make it part from two rooms away, even over the lovely garlic and roasting tomato smell. So, you’ve been here for almost 8 hours. Incontinent. How charming.

UCC: So, let’s get your diaper off, and I’ll put this towel under your butt. Help me lift now…

DOB: (Heaving while she lifts her butt)

I need to go to the bathroom but I didn’t make it. I don’t know what happened. I must have fallen.

UCC: (Cringing)

Not important now. Here’s your cell phone. Answer it and talk to J who is calling again.

DOB: (Making less than no sense talking to J, wandering around in the endless loop that unravels when a giant dose of low blood sugar is added to dementia, and incontinence is involved)

…my pajamas are in the… by the…. I don’t know what happened…

UCC: (Taking the cell and talking to J)

She’s ok, but let me get her upright and cleaned up and we’ll call you back.

(Calling TCG)

What’s your ETA?

TCG: (In that oh-so-refreshing way he has of ignoring and interrupting me)

Just to let you know, I’ve taken Abuterol and a couple of Tums.

Later, TCG arrives, huffs and puffs into DOB’s room. She’s been on her ass, leaning her back against the kitchen sink, with pillows and a stool to support one arm. Note: if not propped, DOB tends to list sideways from sitting to slumping.

The list eventually turns into a collapse exactly, if you’ve ever seen one, of a what geologists call a long-run-out avalanche in which huge boulders behave as if they were drops of water in a stream. This is quite likely what happened when she made her fateful run for head.

DOB: I was trying to go to the bathroom blah blah

TCG: huff, puff, whooo, whoo, blah blah

UCC: (Handing DOB some juice, and TCG his soda, which he left in the computer room when he stopped to rest on his way in from the car to DOB’s room)

You’ve got to drink this. You’ve been on the floor since you were starting to make your breakfast of peanut butter on bread and you’ve had nothing to eat or drink all day. You’re dehydrated and your blood sugar is probably too low. I’ve got to get back to the kitchen (remember, I was canning roasted tomatoes). You guys just sit there and settle down and I’ll be back in a few minutes.

TCG: (Later, Returning to our kitchen, leaving DOB propped up on the floor.)

She has to go to the bathroom and I wanted to give her some privacy.

UCC: Did you get her onto the potty chair?

TCG: No, I gave her the bowl from the potty chair. She’s still on the floor…

WISIMH: Did you consider the physics of how she’s going to get her pee etc. from between her legs into the plastic bowl? Did you consider that she’ can’t lift her ass off the floor? Oh yeah, and that’s she’s completely incoherent?

TCG: … I wanted to give her some privacy.

UCC: (bringing a bowl of soapy water, a wash cloth and towel and cleaning up the necessary places on DOB)

Ok. You sit where you are. I’m going to lift the potty chair over you to the other side. Then, I’m going to put the bowl back into the chair. Then I’m going to get TCG and we’re going to get you onto the chair.

DOB: (We tried several times to explain what we were going to do, we really did. But she’s not only incomprehensible, she’s not receiving any better than she’s broadcasting. And who can blame her? That would be UCC. Finally, watching TCG and UCC mime how we’re going to bend her knees, put her feet flat on the ground, each take an arm and haul her onto the chair)

That would be a good idea. I was going to the bathroom when I fell. I don’t know what happened.

WISIMN: No Shit? But wait, do you know what happened?

DOB: (After she’s sitting on the potty chair, having been hauled in several stages to that point, managing to lift her filthy dress and get a towel over the most disgusting parts)

I don’t know what happened…

UCC: Here’s the thing. I have tomato paste to can. First I have to sterilize my hands. The jars are sterilized and I’ve got to fill them and get them into the canner. I’ve got pasta cooking, and sauce, and garlic bread. It so happened I was making a killer dinner as well as canning. I’ll return and get that done. Drink your juice.

DOB: (After I’ve managed to push her (thank god) wheeled potty chair next to her bed, removed her filthy clothing and put on a nightgown (on her, not me), soaked up the worst of the nasty stuff on the rug at the foot of her bed (remember, she was trying to get to the… and didn’t make it when she fell, and it’s been marinating in the shag carpeting all day) cleaned up the dried blood where she smacked her forehead in the course of falling)

I’ve moved the handle hanging from the chain over your bed. Grab that, and try to stand up. I’ll aim your butt at the bed, and we’ll get you in. I’ve put a towel over the sheets.

WISIMH: Actually, mostly a wordless scream, and then the lyrics to ship of fools.

Later, after DOB has been given a Vicodin and tucked into bed, sitting in the living room, drinking my second martini, eating delicious if cold pasta, and watching the 1958 movie Long Hot Summer on TCM, and explaining plot changes and characters to TCG who couldn’t follow a trickle of water downstream with a mission plan and a trained guide.

TCG: I don’t do so well under stress.

UCC: No shit.

WISIMH: Your judgment is almost as impaired as hers, and your inability to move the empty potty chair indicates more than a weak pulmonary condition. BTW, excellent cold pasta, eh? Not to mention the idea of giving DOB a vicodin so she won’t wander around at night.

TCG: Can you get me a pudding cup from the fridge?

UCC: So you want a pudding cup, do you? You know, we can’t always get what we want. I wanted a pony.

TCG: And I wanted a walk-in humidor.

UCC: (getting pudding cup for TCG and vicodin for self)

It sucks to be us, but at least we can self-medicate. Here’s your pudding cup, love.

TCG: Wanna do it?

UCC: I’d really prefer not to. (paraphrased)

Daily Fiber

2009-09-12T12:55:00.000-07:00

This is what happened when we went to the grocery store together, the third stop in a delightful trip to the pet store for cat litter, and the medical supply store for XXX adult diapers for DOB, so in fairness, TCG was late for his nap and had already walked over 100 (!) steps.

TCG: (White knuckles grasping the bar of the shopping cart, leaning over and gasping for breath) What’s on the list?

UCC: (Turning right heading toward the item) Fiber.

TCG: Ignoring UCC and, pursuant to the dictates of Brownian motion, and wandering off in a random direction.

Rendezvousing improbably at the fiber section of the vitamin aisle.

UCC: How about these psyllium capsules, much easier than the gunk stirred into a glass of water?

TCG: What else is here? (patiently waiting for UCC to read the labels and explain the difference between “cleanse/detox” and generic Metamucil)

UCC: In the best impersonation of Sister Teresa, the Little Flower, soul of patience, reading the entire shelf. Aloud. Slowly.

TCG: Looks like the psyllium caps are easier and better than the powdered stuff.

UCC: Think so? Ok.

WISIMN: Hilarious, and I just never see that coming! I explain. You decide. Which is one of the typically, annoyingly, clinically insane things I love about shopping with you.

UCC: (Reading the next item on the list, as TCG turns, amazingly, in the exactly opposite direction. Calling out wistfully to TCG’s retreating back) I’m going this way to get A, B and C.
(Duly finding said items and staggering off looking for TCG with the shopping cart, several aisles away, out of earshot and with his back turned, inviting himself to join the conversation of some passing strangers.)

WISIMN: I have arrived at this point in the universe where Irony met Cynicism, fell madly in love, became an unwed mother, and Parody was born. Do you ever why is it that the best stuff is that which may cause drowsiness? Or, why I could never watch that meercat show after Shakespeare died? Or especially why I find solace by crawling inside a water pipe and insisting on roasting tomatoes while the outdoor temperature is in the 90s? (Aromatherapy).

UCC: Ahhh, I forgot to bring in the grocery bags. While you’re unloading and paying the cashier, I’ll run out to the car and get them. Returning with the grocery bags to find half the groceries already bagged in plastic, TCG having not mentioned to the cashier about me bringing in the recycled bags.

UCC: (Impatience bleeding through like brown crusty blood on a badly bandaged amputated leg) Ummmm…

TCG: (Innocently) What?

WISIMH: Going out in public with you reminds me of my attempts to furnish my first cramped apartment with freeway furniture – it takes almost infinite patience and lots of driving; and even then, the result may end up smelling like some strange cat’s piss. If today had a subtitle, it would be Today: as long as an alcoholic blackout, as shallow as a cookie sheet, but with the rich aromatherapeutic fragrance of a complex cesspool. If today was a metaphor it would be: when grocery shopping, TCG is as helpful as a snow plow in a monsoon.

Sandy

2009-09-09T14:02:00.000-07:00

Today’s errand/excuse for smoking is to go to the pet food store for Sandy. Who, is Sandy?

Sandy is a 400-year-old dog (in dog years) who is as animated as Rowdy on Scrubs, and considerably more vocal, especially in the middle of the night. He weights about 300 pounds (in dog pounds, heh) and has a bit of arthritis making it hard for him to stand, sit, move, lay, and making it impossible for him to roll over unless you were to roll him into a rug and kick it down the driveway.

Sandy lives with DOB (remember: food is love) and he’s the alpha in the pack. One of DOB's recurrent Tourette-dementia phrases is: Sandy's a good boy. That this creates no cognitive dissonance in DOB's little mind is another indication that there is no cognitive left to dissonate.

Sandy has a skin condition. Probably resulting from his diet of 1 part of dog food to 4 parts of people food, keeping in mind that a balanced people meal back there is a starch, starch and a starch, unless I cook for DOB, which I often do out of pity. Then there’s about .5 parts of dog bones made up of the most hyper-allergenic ingredients known to Big Ag and made in China (150% of your minimum daily requirements of lead). Sandy gets a bone to reward him when he stops barking at dead people – or whatever the hell else it is that he sees that we can’t see – and has thus trained DOB to give him a “cookie” whenever he feels like it. This happens between 12 and 380 times per day.

But the skin condition. Well, for exercise, Sandy eats himself, and, surprise, that is bad for his skin. He licks his front and back legs, butt, flanks and wherever else he can reach, until said spot bleeds. The open sores are somewhat mobile, depending on where and when DOB remembers to apply “medicine.” Medicine can range from actual OTC hotspot remedies, Vaseline, vinegar, generic brand Nyquil (!) and whatever else DOB’s daughter (who, I remind you, knows more than you think you do about any given subject) suggests. We can’t take Sandy to the vet because “he always charges $400 whenever we take him in.” It’s probably just a coincidence that vet bills are high when we persuade DOB to let us take Sandy to the vet because that has happened twice in almost 20 years. Yes, a coincidence. Besides, on any given day, those running sores are "going away" anyway.

Besides, he’s not in pain. What I think is his crying – a sort of squeaky moaning interspersed with violent licking – is merely his way of joining the conversation. Which, has a certain kind of logic given the types of conversations we have with DOB.

Hide and Seek

2009-09-08T12:30:00.000-07:00

“From the list of things (Vladimir) Nabakov bragged about never having learned to do – type, drive, speak German, retrieve a lost object, fold an umbrella, answer the phone, cut a book’s pages, give the time of day to a philistine – it is easy to deduce what Vera (Mrs. Nabakov) spent her life doing.” Stacy Schiff, “Vera” (biography of Mrs. Vladimir Nabokov)

I’m doing laundry in the laundry room. From several rooms away:

TCG: Mumble, mumble, think I found the mumble mumble you were looking for.

UCC: Dropping the laundry I’m working on, and heading down the hall for the computer room. Nope, I didn’t hear you from the laundry room, but I don’t see you in here… so I’m going back to the laundry room to finish what you interrupted.

TCG:HEY, I THINK I FOUND THE PILL YOU WERE LOOKING FOR.

WISIMH: As much as I enjoy playing 20 questions to guess what the fuck you’re talking about, I’m too tired to play just now. Have you even the remotest clue that this is rude, annoying and possibly a motive justifying, if not first degree homicide, possibly sufficient to mitigate punishment for old-manslaughter.

UCC: Thanks for the 4-1-1. Well worth the interruption and running around and whatnot, but I’ve got to be about My Father’s Business.

TCG: I told you I was at the kitchen table!Mumble, mumble, blah, blah…

WISIMH: But we don't have a kitchen table! I thought you meant the counter and stools in the kitchen, but apparently you meant the dinning room table. My bad. I’m going to interpret the mumbles to mean you’re abjectly sorry for being such a lazy dope – never moving farther than your own shadow all day while I do laundry, pick up the place, clean the kitchen, mop the floor, eat my heart out with bitter regret, and cook dinner. It’s like we're Parody and Cynicism and our child, a bitter postmodern overeducated thirtysomething named Irony, has now flown to greener pastures, leaving us with an empty, increasingly fouled nest, populated by increasingly incoherent people who can’t seem to use their words. And you're sorry the pill you found was merely for high blood pressure, not cyanide. Yeah, I’m sorry too.

Egg Night at the Crazyhouse

2009-09-03T14:14:00.000-07:00

TCG: Before we go for eggs, will you check in with Mother and bring her today’s mail, tell her we’re going for eggs, and ask if she wants us to bring her a parfait from Foster’s Freeze.

UCC: Uh, okay…

WISIMH: I know you’re sick of her too, bless your little heart. Then again, she is your mother.

Later

UCC: (To DOB) We’re going for eggs. Would you like us to bring you back a parfait?

DOB: No thanks. I’m in bed for the night.

WISIMH: Of course you are, bless your heart.

UCC: Would you like me to close the blinds?

DOB: If you like.

WISIMN: Then, I probably won’t bother, bless your little heart.

UCC: Do you want me to close the…

WISIMH: …fucking…

UCC: ….shades or not?

WISIMH: I know you never ask for anything, thus justifying inside your little mind that you are indeed not the slightest bit of a bother to us. But you know what? You are. And you would be a butt-load less of a bother if we didn’t have to fucking guess what the hell you need, perhaps even as a matter of life or death. Much less of a bother.

DOB: (Hating to be such a bother as to ask me to close her curtains) Okay then.

WISIMH: And….. thank you?

UCC: Ok, they’re closed. Have a good night. ‘Night, Sandy.

Later, on the drive to get eggs:

TCG: How as mother?

UCC: She didn’t want the parfait.

TCG: (shocked)

UCC: Yeah, she was in bed for the night. If you can call kitchen light on, laying on the bedspread fully clothed and covered with a ratty blanket “in for the night.”

TCG: She thinks you hate her and you’re trying to steal her money.

UCC: She’s half right.

WISIMN: BTW, it may surprise you to know that I don’t hate her so much as I resent her. And the fact is, she’s stealing my money. Not to mention sending my spouse into ill health and an early grave. He is a 67-year-old man with COPD who has to sneak out of the house each day to secretly smoke a cigarette- the high point of his day, both pulmonarily and relaxatory. He doesn’t have the energy to care for himself, for all the aggravation you give him. So guess who does? Plus additional aggravation we both know I give him for being not wild about having lived with his mother in his house for every minute of our entire fucking 22 year marriage.

Then there was that argument we never speak of where you shamelessly said you had to put up with my spoiled latchkey daughter during her terrible teens, and I replied perhaps you’d like to do the math on how long she was under your roof vs. Yo Momma.

I even admit I nurse childish fantasies about having you predecease her, and me giving her 30 days notice. I also admit to feeling catholic guilt about having such bad thoughts. But she’s such a demented pain in the ass. And having the two of you sucking at my soul and draining my energy like a teenage girl alone in her car in a snow storm, mashing her foot on the starter as you hear the battery turn over and finally emit that slow death-rattle of a drained battery. I feel like that girl’s car’s battery. I also fear getting old and crazy myself, but there’s not much time for me to wallow in such day-mares. Besides, it might already be too late.

Great Muppet Expectations: Adult Content

2009-09-02T14:56:00.000-07:00

TCG: Listen. (Doing your best Milhouse impression with the inhaler) I’m taking albuterol.

UCC: I’ll alert the media.

TCG: I’m going down (a driveway with the distance and elevation change of two full flights of stairs) to get the mail. I’m taking my phone so I can call you, or maybe call a cab if I can’t make it back.

UCC: Well, if you call, use the house phone (here beside me) because I have my cat asleep in my lap and I don’t’ know where my cell is.

WISIMN: Actually, what I did was go to my happy place, which is greatly aided by having a cat asleep on my lap. I asked myself the question vis-à-vis Muppets: where are they now? Note to self, always keep a list of daydream topics handy, like that list of emergency numbers to call if reality suddenly turns ugly on you.

Back-story
In case your lost recreational drug generation wasn’t spent watching the very early Sesame Street, you may remember that some Muppet characters were children when you were. So, you may be wondering how they did when they grew up in the real world, miles and miles from Sesame Street. To save you the trouble of trying to choreograph a lucid dream about where they are now, I share my vision.

Take the androgynous, mysterious dynamic duo: Bert and Ernie. Gay or not gay?
It’s been said they are meterosexuals™, but the plain truth is that they died before they ever came out. You may recall that Bert was clubbed to death by some White Supremacists who thought (sadly, incorrectly) that he was the guy who started the Stonewall Riot, aka the beginning of the End Times. Ernie’s fate is best not brought up in polite company unfamiliar with the appearance of a Muppet corpse discovered about six muggy summer months after an overdose of crack.

Beaker, for godssakes, what happened to Beaker?
Think about it. His fate probably depended on whether or not he was covered by Worker’s Comp. If you’re a socialist liberal Nazi, then Beaker is now blissfully medicated and attended 23/7 (sic) by his special care assistants in a lovely private home in some upper-class suburb you could never hope to inhabit unless you too won a personal injury lawsuit. If you’re a burnt out cynic who figures that Obamacare is a Bad Idea, and if Jesus Christ is your personal savior, then Beaker died of complications associated with untreated bedsores, exacerbated by the effects of years of chronic incontinence.

The prototypical, archetypical Imaginary Friend, Big Bird?
Dude. You’re a grown up now. Do you still have an imaginary friend? Big Bird was put on the Endangered Specious Creatures List during the Clinton administration. The reign of Bush II however, left us with more than thousands dead and continuing to die in an Imperialist Grab for Oil, a greater rift between the upper class and the proles, or an economy flatter than road kill on Route 8. Don’t you remember my best-selling expose, “The Big Bird Conspiracy”? Sorry, it’s no longer in print. I’ll summarize.

Following a warrentless wire-tap, a BB was tried in a secret FISA Court for plotting terrorist activities, including but not limited to: engaging in enhanced interrogation activities and brainwashing of innocent children whose own imaginary friends tended to be Illegal Avian immigrants; causing troubled adolescent nightmares of BB dressed in a TSA uniform and putting on rubber gloves, and thus requiring years of counseling; shoplifting at Starbucks; Identity theft; and associating with fellow travelers who are registered as independent voters and failing to cooperate with the authorities in his own prosecution.

So, now that we have all put away our youthful recreational drugs in favor of Big Pharma prescriptions and Internet searching for the drug that killed MJ, you can take it. Sorry to harsh your mellow. Dude, Big Bird is dead.

Calculon Cookie Sheet: The Sequel

2009-08-30T11:14:00.000-07:00

The cookie sheet has been removed from the counter! This morning it was in the sink, with some cleanser rubbed into the burned up corner.

UCC: So, I see you're still trying to revive the Calculon coookie sheet. I thought it was dead, and I was going to take it outside to use on my potting table.

TCG: Yeah, do that. I can't get it clean.

WISIMH: Yet moving it from the counter adjacent to the sink into the sink was all you had the energy to do. The idea of actually taking it out to the trash or otherwise disposing of it would require initiative. And you've got the initiative of a tube of toothpaste.

In other news, I went into DOB's room to get her laundry. She's still sick in bed going into her second week with flu.

UCC: How are you doing today?

DOB: Blah blah, blah, still sick, blah blah.

UCC: It's already over 90, you should close the window and turn on your air conditioner.

DOB: I turned the heat on (in the faux fireplace) because it was cold earlier.

WISIMH: You did what you demented sow? It's going to get over 100 today AGAIN! If you can't close your window, at least don't run the freaking heat!

UCC: Well, it's going to get over 100 today again, so perhaps I could turn it off for you?

DOB: Well, I turned it on because it was cold earlier.

WISIMH: Which is as relevant as, say, telling me your dog is a good boy. BTW, did you notice he has more open sores on his legs, and don't tell me the other ones are healed, because there is always another new sore.

Breaking Cookies Sheet News

2009-08-29T13:06:00.000-07:00

Since I last roasted tomatoes to can (Friday, August 21) one of the cookie sheets has remained on the kitchen counter, with a greasy scummy layer of soapy water, “soaking” to facilitate cleaning the caramelized remains. It has remained there exactly 7 days today.

UCC: I’m going to roast the tomatoes I got at the farmer’s market yesterday. What’s the status of the cookie sheet?

TCG: The cookie sheet cannot be saved. We’ll have to buy another one. I was going to take you to On The Table (aka, Sur La Table) to get a new cookie sheet. The Calculon (Actually it’s calphalon™ but we delight in calling it Calculon – the clueless movie star robot on Futurama – to the annoyance of Jim, the sales clerk at On The Table, who is apparently not a Futurama fan) I can’t get the old one clean.

UCC: Can’t I just use the old cookie sheet? I could use the silicone pad, would that help?

TCG: No. You need a new silicone pad too, I can’t get it clean any more. Can’t you use the stainless steel cookie sheet instead? That cleaned up easier than the Calculon sheet.

UCC: No. the stainless sheet is too thin and it’s bowed somehow so one corner lifts up and all the oil drains off and the tomatoes burn in that corner.

TCG: Well, I suppose you could use the Calculon sheet one last time. Don’t bother with the silicone pad, it doesn’t prevent goo from sticking under it, and it just adds one more thing to clean.

UCC: Very well. Rest in peace, Calculon pan.

WISIMH: Too bad all the heroic efforts to clean the Calculon pan failed in the end and the patient slipped into an irreversible coma. Pulling the plug on the Calculon pan one week to the day it was last used to roast tomatoes is a bittersweet experience. We had some good times together, me and the Calculon pan.

But what pisses me off most of all in this traumatic experience is having the damn pan sit on the counter for an entire week, in intensive care, so to speak, only to pull the plug on it. I truly hate a messy kitchen. It causes me real psychic pain to have to work around that stuff. Our arrangement is that you “wash the dishes.” I do all the cooking, cleaning counters, putting away dishes and sweeping the kitchen floor. I also do at least two loads of dishes while I’m cooking, leaving only the actual serving plates to be washed, which can happen anywhere from 24 to 36 hours after use. I also wash my dishes and cups from breakfast and lunch simply to assure I’ll have a clean coffee cup tomorrow. You’re a lazy slug and I’m getting tired of humoring you into thinking you’re carrying your weight wrt/kitchen upkeep.

TCG: I said you could use the Calculon pan one last time.

UCC: I heard you. I said I’ll use the stainless pan out of respect for the passing of the Calculon pan. It’s better to let it die with dignity than to use it one last time in it’s comatose state.

WISIMH: Besides, if I used the Calculon pan, the encrusted goo marinating in greasy dishwater for a week probably wouldn’t contribute to the tastiness of today’s tomato sauce. It’s like the circus left town, but you’re still here. Is it happy hour yet?

One Man’s Poo is Another Man’s Fantasy

2009-08-28T11:16:00.000-07:00

Went to the gastroenterologist today to follow up on the old man’s chronic diarrhea, one of the tougher topics to tackle in the morning and without any controlled substances stronger than caffeine. By the time we got home, the outside temperature was over 100, with a relative humidity a bit drier than the breath of doom from a mouth-breather with gum disease and a bad cold. But first, there was 30 minutes of the predictable toilet-chair-toilet routine, of course. Interspersed with coughing spells with sound effects like the worst teenage barf movies in Dolby stereo. That’s before we left the house! More fun was in store.

‘Kay, the drive to the doctor. So we finally get in the car, back out of the carport, park and return to house for his cell phone and then actually depart. New fun fact. Did you know that when you cough, you have to take your foot off the accelerator, regardless of the ambient speed on the freeway? But for an even bigger thrill, picture this. I’m in the suicide seat, adjusting the vents on my dashboard air, and trying to drink my coffee before we got to the parking lot and began circling for one of the closest three spaces. We’re halfway there when TCG grabs my wrist and squeezes quite painfully hard. This is the understood signal, in lieu of any verbal input, to convey the imminent likely possibility of a fainting spell or a coughing seizure by the driver, for which he wants to apologize wordlessly in advance to his doomed passenger. I, of course, duly over-respond, are you okaying and all, make an anguished facial expression indicating extreme distress. There! Ahhh, if only I knew what you were trying to say…

UCC Are you ok? (trying not to draw the driver’s attention to a partial unannounced lane change at a comfortable 45 mph)

TCG: No words, but sounds approximating that I imagine would be made by a zombie before he slaps his fish-hands in your face, who is at that very moment being anally raped in a three-way by the bastard child of Boris Karloff and DOB, by an angry postmenopausal woman suffering from spousal dementia, and finally, by your mamma. Between dramatic, desperate, wordless puppy-eye looks, continuing to emit sound effects from your worst drunk driving nightmare, or the fuzzy way your teeth felt the morning after prom night, or the way the sound track to my life is played in the background.

UCC: (With a bit more drama) Are you ok?

WISIMH: Ahhh, if only I knew what you were trying to say… Are you trying to remind me of the recent sad news that Ted Kennedy has lost his brave battle with brain cancer? Is there breaking news about whether Sandy is Still a Good Boy? Has the Coalition of the Willing scheduled a reunion and not invited Hungary? Are you asking me to describe the way your kisses taste after you have licked a camel’s butt and not removed and/or cleaned your dentures in a coon’s age? Are you remarking on the improbable fate of the Soviet Union, which so filled our teenage cold war nightmares of Armageddon, and yet ended spawning a bunch of impotent backward post-communist market kleptocracies that have too much oil and too little understanding of the seriousness of environmental pollutions? Are you saying I was a latchkey mother, and now I’m paying the price? Wait. What? Are you saying Muppets don’t have souls?

Needless to say, we made it home alive, or, I’d be blogging this from heaven, which could happen you never know. The doctor was this 6 foot tall Nordic blond with a Kissinger accent who performed TCG’s colostomy a while back. He was on iv Valium that day. Good times. As TCG said, she knows him in a way no other women does nudge nudge wink wink. I will spare the details of our double entendre poop/sex joke-filled discussion with the lady gastro. I have evolved a remarkable ability to decline to be embarrassed in public by TCG. Like Dad said, in a shit-throwing contest, the winner isn’t the guy who throws the most, but the guy who has the least sticking to him. Or, was it that life is a shit sandwich: the more bread you have, the less shit you taste?

By the time we got home, outside temperatures were up to 106. Seriously. It’s too hot to even try to hand water the parched yard. Think tumbleweed blowing through, dust-bowl breezes pushing the air pollution around and heating it up. Nothing a good news joke won’t cure:

The good news:
A propylene glycol-tini looks like an apple-tini, tastes sweeter, has fewer calories.
The bad news:
An antifreeze-tini will kill you. Too slowly.

Cookie Sheet Update

2009-08-27T13:16:00.001-07:00

It's been two days now and the dirty cookie sheet is still soaking on the counter.

In other news, the empty suitcase was removed from the living room after about a week, so all hope is not lost for the cookies sheet.

Breathing and Coughing

2009-08-26T15:43:00.000-07:00

Last night, sitting in our matching recliners in front of the TV.

TCG: Whooo, hoo. (Pause) Whew hoo. (Repeat endlessly. Think audible pursed-lip breathing, with an added moan/groan attempting to convey the weight of the entire world on one’s exhausted shoulders. Then think of this as part of the ongoing background 24/7. I mean, even when I pull up into the carport and exit the car, he opens the front door, leans out, and starts woo hooing as I walk up the sidewalk.)

UCC: Ok. New Rule. You can make those noises when you walk or otherwise engage in any aerobic activity. But you can’t do it just sitting there in the chair between hacking up phlegm and examining it in the Kleenex before tossing it in the trash.

TCG: But it helps me breathe.

UCC: But it helps drive me crazy, and we wouldn't want that, would we?

WISIMN: Don’t care about the breathing any more. It helps me want to strangle you in your sleep. And you might also consider dropping the habit of making your hand tremble when you know I'm watching, or of closing your eyes and acting surprised out of a coma when I come within earshot. Or not.

This Morning:

TCG: (Washing dishes sitting in a stool in front of the sink) Listen. I washed the big cookie sheet, and your silicone mat. But this other cookie sheet will have to wait for later. I just don’t have the energy now.

UCC: Exercising amazing self control to remain steadfastly silent.

WISIMH: The cookie sheet has already soaked with soapy water for >24 hours. Philip K. Dick said reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away. So, believe it or not, this is the reality of my life. And that’s why I don’t consider my habit “recreational” drug use. It’s a condition of my very survival.

Later this morning:

UCC: Here’s the pomegranate juice you wanted. How are you today?

DOB: Well, I cough, then I cough again. Then, I cough a third time and bring something up. Not much, but a little.

UCC: That’s wonderful. It sounds like you’re feeling a little better.

DOB: Well, I cough once or twice, then on the third cough I usually can bring something up, but not a lot.

UCC: That’s wonderful. It sounds like you’re feeling a little better.

DOB: Yes, I had a better night last night. I usually have to cough about three times to bring something up. But it’s not much.

UCC: That’s wonderful. It sounds like you’re feeling a little better. (This is actually fun).

WISIMN: I wonder if you could try to bring a little something like a fucking clue, or possibly any thought that gets us off this broken record déjà vu merry go round. Better yet, I have a question: Shut the fuck up.

Is there another word for synonym?

2009-08-22T13:20:00.000-07:00

George Carlin always asked the most important questions, didn’t he? Now that he’s gone, who is left to tell us what to question? Watching TV last night in our adjacent recliners, it occurred to me that some people never figure out the mission statement of their lives. If the crucial challenge of our life is never put into terms we can understand, we could end up bouncing around on the pool table of life in whatever direction the other balls push us, and watching banal TV shows in our adjacent lazyboy/girl recliners.

Then again, such people often have the optimism that is the reward of living the unexamined life. Such people tend to think that it’s a good thing, for example, that smokers are less likely to die of age-related causes, without looking past that good news. Also, when these people have an original thought, you have to admit it’s original. For example, Britney Spears actually said this: “I don't really have time to sit down and write. But when I think of a melody, I call up my answering machine and sing it, so I won't forget it.” Pure genius.

The mission statement of my life could be: lather, rinse, drink, repeat. That other mission-statement-challenged people happen frequently to be tiresome, goes without saying. Then again, if I had a time machine, I’d probably use it to go back to the beginning of this sentence.

So, last night, during the commercials between reruns of Scrubs, I began to formulate my Rules for Conversation Interruptus:

1. When I try to explain something, interrupt midway to ask the very question being answered.
2. When I resume an interrupted sentence by beginning “As I may have mentioned recently…” interrupt at this point to say “You don’t have to get all mad about it and whatnot”
3. Break the silence at the point it is becoming somewhat sinister by pointing at something banal and observing how interesting it is. Extra points for not making sense and/or having passed the object being pointed at traveling at 40 mph, making it impossible for conversational partner to see the object. Extra, extra points for talking over another speaker and waving your pointy finger too close to the other speaker’s face.
4. When I have uttered a simple sentence (e.g. cats have whiskers) pause thoughtfully and ask, “what?” and then interrupt after the first two words are repeated.
5. Repeat a statement by the other person verbatim, but intoning it as a question, e.g. Cats have whiskers?
6. Whatever else you do, never listen unless something is repeated at least twice.
7. Gesturing to the undefined aether in front of the speaker – is that someone I should know? Or, is he somebody famous?

What?

2009-08-20T13:21:00.001-07:00

TCG: Looking at the shopping list on the frig door. That Clorox, is that regular Clorox or colored Clorox?
UCC: Regular Clorox.
WISIMH: That’s why I wrote “Clorox,” rather than, say, “Clorox for Colors.”

Fun with Short Term Memory Loss

2009-08-18T13:20:00.000-07:00

Watching the news, and Howard Dean was just interviewed about the status of the health plan legislation. Sufficient time has elapsed for this information to be bumped out of the short term memory queue into the wild blue yonder of neural synapses where long term memories may be stored but are often not indexed for later reference.

TCG: Did I just miss Dean’s interview?
UCC: I don’t know. You were laying on the couch. Were you sleeping?
TCG: Dean. Dean. The other guy. Who was interviewed? The other Dean.
UCC: The guy who was in the movie Giant and was then killed in a drunk driving incident?
TCG: No the other Dean.
UCC: The guy who makes the sausage in a chocolate chip bun on a stick?
TCG: No. Nixon.
UCC: Nixon’s name wasn’t Dean…. Ah, you mean John Dean?
TCG: Yeah. That’s the interview I missed when I was on the couch?
UCC: Possibly, but not tonight. Howard Dean was interviewed. John Dean wasn’t.

In other news…

TCG: DOB has a rash on her arm. J told her to put Milk of Magnesia on it.
UCC: Sure she didn’t mean calamine lotion?
TCG: I’m pretty sure she did, but we can’t question this because, as you know, J knows everything, and DOB forgets nothing.
UCC: When you pick up the Milk of Magnesia, pick me up some car wax to douche with, and a bottle of hair gel for my indigestion.
TCG: Done. I’ll also get some cough syrup in case my dandruff doesn’t clear up by the time I finish the brake fluid.

Toasty Conversation

2009-08-06T12:00:00.000-07:00

Sitting down in my TV chair with a plate with a buttered slice of toast.
TCG: What’s that?

UCC: It’s toast.

TCG: How was I supposed to know?

UCC: One clue might be that it looks like toast.

TCG: What’s that white stuff on it?

UCC: Actual butter...

WISIMN: ...As opposed to the yellow lard you slather on thick enough to choke a horse.

Cat: Hmmmm.

WISIMN: Finally! The first intelligent conversational offering of the evening.

Mad World

2009-07-30T14:03:00.000-07:00

"I think it’s kind of funny
I think it’s kind of sad
The dreams I have of dying
Are the best I’ve ever had."

Sample conversation among our cast during our morning out to a corporate vision of a children’s aquarium, having gone out yesterday to see a movie pitched to the 4-8 crowd.

DOB: What’s that on top of that house?

UCC: (playing along) A roof?

DOB: I don’t know.

Later, lunching at a restaurant DOB visited a day earlier, having placed our orders and proceeded to drink our first bottle (of wine) of the day, wherein we silently toast and think our own private wishes, and after our food is served by a wait person named Pebbles:

TCG: (to UCC) Would you like to eat the crap she ordered but doesn’t like the look of now that it’s here? You could trade your lovely sandwich - made on bread she can chew with her tooth - for the one she got which has a hamburger bun with suspicious seeds on top?

UCC: No.

TCG: (after a brief pause while DOB groks her lunch, to UCC) You didn’t get the bread you wanted, and you go the bread she wants, so do you want to trade your lunch for hers?

UCC: No.

DOB: (to the Lunch God) I can’t eat this bread. The.... seeds.....

TCG: (to DOB) Do you want to trade for her sandwich, it’s on better bread?

DOB: I don’t know.

TCG: (To UCC) Are you gonna eat that? (paraphrased)

UCC: (impatience creeping in on little cat feet, like the Viet Cong in the jungle) Yes (paraphrased).

WI (meant to) SIMH: I want to eat the fucking sandwich I ordered. Also, I don’t want to have to repeat myself four times before you give it a fucking rest.

TCG: (That Eye-Roll of Disdain that precedes any particularly ugly passive aggression) Why you gotta be that way? (paraphrased)

UCC: (Impatience wrestling my restraint to the ground like a jungle ambush) Why indeed (paraphrased).

WISIMN: Why the Fuck Indeed. You Dick.

TCG: (after DOB ventures to the lady’s room with visiting daughter who happens to know everything, especially more about the stuff you thought you knew but you were wrong) How are you doing?

UCC: I’m having a wonderful afternoon.

TCG: (Long and pensive pause that precedes any merely mildly reflexive passive aggression) Like I’m having the time of my life blah blah (actual words, not paraphrased).

UCC: Hey, I said wonderful! Much preferable to, say, a poke in the eye with a sharp stick. Please order another bottle of wine.

WISIMN: Makes me want to laugh just to keep from killin’.

Dead Ex-Wife Tour

2009-07-28T12:39:00.000-07:00

It’s half past I-don’t-give-a-shit, and I’m playing with homicidal fantasies while the LeStrange Family (‘we take the fun out of dysfunction’) is out for a drive up the coast. Having done the laundry yesterday, in a major break with tradition, and having made my second double vanilla vodka martini mixed with ginger smoothie, and I feel up to the challenge of describing my recent vacation.

Went on the Ex-Wife/Girlfriends tour, with a final stop (two actually) at the cemetery to “pay our respects” to his ex FIL and MIL – I mean to some stones in the grass with their names. I was extremely respectful as I photographed said stones in the ground. Good thing their actual souls are up in heaven preparing for that big family reunion in the sky, or I’d find the whole cemetery thing creepy. I should say, more creepy. The second trip was to try to find the stone for the dead ex-wife, but it seems her second spouse hasn’t yet (Note: >8 years: what?) approved the content of the stone, so her grave is unmarked. Thanks to the soft-spoken cemetery people who are trained to deal with the bizzare, we located a bare spot between regulation-sized stones for an overweight 40-something guy who needed a shave (his color picture etched on his stone) and who probably died of heart failure and/or DUI, and a Greatest Generation Vet whose friends called him Buster. Seriously, rest in peace?

Due to all this extraneous recent fun, my homicidal fantasy plans remain pretty sketchy. That, and recent email chatter. The famnet recently counseled me that, despite my crystal clear memories, I couldn’t have written a What I Did on My Summer Vacation story about how we took Pa’s truck to pick up Ma upon completion of her sentence connected with an unfortunate meth lab accident. They insisted that nobody had meth labs in my boomer adolescence. Apparently, weed was the thing then. Pretty sure.

But homicide is such an ugly word. I’d prefer to stick to terms like informed consent and assisted suicide, crossing the rainbow bridge. Lately, I find great comfort in the idea of going to live with a nice family in the country when I die, possibly to be reunited with all those childhood pets who were there one day and missing the next. Grandma is baking a pie and strange cousin Arny is playing his cello version of Smoke on the Water. I need another drink.

Watching Out for Pirates

2009-07-26T14:07:00.000-07:00

There I was, in the laundry room, jiggering with the litter box with the motion-activated motorized sifter to make it do what it’s supposed to do but no longer does, i.e. scrape the crap into a closed box where it won’t act like an air un-freshener and waft throughout the house.

TCG: What are you doing?

UCC: (Carefully covering the entrance to the escape tunnel with the kitty litter box, in case the prison guards conduct an inspection later.) Trying to fix the fucking litter box.

Later…

UCC: (Picking up empty glasses and heading to the kitchen to refill my water glass.)

TCG: Where are you going?

UCC: To the roof to look for pirates, and then to check on the treasure chest.

WISIMH: Do I really have to report whenever I plan to leave the room? Sadly, yes.

Later…

TCG: I put the canned cat food in the cupboard, but now there’ no room for the bags of dried food. (Unspoken: What shall I do?)

Me: You might want to try stacking the cans atop one another to make room for the bags.

WISIMH: Or, you might want to run around in circles in panic, press your open palms to your head like a silent Munch-scream. You could shout “What’s to become of us now? We’re all going to die!” Or, in the alternative, you might want to hold your breath until you faint, and I’ll solve the cupboard problem. Your call.

We Won't Burn it. Yet.

2009-07-25T13:49:00.000-07:00

Irreligiliuous (sic) progeny captured irony on a cell phone. Barnes and Nobel has about 20% of its shelves filled with Christian books in subcategories like Inspiration, Bibles, and God/Self Help.

J overheard a staffer training a new staffer explain that the biggest problem in re-shelving universe is that the Christians go to the modest 30 inch shelf of books labeled Gay/Lesbian, and they turn the books around so others can’t read the titles.

Not believing in the whole vengeance is Mine thing, J promptly moved some books from the section labeled Bibles to the section labeled Religious Fiction.

I asked a staffer to help me locate Jeff Sharlet’s “The Family” and was told they didn’t have it but would let me know if they obtained a copy. Not that they’d order me a copy. I suspected it was another Christian Conspiracy, but put that down to my paranoia, coupled with my understanding of why the Internet is killing bookstores (or at least mega corporate ones) like any other self-interested big corporate enterprise in our fascist state.

Then I got this email:

Dear ____,

Thank you for your order. Despite our best efforts, we were unable to fill your order for:

1 copy of Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power, 0060560053

We are sorry that we were unable to complete this order and apologize for any inconvenience this has caused.

If you would like to place a new order for this item, you are welcome to call us at the number below. Please reference the order number indicated above.

Sincerely,

The Booksellers at Barnes + Noble Booksellers #2733

5500 Grossmont Ctr Dr Suite 331

La Mesa, CA 91942

619-667-2870

This e-mail was generated by an automated process. Please do not reply to it.

A bookstore that is “unable” to order a book for a customer, and I have no need to know why. I ordered it on Amazon during a commercial in the Maddow show. This email is, I now believe, one step away from burning our books. So that’s the last time I darken Barnes and Ignoble’s door, and you should too.

Better Late Than...

2009-06-18T11:38:00.000-07:00

DOB: … I don’t want to be a burden….

UCC: (stricken speechless)

WISIMH: Ok, let’s put 20 seconds on the clock and see what I can make of this
Too late, sweetie!
Approximately twenty years too late, you cow.
Then try holding your breath until you fall over.
And you’re going to avoid that how? By doing your own laundry, cleaning your own room, cooking your own food, doing your own shopping, running your own errands, ordering your own meds, keeping your own doctors appointments, taking out your own trash. I could go on.
Then consider taking a bath or shower every day. And here’s an idea: use soap and maybe even some deodorant. And try changing your clothes more than twice a week.
And I don’t want to be a bitch, but here we are.

Dogs and Longevity

2009-06-04T13:10:00.000-07:00

TCG: Hey. There’s a neat statistic.

UCC: (Not wearing hearing aids) What?

TCG: You live an average of 3 years longer if you have a dog.

UCC: No kidding?

WISIMH: So TCB will live until approximately the twelfth day of never. And with so many loveable characteristics. To name a few: the patience of an untrained circus monkey; the paranoia of a tweaking meth-head; the reasoning skills of a 2-year-old in need of a nap, the charm of a hungry alligator in a kiddie pool; one tooth; the personal hygiene practices of a homeless drunk, the conversation skills of a boiling kettle; the situational awareness of a comatose possum; the manners of a demented hag with one tooth. Not to mention, the fragrance of a dumpster during a garbage strike.

Those Flowers

2009-03-25T14:23:00.000-07:00

DOB: (Waving her hand in the general direction of the front yard) What are those flowers?
UCC: (Trying to figure out what the fuck she’s pointed at) You must be looking at the red bottlebrush flowers.
DOB: I don’t know. What do they look like?
UCC: They’re red. And they’re shaped like bottlebrushes.
DOB: I don’t know.
WISIMH: Do you even pay attention to what comes out of your own mouth?

Again with the Blogging

2009-03-09T13:43:00.000-07:00

TCG: Are you blogging again? Don’t you have anything else to do?
UCC: I do this one or two mornings a week, and I’m retired, so bite me.
TCG: But you go away when you’re at the computer, and I miss you.
UCC: Sometimes, I have to go away, but I always come back because I have a soft spot for you.
WISIMH: And because the soft spot is in the middle of a pit of quicksand. And because it’s hard to spend all my time in your stifling presence. If I tried, I’d probably be doing harder time within six months because I haven’t yet perfected the foolproof crime or the airtight alibi.

More (Approximately) Twenty Questions

2009-03-04T12:10:00.000-08:00

One way to think of our brief lives is to consider our time here as the ultimate game of twenty questions. Our task is to find that “one true thing” (or twenty). Before we can answer what I’ll call the Big Twenty, we have to stop wasting time on answering questions that shouldn’t make the cut.

I offer below some of the questions I’ve answered only to realize they shouldn’t make the Big Twenty cut. By not wasting your time on these question, you could save years of time on detours in the journey of your life. You’ll thank me later.

#11. Will I ever outgrow my distrust of authority?
Not so far, but I begin to suspect that my intermittent distrust is replaced with chronic paranoia as I age. So, I’ve got that to look forward to.

#15. Are more people killed each year by runaway steam engines or malfunctioning jet packs?
This could actually be one of the Big Twenty, but I’m still conducting research and I’m no closer to an answer than I was at age 16.

#38. What collectible object will become the next new overpriced speculatory sensation?
Toast with pictures of saints burned into them. Papist toast!

#47. Do you promise never to use MSG when you cook?
If, by MSG, you mean monosodium glutamate then I’m on board. However, unexplained acronyms are misunderstandings waiting to happen. Don’t get me started about how my starter husband thought it meant Birth Control Pills, but I thought BCP meant Boston Cream Pie.

13. Do you ever wonder what would happen if you mixed Clorox with ammonia to clean the bathroom?
Nope. Already know.

18. What is your biggest regret?
Not knowing until it was too late that when dreams die, they make a sound like someone sitting on a whoopee cushion in a proctologist’s waiting room.

42. Why do elephants drink?
To forget.

1. Have you ever broken a bone?
Mine or somebody else’s?
Either.
Yes. That’s two questions.

9. Would you recommend that people with one glass eye consider replacing it with eye-shaped snow globes?
How moderately funny, but tasteless. So, sadly, no.

The Twenty Questions Game

2009-02-13T12:16:00.000-08:00

9. Is this serotonin reuptake cycle never going to end?
Yes. You will achieve balance at the precise moment when you think your mental noise has diminished to a level just above a rather sinister silence preceding self-destructive behavior in public. Fear not. The moment will pass.

10. Will we ever be able to go back to that restaurant?
Not until our regular waitress retires due to a stress-related injury incurred during the early-bird special rush from 4:00 to 5:00 PM. Thus: soon.

11. What’s with the harsh-edged bitterness? Do you think it becomes you?
Do you think I care whether you think I think it becomes me to express my bitterness via the written word in lieu of, say, lead pipes in the conservatory? And that should count as two questions.

18. Does DOB make sense very often?
No, but she does impart a certain urine-scented je ne’sai quois to any conversation.

19. When pausing mid-sentence in a rambling mumble to search for the missing noun, who becomes more impatient, the speaker or the listeners?
There’s a question for the ages. It would take ages to list all the delightful examples of this phenomenon. However, in a sort of irony typical of the twisted universe I inhabit, one noun that always seems to fit in such instances is “werewolf”. Example:
DOB: Remember the road we used to take rides on? Where not many cars go?
TCG: Hertz Road?
DOB: No! You know, the ride in the old car, that car? The road where there were no other cars, near that place.
TCG: Werewolf Road?
DOB: No! The road near that factory, or whatever it was.
TCG: The American Cyanamid Plant?
DOB: Maybe…. Yes.
TCG: I’m so fucking good at this it’s scary.
WISIMH: Actually, what David Mitchell (Cloud Atlas) said it best: “Sometimes the fluffy bunny of incredulity zooms round the bend so rapidly that the greyhound of language is left, agog, in the starting cage.”

Toward A Principal of

2009-01-16T13:47:00.000-08:00

"A serious and good philosophical work could be written consisting entirely of jokes"
--Wittgenstein

THESIS – DOB is insane because her behavior has no coherent basis and her conversation isn’t so much stream-of-consciousness as swamp-of-consciousness.

ANTITHESIS – It is I who am insane because I cannot translate what she said into what she tried to/meant to say. Seriously, remember when a game of Twenty Questions was fun? The game no longer holds any charm for me.

SYNTHESIS –Alas, perhaps we’re all insane.

HYPOTHESIS – Here in the Fortress of Attitude, insanity is endemic, but not necessarily fatal. When provided with sufficient inoculations of controlled substances, conversation devoid of coherence can be quite entertaining. For example:

DOB: The dog is scratching again, and seems to be opening up sores.

UCC: (With a perfect idea of where this will go, but unable to resist) Should I make an appointment for the vet?

DOB: (apparently unable to answer a yes/no question with yes or no) I think it might be because he can’t poop in your side of the yard anymore (because I’m sick of picking up shit and nobody else will, e.g. TCG) and has to go where the coyotes go (on her side of the yard) and he’s picked up some disease from coyote poop.

UCC; (Trying not to look too incredulous) Doubtful.

WISIMH: This actually makes sense if you assume I’m out to get you and your dog. The only problem with this thesis is that if I was out to get you/your dog, I could probably come up with something that worked quicker than hypothetical coyote poop.

TCG: Should people with glass eyes consider replacing them with eye-sized snow globes?

UCC: Only if they covered the snow globe eye with an eye patch when they appeared in public.

PROSTHESIS - If we could only have a light-signaling system to accompany speech, perhaps communication would be facilitated. For example, when one is saying something that makes any kind of sense, there would be a green light above their head. When the speaker veers into a rant or expression of passive aggression, a yellow light would appear. When the speaker appears to become lost in the jungle of misfiring neurons and nothing coming out of their mouth makes sense – a red light. Finally, for all conversations about shopping for bargains: a blue light.

Putting Things Away

2009-01-03T13:48:00.000-08:00

UCC: (Opening the carton of cat food and putting the cans away in the cupboard)

TCG: I was going to put them away.

UCC: I just thought I'd like them put away sometime in 2009.

TCG: I just have to catch my breath. I was going to put them away later, I promise.

WISIMH: Imagine that? I was going to the backyard to dig up the ammunition, load the pistol, and blow my brains out. I’ll get to that later, I promise.

The Mysterious Smokeless Cigarette

2008-12-31T13:17:00.000-08:00

DOB: What is this?

TCG: It’s a cinnamon smokeless tobacco cigarette substitute. Don’t light it.

DOB: (Sucking and puffing) It doesn’t taste like cinnamon. Wait, it looks like it went out.

TCG: It’s smokeless – you don’t light it.

DOB: (Continuing to suck in and puff out on the smokeless cinnamon-flavored cigarette.)

UCC: Don’t inhale. It’s bad for you. Perhaps if you dipped the end in your plum wine, the cigarette would have a taste.

DOB: (Sticking the end of the smokeless cigarette in her glass of plum wine, and nodding slowly to indicate either deep understanding or complete cluelessness.) Oh. Ok.

TCG: How is the plum wine?

DOB: Good... (Noticing, with genuine surprise, the cigarette in her left hand) What is this?

UCC: It’s a cinnamon smokeless tobacco cigarette substitute.

WISIMH: This, my dear, is one of the circles of hell that Dante left out. The one where I’m stuck in an endless conversational loop where one party repeats a virtually content-less phrase in lieu of actual cogent conversation. The circle where hope is not only abandoned, it’s left beaten and bloody on the side of the road, registering such minimal brain activity that, if measurable at all, would be at the end of the scale where legally dead could be conclusively established by a four-year-old with a toy stethoscope.

Putting the Ass in Procrastinate

2008-12-15T13:24:00.000-08:00

Less than 24 hours ago, UCC left the camera at somebody else’s house.

TCG: (Shouted from two rooms away) Hey! You ever going to do anything about the camera?

UCC: Yeah, I will…(muttered under her breath)…but seriously folks, I ask you - is this guy an ass, or what?

UCC: ...get to it...

WISIMH: ... right about when you get around to disposing of ALL the recyclables, some going back three generations, so that I can actually walk on the brick path I made next to the trashcan corral without having to move flattened cardboard boxes, many evolving into dust after >3 years (presumably left intentionally to ripen like a good stinky cheese, the consistency of both of which, is indistinguishable from baby vomit only through a series of painstaking molecular forensic testing and analysis protocols, performed by one trained beyond the level of Night- Shift Assistant Fry Cook) not to mention a quantity of beer bottles that would make an elephant forget to count them all.

Wheat Grass Incident

2008-12-10T12:45:00.000-08:00

The wheatgrass man is in the driveway. Every week at this time, he delivers a fresh flat of wheat grass and picks up the flat from last week. The delivery guy puts the fresh grass on the steps outside the screened porch, and picks up the old flat. I take the fresh flat inside the screened porch and water it a couple of times a week. I make wheatgrass shots (almost) every day before I make coffee.

TCP: (From the room adjacent to the screened porch) Did you put out the grass?

UCC: (In a surly undertone from 2 rooms away, where despite my hearing aids, it’s not always clear what’s being said from such a distance) Don’t tell me last week’s flat of wheat grass didn’t put itself out?

TCP: Hey, What about (unintelligible/incoherent)?

UCC: (Getting up, going to the room where TCP is laying on the couch) Please repeat.

TCP: While you’re here, put the wheat grass out for the guy to pick up.

WISIMH: (Putting the grass out and taking the new grass in to water, while humming "My only prayer will be/ Someday you’ll care for me/ But it’s o-o-only ma-a-a-ke believe.") If there is a circle in hell where the habitually supine will reside, imbricated together like stacked lumber, their collective murmuring just soft enough that nobody else can understand them, mingling together into a low hum, like the sound the world makes rolling around the sun, that’s where you’ll end up spending eternity, bub.

Happy Birthday

2008-12-01T15:14:00.000-08:00

DOB turns 90 today.

TCG: (Heading off after his postprandial nap - the second of three per day) I have to pick up the ice cream cake and deliver it to the place we eat every Monday since infinity minus forever. (OK, I paraphrased the last part.)

UCC: (Having packaged the florist flowers delivered earlier, together with the card I got, and a present I bought and wrapped into a shopping bag, to enable the invalid to carry it with him to the restaurant.) OK. There's a vase of H20 next to a wrapped candle in a glass. Be careful.

(TCG drives off. Meanwhile, back at the Fortress of Attitude, a mailman knocks on door to deliver birthday card from DOB's daughter and dranddaughter from suburban Branson and collect postage due. How ironic.)

TCG: (Returning home breathlessly, amid much huffing, puffing, and anxiety to reach the toilet, to sit and to begin speaking. The man is nothing unless it's a dramatic overacting diva who desperately needs attention). Had a minor disaster...

UCC: Oh my goodness, what happened?

WISIMH: Let's see. Selectively incontinent? Broken vase in restaurant? Other pathetic fuckup?

TCG: (Never one for wasting his words.) Vase spilled, glass candle broke, spill ruined card.

UCC: Yikes!

TCG: (More breathing et. al.) Do you want to run down to CVS to get her something else?

UCC: (Catching an astonished breath) No.

WISIMH: Are you shitting me, you brain-dead clueless douchebag? What I'd like to giver her for her 90th fucking birthday is my foot up her fat butt so far her demented head'd explode.

TCG: Maybe I'll go down later.

WISIMN: Your filial devotion is exceeded only by your immense absence of initiative, your black hole sucking lack of energy; your tiniest spark of intellectual effort, or your withered fucking imagination.

Meatloaf

2008-11-26T12:57:00.000-08:00

DOB: I used to cook...

UCC: You just made meatloaf the other night.

(pause to eat)

DOB: I used to cook...

UCC: You just made meatloaf the other night.

WISIMH: If you can call ground beef and ketchup, baked until a lovely black crust forms on top "cooking".

Pros and Cones

2008-11-17T11:58:00.000-08:00

TCG: If you’re going to the kitchen, will you bring me back a chocolate ice cream milk shake?

UCC: I was actually going to the happy place in my mind, can I bring you back a dose of Anti-Laziness Potion, or perhaps a chocolate ice cream cone of despair?

TCG: Isn’t the kitchen on your way to wherever the hell you’re going?

UCC: Yes. As is the abattoir, the slaughter house, the henhouse populated with carriers of the H5N1 virus, the giant freezer where I store my unrealized dreams, and the bathroom. Can I pee for you while I’m up, you lazy bastard?

TCG: You’re not a funny as you might think.

WISIMN: Nor are you as delightfully charming, as accomplished at covering up your paranoid suspicions, as proficient at controlling your smoldering resentment before it bursts into flames of bitterness, or as successful at restraining your self-inflicted self-pity. So that makes two of us, dear heart.

The Stamp Dilemma

2008-11-07T10:00:00.000-08:00

TCG: You should know, I used the stamps on the top, in your desk.

UCC: And now I know.

TCG: I mean I used them all up, there are no more – on the top.

UCC: But there might be more stamps on the sides of my desk?

TCG: No, I mean there might be more under the papers and things stacked there.

UCC: And now I know that, too.

TCG: No, I mean there might not be any more stamps.

UCC: You’re telling me I should buy stamps?

TCG: No, you should look first to see if there are more, then buy them if there aren’t.

WHSIHS No, what you REALLY mean is you’re too fucking lazy to do more than pick stamps out of the top of the mess, and notify me of your laziness. Even though you’re going to the Post Office right now, you wouldn’t want to undertake any task involving initiative, decision making, or more than six calories to accomplish.

Gotcha!

2008-11-03T14:43:00.000-08:00

TCG: (driving the car one lovely afternoon) Hey, look over there! (gesturing wildly about 12:15 high)

UCC: (obligingly facing that direction and straining for some clue about what is being drawn to one’s attention. Clueless, but trying not to look impatient for falling, yet again, for that trick.)

TCG: What the hell was that?

UCC: Ok, I know, but you go first.

TCG: (Failing without trying to not look impatient) Forget about it.

UCC: Ok, no prob ---

TCG: Hey, what’s that?

WISIMH: An ancient tribal burial mound that suddenly appeared atop that parking structure? A storm cloud on the horizon bearing down on us from behind? A coven of witches in a lurid fluorescence of acid greens and chartreuse, their feline familiars screaming like banshees? A clue left at the scene of the crime in the form of a man standing on the streetcorner and twirling a sign that says something about erectile dysfunction? Is my fucking hair on fire, you douche?

Somebody We Know

2008-10-26T12:19:00.000-07:00

We are driving in a car, through a lovely suburban neighborhood, to attend the wedding of a family friend.

DOB: Doesn't somebody live in this neighborhood?

TCG: I suspect that many people live in this neighborhood.

WISAIM: His suspicion is based on the fact that there are so many houses on each street.

DOB: (Impatiently) No. Somebody we know.

TCG: Can you give me a clue?

DOB: (Long pause). I have no idea.

WISIMH: This is what passes for conversation here in the Fortress of Attitude.

Short and Not So Sweet

2008-10-20T13:25:00.001-07:00

Short Belligerent Person: Bump your shopping cart into me again and I’ll punch you in the knee.

UCC: I said I was sorry. I didn’t see you because, well, because you’re short.

SBP: Well, next time look, asshole.

WISIMH: Well, surely my good little man. Although, perhaps you should wear a red flag on a long bendy stick - like kids attach to their bikes - to catch the eye of normal people. Asshole.

Menu at the International House of Boredom

2008-10-19T14:18:00.000-07:00

TCG: "Another chance?"

UCC: "Always.
You know I love you, right?"

TCG: Yes. I love you too.

WISIMH: There’s worse ways to go than this. Peacefully, in one’s sleep, tossed in restless slumber. Bored to death.
And I do love him so, the sweet loving man.

It’s All About Trust

2008-10-15T12:41:00.000-07:00

Went to Blood Bath and Beyond (next door to Holy Christ’s 99 cent store) today to buy a new blade for my scythe. While waiting in the checkout line, I overheard the customer behind me say:

Checkout Line Lady: I would never trust him again, Mom. He did steal your TV, remember?

Mom: I don’t know. Maybe I should give him the benefit of the doubt.

WISIMH: I’d put my money on distrust, Mom. As G. B. Burgin once said, it is much more comfortable to be mad and know it, than to be sane and have one's doubts. As I once said, distrust is da best trust dere is.

Let's Try to Use our Words

2008-10-13T10:46:00.000-07:00

TCG: I’ve got the round one.

UCC: What?

TCG: What you just told me to do!

UCC: Again. What?
(Upon subsequent clarification, it was revealed that he was referring to the context of a prior conversation in which I suggested he take leftovers to DOB – the leftovers being in a round container)

WISIMH: While brevity may be the sole of wit, I find that muttered meaningless monosyllables aren’t particularly amusing. A better metaphor would be that if silence is golden, then I’m a fucking millionaire.

Seeing Things

2008-10-10T11:27:00.001-07:00

Yesterday, I made pomegranate juice and when I dumped the seeds into the juicer, some of the splashes stuck to my glasses. Later, I started seeing these red spots before my eyes.

UCC: I’m seeing red spots before my eyes. (closing my eyes) I can’t see! I can’t see!

TCG: What’s the matter? What’s the matter?

UCC: My eyes are closed! My eyes are closed!

WISIMH: One of the all-time best insertions of a Three Stooges skit into a conversation. I knock myself out sometimes, I’m so funny.

Unforseen?

2008-10-08T11:20:00.000-07:00

DOB: When I… whatchamacallit…
TCG: Can you be more specific?
WISIMH: It seems to me we have in the attic a sufficient number of old boards? (Baudelaire)

Just Do What?

2008-10-06T10:52:00.000-07:00

UCC: I have to go and do the laundry.
TCG: I'd be more impressed if you'd just do me.
UCC: I'd be more impressed if you'd just do some laundry.
TCG: If you did me more often, I'd do the laundry.

WISIMH: If you'd do ANYTHING more often, I'd do you more often.

Get Your Tool On

2008-10-04T16:40:00.000-07:00

TCG: Always use the right tool for the job.
UCC: Wow, I didn’t think of that.
WISIMH: Then I’ll need a chainsaw, a bathtub, and a case of Liquid Plumber.

dramatis inpersona

2008-10-04T13:07:00.000-07:00

Fortress of Attitude
The too-big old house were UCC, TCG and DOB live; across the street from the meth lab; around the corner from the poorly fenced yard with the three pit bulls. The Fortress is the usual location where the cast of characters wage their own personal war on the terrors of growing old. The Fortress is where we all go to escape the Actual World.

Crazy Stew
It's what's for dinner. The ambient atmosphere here in the Fortress smells like a savory crazy stew of paranoia, passive agression and delusional behavior. (It actually smells like urine, peppermint, and cheap dog food that's been left in the bowl too long and become black and crusty.) The recipe? Knead several pounds of satire and frustration together in the pizza dough cycle of your bread machine; add a generous pinch of profanity and some beer; Shake the mixture together in a bottle corked with rage, and break it over the head of someone you love. Just do it in the Fortress, and not the Actual World. (We can't go back there any more. Jesus Christ).

The Actual World
The stage most of us inhabit when not in the Fortress. These days in the AW, it feels like mysterious forces stronger than Capitalism are creating disquiet, making us pause, in civilization's march upward to wisdom; and in the S&Ps march upward toward unspeakable wealth. Currently, when I venture into the AW, I am transported to a postmodern shabby truck stop where people say things like: "Alas, how is't with you/ That you do bend your eye on vacancy/ And with the incorporal air do hold discourse?"