Recurring Thoughts

I'm dreaming of zombies again.

Laundry and Passive Agression

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

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:

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

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

“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

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.