The New Girl

I'm Feeling A Little Like A Criminal. If Kidnapping Smallish, Post-Op, Half-Bald, Elderly, Italian Pirates Was A Crime.

Oh, HEY! Hey hey! How yoooooou doing? 

Things around here have been [tense] [fucking hectic] [stressful out the ass] since my dad got here.  After a trip there and back and the stress of leaving him in a rehabilitation center (the therapies are great but the atmosphere in the dining room made me want to HURL MYSELF OUT THE WINDOW) (pun intended,) The Little Sister went back to get him and bring him here.

You should see him. He's quite the sight. A shaved head! Black tape over one side of his glasses! (to get rid of the double vision, 'Don't cry, TLNG! It's like Papi is a PIRATE!') A giant, upside-down, U-shaped scar! ('Hey Look! It's the shape of a RAINBOW!!') (omfg.)  Physically, he's doing well. Pretty amazingly well, actually, for someone his age to whom this kind of surgery was done.  Mentally and emotionally is, as they say, another ball of wax.

He feels kidnapped, I suppose.  The turnaround time at his house was very short, as more time would have just been prolonging the inevitable, not to mention keeping my sister from her nursling.  And while he was being whisked through Pennsyltucky, I was busy making follow up appointments and transferring a lot of his care from there to here.

The visiting nurse came to see him yesterday.  She asked him a series of questions.  One of them was whether or not he'd had any issues with The Depression.  He said, 'No' at the very same time The Little Sister and I said, 'Yes.'  She asked him why he was, 'all the way over there when his whole family was here?'  And then she said, 'Are you going to move here now?' and he said, 'Maaaaaah. I guess I'm going to have to but I don't want to.'

It can't be easy to be wrenched from your life, (not to mention thrown under the bus) by even the most loving hand.  I understand this.  I really do.  But it doesn't change the fact that in order to care for him in the way that The Little Sister and I want, he has to be closer.  The truth is, bringing him here relieves a whole host of not only worries, but also massive inconveniences.  Roadblocks in the form of miles, that would make it impossible for us to be involved enough in his care to make a difference in its quality.  Or, more likely--because I can't see leaving him there in a time of great need--the repeated uprooting of my family and the upheaval of my entire life, which is just not okay right now.

But still.

It's like the title says.

Happy Makers

When I'm down and a little out of it, I sometimes think of really funny shit that's happened to me or to people I know.  For whatever reason, getting a laugh is a Happy Maker for me.  I'm going to share one of the stories that I think about from time to time.  I just thought of it today, in fact, and it's just as funny now as when I first heard it. 

When The Nephew was an infant, The Little Sister was bouncing him to sleep on the yoga ball.  He was in a mei tai wrap and he had just fallen asleep in there.  You should know that TLS was VERY, VERY protective of his sleep at that time (he was the first child, you know.)

Anyway.

You have to picture it in your head.  As she's bouncing the sleeping baby, her cat--for no discernible reason whatsoever--charges at the ball.  She jumps up onto it and turns and pushes off, like a fucking Feline Olympic Swimmer, puncturing the ball with her back claws.  The ball POPS!! (omfg) and DEFLATES!! INSTANTLY!! sending my sister straight to floor, almost breaking her ass bones in the process. (I find this hilarious. But I am the kind of asshole who laughs whenever ANYONE falls down, so--there's that.)

If that isn't enough to make you wish that someone videoed that shit, get this: Although she is in excruciating broken-ass-bone pain, she HOBBLES WITH THE QUICKNESS to her bedroom, so that she can put down the baby--so he STAYS ASLEEP.

Yes. Yes. Let that sink in for a second. 

The yoga ball exploded and she crashed to the floor and broke her ass bones and instead of cursing or crying or screaming from fright, she instantly concerned herself with SAVING THE NAP.

See? I'm happier already.

Stressed. And Sort Of Pissed.

You guys, I'm...stressed. STRESSED.  You know the kind of stressed that has you feeling like you're floating? Bobbing aimlessly along your ceiling? Having a hard time concentrating and forgetting what you were saying in the middle of a sen...

What was I saying?

Oh, yeah. Stressed.

My father was admitted to the hospital after an outpatient CAT scan showed bleeding in the brain. Not a mini-stroke. Go figure.  He was seen by the neurosurgeon, who needs to operate to remove the clot, but who has to wait until the blood thinners are out of his system.  Which means surgery on Sunday (Happy Easter! We're going to crack an Egg, all right!) and an additional 3-5 days in the hospital after that.

My sister and her family are there right now, after driving through the night with their two small kids to get there.  She called me and told me that she was having The Merry Maids come to clean the house and then she said, 'I don't know what the hell is wrong with me. I was writing the note about when the maids were coming and I wrote: 9:00-9:30 Merry Christmas, instead of Merry Maids.'  So, yeah. We're all stressed.

And Happy Fucking New Year, too.

There's is an additional element, which is so bizarre as to render me almost speechless, that is creating more/deeper stress.  I can't talk about it too much, but it involves my father being a victim of a crime and discussions with police. Police! And the fact that my father kept this huge secret from my sister and me makes me anxious, sad and furious, all at the same time.

And lastly, there's this: My father was admitted to the same hospital my mother was in while she died.  He was admitted, like, one day shy of her admission five years ago.

So, this leaves me in a gut-twistingly familiar place. Deciding whether or not to drag some or all of the members of my family 7 hours away to be there for my dad. Who needs me, for sure, but who--right this minute--is pissing me off more than you can imagine. 

Because, you know, if he lived here, he wouldn't have fallen victim to that particular crime, he'd be under better medical care 10 minutes from my house and I wouldn't have to miss seeing my friend, to care for my stubborn Old Goat of a father.  Which, believe me, is the fucking SALT for my wounds.