HalfAsstic.com

Can you tell John is on vacation?  I am being very bad about posting and I really am sorry.  A sorry poster, that is!

First off and the biggest news is that I am the proud aunt of an adorable, new nephew.  My brother, Cam and SIL, Melissa, are the proud parents of 8 year old Noah!  This is the reason my brother is in the States right now, and not at home in Italy.  He’s doing the finalization of Noah’s adoption with the court in Wise County, Texas where it all began.

Noah is a sweetheart who loves Spiderman, swimming, going to the beach, (They live a block or two from the Mediterranean!), riding his Green Machine, snowboarding and being a sweetheart, most of the time.  He’s a doll!  Check it out.

Here he is on his Green Machine, riding in a park at the shore of the Mediterranean Sea.  (Note: two wheeling it on a three wheeler!)

Here he is with my brother, Cam and Melissa, the lovely wife.

Here, Melissa is outfitting him to snowboard.

In action!  I believe this was his first time on a snowboard.

Last Christmas at my parents house looking at a new game.

I said his name, he turned around and I snapped the shot before he knew I even had a camera. (The date on the camera is wrong.  It was last Christmas.

Coloring on his dad’s cast.

A friend of theirs in Italy got married…

Got married at a CASTLE!  But did I get cool pics of the castle?  NO!  grumble, mumblestupidbrothermumble….

At some banquet or another with the lovely mother/my SIL, Melissa!

Snowboarding in the Alps.  I can’t remember which ones.

Isn’t he adorable!  Anyone need a dimple?  He’s got plenty to spare!  I couldn’t be more tickled and even though I already welcomed him to the family when they got him, I am so happy it’s official, now.  Noah Camdon Wilde.  I think it sounds great!

Last night, Kes was walking, (barefoot), through the kitchen on her way to the living room when she stepped on something.  She yelled, “Oww!”, and limped over to the couch to examine her foot.

“MOM!”

“Yes, dear.  I’m right here.”, I deep sighed… (I guess I should know where she gets it.)

“Ohmigosh Mom!  There’s a piece of glass in my foot!”  She glances up and says accusingly, “You left glass on the floor when you broke that glass cake pan the other day!”

You know how Pyrex shatters, eight million gillion pieces, give or take 6 or 7.  I am STILL finding chunks of it two rooms away as it fairly exploded when it hit the ground.  Not to mention the worst part was I was taking a batch of brownies out of the oven when I dropped it.

She plucks the offending shard out and shows it to me.  “It’s huge, Mom!”

She begins to tease now, “You left it there to stab me!  I’m bleeding Mom!  Quick get me a band aid, Neosporin, and hydrogen peroxide.  Hurry, Mom, HURRY!

I am laughing at the fuss she is making and go to the bathroom to get the stuff.  While I’m in there I hear her flip open her phone and start madly texting.  She finishes up pretty soon after I get back and doctor her toe.  I asked, so, who were you texting, and she replied, boyfriend.  What did you tell him?  She flipped her cell back open with the ubiquitous deep sigh/eye roll and read,

“I don’t think I can cook dinner for us nonight, as I am wounded.  Mom has stabbed me with a piece of the pyarrhea cake pan.”

Swear to God, she flipped the cell shut and looked me straight in the face and said “WHAT?”

I couldn’t stop laughing.  And even when I told her it was Pyrex, not pyarrhea, she still didn’t see what was so funny when she thought she was just being a litte silly.

On April 23, 2006 my father-in-law, Marcos, passed away after being on hospice for a few months.  He had lived with us for about a year and seven months.  It all started when Henrietta fell in their home on the way back from the bathroom in the middle of the night.  We got a call from Marcos saying she couldn’t get up and we jumped in the car and raced over there.  Their house is about 30 minutes away.  I called the ambulance on the way there and we made it in about 15 minutes.  This is mainly due to no traffic in the middle of the night! *Mental note: have catastrophes  in the middle of night, ALWAYS.*  So we got there and H had, basically, broken everything.  Well, it seemed like it.  Tibia, hip, humerus, she was in bad shape.  So the little old lady with the severe osteoporosis went off to the hospital and Marcos came home to live with us.  John and I and our two teenage daughters in a three bedroom, one bath house.  With Marcos.  Together.

We got the hell out of that house as soon as we could and moved into a 4 bedroom 3 bath ASAP.  This helped a lot, but Marcos was starting to slide into a depression that he never really came out of.  I fed him an antidepressant everyday and we tried to keep his spirits up.  H stayed in the hospital for months.  Marcos went more and more downhill and his mental state deteriorated.  He couldn’t be left alone for any length of time.  He started falling.  He had a walker and refused to use it for the longest time.  The things that he determined were his duties, such as making coffee or going out to get the newspaper, became impossible for him to master.  He totally screwed up, I don’t know how many coffee makers.  Made HUGE messes in the kitchen attempting to make it multiple times a day and at various odd moments all night long.  He’d get up during the night over and over and attempt to make it outside to “get the paper”.  When I’d point out that it was dark out and night time, he was always very surprised and in the beginning he would voluntarily return to bed.  But, eventually, it became harder and harder to convince him of anything.

I got one of the cowbells that H uses to ring for me and and tied it to his walker with a plastic cable tie wrap.  That way, combined with the baby monitor there was absolutely no way he could make it out of his room with out me knowing at night.  I started jumping out of bed when when I heard him get up and running down the hall and closing the door at the end of it and holding it closed so it would seem locked when he got there after he had used the bathroom and was trying to make it to the front door or kitchen.  I remember him standing there kicking the door and fussing, while I was on the other side just praying for him to go back to bed.  At first he would.  Then it became a matter of he was going to find a way out and do what he wants.  The ruckus became bigger and bigger and John would come and try to convince him to go to bed too.

We had always just kept the front door keys in the door, (on the inside, of course),  and he would just head out anytime he wanted day or night.  So I took the keys out and we started keeping the door locked.  All. the. time.  He searched the house and even went through my purse until he found the keys.  It was like trying to deal with a highly intelligent toddler.  The scariest thing going and SO tiring.

The truly strange thing is he didn’t have Alzheimer’s.  Just old age senility combined with a HUGE overdose of old fashioned Mexican machismo.  That poor little old man had stubbornness in spades.  He was slowly dying and it was just not nearly fast enough for him.  He got to the point that he refused to take a bath and was only doing so about once every 10 days to two weeks under duress.  At some point John was the only one who could convince him.  This wouldn’t have been SO bad except he had become totally inept in the bathroom and would end up with shit everywhere.  Including on him.  He really did try, bless his heart, but he just didn’t have the strength to do anything more than just barely get there.  The commode seat and numerous other things in there were routinely smeared with poo.  I cannot tell you the amount of latex gloves, paper towels and spray bleach I went through.

By the time he died he was a little dried up husk of a man and I could pick him up in my arms like a baby and carry him to bed.  I did this the last time we changed his bed.  H was in the hospital with a broken hip from a totally unrelated incident and the continuous care hospice nurse suggested we put him in her hospital bed.  It was a good idea and we were changing his sheets anyway.  So I just picked him up and put him in her bed.  It was the strangest sensation.  This larger than life man that had always seemed so dominant was no where in there.  I think he died two days later and he had been so ready for so long.

Poor Henrietta was in the hospital and even missed his funeral.  When we told her she took it very well.  She said she knew he wasn’t going to make it much longer, and I’m sure that’s true.  He had a 21 gun salute and honor guard as he was a decorated WWII veteran who was wounded and permanently crippled in the rush on Iwo Jima.  He was someone to contend with…even before things were going downhill.

Hello intertubes!  I am back with a quick update!

Nothing too spectacular has happened since the last time I announced the goings on here at the Nut House.  How bouts a quickie update?  Too bad, here it is:

• John was off yesterday and we ran amuck.  The caregiver provider stayed here with H and we were muckyrunning aaaaall over the place.  For gasoline to be so freakin’ expensive, we were WILD!  heh heh.  We made it to Macy’s to see if there were any good deals to be had and sure enough, John’s ultra sensitive nose for economical spending steered us to a few new ties for him.  His butt cheeks made a squeaking noise as we walked over to where the tie sale rack sits.  He is always needing new neck-wear, as he isn’t that easy on his ties.  We got three $45.00 Donald Trump ties for just $5.63 a piece.  He wore one of them today, but here are the other two.

They look a little pink here.  Actually they are dark red.

Here is the proof!  With tax, $18.28 for three Donald Trump ties.

The trick at Macy’s is to find the stuff that’s on sale and take it over to the price checker thing and start scanning anything that you are remotely interested in because they are really good/bad about either mispricing or just not putting correct signage out for the sale products.  And the prices are SO good that I think they are probably just making mistakes when they are pricing, but it works out great for us almost every time we go.  My sweet little miser husband pulled out his dusty, cobweb covered wallet and paid $18.28 for all three.  Good deal!

• Hurricane Dolly made landfall sometime yesterday evening, I think, and we finally started getting some much needed rain from it.  It is still raining off and on.  Woo-Hoo!

• My brother in Italy isn’t.  In Italy, that is.  He arrived last night at my parents house in Decatur, Tx and I am hoping we will be able to meet up with all of them on Wednesday for a visit.

• Henrietta is still catheter-free and letting her hoo-hoo rest.   I asked her how it was getting on and she pulled a super serious face and replied, “Oh, it’s doing very well, thank you!”, and then burst out laughing.  Last nigh she asked me if I would close the blinds for her in her room and I said sure and was doing so and she said, “Now make sure they’re closed up tight…”.  and I said I thought they were and no one could see in that little slit, and she replied, ” I might be able to get out through there, tho…”.   I said, “You?” To which she looked sly and said, “Krissa, I don’t have any bag to hold me back, now!  You don’t know what I might do!”

• Be on the lookout for a catheter free little old lady in a nightgown.

• I just totally told off a lady who called here from Dell Computers asking me if the problem we were having last Sunday was resolved.  I told her no, we still haven’t been able to get it to recognize the disc drive.  She said something like, “Oh.”, and immediately changed the subject a bit by asking me how it was doing otherwise.  I told her, “Actually it’s running slow.  My husband and I were discussing it last night and he and I have both tried all the little tricks that used to make a difference in the past with no luck.”  (Keep in mind that it’s a year old next month.  In other words, THE WARRANTY IS ABOUT TO EXPIRE AND NO MORE “FREE” TECH SUPPORT)  She came back with, “Well, I see here you bought it with only 2GB of memory and that really isn’t enough to support Vista.”

This is where I got ticked off.

“No.  It supports Vista just fine and has for almost a year now.  It only started running slow just lately.”

She proceeded to tell me that if I ever wanted to get it to run well again I needed to purchase some RAM from her.  Now.  On the phone.  Or forever be delegated to computer hell.

“No one told me it was insufficient to support Vista when I bought it.”  She comes back with a snappy, “Oh, uh, well?”

I told her no thank you we’re not sinking any more money into it because we’re getting an Apple.

That got her off the line.  She was originally calling to sell me another warranty.

• I am taking this opportunity to apologize for the lack of substance in this post.  THAT is the state of my life, lately.  Substance free…and applesauce free.

Well, there is more excitement here at the Nut House.  Last night when I put Henrietta to bed, her diaper was wet.  Not just a little, but soaked,   Great.  The catheter had failed during the day sometime.  Just a little bit of pee in the bag.  Sometimes moving her around and repositioning her gets it to start working again so I was keeping my fingers crossed that it would fix itself over night.  No.  This morning she woke up swathed in wet sheets and nightgown.  FREEZING, of course.  Everything was soaking wet including a diaper full of shit.  I ran in and threw a towel in the dryer and got John to call the nurse while I started trying to strip the bed with her in it and get a dry hospital chux under her.  Got the sheets, blanket and mattress protector off the bed and another chux under her, ran and got the towel out of the dryer and put it over her while I went and ran water in a basin and got washcloths and then bathed her off.  I was answering questions from John for him to answer the nurse on the phone.  He hung up and shouted down the hall that she would be coming at 3:00ish.  M’kay, fine.  She showed up and DID NOT BRING A NEW CATHER WITH HER.  This was a new one for me.  She said she thought she’d just wiggle around the old one and see if she could get it to work.  She explained that she would need to go back to the office to get one.  Well, I had already deflated the old one and removed it, I mean it was just in the way and doing nothing whatsoever.  So no way it was going back in.  She went out and rummaged around in her car and finally found a kit.  I happened to have an extra catheter.  So we poked around and never got any urine back and had no more to try with.  She left and I scheduled Paula to come and give it a shot after she left the office at the home health care place.  She brought 4 catheters and several kits for me to have on stock and we used all but one of them and never got any urine back in the tube.  She said it was time to let H have a rest and she’s coming back tomorrow.  woo-hoo…

Aren’t you glad I don’t have pictures with my post today?

John wanted me to call this diaper incident F.L.  Full Load.

Well, I have been taken to task by my itty, bitty, baby brother.  Calling him that made him furious, years and years ago.  I am thinking now, it’s just dandy. Anyway, yesterday was his birthday and I didn’t even mention it.  I DID remember and called him and all that, but, reporting on the U.P. just seemed to be foremost in my thoughts because, I suppose, I felt like I needed to explain, partially, why I hadn’t been keeping up with this blog.  Not that a U.P. is more significant than his birthday, or even an S.P., but over here in this household you just get caught up in all the excitement of the bowel movements.  You understand.  Sure you do. YESTERDAY, baby brother, Cam, turned 37 years old.  I go back and forth between thinking my teenagers are aging me faster and then I think it’s gotta be him.  He will catch up someday, but for now he’s eight years younger. I remember when he was born, and that’s saying a lot because I have very few memories of childhood.  I was roused in the middle of the night and taken to my auntie-poo’s house to stay while Mither and Pop trailed off to the hospital.  I don’t remember visiting in the hospital, but I’m sure I did.  This was back in the day when a 3 day maternity stay was the norm.    When he finally came home I LOVED that baby with an intensity I assumed only a mother could feel.  He was MINE.  I wanted to do everything for him.  Well, almost everything.  I remember him as a toddler so well.  He was adorable.  I took him everywhere I could with me.  We were living in Lafayette, La. and the subdivision we lived in had a local 7-11 store several blocks away.  My friends and I would walk down there regularly.  I dearly loved pulling my little brother behind me in a wagon outfitted with pillows and a blanket if it was cold.  In the store, I always bought him some candy and then we’d set out towards home.  We took baths together and had tons of fun in the bathtub.  I am sure we splashed an entire ocean of water on the floor. Any time he got into trouble and was being punished or scolded, I cried longer and harder than he did.  He called me “Ya-Ya”, and if he was being put in a time out in his room he’d sit in there and call for me until I convinced our mom to let me go in to see him. And then one day, it happened.  He soured for me.  He was no longer The Golden Boy.   I believe he was 4 and I remember telling my mom that “He is SO spoiled!”.  And the funny thing is that I had absolutely NO idea how he got that way.  Mom says he still worshiped me and I just didn’t think any of what he did was acceptable anymore and he was acting like a baby.  He was 4 and he needed to grow up. The problem, I can see as I look back, was not that he was 4 but I was 12 and about to be a teenager.  (Oh Lord, thank you for giving my parents a stalwart nature more suited to an adventurous pioneer and, consequently, the ability to let me live.)  Oops, was I praying?  Er, yeah, sorry ’bout that.  The mention of the word “teenager” frequently brings on an involuntary fervent prayer response.

A few days old.  Fat ass weighed 9 lbs. at birth…

His second Halloween… hard to tell if his cheeks are full of candy or….  No.  He’s just fat.

Playing with a puppy at our grandmother’s house.

Looking adorable in the backyard at our house.

Here he is with “Baby”, his constant companion.

And a scarecrow for his third Halloween.

Four years old and for the LONGEST time that hat never left his head.  He even wore it to school everyday in Kindergarten.   He’s snaggletoothed here because I ACCIDENTALLY kicked his tooth out.

Loved playing anything outside.

Four or Five years old and was already interested in music.  He now plays a guitar quite well.

Special thanks go to our dear Mither who scanned and sent these pictures after digging through thousands and getting all mired down in “Oooooh LOOK!…AWWWW, he’s soo CUTE!  OH, I’d forgotten all about that!  Look at how sweet!…”

Hello, people!  It’s been a while!  I am happy to report that I am still alive, only just barely it seems.  I am having a hard time shaking this funk I’m in and it really makes it hard to post.  Ideas that seem good to me late at night while watching Ferguson or trying to go to sleep, seem ridiculous the next day.  I am being a little depressed and my mind doesn’t want to work fast or freely anymore, just like the rest of me, I suppose!  Haha.

John was only off one day this week and it was yesterday.  We frantically ran around for three hours while the caregiver provider person was here and managed to take in lunch at a nearby Chinese restaurant, which I felt like was splurging because everything is so expensive now.  And I don’t just mean at the Chinese Restaurant, I mean everything.  At this point I am thinking the only way we can help pay for college is if we rent out the daughter in servitude.  I know what you’re thinking.  If she is in servitude, how will she go to school that is getting paid for?  Vicious circle.  I guess we could sell the younger daughter into servitude and she could support her sister’s need for knowledge, but I am thinking that would create a good deal of resentment and bitterness.  Just guessing.

That leaves us with Henrietta and I just can’t see anyone paying me for taking her off my hands.  Correct me if you know something I don’t.

I was soooo gonna do a post on Wednesday.  Things stewing around in my little head, fingers itching to type them out… whatev.  H. woke up that morning distressed that she was having stomach cramps, “all night”.

me: Why didn’t you ring the bell?

H: Oh, I didn’t want to bother you!

me: (teasing) Well, when you need to use the potty you have to tell me.  I can’t read your mind….!

H: (Smiling) Oh I don’t want to bother you at night, Krissa.

So all this happened BEFORE breakfast.  This is important because it is an UNSCHEDULED POOP, or a “U.P.”  This set the tone for the day.  She ate half her oatmeal very slowly and did the characteristic whiny and sing-song voice.  I knew she wouldn’t eat all of her food just because that is what she automatically does if anything is amiss in her life.  Unscheduled Poo, hangnail, cramp in her calf, cold chill while getting a bed-bath, coughing due to allergies/sinus drainage, whatever.  But, when I brought her the egg and little piece of sausage with a roll and jelly she, ate everything but about a bite and a half of the egg and a little tiny piece of the bread.  It’s like she was thinking, “I have to leave something on the plate, I’m sick!”

So when I picked up the tray and saw she hadn’t finished everything I knew it was going to be a day of pitifullness and staying in bed.  Which really does suit me fine.  She discovered other problems during the day and had a bout with indigestion and we did Malox and Sprite and a teaspoon of baking soda in water and everything we could think of, I don’t know how bad it really was, she was teary eyed all day and acting ready to cash in her chips cause he couldn’t burp.

Thursday she decided she needed to stay in bed because, “Maybe I had better just stay here… you know, to make sure.”  Make sure of what, I have no idea.  Make sure she can burp?  Make sure she only poops between the hours of 1:00 and 2:00PM?  Make sure I can still run up and down that long ass hall, (and getting longer all the time), 400 times a day?  Make sure the clapper on the cowbell she rings isn’t worn out from the day before?  These are questions I now wish I’d asked her.

So that’s it people.  That’s all I got.  Sorry I don’t feel the least bit like trying to produce anything remotely amusing.  I am hoping this will eventually pass.  I am sure it will.

Henrietta has been completely consumed with the death of legendary doctor, Michael DeBakey.  She has launched into gushing praise of him, in apparently mid thought, a number of times and caught me completely off guard.

While putting her to bed last night…

H: He was 99 years old!  And he did SO MUCH for Houston!

Me: …Who?

H: 99!

Me: WHO?- (I was unaware this was going to be an ongoing thing at this point.)

H: Yes!  He was!

Me: HENRIETTA, WHO ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT?

H: Oooh, Dr. DeBakey!

This happened over and over with her out of the blue announcing things like, “Did you know he’s a Catholic?!”.

Just a few minutes ago I looked in the living room and she was sitting there watching the news, bawling.  I just left it and later she started going on about how “sad it is that he died…” I finally told her that was crazy and he was a 99 year old man living in a broken down little old 99 year old body and he had done enough for the world to warrant an excuse to leave and go on to better things.  Her response?

“Ooooh, (sob), Yeeeeees!”

To be such a devout Catholic, she has consistently missed the entire message about death and heaven and rewards in the afterlife, all that.  This has happened over and over with other people who have died and her attitude is always that it must be the worst thing ever.  I really don’t think she believes in heaven.  And like I said, she is a super-duper Catholic, not just your run-or-the-mill kind.  Weird.

How uneventful could this possibly be?  Well, let’s see.

John worked the late shift today and left for work shortly before 1:00PM.  Henrietta was up and fed, pooped, diapered, dressed and in the wheelchair by 1:45ish.  You’ve got to remember that she stays in bed until she is done on the bedpan for the day. (Hopefully.)  The “Big B.M.” is almost always around 1:00 to 1:30.

I just re-read that last paragraph and can see where there are some problems.  I used the term, “You’ve got to remember…”.  Actually, you don’t have to remember anything having to do with H’s poops.  I do, though.  *sigh*

OK, back on track!  I was attempting to communicate how uneventful this day has been.  After I got her dressed she asked if I could cut her hair for her as it was below her collar and bugging her a good deal.  So I got her in the chair and rolled her in the kitchen, threw a sheet around her and stopped to make the child a sandwich before she left for work.  Done. Back to H.  I sprayed her hair and chopped it off around the bottom, just as always and she was good to go.  About that time, the phone rang and the Housecall Dr. said she would be here in about 20 minutes.  So I muted the TV and gently swiveled H’s little head around so that she was looking at me, knelt down and screamed into her face that the new doctor was coming out to visit her.  This was met with the expected amount of horror and panic, as she simultaneously crossed herself, started muttering a hail Mary and felt for her own pulse.  I explained to her three or four times that, “She is just coming to meet you and get acquainted with your case so she can be your doctor!”  All at a decibel level approaching sonic boom.  I swear, this wears me out.  It is so hard to be constantly reassuring her about… everything, and having to scream it over and over and answer her questions because she is so panicked she isn’t paying attention.  And she is SO freakin paranoid.  Oh. My. Gawd.  You cannot begin to believe all the paranoia that we deal with on a regular basis.  When she first came to live with us, we went round and round with her about all the windows being locked.  There was just about no way to convince her that this was all done except show her that you were checking them.  The front door needed to stay locked all the time and she was just hoping and praying that the back one was.  It wasn’t quite as important as the front to her because we had a huge family dog.  In reality we never locked it and Hailee, (huge dog) slept at the back door and would have eaten anybody that came in the yard.  Very nearly did, several stupid meter readers that disregarded the warning sign.

She has slowly gotten better and now does not insist I lock the front door when John is at work.  However she pays entirely too much attention to the news on TV and the newspaper.  EVERYTHING is threatened by the evil somebodyoranother.  She is forever telling me that the reason the nurses ask her all the questions they do is because people try to “trick them and defraud the Medicare.  They have to make sure we’re not trying to trick them, so they ask us questions to see if we know how to answer.”  I swear, there is nothing tricky at all about the nurses visits or their questions.  “Appetite OK?”  “Blood pressure good?”  “Bowels moving?”  Oh, hell yeah.

Yeah.  Wonder what’s on TV tonight…

The wee child that is in no small amount of trouble with me is at work this morning and her friend showed up to pick up an item for her.

Anna: Hi!  Keelan asked me if I would swing her iPod by for her.  She is standing in front of me waiting… Is it pluged in there,…behind you?

Me: Well, yes it is Anna, but are we supposed to even touch it, cause it seems to me that I have been told that I should not even think about touching it… Maybe I shouldn’t pick on unsuspecting friends when I am steamed at deliquent child, but I can’t help myself.

Anna: Oh, yes!  She asked me to come and get it!

Now at this point I wasn’t really planning and scheming.  Involuntary responses took over my body and I am fairly convinced I wasn’t even driving.  I reached down and picked up the iPod and unplugged it and as it came around in front of me I put it close to my face and licked the back of it.  (Not the screen.)  I then laid it down on the desk in front of me and looked Anna carefully in the eye, (Anna’s eye’s were fairly big at this point.), and said, “Anna, you be sure and tell Keelan that I did that, OK?”  She did not speak, just nodded her head with eye’s as big as saucers.

I have not heard from child and don’t think I will.  I have barely exchanged any words with her in the past few days.  But, I don’t think there is any way she will dare bring this up to me.

Oh. and If I get sick any time soon… I will know for sure where computer viruses come from.