How many? Oh.

Uuuuh, lets say 30. Yeah, that sounds good.

Are you having a hard time swallowing this?

What I need here is a touch of evidence. Here are some bathroom pics!

Behold, BEFORE! Go ahead, click on it and make it BIG!

Master bathroom 80's wallpaper BEFORE the paint job. NOW you see why The Peace Corps was needed.

Now stop that! I know you can control your gag reflex better than that! You’re being a sissy! Only a few of those Peace Corps folks tossed their cookies. And there were 45 of them staying here, remember!

Allrightythen, moving right along. I’m guessing you are  now wanting some eye relief. Let’s try showing some improvement, but not quite done.

This is the loverly Kessa. She was a tad upset with me cause she didn't have any make up on. I know... I can be decked out to the nines and sporting a tiara and not come close to looking like that.

SEE! Isn’t it a beautiful shade of blue/teal or whatever it is? Talk about “lighten and brighten”! That’s what we did!

Here's the mess aaaaall over the counter. There is so much mess you probably can't even see the Peace Corps workers in there doing their thing.

Here's Mither bent over painting the wall behind the counter. I realize you can't see that much of her, (go with me, here), but she's peeking out between that bucket of joint compound and blue plastic cup of paint.

Here's a close up of my new shower curtain. I got it for six bucks at a garage sale and so the bathroom color was picked around it. SCORE!

This is a really great shot except that the paint is so totally NOT that color. I really did have a hard time getting pics that represent the shade of blue/aqua/turquoise/greenishblue...

See what I mean? The paint in the potty room is the exact same as the paint in the rest of the bathroom. However, I can point out here that the far wall in the potty room does look more like the actual color. I don't know why it makes it such a baby blue in the foreground.

Well, (refresher here), he had been losing weight at a really alarming rate and so had figured he must have diabetes. We have never known anyone with this disease before and really had nothing to go on besides Wikipedia and medical websites, but it seemed obvious.

Also, understand that John was adopted, so there was no family history.

So, he made an appointment and went in and got his blood drawn and peed in a cup and just basically gave them all the info he could.

For some reason I will never understand the doctor didn’t just prick his finger right there in the office and look at a glucose meter. But, who am I to wonder at the wise and mysterious ways of quacks?

Aaaaanyway, a couple of days later the chick with the test results called and told John he was fine. His cholesterol was just a tad high-he needed to work on that.

He came right out and asked her, “So… I don’t have diabetes?”

“Oh, no, Mr. Lopez.” He was good to go.

So now, I am panicked. How could he have lost literally close to 60 lbs in 2 1/2 months?

Crap.

You know what I was thinking, don’t you? Cancer. And so was John.

We were scared to death.

OK, cutting to the chase now.  That was in February. In October John was admitted to the hospital with congestive heart failure and that’s when his blood sugar was 566.

I had the presence of mind to call the old doctor that USED to see him and ask for a copy of those test results from back in February.

You guessed it. He was very clearly diabetic. It was circled and everything. It was on the page after the cholesterol count and apparently she just hadn’t bothered to look at it.

Color me livid. And panicked, since there was some misinformation at the bottom of the page that said he tested positive for some kind of cancer. Come to find out that bit of info was for another patient and John was fine, which we knew as soon as the hospital ran the same test on him.

OK, now. Guess what I received in the mail from the same clinic that screwed up the delivery of his test results? Go ahead. You never will.

Unless you are skipping ahead before I tell you…

Are you?

Stop it!

OK. I received the test results for a Juan Lopez. Along with his correct address on the INSIDE.

The good news is Juan’s culture was negative. The bad news is I’m pretty sure I am supposed to be oblivious to this.

When I called the clinic and told them I had his test results in my hand there was a lot of gasping and a collective “Oops!”. They asked me if I would please mail it back to them. I asked why not just tear it up and throw it away? She indicated I could do anything I want with it, but they would prefer I mail it back to them.

I would prefer they get their shit together and communicate better with their clients.

Too much to ask?

AND, Is it evil of me to want to just hop in the car with this and run it over to Juan’s house and hand deliver it while explaining why it’s opened and the envelope is addressed to a John Lopez?

Yeah. One of the many default looks, but it got old fast and never looked remotely HalfAsstic.

This one? Not perfect, yet much better.

Now, I am going to try to do better about posting. You have probably heard that from me in the past few years, and I meant it, too. Every single time.

John and I went to Mardi Gras in Galveston the other day. We were invited by a distributing company that supplies beer to his store. We were part of a private party that was on a balcony on The Strand and it was very la tee da.

I’m not sure how much my readers all know about Mardi Gras. It is a very southern experience, and if you’re not from down here it’s probably not something the typical person would know anything much about.

Being on a balcony we were expected to throw beads. Lots and Lots of beads.

This was inside, and really I didn’t spend too much time here. Mostly I was freezing my ass off outside with John.

It was so packed out there it was almost impossible to take pictures except of the street below. And it was too far away for the flash to work well, so really? Not too many good pictures of the crowd or parade.

See the necklaces with the really big beads on John’s and my neck? Guess what the crowd below is expected to do in order to get one of those thrown to them?

Mardi Gras etiquette. No, really. I’m serious.

The first person to respond in comments with the correct answer, I will do something… fabulous for.

Did I mention, it got a bit nippy out there?

Heh! When he finally remembered he wore a shirt with a hood, he didn’t bother to pull his bling to the outside of it before cinching it up. He is holding my drink along with his beer in order for me to take the picture.

All he needs is a couple of cute, long, white ears and he’d look just like the little white bunny on Craig Ferguson.

When it finally became too cold for us to adequately distribute beads we moved on inside and were entertained by none other than Elvis.

Fer Real, people.

And not the old, fat Elvis in the white jumpsuit, either. This guy sounded EXACTLY like him, too.

We chatted with friends, had a few drinks, and danced a good deal. Eventually Elvis had a wardrobe change and came back like this:

He was singing all his hits and we were having a ball. While John and I were out there “getting down”, he all of the sudden grinned and pointed over my shoulder. When I turned around, Elvis was…. making advances to me.

I quickly accessed the situation, ran my hands up and down his chest then threw my arms around his neck and he dipped me.

I don’t think he ever stopped singing or got too far away from the microphone. Very talented professional.

But what would you expect from Elvis?

We met a lot of interesting people…

And had a lot of fun.

I wish you could have all been there with us!

Have you ever had one of those days where you wander around doing all these different things that need doing without any kind of plan in your head, cause really? there is no way to plan that shit, and as you are going from one thing you put up to another thing you do to another thing, you realize you set your coffee cup down somewhere and you begin searching for it.

It is nowhere. You can not find it to save your life. Backtracking all over the house you see where you have been and things you have done countless times. Just no coffee cup.

Finally, you just give up. Throw your hands in the air and admit defeat.

This justifies another trip to the coffee pot and a fresh cup.

Wait a sec… it’s kinda cold. A quick 35 seconds in the microwave will do the trick.

You open the microwave and guess what you see sitting there on the little turntable thingy?

And it’s even cold since it’s been sitting there so long waiting for you to pull your head out of your ass and drink it instead of walking all over the house looking for it like a nitwit.

And has this ever happened to you twice, IN THE SAME DAY?

Really?

Uh… me neither.

Henrietta is home from the hospital and on hospice again. I can’t remember if she was home or not in my last post. It might have been three days ago that I last wrote, it might have been three years. My conception of time, (which has always been shaky at best), has been completely annihilated.

I keep having random thoughts run through my head that I think I should post about and they are never anything that’s related to anything else. Once upon a time I could have pulled that off and while giving the occasional reader a minor case of whiplash, ultimately it would have been light and somewhat charming.

Now, I feel almost as crazy as H. And she IS crazy, people. With a capital C. CRAZY.

I just left her room a few moments ago where I was putting up some laundry. She asked me if I had heard Baby, our dog, try to talk. I asked her if she meant the dog, first. Yes, she did. I shook my head and she smiled and told me, “Oh, yes! She’s so cute! She tries to say the words and then she repeats it! She’s going to be talking soon.”

Now, Baby IS a very smart little dog, but I don’t think she has any desire to learn to talk at this point in her life. She has this whole world domination plan thing where she uses her doggy wiles to get what she wants and it would be totally ruined if she learned to talk. Other than that, I am sure she could.

So is Henrietta.

Now, I don’t want you to think that her confusion is always this pleasant. I can’t tell you how many times she has rung that *%#@*%! bell, I go trotting down the hall and she announces that I need to get all those Mexican men out of the house because she knows they want to buy it and she doesn’t want us to sell it. She then tells me that it’s bad for John’s heart for them to be here and the machine they use put him to sleep and I need to check to see if I can wake him up.

Any one part of this makes as much sense as any other part.

She is SO far gone. I just kind of nod and leave. But, THAT? That is nothing compared to her story about them running out of room for her in hospital so they took her in her bed to a house and put her in the garage to sleep. That’s where Jerry, (her nurse who was a very nice Indian man named something rather exotic that started with an “S”, but I can’t remember what… we just called him Jerry since she named him that), apparently took “… aaaaaall these girls and had his way with them.” Currently her story has morphed into Jerry raping her while she was there and asleep. She shows me her arms that are covered in the bruises from an IV and having blood drawn and all the little sadistic things they do to you in hospital, and says, “That’s where Jerry beat me.”

Oh, and while she was in hospital she insisted that both of my daughters had told her that they were raped. I had taken her the newspaper to read and I had just laid it down on her tray table. She pointed to it and asked,

“Krissa, is the story about the girls in there?”

I hadn’t watched the news in days and didn’t know what she was talking about so I innocently asked, “What girls?” So, slightly disgusted with me, (as I am obviously trying to hide something), she says, “The girls were raped, Krissa!”.

Once again, me being a bit on the obtuse side and all, I say, “WHAT GIRLS?”

“YOUR girls!”

“Well…. this is news to me!”

She doesn’t seem to think this is funny at all and proceeds to tell me that they were and I need to call the police. I assure her I will get right on that.

She hears men talking outside her window every night and the extent of the loooong conversations that she overhears at the other end of the house is amazing and repeated in painstaking detail every time she rings the &%$#*@! bell.

She drinks maybe 8 to 10 oz. of liquid a day and is well on her way to another UTI and fun stay in the hospital. Nothing I say to her can convince her to drink more. I have pleaded, pushed and cajoled. She ain’t gunna do it.

Meanwhile I had a serious… cuticle mishap. Stop sneering! You should see this thing! It has taken on a life of it’s own. A while back I was trimming an offending cuticle that was catching on stuff and ended up trimming just a TAD too close. Damn. That hurts.

BUT THAT WAS NOT THE END. Now, I have a thumb that is the size of John’s big toe. John wears a size 12. You do the math. It is swollen and full of, well, I don’t want to think about what it’s full of. I’d rather go and change a shitty diaper than think about what it’s full of.

Infected. That’s what it’s full of. It looks nasty and is the sorest thing I have experienced in forever. Hurts like a sonofabitch. I am pretty sure I am gonna die and it will be sad and I will be the first person ever who died from not getting a professional manicure from someone that knew what they were doing.

That? Will go on my headstone.

Henrietta has had her meds uped and, strangely, while making absolutely no difference in her associating my daughter’s boyfriend with Satan, (Yes. He still be the devil…), she is calmer while extolling his evilness. Less tears all around and frequent naps.

*Sigh*

There. Now that felt good, didn’t it?

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Yesterday I finally received my nook! Got all my crap transferred over just as it’s supposed to and so far so good! It is kept far away from all liquids and I am planning to have a pedestal built for it to sit it’s precious little self on when not in use. Do you think this will make it feel special enough to not nut up on me again?

We shall see.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Keelan recently got a haircut and while it’s cute…

I wish so much she would let it be wavy and full of body like it wants to be, naturally. I would have KILLED for this hair when I was her age!

No.

She insists on straightening it.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

We were behind this vehicle the other day and I couldn’t help wondering… Drug dealer? Or, maybe just user? Could be just someone with a distinct laugh.

Free toes, everybody!

OK, enough kissing ass and on to the brilliant idea Red had.

In a comment on the last post she said, “… maybe Henrietta should start a newspaper – the Henrietta Inquirer.”

This is an obvious oversight on my part as we could be rich by now and in paper print if the Hollywood press had found out about her back at the beginning of her wild story telling.  Well, or any press at all. Particularly the raunchy kind.

Can you imagine the ruckus  in her little mind as we sat here Superbowl Sunday, watching the game, groaning and shrieking, yelling and high fiving? She sat alone in her room watching some crime drama that she just can’t get enough of. (Cause, I mean what else is a paranoid little old lady going to want to watch? Certainly not sitcoms or anything else reasonable.) I had invited her in to watch the game with us, but she was fast to point out that she wanted nothing to do with it.

Then. Somewhere around the third quarter, she is spotted rolling down the hall like stormtroopers. She, effectively, bursts into the living room and snaps her head around in all directions.  “Why is it dark in here?! Turn that light on!”

The overhead light was off and I switched on a lamp beside me.  “What?” I was clearly a bit pissed. She ignored me completely and looked at John.

“Is he here?”

John and I don’t even pretend we don’t know who she’s talking about anymore.  “Gilbert is outside, mother, he’s checking on the steaks.

Damn, we ate late…

She doesn’t understand what he’s said, just as she doesn’t understand most of what anyone says when she’s got her dander up.

“John, you better not be letting him put any drugs into you!”

And, really, I think this is the most amazing thing about the whole affair. John, her perfect child that could never do any wrong in her eyes, and has NEVER IN HIS LIFE, (OK, he’s admitted to smoking a little pot in high school), DONE ANY DRUGS.  Not to mention he is battling CONGESTIVE HEART FAILURE!  She is convinced that he is getting illegal drugs from Gilbert who is clean as a whistle and has never been in any trouble like that in his life.

I can honestly say that we have stopped trying to talk her out of her misconceptions of Gilbert or anything that she comes up with that is crazy. She just gets kinda waved off. Heh. Which pisses HER off.

She was last seen, that night during the game, being quickly propelled down the hall to her room. With me doing the propelling.

Anyhow, I thought I would fill you people in on what’s going on with Pop and his possible case of Alzheimer’s. I wrote about it some time ago and really, I am too busy typing and eating a bagel to go find the post and link up.  (Hu, I knew all that bagel blather would be useful somehow…)

So when last I wrote about it Pop was in the beginning stages of some sort of dementia problem. The thinking was possibly Alzheimer’s but, there were no guarantees since, as it was explained to Mither, Alzheimer’s is really only 100% diagnosable by autopsy.  The doctors are saying now that they think he has vascular dementia.  This is a disease that progresses just like Alzheimer’s and they are both treated the same way, (with very little effect).

So time is creeping forward, (unless you have a baby or toddler), and Pop has gotten progressively worse. His biggest problem has been his change in personality. Or, I guess I should say everyone else’s problem. He flies into rages that are truly terrifying at times and always at Mither. Or me, when I was there, but nothing like the way he is to Mither.

He scared her so badly the other day that she just sat and didn’t say a word while he ranted and even used the “f” word at her.

Now take a minute and realize that they have been married FOR-EVAH, and she has never heard that word from his lips. He is 73 and from the deep south. Gentlemen just don’t talk like that in front of women. Go ahead and ask him. I dare ya.

The reason she didn’t respond to anything he was saying was that she was afraid he was going to go and get one of the many, many guns in the house and shoot her in his rage. I am not dramatizing here. Seriously. For the really’s.

So, when Kessa and Gilbert went to visit them Mither took those two aside and explained what they had to do. In order not to make a scene with Pop, they were to get their happy asses down to his gun range and shoot up every. single. round. of ammo in the house.

That is one huge job. Pop, has a lifetime’s collection of guns that were handed down to him, bought by him, used in Vietnam by him, given to him, etc. Many, many different kinds and shapes and sizes. (ALL PERFECTLY LEGAL, THOUGH. I mean we DO live in Texas.) What this meant is that there were dozens and dozens of boxes of ammunition in every caliber you can think of. OK, almost.

Those two spent hours trying to shoot up everything when he would be gone for one thing or another. Gilbert had a huge bruise on his shoulder and his wrist was sore. Kes didn’t shoot that diligently, but was tired of it all as well.

They never did finish. They brought home a ton of ammo that I sat in the floor and sorted by caliber and entered into evidence bags put in zip lock bags.

And then there was the guns they found that Mither had them take with them.  A loaded shotgun and 9mm Luger in his pickup. This is not like the Pop I knew from my childhood. It is way overkill. Plus the gun in the top of the closet that had to go. Loaded as well.

He still hasn’t discovered the missing ammo or guns yet. Mither says that when he does she is just going to explain to him how frightened she was when he was raging at her. I really don’t think he will remember doing it though, simply because he would have apologized to her for it later if he knew.

Anyway, my house could be an arsenal, now. I have been thinking about trying to earn extra cash doing something… wonder about being a “hired gun”…?  How would I work that out with H’s poopy diapers? I could take her with me as my pithy sidekick! Only she has never had a pithy word fall out of her mouth… Hummmm. I’m going to have to think on it.

I have identified some of those other seeds on the yummy bagel!  Poppy and rye! Very good bagel. Think I’ll go have another.

Hello everybody. I am, (yes, once again), apologizing for my absence. I am needing a note from my mother at this point and even she is miffed that I still haven’t gotten around to posting all the fabulous pictures of Christmas at her house.

Hey, it’s just a little over a week until February and I don’t like to rush things.

Every time I think about sitting down and posting I start off with something funny in my mind and it turns all maudlin in my head before I can get it out. And I don’t think it’s because the Lexapro isn’t doing the job it once was.

Let’s do a rundown, shall we?

Henrietta is still convinced that Gilbert, (the older daughter’s longtime boyfriend), is the devil and frequently can be overheard muttering things about diablo and then using his name under her breath. Yesterday she told John that I was trying to give her drugs that Gilbert supplied me with that were illegal. (Mucinex DM)  She also started crying a few days ago and telling John that she just KNOWS that Gilbert is bringing drugs over here and “shooting” them into him, (John). He had been to the doctor and they had taken blood and so he had a cotton ball taped to the inside of his elbow. I guess I should be proud that she thinks that we only deal with the kind of pushers that use an alcohol pad and then a sterile cotton ball and band-aid after the shooting up. We be classy like that.

She is also convinced that I am a horrible person because I won’t let her go to the hospital. She has been sick with the same virus that has worked it’s way through the rest of the family and lingered in the chests and throats and sinus cavities of each of us for two to three weeks each.  She is convinced she is dying because she has a hacky little cough that bothers her a few times an hour.

I coughed like I had TB for three weeks and and had a rattle in my chest like a maraca.  On a couple of the days when it was at it’s worst I stayed in bed because there were other people here that could take care of her. I heard that woman say to John, “What’s the matter with her now?” John was obviously aggravated with her when he told her I was sick, (as if she didn’t know), and she didn’t say anything else about it. But now, she is telling me that she wants to go to the hospital because she is coughing. When I tell her it’s just a virus she says, “How do you know?”, and telling her that everyone else has had the same thing and the same symptoms does not help.  “Oh, Krissa… you don’t know!”  She asked me to call a friend of mine that’s a nurse that lives about 20 minutes away and have her come and listen to her chest and tell her what she’s got. (As if that would settle it.) I told her no, there was no way. She said, “Well, she could take my temperature!”. I told her over and over she has no fever. She started telling me I didn’t know what I was talking about. I RAISED TWO CHILDREN. LIKE, I REALLY DON’T KNOW HOW TO TELL IF SOMEONE HAS FEVER!

I got the damn thermometer and took her temp. Normal. So she let that drop.  But she started crying because she wanted to go to the hospital. No amount of assurance that the hospital wouldn’t take her would do. She won’t believe it. I explained that the insurance wouldn’t cover her admittance to the hospital for a cough. She just looked away and shook her head like a small child being defiant.

But, she gave up on the waterworks.

In other news…

John is not doing well at all and I am desperately hoping we can find a new way to attack his heart problems with a new pulmonary doctor and when we see him I am going to ask him if he can recommend a new cardiologist.  He has been sick and barely able to function at least 50% of the time since he got out of the hospital. They are not doing anything different. Same drugs, same course of action. (None.)  He hasn’t been to see the pulmonologist since he got out of the hospital because we found out the hard way that he doesn’t accept our insurance. But he is having such a hard time breathing now that we both think we have to do something new. So he will be going to see him on February 2nd.

Meanwhile his present cardiologist is saying that he should maybe consider “another line of work”, that maybe he just can’t do this anymore. As if there are  all these jobs out there waiting for him to just pick one. I think John is wondering if he can do it too.  I am frightened of the future and all the terribly unsure aspects of our lives.

Meanwhile…

Kessa made a small batch of hash browns the other day for her breakfast along with an egg, ham and cheese sandwich between two slices of perfectly toasted bread. She then walked over and set the plate down on a small occasional table between two chairs in our living room and, (for some totally unknown reason), went down the hall to my bedroom to talk to me for a few minutes. Leaving the sandwich innocently sitting there. On the plate. On the table. Between the two chairs.

Moments later she and I emerged from the bedroom and she exclaimed, “Baby!”  I wondered why since Baby was no where to be seen.

Neither was her sandwich.

Baby was rather shy for another couple of hours, the guilty little shit.

So I approach her about it.

“Hey, Henrietta! Whatcha doin’?

“Oh, I’m just cleaning out my papers.  I just have so much stuff in here!”

This is clearly true as she keeps every letter, greeting card, bill and  bits of junk mail that are addressed to her, because she “might need it”.  She informs me of this current undertaking as she is shredding yet another piece of paper into tiny pieces.

I gesture to the litter on the floor and in the trash can and ask why she’s tearing it up.

“Oh, you have to be careful or they’ll read it!”

“Who?”

“You know!” She leans in conspiratorially, “Those trash men!”

“Do you really think the trash men are interested in your Christmas cards?”

I think she is feeling a little silly about it at this point and says, “Well, I guess there’s nothing they can’t see in there…”

And this is the way I got her to agree to stop tearing up all the paper into tiny pieces and dropping half of it on the floor around the trash bin.

One of my few wins that happened with no argument from her.

The nut.