Hello gang! I hope every little thing is coming up roses in your world today. Here? Well, it’s not exactly, but it’s not an entire bedpan of shit either. So let’s all take that collective sigh of relief I know we all need after opening this blog to see what kind of pee, poo and mayhem bathroom talk Krissa is going to subject us to today.

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?

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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.

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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.

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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!

Well, Henrietta is sitting quietly in her wheelchair in her room. I say quietly because she isn’t crying or yelling for Gilbert to come in there or ringing the *=$#@&! bell for service.  I brought her in the dining room earlier and rolled the table to one side so I could roll her chair right up to the window and she could see the cardinals and blue jays and squirrels fighting for the food I put out on the feeder in front of the window. She greatly enjoyed this and I thought she might stay here for a while.

Nope.

She started rolling out of the room and down the hall in just a few minutes.  Oh well. It was a thought. It just seems to me the more she stays in there the worse her mind gets.

We may need an exorcism.

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I started to name this post, “Tragedy has struck” or something like that, but thought with John’s health problems of late that might not be best. Too easy to get the wrong idea before reading the post.

However, there has been a tragedy of another sort.

Remember Cecilia? Well, I was able to “fix” her. We won’t go into what I found out was the problem and how disgusting and embarrassing it was to admit. (NASTY BLACK…. GUNK. GROWING, reproducing… pooping, and doing all sorts of nasty things in the water reservoir.  I think I heard it laugh at me when I shined a light down in that black tank to see what it looked like. It had it’s own IQ, people.)

Well, I am just not down with that. The only place I am content to grow hairy things that are perfectly capable of turning into monsters that could overthrow the household is in the vegetable crisper. There’s plenty of light in the fridge and I am at lest aware of how bad it’s getting and can warn people not to even open that drawer.

Yes. That’s what I do…. Don’t you?

I think I am getting off track here. I was reminding you all of Cecilia so that you can appreciate how totally in mourning I am when I tell you that the EXPLETIVE HERE, dishwasher won’t wash. I mean, it will wash, but only with fairly cold water. Not nearly hot enough to say, remove grease. Or sanitize. And there is no heat to dry the dishes with either. It sounds to me like the heating element has gone out. Or maybe the thermostat in it is broken. Or, as some smart arse repair person pointed out to me on the phone, it’s an electronic gizmo in the computer brain of it.

I don’t know, but it is a Bosch and supposed to be a superior product dishwasher-wise. This means it costs a fortune to repair. So, until next month when we can afford it, I am washing dishes.

And drinking coffee with my best friend… Cecilia.

Or YOU if you want to come on over, I would love to have you! You don’t have to be scared of Henrietta! Well, not TOO much…

My friend, Red, over at In The Wheel, had a brilliant idea. I cannot take any credit for this idea except to say that my friends are terribly creative and brilliant. Why, yes! Yes, you are! And you too! Oh, and you, and you and you! ALL OF YOU ARE!

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.

Boundaries.  I would first like to describe, (so there can be absolutely no misunderstanding),  exactly where Henrietta’s lie.

They are completely and utterly nonexistent. People, I have searched. They are not there. I have reason to believe they never were. Kind of like a quirky birth defect that it’s OK to laugh at, because, damn, there is nothing else to do when you have been made that uncomfortable.

Today was just the latest on her arm long rap sheet of offenses.

Keelan’s friend, we’ll call her Marie to protect the innocent, came home from college for the day and was over at the house to see Keelan. When she walked through the living room Henrietta  saw her and they exchanged hello’s and the customary, “I haven’t seen you in so long”, and “It’s so good to see you again…”, and “How’s college?”

This is all sounding so civilized and like she knows how to comport herself, right?

I started feeling uncomfortable and was slowly realizing what was coming when she said, “Marie, I remember the last time you were here you had lost so much weight!”.

Ohshit, ohshit ohshit…

Then, under her breath a little but unmistakable to everyone in the room, “But, I see you’re gaining it all back.”.

Damn. The poor girl had almost made it to the stairs, too.

Every time one of her nieces is down from New York to visit she makes a comment about her weight.  Every. Single. Time. Only she is, only slightly, a little less affronting with her. The lady is extremely overweight and I would guess you could say “morbidly obese”.  Henrietta asks her if she’s trying to diet on each visit.

She comes from New York.  A milliondy-thousand miles away for this.

Yes, we’ve got such genteel, charming, southern breeding down here. And then there’s Henrietta.

Oh! Wait a minute! I was about to sign off when another unforgettable moment sprung to mind. Several years ago, when H was on hospice, her nurse  was a dear lady in her 60’s that we all became very fond of. She still comes over to visit from time to time and I run out to have lunch with her here and again.

Of course Henrietta got to know her life’s story by asking one obtrusive question after the other back when she first started coming to pay professional visits to her. She was very close to death at that point, yet not so close that she couldn’t be nosy. I am fairly certain there is no such place.

After knowing her for a few weeks and ascertaining that she was 63 and had never been married, she popped up and asked her if she was a virgin.  I almost fell over. To her credit, Connie, the nurse, snapped back, “Well, sure!” and gave her something to think about.

You know, over the years, even with Connie and I referring to her girlfriend that lives with her and everything, she still doesn’t get it that Connie’s gay.

I bet I could blow her mind with that.

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.

The other day here at Le House de Halfasstic I walked into Henrietta’s room to find her going through her rolling cart of tricks, “cleaning it out“, as it were.  She was meticulously tearing up all forms of paper that she was throwing away.  I know this because half of it was all over the floor.  Millions of tiny little pieces of paper.  I have seen her do this before and it is obviously something she makes a habit of doing every. single. time.

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.

It’s been a year of almost pure shit.  I am sick and tired of it and want it over with. It can not come soon enough. And, I know it’s not supposed to make a difference what year it says it is on the calendar. There is absolutely no reason to think that having the year change from aught nine to ten will make any difference in our day to day continuance. I mean why should it. Logically, it won’t make any difference at all.

And yet, it has to.

I know that it was very close to the beginning of this year when things started spiraling downhill. John’s job got a ton more stressful. We had Marital Problems. His health issues. Issues that weren’t even acknowledged to us by his then general practitioner, and we ended up finding out with his stint in the hospital for the better part of October. Yes, October in particular, can bite my ass.

Moving right along…..

Henrietta has decided that Kessa’s boyfriend is the devil. No. Really. She selected him from all the other contenders of people that she see’s day to day sometime in October when John was in the hospital.

It all began with her telling my SIL, who was here taking care of her while I was there with John, that The Boyfriend was a shifty character who was just trying to sleep with Kessa.

Upon John’s and my return she announced to us that my SIL was unable to sleep while she was here one night because The Boyfriend was going in and out the front door all night and he was trying to sleep with Kessa.

Of course the SIL had already alerted us to this latest rant and we were kind of expecting, well, something like this.

I came *this* close to telling her something like, “Henrietta, I know it’s been a long time since you “slept” with anyone, but it’s not accomplished by going in and out the front door of the house.”

I just explained to her that SIL said no such thing and we had talked to her already and she must have misunderstood her.

Soon afterward, she indicated her annoyance with The Boyfriend in more ways to me.  Saying little muttered things under her breath about him being lazy, shiftless and no good. Rolling her eyes at the mention of his name. Said things like, “Oh, you know how that boy is…”

“No, how is he, Henrietta?”

Exasperated sigh, “Krissa, you know how he is!”

“NO! Truly! I do not! What have you got against him?! You’ve been badmouthing him for days and he has done absolutely nothing to deserve it! I stopped just short of telling her that he is just the latest in a long line of victims she has plucked out of thin air to harp on, (including me), and she is just never happy content if she’s not being hateful about someone.

At this point she stopped and told me that while John was in the hospital The Boyfriend threw the telephone at Kessa.

What?

Oh, yes. She was certain of it.  He was standing at the top of the stairs and Kes was standing on the landing and she told him she didn’t want to talk on the phone and she’d call the person back and he THREW the phone at her!

I assured her that this did not transpire and took the story in and was telling John what she said when Kes came home and caught the tail end of it and was amazed that there actually was a tiny grain of truth to another one of her wild tales.

Old Blue was for sale during all this time and we had an ad on Craig’s List.

We were getting calls for it and Kes and Keelan were taking numbers for me to return from the hospital or where ever. Hence, she took the phone upstairs with her to watch a movie. She came back down to make popcorn and The Boyfriend appeared at the top of the stairs and hollered at her that there was a call for the pickup. She said tell them my parents will call back and he said they just wanted to ask some basic questions. So she stepped up onto the landing and he pitched the phone down like we have done a thousand times, except Kes is the worst catcher in the history of people with hands and practically never does anything but break the fall for the phone. (Stairs are carpeted, whew!)

So, as per normal procedure, she drops the phone and then picked it up and talked on it and hung up and that was the end of it.  OR WAS IT?

God, please, PLEASE give Henrietta a more loving, tolerant, accepting soul and fill her with the understanding that there is no one in this house that is pure evil and actually the only evil she has to worry about is what she brings out in me when she gets all bitchy like this… Actually, scratch all that.

God, PLEASE give me a more loving, tolerant, accepting soul…

Amen

Well, it’s official.  Henrietta has been, at the very least, (to hear her tell it), leered at by a pervert.  She has been waiting for the majority of her life to be able to have verifiable proof that men are after her.  Oh yes.  At 87 years old… it’s here.

Her proof of this came several weeks ago, in the way of a breaking news story that was about, Dr. Bernard Albina, her old orthopedist from years ago when she and Marcos were living in their house.  We took her to all of the appointments she ever had with him, as Marcos didn’t drive anymore at that point.

The news story?  Sadly, he was, apparently, a really busy pedophile.  While that is in itself, not the least bit funny, her take on it was, predictably,  aaaaall about her.  She was absolutely agog and went on and on about how she never trusted him and how Marcos used to ask if he had to go with her to her appointments and she, “always told him yes, he had to go”, because she didn’t trust that man!  “Oooooh, no Krissa!  I knew there was something wrong with him!  Just the way he looked at me!”

I never did point out that it was ME who had gone in with her to every single appointment and, clearly, an octogenarian is not going to do it for a pedophile.  Whatever.  She could not get enough of the local news and the articles about it in the paper.  She has told every single person who will listen to her about the peril she was in and how that man just wanted so badly to get her alone.

Sigh.  If it wasn’t so sad it’d be funny.  OK, maybe it’s funny, anyway.

Check out the news clip.

* I dumped a bit of critter food on a paver sitting in my flowerbed to try to lure the baby squirrels into my yard.    The little shits are very cautious about anything THAT easy to get to.  However I am getting some cardinals and other vermin critters, coming up.

*The other night Craig Ferguson said something like, ” Young people  who want change try to orchestrate a well placed riot.  Old farts like me  just think, “Get that riot off my lawn!”   Heh

*Overheard at chez Lopez last night while discussing John’s midlife crisis crazies.

Kessa shot a look at The Boyfriend and said, “Honey, when you start having a midlife crisis I’m just shipping you off.

The Boyfriend, a tad bewildered, “To where?”

Kessa, “They have places for men to go to stay till they get over that stuff.  That’s where you’ll have to go!  But, don’t worry, I’ll still come and visit you once in a while.”

The Boyfriend contemplates this for a few seconds and says, “So that’s what happens to men…. what happens to women?”

Before Kessa could begin to formulate an answer, I snapped, “We start having periods once a month about the age of 12 and it lasts until who knows when!”

The Boyfriend, “Oh….yeah.”  Now he feels lucky.

* H, essentially, wet the bed last night.  Yesterday her catheter started failing and she was waking up with a leeeetle bit of pee in the bag and a lot in the diaper.  So I called the agency to come out here and change it.

They sent some new chick.  *sigh*

Now don’t get me wrong, she was nice, and doing the best she knew how. Yet, Henrietta is riddled with fistulas  to the point that it’s like Swiss cheese up in there.  At least that’s what I’m guessing since it’s such a hit or miss proposition to get the cath to work.  OK, mostly “miss”.

The nurse did her thing and left.  So cocksure of herself that she didn’t even bother to wait around and see if it “took”.

It didn’t and it was evident last night when I put H to bed.  She just had a wee bit ‘o wee in the bag.  Sometimes moving her around and, consequently moving the fistulas gets it all back lined up, so I was hopeful putting her in bed would do this.

About 8:00 this morning she was soaked in urine.  So I changed up all the fixin’s she was in, diaper, nightgown, hospital chux, etc. and she went back to sleep.

Here in a few minutes she is going to go sit on the bedpan and when she’s done, I am going to give changing the catheter a shot and I bet I can get it done.  If she’ll let me do it.

I’ll report back and don’t worry.   I promise…  no pictures.

Henrietta is MOST unhappy with the temperature in the house at night. Her room is the one that’s the warmest in the summer always, (furthest away from the unit in the attic and therefore gets the least amount of cool air coming through her air vent), and she refuses to sleep with her ceiling fan on any higher than low. I tried to get her to let me turn it on medium and she tried to die saying how sick it would make her. Fine. Then suck it up and quit complaining.
Our electric bill was $500.00 LAST month. I can see that in August, we are going to be battling to keep it under $800.00. So the thermostat has been turned up. To a sweltering…. 74. OOOOOO. Yeah, I know. Everybody else is quite comfortable and keeps the ceiling fan on in the room they are in. She was quite upset when I told her that I had turned up the thermostat and that’s why she gets hot at night. It’s the same temperature, but she’s hot since she’s in bed and she needs to let me turn her fan on higher.
Very indignant, “Krissa. WHY do you have air conditioning?”
I admit, I stared at her a moment looking puzzled. (I CAN’T HELP MYSELF!) “To cool the house?”
Well you have to USE it!  I’m elderly and I can’t tolerate the heat like that! You need to turn on the AIR Krissa!  I will help you pay the bill.  I explained for the millionth time that she already helps us pay for things and NONE OF US CAN AFFORD FOR OUR LIGHT BILLS TO BE THAT MUCH.

“Krissa, is John here?”  Heh.  She really thinks she’s “going over my head” by talking to him.

“No, he’s at work, but he will tell you the exact same thing.”

At this point I had a minor brain storm and sent The Boyfriend out to the garage to get a standing fan that’s been out there for years.  I then plopped it down in the hall several feet from her door.  She’s in the opposite corner in bed looking at it and started immediately bellyaching about how she can’t have a fan on her and OOOOOOOH NOOOOOOO! I just CAN’T, Krissa!  I turned it on pointed it toward her door walked in, leaned over her and said, “It’s not blowing on YOU!  It’s pulling the cool air into the room!

She motioned for me to wait while she determined if I was lying or not and then slowly said, “OK… I guess that’s all right…”.  I was then waved off while she finished up using the bedpan.

Tonight? I am tempted to freeze her shrivled up little ass off.  Heh.