Henrietta is gone, buried and the thank you notes are done. Now, in my “what’s next” mode of mind, comes…. nothing.

This is really rather odd. There was always “something” next. The sense of freedom is at the same time titillating  and scary. I am giddy with lack of responsibility and ability to run, willy-nilly, hither and yon, doing whatever I want whenever the mood strikes me. (And a ride is available.)

I miss Henrietta, yet the sense of relief that I feel was magnified by the immense relief that she felt as she took her last breath.

The girls are having to take turns with me. They both are desirous of my attention. Every. Single. Day.

“Go with me there, Mommy!” and “Come with me here, Mommy!” is what I am hearing constantly. And no. I’m not doing all the buying.

There was a small argument over who got custody of me the other day and I was egging them on telling them how proud I would be if they got in a fight over me. Heh. It was cool. Somehow my past good parenting crap paid off and they found some sort of middle ground. I happily went with whoever and was handed off later in the day.

I am telling you, I am in demand and there is no bedpan involved.

It’s weird.

Now the scary part is, well, financial as much as anything else. I need to find a way to replace the money that was coming into the household via Henrietta’s annuity.

Remember, I don’t drive due to a visual handicap I acquired in a 1978 automobile accident/head injury. All my other people drive, yet have jobs and/or go to school. So they are going to be undependable as far as reliable transportation.

I am sloooowly turning my thoughts towards that foot massager and the line of men that H was convinced I had filing through here paying me money for… a foot massage? I wish I was half as successful as she made me out to be.

Meanwhile, in other parts of Gotham City…

My brother Cam, remember? The rock star? Yes, well he’s published, again. This time a British magazine named Web Designer has included his Periodic Table of Typefaces in their rather pricey pages. I have never paid $15.00 for a magazine before, much less bought three of them.

Yes, I really must love you, Cam… Anyway, congrats to you, bro!

I will get back soon and try really hard to catch up on my blog reading! Things are just starting to slow down around here!

Oh, and right before Henrietta passed I had announced a contest! It’s back on! Read these rules and let me hear from everyone! This is truly a wonderful pile of shit valuable cash and prizes I’m going to be giving away!

As most of you long-time readers know, Krissa has devoted 76.8% of the content of HalfAsstic (Krissa did the math) to stories of care-giving and the general ensuing hi-jinks related to and/or directly or indirectly caused by her dear mother-in-law, Henrietta (or as Krissa refers to her just plain ‘ol “H”).

Well yesterday, July 14 2010, 88 years after she came into this world, Mary Henrietta Lopez quietly and painlessly passed away with Krissa and other family right there by her side.  The whole event from when they all knew it was the end up until her passing was only about 10 minutes so it was indeed a blessing that everything was fast, painless, and with many of her loved ones there with her.

Krissa and her husband John I’m sure would love to hear from you whether you comment or if you like you can privately e-mail them at halfasstic (at) gmail (dot) com.

As you can well imagine, things are busy at the Lopez home right now, but knowing Krissa, the header contest she pushed the last few posts is still on (albeit delayed a bit) and I’m sure we’ll be hearing from her right here on HalfAsstic pretty soon.

Mary Henrietta Lopez

April 29, 1922-July 14, 2010

Just go here and do as I say and nobody will get hurt! Seriously, this is some really good crap,  booty!

Sooo, I’m like just minding my own business this afternoon and in the span of a few minutes, my laid-back, vegging out, bon bon popping self was plunged deep, DEEP into hell.

I walked into Henrietta’s room to check on her, thinking all the way from her doorway to her bedside that it smelled quite… bad. Like urine, but she has a catheter, so… what?

She has been steadily sliding downhill lately and warrants trips in to check on her even when she hasn’t rung the bell. She mouthed some garbledy-gook to me. She makes absolutely no sense anymore. Only a few recognizable words scattered here and there amongst crazy sounds. And nothing that you could string together in a sentence. Plus the fact that she can barely make any noise at all. Her voice is a mere whisper of it’s former self. Literally.

Anyway, I check her out and chat with her for a few minutes. Pull her up more in bed and ask if she needs to sit on the potty. She shakes her head no and I tell her that I really do need to change the dressing on her bottom anyway. She nods OK and I get her ready to roll over on her side. I get gloves and prepare to get down to business.

Sloooowly and carefully I roll her over after I have undone her diaper.  I peel back the old bandages and examine the remains of a few small bedsores. Yes, they are coming along nicely.

I turn around to retrieve some sterile gauze and the medicine tube from the bedside table. I then turn back and there is a poop fountain sprung anew right in front of me.

Oh, so fast. How did she do that? A big stream of it. I shove the new diaper under the… stream and begin catching all the rest that’s coming out. I clean it all up off of her, remove the soiled hospital chux and there is now poop stoppage.

This is a good thing.

I run out of t.p. and am about to go and get some more, since she is resting comfortably on her side and the more time she can spend off of her butt the better for getting her sores well.

The phone rings. So I trot down the hall and answer it. It’s my brudder, Cam. He is calling to confer about the malware problem I’m having on my blog site. I tell him I’ll call him back in no more than 5 minutes.

When I turn to leave the DINING ROOM where I had left the phone, I notice shiny footprints on the floor. Not good. The floor was clean moments ago.

Weird. They seem to lead right up to where I am standing.

Odd. They are the same shape, size and pattern as the soles of my flip-flops.

Slowdumbandstupid. That’s me.

Well…WTH???

I backtrack and find footprints through the foyer, aaaall the way down the hall and across her room. As a matter of fact they are all over her room. Between the bed and dresser and closet and all around the nightstand.

It’s pee, people. It’s everywhere. And I had been cavorting in it the whole time.  If you can call cleaning up pee footprints and bandaging butt sores cavorting.

Her catheter was leaking. There was a puddle of pee on the floor at her bedside the size of a turkey platter. How I didn’t see it when I walked in the first time is beyond my understanding. I blame these wood floors. You can’t see anything on them.

So I spent… God knows how long, on my hands and knees with a roll of paper towels and a spray bottle of disinfectant, crawling all over the freakin house spray, wipe, put in plastic bag. Spray, wipe, put in plastic bag. Spray, wi….. you get the idea.

It took forever!

I know this turned out to be just one long bitch session about my ridiculous administrations to her and all and she really is doing much worse and don’t see her lasting too much longer.

I joke around about her, all the shenanigans she used to get up to and the problems with taking care of her.

I wonder how it will feel when she’s gone?

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.

So Kessa, rather gently even, shut the microwave door and the glass, that’s in the front, fell out. Yeah, literally. Now that is all rather awkward. Every time we run it I wonder how much… plutonium or radioactive fallout or poison ivy we’re being exposed to. I mean the inside is all sealed by the hard plastic stuff on the inside of the door, but the smokey glass part is… well, slid down and won’t stay in place.

SO! If in the near future, (or even right now), I begin to write posts that are, well, a little bit nutz and have a lot of blather and not much of a rhyme or reason, I think we can all agree I was exposed to too much Sesame Street 70′s porn spring pollen microwave radiation.

Now, on to the real news.

Henrietta is in the hospital.  I went into her room yesterday morning to find a little, old, 88 year old woman that, all of the sudden couldn’t speak coherently, could only mumble and only mumble garbled sounds that rarely made words. On the occasion a word fell out of her mouth, it was a bizarre choice. “Scissors,  blinds, towel, flower”, (Or possibly “flour”, I didn’t ask for an elaboration.), were all words that were thrown in here and there amongst the garbled sounds.

Now, I know what you’re thinking. YES, AGAIN! (Don’t you hate when I do this? I KNOW! So why don’t I stop?! heh)

“Krissa, quite obviously Henrietta has had a stroke.” And you wouldn’t be stupid to think that at all. The last time this happened, I thought the exact same thing. I called the EMT’s and they came out and asked all kinds of questions, one of them being what medication she is on and when I mentioned she was taking an antibiotic for a urinary tract infection, (UTI, just cause I’m in love with acronyms when I’m the one doing the typing.), they looked at each other and agreed that she was altered due to the infection.

I immediately thought they were crazy and proceeded to bite my tongue so as not to hurt their feelings with my superior knowledge of all things medical. OBVIOUSLY SHE HAD A STROKE.

Now for the shocking part: The medical professional guys were right and I WAS WRONG.  Yes, it was a red letter day on the calendar.

Stop laughing.

So as soon as she got a big dose of IV antibiotics into her she was fine.

Well, this time she just so happens to have a UTI as well. So I am thinking I know what’s going on here, the prescription antibiotics I’m giving her aren’t doing the job and she’s mentally altered due to the infection.

This time the EMT’s didn’t venture a guess as to whether or not it was the UTI and I, my cocky self, felt it wasn’t necessary for them to since I am aaaaaall on top of things and know what’s wrong.

CAUSE THAT’S THE KIND OF CAREGIVER I AM!

So we took a ride in the ambulance to the hospital, got her all set up and they did a CAT scan and she had a stroke.

Now do you see why I’m convinced that God loves to mess with my head? Sometimes… it’s hard to appreciate the humor.

Anyway, I understand the neurologist  has told us that she has a blood clot in the left side of her brain.  That’s all I know so far. they did a sonigram of her head this morning and I am waiting for the results of that.

I’m wondering if the blood clot isn’t something that’s been there an while and just been slowly growing and that’s why she’s been getting battier and battier and then the stroke.

I’m wondering, but NOT in any form, shape, or manner implying I know.  Go ask the stupid EMT’s.

So she is doing much better today. Her speech is clearer and there is more force behind her words… well, a little. The only real bad difference is that now, not only does she hear voices like before, she hallucinates as well. She points at thin air and says, “Look, there’s Krissa.”. And tells SIL that John is around the corner because she just saw him go there. You may also want to be appraised of the Gilbert situation; According to her he’s back in jail.  My SIL is up there with her for the moment and I am going up in a little bit. She’s in ICU and the visitation hours are weird. There are large gaps between them, but a nice quiet, fairly comfortable waiting room where I can break out the nook and read and read and read while waiting to get in to do bedside vigil.

Anyway, people, I will keep you all apprised of the situation.

Question: I got my handy dandy new cell phone that gets on line and what not and I have been tweeting remotely with it. OK, I THOUGHT I was tweeting remotely. I got on Twitter earlier today and none of my Twits are there.

What do I do to get my phone to twit? Who do I have to kill? This is very important to me. I would trade a child for this information. (There is probably a fair trades law that requires me to warn you that my children are teenagers. They are. *sigh*)

So Darnell shows up and visits with H for a good while. Asks her all kinds of concerned questions, listened patiently to what I’m sure felt like dozens of stories about things that happened 40 and 50 years ago, and I finally decided to rescue her and went on in H’s bedroom.

I plopped my happy ass down on the bed and we discussed all the goings on of late. H was sitting there watching and we were talking loud for her to hear. I said she needs to be on an anti-depressant and Darnell agreed, whipped out her drug book and commenced to look up the perfect concoction for H.

Lexipro. OK, great. She’s taken it before, a few years ago, and it worked just fine. So she sat there and wrote out a script for it and handed it to me. I went to great lengths to get that rascal to the pharmacy that day and John picked it up on his way home.

I took in her pills that night. One in each little pill giver cup because she insists she can only take one at a time and will drop the pill or the cup or anything else close to her if she has to dig one of the two pills out of a solitary cup to take it. So here she is with three cups instead of two. OH MY. Her eyes grow big. “Krissa, what have you done?” She’s peering into the cups and sees that there are two little white pills, (her Ativan and now her new Lexipro pill), and a little brown stool softener in the third, as per normal procedure.

“I can’t take two Ativan’s Krissa! I’d overdose!” Looks at me accusingly as if I am trying to kill her.

“No, Henrietta, this is the new pill that Darnell and I were talking with you about today.”

“Whaaaaa? What’s it for?”

“It’s an anti-depressant, remember? Because you keep crying.”

“NOOOOOOO, Krissa! I don’t need that! You tell him that I won’t take any of his drugs!”

Of course I immediately know who she is talking about, but act like she is off her rocker. Which she clearly is, by the way. Don’t think that this has escaped my attention.

“Who are you talking about, Henrietta?”

In a conspiratorial whisper, “Gilbert!”.

Oh shit, here we go.

And we did. Round and round. I finally convinced her to take the damn thing and that Darnell had prescribed it right there in front of her. She just kept saying that she thought I was getting a refill on her Ativan.

So she took it and the next evening told me that she had had a stomach ache the whole day that day and she just couldn’t take that pill. It didn’t agree with her digestion.

I have been mashing it up in her oatmeal every day since then and the difference was amazingly fast and remarkable. She has completely stopped crying and is so much nicer! She makes no bones about hearing all sorts of voices that she says are Gilbert and he is always doing things he shouldn’t but she no longer sits in her room yelling down the hall all sorts of things to Gilbert while John and I are trying to sit in there and watch a movie. For the two hours(ish) that John and I sat and watched The Blind Side the other night before the new pills were working, she sat in her room and yelled all kinds of things at Gilbert and just generally made the movie watching an unpleasant experience. No amount of visits to her room to tell her Gilbert wasn’t here and hadn’t been all day made a difference. And yes, I know what you’re thinking. I asked her to let me push her into the living room and see. Multiple times. She wouldn’t have it. And she wouldn’t shut up.

She’s still nutty as a fruitcake, but no longer is as paranoid. She’s happier and easier going.

Last Saturday I was changing the third of four shitty diapers she would have that day and, out of the blue, she said, “Krissa, does John have BM’s?”. Swear. To. God.

I was a bit stunned and waited for her to complete the sentence with something like, “on a regular basis?”, or “every day?”, or something like that. No, she just wanted to know if he has them. Period.

I said, “Henrietta, everybody has B.M.’s. They have to.”

She waved that away like it was rather unimportant and said, “Well, yeah, but he doesn’t eat, anymore.”.

So I told her that of course he ate. He’d be dead if he didn’t eat, and she just looked at me like she was trying to determine if I was lying or not.

I called John later and told him what she had asked me and he about fell over laughing. He told me I should have told her no, he stopped having them months ago.

That is something he would have definitely done.

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And in the really BIG news…

Keelan has been saving money like mad and has bought her first car! It is adorable, and I got to drive home from Buffalo, Texas with her in it. She found it online up in a town close to her Nana and Pop’s house in Decatur, (Mither and Pop), and they went and looked at it and drove it and what not and she took care of the down payment over the phone with her bank card and all that. Then the dealership Fedexd the papers to her and she signed and sent them back.

It was all very slick and went without a hitch. Mither and Pop drove down to meet us about half way in Buffalo and she was so excited she was beside herself.

Heh, me too.

Now tell me is this not the perfect little car for a teenage girl?

Here she is with her boyfriend, looking like The Shit!

Just as cute going as coming!

Now, how’s that for adorable?

Please note the length of H’s legs as opposed to the height of her body.

From the tops of her knobby little shoulders to her stride. She measures about 18″.  She and I can wear the same stretch pants. (I just prefer mine a little larger around the ankles.)  I am 5’5″, and fairly short-waisted, (Though I got nothing on her!).

Her spine is collapsing in on itself at an alarming rate. And the really odd thing is that she has positively no tolerance for any kind of pain at all and she doesn’t seem to be feeling it. It seems to me like it would  be grossly uncomfortable. Aside from having more indigestion than ever before, she’s oblivious.

I remember asking the nurse ages ago when she was on hospice what would happen to her eventually when her spine kept disintegrating? What would happen to her insides if she didn’t die first? She said she would need to be fed through a tube.

Every time I get her dressed I look at her twisted up little body and wonder how much longer we have.

Oh, the hideous thing behind her is either the dog bed on the floor on the right or her rolling cart of tricks with all the grandkids and great-grandkids pictures all over the end of it, trash bag hanging off the side, Gerber sippy cup sans the lid with lotion she can’t live without, lamp, remote control, folded up dinner napkin in the back, aaaaall on the top.

Oh, and two flameless votive candles, one with Mary and one with Jesus on the sides. She “lights” these when she prays.

Anyway, I just thought you’d want to know she could implode any minute now.

I’ll keep you all posted.

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.

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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.

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

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!

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…

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.