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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…

Friday, John and I went to JC Penny and I took a gander at the clearance rack.  I walked into the place with a $10.00 off coupon.  I walked out with two really cute new pairs of jeans that cost me a total of $11.21.  AND they’re a size smaller than the ones I’ve been wearing!  “What size, Krissa?”  I’ll tell you.  One more size down and I’ve hit my goal!  Woo-hoo!  How’s that for specific?

I put on one pair of them and wore them yesterday and Keelan remarked that they don’t make me look like I have an, ahem, “old lady butt”.  I considered this statement carefully and decided to let her live after all put it in the compliment category.

Both pairs of jeans are low rise, and while I don’t wear the “Mom Jeans” that  Stacy and Clinton on What Not To Wear are constantly lecturing people about, they are a good deal lower than I’m accustomed to.  I finally went in and put on a belt because every time I stood up I felt like I was losing them by an inch or so.

Then, Sunday,  Kes and I were running into Kohl’s.  Upon getting out of the child’s car, (actually climbing up out of her car, which is what you do with a Mustang…), grabbing the “waist” of the jeans and hauling them up, while pulling my shirt down and noticing Kes staring at me, I turned around so she could see my back and said, “So can you see any butt crack?”

She pinked up a bit, glanced nervously around and said, “NO MOM!”.  While deftly giving the ubiquitous eye roll.  She then had the grace to grin at me and comment that I need to “…get some tight strapless tops today.”.

I told her that I am wearing practically butt crack pants so she can just score one for her team and leave well enough alone.

Free toes, everybody!

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.

As most of you who have been hanging in there with me for a while probably know, Mither and Pop are my lifelong loves.   My mommy and daddy from the get-go.

I think I alluded to the fact that Pop adopted me when I was five years old in a previous post… actually I can’t remember and don’t really feel like going and looking for it.   But, trust me, he did!

As soon as he and Mither got married, they took me up to the courthouse and the nice judge, (a friend of Pop’s), swore me in and explained everything to me, (one more time).  He said some words and reminded me which hand was my right one and showed me how to hold it up while we took our oaths.   I took Pop to be my father and he took me to be his daughter.  It was all pretty cool and I felt like a big shot.  I looked for any reason I could find for ages, to call him “Daddy” , and when I’d forget and call him Bill, I’d slap my hand over my mouth and squirm until I could think of something else to tell him so that I could use the word “Daddy”.   He’s been my daddy ever since.  The only father I’ve ever known.

Mom, (you know her as Mither), and my natural father divorced when I was a baby, shortly after my older brother was killed in a drunk driving accident with my father behind the wheel.  He was an alcoholic and my brother, Kurt had been standing in the front seat beside him.  Kurt was 22 months old.  I was three months old.  Mither and I weren’t in the car.

I had nothing to do with my natural father my entire life, with the exception of one meeting with him when I was in college.  He came to the town my college was in and met me at the little  Mexican restaurant.  He paid the bill after supper and with the exception of giving my dad permission to adopt me, that’s all he ever did for me after he and Mither divorced.

I learned around that time of two half sisters I have and even had a conversation on the phone with them.  They were much younger than I was, but it was very interesting to talk to them, and they seemed really nice.

I never really gave it much of a thought again, or at least not enough to really look hard for them.

Fast forward to a few days ago when Mither called me and said that she was cleaning some things out and found some old letters from my father and some photographs of my half sisters and she would mail them all to me.

The little girl’s pictures are decades old, and  and yellowed.  They appear to be from the early 80’s.

The letters are full of drama and a good deal of angst.  They are really very much like my mither described my father.

There were some phone numbers in one of the letters and I picked the one that looked like it was  possibly where he was working at the time and called it.  It was his AA group, but the guy that answered the phone knew him and said he was dead.  He had died 10 or 12 years ago.  This took the wind out of my sails just a bit.  How was I going to find my half sisters now?  The man was really very nice and friendly and said he knew some people who knew my father better than he did and he’d get my number to them.

In just a few minutes the phone rang and another nice man told me over and over how sorry he was that I was just finding out he was dead, and I finally made him understand that really, I only met the guy the one time.

He told me that he’d give my number to my father’s ex-brother-in-law and he felt sure that he or my father’s ex-wife would call me back.

Sure enough, again in a few minutes, the phone rang and it was a nice lady that used to be married to him.  She said that he had died of lung cancer in 1993, but said that my grandmother was still alive and, as far as she knew, living in Garland Texas.  So I googled her, found her phone number, called and she answered the phone.  She’s 93, living in the same house she was in when I was born and one of my half-sisters lives there with her for the time being.  She said that she had had a drug problem some years ago and after she did the rehab thing she went back to school and was staying there with her while completing it. She wasn’t home at the moment.

So that’s about it.  I found my natural father, only he’s dead.  BUT, I now know where to call my grandmother and she can hook me up with my halfsisters… if that’s a good idea or not is anybody’s guess.

* 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.

Oh man… where were we?  Oh yeah!  The second child was about to graduate high school!

Done.

Moving right along…

NO!  I am much too much of a proud mom to let it go like that.  No, I want you all to experience ALL the glee and joy I did as my darling daughter told us that there was a chance she may not get to graduate due to too many absences.

I stared at her with a thousand questions going through my head. “How many do you have?  How many are OK?  Did you play hooky?  How many times did you play hooky?  How did you make good grades while missing all this school?  Where did you go while playing hooky? WHO WERE YOU WITH, PLAYING HOOKY?  DID YOU COMMIT ANY CRIMES WHILE PLAYING HOOKY?  ARE THE COPS OUTSIDE RIGHT NOW?  YOU’RE EIGHTEEN NOW, SO THAT MEANS YOU GO TO JAIL…. NOT ME, RIGHT?  heh.  Not really.

But I can kinda understand other parents thinking that.  We really were blessed with very good kids and very well behaved ones as well.  They’re a tad lazy and self-centered, (teenagers), but they ARE good. (Thank you, God.)

There she is! On the right side of the stage snatching the sheepskin with one hand and shaking hands with the other.

Oh dear God, please let us see it through and grow them completely up to be “real” adults, where they can take care of themselves and be contributing citizens of Texas, and the United States.

OK, just this household?

Amen

Anyway, OVER.  The whole entire high school thing is done with.  It’s really weird to think, but you know what’s weirder?  I’ll tell you.

You knew I would.

I always swore I would NEVER, UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES, have a snake in my house.  Voluntarily.  The girl child named Keelan decided she would graduate and spend a bit of her money on a “ball python“.  And, *sigh*,  this was OKed by her father and I.

I must admit that I do indeed like her new reptile and she is a “nice snake”.  She’s fun to hold and young and curious.  And, come to find out, not the least bit creepy feeling.  Very soft.  She has teeny, tiny scales and this is why she is soft, Keelan says.

She fell asleep like this with her head on my boob.

Yes, that is me with her crawling in and out of my shirt.  Like I said, curious.  She eventually went to sleep, I guess, (They, apparently, don’t close their eyes, and yes, that’s a bit creepy.), Anyway she got very still and balled up against my skin, (Where it was warm?), and… slept.

Here's Keelan and Mither, aka Nana.

Kessa and Pop. She grabbed his hat and put it on... it was backwards, but I don't think she cared.

Kessa and The Boyfriend. Hat still backwards.

The Proud Graduate! And she's sure of the way she's rocking those sunglasses!

As anyone would guess the proud grandparents have come down for the graduation and the discussion of snakes ensued.  Mither brought to mind a snake story from years ago.

The girls and I had been visiting with Mither and Pop for a few days when they lived in Trinity, Texas and we had gone to a plant nursery.  Mither and I had purchased some bedding plants and while we were there, we planted the ones we had gotten for her.

Then we were packing up her car to go back to my house.  Mither picked up a tray of the bedding plants I had bought and plopped it down in the back of her car.  A startled snake slithered out and went in between the seats.

Crap.

Now what?  Well, a neighbor came over to do some damsels-in-distress work only he couldn’t figure out how to get the seats out and neither could we.  Mither called Pop, who wasn’t home and asked him how to do it and he told her.  Thank you, God. Amen.

The neighbor took out the seats and we had already carefully removed all the luggage and whatnot.  Somehow, he got the snake out.  I don’t remember how, I don’t remember what kind it was, I don’t remember how long it took, I don’t remember if it came willingly or not.  A traumatic experience, my brain won’t let me recollect?  Probably. 

Henrietta has been having trouble with her allergies lately and suffering from an occasional sinus headache.  In the past four and a half years that she has lived here and I’ve been taking care of her, I have repeatedly given her two Ibuprofen for minor aches and pains, headaches, arthritis, etc.  It doesn’t happen that often, yet every time it does there is a long explanation of what I’m giving her, what it’s for, did the doctor OK it, does the nurse know, will it make her fall asleep, what will it do to her, is it “habit forming”.

Now, ya see, this doesn’t happen very often.  But that little old bat has a memory like a pissed off wife.   She remembers everything I have told her about the wonders that are Ibuprofen and every time I give it to her a couple of hours later she is flabbergasted that she is “cured!“.

Well, yesterday she was having a terrible time with her allergies and complaining that her head was hurting, so I asked her if she would like to have some Ibuprofen.

Looking slightly alarmed and worried, she said, “Weeeell,… I guess so…”

I gave it to her and she was amazed when I put her to bed later at how it had just gone away.  Her allergies had also cleared up in the meantime, for whatever reason, and she attributed this to the Ibuprofen.  I told her no, it didn’t do that.  Her allergies just cleared up on their own and she was insistent that that’s the way it worked on her.

OK.  Whatever.

That was yesterday.  Today she is again having trouble with her allergies and chose to stay in bed, (because she is convinced she has to be in bed if she is feeling bad at all), even after I told her that her head would drain easier if she was sitting up in a chair.

Apparently it’s harder to be pitiful sitting up in a chair, than lying in bed.  Don’t question it.  These are the findings.

So I asked her if she would like some Ibuprofen.  I mean after all if worked like the miracle drug it is, yesterday.  “Ooooh… again?”

“Yes, Henrietta, it will help your headache.”

“Well… I don’t know… Is it habit forming?”

I was on my way out at this point to get the meds.  *deep sigh* “No, it’s not.”

“Oh…OK” sounding almost disappointed.

And then, as I was nearing the door, I heard that little old bag mumble resignedly, “I guess I’ll be an addict….”

In worry of a lawsuit respect for my Mexican readers, (I have none that I know of), I have titled my post in… Spanish(?)

Whatever.  My political corrected-ness doesn’t go too terribly far.  Ashamed for my “slander” of my SIL’s wetback boyfriend?  Not entirely.

OK, not really at all.

The afore mentioned wetback is a very nice guy and holds a job in a mechanics garage and really wants to get me alone without my husband around learn better English and pay taxes.

Yes, he does in fact stare at me and make me feel quite uncomfortable from time to time.  Even some of the other members of my family have noticed it.  Yet, he always wanders outside and finds something useful to do while the SIL is here.  Mow the lawn, clean out the garage, weedeat.  Whatever he can find.

So hell yeah, I tolerate leering!  I have told John more than once that if he wants to, try out polygamy,  have a three way, or just a girlfriend, it’s fine with me as long as the other chick cleans house.  And I mean good!  Not like I do.

Yeah.  I can be loose and uber cool.

Until I don’t want to.  And that’s? the tricky part.

To all of those of you harassing me to… dammit, post again, fine.  Here!  Happy?!  It’s Friday and no one will even read this until Monday… It’s totally useless.  UNLESS, YOU! YES YOU, THE ONE THAT HAS NEVER COMMENTED!  EVER!  Will kindly leave a comment and say that, in fact, you DID read and now feel that you can go on living until the next untimely installment.

The thing is, lately especially, I’ll have several ideas rolling around in my head, (Yes, rolling.  That’s what things do in my head…), and as soon as I sit down to post, *POOF* It’s gone.  Or at least the ability to write about it in any kind of readable way is.

This shit is so random, I don’t even feel that apologizing for it is the least bit useful.

Observe:

Keelan missed school last Monday due to puking and diarrhea.  (Dear God, please don’t let her read this.)  Then, on Wednesday she went to school and work then home again where I found her curled up on the couch with a flame red face and 102.5 degree fever.  My first thought was, “Strep throat!”.  I called and made an appointment with her pediatrician for the next day and John took her and brought her home.  He had to cut out of work in the middle of the day to do so.  (Remember, I can’t drive due to a vision blindness problem.)

He called me from the doctor’s office and told me it was just tonsillitis.  OK, this is good.

Keelan walked in the door with her father when they got home, looked at me and said, “Mom, she said it’s just tuberculosis.”

I stared at her for a moment and said, “Tuberculosis?”

“Yeah… well, something like that.”

“You mean tonsillitis?”

“Whatever.”

Then, later, in the same day, We were discussing her infancy and when she was a newborn.

“Mom, what was the matter with me?”  To which I gave her a puzzled look.  “You know, Mom… I had, gingivitis?”.

I can only say my puzzled look grew more puzzled.  “Do you mean jaundice?”

“Oh yeah!  That’s it!”

For Christmas, I’m getting her a medical dictionary.

On Wednesday, April 29, Henrietta turned 87 years old.  There were festivities as you’d expect from a festive family like this.  I do, in fact have pictures that I would like very much to post, but this stupid thing won’t let me as the file size gizmo has pissed off the maximum load of shit thingy.  Or some such crap.  And it’s not Wordpress’s fault this time.  It’s that rat bastard, Vista.

Have I mentioned how I loathe Vista?  I do.  We are getting an Apple sometime in the near future and all I have to do is find a way to finance it….  Hum.  I have children I could sell.  They are 18 and 19 now, but really, if I list them as “slightly used”, won’t that cover my butt?

Anyway, as I was saying before I got all sidetracked, H had a birthday with a beautiful cake I made and Kes iced for me and presents and whatnot.  She had a grand time.  Only her daughter never showed up or called.  So about half way through the day, I’m figuring she may have forgotten and I started trying to call her.  I left messages and never heard back from her.  John did the same from work.

The next day, Thursday, she showed up with the most gawd-awful looking pot of almost completely finished blooming tulips.  Some of them were lying over the side of the pot.    She said she hadn’t called the day before because she was out of minutes on her cell phone and she never gave any idea about why she didn’t come.

She doesn’t own a car, but drives a 14 year old piece of junk Accord that belongs to her boyfriend.  And I DO mean junk.  Rust showing through, no A/C, dings and dents everywhere.  Ugly as sin.  She always parks right in the middle at the end of the sidewalk.  We always make a point not to park there because it is directly across the street from my neighbors driveway.  It’s the elderly couple with the red door that I have posted about before.  They are very sweet and terrific neighbors.  It just makes good sense to not park right where someone has to back out.  You know, the courteous thing to do.

We should have told her not to do it too.  The man that lives there was backing out and hit that piece of junk and dented the front quarter panel.  So he rang the bell and asked me if he could talk to me and I went out and he showed me the dent and said that they were going some place right then and just tell SIL they’d be back in a little while.

So SIL called her boyfriend and told him.

Here’s where I get politically incorrect.

He’s a wet back an illegal alien.

Of course he wanted the insurance info.  **Sigh.**

She stayed here longer than usual visiting with her mother that day so that she could go and talk to my neighbor.  That’s the only good that came out of this.  He gave her his phone number and asked her to call him when she got an estimate.

That was all on Thursday and Friday SIL was calling saying that she’d talked to him and he’s supposed to be bringing a check over.

For $244.00.

To fix body damage on a car.

Yeah,  right.

John was appalled at the whole thing of course and we are both embarrassed.  So when the neighbor came over with the check, he talked to him and apologized.  When the guy left John told me that he’s going to tell his sister that he brought the check but needs a copy of the estimate for his records. He didn’t believe for one minute that $244.00 was going to fix that car either.  And, he and I both know the car will never get fixed.  It will just be an embarrassing reminder every time she comes over here of what happened and how she extorted money from our retired, on a fixed income, neighbors.

She came back on Saturday earlier than she has been here in many, many months, (1:15), and while I was surprised to see her that early, I wasn’t.  My first thought was “OK, at least she’s in time to change her mother’s diaper this time.”.

She stayed 10 to 15 minutes and left.

H promptly rang the bell to be put on the bedpan.

This is my life.

The copy of the estimate she brought looks legit enough.  It’s barely legible, but has the name of the garage stamped on it.   So… whatever!