Archive for the ‘ Oh crap! ’ Category

Are you effin’ kidding me?

I went over to Lisa’s house today and we hung out for a while. Her 14 month old, front loading LG washer is broken and she can’t wash any clothes. It is two months out of warranty and she and her husband turned it over and took the back off to find that a plastic part that connects with a metal gear is worn out.

Duh.

I have no idea why anyone would think that this is a good idea. I mean plastic and metal don’t work well together. The plastic will always either break or wear out.  Anyway, they ordered the $99.00 part and are waiting for it to come.

Meanwhile, I took home her load of beach towels that were hanging out on the fence to dry when it started raining and were in danger of souring.

(Have I ever mentioned the humidity down here? If things don’t get dried fairly soon, they sour and then mildew.)

Anyway, the stuff had been being rained on since yesterday so it all needed washing anyway, as mud had splashed up on it.

I got home, took a load of my own towels out of the washer and tossed them in the dryer and turned it on.

Nothing.

It started to go, the lights dimmed for a second and then nothing.

Wait a minute… the lights dimmed? This can’t be good. I tried again and it happened again. Over and over.

Finally, I held the knob in the on position and the stupid dryer started. It ran for the allotted amount of time and did not dry a thing. Not even a little bit.

It did not get remotely warm.

Shit.

Meanwhile I attempted to wash Lisa’s towels. My washer is making a bizarre noise that can only mean bad things.

Did I mention that the central A/C is blowing and not shutting off, yet not cooling at all? At all?

AT ALL?

Will someone just wake me up before we all go to the poor house.

Henrietta update

Don’t forget to enter my contest to win millions in cash and prizes! Wait… who said that?

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?

Ongoing developments.

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!

Kinda sucky Valentine's Day

John went to work this morning at the butt crack of dawn.  He is expected home sometime within the next hour or two.  It’s 8:00PM.  Being a holiday, he has to work twice three times as hard selling flowers and food and crap like that, that people want on holidays.

This is totally unfair to ME.

And that’s what it’s all about, right?  OK, shut up.

Around here holidays are something to fear and loath.  Something that takes away the husband/father and spits him back out, after the date has passed, a used up, hull of a man.  A man who only wants to sleep and get some decent rest.  When he passes out nods off in his comfy chair in the living room and we mess with him because he is totally defenseless and cannot wake up and protect himself say something to him, his response is something to the effect of, “Go clean up the back room and then start reorganizing isle 9.”  This without ever opening his eyes, of course.

And if you ask him questions?  You can even get him to argue with you.  This is one of our girls favorite pastimes.

Daughter: “What do I use to mop up the soda with?”

John, never moving a mussel or cracking an eyelid except to speak: “A MOP!”

Daughters and wife: massive giggles.

Daughter: “Can I go home early, Mr. Lopez?”

John: “No!  Get back on that check stand!  Now there’s a line!”

This can go on and on.

It gets them to snickering and laughing everytime.  And the only thing I feel badly about is the fact that when we are having close, fun, family moments like this… he won’t remember them.  Completely absent.  But at least he is HERE! 😉

She's Baaaaaack!

I am the official “owner” and operator of one little old lady, once again.  She came back yesterday afternoon after HOURS of John and me waiting around at the hospital.  They were trying to discharge 7 patients at once and it was, I’m assuming, a complex process.  Or so they would have me believe.

At one point she looked at me and said, “Krissa… What would happen to us if we just went ahead and left?”

Don’t think I wasn’t already thinking about doing it.

Right about that time they finally got her all fixed up with wheels to the car and we made a break for it exited the premises.

You have never met anyone as bitchy as she has become since she got home.  Well, actually, that’s not entirely true.  It started before she got home.  While she was still in there she commenced to tell me how I should be changing her diaper differently and I need to do it like the nurses do it there and every time she asked me to raise her up in bed she tried to die when I actually moved her.  Keep in mind that I laid the bed out completely flat and grabbed the hospital chux and slid her upward as slowly as I could.  She is no longer the light weight she used to be and I can’t just suspend animation anymore.  She seems to think everything should be in slow mo and I can’t just stop midway between the wheelchair and bed while holding her.  Or move any slower than I already am.  I certainly am gentle and I don’t just toss her around.

Before she came home I received a call from a lady in charge of her case at the hospital and she said, “Ms. Lopez, it says here on her chart that you are interested in a hospital bed for her at home.”

Noooo… I’m not interested in one…

“Oh, well they must have just stuck this note in the wrong file.”

My wheels were turning at this point and I was remembering the two times she asked me if we needed one while she was in there.  I just shrugged and said, no, I didn’t see why, but she insisted it would  be easier for ME if we had one. Translation: She is pitiful and wants all the hospital equipment she can get around her.

We have been through this before.  Years ago when she was on hospice.  It was an enormous monstrosity that left very little room to move in her bedroom.  Well, comparatively.

Here is her room with a twin bed.  That bizarre looking thing with all the thousands of photos stuck on with ten pounds of scotch tape is her rolling cart of tricks.  It’s on wheels so I can move it out of the way to change her and get her in and out and what not.  It has shelves inside with all her accoutrements.

It’s an ancient, cheap, laminate, microwave cart.  And if something ever happened to it… well, we would all perish, I am sure.

The hospital bed we had ate up the walls when “sliding” the head of the bed up and down.  And since she sleeps in a fairly upright position the only thing we would need it to do is sit up some.  I can accomplish this with pillows.  AND a comfortable mattress, not a hospital one.

Bottom line, we’re getting another damn hospital bed delivered here this afternoon.