Hello there, my dears. I realize it has been a long time since I have posted and if you are beginning to notice a theme in my infrequent posts well, that would be the reason for my… infrequentness. (Is too a word.) I have also be horribly remiss in the reading and commenting on your lovely blogs. For this I am sincerely sorry. I will be making a halfassed attempt at getting caught up here sometime soon.

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.