Complications

I stayed here instead of moving back to California because it was quite obvious, even before any medical professionals weighed in on the subject, that my mother can't live by herself. She can go days, even weeks, without needing any help. But when she does, she does, and it's just easier for me to be there. As a sidenote, I wish people would stop asking me if I'm back here for good. My answer is always "I'm here until my mother doesn't need me anymore." She'll be 77 next month, has congestive heart failure, is on oxygen 24/7 and lost most of the use of her left arm due to a stroke (and she's left-handed) so what do you think "until she doesn't need me anymore" means? Please, people. Don't make me say it.

Anyway, because I'll have to have surgery (as I said, I'm hoping for the least invasive kind) I'll be out of commission for a little while. I'm not going to speculate on how long because I have no idea how serious everything is yet. So, I've been worried about what to do about Mom. Well, I just found out my brother is going to be here at the end of the month, for a week. (He lives 9 hours away. My sister lives 3 hours away.) So, if we can hold off on the surgery until then, all should be well.

I told my mom I don't want my brother and sister to know yet what's going on with me, simply because I don't know exactly yet so there's no need for them to worry. I'm doing enough worrying for all of us.

Driving

The Best Friend calls me a few times a week, mostly when he's driving home from work. During every single call there is one "moron" who does something stupid on the road. Cuts him off, almost rear-ends his vehicle. Well, you name it. Yesterday, the person ahead of him was attempting to merge but was going "4 miles an hour and ran out of road." Of course that lead to yet another discussion of bad drivers. He told me he thinks his state passed a law that he didn't hear about: People making left turns get the right of way. Before I tell you what he said about this, I have to tell you that a couple of days ago when I was at a four-way stop some idiot follwed the car in front of him through the intersection instead of waiting for me and the other motorist at the opposite stop sign to go. I said "In what alternate universe would it be your turn to go?" Back to yesterday. The best friend said "In what alternate universe does someone making a left turn have the right-of-way?" Are we in sync or what?

This story doesn't have to do with driving. It's about parking. When I go to my favorite convenience store I always park in the same place so I don't have to back out. I just pull out, go around the building and back onto the street. Well, yesterday I pulled into my spot. A van pulled up and parked diagonally in front of me. Diagonally! (and I don't care if I didn't spell it correctly). That, of course, meant I had to back up before I pulled out. It was no great hardship. It was just the principle of the thing.

note: I wrote these yesterday but Blogger was being difficult so I couldn't post them until now.

I swear I'd kill myself

I was a little late getting myself up & out of the house this morning so I was forced to watch Live with Regis & Kelly, because my mother watches it. Regis was talking about his experiences at a Yankees game and said he sat between Donald Trump and Bill O'Reilly. Oh ... my ... God!!! Can you even imagine sitting anywhere near them?!?! One would be bad enough. Two would be the definition of "hell on earth." But all three??? OK. Maybe I wouldn't kill myself but I would say "Screw the game. I'm outta here."


New name?

I read somewhere that NBC may soon end its affilliation with Microsoft, which means MSNBC would need a new name. My prediction. NBC24. Remember, you heard it here first.

Celebrity blogs

Do you ever wonder if celebrity bloggers read other blogs? I mean real people's blogs? I'm not talking about Rosie O'Donnell and Barbra Streisand reading each other's blogs. I mean, do you think Rosie O'Donnell would ever read your blog? And I'm not talking about Monica Crowley and Ron Regan looking for the "popular" blogs and talking about them on their show either. That's the not the same as real people surfing blogs and commenting and blogrolling and linking. To me, that's part of the fun of blogging -- getting to "meet" new people and find out how they think and feel. So, back to the original question. Do you ever wonder if celebrity bloggers read other blogs? Or, do they already know enough people that they don't think they need to meet the real people who inhabit the blogosphere?

I'm not a good sick person

I don't deal well with sickness, discomfort and, especially, pain. The only good thing about any of this is that I know I'm not as much of a hypochondriac as I thought I was. The pain is real, and all the other symptoms that go along with this thing are real, too. As I said in a previous post, however, knowing that it's real doesn't make dealing with it any easier.

Anyway, being sick and knowing that I'm going to have some kind of surgery (I'm hoping for the least invasive kind) has made me think even more about Living Wills, if it's even possible for me to think about that even more. I've made it quite clear to everyone I know that if I can't read, write or enjoy watching movies, pull the plug. This includes a feeding tube. I don't even care if there's a debate on whether I'm in a persistent vegetative state or if I'm minimally conscious. No artifical stuff. Got it? Moreover, if someone doesn't get it and hooks me up to something anyway and there's a debate on whether to pull the plug and/or tubes, do not, I repeat, do not distribute videotapes of me to every news organization in the free world so people I don't even know can pontificate on whether I should live or die. And please, for the love of God, do not allow Tom Delay to weigh in on the debate. To me, that would be worse than a slow death.

The Mystery of the Missing Car Key

Last Thursday as I was getting ready to leave for the doctor's office, I realized I had lost my mom's car key. I checked all three coats I'd had to wear during the previous couple of days. When the temperature range is between 32 and 68, it's necessary to have several coats at the ready at all times. The key wasn't in any of the coats. I thought maybe I left the key in my jeans. Nope. Then I remembered I washed that pair of jeans. I checked the washing machine, the dryer and the entire laundry area. No key. I didn't have anymore time to search because I had to get to the doctor. I grabbed the back-up key. I would resume the search when I got back, I told myself. Well, then came the evening of wallowing in self-pity, so I postponed the search. The next day, however, I started looking again. I took everything out of my coat pockets. No key. Checked the jeans and the laundry area again. No key. Checked the pockets of my tan pants and black pants, thinking that maybe I'd worn them and forgotten. No key. I checked my mom's coat pocket, thinking that maybe she'd forgotten to put it on the table, where we leave it for each other. No key. Then I checked every compartment of her highly compartmentalized purse. No key there either. At one point I began to worry that I'd dropped it someplace. Then I quickly realized that if I'd dropped it someplace I wouldn't have been able to drive home. I resigned myself to the fact that today I was going to have to get a replacement key made and explain my irresponsibility to my mother, something I was not looking forward to.

Today, as I was getting ready to leave the house my mother asked me to leave the key so she wouldn't have to use the back-up key anymore. She was afraid of losing it, then we'd be SOL. Of course she didn't say SOL but that's what she meant. So, before I had a chance to get the duplicate made, I had to fess up and tell her I couldn't find the key. I told her everything I done, everyplace I looked since Thursday. She, too, was stumped. Then it hit her. When she used the car on Thursday, five hours before my doctor's appointment, she wore a different coat than the one she usually wears. When she got home, she took the coat upstairs to hang it up. We checked the pocket. Key.

So, I went through nearly 3 1/2 days of searching and frustration and she went through 3 days of being angry with me (although she didn't tell me until this morning) because her memory isn't what it used to be. But don't tell her that. She doesn't have a memory problem.

Weird Saturday morning dreams

I had a very weird dream this morning. I was walking along the street The Coach lives on. I heard someone walking behind me but didn't turn around to see who it was. After a minute or so, the person passed me. It was The Coach. The weird part wasn't that he didn't talk to me, or even acknowledge my presence. The weird part is that he was wearing lime green overalls and a navy blue T-shirt. Odd fashion choice for a conservative dresser, as he is.

This dream came a week after I had a weird dream involving The Best Friend. In that dream, he and I were having dinner and enjoying ourselves ... until his ex-girlfriend, who in non-dream-life doesn't even recognize him when she sees him, invited herself to join us. He started ignoring me and giving all his attention to her. Then, another of his ex-girlfriends joined us. I got insanely jealous and caused quite a scene, even as he was telling me I was being ridiculous and I had nothing to be jealous about. I woke up in the middle of my rampage so I really don't know how the situation would have resolved itself. The weird part about this didn't happen in the dream, though. The weird part is that I'm not one bit jealous when he talks about his wife, yet I'm insanely jealous about ex-girlfriends he doesn't even keep in touch with.

Now I'm anxious to see what next Saturday's dreams will be.

Doesn't make it easier

Knowing that I have a textbook case of this, and that it's not cancer does not make the symptoms any easier to deal with. It definitely makes the wait until the ultrasound, and forthcoming discussion of treatment, easier. But I'm still in pain and uncomfortable. Under the circumstances, those being the Pope's "worsening health," I feel like a wuss complaining about my backaches, leg pains and almost constant trips to the bathroom. That, I suppose, is just one of the myriad reasons the Pope will eventually be cannonized. I will not. I know that to be sainted a person has to have performed at least three miracles. In my case, I don't think getting through the day without strangling cashiers who don't know how to make change would constitute a miracle. I'm pretty sure that resisting the temptation to slam my car into vehicles whose drivers don't use turn signals wouldn't count either. I'm almost positive that saying "No, thank you" to the non-low-carb ice cream isn't going to cut it either. In my mind, those are miraculous feats but, I'm fairly certain there are other people who perform the same feats everyday.

Ya can't make this stuff up

I think we all need a little respite from the death, dying and disease. Here it is:

After work, I stopped at the convenience store to get a cup of decaf. At midnight, they close down their registers, and can't reopen them until they're both Z'd out. In those few mintues, the clerk has to do everything by hand which, obviously, takes a little longer. Tonight, it took even longer than usual because there was a new girl on.

At first, I thought it was my imagination that the woman ahead of me in line was getting increasingly nervous with each person who got behind us in line. As she put her items on the counter, she blushed. Her items were 4 chocolate covered cherries, a 99 cent package of roasted almonds and a box of condoms. The clerk had to write down all the items, and their prices, on a piece of paper so she could ring them in later. You guessed it. She didn't know the price of the condoms and had to ask. The woman got even redder. The clerk then told her the total. $4.78. The woman handed her a $50. Seeing as her cash drawer was practically new, which I assume means she only had $100 in it, she didn't have change, which meant the woman's items had to stay on the counter even longer while the clerk went to the back to get change. There was something going through my head as I looked at the odd collection of items. I didn't have the guts to say it out loud. A man behind me did. "Nuts, cherries and rubbers? Yeah. That fits."

See? I told ya you can't make that stuff up. Maybe it was funnier while it was happening but, it made me chuckle.

Now, back to our regularly scheduled death watch ... or divine miracle, as the case may be.

Wouldn't it be something if the Pope pulled through? Wouldn't that be the perfect way for God to say "See, people. I am still around and I do still perform miracles."

The Pope

I don't even know what to say. He's been the Pope for over half my life, my entire adult life. He defined what a Pope should be. I'm very sad but it's comforting to know that he is ready to die and that he will probably soon be with the God he obviously loves so much.

I also feel honored and blessed to have lived at the same time as this man and Mother Teresa. I wish and pray that more people would follow their examples.

My Grandma was Cool

Every year on April 1 when my brother, sister & I were little we would go to my grandparents' house and my mom would always say "Remember to tell Grandma her shoe is untied, and when she looks down say 'April Fools!'" So, we did. Every year, Grandma would laugh, we'd laugh. I was about 7 or 8 when I said to myself "Wow. Grandma falls for that every year. I guess old people do forget things." It wasn't until a couple years later that I realized she was just humoring us.

This doesn't have anything to do with April Fools but it's about my Grandma. She was a wonderful and prolific baker. Pies and bread were her specialties. One day I was helping her bake apple pies by peeling the apples. I thought I was doing a pretty good job until, in her heavy Italian accent, she said "The way some people peel apples bothers me. You're one of them." I couldn't help but laugh. Then, she did teach me how to do it right.

OK. I can't resist.
Q: If April showers bring May flowers, what do May flowers bring?
A: Pilgrims.
You can stop rolling your eyes now.