are you sure it's the dts?

yesterday morning i got a call from one of the staffers at the nursing home - dad was taken back to the hospital via ambulance. he talked all night long and was hallucinating something terrible. i talked to the doctor and she said she believes it is alcohol withdrawal - the 'd' of the dts. i questioned that it had been 7 days since he went into surgery - i thought the dts started within 48-72 hours. she said it can take longer. i asked where are the tremors of the dts if indeed it is alcohol withdrawal. no answer.

i talked with a niece and she described some of the things he was doing the night before when she visited him. it reminded me very much of the time when mom had the blood clot on her brain in 1970. several of the family members are not convinced that this is an alcohol issue. the people that check in on him do not believe he was drinking that much a month prior to his surgery.

i think i'll be making the 8-hour drive up there, by myself, on saturday. i know there is nothing i can do to help him - but at least if he comes out of it, he'll have a familiar face there.

forgive me dad

last thursday my dad went in for surgery - cystoscopy and transurethral resection of the prostate (TURP) under anesthesia. when i talked to him after the surgery, he seemed a little confused the first day - but not too bad. the second day after surgery he was babbling nonstop - and bleeding. they had given him 4 pints of blood by now and the nurses could not tell me why he was babbling nonstop but they did tell me that he will sit there and have conversations and no one is in the room with him. the third day they decided they needed to go back in to see if they could stop the bleeding. they evacuated a very large clot and cauterized bleeders - again under anesthesia.

the fourth day i talked to yet another nurse - a guy named steve, who is from my ittybitty hometown and knows my dad. i asked him about this terrible confusion and babbling - as i had done with the previous nurses AND who could not give me an acceptable answer. steve told me that he has seen this quite often with older people that have had anesthesia and that sometimes they come out of it and sometimes they don't. god bless steve for telling me this because i had no idea why this had come upon dad soooo fast - virtually overnight! i had no clue that anesthesia could have that type of short term? long term? effect on some older people.

the docs stopped the bleeding and he is peeing clear now so it's time to discharge him - even though he is in a totally confused state of mind. the hospital social worker calls yesterday and tells me that he simply cannot be alone. well, that's another problem because he lives alone and eight hours from me.

the decision had to be made about a nursing home. my brother, who supposedly has 'power of attorney' is somewhere in the southern part of the state on vacation. i finally got a hold of him and explained the choices - as the hospital will be discharging dad before the brother is home from vaca.

even though the hometown nursing home is going to cost more per day, we thought it would be better to have him there where people would come visit him. i have no idea what his finances are and i do not know how this is going to be handled financially. i arranged with the director for them to pick dad up and bring him there upon his discharge.

a couple weeks prior to this, the family took his car keys and car away. a couple weeks before that he moved into a 6-plex apartment, after being in the house for 20-25 years. a couple weeks before that the doc gave him an alzheimer's test - he scored 19/26. the doc put him on aricept. this has been a very fast downward spiral for him.

i know he does not want to be in a care center. i know he cannot come down here - he's 85 and has been in the hometown his entire adult life. i know he's going to hate us if he does recover from the effects of the anesthesia and realizes his money is gone and he's in a nursing home.

please, god forgive me - and god, please be kind to him, he's my dad.

watching the clock

i'm sitting here trying very hard to get some work out that needs to get done.
i cannot focus.
it seems every second i am checking the time.
my mind and my heart are elsewhere.

in 17 minutes peggy will be at the viewing of her son.

it crushes me as i think about peggy seeing her only child lying in the casket ...
he, being completely at peace - she, being completely shattered.

NO ugly cookies

NOTE: guess i forgot to post this one for some reason

for the 4th of july party i decided to make cutout cookies in the shape of stars. i thought cookies won't melt in the sun and everybody likes a cutout cookie.
very appropriate don't you think?

i mixed them up, chilled them, rolled them, cut them out, baked them, and then i made the frosting.
it was a new frosting recipe and it actually was an excellent one.
but after i got the frosting on and started in with the sprinkles, i could see that they just were not going to be pr'E no matter what i did. and of course, i made a double batch - so then i had about 60-70 uglyUglyUGLY cutout cookies - and no time to try to make something else to take.

the ugly cookies were going with me to OK.

i made mention of the ugly cookies on the facebook page - where the OK! cousin can see.

i tell ya, those OK! cousins are some real shits!

when we pulled into their driveway they had these signs posted in the doorway - check out the 'examples' of what is 'excellent' and what is NOT ALLOWED.




and my reaction:

and the second one

I was on the phone with my lifelong friend and cousin, Peg, yesterday. We were rehashing the week - she talking about concerns of two of grandkids there in Alaska and the shape her ex-daughter-in-law and son are in. Both are alcoholics - and recently had started hooking up again with each other. She's telling of the struggle she is having with all this and in mid-sentence she says, "who is that pulling in my driveway?" She pauses, and then says it's the ex-daughter-in-law." Then I hear her say, "something is wrong. Oh God I hope it's not my son."

Five to ten minutes later she calls back with the devastating news, "Todd passed away."

Todd was her only child - he was 35 years old.

So, there she is over half a country away and dealing with the death of her son. I asked her if she wanted me to come out. She said she wanted to sleep on it.

Her mother and a half-sister will not be going out until the 21st. Peg has a strong al-anon family there - thank GOD she became involved in that over 2 years ago. She also has a significant other that she recently started seeing. He has been away for about 3 weeks - but said he would be making arrangements to fly back in while she is coping.

I am in the midst of making another memorial DVD slideshow of someone I know. I hoped I would not have to do that for quite some time because when it's someone you know and love, it completely drains you emotionally.

Since music is not my thing, megaTHANKS to Jockfulloftunes, who is going to help with the music selection. The family will be scanning and sending the photos ASAP - and hopefully, I can have this put together and sent out to her by the 22nd.

I am so sorry for Peg. Todd was a troubled soul, but he was always a treat to be around- there was never a dull moment.
His heart was full of love - but his dreams could not get past the liquor.

With much love ~

Todd Christopher W.
12-29-1973 ~ 07-12-2009

the toshiba dildos

I've got vista on one of my machines.
i hate it.
i had to call for support last week (to some God-forsaken foreign country) cuz i couldn't get the 'restore' option to open.
the 'tech' told me "i can help you with this. i will get your machine back to where it was when you purchased it."
umm and will you also come over here and spend all the hours re-installing the software?
dildo!
i figured it out - i had to start it in 'safe mode' and then do the restore.
i'm going to see if i can get a job on their help desk.

the 4th here and gone

we were in Oklahoma this past weekend. another couple went with us over to the OK! cousins.
sometimes people mix well, and sometimes not so much. i'm trying to make this work - but the truth is, the other gal and i just don't have much in common. and the more she tells about how her financial relationship is between her and her man, the more i'm losing all respect for both of them.

of course it's NONE OF MY BUSINESS! but she keeps telling me - why do you suppose that is? i have asked her why she puts up with that crap and all she says is, "it's better than being alone."

i guess we all have our price that we will pay to avoid being alone, eh?

ok, so i cracked a beer kinda early that day and ended up being a passenger rather than one of the drivers on the ATV - thank GOD i remembered the salt shaker so i could continue drinking&riding.





Below is a dilapidated tribal graveyard - each of the roofs are from these little 'houses' they build over the graves. inside they place some of the deceased's favorite things - usually articles of clothing and such. it's quite interesting to see. this particular graveyard does not get much maintenance - as you can see. the other one we went to was for indians of foreign wars - that seemed to be kept up a bit better - there was even one of the 'houses' with a red tin roof.








i caught the hen and her chick in the hen house settling down for the night. we were surprised to see that the chick could get up to the top rung of the roost. the chick stayed safely tucked under the hen's wing - the flash of the camera did not seem to startle them in the least.




check out the bench seat 'molded' between the trees. this is on the farm where the party was on the 4th. part of the land used to house arock quarry. on the backside of this is this oldOldOLD shambled rock building. one of the "farmer's daughters" told me she thinks that is where the owners of the rock quarry lived - unfortunately, my camera would not get any decent photos of it in the dark - and i was not going to chance crawling under the electric fence to get closer - and going over the electric fence - well that is just dumb



some of the OK friends killing worms and minnows.

gone with the curtain?

once a week i try to make a stop at the local thrift store. the last time i was there they had 4 silk curtain panels, each one about 48" x 84". they were a $1 each. hey! $4 for all that 100% silk fabric - it's definitely going home with me.

i washed them up - even though it says 'dry clean only'. needless to say, they didn't wash up so nice - well not nice enough to hang anymore. what to do with them now?

on a side note, when i get out of the shower/tub, i really hate to dry off - i'm lazy and prefer to just throw a 'thirsty' towel or robe around and wait it out.

well, in this unforgiving heat we've been having, a terry robe or heavy towel is just a bit much. so, i decided to make myself a pareo. I tore out the cotton lining from one of the silk curtain panels and finished up the edges on the sewing machine. it is so much lighter weight than terry cloth and serves me quite well. it's just an oblong piece of fabric tied in knots - not much creativity in that.

scarlett o'hara i ain't.