Month: June 2021

He’s on His Way

I just got a text from my sister. She’s at the hospital picking up my father. They are just wrapping up the discharge process. He’s going to be heading home soon.

What a relief.

Fingers crossed everything goes well, but I know it will. Dad’s coming home.

Confusion

Well that was fun.

My father is coming home today and I think that’s messing with my mother’s head. We had an argument this morning, the first real argument we’ve had in this run of nana sitting. I had just come out of the shower and was starting to get my shit together for the day and she walked passed me and said she was going out. Ummm… what?

First it was that she needed to go home. This one comes up once in a while. I told her she was already home. No, this used to be home I need to go to the new home. Then it turned into she needed to go meet Dad. But Dad is already coming home today, you just have to wait here for him. No, I need to go to where he is. Do you know where he is? No. Then how can you go to where he is? I’ll find it. You don’t have a drivers license anymore. So? Are you going to walk to Concord? What’s in Concord? Dad. No, I’m not going to Concord. Then where are you going? I’m not telling you. And on and on it went for a solid five minutes or so.

That happened about an hour ago. There haven’t been any more discussion, and she hasn’t made a break for the door. I believe whatever she was thinking of has cleared up now. She sometimes has little moments of confusion when she wakes up. Today she had been awake for a couple of hours, but I think while I was in the shower she dozed off for a few minutes. I know she’s done this a few times when my sister was here, and I think my brother has seen it too. It’s not unusual, and in my limited experience she is able to figure things out on her own as she talks it through. Today felt similar but a little different. She was just so insistent that she had to leave the house, even though her reason to leave changed a whole bunch of times. She was a little pissed off at me for trying to stop her. I’ll take that.

On top of all of that, my work group is down by half today due to vacations and sick days.

I’m thinking today is going to suck in a big way. At least Dad is coming home. Keep focusing on that, Robert.

Addendum: She’s on the phone with my father. I just heard her say she wanted to go out and buy him something but, “Rob wouldn’t let me go.” Maybe she wasn’t confused, maybe she was just being secretive. Who knows.

Overtime Again

The Bruins held their 1-0 lead over the Islanders until late in the third when, wouldn’t you know it, the Isles tied the game. Now we are going into overtime yet again. Three overtime games in round one, and now two in round two. Too much stress, man. Too much playoff stress.

I brought dinner with me to my parents house tonight. I didn’t get to eat it until after 7:00. I also brought a bag of chips and I was going to eat that son of a bitch bag if it killed me. I did, but I didn’t finish it until 9:10… 10 minutes after my normal intermittent fasting start time. Oh well. Something tells me that I won’t be able to hold off from eating again until 1:10 tomorrow. Methinks that it’s going to be a fasting-fail day.

It’ll be worth it if the Bruins win. Also, they need to win quickly because the caffeine I was freebasing all day is starting to wear off and the red head is getting sleepy.

Addendum: The NBCSN team covering the Bruins game tonight keeps waxing nostalgic about Nassau County Colosseum. The building is closing after this season and they keep talking about it like it’s some hallowed hall. Has there ever been a time, even back in the Islanders four year Stanley Cup dynasty from 1980-83, when that building was considered to be anything but a shit hole? I always heard that it was so awful it made the old Boston Garden look luxurious. Am I wrong about that or is the team commentating the game just cupping the Islanders fans’ nut sacks?

Addendum #2: The Bruins just won. Marchand scores in the first overtime to put the Bruins back up 2 games to one in the series. Kick ass, dude!

12 Pack Fail

Picked up a 12 pack of Diet Pepsi from the cabinet in the dining room. Started walking to the back door so I could put it in the car and take it to Mom’s house….

Rrrrrrrrrip.

Crash.

The 12 pack had one job: let me carry 12, 12 ounce cans of soda with one hand.

It totally failed its one job.

Jerk.

I Have a Bad Feeling About This

I don’t know what’s wrong with me, but ever since I got to my mother’s house I have had this sense of impending doom. Like, take Star Wars super fandom out of the equation and say, I’ve got a bad feeling about this. I don’t know what the bad feeling is, and I don’t even know what it’s referring to. I just feel like the hammer is about to fall and it’s likely going to fall right on top of my fat head.

Please note that I am not thinking about The Bruins. They are up 1-0 after one period and I am fairly optimistic they will come out of this game with a lead in the series. Even after getting seriously outplayed for a chunk of game two, they still took it to overtime. I think they are going to be okay.

I also don’t think this has anything to do with Jen and the kids. All is well at home. There is nothing on the horizon that we can’t handle, and that includes the imminent empty nest. I am fully happy and content and confident with home life.

Everything else is fucked. Why do I feel this way? What the hell is wrong with me? It’s summer. Lighten up, Francis.

The MLB App Pisses Me Off

When I’m working at home I like to stream audio from my iPad to the HomePods in my bedroom office via AirPlay. Podcasts, music, sometimes radio, whatever.

The exception is baseball games. The MLB app for iOS lets you stream radio broadcasts for every game from every team’s local broadcast. If I use the speakers in my iPad it generally works all right. If I stream it to the HomePods… Not so much.

I set the iPad to AirPlay to the HomePods, then I open the app and connect to the Red Sox, WEEI broadcast and it doesn’t stream. It plays through the iPad speakers. Why? It also screws up the user interface so that switching back to the iPad (even though it’s actually coming through the iPad speakers) isn’t easy to do. You have to do a couple of extra swipes and taps before you can reconnect to the actual device that is already working.

A few process kills and a reboot and some magic tricks and eventually I get the app playing through the HomePods. Except that it isn’t. Instead of the live radio broadcast, which was streaming fine a second ago, it is playing television highlights from NESN. When I switch to the Boston Spanish broadcast it’s fine. When I switch to the opposing team’s radio broadcast it seems fine, when I switch back to the WEEI stream it’s NESN again.

I switch from my iPad to my iPhone and everything works fine. Thanks a pant load, MLB.

Game Night

It’s game night. Bruins and Islanders game #3 from Long Island. The Bruins need to bounce back after the overtime loss and regain the home ice advantage.

I’m at home right now, starting the work day, but tonight I will be at my parents’ house. I was a day late but I was able to watch this week’s The Handmaid’s Tale this morning before work, so I won’t be distracted by that come game time tonight. Of course, I have the attention span of a gnat these days so I will probably find something to watch at the same time I watch the game. So many choices, so many screens.

Tomorrow I’ll sneak in this week’s episode of The Bad Batch before work, then I’ll get through most of the work day, and then my father will come home. I have no idea how things will work once he’s home, but we will continue as we currently are for a while. The goal is to get him back to a point where he doesn’t need us at the house 24/7. Once things level out we’ll have to have some hard conversations about how we avoid letting this happen again.

Until then, work… and then Bruins.

Go Bruins.