It’s getting close to the time I need to leave for my parents for another 24 hour parent sitting shift. Here comes the existential dread. Here comes the anxiety overload. Here comes the pain.
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We got some news today on the parental health care front. I again refuse to get my hopes up, but if what was discussed today happens, then the situation will likely be close to resolved.
It’s still a couple of weeks away and there are a thousand other things that need to happen first, and I am not going to give any details until after everything is complete, but I need this to end and if what came up today happens, we might be dramatically closer to the end.
It’s 12:38 am and I’m still awake. Why? Why am I still awake?
I took a vacation day tomorrow because Bellana is coming over. She’s not going to be here until close to noon though, so I technically can sleep super late without screwing anything up. I do want to get some car music in though, so I should get up early.
Examining the potential consequences of still being awake at 12:42 am does not answer the pertinent question of why.
We may never know the answer.
Bummer.
I’m home. I had dinner with my love. It’s quiet. The air conditioner is running.
It just feels so good to be home.
I don’t have to go back until Tuesday night.
Sigh of relief.
I need this to be over. Not just for me and my family, but also for my parents and my brother and his family and my sister and her family. We all need this to be resolved so we can be in a perpetual state of sigh of relief.
It’s 3:00pm here in the Tewksbury at the parent sitting shift. I’m tired. I got a decent night’s sleep last night but I’m tired. I’m trying to keep my brain occupied. I did a little music, I watched an Orville, I have done a couple of chores, I’ve written slightly more than one blog post, I read my wife’s latest blog post. It’s not working for me today. I just want to go home.
The home health care professional who is on duty today is trying to push my parents into being a little more active. She tried to get them to watch a movie together, with a small amount of temporary success, she’s trying to get my mother to go through the stacks of shit they have hoarded in the living room, she’s trying to get them to eat better, and she even asked them if they have any board games they’d like to play. The word you’re looking for here is heroic, even if they haven’t bitten at any of the bait.
Part of me is feeling overwhelmed by all of this. Part of me just feels like sitting back and letting it all crash down. Like… not indifferent, just no longer willing to try. No, that’s not right… not unwilling to try, more like… no longer wanting to care. I just want it over. I know that if I start thinking about a life after parent sitting then something will go wrong and we’ll reboot and be right back at square one again and I can’t deal with that. That wouldn’t feel overwhelming, that would feel like a catastrophic collapse of all brain function.
I miss my wife so much my heart hurts. It hasn’t been 24 hours since I left home last night but it feels like decades. I just miss her so much. Maybe I’ll grab myself a pile of hoarded shit and just take it outside and dump it in the garbage. I wonder, would that feel good or would it be heartbreaking? I can’t even venture a guess anymore.
Okay, I have about three hours left. I think I need to occupy myself with something non-computer related. Maybe that will make the three hours fly by. Doubtful. We’ll see.
Things are still quiet here. All is pretty much well. Did I just jinx it? I seem to be doing that a lot these days.
I filled the pill caddies today for both of my parents. That is a job for whoever (whomever?) is here on Saturday morning. It stresses me out, but today was the first time I had to do my father’s pills and I was trying to use an outdated meds list. Nothing in the pill case matched what was on the list, and nothing on the list matched the case. The list I was looking at was from late 2020 and he did spend six months in and out of the hospital in 2021 so I couldn’t say for sure it was up to date. My sister straightened me out. There was a new list. I was all set from there.
Seeing as tomorrow there is a risk of us getting spanked by an actual hurricane, we thought it wise to get the grocery order in today rather than wait for tomorrow. I thought that my mother wrote the grocery list and it just got forwarded on to me and then Jen used her super deluxe instacart account to place the order. I’m still 99% sure that’s how it worked, but when I asked my mother for a list today she got really nervous about it. She was happy to do it, but kept asking me to double check her work. I guess she doesn’t generally do it alone? Or she just forgot that she does it alone? She put a couple of things on the order that she probably didn’t need, and left a couple of things off that would probably be good to get, and she put one thing on the order that she’s not allowed to eat. I called her on it and she said it wasn’t for her, it was for everyone else. Riiiiiight.
Only one memory issue today, and it was a common one. Mom mentioned that someone was having a birthday this week. I said it was my baby brother. She asked how he was my baby brother. I said I was six years older than he was so he’s the baby. Then she asked who our parents were. Did we have the same parents? Yes, you and dad. She asked if she gave birth to us. Yup. We’ve gone over this quite a bit over the last four months. It’s heartbreaking, but it’s sort of normal.
On my home front, my beloved bride told me she woke up with a bad headache today. I was I could be there to help her out. I hate that I am not there for her. I really hate it.
Just keep focusing on home, Robert. Something like 6-7 hours before the next shift starts and you can go home. Just hang in there.
It really looked like my mother was going to have a super bad night tonight, but she somehow managed to fall asleep and she’s been out like a light for about half an hour now. Dad is asleep on the hospital bed in the living room. The Red Sox game is still on. If he stays asleep I should be able to take the remote from him. Unless he moves it, of course.
Despite the apparent ease of the evening, I have been stressed out like crazy. No real reason. The half deaf conversations are tough to handle (what did you say? No, what did you say? What?) but it shouldn’t be enough to generate this level of stress. So what is it?
I don’t know, but I think it might just be that I am reaching my limit. I maybe have already reached the limit and gone way past it. I’m not sure. Let’s just get through tonight and tomorrow, and then I can have a stormy, hurricaney day on Sunday, and then we get to spend two days with Bellana.
Come on, Robert. Just focus on the college kid coming home. Focus on the college kid coming home.
Remember a couple of posts back where I said I was suddenly a jinx at work? Oddly enough, the word jinx came up again in a totally unrelated topic today.
I am actually afraid to mention it out of fear of actually jinxing it myself because irony is dead.
We have something in the works for my parents’ healthcare situation. We got some info today that if it happens would be a gift from the healthcare gods, but the person relaying the info actually said that they didn’t want to jinx it.
Holy shit snacks, please don’t let this be jinxed.
Please let the superstitious jinxing be localized to that one issue at work.
Pretty please.
Oh, and did I mention that Lizardfish covers Stevie Wonder’s Superstition? Is that enough to keep all superstitious coincidences at bay for a few decades? That’d be nice, m’kay.
Why is it that every time I work from my parents house I manage to convince myself that it is Friday. The last time I worked here it was Friday, but today is not Friday. Today is Wednesday and here I am thinking about the things I want to do tomorrow when I don’t have to work because tomorrow is Saturday.
No, asshole. Tomorrow is not Saturday. Today is not Friday. Today is Wednesday and tomorrow is Thursday.
My parents are both watching TV. Dad’s in the living room. Mom is in the bedroom. They are watching the same show. He is watching the HD channel. She is watching the SD channel. There is a fraction of a second delay on one of them (I can’t tell which) so the audio isn’t lining up. It’s close, but it’s off, and it is driving my auditory nerve up the fucking wall.
I have a meeting in two minutes. Headphones, blessed headphones, save me from this noise!
Last night sucked but I think it was all in my head. At least I don’t know if my reaction to the situation was appropriate, or was it a huge overreaction. It honestly doesn’t matter, the night just sucked.
I didn’t sleep much on Monday night. By the time I finished up my parent sitting duties (around 8:00pm) I was really tired and starting to get crabby. When my mother started dozing off in the living room I tried a couple of times to get her to go to bed. At one point she actually said she was going to bed and then fell back to sleep. My father offered me the TV remote when the Sox game ended. Not because he was going to sleep, just because he was being nice. I knew he wanted to watch the news so I let him. That was the last I saw of the remote.
When did my temper tantrum start? After 10:00, at least. Maybe around 11:00? I really needed to sleep, that’s all. I know they are both half deaf and crank the TV volume, I know they put the TV on as background noise (my mother’s TV is on right now even though she’s not in the room with it), I just really needed to go to sleep.
My father woke up a little before 1:00 and turned off the TV. He also turned off the air conditioner, so you win some and you lose some, I guess. My mother was still asleep on the recliner but I didn’t care anymore. I turned on the light in her room and lowered the volume on the TV. I didn’t turn it off because I’m pretty sure if I did she would not be able to turn it back on by herself. I wanted her to be able to have enough light to get back to her room if she needed to, but I sure as hell turned off the light in the living room before wiring myself up to the CPAP and going to sleep. I woke up a little less than four hours later, because I always wake up after a little less than four hours when I am on that piece of shit love seat that passes for a couch, and she was in bed with the TV and the light both off. I was able to go back to sleep eventually and I ended up with 4.75 hours of sleep. Yipdy-fucking-doo.
My mother was up long before I was. After she finished her morning routine I went into the bathroom to do mine. When I walked in there, I knew my father’s piss jug (they gave him one at the hospital to take home in case he has an emergency in the middle of the night and can’t get himself up in time) was half full. I made a note that I would empty it for him before I got him his 8:00am pills. When I got out of the shower the piss jug was empty. No one walked into the bathroom while I was in there. If they had, they might have seen me throw a temper tantrum over the empty bottle of shampoo, but no one did. I have to assume that means one of them, most likely my mother because I’m pretty sure my father didn’t stand up until around 8:20, dumped the jug full of piss down the kitchen sink. So remind me not to put anything in the fucking kitchen sink today.
…and after all that, I get to punch into work now. Woo-fucking-hoo.
Yes, I am probably overreacting to everything. I honestly don’t care. I am due for a temper tantrum or 12.
Inside the Red Head's Head 