Photo Fun

So the photo a day challenge thing was super easy to do during the Disney World vacation. Now that we’re home I’m finding it tough. I’m still up to date, but we’ve gone from wonderful Disney views to shit like this:

Oh well.

I saw both of my parents today. It was rough. My father has been sick with a cold since leaving the hospital so we haven’t been able to bring him to see my mother. During that time my mother also tested positive for Covid, so it’s been a consistent kick in the scrotum. Today I was able to bring my father to the nursing home to see my mother. It was heartbreaking. My father was desperate to see her, but when we got there she was completely unresponsive. I was able to feed her some of her lunch, and my father held her hand, but she wasn’t really there, if you know what I mean. Over all I think the trip did help my father’s state of mind, a little at least. It was worth it even if it was hard to bare.

To pile on, the kids are gone. Harry drove back to school today. Bellana goes back to school tomorrow, but she is staying at her Dad’s tonight. Sad faces all around. Sure we had them for two full weeks during vacation, but that doesn’t mean we don’t want more time. Greed is good, as Gordon Gecko once said. Did I get that name right? Michael Douglas in Wall Street, right? Whatever.

Further bad news, my vacation is over tomorrow and I have to go back to work. Also, I have an ass load if work that has to be done with a deadline on Tuesday. Yippee! Way to plan that one out, fat boy.

On an unrelated positive note, The Last of Us series will premier on HBO tonight. A new zombie(adjacent?) show, just in time for the end of The Walking Dead. I’m looking forward to having the shit scared out of me.

Mom

I am freaking out a little right now. The freaking out is 100% irrational but it’s there nonetheless.

My father just called me. The nursing home my mother is in called him to let him know that my mother has Covid-19.

She’s as vaccinated and boosted as a human can get and I am absolutely positive that she will beat it and recover… but I am still panicking right now. Shit shit shit, my mother has Covid.

Busy Monday

It’s been a busy morning. I’m wrapping up lunch right now and I feel like I haven’t had a minute to get my head straight today. I also had like five typos in the previous two sentences. What’s up, Robert?

I’m tired today. I didn’t fall asleep until almost 1:30am. I was then awake at around 7:00am, which is much later than I had hoped. Oh well. I’ll make it through the day and hopefully get to bed early tonight. Maybe. Who knows.

This weekend was busy as well. I spent most of Friday out of work on sick time so that I could stay in the ER with my father. He had massive back pain come up out of nowhere on Thursday. My brother took him to the ER where they waited for nine hours before seeing a doctor. The hospital was 100% full so they couldn’t admit him for the night. He ended up staying in an ER room. I relieved my brother at around 7:00am after his heroic night without sleep. Dad’s pain seemed to fix itself somehow and he was discharged in the mid-afternoon. I got home around 5:00pm or so. Maybe a smidge earlier than that.

From there the weekend of home improvement kicked off. Jen and I made about 650 trips to various Home Depot and Lowes locations. We installed a new cabinet in the kitchen, thanks to huge help from Jen’s step father, Sherman. I installed a wire pull out shelf system which almost killed me. Sherman helped me fix a small issue I was having, and then he installed a counter top onto the new cabinet. It looked great. Jen and I did the finishing work and then started rearranging things in the kitchen. We got some new cookware and saved off the old stuff for when a certain college student graduates and potentially needs a kitchen of her own at some point over the summer.

We were actually thinking about adding three cabinets and a great big pantry and a set of four shelves, but we scrapped all of that as possible overkill. Outside of home improvement, I was only able to get to my mother once. She had a brief moment of awareness when I got there. She asked me to get her a drink. That doesn’t sound like much, but compared to how she normally acts when I am there, that little interaction was huge. A nurse brought her some ice cream too and she devoured it. Normally getting her to eat is a struggle. Not then. She dug in and went after it. It was literally heart warming.

Other than that, there was just a lot of together time with me and my love, Jen. There was a lot of television watched, too much. The Walking Dead and House of the Dragon and Rings of Power are all up to date. Tonight I will go grocery shopping. Tomorrow I have a doctors appointment in the morning. Wednesday we have tons of television to watch. Good stuff.

For now though, lunch is over. Back to work, Robert.

Visit

Visiting my mother. She’s asleep in the dining room. That’s not uncommon. It makes me sad, but as dad once said, if she’s sleeping she’s not in pain. That’s some bright side thinking right there.

I’m hitting the grocery store on the way home and might (if weather and population allow) stop at The Park and snap a pic or two. As always, we will see.

I’m Pretty Sore Today

Yesterday was a tough one physically mostly, but also mentally.

I am not going into a lot of detail here, but the back story is this. Last September my parents moved from their house in Tewksbury to an assisted living space in Billerica. Over the course of the next eight months my mother’s dementia grew steadily worse to the point where she was getting up in the middle of the night and falling down. On May 9th she had a fall and was taken to Lowell General Hospital. The assisted living space said they could no longer handle assisting her living so the hospital started working toward finding a new place for her. She was moved into a nursing facility in Andover and she’s living there now. That means that my parents, who are days away from their 55th wedding anniversary, are no longer able to live together. It’s crushing to say the least. My father was still in the same room at the assisted living place, but that room was in the memory care unit, which he does not require. So yesterday we moved him to a new room, one that is not in the locked down memory unit.

We had movers pick up a piece of furniture at the house in Tewksbury and take it to Billerica. They then moved everything from the memory wing in the basement to Dad’s new room on the first floor, then they took some of mom’s things back to Tewksbury. I bounced from place to place with them and helped out a little. Mostly just by punching in the door lock codes getting in and out of the memory wing.

After the movers were done (huge, huge thanks to them) I went back to Dad’s new room and helped unpack. My sister and my two nephews were there too. We had everything wrapped up by about 2:00 with one glaring exception. Dad sleeps on a rented hospital bed. The company that rents the bed handles moving it from place to place. They initially said they would be there to move the bed at 2:09. Then 2:48. Then 3:30. I had to leave before they got there. I’ll tell you why right now.

We had broken for lunch at around noon. Dad went to the cafe, My sister and the kids went to Wendy’s, and I stayed in the room waiting for maintenance to fix something in the bathroom and switch on the Cable TV. I started eating my little four ounce of chicken lunch but kept getting interrupted. In the end it took me about two hours to get through it and I spent a lot of time taking a bite, then unpacking something for a few minutes, then going back for another bite. I don’t know if my bites were too big, or if it was something to do with being active mid-meal, but I found myself getting pretty nauseous. I pushed through it, but I was feeling pretty bad.

Later, during the time we were done with everything but the waiting for the bed I started feeling sicker. I think it was due to lack of protein? Maybe? Lack of food? Something? I only had a protein shake for breakfast so I hadn’t eaten much. I was just feeling sick to my stomach again and weak and I was getting on toward being nervous about driving. I had to leave and go get something to eat. Once I was home with food in me I felt better. I feel bad about bailing, but at least now I have another couple of food experiences to keep an eye on.

So stomach wise, things are good today. Thankfully. Dad wise, he’s in his new place. He’s miserable about being separated from Mom, but otherwise he seemed okay yesterday. It’s possible he was just putting on a brave face for two of his kids and two of his grandkids, but he did seem okay. Here’s hoping he still feels okay today.

The hang up for me, personally, at this point is pain. I more or less was on my feet yesterday from 7:00am to 3:00pm. It was rough for Mr. Out of Shape here. Sure, I have a lot more energy and stuff since losing 100 pounds in the last seven months (WOOHOO!), but I am still really fat and out of shape and that was a lot of work yesterday.

Then to make things work, I still did my 30 minutes of walking. It was after dinner when I was all settled and feeling better. Jen and I were in the living room watching the tube and I got up and started walking. My Activity App credited me for 18 minutes of exercise during the day, but I have a streak of doing 30 minute walks going (I don’t actually remember when the streak started so I can’t tell you how long it’s lasted) and I didn’t want to ruin it. So I started walking. 30 minutes later I was a mess, but happy. Today I got up as usual and did another 30 minutes before work and now my legs are going to fall off. Poof, no legs. Figuratively at least.

Here’s hoping the pain lessens as the day goes on, but we will have to see.

Ouch, babie. Ouch.