2 More Shopping Days

First, I'm amazed. I discovered the old Control+mouse wheel trick works in the window where I type my blog. Now I can actually lie in bed and type instead of perching on the edge of said bed in order to see anything. I'm not sure if this is going to improve my willingness to blog more often, but what the hey, let's try it.

My dad has gone a whole two weeks without needing hospitalization. Isn't that something? After the stroke then the water weight hospitalization, you'd think he was going to start living there full time. Instead, it looks like they have his med schedule pretty much on track and he seems to be doing better.

Of course, my mom has responded to his now undrugged-out-of-his-mind status to spend even MORE time on the road doing mystery shops. It is her way to cope with him. For me, I just don't go downstairs a lot when he's coherent. When he's thinking he can be dangerous to everyone and it's better not to be in a stupid arguement with him than to spend "quality time" downstairs.

So now that my dad is out of the hospital my brother in law is in. Yup, that's right, in the hospital for a week so far with pneumonia. This started with a massive asthma attack that sent him there to begin with. It may or may not be the cancer again. He and my sister had to get married because he had no insurance in the early 90's and hers would cover the bills. I'm not complaining about my niece and nephews, but you do wonder why the guy never gave up smoking...

So anyway. There are only two shopping days left until my birthday. I'm used to my birthday being all-but ignored (my sister/her family hasn't bought me presents in years and my parents just throw stuff -- selected off a list I have to give them in advance -- unwrapped -- at me with little fanfare), but this year... who am I kidding? This year I'm sitting on my butt again because the people I want to be with on my birthday are quite a ways away.

This is a big one, 35, and it's my own damn fault that I'm in this situation. I could go on and on about life choices, but that would bore you and it really wouldn't do me any good.

So instead of whining, I think I'll head to bed.

Goodnight, god save the queen, and buy me something.

k9

Stormy Weather

I just gave up on Hurricane Rita coverage. I had CNN on for the past couple of hours and while I don't want to go to bed yet, sitting there watching frightened people in the rain really wasn't doing much for my evening.

This is the first major storm since Katrina and it surprises me how much people are reacting and often over reacting to the storm. CNN, for example, has been running non-stop coverage of this pending storm for days now. They had 3D models of how "insert town here" would flood if a storm serge hit and have been on a tear with aggressive coverage of the storm that could be. It made me miss the days when the news stopped at 3PM in order to start the afternoon shows and didn't really come back until 8AM.

People so reacted to this storm yesterday that a few died in Houston of carbon monoxide poisoning. They were stuck in traffic and literally ended up killing themselves while sitting in their cars waiting to get out of town. Schools in Georgia area already closing school for monday and tuesday because they can't afford to pay for gas (which is expected to go through the roof), and there are dire predictions of damage that we can't really imagine since the full blunt of the storm hasn't hit the coast yet.

This differs 10 fold from Katrina. Katrina was an after thought. I can't really blame the president for going back on vacation for an extra day or two before getting off his butt and helping because, let's face it, with recent hurricanes it always sounded bad, nothing really happened (well enough to make extended coverage on the national news) and life went back to normal.

Now, I don't know. Wednesday night CNN had coverage of Hurricane Rita, tornadoes in Minnesota and a plane almost crashing in California all that the same time. The coverage was something out of a DC comic book. You know, Superman, Wonder Woman and the Flash teaming up to divy up who gets to stop what. I was half wishing for devine help (or super heroics) as each situation unfolded on my TV screen.

But there aren't such things. No help is coming from above. We got ourselves into these messes (New Orleans especially -- it was just dumb luck all these years that a hurricane didn't flood it), and now we have to get ourselves out of them.

I remember years ago whenever California would have a big storm there would be million dollar homes that would fall off the sides of cliffs and into the ocean. What did we learn? Don't be a dumbass and build your home that cloes to a cliff. While people still do it, it only took a couple of really bad accidents for the insurance companies to put a stop to it.

So now, hopefully we're learning not to construct cities that are below sea level without MAJOR protection from said sea. Three breaches or overflows of leevees in New Orleans are currently flooding the city again. It could have been avoided years and years ago, but sometimes, as I keep seeing, we humans aren't too bright.

Oh well, no real way to wrap this up. I hope everyone is safe tonight.

k9

Hitching...

I'm currently eating egg rolls with brown mustard. I'm sitting in my room and watching the movie version of "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy." So far it's pretty good, though I probably would have liked it better if I hadn't had the book memorized or if I hadn't grown up with the BBC version of the original teleplay.

The quick random observation is that it added a couple of plot points that weren't in either the book or the original BBC radio version or teleplay. It also added some romance that wasn't there (Arthur Dent should NOT be getting girls). Nothing here really to destroy the mythos of the originals, however, after the first 10 minutes or so I'm longing to retreat into the low-budget glory that was the BBC version.

Zooey Deschanel is to die for, however. Geek goddess. Even geekier than my friend Crissy. Honest.

k9

Here We Go Again

My dad is back in the hospital. This time with low blood pressure and massive water weight gain. When they admitted him last night his legs looked like the Elephant Man's. It was THAT bad.

I saw him this morning and he said he peed 5 jugfulls of pee last night as soon as they gave him antiwater pills. Then he was completely out of it and kept falling asleep while I was there. I stayed for about a half an hour then went home.

This time it's a combination of the doctors reducing his blood pressure meds, which gave him the water weight gain, and increasing his anti-water weight pills, which gave him low blood pressure. They're going to keep him for a couple of days to figure everything out.

I had a major scare yesterday when they admitted him because he called me just as he was going into the emergancy room and I missed his call. There's no reception in the emergancy room at all so he couldn't call again and I couldn't call him. I was supposed to pick him up at the doctor's after getting the dog from the groomer and he wasn't there. So I freaked out a bit, went searching and wound up at the emergancy room. Everyone promised him that they'd call me, but no one did. Stupid hosital.

Today I had another scaree as I got the engine light again in my car. It's a known defect in this model of Explorer but I'm going to end up taking it to the Ford place just in case. I want to know what's going on. The dealership I bought it from said it was probably a bad 0/2 gauge, but you know what? I have no idea what it is and no idea how to fix it so lol. Off to the expensive dealership it goes!

Love life. Love it so much.

Going to bed now.

k9

That Day Again

It is September 11, 2005 and as usual the day will be started by paying tribute to the thousands of people who died on this date some four years ago. I am up early mainly because I have a sinus headache from hell and I had a dream I went to McDonalds with my friend Margie but it was an hour wait for food. Very strange. I couldn't figure out what it meant so I woke up.

I'm really not in much of a mood for all of the 9/11 coverage. I have tons of thigns recording on my TIVO tonight in order to provide an excuse not to watch. I'll tell you that I can't wait for the commercials for "the flight that fought back" on the Discovery related cable channels to go out of rotation. It's not that I don't treat the day with the respect that it deserves, it's the fact that my insides turn to mush when I'm forced to remember the day non-stop every commercial break for the past month and a half.

There was a bullshit saying back in 2001 that we must go on with our lives or else "the terrorists will have won." Well you know what? I can't tell you of one person who wasn't changed by the network coverage on that day. Seeing 3000+ people die is probably the most repeated footage in history in the U.S. and frankly, I don't think you can see that footage (over and over) without something changing.

The only hope I have is that time makes it easier to not forget but to get by this day without as much pain. We do have to move on with our lives and go forward. We can't forget, but we can't be stuck in a day that's now four years past. As horrific as it was, we have to go on or we'll never recover from it.

I'm sort of glad that with time the political word "9/11" is fading. It used to be that politicians (mainly our president) could invoke the magical word in support of nearly anything and be rewarded with massive amounts of support. With the country now bogged down in a war *that had nothing to do with 9/11* and with gas prices at $3 for regular and with a national disaster that dwarfs 9/11 in the form of Hurricane Katrina, we have other things on our minds. Not sure if that's good or bad but it does show that it's no longer our national Kryptonite.

So why am I up and feeling miserable? That same old sinus infection that I thought I got rid of but reactivated last week when I tried to weed whack. Same thing that got me sick thee weeks back. I have no brains at all, but that never changes, and that's my Kryptonite.

With that, this Super-Knine has taken some dayquil and is going to roll back into bed.

Be safe.

k9

Lost and Found

They found my grandfather late Friday afternoon. He had never left the apartment and was safe. He had fallen sometime during the storm but the hospital released him before things went to hell and since then he was at the apartment complex. Right now he's at a high school shelter and my Aunt Mary is driving down from Kansas to get him and his wife.

I don't call his wife my grandmother because she isn't. She's his second wife and I've never met the woman. My real grandma died in 1976 of cancer (my other died in 1992 also of cancer), and I don't know her replacement, I don't want to know her and I cringe when people call her my grandma.

I'm pissed at my grandfather because I learned that when the residents (6 total) decided they were going to stay, that forced the nursing home to leave someone behind with them to take care of them. While I'm sure the guy volunteered to do it, the fact is, their selfish act put someone else's life in danger. I don't mean to sound mean, since they did go through an awful ordeal but they had the means to get out and they didn't and they put someone else's life at stake in order to be selfish. In the end, they can't go back to their apartment until the cleanup happens anyway so it was all for nothing.

Upon hearing that his dad was okay, my dad pretty much had a mental breakdown. He totally overdosed on his meds and was in a stupor for the last two days. That's how he deals with things. He needs to be the center of attention while at the same time he needs to escape from reality because he just can't deal with it. It's like conflicting ego sometimes. One part of him wants to be babied while the other wants the world to go away. It's driving the rest of us nuts.

I want to thank my friends Brandi, Michelle and Crissy for being my constant companions throughout the past week. I'm doing okay. My ear is bugging me but that's normal this time of year. I'm not in the shape my dad is and I'm hoping that the pressure system changes and I'll be back to normal. It was a long horrible week that I don't want to repeat.

k9

Thursday Night Stuff

The update on my grandfather is that FEMA got to his nursing home but couldn't get into the apartments where he lived. There was about three feet of water left. The guy said he had heard from someone who was near there during the storm who claimed to have gotten the 6 residents who stayed (including my grandpa and his wife) to the third floor before the storm hit. They now believe they may have been evacuated to a hospital in Baton Rougue.

Of course I am pissed off at him for staying, but there's hope that he's alive. As always, I want to thank my friends who have IM'd and I also want to thank my friend Brandi who went over and above the call of duty by tracking down numbers for hospitals.

Right now I'm typing from bed. Well my new bed. When we moved up here my parents found out that my dad needed to sleep in a hospital bed. So they put their brand new queen sized bed in storage and have slept in seperate beds since then. When I was going to buy a queen sized, my mom told me to take the one in storage.

It's taken about a month for us to find the time to move the bed up here. Tonight we were sitting around waiting for news on my Grandpa so we had the time and now I'm sitting in bed (I rest my keyboard on a tv tray), tomorrow I'll find another project to occupy my time while we wait for more word.

On that note,

k9