Caterwauling

According to iChat, I’ve been at work 13 hours-plus, although I didn’t log in immediately, so that’s my day. My reward? I just literally spent my last dollar (oh, God, the online banking account. It weeps) on a trip out of town. It’s short, it’s sweet, and it’s not anywhere near the Northeast. And it involves two really nice hotels.

I was sort of kicking myself because here it is, Veteran’s Day, and instead of visiting my beloved veteran grandfather in the so-not-beloved Veterans Hospital, I’m working and planning a very small escape. I just need to check out, literally.

It’s funny — I got out of work at a reasonable hour yesterday and didn’t know what to do with myself. Stores were still open. Restaurants weren’t locking their doors as they saw me circling the parking lot. So I went to a local shopping area, just to waste some time before “Grey’s Anatomy.”

This girl was there, trying to promote world peace or some shit like that. I tried so hard to humor her as she went off on her little prepared tangent. I’ve had to do that pitching of whatever gut-wrenching cause I happened to represent, as I did the non-profit circuit for far too many years — so, my sympathy gets evoked because it’s got to suck to talk to people who don’t want to talk to you.

So she brings out a big book full of things I can donate to, and she asked what I think the biggest problem facing the world today is. Without missing a beat, I said, “Republicans — but it looks like they’re our country’s biggest export, so I’m not altogether that worried about the country right now.”

So she tried the international angle, asking me what I am most interested in doing to make a difference. And I said, “Saving me.”

She blinked but recovered quickly. “You’re not interested in what I’m promoting, huh?” she asked.

I said nope — I’ve done the bleeding-heart thing for too long and I didn’t see the return on my investment, so it’s my time to take care of me. I want to save the world — really, I do — but I’m no good unless I have some resources to save it with.

And I don’t.

I just need for my grandfather to hang in there for awhile longer, although the new news is that he took a bad fall and he’s disoriented and helpless — funny how just four weeks ago, he was walking/talking/laughing/doing his own banking/shopping/diabetic testing/etc. He got out of Hellhole Central and was shipped off somewhere else better, but someplace that says Mom will never be able to handle taking care of him by herself when he’s done there.

So, guilt trip express that I don’t live there, but I can’t think much more on it. Because I? Need to be the strong one, and I need to stop and gather my strength before I can lend it to the people who need it from me most.

Thank God I’m still living out of a suitcase — I’m already packed for my trip! Although on the guilt trip express, they have your bags ready and waiting for you at any time of day. …

From the ever-eloquent Amalah: “You know it’s been a good playdate when nobody is wearing pants by the end.”

The same applies to adult play dates as well, my friend. 😉

Losing the will to blog is, to me, the equivalent of someone else losing the will to live.

I mean, I’m never short on things to talk about. If I had the time, I’d blog 20 times a day. I revel in my weird little thoughts. I even like to talk about nothing in particular at all. Shit, I EXCEL at prattling at length about the irrelevant things in life!

I have had SO many good stories to share — hell, I’ve even gone so far as to write the blog entries in my head. But then? I fire up the computer, log in to my little widget, and go “Enh.”

And lose the story forever.

Like a handful of my other online friends, lately I’ve come to a point where I want to say “enough.” As in, everybody gets a timeout if the clown acts out in class — one turd in a punch bowl threatens to ruin the party. You don’t get the best of me anymore. You just can’t. I could be channeling my energies elsewhere: developing a new hobby, nurturing some friendships — vegging out and keeping my thoughts to myself. Writing a damn novel already!

I don’t know. If this blog closes up shop, I assure you it’s because I wanted to do it and not because anyone made me. But the one thing I do like is that if I don’t make an update, the genuine people in my circle (and all of you know who you are, because there are amazingly and thankfully plenty of you) actually worry and wonder and inquire what happened to me.

And in that, I appreciate the safety and warmth of a caring circle of friends, because I too notice when they’re not showing up in my newsreader. I might not be thoughtful enough to ask, but I do care and miss them and will welcome them back with open arms when I see them resurface.

To anyone who blogs in my circle, I’m one of your biggest fans. You share your heart every day with me. You enlighten me to things I might never experience. You broaden my worldview and my understanding of things that will help me to become a better person. And if I can manage to do the same, in some small way? Takes my breath away.

So maybe we’ve moving into Caterwauling 3.0, the first version being hidden and the second stab at it being where my heart was on my sleeve. I don’t know what’s coming for this newest iteration, but I do know that the exits are always open and you’re encouraged to walk through them. (And for some in particular, the escort service of my foot is also available.)

In the meantime, I might be tapping out Morse code from my squatting position in the rabbit hole, but I’m having a lot of experiences that I love capturing for myself and maybe even sharing — if I can stop typing in tongues and start sharing in plain English again. But maybe now is my time to just live ’em and I can write the memoirs later. I don’t know. I just hope that they’ll be worth reading!

You, the planet in retrograde? OUT!

Ahem.

Things are going as well as can be expected, given the planetary situation, I suppose. I just want to know when the hell the ride is going to slow the fuck down because I can’t find an opportunity to step off and get some goddamned Dramamine so I can keep going.

I wrote 7,000 words in my NaNoWriMo novel and called it a month. I know, it’s only the eighth day of the month, but still. A girl’s got commitments and priorities that have nothing to do with being at home only long enough to do anything but scrub cat shit out of the carpet.

Re: all of you wonderful folks who are asking how The Grandfather is, thank you, love you, big hugs and kisses. To you, I can say simply that I drove past Mellon Arena with Mom and we saw that Ringling Bros. was in town with its circus, and Mom breathed how she’d love to see the circus. I told her to be careful what she wished for, ’cause it’s unquestionably a three-ring affair at the hospital. Today she admitted how right I was.

Here’s a conundrum — the hospital is so fucking dirty, he got all kinds of nasty staph infections. Which the doctor assured me on Sunday (Nov. 5) he was receiving antibiotics for. Which I questioned because they hadn’t had him hooked up to an IV since Friday. So today? These idiots ADMIT that they haven’t been giving him infection-fighting meds because a vein blew (huh?) and so he’s been left untreated with ANY meds he’s needed for the past week.

So the idiot doctor — I call him “Stripe” like the nasty character from “The Gremlins,” because he has a stripe of white hair running along his head like a mohawk — threatened Mom today to approve a procedure to put an IV site next to his heart. I was opposed to it — seems that all they keep doing is fixing something new they’ve fucked up, and what happens if/when they fuck THAT up too? The cycle never ends!!!

Not to mention, but they don’t want our input on ANY decisions, so why now? Because my grandfather refused to allow them to do anything without Mom’s input. As mom told McDorkbutt, “He’s a smart man.”

But she did agree, on the basis of him needing treatment and all, but damn. Idiots, sociopaths and fuckheads continue to roam this earth and hold important jobs — LIKE ONES IN MEDICINE — but it always feels like the truly good people have more problems than China has tea AND rice … and thanks, in part, to them.

My faith in things working out in the end is still strong but, admittedly, it’s wavering today. I was telling someone very special to me today that someday, we’re all going to laugh about all these problems in our lives. We might be laughing from a padded cell with restraints on us, but we’ll be laughing one of these days. …

(*not to exclude all the others who are having the door hit them where the good lord split ’em — I’m doing my Miss America wave behind all of you, especially you, Mr. Grinch Rumsfeld!)

Saw this in my inbox today from a beloved fellow liberal …

Captain O

Originally uploaded by dcwriterdawn.

Anyone who went to school in Pittsburgh probably knows Captain O, the face of The O (restaurant) in Oakland. In my day (and it wasn’t that long ago!) you could get $4 large pizzas that were not much more than cardboard with cheese, but when you were broke, nothing tasted better.

(Incidentally, Captain O reminds me of “Captain Condom,” about whom we saw movies in ninth-grade health classes.)

Anyway, I was never a fan of the hot dogs, but I used to think the burgers were out of this world. That is, until the D.C.-based Five Guys opened up right next door to The O in November ’05. 😉

The real reason to trek to The O was for the fries, as a “small” order was enough to feed four people. Crispy, greasy and bountiful — three of the six food groups of the average college student. (The other three being caffeine, cigarettes and alcohol.)

The joy for those of yinz who spent half your adolescence there as well was the vat o’ hot Cheez Wiz that you could order as a side. (It’s now $1.50 — they know how to make their money! I swear it used to cost a third of that.) And now, they’ve introduced gravy and Ranch dressing (*slobber*) as well.

I’d so kill for a fry right now. …

So I’ve been using a new body wash, Caress with Skin Brighteners.

It’s fine; it’s soap. I don’t stink; apparently, it works.

BUT …

I was wondering just in what way the skin gets brightened. Like, when you scrub your butt, does it glow? Is your hoo-ha like a night light, that when it’s covered by your scandalous underwear it sparkles, but it turns off when light is exposed to it?

Inquiring minds want to know.

Today I’d love to capture all the stupidity that is the VA Hospital, how they took a strong, healthy man into their “care” (sorry, gagged on the word) with a diagnosis of “altered mental state” because he was in pain (but still “all there” — bizarre) and have caused him to contract pneumonia, a UTI and MRSA (although they still say they’re not sure, but I know it because my grandmother went in for a stroke and ended up with MRSA and VRSA which are not only toxic, but they make you lose your bladder/bowel control, which guess what? Yeah, he lost that in the hospital yesterday too. GRAND). On top of it, they say he’s going to need to be permanently on oxygen (huh?) and have a permanent IV site (the hell?).

I’d take altered mental status any day. Hell, I live with it just fine! 😉

The only blessing in all of this is that the hospital they want to dump him in won’t take him with this mess. There’s one other option, and I think we should take it, to go to a supposedly better hospital in a better part of town. I’m not saying that I’m expecting miracles, but. …

No, wait a minute. I AM expecting a miracle. Everyone else (medically) seems to have given up on him. They are destroying him. They do it to everyone. But we’re not giving up on him. I don’t give up on anyone or anything until 10 minutes past the last possible minute. And we’re nowhere near it.

Mom remembers being young and my grandfather being in that same sinking ship of stupidity. He’d shared a room with a young man just back from whatever war we shouldn’t have been fighting (it’s election day — take a wild guess who I’m NOT voting for).

Anyway, the man had gangrene in his one leg and was scheduled to have it amputated. The idiots at the VA? CUT THE WRONG ONE OFF.

I also noticed signs on the bulletin board for a “zero-MRSA” environment. Good work, morons. “Zero-BRAINS” is more like it.

His beloved roommate is gone, off to get a liver transplant. Higher power willing, the 20-year-old doctors have played “Operation” enough to know where the organ’s located.

I say all of this to try to fit all of this into my head and to hope and pray that Mom and I don’t get it, because I am annoyed when I need Tampax, let alone the thought of needing a paper bag for my head to go purchase a bag o’ non-Huggies diapers. GAH.

I also say all of this to remind myself that if there is any goodness in life to be experienced, do it NOW. Don’t wait, don’t pass “go,” just enjoy the quality of life (whatever level it’s at) while you still have it. Let go of the past and let bygones be just that. Never, ever miss the opportunity to be the better person in a disagreement, and keep on going if you can never seem to win. There are better places where your energy can be used, and feeling angry and exhausted is not supposed to be part of your everyday cycle.

I’m not a religious person by any means (although you do find me asking a lot of questions of my Higher Power lately) but I have had to give up a lot of things to that entity because there’s only so much I can do here on earth. I want to spend my time as productively as possible and even invest in doing nothing at all, to regenerate and to not miss what I can easily rush past.

I’m not living my life in regret, and I’m certainly not going to live it afraid. My existence is all about the little moments, and nothing makes me happier than giving someone else a moment of joy or relief. I think that’s how my whole family has operated — I think being the hero in every situation is what fueled them.

But what I’ve learned is to reserve some strength to save your own day, and to try to find one or two people who will lend you some of their strength should yours ever run too low to keep you going.

If you can, give someone a reason to believe in miracles today. I know I’m going to try, and I hope you will, too. …

Before I start today’s tirade, allow me to note that I’d rather have the cast of “Grey’s Anatomy” running a hospital. Sure, they’re actors, but they can’t be any less competent than what I’ve seen in the past few days.

I think there has got to be a note in my grandfather’s chart that when the granddaughter shows up, people need to act like they know what’s going on.

All they know is that I live in D.C. proper and that I can throw around medical terminology enough to seem like I know what the hell I’m talking about. All I know is that when I so much as approach the nurses’ station, I get a team of doctors dispatched to the bedside.

So my grandfather’s had this nasty, gurgly cough since Halloween. My mom had been asking for days about it, and when I arrived a few days later, I could hear it well. She went to ask a doctor about it and he said she’s hallucinating — he’s fine.

So “Harper Valley PTA” marched her ass up to the paging system and got someone sent to the room. I went off and said some asshole had told my mom he didn’t hear a cough and could you PLEASE take a listen because the wrong person was told they were hallucinating. The doc gave me a nasty look and snapped, “I’m that asshole who said he doesn’t have a cough because he doesn’t.”

Heh. He was right — he WAS an asshole. Because SUDDENLY he heard the cough. And even more suddenly? He realized the unclean hellhole had caused the poor man to contract PNEUMONIA.

SPEAKING OF ASSHOLES

Oh wait, I don’t have enough bandwidth to cover all the assholes in the world. (Although I do try. …) But then we got this other doctor the next day. Oh my GOD, I can see this idiot prancing around in his Superman Underoos and his lab coat — I’ll bet he wears that coat to bars to pick up chicks. Because that’d be the only way anyone would talk to him more than two minutes.

I think they versed him on the fact that I was going to give him a hard time. Snotty little punk-ass bitch. It ended up being Mom who got him good, but let me say this. “Meredith” gets “McDreamy” — we got “McDildo.”

So my grandfather was already gravely ill when we took him to the hospital. Now he’s contracted pneumonia, a bladder infection and a blood infection (they didn’t want to tell me they think it’s MRSA. They used a 14-syllable word and because I am well-versed in this shit and the hospital is filthy, I said, “Oh, MRSA.” And everyone looked scared and probably made another note in his chart to not answer pages when I’m around!

Anyway, they want to transfer my grandfather to another hospital, germs and all, because he really is getting sicker in that environment. We all agree on that. But he doesn’t want to go to the other place — he was there years ago and was absolutely terrorized by the experience.

BUT, McDildo pretty much threatened us to help talk him into it or he was going to order it without our blessing. *sigh*

My grandfather fought the transfer with his weak little voice, saying it’s a bunch of assholes running that place. McDildo said, “It’s been years — I’m sure it’s a whole ‘nother group of people.” And Mom chimed in, “Yeah, Dad — it’s a bunch of NEW assholes!”

And because McDildo was trying to win this argument, he had to admit, “Yeah, wouldn’t you rather deal with new assholes instead of the old ones?”

HAH!

GOOD THINGS DO HAPPEN FOR GOOD PEOPLE

With my grandfather’s last roommate, Mom was always buying him treats and talking to him and taking care of him. With his latest roommate, I’ve been bringing him meals and hanging out with him. Luckily, both guys were younger and very verbal, and the most recent one has been feeding my grandfather when those morons were leaving his tray four feet from him and also moving him in the bed, helping him to the bathroom and otherwise just being a friend.

Thank God. You know? What goes around comes around, as the latest one kept saying. And despite the doctors being McDipshits overall, the nursing staff (save for one or two) has really been good. The doctors (i.e., interns) are there for three-month stays (and are all on ego trips) but the nurses have been there for years. He had a lovely Korean woman from San Francisco last night — she calls my grandfather “Papa.” Her mother had told her to treat each of her patients like her own father, and she really does.

Anyway, it restores my faith in karma. It especially pleases me that, like my family, I refuse to become jaded by all the bullshit in life and I continue to want to be good to people because that’s not just my nature, but also my lineage.

So, I’ve been doing everyone’s errands and doing all the driving and giving Mom curbside service and making sure everyone gets fed and whatnot. I am truly the baby of the family and I know I have the most energy (although it’s dissipating) and need to take over for them whenever I can.

This makes me see the point of having kids — having a sane mind around when all the world is collapsing has been good for them. Not to mention, they both sparkle when I come into a room. I mean, most people do light up when they see me — I try to be enertaining or, at least, not annoying. But these people light up just for me. I love that. I miss that. I hated that as a kid, as I couldn’t stand being fussed over. But these days, I’ll take all the love I can get, and it’s there in bountiful supply, thank God.

ARE WE HAVING FUN YET?

I think we all know the answer to THAT question, but I have a funny story. First, I have to mention how hard it is to catch an elevator. There’s a bank of a dozen of them and not a goddamned one of them dings when they hit the floor. By the time you notice it, it’s gone.

I tell you that to share this story. There’s a robot wandering the floors. (It has more personality and probably more knowledge than the M.D.s.) It’s almost five feet tall and three feet wide, just a big cube that rolls around the floor.

Mom’s afraid of it. BIG TIME.

We went to a hidden restroom (it’s the only fairly clean one in the joint) in a back hallway. Wouldn’t you know, I’m in the room and the robot comes zooming down the hall, chasing Mom clear down it. (I think the thing carries files from floor to floor, but I really don’t know.)

I come out of the floor to find Mom collapsed in a heap, sobbing and laughing. I didn’t want to ask. The thing chased her all the way down to the elevators, where one opened and it got on, thus ending its pursuit of her.

She was so traumatized, she had to call her best friend, who’d been to the hospital before I came back. And the friend had said, “How the hell is it that we miss three elevators and yet that thing can catch one?”

I’m almost looking forward to this insane odyssey coming to a close and resuming my life — I’ve been living out of a suitcase for three out of the past four weeks, and I’d like a little bit of routine for a change. I just hope my grandfather is strong enough to make it through the next leg of this journey, because I think the next part is going to be the roughest. But like I always tell him, he’s stronger than they are stupid.

A higher power is giving them a chance to save him (and, therefore, themselves) and they’d all be wise to take it while they can. And if we’d all live by that motto, we will all turn out OK. …