It’s Raining, It’s Pouring…

This week is a marathon of appointments that are spawning more appointments. Today we had our long-awaited pediatrician visit for my teenager. He needed lab work and it was closer to there than home, so we went ahead to get it over with. It was raining buckets and there were streams running through the parking lot. My socks got wet going in.

Mom is extra crazy this week because of the comings and goings, and her new thing is accusing us of stealing our own car. Yes, it’s funny, but it gets old. Also she is projecting because she’s stealing and hoarding toilet paper rolls. I keep having to rescue them from her laundry basket.

She is codependent on me, so every time I leave the house it’s like shaking her whole ant farm and I never know what I’m going to come home to. My husband has the patience of a saint with her, but I know every time I leave not only am I going to be dealing with extra-crazy when I get back, he is while I’m gone. He is in IT and married to me, so he’s already met his quota for this lifetime.

When the teenager and I got home, I had a small handful of paperwork, and I dropped the damn school excuse in the driveway. By the time I noticed it missing, when I wrote the other excuse for the rest of the days my teenager has missed – because half the teachers aren’t following his 504, so he’s already tired of fighting over invisible disabilities – it was well and truly soaked, and I’m lucky it was raining so heavily it didn’t blow away. I thought it was going to be useless and I’d have to call them tomorrow and get a new one. Apparently doctor ink is forever though because after I dried it, it’s still readable. There’s a blue imprint of a post-it with the directions to the lab. I had to brush off some pavement grit but it still works.

A small win – a phone call dodged. I feel like this raggedy paper a lot of days. I can barely make sense of myself but I have to pretend to be some sort of authority on life for three, sometimes four people – not including me because I know for sure I’m bullshitting.

Here We Are in Paradise, or something like that ;-)

This summer has been spent so far settling into our new lives, fixing up our house, figuring out how to live together. There are ups and downs, but in between I can look out my windows and see green everywhere, and if I’m lucky, random animals.

The area we moved to is similar to our last one in that it’s many small towns running into the city. But there are so many farms. Farm stands, farm stores, farm markets. It’s like I’m back in North Carolina; I go buy all the veggies and fruit, then get stuff to go with it at the grocery store.

My oldest son is taking cooking classes in the city, so we’ve gone exploring the shopping that way. My youngest is turning into my hiking and swimming buddy. There are so many places to hike, many of them accessible. Mom is getting rolled all over nature once it’s cooler. Mostly I’ve taken her to the dentist, doctor, and out to eat lately. Her anxiety has been elevated since we had what turned out to be the move from hell: three month edition, bouncing around rentals. Even when she wasn’t living with us, she was coming to visit two different houses. The constant was me, and now she is fine when I’m home but starts to lose her mind if I go anywhere. D. can reassure her when she isn’t sundowning but early afternoon? Forget it. Plus she has had many…rather, shall we say, FUCKING HORRENDOUS experiences with men since she met my late asshole stepfather, so she can be a real grouch toward everyone in the family but me.

We are adjusting her meds to add one specifically for anxiety, because most of her sundowning has a very OCD flavor. We get creative too. She can’t stand to see us standing or sitting around for example. She’ll come out of her room and try to give us a job. Dan complained about this to me and I said “Oh she does that to me too. I just pretend I’m doing something.” I showed him my fake counter wipe with the nearest rag. If I’m playing video games, I’m “waiting on a text/email back from someone on the internet. Oh, there it is! Gotta finish this form.” (Half the time this IS true. I’m lining up dentists, doctors, eye doctors, therapists, new licenses, schools, and occasionally contractors if Dan can’t catch them.) The sky is the damn limit, okay? Call me Nurse Pragmatism.

Mom is also slowly coming off some of the meds they had her on in the memory care from her WV experience. She’s still on several and it gets confusing as hell. The memory care had them all in neat little bubble packs, but now that it’s me and an organizer. I’m just thankful for my own OCD and a fast pharmacy. Also this Ninja soda machine, because she has a sweet tooth and was downing sodas so fast I could’ve paid the mortgage in bottle returns. Now I just make sure we have supplies. I order the berry blast nine bottles at a time.

We brought Jiji, the ex-feral cat, and after she took a giant dump in the travel carrier less than thirty minutes into the trip to convey her gratitude, she did fine the rest of the way. She is doing great as an indoor cat, and there’s no way she’s ever getting out with all these animals. We have things that can kill her, but she’s more likely to chase ten different rodents down the mountain and get lost. She’s really been everyone’s emotional support kitty. Thanks to Pacagen spray, the Purina anti-allergen food, and D’s year of allergy shots, she can actually sleep in our room, usually right by my head, or on it.

After nearly two years of uncertainty, packing, selling, moving, traveling, we finally made it to one house, where we want to be, and now the whole country is going to shit. Par for the course. I dissociate with nature. I watch the birds, wander off to hike, drive down by the river…on bad days I dream of wandering into the woods like that hermit guy in Maine and hiding out until humanity blows over. Or until humanity is over blowing.

Today the birds inspired this poem, which is not a happy one, but was very cathartic to write.

What’s Left

The remnants of dinosaurs hunt for food
in the shady branches outside the window,
reduced to surviving on bugs and seeds.

The remnants of my mother lounge in bed
the next room over, reduced to anxiously asking
for soda, toast, help with a shower, reassurance.

The remnants of my sanity banded together
almost as long as the dinosaurs roamed
and took off for parts unknown.

Sometimes I get a postcard with a photo
of a lovely vista or majestic wildlife.
Wish you were here.

Moving

Last December, the first chance I had after the election, I drove up to New York and did a giant loop: Buffalo to Rochester to Syracuse to Albany to Hudson to Kingston to Binghamton to Ithaca to Corning to Salamanca, then home.

I could’ve been happy just about anywhere with pretty scenery and access to a decent-sized town. But I’m one of those “grow where you’re planted” people as long as the state government is standing between us and the Nazis instead of rolling over for them, like the red states we left behind.

The Hudson Valley really drew me because it looks so similar to WV’s New River Gorge area where I grew up. I contacted a realtor and started getting a plan together. The plan was ideally to sell both houses. I got a new realtor in WV after the family friend we hired the first time essentially sat on her ass for a six-month contract. I got a realtor in OH and started getting my own house ready. As soon as the WV house went under contract we put ours on the market. Ours sold in three days and the contract in WV fell through.

When I went up to check on mom’s house over the winter, the heat had broken. I tried to wash my hands because I ate Pies n Pints on the way up the mountain, and water shot out the side of the bathroom faucet. I tried the kitchen sink, heard a gurgle, and the water that had just gone down the drain was leaking into the cabinet. We had to turn the water off, get a plumber out, and he chased leaks all over those pipes for a week.

We lived in an AirBnB up the street from our old house in OH while we waited for Mom’s house to sell again. Once it was under contract we came up to NY again so everyone could visit and we could start our house hunt, but we didn’t really think we would find one that soon. Everyone said we needed to move up, rent, and look from here. But we managed to find a great house on a two-acre mostly wooded lot. The front has this optical illusion thing going on, and I almost overlooked it online because of it, so there was only one other offer.

When ours got accepted we were over the moon, but then we had to make it through the closing from hell. Mom has a perfectly good POA in WV, and I was able to sell her house using that, but NY real estate transactions give zero shits about out-of-state POAs. We had a lawyer telling us the POA was a no-go, a frankly delusional loan officer telling us we would work it out somehow, and a realtor in the middle poking them both and giving advice, but no one was really direct with us that it would be very difficult to actually put Mom’s name on the house or the mortgage. It almost cost us our contract. We were looking at apartments just in case. If we had known at the beginning what we know now, we would have gotten our own NY real estate lawyer before we even got started.

But then the WV house closed at exactly the right time. We were able to wire the proceeds to our closing lawyer and not have to figure out Schrodinger’s POA. For the entire month long closing, while we were getting these daily or every-other-day “you’re getting the house/you’re losing the house” updates, we lived at the Hampton Inn. We had another AirBNB all lined up in NY, but instead of the resort house advertised in the listing, we all arrived on May 2nd to a house full of dog hair, swarming carpenter ants, and mouse shit. We slept on the couches and left the next day, and I had to wrangle a refund out of them while we all moved into two hotel rooms. I sent graphic mouse shit photos until they capitulated. I got back every dime.

Mom did pretty damn great throughout this whole adventure. She’s happy as long as she knows where her family is. She says she doesn’t even remember being in memory care now; the new place reminds her of Hinton and she mixes them up a lot, so I guess her mind reverted back to WV and skipped Ohio. Good for her. 😀

We finally moved into our new house in the Hudson Valley at the beginning of June. The air conditioner promptly died, but we’ve only had two hot days so we haven’t even missed it much. It’s beautiful here. I have a lot of the same plants and animals in my yard as I did growing up. Everywhere I drive, there are mountains and rivers, creeks and lakes, wildlife and wildflowers. Waterfalls. I don’t have enough eyes to take it all in.

We are slowly building our new life here. I feel like I can breathe easier. It’s not just the politics, it’s the landscape. I never knew how much I missed the mountains. I feel more at home here already than I ever did in the midwest.

2024

The fuckery kind of started this year with the Ohioans passing the anti-trans laws.

I’d planned to start blogging more this year, because we’d started talking about moving to a blue state with our kid who’s being legislated against.

Before I could do that, my husband’s family exploded in yet another drama bomb, but instead of just blowing up all over us, this time it hit his twin’s best friends and the rest of the family. They deleted his social media memorial page with no warning. Many of us, including my husband and me, had messages and comments saved from a decade or more where the other side of the conversation is just missing now. When we told them “wow, that’s fkd up, can you fix it?” they dug in. Not even temporarily so everyone can screenshot those missing convos. Nope.

It was a theme with this family: screw something up on a colossal scale, but instead of apologizing and trying to make it right, let’s attaaaaaack! And in this case, delay until it’s too late to restore the page. I’m waiting on the “aw shucks I swear I meant to D, but I forgot, you know how busy and important I am! And you’re a nobody black sheep! Get over it and rug sweep” non-apology I’ve seen in the past.

We tried to be patient for a year. But the latest mess enlightened us to the fact that the elder four Fs have no intention of ever doing what their son asked with his remains or his estate.

Then I was at my first event of the year for one of my gigs and I got a call from the hospital. Rather, I got a call from my mom’s neighbor at the hospital. It took me a minute, because Mom lives in Southern West Virginia, and the Appalachian accents there can be thick…er than mine, even. It was her friend and drinking buddy telling me she’d had a seizure.

I don’t even remember who I talked to but they were moving her, because that hospital is essentially a glorified landing pad, so I left my event and came home to dump the cargo and went to WV. By the time I got there she was in Charleston.

Over the next few days I made many shocking and not so shocking discoveries. Like my mom was a high functioning high masking alcoholic. In fact, by the number of a scale they gave me, my mom is the GOAT of high functioning alcoholics.

She has OCD like the rest of us, but she’s never really been treated. After T. made his spectacular traumatic exit, she worried nonstop over the house and estate and responsibilities. So she developed these ironclad routines and systems with post-its and the calendar and notes, etc, to make sure the bills were paid and things were taken care of. She did such a good job, when she started to develop dementia, everything looked good on the surface for a long time after it wasn’t underneath.

Then she had a seizure, and had her neighbor take her to the hospital. I think they told her about the drinking then because she checked herself out and didn’t tell me or my aunt. Or she may have even forgotten.

The second seizure was worse and the neighbors found her because her phone had been going in and out – literally nothing works in this f-ing town, more on that later. They’d been helping her report the outage and check the phone, so when they called and she didn’t answer, they went over. She couldn’t talk and they thought she might be having a stroke, but then she fell on the way to sit down and had a seizure. Once she went to the hospital for that, we found out the extent of the dependency.

I just went on autopilot for a while. I’m grateful I had my family and friends to help and support me because this has been one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do. I started driving back and forth taking care of things. Trying to process in between. Thinking of all the signs I may have missed. I wanted to be pissed at the neighbors who drank with her or didn’t tell me things. But I knew if they had tried to talk to her about it she’d bite their heads off. I was mentally preparing myself to talk to her about it before we moved – I wanted her to go with us – and now I’m sure that would have gone over like a turd in a punch bowl.

Then we found out that her memory wasn’t just damaged short term. She sat in the hospital forever waiting on a broken machine. I don’t even remember which one. We found out she has brain atrophy. She used to go to the doctor every year and tell me “My kidneys and liver are fine! If she ever tells me I have to quit drinking I’ll have to find a new doctor, but I’m good for another year.” No, mom, no you weren’t. Apparently there are other organs of concern.

By then, the hospital was telling me she’d need rehab. Either for PT or dependency. They submitted paperwork and gave us a list and were taking care of it all they said. When they found the atrophy they assured me they still planned on two weeks in rehab. However, I should start looking at long term memory care or assisted living.

I spent almost a week doing that while they were supposedly working on the rehab. Then they told me she was rejected from one place, and they really hadn’t looked elsewhere but they’d been sure that one would work so now they weren’t sure they could place her…anywhere? But I could take her home if I could maybe hire a nurse to help me to watch her 24/7.

I asked around on my local social media, and started memory care speed-shopping near me. I talked to a clinician who informed me that since Mom is self-sufficient in most ambulatory ways, severe memory care wasn’t for her. But she’s risky because she has impulse control/dependency issues so assisted living probably isn’t for her either.

Meanwhile, Mom has a yard full of feral cats. She got most of them spayed or neutered a couple years ago but since she feeds hers, all the neighborhood cats just come on over. She also never let the TNR people come back to finish the job. So we have a bunch of hecking inbred cats to deal with. And this is where shit gets dark.

I was driving to and from southern WV, stopping in the capital city in between. Feeding cats. Rigging MacGuyver level shit to ensure I could leave the one indoor cat (who is an antisocial bitch, but I still feed her) at least most of a week and coordinate with Mom’s angel of a neighbor on the one side to feed the others. People started asking me what would happen to the cats. I would mention I’ve contacted the local rescue to help me figure it out, and they’d say “Don’t call the dog catcher.” Apparently this guy tells little old ladies he can place their excess cats on farms, and there aren’t any farms.

A couple of them also told me not to call Mom’s ex-lawyer, and one said “Google him way back.” I did, and paid $5 for a newspaper archive and found out all kinds of lovely stuff like violent crime.

The whole experience solidified my plans to move. It was like the universe pointing a giant arrow north: GET OUT.

I managed to obtain memory care for my mom fifteen minutes from me. I lugged the furniture and boxes of supplies over to the room in a u-haul today. I can’t even believe any of this is real. I go get her tomorrow and drive her to her new place. I don’t even know what I’m supposed to do if she tries to bust loose. If she has to piss we’re going to a rest area, because I’m not taking her anywhere near booze.

I could get help with the transport but with this hospital, I have no faith they’d move the right patient to the right facility. I think we’ll be fine though. Mom seems to be getting used to the idea of letting go of all the responsibility and moving closer.

The doctors did say that with sobriety, she can rewire and regain more functionality. She may eventually go to assisted living, or we could build her a secure Crazy Grandma facility when we move. Long-term, we’ll see.

Short term, I can almost breathe again.