Well Evening

Thu Oct 16, 2008, 11:40 AM

So it has been around a week since my last entry. I tended to write rather long ones every 4 or 5 days even in a relatively stable enviorment. I do hope this doesn't turn into a monstrosity in scale. Things have been as they always have been. I'm still in New Jersey, in my aunt's apartment with my grandfather after the hospital bit.

Tensions have risen at points and I have no idea what I'll do eventually about it but as for now I'll keep my Gandhi inspired outlook on things. Thing is you see my aunt is getting to being incredibly irritating. Grandpa upon his arrival from the hospital hasn't spoken a word. I spend my mornings sitting by him watching tv or just talking to him. Talking for the sake of talking because he just stares off into the distance. When it first started I told him he was the best grandpa in the world and that I loved him very much. He simply stared and didn't make a peep that stung me deeply. I simply forced the feelings down since I've always believed crying doesn't really help anything, especially infront of him. Now I just talk to him as I did then, without breaking stride or waiting for reactions. I tell him I care for him and that he's awesome. I tell him about the documentaries I watch on tv when I'm next to him. I miss when we watched them together. I tell him not to listen to my aunt because she's silly and doesn't know what she says. I've gotten used to it, the talking to him just to give him attention. Sometimes I look over and smile to myself because I've been talking for an hour, remarking things now and stating things every once in awhile and holding his hand. I find him sound asleep and I tell him I'd be bored too if I had to listen to myself for that long. I kiss his forehead and go cook for myself or clean the house.

He's hooked up to a feeding tube and the decay of his physical state has really sped to a degree. He only has one working hand and the most expressive thing he can do it grunts and wiggle his eyebrows and I get that out of him rarely. I wash his mouth in the mornings and clean his face. Check his tubes and machines. Play classical music when he seems sleepy and read the captions on the documentaries or watch them with him and talk to him when he's awake. I give him "flushes" of sterile water down his feeding tube to either administer medication or keep him hydrated and I keep an eye out for red skin spots or anything that might turn into an ulcer or be a fungus and put lotion on them. I recieve the home aids and the nurses as well as any other medical supplies that drop by on a daily basis.

I really do miss the feedback when he did talk or actually concentrated on something and I knew this would happen but still. Now taking in consideration all that has been said. My aunt is grinding on my nerves. Firstly because I really wish I could do more for grandpa that press buttons, administer machines and talk to myself well everything said before it. I know he's sick and I know his condition, I've always known it but my mind rebels against accepting my inability to do anything other than routine care. Point is I end up feeling I spend more time tolerating her incompetence, manias and idiocy more than giving grandpa the care and love I wish I could. Secondly because she is simply impossible to coexist with. She's taken for granted that I'm here it would seem. So it's okay to hound me with her manias and perfectionism. I don't she understands she can have someone else living with her, someone that's helping her, and keep her house completely the exact way she wants it. She's obsessed with cleaning and health. That's fine but she takes it to extremes. Of keeping the lid down when you flush to toilet so particles don't get in the air. I cook for myself and eat, the phone rings I go answer the call and she goes batshit crazy yelling about dishes in the sink, a half finished glass of water, a blanket touching the floor after I got up at 6 a.m. to go to the bathroom and get back on the bed which I would've of course pulled back onto the bed over me.

She went insane yesterday it was like a cross between a rabid mongoose and a fidel castro speech. She says I made "too much coffee" now it wasn't that much and it being my coffee and I planned to drink it by myself and she didn't want any it shouldn't have been a problem with a logical considerate person. Because I believe they wouldn't throw a tantrum over it if they understood simple facts. The ammount of coffee put into the coffee machine is completely irrelevant to the ammount of coffee you get. What makes the ammount of coffee fluctuate is the ammount of WATER, now unless she has a monopoly on the bottled water I bought from my own money it shouldn't be an issue. Sadly she's stupid enough to think the ammount of coffee in the container means I emptied half the bag of actual coffee. Ironically I used more water to use less coffee. I greeted her outburst with silence and quiet anger because not knowing something is fine. I know people who are dumb as rocks in logic and factual knowledge and I consider them great people and respect them. However people who are dumb as rocks and think they know everything, act with authority, arrogance and are loud and rude without understanding simple facts or wanting to, like evaporation or how making cofee works for examples, can be really just really patience testing.

I walk in and she not understanding or even thinking about the vapor machine, a machine bigger than your closed fist, works is trying to put it in his mouth to "give" him to vapor treatment. She puts on wound cleansers that need to be rinsed and puts a patch over them and leaves it for days. She's pulled on his feeding tube and made it bleeds. I've walked in on her wrapping his oxygen tube around his neck because she doesn't know it or figures it goes behind his ears.

The great part of it? I'll take shit from her but when grandpa's wellbeing is on the line I go toe to toe with her. The great part is she denies and baulks at what I say being fact and eventually takes 15 minutes of explaining to understand.

"Are you sure it doesn't go in his mouth it didn't bring a mask"

"It actually says I have to rinse it on the package?"

"I didn't see any blood" (Oh that was a big one because I CLEANED it and she was insinuating in her feverish paranoia I was for some reason lying about it)

and of course her wrapping it in every other way possible than the right way while I'm telling her it's just like the glasses rest on your ears. These are to mention a few of the incidents. I think to myself what the hell would be going on if I wasn't here. On her more mundane fits she doesn't understand evaporation so the tiny droplets on the base of the marble sink in the bathroom have to be wiped with a paper towel. Why? because she doesn't like them "staying" there and started raising her voice at me when I started explaining that the evaportation would take 15minutes this is made all the more irritating because she burst into the room while I was putting eyedrops on grandpa to bring up that insane arguement. I think the one that takes the cake though has to be her coming in at 12a.m. into my room while I was sleeping and telling me I should wash my hands a lot and saying how bacteria are all reproducing and after you so you have to wash your hands to fight them. The cake though goes for the following statement. That she has washed her hands in such a habitual dutiful way she can now feel when the first bacteria and particles adhere themselves to her fingertips. I should too wash my hands in such way too to gain that ability. I don't know what answer she was expecting I simply stared as neutrally as I could then she just added I should go to bed and left. How empty does a person's mind need to be for their lives to revolve around things like this is uncomprehensible for me.

She is seriously upset if she finds more than one water bottle in the fridge which I put there to drink. Two are a no no, the fridge is "too full". You open it there are 6 cans of coca cola. She personally doesn't drink water at all so water bottles are apparently unnecesary in her warped world.

Now my reaction to all of this violently dominant obsessive and schtizofrenic behavior has been to go about my buisness when she's at work. I can eat leave the dishes for half an hour in the sink while I answer the phone or attend a machine. I can shower with no complains about wet sinks or that half an hour is too much water. Any wet spots or droplets evaporate. I cook in my own time and I play classical music for grandpa. Which she switchs to incredibly braindead soaps with a lot of large yelling and slapping that upsets grandpa. I tend to the machines and to grandpa and go about my buisness calmly. Then retreat to my room at 5 in the afternoon when she comes home after work and just read or watch national geographic or the history channel until she needs help changing him or it's time to give him his nightly bath.

It seems she's dumb was enough, maybe still is, to assume that because she's not being able to yell at me over slights in her perfect house now that I have time to finish everything and leave it flawless. She has started assuming I don't actually do anything but read and watch tv. This two dimensional thinking has been proven false more than once but it seems to persist. She went off saying she didn't know why I had stopped cooking for myself but that I should because she can't cook everynight. Um a rather short and simple look into the dishwasher would reveal that everyday it's half full with pots, pans, utensils and dishes. She got that and I had to explain that I also used still took daily showers when she asked me a few times, sometimes adding a rude joke, if I had taken a shower because I wore the same shirt all day. Since I'm inside and don't sweat her two dimensional thinking and lack of droplets in the marble sink makes her jump to offensive or agitated remarks. She went as far to tell me there wasn't any blood because I don't care for his wounds, that pissed me off badly and I did let her know how offensive I found that assumption, she merely dismissed it.

Now the cherry on the cake my friends is that her, herself, the one and only. Leaves balls of hair in the tub's drain, leaves food residue and droplets more than occasionally when she's also in a rush, leaves soda cans all over the house and eaten yogurt containers and cans of food with flies in them, explosions of spagetthi salsa for days in the microwave. I simply clean behind the scenes or remark it vaguely and clean it. I'm not about to go off like a 6 year old and start saying "Oh yeah well you leave stuff too nyah nyah". Let's all act like were in kindergarden.

I don't know what goes on in her head. I think she's simply lost touch with the fact that I can go I can't or don't want to be here anymore and leave or she understands I won't leave grandpa and is abusing that fact. I feel like a dad stuck in an extremely shitty marriage not getting divorced for the child figure which would be gradpa. Nobody would shift him daily to prevent sores, nobody would maintain and restart his machines when they stopped or had errors, nobody would medicate him in the mornings and afternoon or recieve the home aids, nurses and medical services. I don't go out during day or night because in addition to all the things I said I do earlier and now. My aunt can't change him or move him by herself. So I'm here 24/7 every hour and everyday.

Now you can't really want someone to be a 24/7 nurse and home aid and not be able to coexist or be considerate to them. She really makes it seem like she doesn't want me here because I upset her "perfect" delicate balance of insanity and delusion. All she does is complain everything she says are negative remarks and that combined with her incompetence and idiocy. She's likes as well as everything else I've mentioned, complain about electricty. Once again a lamp on when I go to the bathroom for 2 minutes you can guess really insignificant things blown out of proportion. If it's mania she needs to get over it because I'm getting really tired of the martyrdom of putting up with her. If it's financial issues she needs to get over it too because I don't believe she stops and thinks that if we want to get into financial aspects which we should be above. Theoretically the hourly salary of a home aid multiplied 24/7 for 3 months pretty much covers anything she wishes to complain about in that aspect. She's incredibly ignorant and acting all around ungrateful and rude based on delusions and obsessions she expects me to meet and she does not meet herself.

In a nutshell I'm not getting the feedback from grandpa that kept me steady at the helm and she's grinding on me nerves badly. This was just one big rant... I wanted to talk about what I'm doing with the garden. Meh I have to go I hope this didn't have too many errors.