19 | September | 2012 | GrandFortuna's League of 20,000 Planets

Day: September 19, 2012

it's Halloween all year long with us
I never know what I'm going to see driving around town. Today it was this. #greenwithenvy
Let's see, what else is going on lately? I thought I'd be updating more often, but it seems to be more like monthly assessments.

Physical therapy has me nearly back to superhero status. Ok, midlife superhero status. Kinda different rating scale on that nowadays.

Those giant mirrors all over physical therapy are taunting me into an opportunity that I hope will be magically easy, like my first go round on a 1500 calorie diet a couple of years ago. 50 pounds melted right off me over 4 months with me hardly even trying before I plateaued, and all I did was count calories and especially carbs. That's 5 bowling balls. Or a giant sack of cat food, whichever way you want to look at it.

I didn't bloat up the easy and fun way on yummy stuff, I did most of it during 9 months of daily steroids while I was real sick for a long time. It sucked. I vowed to do everything in my power to never get that sick again if I could possibly prevent it, and what has come out of that is I can't say enough how diet change actually really works. Anyway, may as well take it all the way, right? Yeah, baby! Time to finish what I started.

Kinda been a little busier lately getting ready to go see my dad. His birthday is next week, so I asked him if he'd like to get out for a drive (he's over 80), and it sounds like he's got a doozy planned out, roaming around the countryside like he always loved to do. When we were kids he'd sometimes take us on drives up to the mountains, or to go see some Indian ruins. These weren't the typical fun outings, where you stop and get a pop on the way home. No, we were so worn out and starving and dying of thirst by the time we finally dragged back home that I developed a hearty loathing of driving around, until I got my own car and my own money and stopped whenever I jolly well felt like it for what I jolly well wanted. Anyway, one day Dad piled us in the back of the pickup and drove us out across some guy's big ranch in New Mexico to see a petrified log and pottery shards and stuff, pretty big acreage, and on the way back out of there he hit a rut or something and I went flying right off the back of the truck. He didn't slow down, didn't even know I was missing, and I picked myself up and started hauling it like crazy and managed to catch up and sorta lunge back onto the truck before I lost all my wind. I had no doubt in my mind that if I didn't make it, he might not be back for awhile (and I was already sunburned and so thirsty I could barely swallow), because he was busy yapping in the cab to someone and wouldn't pay that much attention to the kids beating on the back glass. This is the guy we're taking out for a drive this weekend. He's so excited he can hardly stand it. For some reason I think that is pretty funny.

And what else do you get an old Mennonite for his birthday? I told him I'd mix up a bunch of little meatloaves to put up in his freezer to cook later through the year, and make him some rolls and cookies. Really curious to see if he ever got started on the homemade coffin he got all excited about making last winter. He repeatedly went over detailed instructions with me on the phone on all the ways we are NOT to save his life if it comes down to it. Here you go, something from my private blog awhile back. Please be advised that the reason I usually put stuff like this in private is because I say horrible things that generally aren't taken well by the public, but it 'splains a lot.

Tuesday, November 29, 2011

an Addams Family Christmas

Back on track. Little tiny chicken in a little tiny pot on the stove, so cute! Laundry going. Bathed. Ate a big salad for breakfast. Beans for lunch pretty soon. Couple scrabble games with Sal. Discussed Dad's insistence that all us kids sign and notarize his last wishes...

I think we're way more morbid than the Addams family sometimes. The details are stupid and incredible. I argued with him a couple weeks ago about how we are *not* going to let him lay till he dies if he falls and beaks a hip, that's extreme negligence and any authority would come after us over it. There is no way I'm pulling his gold teeth out of his head *myself*. ~gag~ No, I refuse, don't want that memory, Dad. Nope, not getting in a big fight with anyone because I won't let anyone comfort your cries of pain that will probably last *looking at watch* DAYS while we withhold food and water on top of the injury or illness... What a horrible memory for the grandkids, especially, and we'd have to be outright monsters to do that. I know Julie and John could never live with that kind of guilt. And if you *do* happen to lay there in your bodily wastes before we find you, we are NOT letting you keep laying in them, BUT, I am NOT cleaning you up myself. Either way, that's just nasty.

Seriously. Yes, I had this conversation with my dad. And apparently he has moved on to Sal.

So we're digging up paperwork he can fill out as an addendum to the power of attorney we already have, so he can be explicit in all his last wishes. Very explicit. Shockingly explicit. Let me lay in my excrement in horrible agony with no offer of food or water, no matter how long it takes me to die, even if it's not necessarily a life threatening condition unless I simply just can't get up by myself.... I've never even seen him do that to a farm animal if there was a way to either get it up or put it down. He would go hand feed it, even if he was too stupid to call a vet, so I don't know why he thinks we could do this to another human being.

Sal thinks we should go ahead and dig his hole and give it to him for Christmas. She's awesome. He wants to be buried super fast, even faster than Mom if possible (right around 12-13 hours for her), and Sal and I are thinking if John's out on the road, he's going to miss the whole thing. I asked Dad if he wants us to open the casket and see if he's really in there, he said just a crack, I said I'll bring a flashlight... He adamantly does not want any kids putting stuff in the casket (preferably a cardboard box...) with him like they did Mom. I'm thinking how cathartic it would be to put in all the stuff he can't bring himself to throw away. Old utensils. 30 year old magazines...

Well, enough of that yap. Falalalala, as they say this time of year. We're hoping he goes in his sleep just so we won't have to deal with anything, but since this could drag on for years, I'm sure we'll thoroughly discuss it to death long before he ever really croaks off.

What a charming day I'm having.

I watched Attack of the Clones yesterday, today I'm about to start Revenge of the Sith. Just need something Christmasy, you know? Keep that ol' holiday spirit going.

Anyway, we've got it all ironed out, if all he does is simply break a leg and it gets infected because he refuses to go to a doctor and have it set and it swells up all purple and he can't even get around his house to take care of himself, he's now decided that he has the will power to will himself to death before he'd actually die of thirst. And he will lay himself down in his homemade coffin, and if he doesn't answer his phone for awhile and we come over to check on him, we are NOT to touch him or the coffin until he's actually really dead. Then we are still under instruction to get the gold yanked out of his teeth ourselves so the funeral home people don't rip it off, and then get him into the ground ASAP before we call any relatives.

Personally, just to get even with the guy for all this pre-death stress, I think we should send out invitations to a Macabre Party and throw a huge wake. Maybe angle for gold.

But in the meantime, I'm kinda looking forward to getting out with my dad for a drive around the countryside. I'll pack some snacky stuff in a cooler and take the camera, and maybe a half a vicodin just in case.

7:01 pm

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