Some days ago, I wrote about Mom having serious memory issues, and if you read that then you deserve this follow-up:

Mom had been mentally foggy for a week before that incident, just nowhere near as bad. And afterward, talking and texting about it, my sister and I put clues together and realized that Mom had grown foggier after being prescribed low-dose oxy for the pain in her fractured tailbone.

The pain had been decreasing anyway, so we tapered her off the oxy a week early, and now Mom reports more pain, but she’s Mom again.

The choice is, no pain and a flatlined old lady where Mom used to be, or our actual mother — knowing her name, knowing who we are, remembering her life, etc — in moderate pain. The three of us talked it over, and unanimously decided to go with Mom in moderate pain.

♦ ♦ ♦

She fell twice more on Monday morning, first from bed, and then from the toilet. This was before I got to the house she shares with my sister Katrina, who calls 9-1-1 after every fall, because just like in the commercials, when Mom’s fallen, she can’t get up without help.

Mom wasn’t injured, and says her only pain is the same back pain she’s been having for weeks — after an earlier fall — but she’s taken four falls so far this month. Every fall is a gamble that something could be broken, especially if she falls in the bathroom, surrounded by the hard porcelain of the toilet and tub. Every fall says louder and louder to me that maybe Mom should be in a nursing home.

I intend to broach the subject with Katrina this afternoon or tomorrow. It’ll be a difficult conversation, and Katrina will probably talk me out of it. To her great credit, she really wants Mom to stay in their house, where Katrina is almost literally always there for Mom.

♦ ♦ ♦

Katrina likes to have me along for Mom;s medical appointments, so I’ve tagged along a dozen times. It’s depressing as hell, not just because it’s Mom but because it’s the American medical system.

Every appointment can only be scheduled two months in the future. There are no openings quicker than that, which is, of course, intentional and profitable.

Every visit has a co-pay. Not a problem for Mom, thankfully, but a roadblock to health care for millions, which is, of course, intentional and profitable.

At the eye doctor, nobody knew how to get the vision-testing machines aligned to the level of someone sitting in a wheelchair. The notion that a person in a wheelchair might need an eye exam had apparently never occurred to anyone on staff.

Mom’s main doctor is a geriatrician — a specialist in medicine for old people — but the clinic has only two disabled parking spaces. We always end up parked at the hardware store across the same strip mall, hoping no-one will park in the adjacent stall, because we need extra space for Mom’s wheelchair.

Before every appointment, they want to weigh Mom. She’s frail, and can’t stand on a scale without holding on to something, but they don’t have anything she can hold on to except me. When I offered to hold her hand for stability as she wobbled onto the scale, the nurse’s assistant was aghast, like I’d suggested cheating or something.

Every prescription is a phenomenal clusterfuck. We go to pick it up, and the pharmacist tells us the refill has been denied, but the doctor’s office says they authorized the refills. The pharmacist says they only carry this med in 5 mg or 15 mg, but the doctor has prescribed 10 mg, and they can’t just fill the prescription with twice as many 5 mg tablets so we have to wait an hour for confirmation that it’s OK from the doctor’s office. Etc, every damned time.

All the employees are generally polite, but the actual giving of a damn is not allowed.

On our most recent visit, Katrina, Mom, and I were waiting in the little examining room when the doctor opened the door. He saw me, and his eyes widened in surprise, because I was wearing a mask. He wasn’t. Katrina wasn’t, and Mom wasn’t, but they’re not healthcare professionals.

“Do you want me to wear a mask? I can do that,” the doc said, flustered. His assumption was that I’m sick or susceptible or something, but no, it’s only common sense. I wear a mask when I’m riding the bus, or anywhere in public around strangers, and definitely in a medical environment — and the doctor doesn’t?

“Do I want you to wear a mask?” I echoed back at him, frustrated. “I want you to be a good doctor for my mom,” and then I saw Katrina’s eyes signaling “Shut up, Doug,” so I shut up, Doug, and didn’t say that if the frickin’ doctor doesn’t understand the efficacy of masking up when he’s seeing dozens of patients in a day, why should we take any of his medical advice seriously?

7/16/2026

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Always on the lookout for lazy bachelor food that’s vegan or vegetarian, I purchased a sack of frozen, pre-pattied yam-based hash browns. They were damned near flavorless without a coating of salt, and worse than the taste they stank like unwashed arm pits.

After two bites regretted, I spat out what I’d chewed, and flushed the rest. Five patties remained in the freezer, so I jettisoned them out the side door as a gift to urban wildlife.

Not ten seconds after launch, a crow landed near the patties, and walked toward and then onto one of them. Each patty was the size of a where’s-the-beef burger, but flatter and frozen solid. Watching from the kitchen window, I wondered whether the crow wondered why whatever it was standing on was very, very cold, on a hot summer’s day.

The the bird started pecking at the sweet potato patty, while standing on it. On the second peck, something edible (for a bird, not for a human) chipped off and bounced away, but instead of chasing it, the crow continued pecking. Peck, peck, peck. After a dozen pecks, the bird left the patty platform and walked to and ate all its well-earned yam shrapnel.

After that, I thought it would peck off more bits, but instead the bird lifted a corner of the frozen patty in its beak, and flew away with it. In two minutes’ time, a hash brown had gone from the freezer to property of a crow.

Four patties remained on the grass, and I’d enjoyed the show so much, I grabbed a few popsicles, unwrapped them, then dragged a chair across the kitchen floor, expecting to sit and watch more crows, more pecking, more flights with frozen food. Nope. In the 45 seconds it had taken me to fetch the popsicles and chair, all the hash brown patties had been taken, presumably by other crows.

Nature, man. That is some slick, wicked shit.

♦ ♦ ♦

A less pleasant part of nature is getting old. Body parts don’t work so well as they used to, pains come and go for no reason, and for me (at least so far) the worst part is the sudden need to poop.

Right up to my early 60s, poop was rarely a panic, but these days I gotta sit and spread cheeks pronto, soon as I feel the urge. A few mornings ago, I felt the urge and hurried to the john, but found the door closed. Which means, one of my flatmates was in there.

The good news is, I have a porta-toilet for exactly such emergencies. The bad news is, I’ve been cleaning my room, and several boxes had been stacked on top of the potty. In my urgent condition, lifting four boxes to reveal the porta-toilet would’ve been moot; the bending and exertion would’ve squeezed all the shit outta my sphincter, and into my shorts.

One of the advantages of being a slob is, there’s always a box when you need one. The solution was jammed into the top of a bookshelf: an empty box my mail-order shoes had come in, many months ago. I dropped my shorts, held the box under my anus, opened wide and said ahhh.

If this had been a diarrhea poop, there would’ve been splatter on the ceiling, the walls, the carpet, and everywhere in between, but fortunately, it was the consistency of applesauce, so the only splatter was in my shorts and on my legs. There was lots, though.

Stashed the now-shitty box where I’d gotten it, top shelf, then opened my bedroom door to wait until whoever was in the bathroom came out. My need to poop had passed entirely, but I needed to shower the feces from my pasty white legs, and I’d need to wash my shitty shorts in the shower, too, because no other pair was clean.

Almost immediately (of course) the bathroom door opened, and out stepped Dean (of course), who saw me and immediately (of course) started talking about what he’d cooked yesterday at the Hilton Park Hyatt Saint-Regis Four Seasons Marriott Ritz Carlton Hotel, where he’s an assistant chef and never stops telling me.

“Not right now, dude,” I said and hurricaned past him into the john.

Soap, scrub, rinse, repeat, I cleaned myself and my shorts. Dean was still in the kitchen (of course) when I emerged, and instantly (of course) started talking at me again. “‘Not right now’ means all morning, Dean,” I said as I blitzed past in my wet underwear, and into my room.

Soon as my door closed, I heard Robert, my other flatmate, come into the kitchen, and he and Dean started talking. When that happens they talk for hours, and indeed, they were still there, talking football or baseball or whatever, when I came out twenty minutes later, fully dressed over my wet underwear, and carrying that cardboard box with my applesaucey shit in it. They were sitting and I held the box high so they couldn’t see what was in it, but their conversation grew strangely silent after I’d passed and until I reached the door, so they must’ve smelt what I’d dealt. Which made me smile, then, and now as I type it.

Shoved the shitty box into the dumpster, then walked to the bus stop to start my morning’s journey to Mom’s house.

For a few hours my shorts were wet from the shower, but wearing black britches I don’t think anyone could see the wetness. And the cool and the wet is rather refreshing when it’s warm out. Might start wearing wet shorts any time the forecast approaches or exceeds 80°.

♦ ♦ ♦

When I was 10 and my sister Katrina was 14, her two best friends at school were Adelle and Michelle. Adelle was cute, and little-kid me had a crush on her. Michelle was frickin’ beautiful, so I never bothered daydreaming about her, ‘cuz even as a child I understood the concept “out of my league.”

Adelle, though. Lots of daydreams there.

Through my early and their late teens, Adelle and Michelle spent many afternoons and overnights with Katrina at our house. It was 50+ years ago, but I’ll never forget one afternoon circa 1971, when the three of them were sunbathing in our back yard. They thought I was in the living room watching TV, if they thought of me at all. But no, I was in the attic, bent painfully over a small air vent overlooking the back yard, so’s I could see the three of them laying face down, but with their bikinis unstrapped. Oh là là!

As usually happens, the girls gradually became women. Adelle and Michelle got apartments and husbands and stopped coming by the Holland homestead, but the three of them have remained friends. Adelle has become a friend of mine, too, and comes to our twice-monthly family breakfasts, when her health permits. Which isn’t as often as it used to be. She’s 70-something, and she’s been hospitalized twice in recent months.

I haven’t seen Michelle since the early 1990s, when I made my big break from Seattle, but Katrina and Adelle still mention her, and see her sometimes. Not for much longer, though. She has leukemia, and went into hospice care last week.

Dying is just another part of nature. Eventually we’ll all be pecked at and eaten by crows, even the hot girls from high school.

7/14/2026

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At the Burien Transit Center, for a couple of years now, there’s been a construction-style portable toilet. It’s a big plastic box with a door you can close and latch, and a seat that looms over a lake of shit and piss, which is emptied once weekly.

As a bus-rider on the south and west side, I’m often in Burien, and that honey bucket was always icky and sticky and stank, but I used it dozens of times, and appreciated it. I even like to think that I’m part of the reason it was installed, only a few weeks after I shat on the concourse at the Transit Center, and wrote a letter to Metro Transit about it.

But a couple of weeks ago, the icky, sticky, stinking restroom was removed, and replaced by a high-tech and allegedly self-cleaning toilet, with electricity and flush-plumbing and a sink!

You’re thinking this is better than a toilet that’s just a pit for pooping and peeing in, but actually, it’s worse.

To access the new facility, you scan a QR-code with your phone’s camera, or send a text to Throne Labs Inc, the company that’s been contracted to install, clean, and maintain the restroom. And indeed that’s simple, if you have a smart phone, but if you don’t, there’s no longer a restroom you can use at the Burien Transit Center.

Goes without saying, life in the big city and all, people who ride the bus aren’t rich, often aren’t even lower-middle class, and might not have smart phones. And a lot of people who used the honey bucket were homeless, and definitely don’t carry smart phones.

Poor people and homeless people are people. That’s a bold statement, I know, and so’s this: People need to poop and pee, even poor people, even homeless people. If they can’t poop and pee in a public toilet, they’re going to poop and pee in the bushes, on the sidewalk, or someplace else you’d rather not find poop and pee.

So I’m skeptical of this new toilet, on principle.

But one fine afternoon, when the toilet had been there for a week or so, your reporter needed a restroom. I approached this new monument to feces and urine, to solve the riddle of its entrance and use.

“Available,” said a large electronic readout on the door. I read the instructions, but I have never used a QR-code and hate my phone’s camera, so I texted the number on the sign, thinking that would open the door. Nope. Throne Labs Inc replied with a six-digit number, which I was supposed to input somewhere, which would, they promised, open the door.

It all began creeping me out. Where’s the privacy notice, explaining what Throne Labs Inc does with its database of pee-ers and poopers’ phone numbers? Instead of inputting the access code they’d sent, I replied, “What do you do with this information?”

Got no error message in response, but also got no response. Presumably, users’ phone numbers are sold for marketing purposes, yielding more profits for Big Toilet, and spam from adult diaper manufacturers for me.

So I walked across the asphalt and peed in the bushes, not far from where the honey bucket used to be.

On further stops at the Burien Transit Center, a few further problems have become apparent.

The old john, the open pit in a man-sized plastic box, had been across from the waiting area, sorta secluded. This new toilet is on the platform, right where riders wait for the RapidRide #F. You’re literally peeing and pooping in the heart of a busy bus depot. You might as well announce to the crowd, “I’ll be taking a dump now.” And there’s always a crowd.

Also, this new restroom is tall, and blocks view of the readerboard that lists arrivals and departures. To see that info, you now need to walk about ten extra steps.

Also, it’s supposed to be a self-cleaning toilet, but a truck and workers from Throne Labs Inc are present about a third of the times I’m at the bus station.

I don’t know shit about the business model for Throne Labs Inc, and there are no ads yet, but I’ll wager big bucks that the new restroom will soon be festooned with advertising all over its outside and inside.

And then, one weird day when I didn’t need a toilet, I was sitting on a bench at the bus station, waiting for my ride home, when — whoosh — the restroom door slid open. Nobody was there. Nobody walked in. Nobody walked out. Nobody had asked for the door to be opened.

Curious, I walked up the ramp and looked into the restroom, then stepped inside. The door whooshed closed behind me, like the doors on Star Trek.

It’s a basic restroom, toilet on one side, sink on the other, but there’s no lock — nothing to twist or latch, to make sure nobody else comes in. Ten minutes after you enter, or sooner if you’ve flushed and a sensor detects that you’re walking toward the door, it opens.

So you’re trusting Throne Labs Inc with your phone number, and trusting them to lock the door, and to keep the door locked while you’re doing what you came to do, and trusting them to unlock and open the door when you’ve wiped and flushed.

This is the same company that opened the door a few minutes earlier, when nobody had requested the door be opened.

Like I said, I didn’t need a toilet that day, but any time nature calls at the Burien Transit Center, you’ll find me back in the bushes, near where the honey bucket used to be.

7/13/2026

Transit Takes

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