our 77th weekly open mike
Let’s see what happens when your host (me) has nothing to say. Step right up, speak your mind, tell a story, sing a song, whatever.
4/25/2026
Anything goes: 4/25
22 responses to “Anything goes: 4/25”
-
Mom comes home from rehab in a few hours, and I’ll be spending most of my day getting her resettled at home. She’s not ready, barely walking, and there’s a significant chance she’ll fall in the near future, break a hip, and begin the well-known old folks’ spiral to death.
Discharging her now is dumb and dangerous, and anyone who kills an insurance executive gets a happy handshake from me.
Meanwhile, I’d sure like to write about Mom’s awful care in rehab, and about more mundane happening on the bus in recent weeks, but there’s no time and my energy levels are depleted daily.
-
Nursing Home Visit
I was walking down the long hall at my mother’s nursing home when I heard a bright cheery “Hi!” behind me. I turned around and saw a woman in her nineties rolling toward me in her wheelchair with a big smile on her face.
“Hi,” I said. “I’m heading down this hallway.”
“Let’s go!” she said.
“What’s your name?” I said. “Mine’s Paul.”
“Leti,” she said. “Leticia. Take me with you.” (I think she liked me and I started to wonder what it would be like to get a handjob from a 90-something woman…)
“Well, I’m going to visit my mother,” I said. “We’ll be coming back this way to go outside to the orchard and I’ll introduce you. See you soon.” I continued down the hall then took a left into her room.
“Hi,” I said, sitting down. She had dozed off in her wheelchair with a book in her hands and MSNBC on the tube. “I just met someone here.”
“A visitor?” she said.
“No.”
“Someone who works here?”
“No, a resident named Leticia. I think she escaped from the Memory Unit, maybe we can take her outside to the garden with us?”
“No,” my mother said.
“No? No share-zies?” I said. “Well, are you ready to go?” I started wheeling her out of the room and noticed Leticia rolling in.
“Hi Leticia,” I said. She wheeled herself back out, grumbling and mumbling.
“That’s the woman I met, I wonder how she found us?” I asked.
“Maybe she heard your voice,” my mother said. (I should have talked to Leticia for a few minutes when I met her in the hall and got her story, instead of being in a hurry to get to my mother’s room.)
Out in the garden we found a spot where there was sun for her and shade for me with blackbirds and seagulls hovered around on the low roofs waiting to pounce on the fruit.
“I’m feeling really low energy, like Jeb Bush.” I said. “I’ve been making a list of what I like and what I hate: I like food, weed, wine, beer, scones, following politics, writing, conversation, reading good books, watching sports, women and dancing. I hate to shop, cook, clean, do laundry, do my physical therapy exercises, and limp around on this bad hip. I might be depressed, maybe I shouldn’t have come here today. If you really want to know, it feels depressing coming to this nursing home every day.”
“Well, how do you think I feel?” she said.
“Ten times worse,” I said.
“Don’t look at your watch, that’s rude.”
“Everyone’s having fun but me. Kate, John, and Jessie (my sisters and brother- in-law) are all at Lark music camp. Carl is always having fun, Bergen is probably having fun, I’m just limping around. I think I have to get serious about planning for the hip replacement. You know how sporty people get their hip and knees replaced so they can resume their active lifestyles, like biking and mountain-climbing? I just want to be able to walk normally again, do you think I’ll be able to dance for another ten years if I get the operation?”
“Yeah, probably.”
“I might not come tomorrow, I’m feeling really low energy.”
“Well, it’s a long day if no one visits.”
“Does Kate come every day when she’s in town?”
“Well, if she can’t then John will usually come. It might be a little boring for him at first, but then the conversation gets going.”
I took her back to her room. “I hope Leticia doesn’t come in here and strangle you in your sleep.”
“What?!” she said.
hillmuffin@gmail.com-
Fun story. I smiled all the way. Sounds like bad blood between Leticia and your mum.
Was the place awful — like, unable to follow plain, straightforward medical and dietary instructions? That’s every rehab/nursing home I’ve dealt with.
Definitely got to know a few Leticias at my mom’s shitty rehab place.
-
It was a nice place, however……………………………………….she couldn’t walk (because she had been afraid of getting knee replacements years before)and so she would get hoisted to the bathroom at all hours, sometimes with a new employee wiping her roughly and, dammit, it wasn’t so nice, right? well, she was lucky to have her four children who loved her, and she us, and had one living nearby…that’s the thing, sister Kate was finally freeeeeee from all of her caregiving, living a mile away, but I learned that even when they go into institutions like that they STILL need the advocate on the outside, si?….anyway, i regret not going up to see her the last couple years, i was so afraid of covid…
(glad you smiled…Leticia was nice, didn’t know my mom…)-
Hope someone was your mom’s advocate while she was there.
Anyone plopped into a nursing home/rehab center, or even a hospital, without an informal advocate looking out for them, is in genuine danger.
-
definitely had advocacy and almost daily visits…
-
Excellent. As it should be. And it should be mounted on a plaque at the registration desk, for all patients and their loved ones to understand.
-
-
-
-
-
-
Best wishes for your mom. I hate writing that, as a people we should be providing care to all that need it instead of BS military actions.
In any case best wishes. I hope you make it through this challenging time.-
Thank you kindly & sincerely.
Getting Mom into the car took twenty minutes, and a walk back into the rehab building to ask for help. Getting her from the car into her house was a bit less terrifying, so we’re optimistic that this whole “Mom living at home” concept might be viable…
-
-
I woke up with a pain in my side this morning. It sucked.
I’ve often been under the idea that I’d go sooner than later, that when the big question mark came up, I’d check out. At one time it was, when I’d hit 50 that was it. Well that was a few years ago.
There is a conversation on how you want to live, or not, your last years. One view is to take advantage of what modern medicine provides and work with it.The other would be, once things start falling off the rig, let it go.
If money was no object I’d likely that the first approach. Money for me is an object. We’re ok for now, but I would’t want to die and leave my wife in grand debt.
The pain in my side is gone, and I’m OK. I really don’t know what I’d do though if I got the message the pain was cancer or whatever. I’d like to say I’d peace ok but nobody knows until you get there.-
Weirdest thing about old age, and nobody told me it was coming, is the unexplained pains. They come outta nowhere, usually last just long enough to start the worrying, is this the big one, is this the heart attack or cancer that’ll kill me, and then the pain’s gone until the next unrelated pain somewhere else on this wrinkled flabby bod.
Glad you survived yesterday’s pain, and here’s hoping it was nothing and stays nothing.
> There is a conversation on how you want to live, or not, your last years. One view is to take advantage of what modern medicine provides and work with it. The other would be, once things start falling off the rig, let it go.
Wouldn’t want to live in constant pain. I’ve always been a wuss about pain. But it *might* be OK to live like Mom, in a constant fog that clears for a few minutes once in a while.
Takes money, though. Having no money, no insurance, the choice will mostly be made for me.
-
I liked that morbid piece you wrote a couple months ago about how you feel you’re going downhill and might not live past this year…i know you probably won’t send it to the ava, mind if i do in your name? people should hear/see that side, i’ve never seen anything like it, it’s rawly unique, whadayathink?
-
I didn’t think it was much, but — whatever you wish, dude.
-
Sent this to the ava today:
Should I thank you for once again saving me from myself when you declined to publish my latest submission? In the piece I confessed personal and financial aspects about business which were not very discrete, an essay I had been reworking for a year and considered it the best thing I had on hand after ten drafts. I had been reluctant to send it in for obvious reasons as you may have noticed.
Yes, I considered it personal, confessional, interesting and even a little humorous when I alluded to some defecation desperation, but wait, it wasn’t the shit joke that got it disappeared was it? (I notice the rapist Clog can talk about his erections but maybe his welcome and entertaining ravings are grandfathered in, possibly literally if he is one.)
Then again, maybe I got it wrong and you’re not looking out for me. I’m just imagining it, maybe it’s a diminished filing system and once again my submission disappears under a steaming pile of unreadable and repetitious political speculation. Case in point yesterday’s edition where there were three very long, thousands of words each, stories about the press club gala shooter which like most of the politics herein I have no interest in wasting my time and attention reading.
Other readers probably agree and might have had the human interest to read my concise 930 word piece about local real life stuff, albeit it failed to make the cut again. It’s not encouraging.-
Do you get a rejection letter, or simply silence?
You could always run it in the AVA’s letters section. Pretty sure there’s no editorial control there.
Still clicking and reading the AVA daily, but I’ll admit, not as closely as when it was on paper. Possibly I’ve missed the rapist Clog?
-
Just an old Mendo character who’s very entertaining to read, said last week that he raped his wife a couple times long ago, pretty open dude…
-
I do not understand men who do such things, and perhaps even more don’t understand men who confess to it.
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
I’ve been giving Mom about six hours daily (including the long bus ride), which leaves me mostly drained and unable to write anything worth reading. Today and tomorrow will be worse, as I’m on all-day duty today, giving my sister a break, and tomorrow we’re somehow going to wedge Mom into a car and get her to two doctor’s appointments.
Being a good kid while also being a senior citizen is exhausting.
-
You don’t write much any more, and I miss you.
-
Starting to get the hang of the daily pattern of caring for my disabled mother. Might mean more time for writing, I hope.
-
You could go the Duplex Planet route and just transcribe all your conversations with Mom…
-
It’s kinda surprising/amusing what she remembers when the clouds lift, but mostly she wants to sing hymns.
-
-
-
Comments with attachments or multiple links are held for manual approval.
Leave a Reply