Whatta Fiasco

Events made for a busy weekend. On Saturday I turned two bedrooms that had become closets back into bedrooms again so that Louise and Lisa would have a place to stay at my mother-in-law’s house. On Sunday, while hubby was driving down south to pick up Louise and Lisa and bring them up here, I made significant progress toward turning the kitchen cum pantry back into a kitchen, cleaned carpets, and planted purple pansies in the planters on the porch. Many bags of clothing were temporarily moved into the attic. Many bags of pantry goods were sorted and sacked.

The good news is that she perked up when she figured out she was leaving the hospital. Back home again, she was offered a nutritional supplement drink. She asked for chocolate instead and ate two mini chocolate bars. Very good news. It doesn’t change the prognosis any (death an dandelions; you may stave them off, but in the end they always win), but it’s good to see her able to take some pleasure in life.

Yes, Louise has moved into my mother-in-law’s house. Elder care is what she’s trained in and she’s good at it. Hubby offered to hire her to do the job. She has a contract for services. The down side is that it makes it much less comfortable for me to spend time at the house. The upside is that, along with the hospice service, my mother-in-law will be getting the care she needs from people will trust. The bonus is that Kansas City has a lot more employment opportunity for Louise and she’s planning on using this as a springboard to relocate from Wherever. So I won’t be as involved in the day to day care issues as I might have, but it theoretically leaves me in a better position to pick up the slack in other areas.

And in the middle of the great get the house ready caper this weekend, we first got word that Max had successfully renewed his visitor’s visa by taking a ferry ride to Uruguay and back. Then we got a call saying that his girlfriend had kicked him out and could we please figure out how to get an airline ticket back to the states to him. This was followed about an hour or so later by another message calling off the emergency; all was well again. Whee. Too much excitement.

Last night was my night to see the last opera of the season at the Lyric, The Marriage of Figaro. Given everything that was going on, I wasn’t entirely keen on going, but there wasn’t much of anything I could do to help with the moving home process, so I went. It was a rainy evening. Walking up the hill with my broken black umbrella, I passed quite a few people. They all seemed friendlier than usual for this part of town at that time of night. But the waitresses at the restaurant seemed to be surly. Maybe they were expecting worse tips because of the weather? Making the final walk to the theater I listened to someone playing the bells at a local cathedral. And there was a new piece of art on display on the lawn in front of the theater. It was a series of little concrete semi tractor trailers about a foot tall, nearly swamped in the luxurious grass. The trailer parts were designed as planters and had something green and spiky planted in them. One of the trailers was tipped over sideways. The cab was still upright. The opera was broad slapstick humor. Lots of physical comedy. It’s fun to be able to laugh out loud at an opera and this audience did a lot of laughing.

I no longer have any idea why I rented Veneno para las Hadas, other than that it had been awhile since I’d seen a Mexican film. It may have been made in 1986, but in terms of style, quality and theme it belongs to a genre of 1950s films about cruel and pathological children who let their imaginations get the best of them and it all ends badly. Watch the original version of The Bad Seed instead.

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Another of her Company novels ab0out time traveling immortals. This one brings together an odd bit of story line from Anvil of the World with the rest of the history and it all starts to make sense. But I should have listened to the hints that this as a cruel book. They were right, because just as it all starts to make sense but before anything can be resolved, it ends. Fin. Luckily the next book, Graveyard Games is out. No to track down a copy.

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Monday – She’s alert enough to explain in her own words why she wants a durable power of attorney and durable power of attorney for medical matters executed. Everyone, particularly the hospital staff, is relieved. This will make it much easier to make decisions and take care of her affairs regardless of how things work out. She’s still very weak. She mentions that it may be time for her to stop worrying and let others help her.
Tuesday – She’s essentially unresponsive. She sits up in her chair and shifts position from time to time. Her eyes open now and then but don’t focus. She doesn’t respond to words or gentle touch. No urine all day. A competency hearing is held in the morning and a notation is added to the durable power of attorney. It seems largely superfluous. She’s very much inside herself. After leaving the hospital we stop by the house to feed the cat and do some initial inventory and planning. If she comes home, what will need to be done? If she doesn’t, what then? We find a photo album of pictures from 1939 and 1940 of his dad and his truck. A whole stringer of fish. A cute girl perched on the hood of his truck. A small dog. Many pictures of wrecked trucks, crumpled fenders, upended in ditches. None of the wrecks were his. Each picture with a fancy border added by the printer. Each picture carefully mounted on its page.

Wednesday – A CAT scan is done. It will be several days before the results come back. She’s still unresponsive. If you pester her sufficiently she will say just enough to get you to leave her alone. In the evening the doctor calls asking for permission to install a PIC line (peripheral intravenous catheter) to improve her hydration in the hope that she might perk up. If she doesn’t improve in the next day or so, they’ll be removing it.

Thursday – Some initial results from the CAT scan come back and they’re not good. The cancer has returned, is large, and has metastasized. There’s no need to do a biopsy. There will be no more surgery. The PIC line is removed. Another step down the path.

I still find it amazing how much of a writer’s talent can make it through even a mediocre translation. This one is quite a bit better than mediocre but it has an odd yet appropriate stiffness that lets the meaning shine through. The story itself is a fictionalization of an actual post war strike in a textile plant in Japan where the owner sees himself as a benevolent father figure to his employees. But he’s a father who feels that cruelty is the only kindness to be shown to the young. The young employees are rescued from this oppressiveness, but only incidentally in the process of modern capitalism moving to crush the competition. It’s not healthy to expect to find heroes in a Mishima novel, and there are none here.

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What an interesting and bifurcated sort of weekend. On the one hand was lots of excitement and handling emergencies, which I took no direct part in. On the other hand was a hazy fog of sleep and fuzziness and wheelbarrows. All shall be explained.

For those of you joining late, my mother-in-law (in her early eighties) started having symptoms of medical problems last week sufficiently disturbing to get friends and family motivated to set up a rotating watch on her to make sure she was ok and eating. All through this she refused to see medical attention. Hubby stopped by the house on Friday afternoon to check in on her and spend some time. At about six I got a call from him saying her was just leaving for fencing. He’d be a little late, but he’d be there, and that he was planning on staying the night with his mom afterward. Â No big surprises. I make my way to the gym and suit up. At about six-thirty I get another call from him saying he’d called 911 and his mom was going into the hospital. He didn’t make it back home until very late and I didn’t get a chance to talk with him until the next morning.
It turns out things were going reasonably well Friday evening, until she suddenly became very week and couldn’t form intelligible words. Hubby was very much afraid she’d had a stroke. Â When the doctors got hold of her it was clear that it wasn’t a stroke, but there were plenty of other things going on. First of all, they were pretty clear that if this crisis hadn’t precipitated getting medical attention, she likely would have been dead in about a week. She was dehydrated, which I had expected. She was having a mild heart attack, which I wasn’t expecting. She has a massive UTI. leaving them worried about septicemia. She also has a lesion indicative of a recurrence of her cancer from last year. And there was some sign of mild pneumonia. All of this was on top of the symptoms she was experiencing last week that were largely caused by going cold turkey from some of her medications.

Right now they’re getting her stabilized and planning how to move forward. They’ve been pumping her full of fluids, and, in spite of some continuing shortness of breath, her blood oxygen levels are looking good. They talked to the oncologist again about her decision last year to refuse chemotherapy or radiation on quality of life grounds. He thinks that maintaining her quality of life would be promoted by scheduling surgery for the current cancer issue. Whether she has the surgery or not, when she leaves the hospital they want her released to a rehabilitative care center for at least thirty days instead of going back home. One of the good things so far (other than getting her into medical care) has been that when she’s been lucid enough to discuss it this weekend, she’s been more accepting of receiving care and letting others help her. And today she’s feeling even better.

What was I doing in the middle of all this? Well, first I was setting up and tearing down equipment at fencing practice, while playing a moving target in between. I was ready to go to the emergency room, but they only allowed one person in there with the patient and she didn’t get checked in until nearly midnight. So instead I went home. Or rather, I went to the grocery store first and picked up a generic version of Claritin on the advice of a friend. Whoa. No more of that stuff for me. I was feeling pretty low energy and sleep on Saturday, but I thought that maybe it was just the stress and disturbed sleep. But the case of slow-sleepy-stupids was even worse on Sunday. No thank you. But I still managed to make it to fencing practice on Saturday, just in case any one else showed up. No one did, but I got enough footwork and target practice in to get hot and sweaty, so that was good. I’ve been missing my Saturday workouts. After getting all sweaty I met up with hubby and Kernat and Ms.K to have some lunch, followed by a trip out to the farm to help pick up sticks. Lots of big sticks. I decided the job might go faster if I used the wheelbarrow. And it did, but Ms.K decided it was just the sort of vehicular transportation a two-year old should have. Once she got over the fact that I was going to put sticks in there with her, it was Ready-Set-GO! all over the side pasture as we fed the growing pile of wood in the fire pit.
I woke up late Sunday morning with sore biceps and triceps. I was still groggy enough that it took a while to figure out that I’d been chucking around some good sized hunks of wood the day before, an activity that might have something to do with the soreness. Then it was time to switch to lighter reading material (the last fifty pages of Yukio Mishima can wait a day or so) and ingest coffee and pastry in an attempt to break through the fog. Twenty-four hour doses are evil. By evening things were feeling a little more like normal.

A costume drama directed by Im Kwon-taek, and set in Korea in the late 1800s depicting the exuberant and alcoholic life of the artist Jang Seung-Up, known as Ohwon and portrayed by Choi Min-Sik. The film suffers a bit, particularly in the beginning, from a marked choppiness. But it slowly comes up to speed, and when it busts out, it’s gorgeous in more than just the art work. If I were putting together a film festival of films about artists, I’d add this one to the list. (Boy. that sure could be a downer of thing to do.)

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Pardon me if I wander all over the place today. As if that’s anything new.

Hubby and I usually spend Tuesday evening doing something together, but he was running late last night because he was at his mom’s house. She hadn’t been feeling very well the past few days, and in spite of advice from a good friend, she refused to go see the doctor. So her friend said the hell with it and called 911. The EMTs came and checked her over. They agreed that she really ought to go see the doctor but her vital signs were healthy and stable, and she wasn’t in any immediate danger, so they couldn’t just load her into the ambulance and haul her away. So now there will be somebody by to check on her every day to make sure she’s eating, keep an eye on her symptoms, and continue trying to convince her to see the doctor. If she doesn’t improve in the next few days, she may have to be taken in spite of herself. I expect I’ll have more to say on this subject in a week or so.

While hubby was thus occupied, I took advantage of the free time to get some shopping done. We needed some hardware to repair a fencing strip, so off I went. And the oriental grocery store was in the same strip mall, so I replenished my stock of black vinegar and vegetarian noodles. I debated picking up a jar of pickled cassia leaves just to see what they’re like (pickled cinnamon? eek), but decided to get a couple of packages of my favorite duck flavored instant Vietnamese soup instead. Then I topped up my supply of coffee beans (Sumatra again), and then headed to the Merc, our local organic, community grocery store. Found a lovely pack of tiny baby spinach leaves and grabbed some more of the whole wheat pasta I’ve become so fond of. I was looking at their butter selection and considering trying some organic butter, but got depressed looking at the Horizon products. That’s what I get for reading up on sustainable farming news and finding out how many of the organic brands in my organic store are either subsidiaries of BigFood companies (lots) or, like Horizon, are busy wiggling through loopholes in the regulations in order to get the organic label on their products. To cheer myself up I decided to notice the olive bar they’ve installed. I know it’s been there for a while now but I can’t tell you how long. It seems I’ve been deliberately blind to it until yesterday. A handful of intensely flavored olives plus some baby spinach and a left over baked chicken thigh made a wonderful lunch today.

Louise has now been brought up to date on the Max situation. She’s very unhappy. Not because Max overdrew his account, but because we bailed him out instead of just offering him an airline ticket. Whatever. It’s not her money. If she wants to come up with enough cash to offer him an airline ticket, that’s up to her. Hubby and I have discussed just how far we’re comfortable with taking this little support project. We haven’t yet reached that point, but it’s steadily getting closer. The good news from Louise is that Lisa has been accepted for admission to the local community college down there. She hasn’t started classes yet, but they’re looking into financial aid options, and we’ve told her to let us know about uncovered expenses because we want to help. Excellent news.

Want some more good news? I’ve got some. If all goes well, Ms.K should have a new sibling before the end of the year. This morning I discovered that a random anonymous blog I started reading in the last week or so is in fact written by a friend of mine. (Cue the music…) My taxes are done, all but the signing. We’ll get that done tonight. Jon has also finished his taxes (long before I finished mine), but he’s much happier about starting a new job, one that not only pays well but that will use his skills and may actually engage his brain. Very cool. And those olives were really quite tasty.

This book got a lot of shiny happy press when it was published earlier this year. (Was it really only in February? That doesn’t seem possible.) Newly published books often get shiny happy press for the obvious reasons. Sometimes (*cough*Ishmael*cough*) they turn out to be dreck. But sometimes the press is deserved, as it is here. Then you try desperately to remember just where it was you heard about the book and what made you decide to read it. Alas, I cannot, but I do remember the notices as being positive and admiring without being fawning.

It’s an admirable book based on a tortured conceit, the idea of a man who is born into an old body that grows younger as he ages. The execution is deft, with emotional scenes that unfold like delicate flowers leaving only a faint scent but unforgettable scent. Clever. There’s very much as sense of cleverness in this book and that’s most likely to be what wears on its reputation as time passes. Tragedy. The love triangle strains a bit to reach its ultimate symmetry, but I can forgive that.

Yes, I enjoyed the book.

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This is quite definitely the work of Satoshi Kon. No mistaking it. He has this way of populating his pieces with old, ugly, and grotesque characters, outcasts, and making them fully human and alive. My biggest problem with this series so far is that he’s reusing a lot of material from his previous three movies. But he’s doing something different with some very familiar faces, so I’ll hang on for a while longer. In the meantime, if you like this one and haven’t watched any of his movies, I once again recommend to you Perfect Blue, Millennium ActressTokyo Godfathers.

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