Hi Hi!

It's rather late...if the clock on this computer is right, it's a few minutes after midnight and this is the first chance I've had to come online all day. The day started with a doctor's appointment for Jean. The doctor was amazed at how well she looked. In the 6 weeks before I got here, she ended up in the hospital 4 times. I've been here for close to a month and she hasn't gone in once. Also, when I got here, the doctor had gotten two other doctors to sign a paper stating that she needed to be placed in a nursing home. Today he said that he no longer thought it was necessary.

It wasn't tough at all to get her in good shape...unless you count her bitching when I would ask her to do the normal things that she needed to do. I took her to have a mani-pedi a couple of times...against her will. I even had her face waxed... she would have argued about that if she had any idea that they'd be "ripping her face off." We went and had her hair done for the first time in a couple of years. She would occasionally have it trimmed but she had let the color go so I had them style it and color it. I've been making her 3 meals a day, take all of her medication and her respiratory treatment...not to mention 3 showers a week. I've had to withhold her cigarettes to get her to do it...but she did it.

I went to Target and got her a bunch of new clothes because all of her other clothes had cigarette burns in them. (I can't believe that she had so many burns in her clothes, the chair she sits on and the plastic thing under the chair to protect the carpet and yet she never once burned herself.) That's all it took to make the doctor allow her to stay out of the home. She complained to the doctor that I was "relentless" in my efforts to get her to do the right things and of course, he told her that it was a good thing. All the complaining that she tried to do about me backfired...the doctor just kept telling her that it was for her own good. I wanted to laugh when she said, "But she hides my cigarettes from me until I take a shower!" He told her that he backed me 100% and that he wouldn't mind if I took them away and never let her have another one.

But, she was happy that he told her that he didn't think she had to go into the home. She was so happy that she tried to give me a pair of earrings. I couldn't accept them because they were huge diamond earrings and it just wouldn't be right to take such a gift from someone with Alzheimer's...although I must say...I would have loved to have those suckers. Each one of them had two diamonds and the smaller of the two diamonds were both at least one karat. Damn...why do I have to be so ethical?

Anyway, he also told her that a month ago he wouldn't have given her three months to live. Actually, last month he told my father that she wouldn't survive for another few months. Today he said that if she keeps going the way she has been going, she could live indefinitely. He told her that she appeared to be "immune" from death. That's great, right?

Well, there's one problem with that. If I were to go home now...she would decline again because my father doesn't want to argue with her. He offers her her medication and breathing treatments, he tells her to shower and he serves her nutritious meals. But, she refuses it all because he doesn't have the patience to listen to her bitch so he doesn't force her or blackmail her by withholding her smokes. I don't fault him at all for that...he's too old to have to deal with that crap and he's an attorney...not a nurse. So, basically, as soon as I leave, she'll have to go into a nursing home.

I had never planned to stay gone THIS long...much less indefinitely. I have to think this one through for a good while. I want to go home! On the other hand, as I've said before, I would feel absolutely SHITTY if I were to leave knowing that she would go straight into a nursing home. I would rather just take her home with me than to have her in a home...but she wants to stay here and I don't think that my father really wants her GONE...he just wants her to be well cared for.

Oh well, the doctor's appointment made me feel really, really good. Then, we went to the beach and when we got back, Jean and my father went out to play bridge and I stayed here cleaning the house and doing laundry. I didn't wait for my father to decide to go to the laundromat...I just did it downstairs without telling him that I was going to so the laundry was done before he could scam me into another trip to the laundromat.

Now the kitchen is dirty again and I was going to clean it but I decided to come here and write this before I started another round of housework. I've done MUCH more housework here than I did at home. My father is most certainly an old fashioned chauvinist but I love him. If there's a female in the house, she gets to cook, clean and do the laundry. I knew what I was getting myself into when I came down here but I didn't know it would last this long.

I spoke to my brother the other day...the middle one. (There are 3 boys and 3 girls in my family.) He is a great guy, everybody adores him. He's one of those people who ALWAYS has a great joke to tell when you speak to him. He told me two of them...one was in very poor taste but it was as funny as hell. It was in such poor taste that even I can't tell you but I can tell you the other one. This one is much better when you tell it as opposed to when you write it but I'll write it anyway...you can tell someone sometime:

This guy was sitting as a bar and he heard the guy next to him order a beer. The guy ordering the beer spoke with an Irish accent and the first guy was Irish too so he introduced himself. Then, he asked, "Where in Ireland are you from?"

"Dublin!" said the other guy.

"What a coincidence...I'm from Dublin as well! Where did you go to school?" he asked.

"Why, I went to St. Mary's School."

"What a coincidence...I went to St. Mary's as well! When did you graduate?" asked the first guy.

"Aye...in 1963."

"Oh my heavens...I graduated in 1963 too! That's amazing!" responded the first guy.

Then the bartender said to the bouncer, "It's gonna be a long night, the O'Brien twins are drunk again!"

I got quite a kick out of that one. If you want to hear the one that's in really, really bad taste...I'd be happy to email it to you, just email me at megkelsobroderick@gmail.com and I'll be happy to send it to you.

A long time ago, I wrote something on this blog that was in such poor taste that I posted a warning...a very stern warning that what I was about to write was extremely offensive and if you were at all sensitive to poor taste, you should stop reading. Then, a bunch of nit wits commented about how dreadfully offensive what I had said was. I couldn't believe that people would be stupid enough to read past the warning and then bitch that the warning was right. So, if you do want to read the joke, I'd be more than happy to send it to you...but when you see how bad it is...no bitching to me that it's offensive!

Well, the entire condo is quiet so I'm going to take advantage of it and go watch the end of Field of Dreams. I hope you're having a nice day and I'll be back soon. If I'm still awake after the movie I'll come back tonight...if not, I'll be back in the morning.

See ya!