Poisons and Decay

Much has happened in the past weeks. I watch my father daily and the decline is becoming more apparent. I watch and it makes me sad, and scared because I know I may get like this in my future.

But, one mystery may have been solved. A couple years ago he went into the hospital, almost killed him, and the doc found an abcess near his liver. Could't provide a good explanation about how it formed. I think I know, after cleaning the house from one of his "wars" with ants, and watching him do dishes.

The dishes are never clean. The "war" consists of him spreading large amounts of powdered insect poison all around the house - including kitchen, dining room table, and food preparation areas (ants appear on the counter, you know). I should have realized this after I cleaned the home during his hospital stay but it didn't hit me, even as I was vacuuming up a 1/8" film of white powder all over the floor throughout the house. Roach powder.

Insecticide. Filthy dishes. Ok. Sighted him today cleaning out the inside of the garbage recepticle we keep in the kitchen with the same sponge we use to wash dishes. I mentioned that, in general, it's probably not a good idea to do that.

My dad is not a good housekeeper.

Gecko Capture and Eviction Success!

I am glad to announce I have managed to capture one of the baby geckos that have invaded my room.

It's hard to catch them. They are usually on the ceiling, or high up on the wall when they make an appearance. Sometimes they are on the window behind the venetian blind, on the other side of the entertainment center, forcing a lot of physical contortion just to reach them. But sometimes they get on the carpet and make a dash for some other place only they understand. That's my chance.

You see the carpet snags their little feet just enough to slow them down. Not much, but its enough for me to maneuver my hands in such a manner that does not crush them when I finally make contact. They are very fragile creatures - imagine velvet coated jello. The slightest squeeze would be fatal to the little guys, so I am VERY gentle during these capture attempts. That means they often fail, but I'd rather have them in the house than ants or spiders or palmetto bugs, so if they evade me (along with an occasional anole), it's no big deal. I even leave water out for them if I think it's too dry.

But I got one the other day.

I put the little guy outside and he immediately ran up my arm. Put him down again and he jumped back on me. Then it occurred to me that he might be scared of the big world out there and took him to a dark corner with lots of objects where he could hid (the porch is full of objects he could hide in but apparently he didn't like it), and this area he liked better. He hopped away and hid under a piece of bamboo. 

As for the other ones, well, now I'm wondering if taking them into the big scary world is doing them a favor or not. Maybe I should just nurture them in the house. They don't bother me, except every once in a while when they move in the periphery of my field of vision. That can be startling. What do you think? Keep them in the house or keep trying to evict them when I can? I know  there's still more enjoying a roof over their heads (but not the carpeted floor so much). 

BTW, in case you are wondering, I want them out because there isn't enough food or water for them inside the house. I can see them get skinnier over the weeks they are inside. So even if the world outside is scary, it's probably healthier than starvation inside my home.

Can't stop a old man from Driving

My 90 year old father has a habit of jumping in his care and doing road trips. Read that again.

90 year old man. Doing long road trips.

The thing is, I've tried again and again to stop this. I offer to drive him (won't have it, thinks I'll kill him yet I have never had a serious accident, never had an accident or ticket at all in the last 10 years, and I have a clean license and have never even been arrested). I go with him until recently when he's scared me too much to get into the car unless it's absolutely necessary. I even went so far as to turn him into the state of Florida as an  unsafe elderly driver - but he passed all the tests. Yet he IS NOT A SAFE DRIVER.

He doesn't see everything. He doesn't here anything. He forgets where he is going and can't follow directions. Yet the state of Florida says he can drive.

What the hell is going to happen? Well, it's fairly obvious. He'll kill himself, or he'll kill someone else, or both. Worse, he might just cripple himself horribly so his final years are even more filled with pain and sorrow.

I can only pray tht when it happens, he only does himself.

You have to also realize this individual disowned me when I was ten years old and told my mother it was "up to her" to bring me up. Yeah, I must have been a bad ADHD kid at ten. Somehow I grew out of it and have never had problems with violence, drugs, or any of the typical things you might imagine an "uncontrollable child" would naturally fall into. And I've had my own ADHD son - learned how to love him without the bullshit "disowning" crap of my old man.

He's still nasty to me, mostly. I guess all families have the one member the parents dislike. But am I wrong in thinking, at least partially, that the problem is his? The nastiness, bullying personality that made an adult actively disown a 10 year old child? Something in him is seriously wrong.

I do hate him. I can't stand him. I avoid contact. But at the same time monitor and watch him closely. I have a duty and I wish I didn't have to be around him. Although he will never claim anything about what he said or admit how much he hates me (I guess for being an unruly 10 year old, since that's when it began - haven't done anything to or around him for 30 years so it can't be anything I do). He's a real problem and he's getting worse.

90 years old. State of Florida says he can drive. I can't stop him. This is a nightmare.

So much has happened...

Where to begin? Over the last few weeks I've watched a neighbor's boat sink in the canal.

Then we had a talk with the sheriff, because I wanted to raise it and claim it (no one seems to own it). He said do nothing until the "owner" found a title he could sign over. So we waited.

Then we talked to the coast guard, he came by with the EPA to test the water for gas and oil. They didn't find enough to worry about. 

Talked to the owner who said he could get the title.

Talked to a meth head who came by and tried to physically haul the boat out of the water.

Watched hillbillies tie a strap onto the boat and try to haul it out of the water.

Had to take the planks off the dock I fixed because my dad was worried that one corner was a little lower than the other three, and put more flotation material under it.

Found gasoline on the water. The small fire was confined to the neigbor's yard.

Neighbor's house caught on fire. Suffered smoke inhalation. 

Met my dad's new girlfriend (I call her "new mom").

And that's about it. More to come. Oh, and here's a little movie that shows what happens when you pull out old water logged flotation bats that are coated with sea squirts. Enjoy. 

Sight Eval

Getting ready to take my dad in for a vision evaluation. He went to the doctor on Monday and they expressed concern that at 90 he is still driving. They sent him for evaluation, which I set up for today. He is majorly pissed. I'm trying to settle him down.

It's not that you've had accidents, dad, but what if you had an episode or a second of inattention and due to it caused someone else harm, or even killed them? He's come to terms (and so have I) with dying in a car accident (I'm surprised every time he comes home). I can't get him to stop driving, and he won't let me drive him (although he has shown some changes on this front lately). So, I'm wondering what is going to happen.

Taking him now.

---

The evaluation went off fine. A lot of questions on the form. I'm not sure why they were asking him about his alcohol consumption, which he lied about btw, but maybe it makes a difference in the case of prescription drugs or something else, but he went for eyesight issues.

So, 90 years old. We filled out the forms. Sent them into the state. Not sure what to think at this point.

90 years old. Won't let me drive. Seriously. He acts like I'm some kind of road danger - and I've never had an accident. He makes comments to friends about how I'd "kill him". Strange, eh? He's really about 90% ok, but it's the 10% that's going to end up hurting him. I can only hope that he doesn't hurt someone else.I try to get him to understand this but it is pointless now. He'll have to have an incident before he stops laughing at the idea of putting up his driver's license.

Rats and Snakes Oh My

So the roof of the spare room has fallen in due to a nest of rats in the ceiling. Not the roof, but the drop ceiling section. Tiles, specifically. The room is a disaster area.

There is so much rat feces on the floor it looks like a negative-photo of a hall's floor after a wedding reception - black rice covering everything.

But my dad thinks it's fine.

There are rats in the ceiling above his head, shitting and pissing in the tiles. I removed one in his bedroom, which adjoins the spare room, and it is covered with large rat and mice turds.

But my dad thinks it's fine.

What am I going to fucking do?? If I get forceful he threatens to kick me out. I'm currently unemployed and my dad thinks I'm on vacation here (even though I've stressed the gravity of my situation many times), he seems to think it's hilarious to threaten to kick me out if I argue with him. So I clean "around the edges".

But the rats and mice have taken this to another level.

So the ceiling caved in. Two tiles. My dad goes and buys two tiles to replace them - not two cases, so I can do both ceilings in his bedroom and the spare room, but two tiles.

So I'm cleaning the rat shit, empty boxes, tupperware, stuffed animals, glassware, old tools and piss/shit covered junk in the spare room (can't throw any of it out, of course, he has to have it), and I turn  around and the dresser I was piling glassware and tupperware (clean) onto now has a rubber snake.

Ok, this is at elbow's length away. We use rubber snakes to sometimes scare birds away on the dock. I turned away, continued to clean whatever the hell I was working on, and turn back, and the rubber snake has changed position. Two things dawn on me at once.

1) I didn't put no fucking rubber snake on that dresser 30 seconds ago.

2) The dresser is directly under the missing ceiling tile.

Put that together.

I look back, closely, at the snake. It's a foot or two long, brown with stripes, and in  the shadows I can't see it very well. Triangular head. We live next to a salt marsh and see all manner of wildlife, so I knew this was likely a cottonmouth or water moccassin. I wasn't taking chances. And I knew I had to kill it before it got off the dresser and into the maze and mess of boxes, pieces of hoarded crap and everything in the spare room or I'd never find it and it would be lose in the house.

I darted to the kitchen and got the best thing I could find - an old broom. I didn't want to go further because I was afraid it would leave and hide somewhere (we have guns and much better snake killing things, of course). I figured the broom would be enough.

I go back in, the snake is still there, frozen in position. So I wail it with the broom. The plastic head of the 20 year old broom shatters into a million pieces, the tupperware flies all over the room, the glassware under the tupperware shatters, glass and plastic are bouncing off the walls, the pictures hanging on the wall next to the dresser fall off the wall onto the top of the dresser (breaking the glass), the snake is writhing under what is left of my broom. BUT I have him pinned down on top of all the shattered crap on top of the dresser.

I hit him hard so I figured he might be dead, but he's still moving - not unusual for a reptile in death throes, so I decide to wait him out, pinning him down until he's dead. But he just keeps getting stronger. Clearly I had not delivered a killing blow.

So now he's biting at t he stub of the broom, coiling up the handle toward me, trying like crazy to get out of the little piece of wood and plastic left on the end of the shattered and cracked broom that is pinning him down. He's getting more active all the time. I can't let him up, can't move away or he'll escape into the mess around me so I start looking for a weapon.

Stuffed animal. Empty box. Piece of tupperware. Bag of mardi gras beads. Bag of green plastic easter grass. Empty box. Magazine.Paper. Empty box. Piece of a lid. Part of a picture frame. Empty box. Then I spot it  - an old car battery charger on the shelf barely with my reach. I get it by the plastic handle. Then things got medieval.

I nailed the snake and the top of the dresser hard enough for all the broken glass, snake, picture frames, smashed dishes, and broken tupperware to jump in the air. The snake is still wriggling (or I thought it was) so I got it against the wall and wailed on it again. This time the guts of the charger came out of the bottom. So now I've got this steampunk flail, transformer and broken circuit board connected with wires, and I flail the living shit out of the dresser, the wall, the carpet, everywhere the snake was going.

At some point the snake stopped moving.

Then I went and got my coffee and went about the rest of the day.

Dad? When he saw it he said "it doesn't eat much".

Just another day in Rat Mansion.

Oh, and to make it worse, after  I got light on it I see it's just a poor innocent corn snake. Damn. Sorry snake! If I'da known that I would'a just grabbed you and tossed you in the yard. It was dark, I wasn't taking chances.  I'll try to make up for it in my next snake encounter (they happen all the time).

No one hears like my Dad

So I go down to the Chase bank (a terrible company, one that should be fined out of existence for their malfeasance in lending and repossessing during the last depression). Had a tire go out. Got to the bank, then decided I'd call my dad to come down and pick me (and the tire) up so we could go to a store for a new tire.

Three hours later I'm still in the parking lot. My dad is orbiting the area, trying to 1) find the right Publix supermarket used for a landmark or 2) forgetting what he was in the car for. We exchange several phone calls, but it is pointless since he can't hear, and can not understand words spoken through the cell phone he has. So many calls, just to try and tell him its 4 MILES SOUTH he has to go. That's it. Over and over and over and over. Eventually my phone is going dead, and I tell him to go home and he says ok (which he says to everything when he doesn't understand what you are saying, or hear you). I call a cab. While waiting for the cab, he shows up in the parking lot.

Pulled the tire, went and got a new, and I'm off and running after another hour, but at least I'm in control.

The hearing aid issue and his cell phone is going to end up killing him one day, and he won't give it to someone else to relay the message. Lesson learned. I will call a cab first next time I'm stranded a few miles from home. Fuck it.

Now I really need a beer.

New tactic on the dock

My father has only so many years left, at 90, and sometimes he gets impatient. So today he got impatient with messing around with the enormous deck plate he wanted to use for the gangplank on the broken dock. Instead, he modified a couple of 12x6's and had me attach them to the concrete landing. Done. Then he began to hammer on bits of broken wood - after he almost pitched himself into the drink the other day when he stumbled on the shore by the landing. The boards in, I finally had to ask him what the heck kind of death trap he was building. Wiggly and unstable, held together by nails, it looked like a death trap waiting to happen. So I took the situation in hand, measured a third plank, screwed two boards on it, removed the three boards he'd hammered into the new assembly (under his sour gaze), and placed the third plank between the two and screwed them all together. In the next twenty minutes I had half the gangplank screwed together before the driver ran out of juice (19.2v Craftsman).

Tomorrow, I hope  to finish it. Then he can go out on the busted up dock and we'll see what happens.

A Typical Day Caring for the Elderly

So here's the day.

I get up, begin research on some sports administration articles I'm writing on contract. These are rather complex, and while I'm buried in "the Google" the phone rings. It's my dad's date for the night. The next twenty minutes are spent arranging their hook up for later (he can't hear on the phone and her phone makes an odd ring/aftertone in the handset I'm using that makes it difficult for me to hear what she is saying).

So that's done. Then I decide to make coffee and I see the microwave. Hmm. Guess it's time to make the rounds with my squeeze bottle of disinfectant and paper towels. Twenty minutes on the microwave (I've never seen him put eggs in there but eggs were on the inside, and more). Ten minutes in other areas of the kitchen. Dishes - done. Bathroom wipe duty - completed. Then a quick trip to the yard to make sure he's not overworking himself (not that I could stop him if I wanted to).

I just got a call from my dad's girl friend. It's his third over the years since my mom passed. Arranged a meeting with the two of them at a restaurant later tonight. Looks like my dad is more popular than me with the ladies.

Looked through the mail. It appears I have been asked to pay a fine for prematurely vacating my last apartment. There should be a low to protect the unemployed from this kind of contractual obligation when it concerns housing. Let's figure this out. If I was making enough money to pay the rent plus utilities plus food plus insurance for my vehicle (so I can go to job interviews) I'd still be there. But as many of the long termed unemployed discover, you can't make a payment on any of those things and you are well and truly SCREWED. So, that explains my reason for leaving my old apartment prior t o the expiration of the lease (and the narrow time slot they allow you to inform them you are vacating). It's not that I had nefarious plans to profit in some way, of course. But now they heap yet another piece of crap on my shoulders, and want $1453 to shut them up. I arranged to make payments out of my pittance I'm currently earning through freelance work. Want a professional writer? Contact me. I must work remotely, for reasons that, if you've read this blog you will understand. Just send me an email if you're interested in hiring the best creative talent you can find.

Nothing smells worse than my dad

It's a nice day today so my dad is out working on the deck plate he still wants to use as a gangway to connect to the floating dock. It's a nice day, about 70 degrees or so, and perfect for working in the back yard in the sun. Naturally, this makes you sweat.

If you've never smelled a sweaty old man, I have to tell you, it's quite the experience. It reminds me a mostly of a wet dog, with traces of vomit and dog shit. I'd rather smell a cat litter box. I'd rather smell a wet dog. I'd rather smell low tide at the docks where the shrimp boats gather. I can not adequately  convey this odor. It must be experienced.

My dad's not dirty. He takes a shower in the morning. His clothes appear to be clean (he does laundry and I check them on occasion just to make sure they are free of odor, etc., and they are). It's just this FREAKING MIASMA that hangs about him when he's sweating like this, that I have never quite experienced. It's something totally different and it is highly nauseating. This is the second time I've smelled it, and was able to ascertain for certain its source.

Not sure why this odor is so bad (I've experienced lots of odors tramping around swamps, woods, derelict building, hobo camps, shelters, etc.) and I can only wonder what the true source of this odor is. He does eat an awful lot of bad food - meat, canned goods, restaurant food. He rarely, if ever, eats fresh fruit or vegetables. Perhaps this is the root cause. Or maybe it's something else.

The police have finished digging in the bank by the dock and we are free to put the freaking dock in. They've found nothing worth a real clue about the bones, just something that washed up and got buried over the years. Wonderful.  Now I can't wait until my dad's ready to try and move the damned dock into place.

Mouse or rat?

So there's a room in the house where my dad has been putting odds an ends over the year. This was once the room my mother used for painting (I've inherited her brushes and other artists equipment, as I inherited her desire if not talent to be a graphic artist, a pursuit I will probably ever see fulfilled, but that's another story). Since her passing, and my removal of all material that was of any use in the painter's craft, he's installed various metal racks along the wall, and shelving, and has filled it with a wild assortment of odds and ends. Not all of this material fits, and many boxes and containers have for some reason fallen off the walls and created an impassable mass that literally fills the majority of the room save for a small space just on the other side of the door.

I have been forbidden, essentially, from touching anything in that room. After the first time I opened the door and smelled it, I knew it was a problem. But my 90 year old father is adamant. Leave that room alone. So I have peered around the fallen boxes and metal objects and tools and appliances and other things in there to try to get an idea about what is causing the smell and have figured out it's probably mice and rat filth and other things associated with rodentia.

There's a similar situation in the shed out back, but this one includes a number of gasoline containers I can't seem to get rid of because they are "precious". But that's another story, for another time.

Gotta go. I need to look at the cell phone that won't work for my dad. It seems someone set him up with a very pricey Virgin Mobile plan he doesn't need and now it wants money ... I think ...

Today's Trip to Home Depot

When you have a parent that's 90 years old, and has several physical problems, including bad hearing, they can be a bit problematic when you go to places like supermarkets and grocery stores. Today my dad wanted to go to Home Depot to look at drill presses.

He drove, of course. So he parked and had to walk across the parking lot to the store. That took a few minutes, then a necessary wait while he caught his breath and rested in front of the doors to Home Depot. (Yes, I offer to drive but that's just not going to happen, you see.) Then we amble into the store and look for the aisle where the drill presses are kept.

Being hard of hearing, my father sometimes talks very loudly when he speaks. He also needs you to talk loudly for the reply. And he has a habit of commenting about other people, including the overweight woman, the black family, and the indian man we passed on the way to the Ryobi display. He had comments to make along the way, including but not limited to:

• Look at that fat pig. She needs to learn how to put the fork down.
• Our neighborhood was good until the guy down the street started renting to niggers.
• Don't white people come in here?

Ok, now if you don't know him and read that you're probably thinking he's some kind of horrible bigot racist. The truth is that he is a product of his time. I was raised without hearing those comments, by the way, so he is very aware of how much damage they can do and made attempts to not inculcate his children with those attitudes. I like to think it worked. 

You have to understand he expects a reply to those comments. So I make the most bland and public-service style of reply I can make and try to make it clear to any who overhear him that YES, HE'S OLD, HE'S NOT A DANGER TO ANYONE BUT HIMSELF, etc. So far this has always worked.

Anyway, we did what we wanted to do (look at a price on a drill press), and went home. 

I went to work on the boat I've been rehabbing. Will spend the night on it tonight and see how that works. 

Well the investigation continues on the bones found under the dock.

I've also discovered that I am in severe danger of losing my butt as I grow older. Dad walked through the living room the other day in his tighty whities, and I had to look twice to make sure I wasn't seeing things. No butt. No butt whatsoever. Just saggy whities. Is this diminished glute syndrome? Could Hank Hill be correct?

No, there's no picture of this.

Premature Dockulation

While I have been busy working on some assignments for a company that wants articles written about various colleges around the US, I haven't had a lot of time to spend in the pursuit of dock repair. Of course this has made my father go a little crazy, since he wants to have the dock fixed NOW. Can't have everything, eh dad? At any rate his impatience has cost him, so far, $100 for a deck plate from a carnival cruise ship and $50 more to have a pair of dimwit hillbillies deliver it.

Now, I've said this before. You can get good deals from hillbilly dimwits, but if you don't watch it they'll rip you off like crazy and chuckle about how smart they were with that city slicker (if you know words with three or more syllables you're a city slicker, probably a fag too). Well, a pair of gap tooth mouth breathers saw the old man coming and sold him this. I think they tricked him with a US MARINE CORP bumper sticker on their pickup truck, but I'll never know what thought processes are misfiring in his head, making him misjudge things so terribly now. He used to be fairly good at those judgment calls. Not anymore.

So now he's at the store looking for fitting adapters so we can make this fit on the dock (in the background). More to come.

As  I was clearing up some debris I encountered an old skull. Authorities were contacted. More to come on this as I find out where it came from, how it got under the rocks on the seawall, and if there are more bones in the seawall as I clean it up.

Oh boy...it's a Red State!

So I went for a bike ride today, it was such a great day. Then I ran into a true, down home red stater. And I had my camera!

 

If there is anything I hate more than bullies, it's a racist.

Work on the dock continues. I removed the rest of the broken debris this morning, then as I was working on the sailboat I've been rehabbing, I hear a chainsaw. Dad is out there "trimming" the boards to even up the ends so we can reuse the mangy wood.

Rain and wind erode the finest materials.

The third dock was not exactly made of the finest material, but it was perfectly usable until the other day when a storm blew  through and rocked it around for a few hours. Here's a POV movie of me walking out on the dock that was destroyed, showing it before it fell apart.

And here's a picture of it now, before I pulled it apart.

And here's our hero removing the broken parts, the first stage of repair.

Here's a short appearance of my father. 90 years old.

Day of the Remote Control

My dad has a DVD player and a VCR attached to the television in the living room. He has another television in the kitchen and another television in the bathroom. Each one of  these devices has a remote control. When he loses one, he often buys a "universal remote" controller and uses that instead. Today we attempted to use the DVD player. An two hours later he's a very frustrated 90 year old, and I have a pulled neck muscle, and the DVD player still won't work.

First we had to find the remote control that went to the DVD player. That necessitated a search and identify mission through the seat cushions of the easy chair, the couch, removal of several years worth of magazines, books and papers, with no remote being found. I did, however, find a .38 pistol in a plastic bag he keeps in the easy chair when it fell out and hit my foot. But I am getting ahead of myself.

The first twenty minutes were spent trying to explain to him that the DVD player had to have it's own remote control (no, the Universal remotes won't work - they don't have an open/close button for the tray). After I got that, the next fifteen minutes were spent figuring out the wiring between the auxiliary inputs and the Video input on the television and which remote worked with the VCR, and which input enabled it on the television. Then I had to explain that the VCR remote control won't work with the other devices, and the universal remote control won't work with the DVD player (see, it has an open/close function for the tray, which won't open with a button on the front of the DVD player, so I surmised it must have a dedicated remote control somewhere).

I knew this would happen one day and I have been dreading it. But it was a Clint Eastwood movie, so I figured what the hell. Clint Eastwood, man. Maybe I could get things going with a minimum of confusion.

Meanwhile, my father has collected every remote control in the house and has started going through them from device to device. No, that won't work. No, that doesn't work. Nope, not that one. Yup, that's the one for the kitchen.

In a moment of Einsteinien inspiration, I opened the cabinet next to the television. There was a remote control. It was the same brand as the DVD player. Ah, I thought. Success.

No button seemed to work anything on the DVD player. I removed the batteries and began to look for batteries in the drawers. I found them. About twenty. All in various states, all by different makers, so I removed the old batteries, noting their condition and maker, and noticed the corrosion filling the battery compartment. Ok, well I scraped off the terminals, selected the best looking candidates from all the AAA batteries I found, and started plugging them in, trying the remote, twisting, turning, etc.

Meanwhile, my father was busy with the pod of remote controls he had in his lap, pointing them at the television and changing channels, turning it off and on, changing functions to the VCR (no dad, that's not it, see the light on the DVR? We need the DVD light to go on and off.). During this process he managed to deprogram the television so it would not connect to cable. I know mare about the television remote control and cable setup now than I ever wanted to know. So, after I got the cable hooked up, programmed, and running normally again he made the comment that "sometimes the tv goes out by itself then comes back in a few hours or days. That's ok...."

So after a while messing around with the drawer full of batteries and playing with the DVD remote control I determined that I still might be using bad batteries. So, I took one remote control that worked and removed the batteries from it and swapped them with the ones in the DVD remote control. Still nothing.

Meanwhile, my dad has picked up the remote control w/o batteries and has been trying it on different televisions. His cussing alerted me to the fact he had put "new" batteries from the drawer into the remote control that had no batteries.

This is the point where I think I pulled my neck muscle.

So, holding the known good batteries, I have determined that the DVD remote control either doesn't work any more or the thing is broken. I explained this to my father while I set up the cable programming again on the television. Then I helped him to identify the remote control for the television in the living room and the universal that worked on it, and I put the batteries back into the remote control for the kitchen television. But I had mentioned the funky batteries, and my dad went and found a battery tester that looked like it was pulled of a classic model Buick car, and began testing batteries as he removed them from remote controls.

I explained again that we weren't going to be able to use the DVD player because it had only one remote control, with the manufacturer logo (A-Star), and it didn't work so don't bother with that one. Sensing increasing levels of his frustration, I decided then to return to my "cell" and find something to do while he tested batteries. An hour later he had finished and identified the working remotes for the various televisions and had them properly placed. Then he asked me if we could watch the Clint Eastwood movie in the DVD player.

"No, dad, the remote control ... the player ... it's broken. It doesn't work."

"Oh, well, sh*t. I'll have to take that down to the store and buy another remote control."

Then I explained that the universal controller probably wouldn't work, and he shouldn't mess with getting another one. Then I explained why the remote control for the DVD players doesn't work.

Thank God it Saint Patrick's day. Evening is on the way. I'll see my favorite bartender.

The crab trap continues to vex me.

Well, not the trap itself, but the crabs. My last attempt at raiding the crustacean haven off the end of the dock, using a couple pounds of rotten bacon, came to naught. So far I've used old bologna, old steaks, old head cheese and old olive loaf (all in varying stages of decomposition). I've put one of my first attempts on video, below. It's rather boring, so consider this just a look at what not to do.

The first bait I tried was headcheese.

The result: no luck. Head cheese was missing but no crab had been trapped.

Here's a quick video of the trap - it's hard to see, since it's made of black plastic coated wire, but you can make it out if you look closely enough.

Here's a video of the bait I used from the 'frig.

And here's a POV walkout to where the crab trap is currently positioned as of yesterday.

Stay tuned for further news, and upcoming videos!

I double I will be doing much outside today. It's raining like crazy. There's enough to do in the house anyway. I am going to remove drawers and attempt to locate the hole where rats and mice and snakes are getting into the house. There's gonna be a lot of crawling around today. Stay tuned!

The saga continues.

Over the past few days I've been suffering with allergies that have kept me down. However, application of many different blends of over the counter medications have helped get it out of my system. During the time I've been off the blog, a number of things have happened.

Still applying to any freelance writing job I can find. I think my age and lack of a Bachelor Degree are holding me down, but that doesn't effect my personal writing. I've been adding more chapters to the "saga" that was published at JukepopSerials (up to Ch. 4). While the subject matter is laden with topics I don't work with anymore, I find it to be a fresh change of pace and plan to continue it for quite some time. Who knows? Tolkien penned his stories without any prior history of elves, hobbits, and orcs and, well, you know how that went. I'm not trying to say I have anywhere near his level of talent, but maybe I can make an interesting story anyways. That's really all I want.

I am under constant observation from the many animals that live on the property.

Another week

A week has passed at my father's place. I have found the only way I can stand things is to sleep through most of the day, work furiously on the computer while awake during daylight hours, and then leave for the bar as soon as it gets dark. This has kept my father from focusing on my long enough to deliver some harangue about "following his rules if I want to live here" (which means I can't clean the rat shit and rat piss, stained magazines and newspapers, or move the decades old detritus in any way that he notices while living/surviving/existing in the closet I have been allotted). Well, as long as he leaves me alone I suppose that's a win, as sad as it is.

Published chapter 3 of my "fun book" on Jukepopserial http://www.jukepopserials.com/home/read/1323

Continued work on "Quest of the Migo" and outlines for SCP project and another Lovecraftian story based upon lizard men.

Took garbage can outside for a thorough cleaning. Can't throw it out and get a new one - "What do you think, I'm made of money?" from the father who eats out every day, buys new things instead of looking for something he lost, and buys electronic equipment and tools that are broken "for the right price". You should see the tool shed. And the vicinity. (will post pics).

So I'm rinsing out the garbage can for reuse. While doing so I have cleaned HALF of the sink area. That means I had to put detergent, scrubber pads, oil, tools, styrofoam cups, and cleansers in their "new" places (under the sink and in a nearby drawer). I can hardly wait for my father to return home from breakfast and explode when he sees what I have done.

Onward ...

Moved - Accomplished, Mostly

So the move into my father's place is complete. I've piled boxes as high as I can in the tiny room he has alotted for my use, and stacked the rest on the porch outside. After a week of waiting I have Verizon installed as an internet service. Did you know, according to my last Brighthouse technician, that Brighthouse is incapable of providing two accounts to a single residential address? The level of technical ability - adding another tap to the pole - is far beyond the abilities of their average service technician. In fact, as I wrote this, Brighthouse called me to discuss the issue of providing a second service to the same residential address. Apparently it IS possible. So the technician was wrong. Why he turned off my father's cable service AT THE POLE is now a rather curious question. He acted displeased that he had to come here and not be able to do the job. Spite? He certainly seemed to be somewhat of a jackass. I'm finding "spite" is the only possible reason he decided to "unhook" the address. Nice, eh?

So the adventure continues. Soon I will be eradicating the rats in the walls and the mice that have infested my father's place due to his unwillingness to pick up after himself. They are on official notice of eviction. After that, I can clean up the rotting hulk of a sailboat that rests at the end of the dock. I'm not sure, but I may have heard moans of the damned emanating from it's vicinity. I look forward to the investigation.

More Encounters with Evil

While developing web sites to keep my web design skills sharp, and working on "Hello! Chupacabra" as well as other endeavors, I have, of course, been searching for gainful employment with the system. The right-to-work state of Florida is a fairly hostile employment environment and with the glut of job seekers just getting an interview is a major hurdle. The search continues. The software employed by FLUID (the unemployment compensation system ran by the state of Florida, recently reworked by Rick Scott, worst governor in the history of the United States) still fails to operate correctly, and reported to me that I would not be getting a check at one point when I struggled through reporting my freelance work, but then operated correctly for no reason whatsoever. The instructions are ambiguous in many places, and I can only wonder what people who don't have a background in writing and programming do when they are presented with its many strange glitches (which can be overcome through repeated experimentation using different browsers, if you understand how this stuff works).

In the meantime,  there's no reason not to enjoy the weather and thank the powers that be that I'm not up in the frozen hell of Michigan. Of course my relatives have come to hate my facebook posts, such as the ones you see here. I always try to throw in something so life in here in Florida seems less than idyllic, such as "stubbed my toe on the stairs" or "got a flat tire on my bike" so they don't get too jealous of life here in the sunshine state. It seems to work.

I'm also working on providing other writers with some useful utilities, such as a tutorial on using the database function in OpenOffice Writer, and more Joomla tutorials at http://www.webdissemble.com, so go give it a look if you're interested (the database tutorial will be on that website in a special section I'm creating for this type of work).

As usual, email from people encountering the chupacabra in the wild keep arriving. While most are clear fakes, some warrant further investigation. I've forwarded them to the respectable Dr. Arthur Antebury at the Mexico Institute for further investigation. (http://www.hellochupacabra.com).