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.