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.