wandering wordsmith

I’ve been feeling so good this week that it’s a little scary. After much reflection and analysis, I discovered that the reason I’d felt so bad was that the particular brand of brain pills the pharmacy had given me did not work. Yes, did not work. I’ve had them off and on for a month here, a month there, and it took a while to recognize it. They’re generic, so are required to have the same chemical composition as the brand-name stuff, but nevertheless, they did not work. It’s a miracle I didn’t fling myself off a cliff after murdering sixteen stupid drivers.

Of course, the manufacturer no longer makes the ones that did work, so I’ve been trying yet a third variety and they seem to be doing fine. It may be that, or it may just be that day length has increased enough to get rid of the seasonal crap. Either way, I’ve been cheerful, full of energy, and boisterous as can be this week. It’s a welcome change, lemme tellya!

Speaking of flinging myself from a cliff. . . Grandma hit the emergency room last Wednesday, so most of my day was spent there. She had shoulder pain (nothing showed on X-rays, but she does seem to be genuinely sore as opposed to, erm, inventing something so she can get special attention, though she gets royally pissed off whenever someone dares suggest that’s what she’s doing). They’d put her in the north unit, where I’d never been. On her left, behind a curtain, was another senile old lady. . . and on her right, behind another thin curtain, was yet a third senile old lady.

For five solid hours, maybe more, I listened to the three of them have the same three separate conversations. . . over. . . and over. . . and over. . . and over. . . until I would have flung myself out the window in despair, except that ER’s on the first floor and it would have been fairly pointless. Although it would have halted the original comments and started a new set of three repetitive comments: Why is it so cold in here? Why is that window open? I feel a cold breeze coming through!

My hooch has had booster yeast, but I don’t think it’s made much more of the vital waste product without which hooch is just rotten juice. Snaotheus and KrisDi are, at last notice, planning to come up and buy beer this weekend, so I may de-balloon the hooch while they’re here so they can help check it out. So far, it seems to have been a rather remarkably unsuccessful ’speriment. Maybe I need to throw in some robust wild (read: bread) yeast.

The other day, Grandma was complaining furiously that her new high-tech ear trumpet wasn’t working. She turned the volume up to 10 to no avail (I thought about telling her to try 11). She fussed and fiddled and farted around with it (as she always does; she can’t just find the right spot and leave it alone).

“The battery’s dead,” she announced (the battery was fine).

“It’s broken, then,” she countered when I pointed that out.

Well, not likely, I said, so I started checking things. She had it turned on, the earphone was plugged into the unit, the contact was good. . . so I followed the wire back toward her. . . you know where this is going, right? Yes.

She’d forgotten to put the earphone in her ear.

Somehow, this was my fault.

Today, she’s decided that she has “hallucinations” (read: inability to remember things) because of “something they gave me when they pulled my teeth.”

I will never learn. I just had to explain that a) lack of memory and reasoning ability do not a hallucination make; b) Novocain does not give anyone hallucinations; and c) even if it did, her teeth were pulled nigh on a year ago, and it wouldn’t hang around this long.

She, of course, was not having any of this rational, fact-based shit. No, by damn, she was having hallucinations and it’s the dentist’s fault she can’t remember anything.

Since she comes up with some cockamamie thing to blame this on every so often, you’d think I’d've learned by now just to mumble “mmm” and move on to another topic. But despite her lack of memory, she manages to hold on to these idiotic ideas for long periods of time, and my intent is to keep her from driving the aides insane asking / telling them about them. (See “repetitive comments” above.) We’ve all told her ten thousand times that she’s old, she’s falling apart, and she’s freaking senile, but she absolutely refuses to accept it. Aargh. I tellya, I’m checking out before I reach that stage!

This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 24th, 2010 at 8:27 pm and is filed under Family. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.