Burning, Escape to Town and Falling

Thank heavens, Joe is almost in bed. He has been more than a handful today. He was on me this morning at 10:30 a.m. because he wanted me to go out back and burn. Huh? Gah! I didn't get to sleep till 2:00 a.m. For crying out loud, at least let me sip my first sip of coffee of the day.

Point of fact, it's pretty dry here. Not as dry as Texas and Oklahoma. The Gulf and the Northeast have been getting all the rain. Point of fact, it's still a bit breezy from Hurricane Lee. Not a lot breezy, but enough that coupled with dry grass, it could be very dangerous.

"No, Dad," I moan. "There's a No-Burn Order."
"You can't tell me what I can and can't do!"
"It means the Sheriff says you can't burn. It's too dangerous."
"The hell it is. Give me some matches."
"No."
"Yes."
"No." Sigh. "You couldn't put an accidental fire out if your life depended on it. You can't stomp. You can't shovel. You can't even move the hose. There's a No-Burn Order."
"Gimme some matches!!!"
"NO!!!"

Dentures and Mowing

On Sunday Lola went  to the bathroom at least twice an hour all day. I'm pushing her drinking, but she resists that. I'm keeping an eye on whether or not she might have an infection or if it's just the dropped bladder. Neither of us have ever been prone to urinary tract or bladder infections; I don't really think it's an infection. I don't recall ever having one, nor her having one.

On Monday I forgot to bring her a spoon for her breakfast cereal. After getting bushwhacked by Joe to start the mower and going into the basement to clean a shelf, I came back by Mom. She and her bowl of cereal were just sitting there. She doesn't have enough mind left to get up and get herself a spoon from the kitchen. At suppertime, I brought her meal and sat it on her tray. About 5 minutes later, I walked by and realized she hadn't started eating. I said, "Mother, eat your supper." She shook her head at herself, picked up her fork and started eating.

 Joe has been happily mowing the yard Monday and today. Monday morning, Uncle Charles came by and helped Dad bag up a bunch of grass clippings. Dad had raked and raked them (the results of letting the back go for so long) into little piles, then spent Sunday marrying the piles. Thank you Uncle Charles for all that you do.

At one time, Dad would have gotten his golf cart, attached his big wagon/little trailer to it and taken care of this in no time flat. Now I don't dare let him do things the easy way because I can't let him drive the cart. If I, myself, or Uncle Charles were to drive the cart, then I'd have to go round and round with Joe on a daily basis over the golf cart. Just saying the key is lost for so long has mostly ended that. Joe can't be allowed to run the golf cart anymore. His driving skill is so poor he was running into trees, buildings and porches, and I was scared he was going to tip over on some slope. At one point, he was driving it with one roof support broken and flapping around and was totally oblivious to it.

This morning I wanted to see if Mother would ask for a meal. Finally at 2:30, I couldn't stand it anymore and got her lunch. I wonder if she's not feeling hunger or what. I wonder how long she would have gone before either asking me for something or thinking of getting up and getting something.

I don't dare fix her dentures before I bring the meal, because she'll suck the glue out before I can bring the meal. Today, I brought the meal, got her bottom denture and fixed that. I went to the kitchen to get her a straw, and when I came back, she'd tugged the top denture out, so I had to take that to the bathroom and brush it. When I came back, she'd taken the bottom denture out and was wiping off all the fresh glue I'd just put on it. Oy, vey.

Actually, I wonder if something major has recently broken in her brain.

Joe, Sigh - Heat Wave and Mowing

Well, we're in the middle of a heat wave that is a killer, and Joe wants to mow the yard. Y'all just have to put up with me venting here. The back field can get a foot tall. I DO NOT CARE. I am not going to mow it while it's this hot.

Today we've gone round and round about it. He wants to do it. He wants to ride the Bush Hog. According to him there's never been a time in his life when it was too hot for him to do what he wants. According to him he does too weigh enough to keep the machine going. According to him he's perfectly safe on it regardless of how many trees, stumps or houses he runs into.

With his pulled teeth, he's not eating well, nor drinking enough. He fell yesterday and today. Earlier in the day he came in dripping blood from a barked elbow. It's a bloody miracle he hasn't broken a bone yet.

He's having bowel movements in his pants on a daily basis. He's not got enough sense to clean himself well or the rooms up.

Folks, I'm coming to the end of my rope with Joe. I'm beginning to look for alternative solutions. I've tried to keep him home till he dies. He's becoming belligerent and combative. He refuses to give anything up - fighting all the way. He's making everyone around him miserable.

I can't continue to take care of both him and Lola, get their groceries, cook their meals, wash their clothes, clean his shit, try to keep him from killing himself and live away from my own home and husband much longer.

I've desperately tried to not give up these roots to Arlington. After all, my folks have been in this area since the 1860s. I like being where people know you, care and look out for you. I've never really felt like anywhere else was home. Yet, my husband is in Memphis. My son is in Frankfurt. My friends are in Waverly and Oak Ridge. I'm here in Arlington. There's a lot wrong with that picture.

Mowing and Back Spasms

Well.  Joe had a one-track mind Thursday morning - mowing. He got up and out there mowing without saying hello, getting a drink of OJ or anything. I mean, I was in the kitchen making coffee when I heard the mower. You gotta laugh.

I wasn't last night. Laughing, that is. I was trying to watch "So You Think You Can Dance," and Joe and that mowing obsession made me miss the first part of 5 dances. First it was start the mower. Then when it quit, it was restart the mower. This mower doesn't want to restart quickly; I don't know why. I told him to let it sit. In five minutes, he was on me to start the mower. Too early. He let it sit for another 15, and it started. Ten minutes later, he let it quit again. After another false start, he finally decided that since it was after 8:00 p.m. it was too late.

So Thursday morning after mowing about 10 rows across the yard, I heard the mower quit. After a few minutes when Dad hadn't come into the house, I checked on him, and he was sweeping clippings off the driveway. He came into the house saying, "Oh. Oh." As he walked in the door, he said his back was broke.

As humorous as that might appear, say, as a way of saying what he had just done had worn him out, in reality this could be a very bad thing. Dad has suffered from a back thing as long as I remember. Sometimes, for no apparent reason, his back simply goes "out." It can range from a few days of an achy back and his walking crooked to dropping him to the floor in a split second with muscle spasms.

The muscle spasms can put him in the bed for a few days.  I've never quite known just how bad Dad's back really was. As the typical sick man wanting to be babied, he's the epitome. He's rarely sick, but when he is, he's pathetic. Moaning and groaning. Lordy, don't ever be around if he has a stomach flu.

I've seen him drop to the floor in the living room screaming, "Don't touch me. Don't touch me." I don't have a chronic bad back, but I've had a few spates of back spasms in my life - probably four. Whenever my back "goes out," believe me, I've wanted help getting sat back down. Anyway, my childhood memory doesn't contain just how Mother handled getting him to bed or off the floor. It just contains the scare of Daddy dropping to the floor screaming.

I surely hope he's not going to have a spell of back spasms and need to be in the bed. Lola's not competent enough anymore to handle it, and I'm certainly not the balm Joe will need.

I got him breakfast and got some Ibuprofen in him. I'm keeping my fingers crossed he sits most of the day and lets this back thing calm down rather than trying to locomotive his way through it.

Piano, Mowing, Storms and Burning

Mother got onto the piano thing again Sunday morning, asking me who bought that piano. I, again, told her she did, and she, again, told me that was crap and she did not. This time I reminded her about me taking lessons from Myrla Peck. Ms. Peck was from Arlington and taught piano in Paducah.  That stopped her arguing.

Joe took a short run of the push mower on the front lawn.  There was a time he wouldn't have lifted a hand on Sunday. I think it used make him bored to tears.  Nowadays, it seems he's forgotten the rules he used to follow. I'm not going to fight him over it. He got really bored in the afternoon and wanted me to burn the pruning trimmings with him.

On Tuesday morning, Joe left the house just as a bad storm was coming. I put bells on the door, but they don't override the blaring volume from Mother's TV. As the storm hit, I vainly tried to find Joe. Before I could get to the workshop, the rain and wind hit. Since I didn't see his body on the lawn, I kept my fingers crossed and waited for the worst to be over. When the wind stopped blowing strongly enough to turn an umbrella inside out, I put on rubber boots and went to the workshop. The door was locked.

Then I heard a whistling. He's started whistling at me now. Gads I always hated that whistle. Anyway, sure enough, he was in the workshop and opened the door for me. I handed him the other umbrella and went back to the house.

While I walked around the workshop, I realized he'd burned the scrap pile this morning. Last night Lola got on her binge of "someone's looking through that window." So I had closed the heavier drapes. I forgot to turn my alarm clock on and really overslept this morning. In fact, I actually got 9 hours of sleep. It felt good, but.... Apparently Joe burned the pile while I was asleep this morning.

I knew this was on his mind. He'd been wanting to do it for a while. We've hidden as many matches and lighters as we run across, but he's got some squirreled away somewhere. We also have hidden all the gas because he thinks it's just dandy to drench the pile in gas before he starts it.

We have a 100-foot hose, and when I was in Paducah I got another 50-foot hose. I hadn't had a chance to get it out and connected yet. I'm hoping that will be long enough to have on hand when he wants to burn. But he won't damned listen to me. He's too damaged to realize how dangerous his little ideas are.  He's too obsessed to back off. And I'm just damned tired of chasing after him.

After Midnight Photos and Snakes

Back on June 6th, I started a post, which never got published, with this:
Goodness gracious.  Lola came wandering out of her bedroom at 1:15 a.m. with an envelope of pictures in hand.  She's worried that she's the only one that knows who is in those pictures. At that time of night, no one cares who's in those pictures.  And really they were pictures from the last two decades, so odds are that they are pics of Lola, Joe, Elizabeth and Howard on vacation.

Back to the present.  Yesterday, at the end of the pruning jag, I'd come in and collapsed on the sofa.  Joe was still outside carrying pruned trimmings.  Eventually he came in all excited about the 3 snakes that came out of the neighbors' yard.

Those neighbors haven't mowed their yard yet this summer. They've done something to some of the front - found a scythe or something.  I haven't actually seen them doing it, yet some of the front yard is shorter. Anyway, the back yard is about 2 foot tall.

If Joe can be believed, it's become a snake pit. Since he was obsessed about these snakes all night long and wouldn't, fer cryin' out loud, shut up about them, I'm pretty sure he saw at least 1 snake.  According to him, there were 3 and they were at least 6 feet long. First he said he killed them. Then he said they raced away. I don't even want to walk back there now. Shudder.

Pruning, Mowing and Shaking Your Guts to Smithereens

Here is my tip of the day: If you value your internal organs, don't run a Bush Hog over a field that has previously been mowed after a rain by a tractor.

I think my boobs lost a pound each. My stomach ate my esophagus, and everything was snogging my diaphragm.  For hours and hours and hours. (I've been watching Torchwood from the BBC lately if you're wondering where snogging came from. Although, my Brit friend Carol, my age, says it's an old slang.) If I didn't already think I was drain bamaged, it'd probably be a good idea to make sure I didn't rattle it.

If you value your pocket book, don't try to fill the gas tanks on a Bush Hog.  I put 6 gallons in it today (it holds 10), and it was $24.03. Criminy.  The reason I mention this, besides just griping about the cost of gas, is because Joe chewed me out Sunday for finding a reason everyday not to do what I knew was needed, i.e., mow the lawn.  What Joe can't comprehend is how much it costs to mow 7 acres, and that's why we're (I'm) not mowing so frequently.

Forgotten Maps and the Mowing

In talking to Joe about the tornado warning we were under the other day, I realized he has forgotten what weather maps are. He asked me how I knew we were under a warning, and I showed him the map I'd been following on weather.com. He looked at it blankly and didn't know what the red boxes meant. Damn, he's been following these things his whole life, and now they are totally unknown to him.

Here's a picture I took of Joe showing him mowing.  It's an absolute freakin' obsession with him.  At least this way he won't run it into a planter (2 of which he did and smashed, concrete ones, no less) or get it stuck in the back 40. He's doing something and happy.

Mother has been playing flashlight games all morning. She lays in bed and flashes the flashlight on the wall. I keep waiting for her to get up, but it's 3 p.m. without her showing her face. I'm going to have to get her up.

Back in May

It's Friday, and I've been back since Wednesday.  Things are going as normal. The mowing wars continue with Joe. Lola is lost in the morning and gets up and wanders around with the grumpiest look on her face proclaiming she doesn't know where anyone is, what the ruckus is about - TV, what is going on - nothing. I think she takes the back ways to avoid where people are just so she can claim she thought she was alone.

On the other hand, once Lola gets up and set down in her chair in the living room, she's as easy to care for as can be. She's pleasant and good-natured. She's quiet and not prone to argue about much of anything. She laughs, and if you press her, will engage back with you. You have to press, but at least she does engage.

Joe, on the other hand, keeps himself apart in his den. He rarely tries to engage. He occasionally shows a sense of humor, which continues to surprise me when it emerges because he always kept it squelched around me.

I'm trying to discourage him about the mowing. He insists the 7 acres be mowed. Gas is so bloody expensive now that I'm trying to discourage that. Additionally, I'm trying to stretch the times between mowings. I don't want to let the yard stay totally unkempt, but I don't feel it affordable to keep it a continual 2.5 inches tall with gas at nearly $4.00 a gallon.

If he just had a normal front and back yard, I'd agree and mow. He argues because Jimmy across the street keeps his lovely and low.  Well...Jimmy doesn't mow his back field. Larry next door mows his front and back yard and takes the tractor to the field. Thank heavens for Larry, because the field Larry takes the tractor to is actually Dad's field - the field I try to keep Dad distracted from. I've mowed to the crest of the hill and left the rest to go to hay or whatever.

We're wondering if the neighbors on the other side have absconded because their yard is about 2 feet tall now. I think that's egging Dad on, to boot.  We had 2 go-arounds about the mowing today.  He's furious with me. I'd hold out for another day, but I think I'm going to have to give in and mow tomorrow just for my own sanity.  Sigh.  There goes $40 bucks.

Pictures About the Mowing

Most of the relatives already know this lawn/field area surrounding my parents' house.  For those of you who don't and may be wondering why on earth I moan and groan so much about the mowing, these are pics of the area that need mowing.

That's according to what my Dad demands. These are the areas he's always kept mown. Wait, spell check doesn't like the word "mown" at all.  Isn't that a valid word anymore? Sigh.

The first picture is of the front yard. It extends to the last individual tree you can see on the left.

The second picture is of the back yard/field. The yard extends about 5 feet to the left of the end of the workshop. I know you can't visualize from this pic, but there is another window just to the left of the edge of the pic, and the building ends equidistant like the end of the window on the right. This is my Dad's workshop where he used to make furniture.

The stump on the left is the tree that split and fell on the left edge of the workshop during a storm. The field that Dad requires to be mowed ends at the tree line at the far back of the picture.

The third picture is the right side of the property. What he owns and has always mowed is L-shaped. The neighbors to the right own land just past the line of trees on the right.  You can see the difference in the color of the lawn/field just past the trees.

Their land is darker green. My Dad's land is lighter. It extends to the far back full tree line you can see.

What I haven't shown here is the "Apple Orchard."  Dad planted a lot of apple trees 30 years ago. I can't remember the number but I think it was about 30 trees.  I'll try to take a pic of them tomorrow.  You can't see them due to the slope of the land and the trees.

OMG, I only got back there a few days ago when I had to retrieve the golf cart from being stuck. It was just 3 days ago that it was dry enough to mow and I finally got to see it all. At this point in time, you can't even count the number of trees that are there because so many are down.  Dad got so bad he quit taking care of them years ago.  I didn't realize this.  Flitter, I never walked back there.

He hadn't pruned them in years I now realize, probably in two decades. He may have never known how to properly prune them.  The result  is that they grew so many branches the roots couldn't hold the trees up when the soil became waterlogged.  There are more trees fallen over than there are standing right now. It's a nightmare.

Actually mowing is nigh on to impossible. It's a matter of zigging in and under branches as much as possible.  It's simply a snake fest waiting to happen.  It needs someone to go in with a chainsaw and take all the fallen ones out. Oy.