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Stormy, Weeping
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: People
- Hits: 568
The Tuesday visit, I have to bring him supplies. Pop, candy bars, toothpaste, deodorant, shampoo, soap, toothbrushes, razors...
Get swabbed, wait for the test results, masked up, in for the visit.
These visits, they're to be in the room only, there's no visiting in the common areas, the plague, here, is ongoing.
Stormy doesn't listen. He tries to lure me into the halls, wants to show me off to his friends. I decline.
He persists. Eventually a friend of his - a "girlfriend" - comes by in a wheelchair, she assures me it's fine, and I step out of his room...
Only to be told by a passing nurse that I have to remain in his room.
Back into his room. Small, generic, ugly furnishings, it's a hospital, hospice, bleak beyond measure.
We chat. There's really, for him, nothing to chat about. He wants out. He wants me to wheel him outside for a cigarette. "I can't" I tell him. It's against the rules.
He's not taking no for an answer.
He wants me to steal a vehicle, take him downtown for the day. Nope, nope, nope.
- I don't understand what it's like here, to be here, all the time, it's a prison, when am I coming next, when are we going in to town?
And this. These visits, an hour, but with the bus, the shopping, the countless trifles, tests, etc, etc, they consume a full day. And I explain to him that he'd best now start settling in, we'll go to town once a week or every other week, but it's time face facts, we're not moving in together, I've sat in on the discussions with the nurses, caregivers, doctors, I'm not dealing with his incontinence, soiled laundry thrown in the corners of the room, time now to make friends here...
At this he looks stubbornly out the window and he tears up.
I apologize. This is horrible, but - there are people here he can talk to, there's a kindly old woman that has a crush on him, there are others, and - change is tough, but - friendship has it's limits. It kills me to see him cry, but being his full-time wheelchair pusher is not a career I wanted, and he doesn't respect the courtesy of it, takes it for granted, doesn't get that it's no pleasure for me to be the arms to his caprices...
And so this is where we are at the moment...
In misery there's comfort
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Blog
- Hits: 429
Back at the restaurant, just reopened. And so familiar - and yet -
Not where I'm meant to be.
In misery there's comfort, the comfort of numbers, the joy of familiar faces disappeared over the winter, old customers, staff, of new faces - I'm 3 days a week, they've hired a new waitress. My age, maybe older, short, plump, career waitress, you can tell pretty quick she knows where her hands are and what's up. A perpetually stretched smile across a weather-beaten face, she's wintered in California, Arizona, someplace. And so you balance the familiar with the new, when it's slow - and it's always slow in April, but never fear the rush is coming up quick - I introduce her to...
Well, Ken of course. Who else. Start by telling her about the six pack of gerbils he picks up at the Superette every night, about how he's got the best supply of what's-it-called-that-date-rape drug GBH that's it and the time I was in the basement partying and I woke up with a PICKLE in my...
And so on and so forth
It's mindless, this, and I have to escape, time now to plan it, in the meantime the comfort of the other bad habits that accompany it, Vodka, Cigarettes, I'm never sure which one is going to kill me first.
Not this year.
Bathe in My Milk...
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: WTF
- Hits: 502
Don't know how I haven't stumbled across this sooner: http://batheinmymilk.com/
There are still great things on the internet...
OBEY
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: WTF
- Hits: 415
An absolutely terrible book from the "Standin' Tall with Obedience" series by Janeen Brady. Link courtesy of Popkin, Via Boing Boing.
Now, I actually gave this a listen - far more than I should have - and I can't help but think that Ms. Brady's next series should have been titled "Can you keep a secret?", I mean, this is exactly the sort of drivel that you would expect a ambitious church leader would indoctrinate his flock with...
It might not be so bad (it would, who am I kidding?) if it followed on the heels of "Reasonable Boundaries" or "Please don't touch me there...", but it doesn't...
Who thought this was a good idea to publish? And - really - it's one thing to look at it and cringe, quite another to think children might watch and take it seriously. Or adults might make them watch it, and I would be soooo mistrustful of any family or church that had this on the shelf...
Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KAMhzwaskuo&list=OLAK5uy_lt5NEDkB0xlV6rI_qjIa07bRJN_Ad4p_0
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