Waiting

I had a talk with Dad yesterday about how he always seems to be waiting, very impatiently, for me in the mornings. Even when I am ready by the designated time that he has chosen, I can't seem to be ready soon enough to please him. So, I asked him, point-blank, yesterday if he wanted me to be ready to leave the house by 8:00 am or whatever.  He said that NO, leaving the house around 9:15 - 9:30 am was good, which always gets us to the hospital by 9:45 or 9:50, and that any earlier would make for too long a day for him to handle.

So, it was a friggin' shock this morning when he went outside just after 8:00 am as usual, raised the garage door, and stood on his crutches out in the driveway, waiting for me to back the car out of the garage.  I was still in my nightgown, hair in curlers, no makeup, and it is still over an hour before he said we needed to leave the house — yet he is standing on his crutches beside the garage door, doing nothing but waiting for me yet again. OH.MY.FUCKING.GAWD. This crap, over and over, is getting old. I WILL be ready to walk out the door by 8:00 am tomorrow morning, by god, and he fucking goddamned better be ready at that time and not a fucking minute sooner or I am going to go fucking ballistic. 

Now, since that is out of my system, we return you to the regularly-scheduled blog, already in progress...

I took Dad to an appointment with one of his doctors this morning. He arrived in  their office 50 minutes ahead of his appointment time because he insisted that we leave so early. I dropped him off to wait that 50 minutes plus whatever time the staff at the office needed to treat him. I gave them my cell phone number and went across to the hospital to visit with Mom. She was awake this morning and partway through a decent-looking breakfast of scrambled egg, cheese grits, toast with jelly, and apple juice. She didn't end up eating all of it, but she did eat a decent amount for someone just coming back onto solid foods after major surgery. After we wheeled her breakfast tray aside, I showed her all the "get well" cards that accumulated over the past few days (she didn't feel like looking at most of them, until now). Her mood was good, gentle, and loving, but she was definitely in a confused, flaked-out state.

Several people called our house last night and this morning to ask about Mom. There were reports that they could not get a telephone call to go through. So, I checked the phone, found it off-hook, and asked Mom about it. She said that it was intentional that it was left that way. When I asked her why, she took about 20 minutes to ramble through pieces of stories about one of my uncles, an apple-cinnamomn dessert pizza, a short woman without a husband, my brother's cell phone, and she kept trailing off and getting distracted without ever reaching the point of the whole thing.  So, I am leaving it off-hook until she comes back to this world and can talk clearly to folks.

When I got the phone call from Dad's doctor's office that he was ready to leave, I went over there to get him. There had been a mix-up, however, and he was not ready after all, but sitting in the waiting room for a piece of equipment to be fixed.  Instead of going back to the hospital and returning again later, I decided to just sit there and wait with Dad becuse they said it would only be "a few minutes. After waiting an hour-and-a-half, he lost his patience (and was probably afraid of missing the free lunch at the hospital) so we went over to Mom's room.

It wasn't too long before lunch arrived. They brought a tray for my mother and father, but said that mine would be along a little later. Mom wasn't hungry and didn't touch a bite of her food. Dad ate his lunch.  Just as he was finishing his food, my tray was delivered. However, he was hell-bent on getting back over to his doctor's office immediately, so I took him back over there without eating. Fortunately, my tray was still there when we returned so I finally got some food in me. Now I am just sitting here  — thankful that I have a computer to play with — because my cranky-as-hell father is napping in the recliner and my mother is still off in her own little world and much too flakey for carrying on a meaningful conversation.

What a day. Fuck.



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