CafeChatNoir

Hell of a decade and I’m thrilled that it’s in the rear view mirror.  (No, I’m not going to argue that it’s really not the end of the decade because there was no year zero, etc, etc.)

A divorce, 4 jobs, failed relationships, death, destruction, moving, general chaos & a good chunk of family drama.

On the upside, there were 2 of the best cats ever, 2 of the best kittens ever, the awesomedog, a great brother, good friends, and Guinness.  A lot of Guinness.

Hopefully the next decade will have more ups than downs.

I have hit the wall and I am just flat-out exhausted.

Little bro went off to see Avatar, and I was thinking about seeing Up In The Air, but I decided it was too likely that I’d fall asleep in the middle of the movie, or I’d have a coughing fit.  (The head cold is pretty much gone, now I will just sound like a TB patient for the next week and a half.)

I can only assume it’s just the stress of the trip – it’s not really easy to sit around and pretend like everything is just fine and dandy when in reality, my grandmother’s brain is turning to cement.  It’s not like we’ve been partying every night by any means.

The hotel has been a godsend, but it’s no substitute for home.

Because it seems we’ve decided to let the terrorists win by making flying commercially so inconvenient and unpleasant that not even the terrorists will get on board, much less anyone else.  Sure, this could be a boon to RV rentals, rail & boat travel, but I’m not really sure that’s the best idea.

To the jackass pants bomber with Daddy issues:  I hope you have the meanest nurse on the wing you are in, your burns get infected and you get Necrotizing fasciitis.  And that they only have ham sandwiches for meals.  I hope after you got tackled on the plane, someone kicked you in the nuts for good measure.

Jasper Schuringa: Well done.  Northwest/Delta should be giving you free first class flights for the rest of your life.

Pants bomber Dad:  You tried to warn people.  I do give you credit for that.

Al Qaeda:  Dredging the bottom of the barrel now, aren’t we?  Guess it shows you’re being progressive to recruit from the short bus brigade.

TSA:  Let’s start by revoking that passing audit on Lagos International Airport, shall we?  Just how big was that briefcase full of cash to make that happen, anyway?  (Yes, I said it.)

State Department:  Why did he still have a visa?  Wasn’t he on an “We don’t think we really want this guy around, but we don’t know enough to flat out put him on the no-fly list” list?  Why wasn’t that enough to say, “Sorry, we get to be arbitrary about some things, and this is one of them, we’re revoking your visa.”?

Amsterdam Airport: Weren’t you guys supposed to re-screen this twit?  What happened?

And last but not least, would an flight originating in Nigeria passing through Amsterdam with this guy on the manifest be welcome at Ben Gurion airport?  Had this guy even been allowed on the first leg of the flight, would Israeli security have been waiting at Amsterdam to escort him off?  I really don’t know the answer – just wondering, because they seem to have the security thing down.

But really TSA, let’s not go knee-jerk on this.  Get mad at the other airports that failed before the flight even left the tarmac.  Making everyone miserable to show that you’re “doing something” for the sake of “doing something” isn’t the answer.

Can you tell I’m really looking forward to our flight home?

Upon further investigation, it has come to my attention that Boxing Day does not mean I can go punch someone.  Damn.

I will say I am greatly tiring of my grandmother’s attitude.  I completely sympathize with her situation and frustrations and it is why I am completely hellbent on getting her more help to make things easier in any and every way possible for her and allow her to continue to stay in her home for as long as humanly possible.  I am really not that much of a bastard, despite what she may think – I don’t want her to have to go into a nursing home unless it’s an absolute 100% necessity.

But her attitude still sucks – and it’s not the Alzheimer’s/dementia/mad cow/whatever the hell it is, it’s been this way for a very, very long time.

She’s perfectly content to use us for errands and taxes and whatever else that will keep someone from calling social services on her, but other than that, we’re just cluttering up her life.  She does it to others as well, but it’s always been family that has taken the brunt of it.  (I still do not know how my mother managed to never shove her down the stairs.)  After a while, I cannot help but find myself thinking, “I left my home, my pets, and my friends at Christmas for this?” I can only hear that we’re throwing her day into disarray so many times before I am tempted to say, “We can fix that, we’re outta here.”  But I have not.  Not sure if it because I am nice or an idiot.  (Idiot is probably the right answer.)

I have still managed NOT to get into any fights with her – it’s been a record length of time for any visit with her in my entire life.  So I’ve got that going for me, and I’ll be damned if I don’t take a hell of a lot of credit for it.

Though there has been a bit of Festivus action today, on the whole it’s gone better than I thought it would.  We did accidentally wake her up from a nap, which had her in a bit of a mood for the first half of the afternoon.  (She doesn’t nap on any kind of consistent schedule, so the only way we could guarantee not waking her would be to not show up at all.)

She actually decided that eating in was preferable to standing in line for over an hour for the exact same food.  However, we did near come to blows over the microwave…  She doesn’t use it, and has decided it is broken, which must be why she doesn’t use it.  No, she doesn’t use it because she can’t even begin to read any of the buttons and can’t remember what order to hit them in.*  Then even if it did work, she was sure I wouldn’t know how to use it, because it’s not the same model as mine.

But, we finally got past all that and had a relatively pleasant dinner.

The Snuggie seemed to be a hit, (yes, we got her a Snuggie, no I am not proud of it) though I wish I had remembered how damn big those things are (it’s pretty obvious from the ads that they’re huge) and had I been smart I would have opened it up before we left and hemmed it up, but hindsight is always 20/20, isn’t it?

Despite feeling like death, and it greatly affecting my mood to the negative side, I am happy to say there have been no knock down-drag out fights yet, and even today when she was getting a touch on the bitchy side, I did not take the bait.

*Thankfully others bring her home cooked stuff so it’s not like she lives 100% on cold food.  But would certainly do so if left to her own devices.

Either my grandmother will recognize I took some initiative to make Christmas dinner just as tradtional but 100x easier, or I have ruined Christmas.

I made an executive decision this year, and it was that we would NOT be going to JB’s for Christmas dinner.  It is a perfectly fine place, but it is the only place that is open on Christmas day in Sun City, and as such, it is a madhouse.  Unless you get there the minute they open for the morning brunch, you can count on a minimum of a 1 hour wait.  There are not enough places to sit when waiting, and given that it is Sun City, about 2/3 of the guests NEED to sit while waiting.  Finally, it is a buffet, which is near impossible for my grandmother to navigate with the cane & balance issues.

Yet, she has made noises about doing it again this year.  (I suspect she has forgotten the buffet/insane asylum aspect of it.)  Rather than even argue it, we are just going to surprise her.

With the help of Safeway’s deli & prepared foods department, we’re heading over with turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, gravy, pasta salad and rolls.  Everything we could get at JB’s without the wait or standing in line to get it, and without the noise and insanity of being stuffed in a small restaurant with 120 other people.  (I also fully admit this may be nothing more subconscious revenge for the year she arrived and simply announced we would be having ham for Christmas dinner and that was that.  I beleive that was also the year I banned her from my kitchen.)

This one really could go either way.

I brought the laptop to the condo so we could avoid going to the bank.  I think we almost have my grandmother convinced that her checkbook is in fact up to date and perfect and matches the bank records and we don’t need to run that little hellish errand.  (She has quite the reputation at the bank, and it’s not a good one.  I am still surprised that no one there has called Social Services on her.)

Of course, now I am just using the laptop because my god, no offense to my grandmother, it is so incredibly boring here, cause we don’t talk about anything besides her checkbook, taxes, or death.  And I can certainly talk about her checkbook and surf the internet all at the same time – I am quite the multitasker.  I also need to keep track of where Santa is, dammit.  I think keeping my sanity intact is very important, lest I start saying what I’m thinking out loud.

Today’s conversations have been split between the checkbook and the fact that our presence has thrown her day into disarray.  Her nose is also out of joint because Sharyn isn’t coming over today.  Sharyn isn’t coming over because a) we are here and can help out and b) Sharyn’s grandchildren are here and she wants to spend time with them.  Though given that Sharyn is the only thing keeping her out of a nursing home, it’s a good thing she likes her.

And yet, my head cold rages on.

We made it.  Grandma is still grandma, if flakier and more frail.  Nothing unexpected – she’ll be 87 in a week and has never had a healthy habit in her life.  The fact that she is still alive is amazing, though I would have to say that one good fall with a broken bone, and she’d be toast.  In talking w/Sharyn it’s agreed all around that the “caregiving crew that can’t be called caregivers” needs to be expanded and we’ll be working on that.  The biggest problem is when she is alone, no one gets any peace.  Whenever something pops into her head, she goes to the phone – it’s a pure reflex at this point for her, not a conscious decision, which results in her making everyone else crazy.

This is probably also the last Christmas she’ll have any clue who we are.  Kinda sad, but again, hardly unexpected.  I’d say it could be her last Christmas here on earth, but we’ve been saying that for the last 10 years.

The calendar says it’s Christmas Eve, but you couldn’t prove it by me – the biggest downer of being here at Christmas is that it has never, ever felt anything like Christmas.  Everything that makes Christmas what it is to me is back home, not here.  So, that part fairly well sucks, but it is what it is.  (And though I have fears to the contrary, my grandmother will not live forever and I’ll have many years of finally doing Christmas my way.  Just not this year.)

On the upside, we have made a few brilliant decisions this trip.  The first being the hotel.  (Mad props to my brother for coming up with this idea in the first place.)  We’re at the Renaissance Grand over in Glendale, and it’s really nice.  It’s right next to the town center which has a bucketload of restaurants, the hockey arena and a movie theater – and people under the age of 60.  And given that it doesn’t seem that Phoenix is a big Christmas destination, we got a really good deal on the room to boot.

The second brilliant decision was in making the travel days separate from any interaction with my grandmother.  (This comes from my last trip out here.)  It may sound harsh, but I can deal with US Airways, or my grandmother, but not both in the same day.  Just isn’t going to work.

Last but not least – deciding to fly out of Dulles instead of National.  Amazing how when you decide you will take flights that are convienent for YOU and not anyone else, things are a lot easier.  I hadn’t flown out of Dulles in 10 years and I was blown away at how much better it is than National.  Between having many hours in the morning to get the pets to the kennel (*sob*) and not having to take a death cab to the metro and fight with that ridiculousness (and I’m not even sure our metro station was open) and deal with the service impaired folks at National – it was actually a stress free travel day.

I’m still kicking myself a bit for the length of this trip – we could probably leave day after tomorrow and it wouldn’t make a difference at all in my grandmother’s mind.  But her shrieks of “you won’t be here long enough to get everything done!” from years past kept ringing in my ears as I made the reservations…  Ah well, lessons learned.  (I think I’ll have it all figured out about a week after she dies.  If she ever dies.)

Other than the “damn, I REALLY want to go drive somewhere, because I really SHOULDN’T drive anywhere” cabin fever, we seem to have survived the not-quite-a-blizzard of 2009.

Our road is looking really good, seems a VDOT truck or two has come through – the landscaping truck helped a LOT though.  Sounds like Arlington is still a mess, saw a report a bit ago of a 5 car pileup on 233 going into National Airport.  It seems to be another good day to simply stay put if at all possible and let the road crews do their thing.

The cats still seem mildly confused when they look outside and can’t figure out where the color all went, but they’re doing their normal sleep/annoy the dog activities.  The dog is quite unimpressed at this point – when the snow is as high as he is (or higher) it takes a fair amount of the fun out of it for him.  However, he has decided that it’s GREAT fun to go sit under the patio table and refuse to come back inside, for he is Moxley, wild dog of Tibet.

The sidewalks are done – well, done enough as far I am concered at the moment.  No, they are not 4 feet wide, but they are passable.  We said “screw it” as far as the full driveway was concerned – there is a clear path down to the sidewalks.  (Yay for 4WD vehicles so we can get in & out.)  I swear, I need to remember this next August and go out and get a little snowblower of some sort.  I am in a bit of pain today – funny how there is no activity that really mimics snowshoveling when it comes to muscle usage.

The only big question remaining is – how overbooked will Tuesday’s flight be?

And it really needs to stop soon. I love a good snowstorm, but around here, anything above 10 inches becomes a touch…unwieldy.  Mainly because we just do NOT have the snow-removal infrastructure needed to keep up with a storm like this, and it shows.  If we got more storms like this, then I’d be annoyed, but we don’t, so there isn’t much reason to have a snowplow brigade that rivals Buffalo.  And to top that off, all above ground Metro services ceased operations at 1:00 this afternoon.  So, everyone is fairly well stuck.

The only reason our street is semi-decent is there was a landscaping truck looping through the neighborhood most of the day, along with a truck with a plow blade on it from the local firehouse.  (I’m sure it has nothing to do with the fact that the volunteer chief lives on our street.)  The truck I thought was VDOT last night was the landscaping truck.  I won’t be surprised if I don’t see a VDOT vehicle on this road until Monday.

Saw lots of footage of Old Keene Mill Road today, which is the main road to get to I-95 in this area and it was a complete disaster.  Hopefully once the snow stops, VDOT can start catching up.  Several of the interstates were shut down at various points during the day today, and at the moment VDOT has pretty much all of them classified as “hazardous” with “significant accumulations of snow and/or ice.”  Lots of cars stranded all over the place – I was surprised at how many people were trying to get around in this mess.

All in all, I’d say we got about 2 feet here, which is more than enough.  Hopefully all the various and sundry modes of transportation will be working again come Tuesday.