Nice soothing, protective ones for me, please?
Heading out in the morning with my folks and my sister in their new RV. Egads this was SUCH a bad idea! Dad decided that due to Mom's incontinence this was the only way she'd ever get out and about (he calls it a pot on wheels). Well she claims the problem(s) are solved and she doesn't need this anyway, and with the price of gas so high (spent $3.76/gal for lowest grade this AM), a 30 gallon tank and 10 MPG, I can't see the silver lining here, myself. But still he bought it, then realized he is terrified to drive it and decided that L(sister) and I should drop everything and drive Mom and him around the countryside. Sigh... If there is one thing that has truly never EVER crossed my mind it is traveling the world in a motor home. I DESPISE the buggers weaving all over the road with little puffs of grey hair barely showing over the steering wheel. This one is small, 24 feet I think, but I'm sure it will sway in the wind just fine. I'm also sure the risk that Mom will mistake the back door for the bathroom and step out onto the freeway at 65mph is quite high.
So this is the initiation trip. L drove them to my house and we'll tandem up through the big cities visiting friends and relatives. Then L will fly home from up north and I'll drive them back down here. From there, hopefully, Dad can navigate himself back Home. They live near an enormous city, but they don't actually have to drive through the city, just through a piece of sprawl to the south. If he can't do that he should sell the fucker and be done with it! Really he shouldn't drive at all, IMOP, but that's a story for another time and place.
Even without the whole RV thing, 5 days with my parents is something to make the bravest soul quake. May I introduce Pollyanna and Lucifer? L just snuck around the back of my house and headed out to a hotel so she can sleep in peace tonight. I have only a pair of air mattresses and she is a finicky sleeper. I guess Dad took a power nap before she arrived last night and proceeded to keep her awake until 2am, then got up again at 5 and began grinding coffee beans. The bed was horrid and the bathroom so nasty she wore shoes and levitated. Can't blame her at all for wanting respite before she faces another three days with them.
Dad is riding high at the moment, mood wise, which means he's talking endlessly and loudly and demanding every nanosecond of everyone's time. No doubt he will crash soon and become a sullen, irritable 3 year old for at least half of the trip, complete with at least one whopping temper tantrum. WHY is it that I feel the need to tolerate this shit? Ok, because I was raised believing your parents are to be cherished and respected and that you should give back for all the sacrifices they made for you. Well I've heard somewhere that two out of three ain't bad... how about just the one, will that suffice? On the bright side I will come home with a much greater appreciation for the life I live with a wonderful person who does NOT behave like this. Granted the feathered pets are incontinent, for all intents and purposes, so there are some similarities, but they're at least cute in the bargain!
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9 comments:
OMG. This does not sound like a very fun vacation. I think you will be very, very glad to return home when the trip is done.
Be safe and don't forget to breathe.
Donna
Will be thinking of you...I couldn't do it...no way, no how!
Oh...and keep the "back door" locked and the bathroom door slightly ajar?
lol sounds god awful. PLease make sure you mom doesn't go to the bathroom alone. That was truly a horrible image.
Will be sending you nice thoughts.
Ok, so this isn't going so well. Mom has this 'little' incontinence thing which she denies exists. It comes in two flavors, but she had successfully hidden one from us for a long time. After she peed all over my sister's floor at Thanksgiving we w/out knowing it we had a come to Jesus meeting and got her to a doctor (other than my father). She went once and then refused to do the followup, swearing that the hormone cream he gave her did the trick.
Then there is the 'poop' problem which has been getting progressively worse as she ages (torn apeaseatomy almost 50 years ago) She refused to tell the doc she even had the problem since she said it was all gone. Um, right.
This morning it looked like someone blew up a chocolate frosted cake in the RV bathroom. She didn't tell anyone (we stayed in the house while visiting a family friend) and L discovered it in tidying up for the day's trip.
Ugly scene w/ the family friend raading my dad the riot act about dealing with reality, selling their house (and the stupid RV) and getting into assisted living. Three hour delay and then Mom's sister-in-law informed us that they weren't available to see her after all and left us high and dry in SJ. There is an 11 car pileup on the GG bridge and it's closed, so we're Chugging through East Bay traffic to get to our hotel up north of SF for the night. This is day two of five...
OMG - you are a braver/more committed daughter than I. Your trip sounds like torture. I hope your parents really appreciate it and that you'll never have to take another trip like this again.
Oh geez. This sounds like a nightmare trip. It's gotta be hard for you. Sounds like there's a ton of denial going on with both parents, and I don't know what it will take before they understand that they need assistance. Assisted living is awesome - we did it with my father-in-law, but it sometimes takes an act of God before they believe that it's needed.
Donna
It sounds horrible. East bay traffic is really bad too...that does not help any at all. We were going through East Bay traffic on the afternoon of the 21st...bad, bad, bad move. :(
Thank you everyone for the much needed moral support! If it weren't for having a hotel room separate from my folks I'd be psychotic by now. They were horrified at the idea, seeing as they have the RV, but after two nights in there they were ready for regular beds and a shower.
Today was pretty good, all told. Dad's half brother and his wife were was great. She's Peruvian and made us an absolutely scrumptious meal from her home country! Mom's brother called and wanted to reschedule a visit, so we're going to see him for lunch on the way home Saturday (means I have to drive the monster in SJ proper). L got on the plane ok and except for all her luggage being hopelessly lost, she is home safely.
Going to sleep sleep sleep tonight and hope the next two days go well too. Dad was only marginally assholish and his brother is enough like him that he was able to hold his own. This is a 'new' family, only discovered when Dad was pursuing genealogy online and learned that his father had remarried and had 7 more kids after him! So after 72 years of being an only child he is suddenly at sea in siblings. Many of them are much worse than he is, and we learned that his father, whom he never knew, was quite clearly a psychopath... lied, cheated, stole, beat his kids and his wife mercilessly (tried to kill two sons and give his daughters to an orphanage), but was also charming, well educated, cultured, and amazingly intelligent at the same time. Thus I have to acknowledge that we could have had it much worse... This brother we just visited is the kindest, gentlest of the group. Probably because he never knew their father either. His mother divorced when he was very little. Fortunately for him his mother didn't remarry exactly the same sort of guy the way my grandmother did. It's been 7 years since he found them and we've met all but one brother; who appears to be so far off plumb we're not so sure we want to go there anyway.
I think it may have been finding and learning about this family that pushed me the rest of the way into psychology. I also think that this is why I study psychopathy and work with young criminals.
Off to bed in preparation for the migration south tomorrow. We'll be in my birth town for the day, visiting a cousin, so I'm hoping it might actually be fun!
Very interesting stuff about your father's family. I totally identify with the psychopathic parent - my father was one and that's a hell of a way to live for a kid. While my father never tried to give me away, he did threaten to have me locked up for being incorrigible when I was a teenager, and he could have done it since he was a cop. He did lots of other things, too, including embezzling from his own mother when she was in a nursing home with dementia. Thankfully, I got away from him at 18 and my mother divorced him a few years later. Then he died. Good riddance. Like you said, I also think it played a part in my interest in the field of psychology.
Every day gets you closer to home :)
Donna
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