Friday, March 31, 2006

Sigh..I wish I was suprised by it ..but I am not.

Well, I should have seen this coming. MIL is going to be in the Rehab facility for two more weeks. Spouse refuses to refer to it as a nursing home. Like that is going to make a GD difference. But....it's his Mama...his call . I just hope and pray that this is not going to be the beginning of a road I dread for him . Now all the times that the co-workers here at the gulag asked .." Is she out yet...? " " How long will she be in?" make sense in a fearful way. I have heard all too often lately of their plight, trauma and eventual acceptance of putting their own beloved parents in a facility. Wracked by guilt, they stand helpless as the face that loved them, cherished them , chastised them and raised them , no longer recognizes them. I cannot imagine their pain. IMHO..it would be worse than the finality of a parent dying. That is agony in itself, been there , done that. But to watch the day by day slow death of a parent...I would weep if there were any tears left. Do me a favor kids. If your parents are still alive and in good health , reletively speaking for their age and circumstances....the next time they just work your last nerve over some trivial BS...let it go. Be grateful that they are still there to piss you off. Cause you are surely gonna miss even that when they are gone. Trust me on this one.


And then there is our wonderful guvmunt. How many of you blew past the lil bitty article on page A10 of our local paper ? . Evidently, the guvmunt has in it's infinite wisdom and grace decided that our troops cannot purchase their own body armor. Seems the guvmunt is worried that an alternate source might not offer the same level of protection that Unca Sammy's does. OK...Calling Bullshit on this one right here and now. The guvmunt is not supplying troops IC with body armor as it is. So GI Joe or Jane, just swimming in the excess that their allotment provides every month , can just buy their own ? How do you tell your spouse that the amount of money they had planned to spend at something totally frivilous ..like the commisary ..is now going to have to go for a vest ? " Gee..lemme think this through Honey...food for Jr. or you getting your head blown off....Aw hell...lets just toss a coin on this one. "

It is enough to make me weep.


Hsve a great weekend...Aunty Pol is off to get the do done...

Wednesday, March 29, 2006

Some Things Are Just Flat Out Wrong People

As usual , it is raining like all Billy Hell as we say down here. Don't ask me why we say that , I neither know nor care who Billy is or why he is infact in hell..! But it is raining. People, this is not a new thing. It rains before Mardi Gras/ the Rodeo. It rains at 4 p.m. as you stand in line for the park and ride to zip your butts back home. It rains after you have washed the car, watered the plants /yard or just gotten your do done. This is especially true , if you and your life partner of whatever format have a function to attend that night. The more formal the function , the higher chance of rain. It is neither good or bad , right ot wrong....it simply is.


But, there are some things that are just Jeebus H wrong. As Easter approaches and the stores are all full of candy, baskets and some truely terrifying rabbits..( If you don't think a rabbit can be terrifying..access your Netflix account and order " Night of the Lepus" staring Rory Calhoon and Janet Lee...watch it , I dare ya..!)...People..Peeps are YELLOW ! Not Purple, lavender, mauve or lilac. Yellow.....like an egg yolk, margerine, the bloody phone book cover.....YELLOW.

It's bad enough that as soon as the Labor Day weekend is over, the stores will start the holiday displays. I ignore most of it as I shop on line...try it , you might be suprised....but PURPLE Peeps ????.............Oh HELL NO !


Speaking of Easter, it is all Aunty Pol can do to stop herself from purchasing some lil outfit for the Princess..aka Cutest Baby on the Planet. God, the outfits are soooooo cute. My brain just melts in a puddle..worse than www.cuteoverload.com ( yes, shameless plug..trust me..it will make you smile on the worst day of your life.) I will resist..I will be good....I will resist.,..I will be good...eyes are crossed now...I will resist...I will be good...

Chanting now dahling..( Wink to SIL) ...chanting

Remember..Purple Peeps are just WRONG !

Have what ever day you feel like....really,.......go a head.

Well...I've re-arranged all the deck chairs on the Titanic

LOL...I heard that used in a conversation recently, and it sums up my frame of mind. I hate spring. I hate it that the yard looks like krep and yet all the mags and tv are full of impossible to accomplish shite. Am I the only one who doesn 't call a fountain a " water feature" ..thank you so very much Alan, Charlie and Tommy ..The SU has one thing on his mind ..no..I wish...Golf. Specifically Myrtle Beach again. Umm..yup..the Redneck Riviera. He had such a good time there last year that he and his band of cohorts are plottin and scheming and blah blah. I don't want to hear it ..I don't care how he pulls this off...I really don't . I did my good wifey poo deed and paid the entry fee last year...yes I am THAT stupid. This now gives the dude the idea that is is so-able on an annual basis. GGGGRRRRR. !

Thursday, March 23, 2006

Well..It's getting a bit better at Casa De Swamp

Well kids, life is calming down a bit it seems, tho I try not to say that too loudly as we all know what happens then.....

MIL is in a nursing home for intensive rehab. The surgery went very well, but the concept of actually getting her from their house to rehab was a bit logistically hard with the sedan and the wheel chair and such ...so this is actually better. Of course SU freaked out totally...TOTALLY.
" Momma in a nursing home...oh hell no". Not even for eight to 10 days.... "Oh HELL NO ".
Nothing I could do would calm his ass down. Finally, I think my MIL realized what was going on and called him herself. Initially, she wanted SU to come and spend the first night at the home with her so FIL could go home and actually sleep in their own bed instead of a pallet at the hospital. Then we found out that this idea was against the homes policy which is understandable..they are not La Quinta . He went over last Saturday and spent the better part of the day with her and said that the joint is brand spankin new, clean, nice staff..yada yada yada so he is getting better with some of this.

Except.................................


MIL has been in remission for over ten years now with Non Hodgekins Lymphoma. Don't ask Aunty Pol what the difference between Hodgekins and Non Hodgekins is cause as far as I am concerned,,cancer is cancer. And yes....I do know that the basic definition of cancer is an abnormality of a cell or group of cells. IT's what happens after that gets hairy. Just to be clear here. Anyhoo...MIL had some very aggressive cancer treatment and I personally suspect that the procedures accelerated the osteoporosis . MIL's bones are very fragile, and while I am trying to be optimistic, I just cannot escape the idea that this is the beginning of ......yeah. SU and I don't talk about this...but I think it is beginning to dawn on him. I think in hindsight that he started to think about this 2 years ago when we lost my father . It's hard to realize that at some certain point, there will be a role reversal and we will be the ones to take care of the folks. Screw all this Sh*t we hear about living longer , better blah blah...Sixty ain''t the new forty...it's Sixty. Taking your flinstones every day does not give you a cosmic 20 year do over. I shudder at the thought of a sixty year old person acting like some of the a**hat forty year olds I know.
Jeebus H.. Now it's the wonderful world of on line research into First Alert or Med Alert and blah blah.....

to be continued.................................

Monday, March 13, 2006

RIP Jakey Jay

Well kids, for some reason the old blog Pol's Pearls is fubared, and frankly I am out of patience. It's probably something I have done...which will make sense in a minute.

SU and I had a loss this weekend. Our "Son" , Jake or Jakey J died. He was first and foremost the most loving male cat I have ever known. And that says a lot. After Bubba Chuck died, SU and I decided to adopt 2 more kittens. A new baby always needs a sib of the same age to buddy up with if being introduced to a house with older kittys. Well, we adopted Munchkin from Pet Smart's PAP..Volunteer Animal Rescue, along with her brother ET. Sadly and unexpectedly, ET did not make it , failure to thrive is what I think it's called . The Vet had this orange marmalade long hair male about 14 months old. The poor lil guy had some minor health issues so ..he was not easily adoptible. Except to us that is. Off we trooped...our new family. You see, SU had cats and I brought in cats, a real feline your's , mine.....and now ours. Tra la la ...Happy family one and all. Because they were so close in age, and brought in together, Munchy and Jakey immediately bonded. You couldn't find one without the other. I honestly cannot recall ever, ever seeing them fight. Kitty Wrestle ..of course. Fight...nope. They slept together, ate together... When we took them to be spayed/neutered , we told the Vet to put them in 1 cage in recovery . He must have initially forgotten, because he made a point of telling us when they were released that they carried on until united. Told ya. A few years later, we brought the triplets home. We were down to TJ, Jakey and Munchkin..so we had room. After all , they have their own bathroom, bedroom and generally speaking the run of the house. Xena and Boshi loved their big bubby. He was the best bed pillow in the world. And he and Loki...buds.....

Jakey J was a pretty big boy, and we felt his weight could be a problem so we put them all in the Iames multi cat reduced diet. And he trimmed up, but with a long haired cat , sometimes it's hard to tell. Last Week, we noticed he'd dropped a lot of weight...too much too quick. We saw this on Thursday and when we got home Friday..it was worse. We took him to the Vet Saturday. There was a tumor in his stomach that the vet felt fairly certain was an aggressive cancer. Inoperable . And my boy was in pain. SO there it was.

We are just heartsick over this., it was one thing when we lost TJ. We had prepared for this and discussed it. She was 21, and lost some ..umm..no other way to say it here gang...bowl control. So we did the right thing. But Jakey J? It happened so quickly...boom. Munchkin has begun to figure out her bubby is gone, the triplets too. They started to look for him yesterday, and Big Daddy no longer has a buddy to nap on the sofa with him.

Jakey was smart as a whip, loved a good game of fetch and his daddy. When he was young we had a stuffed flying pin attached to an elastic string and the entry in to the hall..Yes.."Pigs in Space " . If you bopped it to Jakey, he'd sit there and bop it back..somewhere between volleyball and tether ball. Friends got the biggest kick out of this. He also knew how to turn on lights by getting up on the bathroom vanity and grasping the switch with his teeth. Now before you get all freaky on Ol Pol here..cat Mom's and Dads know it is virtually impossible to keep a determined cat off targeted counter space. Our house is an older house and SU closet has a built in that we figured out had a shoe storage shelf. Jake used to love to get into the closet , jump to an appropriate shelf, grab on to the string for the light bulb and turn it on and off and on and off ....He hated a closed door of any kind. We had the old fashioned door handles for a long time. On schedule at 2 a.m., Jakey would reach up and hit the handle with his paw....Bangadah
Bangadah,,Bangadah till either his Dad or I would get up and open the door. The contents behind the door was not the prize...getting your trained Mom or Dad to get up and open the door was the object. Man, was he pissed when we replaced the handles with door knobs.


There will never be another boy like Jakey J....ever. And I miss him more that I can say..and Big Daddy .....fergit it....he's in no better shape that I am.


If you are a Mom or Dad of what ever variety, and you think about your babies , say a prayer for Jakey J....It's appreciated. PLs forgive the spelling..I'm having trouble reading through the tears as it is.



Aunty Pol