Drunky Drunk Girl

3:47

Course correction? Um, that would mean, me not worrying anymore about whether I post (regularly) to this blog. I thought quite a bit about this over the past few months, and I’ve concluded: this blog is more for me than for my readers, so I don’t have to “please” anyone per se (with the quantity or quality of my posts).

That being said, at this point in my life–and this blog’s life–it’s still nice to reconnect, to stop by the old ‘hood once in a while and say hi to friends and strangers. Hi, friends. Hi, strangers. How’s life?

My life has been a lot of work. Ongoing work. I feel fortunate that I work in one of those professions that was enhanced/improved by the pandemic–in fact, in my professional world, the rest of my coworkers have finally caught up to my reality of working from home (for the past near-decade)! But, yeah, I have a job and I just took another one; I don’t mind, as I know it’s not forever and it’s a means to a financial end. It’s a grind, though, and I’ve suffered from pretty bad RSI in my right wrist these past few weeks to a month, so it’s been hard to do any writing outside of weekday work.

On a different note, after almost a full year since all the craziness with my dad began–it was last August that my brothers and I started to notice just how off-the-wall my dad’s behavior had become; one night, at about dusk, he called me from a field…where, um, he ended up wandering around until 4 the next morning because he essentially got lost–we got him placed into a community-based residential facility, and he moves in tomorrow. It’s like a dorm for people with dementia and Alzheimer’s disease. We shall see how he handles it.

I don’t expect his trying to leave 24/7 to stop, but I hope it dies down a little bit. He’s actually successfully managed to almost “escape” (as he calls it) the nursing home a few times, getting as far as the highway and trying to hitchhike home. The other weekend, a couple of his farmer friends (who are clueless as to what dementia entails) took him out to some sort of event, and that ended up riling him up for days afterward, which culminated in my dad trying to leave the nursing home by stealing an ambulance! All I know is that, the cops were called and my dad didn’t even remember the incident days later.

Of course, nothing is wrong with him and he plans to get a car and commute back and forth to our/his farm. This past Friday night, after my brother had spent the entire day making his dorm room a home, we talked to Dad, and he was like, yeah, when your step-mom comes to pick me up on Monday to take me to the new place, I’m not going, I’ll have her drop me off at home instead–yup, OK, sure.

This has all been quite the trip. I’m just glad it’s over, to the extent that, we did what we needed to do to get him somewhere permanent, safe, and that can actually help his state of mind. Looking at the pictures that my brother sent of his new “home,” I couldn’t help but feel dread more than sadness: so, THIS is where a man of his intellect (he went to one of the military academies) ends up, a small room with a twin bed and a few pictures of the highlights of his life (which he can’t remember anyway), hanging on the walls. GREAT.

It’s hard not to take his deterioration to heart. It’s really brought home the question, what is the point? Literally. Like, if you can’t remember any of it anyway, WHY live a life in which you don’t like your job, you don’t like your moments? It’s been rattling around in my head as I work all these jobs that leave me going, wow, I really did not have ANY fun today except that one hour walking the dogs, or those two hours of jogging along the beach. Sure, I know I am fortunate and have privilege; at the same time, this question bounces along like a tumbleweed being blown down the center line.

Anyway, I hope all are well. We’ve got a tropical storm passing over our island today, which means a lot of rain (nothing more serious; it’s just a storm, not a hurricane). I’m taking advantage of a rare day of downtime–to write, to take stock, to zone out…

Tags: dementia, downtime, life goes on, parent with dementia, post-pandemic, Sunday, weekend, working from home