Eldercare and Its Pitfalls

Dementia is a bitch.  It nothing more is an exaggeration of a woman "on the rag."  Bitchy, irrational, selfish, hypoglycemic, and angry.  Today, hell day, I was just waiting for the shit to hit the fan.  First, eating waffles and bacon at three in the afternoon on a Sunday is the antiChrist.  I should have remembered this, except that today I made the mistake of fixing Campbells tomato soup and a toasted cheese sandwich.  This really pisses my mom off.  If I were on my P's and Q's, I would word that differently.  Off is a preposition, and one does not end a sentence with a dangling preposition.  Really it is a dangling participle,  Not.  A preposition should not dangle like your penis.  Whatever.  Eating lunch at three in the afternoon on a Sunday.  Hell.  I made that mistake today, only because I spent four hours in the car on the highway yesterday.  I was tired.  Like the majority of the populace, I sleep when I can.  "Get what you can, can it, and sit on the can."  Lots of folks in Fayettenam have done that, and they are filthy rich.  I, on the other hand, am poor.  I have not only the antagonism of both of the females in my immediate family, but the antagonism of America.  Corrupt America.  Trump America.  The legal drug trade, now as reported by "60 Minutes," as Big Pharma, the reason we are in Afghanistan.  The drug companies are controlling Washington and thus the United States Military.  Those poor, ignorant, naive bastards willing to get their asses shot off for their country, are gathering poppies for the legal drug trade.  No surprise there.  Shit.  So our van stopped working.  Our 1999 Toyota Sienna van failed to turn over a new leaf.  It failed to start, in our driveway, a few days ago.  Its battery is pretty new, one year old to be exact.  It has a three year replacement policy.  I had no worries about it, other than the van was dead in the driveway.  I left it, and traveled to Boone, North Carolina to visit my uncle.  When I came back, there it sat, the van, dead in the driveway.  No matter what I did in the meantime.  Counselor and therapist for my uncle and his wife.  No matter the altruistic offering of moi.  Fuck all that.  The van is sitting int he driveway, DOA.  When I arrived back home after four hours on the highway, I was tired.  I didn't much care about the van, because mi madre has spent beaucoup dinero on that van.  Each time we take it to Triple A to get its annual inspection (that's once a year) they dredge up whatever repairs are necessary.  This annual forty dollar inspection cost us a grand.  What was it?  Timing belt.  Water pump.  Blah blah.  Did they actually do it?  I don't know.  I used to do these repairs myself, but with three vehicles in our immediate family now....   You have to trust.  Before that it was a valve cover gasket, transmission fluid, and something else.  You never know.  This time it was timing belt and water pump.  I realize having owned and driven a Toyota Tercel for many years, the timeline for Japanese import repairs.  The Triple A suggestions have been timely.  They have been accurate.  The reason for the van's unwillingness to start in the last few days, like most everything, is a new riddle.  I was busy on the road, and that van's reluctance to start after all of this work was a irritant, to both me and my moms.  To make a long story short I knew in a matter of time my ass would roll because that van was stationary in the driveway.  Because it was Sunday and because I get to choose what I pleasure, I left the van for later.  After half a bottle of bourbon, to forget about my family, and to forget about Stephan Sanders and his program for the Fayetteville Symphony, and to forget about my homosexual neighbors and their inhibitions, insecurities, and foibles, (mostly my mother's dementia) I decided to probe a little deeper.  The battery registered a full twelve volts, after an overnight charge.  And after sleeping, an impossibility in America, I tried jumping that van with my able Nissan truck.  No mas.  No more.  DOA.  I remember when I installed the new battery a year ago, I had an issue with the terminal connector.  Even after putting in the new battery, it didn't want to start.  I took off the connector, put it in the vise, and bent, cleaned, and manipulated it until the bolt would tighten.  As it were that same problematic terminal end had grown white dust between its strata.  White dust.  That two-tiered device, a cheap piece OEM metal from Toyota, had grown a new layer of non-conductive white ash.  Okay.  I discovered the issue, not with panic, not with dementia, and not with tragedy.  The world would not end because the van was dead.  It just was not going to be my priority.  As an educated, adult, intelligent heterosexual man, I get to choose.  That is my God-given right, something that pales  today.  We all have become slaves, again.