Heaven, one bite at a time

    My portable baklava has transmogrified again, this time to mini-muffins. I wanted to add coconut, but adding enough such that anybody could taste it made for an unpleasantly chaotic trail mix and unpleasantly greasy fingers. So I added an egg and tried to make cookies, but too much stuck to the aluminum foil. Thus mini-muffins. Otherwise, the recipe is exactly the same. OK, end of blog post; have a nice day!
    Or maybe not. It's kind of hard to write this recipe, since what I do is completely insane. What I wanted was brown rice flour, which nobody sells. This is because the difference between white and brown rice is the bran. So if you want brown rice flour, you buy white rice flour and rice bran and blend the two. However, I still have all that puffed brown rice I need to use up anyway, so what I did was put a cup thereof in a freezer bag and beat hell out of it. A lot of people think that the strongest substance on Earth is spider silk, but I'm pretty sure it's puffed brown rice. I use a sauce pan for the beating, flipping the bag over now and again. It isn't necessary (nor possible) to make flour or meal; just pulverize as much as you can.
    Preheat oven to 325 degrees. The coconut is a pain, since I use frozen. It doesn't exactly like being measured. However, I aim for about two tablespoons worth. I set it out on a saucer on the rear right burner, which in my house gets quite warm as the oven is preheating. If yours doesn't, you can always put it in the oven for 5 minutes or so.
    As before, get out a large mixing bowl and add a tablespoon of EV olive oil, two of clover honey, another of oil, another two of honey. Add a teaspoon of cocoa and a teaspoon of vanilla. Mix like crazy. Crack and scramble an egg and add. Mix even crazier. Add your ricemeal and mix the craziest still. Add a quarter of a cup of raw sunflower seed meats and three-quarters of a cup of chopped pecans and your hopefully-defrosted coconut. Mix to your heart's content.
    Publix has non-stick mini-muffin tins and also the paper liners. Between the honey and the egg, this stuff is super-sticky. Also, the muffin tins feature a warning not to use anything metal on them. I just had no confidence that I could get the muffins out without a knife or something, so I used paper liners and they worked very well. Might be overkill. The recipe above made an even 12, coincidentally the number of cups in the mini-muffin tin. Magic!
    Spoon out your mixture into the paper liners in your mini-muffin tin. Cook for 25 minutes. (See Edit below.) Take out and let cool for at least 10 minutes. Enjoy heaven in the form of ricemeal pecan joy mini-muffins, one bite at a time.
     Edit: When I did this the first time, I baked for 20 minutes at 350 and when I brought the pan out, the cupcakes looked undercooked. So I put them back in for another five minutes with the oven still hot but the heat turned off and they turned out perfect. When I tried it the second time but baking for 25 minutes, they came out just a tad overcooked. I settled on 23 minutes at 350, but since have been happier baking for 25 minutes at 325. Pretty sure that the egg is completely cooked at that temperature. Anyway, nobody died. Well; nobody important.:)
    Eventually, I remembered that between the cocoa, the coconut and the pecans, I've pretty much synthesized German chocolate cake frosting, at least how it was done in our house. Thus the new name for the mini-muffins (or cupcakes) is German Chocolate Ricing. Huzzah!

OK, maybe I'm not such an idiot

    On retrospect, Dad seems to like UniHealth a lot more than he did when he was actually there. Of course, he may be trying to make me feel better, since I've been quite loud in my self-criticism about having ever sent him there. But he now says that they taught him to walk again, so he's grateful. The whole having to beg for help with bodily functions thing, the whole always hating the food thing, and the whole having to wait an hour to see a nurse thing seems to be out of sight and out of mind.
    Still, he's doing a lot lot lot better at Rice Estate, so I'm glad I got him moved there. He's well, so UniHealth didn't do any serious damage. And it's possible that I couldn't have gotten him off Dilantin at Rice Estate. The fact that UniHealth is so cheap and slapdash may have served us well in that case. Anyway, I'm willing to accept "All's well that ends well" as a life's philosophy, as indeed, my father did decades ago.

Whatcha say

    "Whatcha say" is a lot more romantic sounding in "Heroes" by David Bowie than if you add a question mark and an exclamation mark. Dad has needed hearing aids for at least 40 years, probably my entire life, and he's never been particularly gracious about his lack of hearing. Rather than grasping that maybe his life would be better if he could hear better, he has always acted as if the rest of us are just mumbling. His recent tendency to answer everything with "Whatcha SAY?!", even to Margaret, is more than a little wearing. It isn't even as fun to hear as the Nazi in "Casablanca": "Vot did you SAY?" When I can't hear what he says, I try to set a good example with "I'm sorry; I couldn't hear you" or even "Pardon?" Not working so far.

A small tragedy

    Walking home from yesterday's building, just around the corner on Olympia Avenue, I saw a young woman holding a baby and with two very small children, standing just outside her front door talking on a cell or otherwise cordless phone. She was obviously upset, but calm enough to be polite. ("Yes, ma'am.") She must have been talking to 9-1-1; given how quickly the fire trucks came, she must have been on for a while and they may have been keeping her on the line to keep her calm. It's a terrible little building, a duplex like two shotgun shacks turned sideways. Also with window units for AC, but with a small satellite dish. No matter how poor you are, you have to be plugged into the entertainment monster.
    Two pumper trucks came and one ladder truck. I thought the latter was overkill since it was a one-story building and a low one at that, but by this morning, the roof was boarded up, meaning part of it must have burned away. There was obvious smoke damage out one window (also boarded up) and no sign of the young family, not surprisingly. It was weird because I was only feet away and never even smelled smoke. The lady and her young children seemed to be breathing perfectly well; there were no coughs that I could hear.
    So while I'm very sorry that they lost their rental apartment and that their possessions were likely smoke and water damaged, I'm so grateful that they came out unhurt. And wish them every good luck in the future.
    (Why didn't you stay to help, John? It looked like a lady talking on the phone and standing in front of her house with her kids. As I say, I didn't smell smoke and she didn't sound all that alarmed. It was only when the fire trucks rolled up and stopped there that I was sure that something was wrong. And firemen are often called for grease fires that get contained with no damage at all. In other words, I didn't know it was a small tragedy until today.)

This property is condemned

    There's this very cool building in my neighborhood. It looks like a fortress, painted white. It must have been in some commercial use at some time. I say this partly because the real estate sign very, very high on one wall says "For Lease" instead of "For Rent" and because the front door is recessed behind two iron gates with plate glass windows like the entrance to a small store.
    I wanted it for my world headquarters. It's-- well, I used "very cool" already, so I'll just say that it's a delightful surprise in an otherwise residential neighborhood. The fortress look appeals to my enchantment with irony. Unfortunately, there is a notice on both doors to the effect that the building has been deemed unsafe and will be knocked down if corrections are not made. Granted that the notice was about it being unsafe for housing and the building doesn't appear to be intended for housing, but one suspects that the authorities would call this hair-splitting.
    Mind you, there are window units in some of the windows, suggesting a lack of central air. In this climate, that would make for a fairly unpleasant world headquarters. Still, in a town with so few cool buildings, it would be a pity to lose one more. Where are the "Breakin'" kids when we need them?

Pleasantly uneventful

    Long ago, I noted that in the current situation, boring is a good thing. However, since it is not a popular word or concept and certainly not something you can say about an event reflecting a lot of hard work by others, so I will say that Thanksgiving yesterday was pleasantly uneventful. Granted, Dad hit his head getting into Anne's car, which is always a little worrying, but otherwise everything went trouble-free.
    It was also neat that there was so much going on. Between baby Braiden, now almost 10 months old, walking, cute as a button and waving like royalty and Margaret's granddaughter Libby and her husband Matt on the verge of adopting a baby, there was a lot to distract from the return of the conquering hero. I suspect that this suited Dad fine. Libby and Matt received a surprise baby shower to their great delight and that of us all. So Thanksgiving was pleasantly uneventful in the sense that nothing bad happened to or with Dad, and quite fun and eventful otherwise. And the turkey was great.
    We also got to talk a bit with Margaret's daughters Linda and Bunny. We are all agreed that, though we don't disapprove of Dad and Margaret living together, we don't see how it could work given their mobility problems. So now it's just a matter of getting them to see another way. Which might not be so hard.

We none of us can pronounce "dialysis"

    Well, between Dad, Margaret and me, that is. Granted it's a difficult word. Granted two of us are fast approaching 91. But we all tend to stick on the word. Dad for a long time called it "the place I go" or "the place I go three times a week." Margaret will stick on the word and otherwise has trouble pronouncing it. I have more trouble with the word than with most words, too, and find a certain difficulty saying it as well.
    I don't think we're in denial or anything. I guess it's mostly all it represents: the loss of freedom of movement; the loss of all that time; and the actual discomfort it causes Dad three times a week. (I'd rather blame the dipthong, but I don't think that's really a dipthong. Long, long, long time since I took Phonics. Really love using the word "dipthong" at every opportunity, though.)
    And on this Thanksgiving Day: Thanks!

The Fortress of Solitude

    As time passes, I tend more to question the wisdom of having set up all these defenses around me. OK, the barbed wire, that's just common sense, but the machine gun emplacements, the tank crews, the neutron bomb-- these might be overdoing it just a smidge. The world just isn't that scary. Anyway, the world isn't any scarier, or even as scary, as I am. There must be some reason all these people seem so intimidated by me, I mean besides the monobrow. It's a bewilderment to me.
    Maybe I'll dismiss the crews and dismantle the bomb. I actually like people a great deal. I think I can trust them not to bring any red kryptonite. And it's getting pretty cold up here in the Arctic with just a leotard on. (Kidding!)

Aggressively uninteresting

    I had one of those dreams last night that was interesting because it was uninteresting. In other words, it was startlingly vivid, especially given that a) my dreams usually aren't and b) it was highly prosaic. In real life, I'm giving Paul a ride to Aiken today to see his mom, brother, sister-in-law and nieces. In the dream, we were going to the mountains instead. (A much better idea. Hey; his extended family can come, too!)
    He was playing a Walkman, only it was called a Boneman. I believe that in real life there is something called bone hearing aids, but maybe I'm making that up, too. If there's such a thing as bone headphones, I don't want to know about it. I think that was the inspiration anyway. I thought he was playing my Walkman (I think you can guess the odds that either of us have a Walkman in real life in 2011) and he got annoyed that I would suggest such a thing. He wanted to play his Fats Domino records.
    Also in the dream were real things from my apartment like the Batman punching bag. In real life, we went to a rally at the State House last night and I was pretty hepped up by the experience for no reason that I can think of, both as of the time I went to bed and when I got up. Maybe that was it. Maybe it's the unseasonably warm weather. Note to Paul: you should probably go get some Fats Domino records.

Oh great

    Sarcastic but it isn't sarcastic, because on one level it really IS great. Dad, before the hospital, drove one of two cars: a '78 Impala and an '82 (or so) Crown Victoria, mainly the latter. The engine on the Ford died when it was only a few years old, so he's been driving it with a (terribly) rebuilt engine for decades now. My sister Anne has been offering for many years to buy him a new, reliable car. The other day, he finally said that he thought he would accept the offer. Yaaay... ish.
    Problem is of course that he should. not. be. driving. Even Margaret, who is also his age, feels this way. (Probably especially Margaret, since she would be the one riding with him.) She says he can't turn his head, which indeed would uh, impinge unfavorably on driving. Also, the main thing he would want to drive to and from would be dialysis, which I think would be ill-advised at best. I'd much, much, much rather hire somebody to drive him, especially to dialysis.
    In the short term, Anne will be coming down for Thanksgiving, so we can discuss it then. And I will ask the physical and occupational therapists to check on his neck mobility. But compared to a few months ago, it's truly awesome that such questions are even coming up.

Where's the river?

    Back in the '80s, I had the pleasure of traveling in Europe now and again, creating many happy memories, and one weird one. When I reached Valencia, in Spain, it struck me as a very nice city, except for one thing: the river was missing. There was a broad flat area running linearly through town with bridges over it and everything, but no water. I keep thinking that I must have asked many people, "Where the hell is the river?" but if I did, they must have been fellow tourists who knew no more than I did. Because if I had asked any natives, they would have without doubt cleared it up directly.
    If you want to know the solution to the mystery, do an image search of Valencia, Spain, which I did a year or so ago to try to find the answer. And you will find that by the riverside, or oftener in the river, they built just a spectacular series of buildings, pretty much Europe's answer to Sydney, Australia. I know that I could just throw in some links to pictures, but as they wouldn't belong to me, I wouldn't feel comfortable. If I ever get a scanner, I'll put up my pictures of riverless Valencia. They're pretty cool, too. And now I want to go back.

Do not hump

    I really need to start carrying a camera with me at all times. I got stuck waiting for a freight train, a frequent problem in my neighborhood, though not one I was expecting on a football Saturday morning. I was behind a Checker Yellow cab on the rear of which was a plate reading "Taxi Interceptor." This caused and is causing me great mirth. I get that cars made by Ford to be police vehicles are Police Interceptors. I can even grasp that the same fleet vehicles might be sold as taxicabs. But it seems to me that Ford could manage another word. Taxi Catcher? Taxi Interceptor sounds like a really weird comic book hero.
    One of the flat cars on the freight train had "Do Not Hump" written on the side. It looked like it was painted on there officially, in other words that it wasn't put there by a really clever graffiti artist. But none of the other flat cars (there were many) had "Do Not Hump" written on them. Maybe humping is only a recent flat car phenomenon. Or maybe it's a Shaker railroad.
     Edit: apparently it's flatcar, and that isn't what these were anyway. A relatively flatcar. Also, something else odd yesterday, though I don't know if I needed a camera for it. The Valero station on State St., which used to be cheap, then was expensive, is now cheap again. And there is a sticker on the gas pump reading "Enriched with 10% ethanol." In the first place, every other station says "up to 10% ethanol." In the second, "enriched" is an odd choice of words; given gas mileage figures, "impoverished" would probably be more accurate.

Denouement

    Reading back, I see that I have unintentionally left the last few entries incomplete. Not that any of them were all that electrifying, but here are the endings. Most importantly, Dad indeed had a perfectly easy procedure yesterday, and was back at Rice Estate in time for lunch and physical therapy. The latter went particularly well; he walked all the way back from the PT room (a considerable distance) without a rest break, I think for the first time.
    As to Dad's stool softener, they didn't actually take it away, so we did. And the doctor at Rice Estate came to see Dad and told him that the stool softener he was using wasn't particularly good and that he would write him a prescription for a much better laxative. This hasn't happened yet, but Dad is at least hopeful. And it's neat to have him in a facility where people actually listen, and communicate. What a concept!
    Amelia's story ended well also. I can get a job anywhere as a cat whisperer. I got her to stay still by the simple means of scritching her chin, and put the Feline Advantage on the back of her neck without her even running away. Her scratching and compulsive grooming has diminished remarkably. OK; so I'm dumb. But I figure stuff out eventually.

All fingers and toes

    Dad is having the permanent catheter out this morning. Hopefully he's all done and all went well and easily. It's supposed to be a perfectly routine procedure. This will be the first time that I'm hoping that he's off having physical therapy when we arrive, since that would mean that it was really routine.
    Meanwhile, the alleged governor had the Occupy Columbia protesters arrested for camping at the State House, including at least one friend or at least acquaintance of mine. Note: if you're going to abrogate the Bill of Rights unilaterally, you might want to put up No Trespassing signs first. Otherwise, you aren't going to enjoy the lawsuits you're going to lose.

OK, so the kitty is smarter than me

    I've learned before, but keep having to relearn, that when Amelia starts grooming like a maniac, it means that she has fleas. I'm always reluctant to use flea medicine, since it's actually poison that goes into her bloodstream. So I always wait until I actually find flea dirt, i.e., dried blood in her fur, in other words, flea poop. Finally found it yesterday, so Feline Advantage has been purchased. Getting ready to try to get her to stay in one place long enough to apply it to her neck. And I'll try to learn to trust that she's smarter than me next time.

Still learning

    ...more than I want to learn about dialysis. As it turns out, a permanent catheter for dialysis means-- a temporary catheter. So apparently it's normal to switch to the graft in his arm. In fact, this usually would have been done months ago. But I did get the nursing staff at Rice Estate to examine his arm. They say the lump is also normal and nothing to worry about. Not a hematoma, in other words. So he's now scheduled to have the catheter taken out Thursday morning. Knocking on wood commences then.
    Also, I accidentally ratted Dad out. He asked me to bring him his stool softener tablets from home. I told the staff at Rice that he was still having trouble going to the bathroom and mentioned the stool softeners in the context of asking for him to have a higher fiber diet. They blew up a bit. So supposedly, his stool softeners have been taken away, though he can still call the nurse and ask for one. Apparently, it's another thing that isn't particularly good with dialysis (as, apparently, is a high-fiber diet). Pisser. Hopefully, he won't be too mad.

Continuing dialysis adventures

    It seems like years ago now. Dad was in the hospital, and I was trying to persuade them that it wasn't a good idea to drag him all the way across town three days a week through 100 degree weather in an ambulance for dialysis. There were two dialysis facilities reasonably convenient to the nursing home I had chosen. Dad already had a permanent catheter in his chest for dialysis. One of the facilities wanted him to have a graft in his left arm for dialysis instead. So the hospital did that and sent him along to the nursing home.
    As far as we can remember, it wasn't the dialysis facility that he wound up using that wanted the graft. These guys used the permanent catheter instead for well over three months. However, suddenly they have decided to use it, and that the permanent catheter is too much of an infection risk, and that it has to come out. Immediately. (Well, Wednesday.) I'm trying to find someone there to talk to about it. Because he isn't going to be staying at the nursing home, and he and Margaret aren't going to want to go all that way for dialysis. And the other dialysis facilities are under different ownership, and might well prefer the permanent catheter.
    Moreover, using the graft hurts Dad, and there's a lump (possibly a hematoma) in his arm near the site. The catheter never caused any problems at all. It's very frustrating waiting on a callback. In theory of course, they shouldn't be able to do any procedure without express permission from either me or him. But maybe I signed that away when he started; they certainly have already done one procedure (admittedly minor) without asking for any signatures. As I say, frustrating. Hopefully, I can get this straightened out before Wednesday.

Cell phones

    I've always been fairly hostile to cellular phone. Since the crisis with my dad erupted, I've had to live with one constantly. Lately, it's quit ringing, and I can see a day when it will be no big deal if I happen to forget to bring it with me.
    When Dad changed nursing homes, he no longer had a room phone, and setting up a new account with the phone company seemed like overkill when we had no idea how long he was staying. As luck would have it, brother William had an extra cell phone, so I put some minutes and days on it (It's a prepaid, almost a twin to mine. Trakfone or some damn thing.)
    It works, and he can make calls. Unfortunately, his hearing is terrible, and he also usual has the TV blaring. So often, the phone goes to voicemail. He wasn't able to retrieve his voicemail. Yesterday, I found out why. Whoever programmed the phone at the factory put in the wrong number for voicemail. They left off a couple of digits, so the call would never completed. I couldn't change that, but I did put the right number in his address book.
    Sister Anne taught me that holding down the 1 key will normally get you voicemail. This would be true, except that's still the number only with two digits missing. Now, however, I've figured out how to program speed-dial, so today I will do so, putting Margaret as 2 and voicemail as 3 and anyone else Dad wants on the other keys. (Can't reprogram 1; go figure.) Did I mention that I'm not very familiar or comfortable with cell phones? Getting there.

Mr. Bill Wells

    Bill Wells, owner, proprietor and genial host of Bill's Music Shop and Pickin' Parlor, an institution on Meeting St. in West Columbia lo these many decades, has died. He died Tuesday at the age of 84. His age was a surprise, as he looked a hale 60 or so. He had clearly been in declining health, though, as he had been using a walker/chair and oxygen in recent months, and had more recently turned the store over to his son Willie. He was a terrific human being and musician and gave a home to bluegrass and old-time music that brought joy to the Columbia area for ages.
    When Mom was still alive and somewhat alert, I wanted Dad to see Bill's, as he had always been a big Grand Ole Opry fan. He also exposed us to Arthur Smith and the Lewis Family on early morning TV from Augusta when we were little (or anyway when I was). So I borrowed brother Frank's video camera and was able to show my folks how great open stage at Bill's is, and also I think a bit of the jam session. On a subsequent birthday, I was encouraged to pick my entertainment, so we went out to barbecue and then to Bill's. So I got Dad there after all. Mom may have been in the nursing home by then, though; I don't truly remember.
    Last night, they had a special open stage and jam session to honor Bill's memory. The crowd was immense, and every bluegrass musician in three states apparently turned out as well. I had to leave early, as I had committed to go down the street to pay for the privilege of getting insulted by a geriatric punk rocker (which was more fun than it sounds like), but a great time was had by all. I wasn't there long enough to hear "Will the Circle Be Unbroken," but I know they did it and it was awesome. The family promises that the store and Friday night open stage will go on. Will it be unbroken indeed.

PT

    Yesterday we arrived to visit Dad and he had just left for physical therapy. A nice physical therapist (Kayla, who was at the meeting Tuesday) offered to show us the way, so we went on down. (Also, the cleaner was working on his room, so we couldn't exactly wait there anyway.) This place has much more primitive facilities compared to UniHealth. On the other hand, the staff actually seem to know what they're doing, which is rather the exception at the previous place. Melanie, Dad's physical therapist, was mainly working on his balance and coordination. It's too early to say how much it's helping, but it certainly seems like a much more intelligent approach. Also, the physical therapy room is so far from his own room that it's a pretty good workout just getting there.
    Also also, they did bring him back up to five days a week of physical therapy, leaving him with three of occupational therapy. Also also also he got his double portions. Yay!

It's 2005 again

    Amelia the cat is a good doctor but a poor chiropractor. When she first came into my life, she would sleep glued to me all night. If I rolled over, she would climb up to the new high place. She's started doing that again. For much of the intervening six years, she's been sleeping on my legs instead. These days, she's mostly sleeping on my belly, which tends to knock my back out of kilter. Thus, I'm much happier on the occasions that she sleeps on my chest instead.
    She also is grooming all. the. time. This is also much like 2005. I couldn't figure it out then and I can't figure it out now. It's supposed to represent stress. I guess she might be stressed out because I've been absent a lot more while watching out for my dad, or she might be stressed because I'm stressed about him. Or maybe she just thinks she's dirty. Who knows? I keep looking for fleadirt, but can't find any. Sooner or later, I'll get flea medicine (ok, poison) just to be on the safe side.
    She also hides in the uh, portable closet. Call it a plastic armoire. She lies on Alice's old comforter, which I wasn't using in 2005 quite yet, but for most of my stay over there. Don't know if Amelia's nostalgic or just cold. Maybe I'll slide the thermostat up another degree.

That went well

    The care planning meeting at Rice Estate went well. Or to be more accurate, it went fine, but aspects of it were spectacular. Because Dad went to his own care meeting. He walked all the way and all the way back, and he had already had physical therapy about an hour before. He made intelligent observations, and signed off at the end, and his signature looked like his signature instead of the shaky thing it was the last time I asked him to sign something.
    The staff still feels that he needs in-out catheterization and thus that he has to learn to do it himself. That was certainly the goal when he moved in, but since then he's been able to go to the bathroom on his own. Their scanner shows that there's a lot of pee retained in his bladder when he feels like he doesn't need to go. I pointed out that since Baptist he's been getting in-out cath and nearly every time the nurse told him how much came out. When the quantity reflects the kind of numbers their scanner is showing, he felt an extreme degree of bladder fullness. I also pointed out that he was a lot less alert and aware then than now. They said they were getting a new scanner and getting the old one calibrated. So we'll see. (Or somebody will; I'm pretty much out of the loop.)
    The problem being that they won't allow him to move to Assisted Living until he can do in-out cath for himself, and they won't be happy about him leaving until he's done about three weeks in Assisted Living. He doesn't see much point to either in-out cath or Assisted Living. Gail assures us that he's at risk for urinary infection if he's retaining urine. (I think urine is sterile, but what do I know?)
    The other thing Dad was concerned about was physical therapy. He wants it 5 days a week; really seven. He was getting it three days a week instead. He says a day without physical therapy is a day wasted. The physical therapist, Kayla, said they should put that up in the PT room as a motto. Anyway, they agreed to 5 days a week. And the dietitian promised to redouble efforts to double his portions. So a good day, on the whole.

Big meeting

    I meet today with staff at Rice Estate about Dad's future. They sent me a very large bill the other day, but it was only very large because they asked for all of November in advance. I have very grave doubts whether he will want to stay for all of November, though not because there's anything in particular wrong with Rice Estate. He's already lost almost six months, and at 90, pushing 91, there isn't an unlimited supply of months.
    On the other hand, Margaret still isn't moving that well, and I dread having them living together alone without help. Thus, I mainly need to talk about how to get them help, how to get him rides to dialysis three times a week, how to get his dialysis moved to a more convenient facility, etc. Or how Rice Estate is going to make him significantly more ready to go home than he is already. I think what nobody grasps is how much better he is. In spite of being so very thin, he's much better off than he was before all this started, or even a year ago. Whether that's good enough is another question; whether he can get drastically better is another still. But he and Margaret miss each other so badly, and deserve to be together. Tough one, isn't it?

Mnemonics

    Age is catching up to me. I no longer can remember everything, or even much. Last week, I forgot my ATM PIN. I went to the bank to get a new PIN. That bank branch had sent their rePINing machine to the shop, so I went on to another branch. The second branch should have sent theirs, too. It destroyed my card for me just exactly at the moment that I remembered the old PIN. Soooo they got me a new card within a few days and at no charge but with the same old PIN. If I had been wrong in thinking that I had re-remembered the old number, it would have been a hell of a mess. Fortunately, I had been right, and all was well.
    The point to all this song and dance: I had had a mnemonic for remembering the number. The PIN had been very much like the 3-digit code on the back of my old card. Unfortunately, they had sent me a new card with a different 3-digit code, and eventually I forgot the old one. And it develops that relying on the old mnemonic had blinded me to the fact that there was a much, much easier mnemonic, one so easy it makes me hope I can keep this PIN forever. Lucky that the new PIN didn't work!
    My other memory issue lately has been that when I cook in the morning before going to see Dad, I tend to think that I left a burner on. It's happened twice; both times I was panicked enough to drive all the way home to check, even though I was sure (correctly as it turned out) that I hadn't left anything on. Yesterday, I thought of a trick: I put a sock over the front doorknob, so I would remember to check the burners before I left. Worked, too. It's heck getting old.

Oh lackey! Lackey!

    Back at the old place, I would sometimes hear Amelia calling out from the bathroom in the night. And I thought that this must be the dumbest kitty on all the planet to be able to get lost from ten feet away. Or possibly that I had one of the few night-blind kitties. And it's taken me all this time to figure out that what she was saying was, "Oh lackey! Lackey! I have befouled the litter box. It must be cleaned immediately!" Not that I would have jumped to attention any quicker if I had known what she was saying, mind you. I'm a pretty good chamberlain and all, but I draw the line at 24-hour-a-day service!

Old-time radio

    As I may have mentioned, I am a major fan of old-time radio, great stuff like "Escape" and "Suspense" and slightly less great stuff like "Inner Sanctum Mysteries." But I think my greatest fandom is for stuff that's really terrible, like "Dark Fantasy." It was a show that had a brief run in the early '40s, produced in Oklahoma City. All the episodes were written by one guy, a novelist (or so he said) named Scott Bishop. Maybe his novels were better.
    The problem with radio is that everything that happens has to be described. The problem with horror on radio is that it has to be described at the top of one's voice. The problem with low-budget horror radio is that it has to be described at the top of his voice by one of the characters, since who can afford a narrator? "Oh NO! You have a knife! You're coming at me with the knife! Please don't stab me with the knife! Oh no!"
    Or in Scott Bishop's case, a demented and disembodied (distrunked?) tree branch comes after somebody and pushes her down an elevator shaft. In another episode, a mad scientist kidnaps an opera singer and puts his vocal chords in a gorilla and trains the gorilla to sing opera. (And to talk and to fly a plane.) So he could make a fortune from his opera-singing gorilla. And when his gorilla starts singing less well, he shoots him. As if people would only pay to see a gorilla who sings opera REALLY WELL! I gotta go find this guy's novels! As a longtime Mystery Science 3000 fan, this stuff is catnip to me.

Pheromone-infused

    I have a sinus headache, so this won't be a very ambitious entry. I was looking for body wash and was amused beyond words by Dial for Men Magnetic Attraction-Enhancing Pheromone-Infused Body Wash. (No, I didn't remember all that; I looked it up.) I almost bought it for the kitsch factor, but not quite. I assume that they're trying to take on AXE, seeking to crack the dumb, cheap guy market. With my luck, I would just attract mosquitoes anyway.:P

Crisis Kitty

    Amelia the cat has always been a little keyed up. If she could talk, her conversation would go like, "Ohmygod ohmygod ohmygod, John! There's a squirrel in the tree!" Or "Ohmygod ohmygod ohmygod, John! There's another kitty! In the yard! Ohmygod!" Lately, she's been even more anxious than usual. She's started jumping in the laundry basket. I appreciate that this is typical kitty behavior, but she's never done it in all these years. She also jumps up on the kitchen counter to sit on the kitchen windowsill, another unsurprising kitty act which nevertheless she had never done before.
    I also noticed that she never gets up on her kitty condo anymore. Eventually I worked out that there might be a connection. I vacuumed that heck out of the kitty condo (as it was blanketed in kitty fur), but she still wouldn't climb on it. I tried the tricks I had done to get her to use it in the first place, but no go. Finally, I just picked her up and put it on it. She didn't stay long (Crisis Kitty doesn't like being picked up by anybody!) but a little while later, she was back up on it like normal.
    Later she jumped in the laundry basket again, and she's still grooming herself like a maniac. So the crisis isn't necessarily over. I'd be happy to think we're back down to normal crisis levels, however.

Slack

    As the weather gets colder, I really really need to get Dad some warmer clothes. He has a bunch of sweaters at his house which I can easily liberate. Only problem is that he has lost so much weight that they will probably be falling off him. I really need to get somebody to take his measurements, because he's going to need a whole new wardrobe, or at least to have the old one taken in pretty comprehensively. I really need to talk to the powers that be at Rice Estate about Dad's outlook and plans. In a perfect world, he would stay there until he could handle the outside world well. But he and Margaret really miss each other, and I think he'll want to go off to be with her as soon as she's ready for him. In summary, I need to be doing a lot of things, and I'm really slacking off. Combat fatigue, I suppose.

Canvasser

    Paul was over last night for shrimp boil. There was a knock on the door, but it wasn't a trick-or-treater. A young man from Occupy Columbia was canvassing to oppose the Walmart expected to go up in place of Capital City (baseball) Stadium. He met a friendly reception. We signed his petition and I gave him a bowl of shrimp boil. His name is Dillon and he lives up the street. We had to decline the opportunity to march on City Council, but were otherwise totally supportive. Hopefully he has other successful canvasses.
    Trick-or-treaters eventually turned up, though not in great numbers. Paul and I listened to Orson Welles' War of the Worlds, which was suitably creepy. Amelia got comfortable enough to sit on Paul's satchel for a while. Well, I thought it was funny.