Grumpy old ladies...

Sure, I was going to tell you about how I was nearly run over by a guy in a truck whose girlfriend was churning his butter, if you know what I'm saying, but things got positively odd today at my parents' place.

Now that I think about it, it was unusual that my mother had left a message on my machine encouraging me to come and babysit the nietos (niece and nephews) at her house. She usually tries to limit the number of visitors to her place when she babysits for my brother and his wife. The twins (the pair) are 3 and the baby (the spare) is almost 2, so they are a handful.

I got there around 3:30 or so, and commenced playing. Today I introduced them to the Beatles and the Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band, which I did. But as we all sang about living in a yellow submarine, my mother told me that she needed to make some phone calls. She was making arrangements for my grandmother, who, for some reason, decided that she was no longer going to be taking the intrevenous antibiotics for a septic bladder infection, and who had actually bargained a release with her doctor on Friday provided she finish her course of antibiotics. My mom was going to set things up with Granny's retirement community, but the my grandmother's physical therapist put his or her foot down and the skilled nursing site where she is currently recuperating from her 1) multiple broken vertebrae, 2) septic bladder infection, 3) infiltrates in her lung (pneumonia), 4) oxygen treatments, because her lungs were going out recently, and 5) being immoble for several weeks. The last one is the one that is making her life difficult now. She needs to get her strength back so she doesn't tip over at her apartment and hurt herself.

She has been having major mood swings lately, from hospitable and coooperative to irrational nut. We call them Good Granny and Bad Granny. Bad Granny was out this morning, but when the physical therapist put her/his foot down, Good Granny was there. She is staying on for the full treatment.

Good for the physical therapist.

So, this is not good. She is despondent because she is still in a dull fucking place. Her roommate is recovering from pneumonia and, holy shit, yesterday when I was visiting, the roommate had fucking C-Span on all day during the least interesting debate...ever, I'm comfortable to say. It was all about planes not crashing or something. Seriously, I was there for 2 hours and I still had no idea about what they were talking about. I'd go bat shit too. But there is something not right, as she becomes increasingly whimsical in the brain pan. She's almost always lucid, but she refused two courses of antibiotics, one last night and one this morning.

My idea is to show up and try to engage her interest. I was thinking she might teach me how to play bridge or something. Maybe bring Scrabble down and we can spell poorly together. I don't know. Any good ideas about how to entertain someone who is in the hospital for a long time. One really good idea that I came across was to send the person letters as if they were from a celebrity, but be, you know, humorous. I might try that. We'll see. Not every day that Queen Elizabeth sends my grandmother a letter. She might be interested in that.

HJ