Hemlock B Bootsalotta

I am having the worst vertigo episode I've had to deal with since the inner ear went bad in the first place.

Lord Brock is back in the hospital as of yesterday.

A friend died suddenly on Monday.

I am setting this entire week on fire.

My stomach hurts.

I have TWO WEEKS LEFT until this mortgage is finalized and housemate is leaving EVERYTHING until the last minute and I am terrified they will pooch the deal. They don't even have to do it out of malevolence, just their normal float-through-life-because-somebody-else-will-deal-with-it will be enough. My lawyer wants the name of their lawyer. They don't have a lawyer. I don't think they're going to get a lawyer. Is that a deal-breaker? I have no fucking idea. There are not enough hours in my day for me to babysit them through this and every time I think about it I feel like I'm going to throw up.

I got an email from my lawyer with a list of documents I have to dig up and scan tonight. Friday I got an email from the energy grant that I'm getting booted off the program if I don't show progress of finishing the renos, so I have to put together a package to send them. I made the appointment for the closing audit for late July so hopefully that's a) close enough to meet the grant requirements and b) the work is actually fucking done by then.

The contractor is here tomorrow so I have to write him a cheque. And I have to go through the bank records AGAIN because the household credit line sent me an overdrawn alert even though I've been paying it.

I have no idea what's happening with the arborists that housemate was supposed to call, so I guess I'm in charge of that now too.

I've been setting up appointments to tour long-term care homes for my step-father and I have to send an updated list to the coordinator. The coordinator called me today and wants me to hire a private PSW for night checks because the public staff don't work overnight so I have to sort that out. I have to contact the rental company to pick up his temporary bed.

There is no way I can manage all this shit if I'm living out of a suitcase.

Fuuuuuuuuccccckkkkk. I just need something to go right for once.

Woke up with a scratchy throat this morning. Could be allergies, the cats have been all over me, and I've been going down to the basement on the regular to take pictures for the contractor. (It rained heavily yesterday, so I've been monitoring the waterproofing situation.)

Housemates positive showed up 48 hours after symptoms so I'll start testing tomorrow.

***

Yesterday fucking sucked, to put it bluntly.

I got a call from Old Man's brother on Sunday saying there was something wrong with his bed. He has a hospital bed with an inflatable mattress that regulates air pressure for people who are at risk of bed sores. It cost a couple of grand second-hand.

Two seconds after I hang up the residence manager calls me. There's a problem with the bed? No no, the bed's fine, but your step-father is delirious and not responding to questions so we are sending him to the hospital.

Well the hospital sent him home yesterday and I get a call from the PSW - the bed is not fine - she sent me a photo and it looks like somebody yanked one of the electrical cords out of the motor casing. Probably with a broom or a vaccuum. And fucking left it that way, did not call me, nothing. So his mattress is completely deflated. He has nowhere to sleep.

And my brain just went offline.

It probably lasted a minute but it felt like hours. I just could not think. Everything was snow. Static. Leetle birdies twittering in a circle around my bucket.

A form of panic attack? I guess?

Then I snapped out of it, formulated a plan, called about twenty equipment rental places until I found one that had a mattress in stock, arranged and paid for the rental, called my sister and arranged for her to drop off an inflatable camping mattress just to get him through the night, called the PSW to give her an update with times and called the residence to advise them of the delivery. Once I'm out of quarantine I'll bring the motor back here and see if I can open it up and re-attach the wires. I will take photos to show to the residence manager, because this Will Not Happen Again.

So like no harm done by the brain freeze but it freaked me the fuck out. And I guess today I'm dealing with the resulting adrenaline crash, because I've burst into tears twice already so far today. Over shit like... music videos and nonsense.

***

The good news is the waterproofing is holding. So that means the contractor can close up the walls and finish up.

Roommate is sick. Headache, fever, vomiting. I just walked in the door and they DID NOT FUCKING TELL ME until I was already standing the room with them, unmasked. I've dosed myself with enovid and I was only in the room for a few minutes so hopefully I'll escape whatever it is. But seriously, WHY WOULD THEY NOT WARN ME.

I am fucking livid. I go downstairs and a contractor came up from the basement and walked RIGHT BY ME - not wearing a mask.

I dropped what I was carrying and fled upstairs. And sent the housemate a furious text. Housemate comes upstairs - also not wearing a mask.

They didn't do anything because they didn't see it. I saw it before they did. They put up signs, what more do I expect.

So even though they live on the floor where the work is going on and the contractors are walking right by them to go outside, it's somehow MY job to know what's going on from my office on a completely different floor where I AM WORKING to come downstairs to enforce the fucking rules.

I've taken a dose of enovid and turned on the fans on my floor. When the workers are done for the day I will go downstairs - masked - open all the windows and turn the fan on. I will put up new signs on more doors to make sure every fucking surface is covered with instructions and put a fresh box of masks by the basement entrance for Monday. Then I will contact the bosses and reiterate once again, IF YOUR STAFF KILL ME OR MAKE ME TOO SICK TO WORK I WON'T BE ABLE TO PAY YOU.

Jesus FUCKING Christ, how is this so fucking hard that I'm apparently the only person in the house who can manage it.

It has been a long day and I'm feeling more than a little bit overwhelmed.

So of course there is a car alarm going on outside my bedroom window.[1]

Old Man was about six hours late getting home, which turned out be a good thing, because I had to take apart his old bed in order to make room for the new one, which was just kind of shoved into the doorway. We will be returning with a van on Thursday to get the pieces of his old bed out, and whatever else the Occupational Therapist deems needs to be replaced. It's a small room and he has a lot of stuff in it, especially as his medical needs have escalated over time.

He is very much Himself and 100% cognitively present, which is a huge relief. He told me a story about how somebody was howling at night in the hospital so he "howled along just to keep them company" which is absolutely on brand for him. He is also 1000% raring to go on getting out of bed and doing physio, which is also very much his style. The residence rep showed up to meet him and I think she is also very much relieved that he not intending to just be some lump that they stick soup into one end of. That doesn't change my desire to move him to a place that is less constructed around being assholes, because I still don't trust them to not try and evict him. But I think it does buy us some time.

I mentioned earlier that I'm having trouble sleeping. That is absolutely true, if you are talking about sleeping at the beginning of the night. however, I am absolutely exemplary at sleeping in the mornings. Which is kind of a problem because health care workers work early shifts. I didn't answer my phone at God o'clock in the morning so my sister got a call from a nurse who is supposed to go in tomorrow wanting to know if he has wound care supplies.

Um. Maybe? There are boxes of stuff in his room? If you could tell me want constitutes a full list of "wound care supplies" I could probably answer that question? But in general I have no fucking idea if any specific box out of the absolute swamp of medical looking kit constitutes a full inventory of "wound care supplies".

I get this a lot from the residence staff, they say, "[Old Man] needs Boofrock Protocols and I'm like... that means what? This garment made to wrap around the lower half of the mammalian torso? Made out of what materials out of the following 7 options? In what size? In what number? I am more than happy to throw a bunch of money at a need, but help me out here, I'm new at this.

I do wonder occasionally if this is the same thing where somebody at work comes to me and says, IT'S NOT WORKING and I'm like, I understand that you are asking me to fix it, but I need more information than that to even start figuring out what the fuck is wrong.

I dunno. I'm tired. Thursday I go back to meet with the Occupational Therapist and haul furniture and get trained on how to use his lift and I am so tapped out that if a single person there suggests that are not 100% on board with helping him out I might just eat them[2] because I could definitely use the protein.

***

[1] I live in a very dense urban centre and there is huge social pressure against having a car alarm. That doesn't stop some people. On my street, one person. It goes off maybe... once a month? And people lose their minds every single time.

[2] Just as an aside, if you ever want to make sure that your ass is covered when systemic neglect is getting you down, an aging punk rocker who already has a problem with authority just might be a good addition to your care team. If nothing else, they can be counted upon to occasionally eat people.

I am on vacation from work this week. I was planning to do some vacation things, like, I dunno, rent a car and go walk in the woods or something.

Instead I may be visiting assisted living residences to try and find an alternative housing arrangement for the Old Man. The hospital wants to discharge him, but his retirement residence is pushing back on letting him move back. I read his lease agreement, and he is covered by the Landlord Tenant Act so while they technically can't prevent him from moving home, they can apply to evict him on the grounds that his care needs exceed what they are designed to accommodate.

There is a conference call on Monday between hospital staff, residence management and his home care coordinator, so hopefully we can hammer something out for the short term, but long term I'm pretty sure they're going to force him out.

And Long Term Care has a five year waiting list, because of course it does.

Is this one of those "Mercury in retrograde" weeks or something? Because what the absolute fuck?

From a personal relationship perspective, the worst thing about his lock-down is that I can no longer pretend not to know how much time Axel spends playing video games.

Work is so busy. I am one of the two people dealing with a major software upgrade and one of three people dealing with a major process change. Of the two people team, my co-worker will be on vacation the week we are scheduled for testing. Of the three people team I'm the only one who has done this process before. I still have my daily work while this is going on of course, plus some additional minor projects that I can't really punt. Out of my other co-workers, one left a couple of weeks ago and one is leaving at the end of next week so their stuff is being spread out among the rest of the team. Oh and my boss has been off work for the last six months.

To say I'm feeling a little stretched would be entirely accurate.

My mother's husband is moving into a residence the end of next week. Before that happens we have to clear out the garage and pack up as much as we can so we can move out all the furniture that isn't being used to stage the house. After he's moved we then have ten days to clear out the excess furniture, paint, and clean, so it's ready to show.

Really my sister has been doing most of the work. She's been staying at the house and doing things like taking Jim to choose the residence, doctor's appointments, trips to buy the things he needs, and of course cooking and packing for him. I've been handling the side of contacting accounts, paying bills and dealing with paperwork. (So. Much. Paperwork.) Once we start prepping the house though, it's going to need all hands on deck. Axe gets on a plane next week to go to England. My sister is leaving the day before the house hits the market. Then I'll be the one helping Jim with closing the sale, setting up his accounts, getting his taxes filed and the fifty billion other little things that are no doubt just over the horizon but that I haven't thought of yet.

Does that look like a lot? Because it sure as hell feels like a lot. I have, on more than one occasion, sat in the dark in my bedroom and whispered, "I can't do this. Holy shit, there's the wall, I've just found it, I can't do this."

And then I got up and I did it. So obviously I can, it's just... it's a lot.