Balancing stress and boredom in CA

Yesterday, I was asked how I'm holding up while down here in greater Palm Springs, and I replied that I was OK but doing a kind of balancing act—this experience equal parts challenging and boring.

Most of the challenges are emotional, of course, seeing and interacting with my dad in the state he's in. On that front, today was pretty tame. Marty had stuff to do out in the world this morning, so I had to be up early in case Dad needed anything, which he naturally did. After trying to get him up and about, he had to immediately go back to bed due to vertigo. I decided this was a time he could take one of his dizzy pills (which do have a name, I just can't remember it) even though his neurologist ordered him to cut way down on them and only take a few a week. I think I was vindicated in that decision as he later got up and wandered out into the living room on his own; I had sat down to read, but only going on a few hours' sleep, I'd nodded off, a dereliction of sentry duty. I stirred—after having some weird dreams involving my grandfather, his old house with a ton of people in it, and a phone call from Erik that I could never hear properly because of all the people making noise and that in the end turned out to be on speaker so a bunch of people on the other end were hearing me that I didn't know about; I'm sure that was prompted by something in my subconscious relating to how my dad seems frailer than Grandpa ever did along with the various bouts of chaos here—and came out to the living room to find Dad trying to figure out the Roku remote control.

No appointments today, no visits from nurses or attractive physical therapists, just hanging out and doing a fair amount of escorting dad back and forth to bed and making him lunch, which he ate about a third of. He wasn't going on about being in strange places today, though he did seem to think I had left and come back from somewhere distant between his naps, and once he asked me what grade of school I was in now. But, as I've said before, I'm kind of getting used to that. Sort of. A little.

While he was napping I took some time to clean up a little around here, and while I was running the vacuum it got hung up on something and started making noise (it's a fairly quiet vacuum otherwise) that I immediately equated with the "victory growl" Zephyr makes when he successfully steals food from either me or the other cats. I miss my cats. This is a long time to be away.

Dad and Marty's cat treats me like an intruder, which is fair. But this morning he let me pet him a little. He's got some abrasions and little scabs on his head and neck that I'd like to get a look at, but he'd never let me. His fur's a bit unkempt too. He's mostly an outdoor cat, so I think the abrasions are likely from altercations with other cats in the area (I hear them now and then) since this isn't an environment where you tend to get fleas. Still, I know he doesn't get regular vet care, so I'd feel better if I could check him out more thoroughly. I'll take what I can get, I suppose.

We've made progress on selling the truck and trailer, though nothing final yet. Got a decent offer on the truck, a less decent but acceptable given the ease of transaction one for the trailer. Also I'm trying to further refine what's needed here for after I leave and tweaking some furnishings. I wish I could convince Dad to use a different chair in the living room; years ago they bought these "captains chairs" that are deeply padded, swivel, recline, have footrests that spring out. All that flexibility makes them a horrible choice for him because they're so hard to get out of, it's impossible for him to stand from it on his own and a little tricky with help. Tried swapping it for a more stable option in its place, but he complained that the swapped-in chair didn't move enough and insisted we switch it back. I tried elevating the seat with extra padding and that just made it unfamiliar and distracting when he'd sit down and didn't really help much with getting out of it, so that experiment was short-lived. His bed's too high off the floor, too, getting in it is a struggle every time, so I'm going to try a sort of low stepstool thing. If I were at home, I'd just build one in my garage from spare wood, but not an option here so we'll be buying one.

I also watched this week's Strange New Worlds today. Eh. I didn't hate it, which is a surprise given the material—this week we got something like "SNW does The Princess Bride"—but once again it's the sort of thing that would be fun as one of 26 but is frustrating as can be when it's the seventh of eight (out of just ten) episodes that are gimmick-based and stray so far afield of the solid Trek sci-fi by being sendups of/homages to other media. It's just sad what the series became after two really good years pre-COVID.

Got another early (by my standards) day tomorrow, with visits from both a home-care nurse and the pretty PT gal on the agenda, so no in-depth SNW review for a while. I'll get there, though, I can't help myself.