Winding down the trip

I'm finally nearing the end of my lengthy sojourn to greater Palm Springs. I'll start heading back toward home either tomorrow night or midday Sunday, I think, depending on what things are like with Dad tomorrow and how well-rested I feel; by the time I get home, I'll have been away from my cats for a month. I don't know if that's worse for me or for them.

Dad went in to get new imaging on his brain done early this morning. I'd intended to go along, but I couldn't manage to stay awake at 5:00am, having by then only gotten a couple hours' sleep at best. No matter, though, Marty says he was relegated to the waiting room the whole time anyway and was basically just taxi service. Whatever the results from that imaging tell the doctors I suppose I'll find out in due course, but right now we know zippo; it's like the old days when you took pictures on film and had to wait a few days for it to be developed, I guess (I'm sure the doctors have the pictures immediately, but they need to be parsed, evaluated, whathaveyou before they share).

Most of what I wanted to accomplish with this trip I have, and I'd like to think Marty got to have a bit of a break with me here. I'm wiped out, though. And I feel flabby, having done near-zero physical activity for basically a month now. And I'm tired of being the blood bank for the neighborhood mosquito population.

Hopefully Dad will sleep well overnight. That has not been the case over the past few days, and as I've said before, his level of cogency seems directly proportional to how well-rested he is. I'm kind of resigned to the probability that when I leave, he won't have been aware of how long I was here or remember much of anything about my visit. That's OK, though. It's been worthwhile to him inasmuch as it could be.

I belatedly realized I have tickets to tomorrow night's penultimate Mariners game; I've put them on StubHub, but thanks to the team's crappy finish to the season I may not get anything for them. I've already priced them at a loss. Anyone seeing this wants to go, text me and if they haven't sold by time I hear from you I'll send them along.

Now I'm pondering which route to take for my return drive. Going back the way I came is the old reliable, fewer miles and more interesting scenically speaking than just sticking to the Interstates. I've done it already, though, repeatedly. I mean, I've done the Interstate option as well—it's maybe faster by an hour even though it's more miles—but dull. Going up the coast is better, but that would mean adding another day and maybe 1½ more tanks of gas, so I won't be doing that. I'll probably just go back the way I came, US 395 and some state highways until north Oregon, then I-5.

I'm glad I came down and stayed this long, but I am ready to be home.

Tagged Dad, Health, Traveling, Posted on September 25, 2026 at 11:30PM   |   Permalink   |     |  

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Good day, and welcome to week four

Week four of my visit to greater Palm Springs is fairly productive while also being boring. Right now I'm here watching Your Seattle Mariners as they get eliminated from this year's playoff race (I'm assuming they'll lose or Texas will win—ooh, just saw an update on the Texas score, the Mets are thumping them!—technically, if the M's win their final five games and Texas and the Astros lose all their remaining games there's still a chance? There's some sort of tiebreaker formula Rob Manfred BS that would come into play; won't happen) while Dad naps and Marty catches some rest. More power to him, man. This is a stressful reality to live in.

Dad had a surgery followup yesterday, X-rays on his repaired shoulder looked good (lot of hardware in there now) but because he doesn't do his exercises unless a physical therapist is here his range of motion still stinks. He was supposed to have a PT visit yesterday as well; he sort of did, but it was a bit of a mess. The agency that employs these folks seems to be a bit lax when it comes to communication; this was the second reschedule for this visit, and when someone did show it was hours ahead of the appointed time while we were out at the doctor's office and it was someone new, who said he was covering for someone we'd never heard of, and confusion reigned. He left when no one answered the door, Marty went through in intermediary to remind the agency the appointment was for 5:00, and he came back then, but because he knew nothing of the history here is was a rudimentary intro visit rather than continuing the therapies that have been in progress for weeks. Hopefully the former PT will return soon and there won't be more random restarts. Bureaucracy, man.

We met with a potential in-home care aide today, I think she'll be good. I'm a little concerned with her being understood—English is her second language, Marty's hearing sucks, and I can envision their respective accents getting in the way. But she's local (by real people standards, not just by southern California standards) and it sounds like she's plenty capable, plus the expense won't break the bank. I feel OK with her in the mix, assuming it works out. Hope so, because a stopgap is definitely needed while we wait for the state paper-pushers to approve them for subsidized home care, which seems like it'll be weeks away still. Bureaucracy, man.

Dad was cogent-ish for both the surgeon followup and the home-care interview visit, but afterwards not so much. I never know what to say when he asks me "if we're staying here tonight or going home," since the obvious reply, "you're already at home, Dad," would short-circuit him like he's Norman the android. "We're staying here" has been OK, but it frustrates him because at such times he thinks he hasn't been home in weeks.

We still need to finalize a couple of things, get their trailer sold and make sure the home care will fly, and there's getting Dad in for a brain scan Friday. Then we hit the weekend, and barring complications I'll start for home Saturday or Sunday evening. I'd like to be home Monday night, but Tuesday sometime would be OK too.

I need me some kitty time. :)  And maybe some rain. I've had enough 100° weather for a good while.

Also, hello to a few of y'all who've reached out and whom I've been bad about getting back to. I appreciate the texts/emails. I promise to be a better correspondent after I get out of here.

Tagged Dad, Health, Posted on September 23, 2026 at 8:14PM   |   Permalink   |     |  

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Trying to make it make sense

Things are progressing down here in the scorching desert (less scorching now, I think the high today was only in the low 90s), but though taskwise I feel like things are slowly getting accomplished, overall outlookwise it appears it's going to be status quo for the foreseeable future.

Dad's more cogent times occur only when he's well-rested, and you never know when they'll veer into distorted memory or a need to go drop me off somewhere on his way to wherever he thought he needed to go. A lot of that today, a lot of dissuading Dad from compulsions to transport me somewhere and to return to whatever place we'd supposedly been at earlier in the day. In other words, more of the same as I hung out here with Dad while Marty was out dealing with his own stuff, medical and otherwise. 

I'm sure there are professionals and scholars who know this already and could explain it to me in detail if I wanted to seek them out. I doubt I'm breaking any new ground. But I'm realizing just from observation that the part of Dad's brain that's working recognizes that his current circumstance isn't what it should be, that something is off, but it can't understand what exactly is off because of the part that isn't working—all it knows for sure is that right now, in the moment, things are not what they're expected to be. So the working parts of the brain try to compensate by treating the current moment as a transition in between something that does makes sense to it and something else that makes sense. So a memory of something that did make sense is plugged in to the slot for "recent past" and the expectation of another something that makes sense is put forth as coming up.

That's why he's always insisting he needs his shoes on, he has to be ready to go when it's time to move to the expected "coming up" thing his brain's plugged into place to compensate for right now being wonky. The thing from the other day when he was convinced we were at a conference center is probably extrapolated from things he attended in his career at U of A, that was the memory his brain could find to stick into the blank "recent past" slot, and context from those things fed the insistence that he needs to know the conference schedule and how we're going to get from place to place in "the complex" since that's the logical thing "coming up." It's not so much about believing he's someplace he's not as it is about not believing right now is real. The unreality context is just randomly picked from whatever file fragments can be easily found in the busted hard drive in his skull.

Hell, what do I know, I'm tired all the time now.

Today Dad was asking me if I had a light meter. He explained how it would help me assure anyone I was working for that I'd done things correctly, that it would be worth investing in if I didn't have one and he suggested his leftover lunch was the object I was supposed to be doing something with. I presume photographing, since he was talking about light meters and since part of his old job was managing multimedia stuff for a hospital.

Interestingly, the cat can ground him somewhat. When the cat's in view—or better, lying at his feet—he focuses. On another plane, if we have a news program on the TV and a clip of Felon47 plays, spouting whatever the bullshit of the day is, that brings him back at least enough that he confidently declares "that guy is such an asshole."

On other fronts, my wrist is better—not 100% by a long way, but healed enough that I don't feel like I need the brace. Range of motion is good and the twinges aren't excruciating. The mosquito trap has worked reasonably well; it hasn't actually trapped many mosquitos, just a few, but it does appear to at least be keeping them away from me overnight.

Tomorrow there's a doctor's appointment and a PT visit on tap, Wednesday and Thursday should be good for dealing with other logistics about various loose ends, Friday Dad's going to get another brain scan. We'll see where we are after that. Somewhere in there I hope we can get a handle on what kind of other home care help will be available for later so I can head home feeling like things are stable.

Tagged Dad, Health, Posted on September 21, 2026 at 10:48PM   |   Permalink   |     |  

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Good days and bad days

Today's events down here at chichi no uchi were more tiring than anything else. Dad slept a lot of the day, but that's not what I mean. I'm tired. Marty's obviously tired. In terms of physical energy, I've expended almost nil since I got here—I feel fatter than ever—but I'm still wiped out.

Most days, Dad seems to have ups and downs regarding his cogency. Today there were no ups. He didn't have any bad vertigo, which is good, but was confused continually, wondering where he was supposed to be and not recognizing where he was and seemingly regressing in time but only sort of.

The most surreal part of the day was when Dad starting talking to me about me not knowing I was here. I understand that kind of thing's not uncommon among dementia patients, but it was a first for my personal experience. He didn't reveal anything I didn't already know he thought about me, but it reminded me of an exchange we had a few years ago when I finally got in his face regarding his pestering me about my dating life or lack thereof; it cleared the air, at least for a while. Today I wanted to get in his face again, but he wouldn't have understood and nothing good would come of it as it did before so I just acknowledged what he said and tried to shift the conversation away from me since he didn't know he was talking to me. When that didn't work I tried leaving the room for a couple minutes and made sure to greet him with "Hi, Dad" when I returned to jolt his recognition. That did the trick, and since it seemed to ground him the other day, we tried to watch some baseball. Or I did, rather; he kept either talking nonsense or wondering where Marty went. Or worse, where my mom was. Eventually I steered him into talking about going to ballgames with his dad in Santa Barbara and that got him onto things that were real memories and were safe (i.e. wouldn't upset me), though it did make it harder to follow the game. :)

I'm here at least through next week. After that, if there are no appointments on the books in the immediate next few days that I could assist with, I'll likely start heading home. I kind of feel badly for that, but as my friend Stacey, who has her own experience with this sort of thing, told me recently, "When you hit the wall, get back to your life. (And your cats.)" Besides, I'll be back down again before too long.

Of course, by the end of next week, gas prices might be twice what they were when I came down at the beginning of the month because of the utter stupidity/bigotry/cruelty/willful ignorance of millions of American voters. Makes me even more appreciative of my Prius and its better-than-2½-times the fuel economy of my previous car.

Tagged Dad, Health, Posted on September 18, 2026 at 11:23PM   |   Permalink   |     |  

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Balancing stress and boredom in CA

Zephyr, Mizuki, and Raimei (not pictured) have been wihtout their human for going on three weeks. I know they're fine, but I worry about them.

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.

Tagged Dad, Aging, Health, Cats, Posted on September 17, 2026 at 10:02PM   |   Permalink   |     |  

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Round and round we go

Starting week three down here in the scorching desert, which thankfully is somewhat less scorching right now ("only" 97°F outside). Marty is off trying to get info on the camper trailer he and Dad own and want to be rid of, I've investigated easy ways to take care of that; between the two of us we may well be able to get rid of both that and the giant truck they have that's been sitting unused in their driveway for who knows how long.

Meanwhile, the home-care nurse was just here giving Dad a once-over; he's dizzier today than he has been for a while, but otherwise he checked out well. Yesterday a physical therapist paid a visit (a distractingly attractive one, if I'm being candid); she was great, put Dad through the motions with some minor exercise and gave Marty some attention as well. The day prior, we took Dad in to see his neurologist, who seemed to be far more concerned with Dad's mobility than his cognition. That surprised me, but then she has a context to work from that I don't. Dad was pretty cogent for that visit, only failing the "name the months in reverse order" exercise and showing reasonably good immediate recall.

I don't really know what to make of it all; having observed all this for a couple of weeks now, I've seen the swings, the marked difference between well-rested Dad and tired-minded Dad. I've got a better sense of things than what I had from just primarily reports from Marty and my sister (which always differ, sometimes wildly). I've gone from believing Dad was looking at just a few more months maybe to thinking this is going to stabilize and persist in this fashion for a while longer.

Is that good or bad? My mom's third husband, the one she was married to the longest and at the end, he also had Alzheimer's but it had not progressed terribly far before he died. At that time, I thought it was a good thing that he didn't have to go through the later stages. On the other hand, due to some pretty fucked up international/intercultural family dynamics, he'd been stuck living in a place and situation he didn't want to be in and had no control over anything, while Dad is living at home (even if he sometimes thinks otherwise) with Marty and—other than dealing with some vertigo (which we''re still trying to treat, and may have some therapy for shortly)—is coasting along relatively comfortably, even when he's confused.

On balance, I'll go with "good thing." Though he did just ask me what I did with the dog. He had a dog when I was a kid that he loved, but it's been decades. Marty had a dog while they were traveling in their fifth-wheel nomad days, but that too was some time back. I don't know which of those, if either, he was thinking of.

I don't think I could handle this if it was just me and Dad here. Even while Marty is gone for a few hours (like now) it gets frustrating/difficult in a way that it doesn't if Marty is here too. Part of that is a comfort level for Dad, I'm sure, but it's also that we can trade off helping him get up and around and use each other to deflect a difficult topic of discussion that's outside reality.

But part of why I'm here is to allow for Marty to get out now and then, so I persevere. Next thing on my agenda is to reposition and alter the bed rail thing as much as can be done. Dad detests it, which isn't all that surprising, but he also doesn't get what it's for and is only focused on it as an impediment. I'm hoping that some placement tweaks will help make it actually useful and not a waste of space.

My wrist is improving bit by bit, so that's good. And I bought a mosquito trap gadget to lessen my daily blood loss to the hated bugs' massive appetites—there seems to always be some part of me that itches; feet, hands, back, arms, fingers, even my face is getting bitten at night. Looks like I'm going to be here a while longer, so might as well make it as nuisance-free as possible.

I miss my cats. I hear from my neighbor that they are fine, but I still worry about them. Fortunately, cats tend to live in the moment and won't be keeping track of just how long I've been away from them, but I still expect to be reminded when I get home that I didn't get their permission to leave.

For distraction, I've been enjoying the new season of Ted Lasso and catching up on Lanterns, which is surprisingly good; Green Lantern is such a goofy superhero concept that I didn't have great hopes for a TV adaptation, but they're doing a good job making it gritty and not outlandish.

I'd written a much longer post about how things are going here last night, but before I posted it my laptop decided to glitch and everything froze up; in the end it crashed and I had to reboot, losing everything I'd written over a couple of hours. When oh when will I learn to save as I go? Sometimes I feel like Bart Simpson sticking his finger in the AC socket over and over. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. I'm not going to bother trying to reconstruct last night's writing, if I recall correctly it was mostly angst. But I will(?) learn the lesson to save every now and then.

Tagged Dad, Health, TV, Posted on September 16, 2026 at 3:57PM   |   Permalink   |     |  

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Plodding along

This much we can agree on, anyway

A lackluster update from greater Palm Springs, as I continue my second week here.

Since the last post, I've had one day dealing with a relatively lucid Dad for most of the day before the confusion about where he was set in again. That came after he had a long sleep, which I imagine helped matters. Yesterday, though, we were back to bouncing around in time. He asked me how school was going, referencing things from my high school years, and was a bit surprised to hear that I graduated a long time ago. He seemed to get that I lived in Seattle now, but also thought we were in Tucson and that I was "home" for a while.

I tried—successfully, I think—to engage him with some old photos; he has a few displayed on a cork board here of old family gatherings from his childhood, so I asked him who everybody was, and as that's not a short-term memory, he was on the ball for it. Knew everyone, knew how they were related, all that, but didn't know when the pictures were taken or what the event was that had him, his dad, and his brothers decked out in white tuxedos. But that was good. His eye caught on some other photos of people from much more recently and things went downhill a bit, he didn't remember names of some (and they were of people I never met, so I was no help).

Today I had to be up early with him as Marty had to go to a medical appointment for himself and do some other things, so I groggily hung out with him and fielded queries about how long the drive back to Tucson was and what the route would be; who was joining us on the trip; and where we were stopping for lunch on the way. There were also many urgent requests to find the flyers to put in the mail and concerns about whether or not any of the furniture had to be returned somewhere before we left. Also, just now he asked me what my mom was doing today, which is like kicking a dude when he's down. Sigh.

On the other hand, mobility has been good for a few days straight now, only mild dizziness and no big vertigo spells.

I gave up on the bedrail after my ingenious improvisations worked, but not well enough to justify having bought the damn thing. I took it apart and sent it back. Marty bought it from the hated Amazon, which though contributing to the rise of evil and predatory corporate rule does mean returns are super easy. Disassembling the damn thing was easier than assembling it, but we'd already tossed out the packaging in the recycling, so hopefully there won't be any issue with the refund. One of the problems was it didn't ship with all of its parts, so again, hopefully they won't be jerks about it. I ordered a replacement in a different model, making sure to check ALL the specs this time. :-)

Meanwhile, I keep doing things to aggravate my sprained wrist, so that's probably still going to take a couple more weeks to heal. Straining it trying to carry heavy grocery items is one thing, but you don't realize how many wrist tendons are in play when you brush your teeth or use certain tools until you drop the toothbrush/tool because you've inadvertently moved at just the right angle for it to HURT LIKE FUCK.

Anyway.

While out on an errand today I noticed the prices at the gas pumps were 50¢ to $1 more than when I last filled up on the way down in Victorville. I've not been paying as much attention to the news, so for the moment I can only imagine it's because President Felon Dumbass escalated his war somehow at his hatefest "convention," where he also apparently tried to bribe voters and asked his supporters to cheat in the midterms. Add those to the ever-expanding list of crimes committed by Felon47 and abetted by Republicans in Congress and two-thirds of the Supreme Court. Alas.

For my few readers of Star Trek reviews, I will have one for Strange New Worlds 408, "Orders of Magnitude," in a day or two. It's less gimmicky than the rest of the season and therefore doesn't suck, but it is derivative as hell and has some missteps. Might be the best ep of the season, though.

Tagged Dad, Health, Politics, Posted on September 11, 2026 at 5:19PM   |   Permalink   |     |  

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Identical buildings and morning baseball

I continue to be challenged in my understandings of my dad's condition. Maybe there is no understanding to be had, but I'm one of those that has a compulsion to theorize. I'm inclined to lean heavily on the "postoperative delirium" theory for some of what's going on. Alzheimer's is tricky enough, and my comprehension of that is quite limited, so maybe the post-anesthesia issue isn't really in play here; plus, I always thought Alzheimer's was concentrated in loss of memory, but I'm learning there are other aspects too.

Regardless of reason, the things about Dad's behavior that have perplexed me today are not really memory-related.

First, and from what I'm told this started shortly after his surgery, he is more often than not utterly convinced that he is not at home but in a hospital-provided housing unit that is connected to many others and on a vast campus very far from his house. He has repeatedly expressed amazement that so many of the buildings are identical to each other in layout and furnishings, and has asked me how the building I've been sleeping at looks—is it the same as here? He also has been impressed with the quality of the TV as being "much better than the one at home," and is confused about why there's a pool in the yard as that seems dangerous for a place like this. This isn't something that varies, it's consistent in his perception even when other things are not.

It does go away from time to time, sort of—when the cat comes inside or goes out, he's not startled that the cat is here rather than "at home"; he has wanted to go out and get the mail, which is only an at-home thing. But soon afterward he remarks on when he goes home after being here, or how he's been in this place for a long time and shouldn't he go home soon.

I've been trying to figure out how this concept got lodged in his head, whether there was an event while he was in the hospital after surgery or while in again after a subsequent fall that locked in and the experience of going home was skipped over or never registered or something? I also realize that trying to figure that out is a fool's errand and not worth spending my energy on, I just can't help wondering.

The other thing today was that, after a nap in the afternoon, he got out of bed around 6:00 and greeted me and Marty with "good morning," not facetiously, and a little later when I rigged up the TV to use my MLB.TV account to watch Your Seattle Mariners lose again he found it very, very odd indeed that they were playing baseball—in a packed stadium, no less—at 8:00 in the morning. It was dark here, it was dark outside the ballpark on the screen, we'd mentioned it was evening, Marty was serving dinner, but he kept coming back to morning baseball. "Did you stay up all night so you'd be sure to be awake for this game?" he asked me, knowing I am not at all a morning person. "No, Dad, I got up around noon." Did not compute.

The morning baseball confusion is less perplexing to me than the not-at-home thing. He had slept during the day and got up in early evening, habitually he gets up in the mornings, given the overall condition I can understand that at least somewhat.

All of this is really hard to see, though. It's one thing to be informed from afar that Dad's in decline—even when the informing is greatly detailed—it's another to actually witness it. And that's just from me being here a couple of days. I expect Marty's pretty much crushed, or would be if he could relax long enough to just feel instead of being on guard as the caretaker while still trying to manage regular stuff. I think my being here at least helps him, even if it's not doing a lot for Dad. Though Dad is glad I'm here, and asks me two or three times a day how long I'll be here for. I've taken to just answering "a week or so" instead of attempting the more honest answer of "I'm not sure yet, it kind of depends" that I gave the first couple of times.

Also, I have been so preoccupied with all of this that I let it slip my mind that yesterday, September 3rd, was what would have been my grandfather's 106th birthday. Like I said last time, Grandpa never had to deal with dementia of any kind and lived to be 92½, fully cognizant all the way. I still miss him, though I admit to thinking about him less as time has gone on as it's been "normal" not to have him around. Bums me out a little that I missed acknowledging the day on the day, though.

One bright spot from today: I was wearing my Mariners cap and a J.P. Crawford jersey T-shirt while running an errand to the local Walmart (in typical circumstances, I would never patronize Walmart, but this is a "when in Rome" situation). A young (maybe 20 years old) employee at the store approached me and I was prepared to dismiss her, thinking it was going to be one of those, "can I help you find what you need" sorts of accostings that I usually avoid, but instead she indicated my attire and asked if I was from Washington. "I am," I said. Seattle? "Yep." She told me she had just relocated from Vancouver, WA, and was experiencing culture shock/weather shock/environment shock as she got used to living down here. I didn't press, but it sounded like she was questioning her life choices; I probably would be too if I were a 20ish young woman raised in the PNW and found myself living in the scorching desert populated by mostly senior citizens, retirees, and gay dudes (and gay retirees). Especially if I didn't play golf. I mean, what would I do for fun? Go to LA? Anyway, running into a friendly Washingtonian seemed to make her day, so I'm glad there was something to smile about amidst all this.

Meantime, my sister texted me from a Los Angeles movie theater that was among the many nationwide celebrating the 60th anniversary of Star Trek by showing some of the feature films, tonight's selection being Star Trek—The Motion Picture. Part of the event tonight was a Q & A with Eugene "Rod"  Roddenberry Jr., and among the things texted to me was a short video of my nephew Ben asking Rod a question about how Gene Sr. would have felt about some of the newer series maybe straying from the original's ethos. Also a photo of Ben with Rod. Very cool. Glad my sister's raising him to be a proper nerd. (Rod's reply included his lack of affection for my favorite Trek series, Deep Space Nine, but I see where Rod's coming from even if I think he's missing out.) Then she complained about the movie being too long. Can't argue with her there, STTMP is bloated with nothing scenes that exist just to show off new-for-1979 special effects and pad the run time. I've long thought I could do my own edit of the picture, cut a good 20-30 minutes out of it and lose zero dialogue. It'd surely be a way better movie that way.

Tagged Dad, Health, Star Trek, Posted on September 5, 2026 at 12:51AM   |   Permalink   |     |  

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Status report

There isn't much to report in terms of updates from down here. I'm getting a much better sense of what Marty had been living with regarding my dad's condition, I'm finding things frustrating but also manageable, but then I've only been here a short time. There are things in motion to get some help here, but as with any bureaucracy it will take time to further.

Meanwhile, I'm helping out where I can, keeping Dad company so Marty can go out and do things that have been put off for a while, and trying not to be too frustrated when Dad asks the same questions over and over or insists he needs his shoes before we go wherever he thinks we're supposed to go. It's so weird. Everything I've been reading on the subject of relating to dementia patients suggests that contradicting them is counter-productive, so I've yet to figure out how to respond to queries about when we have to leave, how far is the walk, how big is this campus of buildings that he thinks we're in, when do I have to pick up Marty (he left on his own with his car), and so on. I try to keep it short and redirect, but that's anxiety-inducing for me.

Anyway. The wrist is worse today, probably because I strained it supporting the weight of a full dishwasher rack that came loose from its rails earlier. That's on my list of things to fix now. (The dishwasher rack, not my wrist, which I can only refrain from using to help it fix itself.) I also want to assist Marty in disconnecting their expensive satellite TV service and replacing it with a leaner, less expensive internet-based service; try and organize some decent meal options; whatever other small conveniences I can facilitate. Otherwise, I have once more become a mosquito buffet here and need to find a drugstore and get some hydrocortisone. Dad never gets bitten by mosquitos; I think it's because biter mosquitos are always female and they can tell he's not their type. I, however, remain tasty.

For distraction, I watched tonight's season finale episode of Silo, which just served to create more mystery even as it answered other questions while moving the various plots along.

I'll get to a review of the latest SNW soon, but I'll have to watch it again to form more coherent thoughts on it and it's mostly a dud, so I'm not motivated yet. There's a kernel of something worthwhile in it, but it's surrounded by silliness, and not the good kind. Maybe it's not a bad thing there's only one truncated season left after this one.

Tagged Dad, Health, TV, Posted on September 4, 2026 at 12:48AM   |   Permalink   |     |  

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Road trip

Map from Mapquest, as they're the only ones not kowtowing to the "Lake America" bullshit

I  am back down at my dad and Marty's place in greater Palm Springs, about a month-and-a-half ahead of schedule. I drove down beginning midday Monday, taking about 30 hours to make the trip including various stops along the way. I only stopped for rest and food, but even though I was kind of hurrying down, I did opt for the more appealing route. I-5 after you pass the mountains around Weed is just boring as hell, so I cut east around Eugene through the mountains and a few small towns over to a road that takes you down to Klamath Falls and eventually to US 395.

It's an interesting way to go, a route I've done more than once in each direction before, and if I were being leisurely and willing to spend extra time and money I'd avail myself of the many recreation areas and little towns and other points of interest. Lake Topaz is interesting and pretty. Plenty of nice mountain camping areas. And for historical import there's Manzanar and Tulelake, but I've stopped at those before.

It's also more hazardous in some places. I nearly hit a deer in the middle of the night south of Tulelake, for instance. That was a nice test of my brakes (successful!) and made the point that the big cooler on my passenger seat might be better off being seat-belted into place.

All in all, though, it was a rather uneventful drive and, thanks to my Prius getting better than 2½ times the mileage of my old Subaru, I only had to fill up the tank three times, the last when I was nearly at the end of the trip. (Had I started out with a full tank, I'd have only needed to fill up twice. Gas for coming here and going back combined is going to end up costing less than half of what a plane ticket would have.) The lengthy drive did reveal some new annoyances regarding my sprained wrist; you wouldn't think there'd be much wrist action with driving, but there is, especially on stretches of windy road. My wrist brace was helpful, and it's now a week since the injury so range of motion is almost normal, but I'm hoping it'll be less/not at all painful on the return trip.

Rushing down did result in my being pretty wiped out when I got here, though, and I ended up sleeping much of today; not what I had in mind for this visit, but now that I've gotten caught up I should be able to right that ship somewhat. Because there's simultaneously a lot and not much for me to do here.

My dad isn't doing well, he's 83 and has Alzheimer's (definitively diagnosed just recently), which hasn't been a huge deal yet, but as mentioned before, a recent general anesthesia surgery has exacerbated things. Marty is understandably overwhelmed, and  after just 24 hours or so here I have a better understanding of why. Sometimes our discussion is normalish, other times he's really confused. Sometimes he's convinced he's staying in some sort of hospital-provided facility on a campus somewhere and not at home. He referred to my sister by my mom's name a couple of times. But I've yet to see how he does early in the day, I imagine things are better then. I did meet his in-home nurse today, someone who's here once a week for a while, at least, and she seems on the ball and helpful. Physically, Dad appears to be a little better than the last time I was here in the fall, though he sure sounds more feeble when he talks.

I don't know, it's all fairly sobering and yet somehow ... not? My vocabulary fails me at this. Dad's deterioration has seemed very fast to me, but that's likely because I only see him in person once or twice a year; on the other hand, he's not really taken care of himself for many years, he's never been one to engage his mind in the sort of exercise one needs to do as they age—unlike my grandfather (on my mom's side), who lived into his 90s and was sharp the whole way through even as his body failed him; Grandpa read a lot of fiction, loved crosswords, followed baseball, kept a social circle of sorts even as it kept diminishing as he outlived his peers. Dad's never done those things and has no local social circle to speak of outside of Marty. So from an objective point of view this isn't a surprise at all, yet, you know, it's my dad, so even when it's predictable it still lands differently.

I'm getting accustomed to the feeling that I'll be an orphan soon. And I'm getting equally accustomed to the idea that that will be OK. It's a very strange state of mind to experience.

Later tonight there's a new episode of Strange New Worlds. I'm looking forward to that as a mental palate cleanser. (Even though I'm expecting it not to be very good.)

Tagged Traveling, Dad, Health, Posted on September 2, 2026 at 8:36PM   |   Permalink   |     |  

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What a drag it is getting old

I've been thinking about aging recently. More than I usually do, I mean. Mostly that's because my dad, now 83, isn't doing very well in a number of ways, and when one is 83 and in not very good shape and has preexisting issues, one new event can beget a cascade of things getting worse.

He had a fall a couple weeks ago that broke his shoulder and required a relatively minor surgical procedure to put the bone back together, but it was a general anesthesia surgery and there is a thing I now know about called "postoperative delirium" that is common in elderly folk. The anesthesia can have a delayed effect of kind of scrambling your neurons, all the worse if you've already got some sort of cognitive decline issue. It's usually temporary, but, again, if one already has an issue it might just accelerate that. 

Who knows. I certainly don't, I'm just learning about these things as they come up. Anyway, Dad's had trouble recuperating and is back in the hospital with balance issues, having fallen down a few more times, and with evident postoperative delirium. His memory's been wonky for a while now, but now he's being especially weird, according to my sources.

So there's that. He and Marty were up my way a little over a year ago, and that was the first time I had truly clocked how frail Dad had become, but he was still managing cognitively. Memory was a little suspect, but to a relatively minor degree. I went to visit them last fall and things were worse but still following a kind of expected track. With this latest series of events, "expected track" is just a meaningless phrase.

I may head down to see them ahead of schedule; I wasn't planning on it until October, but I may well move that up. We'll see.

Meanwhile, I, too, am getting older, but thankfully my issues are more on the "annoyance" end of the scale, at least so far. For instance, my sprained finger still hasn't completely healed. That's annoying. I now weigh 10 pounds more than I did 15 years ago and 40 more than what was locked into my brain as my normal mass from the time I was a teenager until at least my mid-thirties. I have a protruding midsection. Not like many Americans do (certainly many in my age cohort), I still have no trouble fastening my 30" waist jeans, but it nevertheless feels "not-me." My bad cholesterol is high despite not having eaten land meat since 1987 (for which I blame genetics—Mom was always rather slight and she had the same issue).

So to maybe address these things (not the sprained finger, but the rest) I've been making a point to be more active than I have been. I'm a long way from the days when I bicycled everywhere, and I've no illusions about doing that again, but I have been getting out either on the bike or on foot (or in a pinch using the indoor stationary bike) for an hour or more a few times a week. Generally, it feels pretty good.

Not today, though. Today I got a reminder of something that is not related to getting older, it's just a thing I've always dealt with—overexertion. I think this is related to my lower-than-normal blood pressure, which has been relatively constant for me, but again, I'm only semi-informed about such things. (I do know it's not a heart problem, as I had a doctor once order me one of those treadmill stress tests, which achieved making me overexert and barf all over the machine but also showed no cardiac issues while doing it.) Anyway, for as long as I can recall if I pushed myself beyond a certain threshold of exercise—usually while biking, but once on a hike up Tiger Mountain (on a date—that was embarrassing, and there was no next date) and a couple of times playing ultimate frisbee—I feel overheated, slightly dizzy, and eventually nauseous. The remedy is to lie down and breathe deeply until the heat escapes my head and functionality returns; sometimes there's also barfing.

Anyway, I went out around the neighborhood on the bicycle late this afternoon and, knowing I'm not in the kind of shape I used to be in, tried to keep to as flat a route as I could. This is greater Seattle, so nothing is going to be flat, but I intended to avoid more challenging hills. This was going OK until I found myself across the border to Edmonds and didn't know the best way back; before I knew it I'd committed to a stretch of downhill that I knew was going to be a problem. Then my available options all had inclines. I took a breather for a couple of minutes and opted to walk the bike up the shortest of the options, a steep one-block length that would get me back on relatively flat ground soonest.

It probably was the best option, but when I reached the top of the hill I had to lie down, just off the street in the dirt and dead grass near someone's front yard. After about ten minutes I was able to get up again, drink some water, and proceed on my way home, opting not to stop by the store on the way as originally planned. When I reached my garage and got off the bike, yep, dizziness and vomit. Didn't even make it inside first. The upside is that after the vomit stage, things get back to normal pretty fast, so I came inside, cleaned up my face, and watched the Mariners win for once and all is well.

Except I still have a protruding gut.

Tagged Health, Dad, Aging, Posted on August 15, 2026 at 10:15PM   |   Permalink   |     |  

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Bits and pieces

All-Star Game AQI: Very Unhealthy

So, there've been a few things I've been meaning to post about, but time and energy haven't been forthcoming for it. So a disjointed one today and hopefully back to real posts over the weekend(?).

• ITEM: The MLB All-Star Game was a dud for the 7th consecutive year. I don't know exactly what to suggest for de-dudifying the All-Star Game, other than doing away with the unconscionable home-run derby tiebreaker that marred last year's ASG (some of the best ASGs have been extra-inning affairs, which can never happen again so long as that stupid rule exists). But it would be in baseball's interest to tweak some things. As a friend of mine put it last night, in a way it's amazing anyone gets any hits at all in these games, since every pitcher is elite and they're only in the game very briefly. And this time around, the National League team barely had any, with Juan Soto notching a base hit in the 4th and nothing else until PCA got a hit in the 8th and Otto Lopez lined one in the 9th. One walk in the first, one in the seventh. Zippo otherwise in a year when the NL is far and away the superior league in terms of team strength (of course, the ASG is all about individuals, where there's more parity). Meanwhile, the American League team plated three in the first inning and that was effectively it for the game, after that just a solo homer from Miguel Vargas in the 8th that went by in a blink. We were wondering if this game would set a record for most strikeouts, but no; that happened a few years back in another dud.

  Other than changing the selection process to better choose the participants, I don't know how to fix this, or even if it needs to be fixed, but there are a couple of things I'd like to see beyond obliterating the HR Derby tiebreaker. One, mandate that the starting pitcher pitch at least two innings unless he gets hurt or unless he gets lit up. Then it's actually a bigger deal to be named starter than to just be an opener in a bullpen game. Two, no more mid-game interruptions—in Bud Selig's day we'd get mid-game delays to make a speech or something, these days it's a delay for some sort of stunt or performance like it's a miniature football halftime show. This year it was a video of a bunch of kids riding their bikes to a ballgame followed by real kids riding bikes onto the field, I think as some sort of homage to the film The Sandlot. Also midgame fireworks that flooded the ballpark with particulates and haze. Do that shit before the game or don't do it at all.

  Maybe the biggest problem, though, isn't the game itself but the broadcast of the game. It's hard to follow the game as it's being presented to us. Fox Sports has taken to interviewing players—including, this time, both the pitcher and catcher at the same time—while they are actively playing the game, which, OK, can be entertaining in spots but generally is pointless and has to be distracting for the players, in addition to being a sideshow from the game itself. The commentators have interviewed players after they come out of the game forever, that's fine (so long as we can still see what's happening on the field) and less intrusive. But I'd do away with players taking earpieces with them out to the field to chat with Joe Davis and John Smoltz, or whomever takes over play-by-play duty in the future. Not unrelatedly, the Fox crew doesn't reliably let us know when players come into the game, and there are a ton of substitutions going on after the third inning of an ASG (elected starters have to play three frames); many fans are wanting to see "their guy" play, and sometimes we don't know until a ball is hit to his position and we see the guy make a play. "Hey, my guy is in! Wonder how long he's been out there. Could've been two or three innings for all we know." The broadcasters are too into doing their goofy/inane Q&A with players as they're trying to play to really pay attention to much else. We also should get more in the way of graphics and info on the All-Star players; you get some with the starters as the lineups are announced, but a lot of these guys are unfamiliar to the audience outside of their home markets, it'd be nice for the casual fan to see why, say, rookie Tristian Peters made the squad instead of just wondering amongst themselves as we did, "hey who's that White Sox guy, what's his deal?" Do a little graphical info dump when new players enter the game. And John Smoltz is his own category of problem, he's just terrible as a commentator whether it's the ASG or a playoff game or anything else.

  We enjoyed mocking the thing here, though.

• ITEM (related): Another quote from Craig. From the "this date in baseball history" section of Craig Calcaterra's newsletter today: "1909 — Ed Summers of the Detroit Tigers allows only seven hits and pitches all 18 innings of a 0-0 tie—the game was called due to darkness—with the Washington Senators. It's the longest scoreless game in AL history. Yet, somehow, it was still far more compelling than the 2026 All-Star Game."
• ITEM: People are dumb, and people with fireworks are super dumb. My umpiring shifts for Capitol Hill games have been/are being moved elsewhere because some idiot set off fireworks on the Cap Hill field's synthetic infield and damaged it to the point of unplayability. That whole set of athletic fields is in need of resurfacing, yes, but until a week-and-a-half ago it was still plenty usable. This happened to a lesser extent last year at the Ballard fields where the Spuds play and we had to navigate our play around a hole between first and second base. Can we just be done with fireworks? They're pretty, but the particulates, the smoke, the noise, the fire hazard, is it really worth it? Drone shows are less damaging.
• ITEM: Spuds done for ’26: Speaking of the Spuddies, we played our playoff game yesterday and it did not go well. Full post on that coming later on, but we were trounced.
• ITEM: The health care system in this country is a joke, part 2,352,091. I had my annual checkup today, and I had to go to a new doctor for it. My prior doc doesn't take the insurance I have now, which I switched to because Republicans made the premiums on the insurance I had the last couple of years unaffordable. So I had to go through the rigamarole of again finding a new primary care doc, which I did a couple months ago and today was the next available appointment I could comfortably swing. So I find my way to the new place, go to check in, and am told this doctor isn't taking new patients, but we can do my annual check. "Wait, what?" This didn't compute with me. "If she isn't taking new patients, why am I here? Why did this appointment even get accepted in the first place?" The reply was gobbledygook that made no sense to me, but I was already there and my Rx is going to run out in a couple weeks, so I said fine, we'll do this and then I'll go through the whole process yet again next time I need to see someone. The nurse/med tech guy was sympathetic when he was getting my vitals and such, and after he left the exam room I heard him explain to the doctor in detail about the scheduling fuckup, and in the end the doc agreed to take me on anyway. It may or may not work out well, I don't really have a sense of her as someone I can relate to. The prior doctor was a good fit, I wish I could've kept seeing her, but we live in the US of A, where everything medical is dictated by what insurance you can afford, because people are stupid and keep electing Republicans.
• ITEM: Felon47 went on TV with his tin-foil hat. The alleged President of the United States, a convicted felon and perpetrator of several frauds that were settled out of court as well as many that have yet to be charged, the most grandiose and prolific liar on Earth, made a "speech" about made-up election conspiracies tonight. He distorted intelligence that we already knew about to make it sound (to him, anyway) like there were rampant issues with foreign operatives that are not the actual issues with foreign operatives which benefit him, he made already-debunked claims of mass-voting by non-citizens. He whined and grievanced his way through a pathetic spectacle intended to do two things: Create support for his pet voter-suppression bill that as it stands has no chance of passing either house of Congress, because he wants to be able to cheat in elections with impunity; and take the news media's focus off of the Iran debacle, gas prices, oncoming economic calamity, the outrageous things said by his unqualified criminal lackey nominees in confirmation hearings going on this week, his Air Force One fuckups, the reflecting pool bullshit, ICE murdering people and getting away with it, RFK Jr.'s direct responsibility for both screwworm and parasites in our lettuce (and the need for me to have gotten a measles vaccination today), deaths in DHS custody, the embarrassing NATO summit, his petulant refusal to sign a bipartisan housing bill that became law anyway (which he may not know), his staff getting caught using inside info to make Kalshi bets, his flip-flopping Strait of Hormuz "policies", a judge slapping him down hard on his "settlement" with the IRS, the Republican push for an unconscionable increase in military funding, his and Pete Hegseth's various war crimes, his illegal harassment of journalists, and the evergreen scandal of the Epstein Files. We can't wait for this maniac's term to run out, we need to elect as may Democrats to Congress as possible, by margins too big for him to cheat against, and remove him ASAP.

Tagged Baseball, MLB, Umping, Softball, Politics, Republicans, President VonClownstick, Health, Craig Calcaterra, Posted on July 16, 2026 at 8:51PM   |   Permalink   |     |  

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