Moon Day Thing, 5/22/22

On The Road

Pictured here: Not poop, because I’m in a hotel. I guess I could take a picture of the toilet. LMK in comments.

All the way from where we came
We built a mansion in a day
Distant lightning, thunder claps
Watched our neighbors house collapse
Looked the other way
And then the storm was overhead
All the ocean's boil and river's bled
We auctioned off our memories in the absence of a breeze
Scatter what remains, scatter what remains
- Metric, "Speed the Collapse"

Article coming tomorrow.

• I’ve been absent because of Fathermouth’s medical saga: the Great and Final Surgery happened last Tuesday, a surprisingly uninvasive TAVR implant for a new valve. He was clear to go home the next day with a huge hole in the side of his groin and some big IV wounds. So he did, with a heart monitor he was supposed to wear for two weeks. And promptly thereafter, his heart stopped. Three times. He didn’t notice on any occasion (he was asleep for two of them). But apparently the last time looked enough like being dead that the monitor people called and said, “take your dad to the ER. Now.” So, long story short, the rest of the week was spent shuffling from the ER to various departments at all hours of the day. Apparently, a small number of people that get this kind of valve implant are prone to “blocks,” which in this case doesn’t refer to a clogged artery or other circulatory pathway but in the electrical sense, a short circuit. He had a temporary, then permanent, pacemaker installed and came home this weekend. He also developed gout (again) while in the hospital, and had a couple of days of excruciating pain and toilet accidents because his movement was so impaired.

  It’s a very existential thing to see your father, who is still much bigger than you at 82 and has been nigh-indestructible your whole life, who pulls nails out of his hand while telling jokes, howling in a kind of pure, animalistic pain while doubled over with a pool of waste at his feet. And you can’t do a fucking thing.

  Anyway, he’s been on his gout medicine for a few days and has the crappy painkillers they sent him home with, and is gradually on the rebound. He has a month worth of follow-ups to check on the implant, and physical therapy if he wants it after the gout recedes. He’s expected to be well enough to head home to NC and be independent at the end of the month, marking the end of a 6-month saga I’ll probably spend a lot of time trying to glean meaning from.

  If I’m being honest, I’m not sure dad is going to do well on his own. It’s impossible to know how much strength and alertness he’ll regain, but he’s undeniably.. frailer. He gained back all the weight he lost during his effective coma (40 lbs) because he’s overeaten and snacked on junk food and not exercised the whole time he’s been here despite my best efforts- I can’t bring myself to tell a mentally-alert parent what to do. But his vision is worsening (Dad has had only one eye since the horrific accident I’ve alluded to from my college days), and I see him getting frustrated with daily life. All of this is subjective, of course- he’s got plenty of reason to be exhausted and impatient. And we’re looking forward to having our privacy back, and I admit I’m at the edge of my patience- Dad has basically no filter about interrupting me, largely because he doesn’t understand what he sees me doing most of the time if it doesn’t involve farm work, so it’s been harder and harder to write, work, watch TV, or just take a break without needing to jump up and navigate a piece of technology on the other side of the house. I wouldn’t mind having my house back to myself, but I’m worried. But it’s Dad’s life, and he’s going to live or die on his own terms, and that’s the most important thing.

• So we’ve got a Ministry of Truth now. I’m out of things to say. Really, nothing surprises me anymore, and I’ve run out of energy to feel new outrage or worry. (I was already getting there.) Don’t get me wrong, it’s bad. It’s all bad, and I’m a powerless little nobody. At this point, I figure one of four things is going to happen:

  • 1. The Democratic party will get shellacked in November, lose Congress, Musk will turn Twitter inside out and possibly reveal the related deep state shenanigans that I suspect prompted the violent reaction to his decision to pursue the buyout. Stuff will get rolled back, Brandon will continue to decline and either get 25th’ed or the administration will limp along on life support, literally and figuratively, and we’ll end up with a Republican President, maybe Trump, maybe someone else. Will things get better? Who fucking knows. Maybe they just don’t get worse.

  • 2. The elections are completely fucked with in November: mail-in ballots, a state of emergency, or some other bullshit. Maybe just an overt middle finger. There are protests or worse, and Brandon and Friends come down hard on it. Maybe the whole curtain is drawn back because there’s no need for it anymore, and the hellscape just gets rolling.

  • 3. We end up in a war with Russia, which opens the door for China to take sides or move up their whole agenda, we watch Taiwan fall, and maybe get into a nuclear exchange. Maybe there’s a NATO dogpile. Traditionally wars make America more conservative or at least more nationalist for a while, but this one doesn’t.

  • 4. Some other shit. Things limp along miserably, some stuff gets worse, some stuff doesn’t, nothing gets better, specifics are irrelevant.

  Inspiring, no?

• I’m on a business trip to South Carolina. Since this was scheduled before the TSA mask mandate was lifted, I planned to drive instead. Since it’s a roughly 9-hour drive, I decided to do it in two stages, stop at Colonial Williamburg in VA for a day on the way. Brothermouth loves CW, because we’re both edutainment nerds, and decided to come along and work on his laptop later in the week while I’m doing consulting shit.

  Turns out basically nothing is open in Colonial Williamsburg on Mondays or Tuesdays anymore, so it was a waste. We’re going to Busch Gardens tomorrow instead to make the best of it. Husbandmouth is holding down the fort and keeping an eye on Dad. I spent most of last week planting crops.

• If I’m being honest, life feels pretty bleak. Most days I feel like I’m just lurching from one responsibility to another, which at least keeps me marching forward and not, like, curled up in a depressive ball or anything. But it’s hard to see meaning or purpose in any of it. I’m not sure what I’m living for, which doesn’t seem to bother Brothermouth or Husbandmouth- or Fathermouth, for that matter, who mainly just seems motivated to keep living as though he’s getting one over on a casino. Maybe that’s a guy thing.

  Husbandmouth and I had started the process of adoption shortly before COVID- it was delayed during all the pandemic bullshit, which the agency went all-in on, and they cut us loose when we moved away from NY despite telling us they wouldn’t, which lost us all that time.

  Because I believed a lot of dumb bullshit when we were younger, and because Husbandmouth followed my lead, we waited way too long to get married or start a family, and adoption is our only realistic (safe/affordable) option, only there’s no point in opening that door again until Husbandmouth gets a job again or it will look terrible, and he just can’t seem to pass this last section on his license.

  We lost nearly all our friends when we moved away from NYC’s COVID tyranny. Most of our hobbies happened through our friends. We started over because our old life was being crumbled into dust while we were forced to watch, alone, in our homes, with masks on. If I’m not building anything to pass on to someone I love, it’s hard to feel like it means anything. Maybe that shouldn’t matter, but it does.

Anyway. Real article tomorrow. It can’t rain all the time.