Stoned Ramblings - Elvis

 I was a big Elvis fan as a child. I was so young that I chose my heavy rotation 8-track tape by color. Elvis's Christmas tape was red. On any day, you'd catch me carrying the player around  the house, red tape sticking out of the back and Elvis singing with sleigh bell accompaniment.

My favorite song on the album was Blue Christmas. I liked his sad songs the best. My father was away battling the demons that challenged his sobriety and mental health for a while during my obsession with Elvis. I felt his absence deeply. He was my favorite person, and I absolutely adored him. I don't remember how long he was gone, but it felt like several years. I was lonely.

I remember believing my father had died because my mother started saying, "Your Santa Claus is dead." On television sitcoms, the dad always dressed up as Santa Claus, so I drew what I thought was the most logical conclusion. 

My mom felt no obligation to explain things to me, and she did not tolerate being questioned. She resented being the "other" (not favorite) parent particularly because my dad was absent most of those years. How dare I love him more? I get it now. I didn't know better back then. I felt the resentment directed at me. I knew I was being punished, but not why. Something must be wrong with me - this is how children think.

Maybe his performances of sad songs sounded better to me because he was lonely. Of course, I had the same fascination with him that most people had. He was a great entertainer. However, that charisma and cool was his trademark celebrity character. It did not necessarily represent his human experience and internal struggle. In his  personal life, he probably felt much of the same pain as the rest of us. The public's idolization was his power and his prison.

Soooooo anyway, Elvis. The newly-revealed details paint quite a different picture. Sadness, guilt, powerlessness, hopelessness and an infinite loop of putting on a mask for the rest of the world,  playing with danger to distract yourself from the emotional pain and isolating to heal just enough to do it all over again.

Some of us are still out here, but it's not glamorous. We're not Elvis or Marilyn. We're just going through it, the joy and the shit. I feel bad for them. I'd be horrified to have my entire journey chronicled in such an invasive way.

Wings Unfold

I practically had it hidden away or at least I thought I did. I reached out to people with the confidence that the secure have. I rarely felt the need to be emotional in front of people, and I embraced it when those moments happened in private. I felt comfortable being myself, but I was also cautious not to reveal too much for fear that the wrong person might want to get involved with me. I hadn't considered that I might fall without intending to. I thought I could decide to free my heart or keep it guarded from moment to moment. I thought it would be a conscious effort to unlock the armor. I didn't know that someone else could  disassemble it so slowly and softly that I wouldn't realize what was happening until my heart was naked in his hands. I mostly waver between disbelief and surrender, but I sometimes have resentment. He is another one of them, the seemingly unavailable. He was supposed to be a safe person to befriend, but I think we both felt something at our first meeting. I am often angry about it. I want to be angry at myself, at him, at the world. Why? Why him? I do not understand.

Light at the end of the Pandemic Tunnel

 It has been a really long time since I gave this blog any thought at all. I happened across the link in my Yelp profile during an update. Reading through my last few entries, I felt a weight start to drag me down. I was struggling with terrible depression when I wrote them. Under the circumstances, depression was unavoidable. In the years that followed, I continued to struggle through the financial implications of having little to no income for so long. I applied to two companies that were doing mass recruiting. They both were in the process of hiring me (Amazon was actually a previous employer, so I was a re-hire), but Tesla's recruiting staff were faster and more efficient. Almost 4 years later, I am still there and working on a team that is the pinnacle of diversity in a role that feels like it was created to help me grow. 

Tesla is a small, scrappy company in comparison to its competitors. In that way, it reminds me a lot of CB&C. It is nimble and reactive in a way that the bigger and more established auto manufacturers cannot be. It can be exciting but stressful. I am a member of one the many maintenance teams keeping the factory running. The work isn't glamorous, but it is important to the business. Typically the production staff gets recognized when the numbers are good. As my crew's shepherd, I do my best to provide praise, encouragement and a nice team dinner once in a while. Our department head also chimes in with rallying announcements every quarter. It's toughest on those who seek recognition when we blend into the background, but that's really the essence of our job. We aren't meant to be seen. The evidence of our efforts is invisible when the expectation is for things to operate normally. Tesla as a whole is a very unique place to work. There are many elements of the company (limited only to the automotive portion) that I find confusing. That's probably all I am at liberty to say.

I was lucky (or it was kismet) to have landed here after such a traumatic and spiritually trying time. In the beginning, I was a grunt and I loved it. I could zone out and just work. All the ugliness and sadness in my mind and heart was suspended while I worked my ass off, and I got back home exhausted every morning. No time to concern myself with the darkness. I was pretty much ruined financially, and the little chump change I made was just a drop in the bucket. When I got the creditors to a point where they weren't harassing me anymore, franchise tax board started garnishing my check. I worked with one of their agents and negotiated a more manageable deal until I defaulted. When the agent called to ask me what happened, I told him that I would have to call him back once I had a place to live. During the time when I was technically homeless, a coworker and his wife put me up in the guest room of their family home. They wouldn't accept any money for rent - angels in real life. A couple of months later, I found a room to rent in the valley. It was a really really really long commute, but it was all I could afford at the time. How I managed to keep a positive attitude through all that is a mysterious and wonderful miracle. I crossed paths with some very supportive people who gave me the push I needed to keep going and cheered me on when I felt like I was too tired. 

After receiving a promotion that served to slingshot me up into the kind of financial independence I had before mom's decline, I breathed a huge sigh of relief. That was a little over a year ago. The plant shut down just as I was moving all my stuff. After we went back to work, I had a few magical months of setting up my new digs to reflect the things that make me feel at home. Now I'm paying back taxes again, but I don't mind. I have a really small but safe and comfy apartment and everything I need to live. When I asked my boss for the days off to move (prior to the pandemic shutdown announcement), he joked that I needed to move up to better digs since I was in "management". When I told him that I'd been homeless and rented the room so far away out of necessity in a desperate situation, he was shocked. He didn't understand why I'd never shared my situation with him, and I said that it wasn't his job to manage my personal life. As my manager and mentor, I counted on him to guide me professionally. The rest, I said, was my responsibility. I also felt very accomplished that I'd gone through all that struggle without letting my work suffer. It's true that I practically treated work as a vice during the worst of times, but it turned out to be the healthiest option available. I needed to fix me: my finances, my home, my heart. I focused on fixing equipment, and I managed to fix parts of myself along the way. Win-Win.

I'm still a work in progress of course. I have this weird dysfunctional relationship with money that I think I inherited from my parents. They both turned to unhealthy money habits when they were unhappy: gambling, shopping, compulsive debting. Yup, I have all that. However, recognizing that I suffer from those tendencies makes it a lot easier to resist them. I still buy myself something nice when I feel sad and occasionally gamble when I'm bored, but I actually enjoy those activities now. There's a big difference in compulsive debting to escape reality and treating yourself to something nice or fun. The absolutely best part is being able to buy something I really want after waiting until I have the money together to make it happen instead of just buying random stuff all the time and keeping the bank account empty. I got a bike that I loooooove and ride as much as possible. I love her more than people, and I am not exaggerating. Wait, no. The BEST part is not being afraid of getting my card declined. I know exactly how much money I have in every account (and every account has money in it). There aren't any nasty surprises at the register and my rent is paid on time. I am truly grateful for how things are turning out, and I don't have to remember too far back to see the evidence of just how fortunate I am.

I tell people that I love them now. Sometimes the words feel weird and get caught in my throat, but I'm working on that.

In-Dependence Day

It's difficult to be the human embodiment of the intersection of conflicting beliefs. I sometimes feel similarly to the people of color voicing their reasons why they don't celebrate the 4th (especially when some jackass reminds me of it), but it's not a nagging presence in my daily life. I come from a military family and consider myself a patriot at heart. My mother didn't like black people, but her desire to become a US citizen was stronger than her racism. Luckily, my brother was the meal ticket, and I just came along as a surprise. The way I look at it, everyone has an internal struggle. Mine looks different from yours, but it's not any more or less valid. I personally don't believe any of us (regardless of race/gender) really understands what freedom truly is until we experience life without it. How can a person  really "feel free"? I can walk outside at night alone. My parents couldn't do that. I can go to college anywhere. They couldn't do that either. There is a long list of privileges I have that they did not, but I don't "feel free". I don't even know what that means because practically every aspect of American life is based on programming from education, advertising/media and religion. Still, I know that life for billions of people in other countries is far far worse. In fact, there are people in this country who would happily trade places with me.

Equality, on the other hand, clearly hasn't been achieved yet. So many who have privilege aren't ready to give it up. Some can't even see that the privilege is what they're really fighting for; they just know that it feels like something is being taken away, and they think they need someone to blame. In my opinion, it's more of an issue of maturity, not race, not status. Those who hold themselves accountable as citizens for the way our country evolves will be the first to extend the olive branch, no matter how uncomfortable it feels, because it is for the good of all. Those who want to be selfish, stubborn, ignorant and afraid will do their best to stand in the way. Sometimes their best is name-calling. That only speaks to their ignorance. The worst offenders are those who say they want equality but lower themselves to the same petty tactics as the incompetent. I don't understand why they don't see that they're hurting their own cause.

Transitioning

Mom has been at Kaiser for twelve days. I've worked ten of those twelve days. It feels really good to be able to earn money again while knowing that mom is safe and properly supervised. She has a 24 hour sitter. They've moved her twice. I'm assuming that is to give each crew a break after a few days. The longer she is there, the more they understand why I refused to allow her to be discharged to my care again. One person cannot take care of her. It is physically impossible for one person to be awake for that many hours every day.

I practically had to throw a royal fit in the hospital to get them to take me seriously. I went as far as threatening to take my own life if they insisted that I take her home. I said that I had no desire to harm her, but, since there was no one else to care for her, I might need to drug her. They put me in a secured room with no access to a phone. They took all my belongings and sent me to John George, the local psychiatric hospital. I spent the night there, about six hours, and the morning psychiatrist released me after a very brief interview. I'd spoken to so many people by that point that there was really no indication that I would be a danger to anyone. It was pretty clear that I did not belong there. John George, by the way, strikes me as the type of facility used as storage for people who cannot be trusted in society. I sincerely doubt that anyone would go there to "get better". I was warned not to say those kinds of things anymore, regardless of how frustrated I become. I was also advised by some of the staff there that I should refuse mom's discharge over the phone or simply stop answering their calls and force them to do whatever they'd do if she had nowhere to go.

I took their advice. I even blocked the hospital from ringing my phone so I wouldn't be tempted. I let that go on for almost a week, and then my brother started losing it. They were harassing him constantly. I didn't feel any sympathy for him, but I did worry about the house since it's still in her name with that ridiculous reverse mortgage hanging over it. I called the Kaiser social worker and left a message, but I got no response. I decided to take a chance and visit her, hoping that I hadn't been placed on some black list. She was well. She was actually happy! She was on some good drugs, and she had someone to talk to all the time. She still refused to exercise, but that's not my problem anymore.

Mom's doctor has officially listed her as physically and mentally incapable of living independently, which I'd been pushing for almost a year with no progress. Now that Kaiser has to care for her, all the adjustments to her medical records are swift and easy. The new social worker assigned to her case is ready to help me in every way she can. If I can get the VA application moving forward, she'll be all situated asap. I don't know what that timeline looks like in this land of seemingly endless red tape, but at least there is progress now. I kept getting turned away when I was trying to do it all alone. Nobody wanted to help me. Now she's their responsibility, so they're being polite to me because I am technically helping them.

For the first time since I took over her care, I feel optimistic about the direction in which things are going. Although the process may take a while, I can see an achievable goal. 

I started driving a Lyft rental last weekend. I'm making decent money for something that requires no training. I'm not loving it, but I am grateful for it. I'm still tired, but I am not plagued with worry like I was two weeks ago, and I can sleep at night. Omg I can sleep! I wish I had more hours to sleep and screw around, but I gotta get these bills under control. I'm hitting it hard. It feels good. I don't care about the long hours. I just want to clean up and organize this mess.

Since I am in the car so much, I've already finished three audio books. One of which was a beginner's guide to tarot. Despite the mediocre quality of the recording, I felt inspired. As depicted in today's card from my hauntingly beautiful Mary-El deck, 3 of Swords, the peaceful dove summons the courage, strength and energy to carry the burden of power through a storm. Although it appears to be small and laboring, the intense struggle is transforming it into a mighty eagle. I never thought of myself as a dove, but to this dove I can definitely relate. The job looks impossible, but she's doing it. That's my girl.

Any minute now

I took mom to Kaiser emergency again in Saturday. After two calls with the advice nurse, I was instructed to just go to ER for a respite. They kept her overnight so I could go home and sleep. I got about seven hours that night. She was prescribed a sleep aid that normally isn't recommended for dementia patients, but it works without compromising her coordination. I'm adjusting the dementia medicine back down to a half dose tonight because she is sleeping a lot, and I'm concerned that she could be too drugged up. I know that she needs a few days of long sleeping hours to make up for the past week of terrible insomnia, but I don't know how strong the effects of the meds are (together or separately) because both are new.

Before she was moved to an observation room on Saturday night, I spoke with the social worker on duty. We stepped out of my mom's room and into a semi-private space a few steps down the hallway. My mom yelled and pitched a fit for the entire time I was out of the room. The tantrum continued even after I returned. She said that she wanted me to help her scream at the ER staff. I refused. The nurses were very helpful and polite. One of them brought me a sandwich and juice after mom's dissatisfaction with the two meals she was given. Mom watched me eat the sandwich with a strange look on her face. She asked me if it was good, and I told her that it was basic. It was basic, but I was tired and hungry. She asked, "You're just going to eat whatever they give you?"

   "Yes."

  "Why?"

   "Because it's what they have. This is not a restaurant."

She looked at her food again (the second meal they brought her), ate a few more bites and quieted down. She said she still didn't like it, but she didn't scream anymore after that... at least not while I was there.

The next morning, I spoke to the new nurse on duty (barely an hour into her shift) twice within fifteen minutes. I could hear mom in the background insisting that I immediately appear. Although I skipped making breakfast and coffee, opting to go straight to the hospital instead, it took me an hour. An hour is an eternity to her if she's waiting. She thinks thirty seconds is ten minutes. She has a lot of difficulty with gauging time and reading clocks.

Her dementia is overwhelming. It's a 24 hour crap shoot. I never know when she's going to be herself, a vacant husk or somewhere in between. We've been burning through the disposable underwear at an alarming rate. I have to get her into a facility before she becomes completely incontinent. I don't know how much time I have left. It's all happening so fast! I pray that getting enough rest will help mom recover some of the independence she had just a couple of months ago. I need to be able to get out of the house to make money. She can't get any services for free, we have nothing left after paying bills from her fixed income, and a few bills go unpaid 2-3 months at a time.

I'm applying for adult day care and requested to be reactivated as a DoorDash driver. I signed up for Instacart too. The day care hours aren't long enough for me to drive Lyft, especially since I need to drive a rental. I'm not sure what else I can do with a few hours every other weekday, but I hope I come up with something good soon.

Breaking Point

It has been 19 days since mom was released from the physical therapy rehabilitation nursing home. What was initially her conscious, annoying preference to have assistance with everything and be super clingy and chatty, brought on by the attentiveness of the nursing home staff has developed into a genuine helplessness. Mom's dementia is the worst I have ever seen it. At first she just refused to exercise because she didn't want to listen to me. Now, she's so weak that her arms and legs tremble after five minutes (or less) of activity.

Here's the problem: she won't sleep. I'm not sure what is happening in her dementia-wracked mind, but it must be nightmarish. She will only close her eyes for a few minutes before opening them again and sitting up. I tried giving her the Norco that she was prescribed, but she still won't sleep. The drowsiness just makes her weaker and more confused. It seems to also make the unpleasant stuff in her mind worse. Without the sedating meds, she needs help finding and using the bathroom when she gets up at night. During the day she usually knows where she is going although she often needs help getting there. When sedated, she can barely get out of bed, but she still tries it. She doesn't know why she is getting up. Sometimes she has to go to the bathroom, but she has to be both convinced and assisted. She's so unsteady on her feet that I've had some close calls avoiding injuring myself to keep her from falling. I can't sleep at night because she needs to be monitored so closely. I am also becoming a safety concern as my sleep deprivation builds up.

I sat with her at dialysis for the whole three and a half hours yesterday. She has a cold with a nasty cough (which is definitely not helping the insomnia). Since her dementia is so bad and she's so exhausted already, combining those with the energy drain of dialysis treatment makes her a loopy, frail mess. She often blows her nose into her hand, spraying and dribbling mucus everywhere and spits wherever: ground, floor, garbage, any cup within reach and often onto her own clothing or bed linens. I had to assist with the nose-blowing and spitting, distribute snacks, keep a germ mask on her as much as possible and clean everything up. That's, of course, in addition to keeping her relatively calm through her episodes.

After dialysis, she was in a state of inconsolable misery. Physically, it was much worse than sedating her. Most of my safety close calls occurred during that time. Around 7pm, her groaning and whining escalated to loud wailing and calling for Jesus's mercy. When I asked her what was wrong, she couldn't tell me. She just kept repeating herself. When I asked if she was in pain, she said yes. I asked her if the pain was bad enough to go to the emergency room, and she said that it was. She NEVER wants to go to the ER! I usually have to either threaten her or trick her to get her into the car for a hospital visit of any kind. Although we can't afford another ER visit (so far we're at three visits since rehab with a $75 copay each, and, without me earning a single dollar for the past two weeks, we are literally on the verge of losing everything from transportation to housing), I knew we had to go. A few miles into the drive, Controlla by Drake came in the radio. Her groaning ceased, and she sat quietly for the rest of the trip. After taking the hospital exit off the freeway, I asked her how she felt. She said she was fine. I asked her if she was still in pain, and she said no. I asked her if she still wanted to go to emergency, and she said that she didn't care. Since we were already there, I told her that I would at least pick up her prescription refills. Well, I couldn't afford them. I had $11 in my bank account, $7 on her credit card (I had to order a new card for mine because of a weird charge last week, so I don't have one at the moment - even if I did, I only have $50 available credit left). She needed her blood sugar pills for today. Luckily, the co-pay for that med was $10. I would've given them a roll of quarters from my trunk for those pills if I had to. One of her prescriptions is over a hundred dollars! How on earth am I supposed to pay for that?

So, anyway, here we are. I have about $50 in change that I can coinstar for food. I have to make the fuel in the car last as long as I can. I'm still riding around on a spare because I can't afford another new tire. A friend loaned me money for that, but my bank hasn't posted the PayPal transfer, which I initiated on Thursday. I can't drive for Lyft in my car until I get my scheduled maintenance and safety inspection ($800+). I suppose I could deliver DoorDash or Instacart in a pinch if it was safe to leave mom home alone for a while, but it simply is not. I want to use the money, whenever the hell they decide to post it, to rent a car with the Hertz-Lyft partnership program, but I will need to be out of the house for long hours. That's really the only way I can see to earn enough money to start making a dent in the massive debt we're accruing and have an acceptable quality of life.

The government program (Medi-Cal is the gateway to all the senior care and support services) won't help us because her retirement income is a couple hundred a month higher than what they consider low income. My lack of income while I am primary caregiver doesn't even come into play, which is such bullshit. I can't even get her a damn wheelchair!

My February car loan payment is overdue because of the double blowout. I was driving for Lyft on the last few days of my last valid safety inspection in an effort to make enough money to pay for that and a rental, but I instead ended up spending more than I made. I had to buy a new tire so I could go pick mom up from dialysis (almost three hours late). The second flat is still in the trunk. I know that I'm not supposed to ride a spare so long, but... no fucking choice. I have nine days until my March car payment is due, and I haven't yet paid February, and I have no income.  My car insurance is due tomorrow. I will pay it late from mom's SSI when it posts Wednesday. I don't know what I'll do about the car loan payment yet. I will also need to pay my cell phone.

Last night, after a brief, wonderful few hours of lucidity (which I used to get some much needed rest), mom went back to the crazed insomnia and coughing. She had a bathroom accident just before 6am. She almost got there in time. If she hadn't been so confused and combative, we could've made it. However, there we were, both exhausted and irritable. She could barely stand while I cleaned her up, but we somehow got through it. An hour prior,  I helped her go pee. An hour later, I had to calm her down and assure her that she didn't have to get up because it wasn't a dialysis day, and she wanted to discuss the music I was playing for her (yes, I've had the Bluetooth speaker on in her room ever since the Drake incident, but she seems to prefer Billie Holiday and others from that era over newer tunes). An hour after that, she wanted breakfast. It's noon now. Neither of us has slept since the bathroom accident. Her coughing has gotten much better. I gave her Mucinex Friday night despite my reservations about drug interactions because she just couldn't breathe and she was suffering so bad that I was desperate. A trip to the ER the night before was fruitless. They wouldn't help her at all. They just ran a bunch of tests and told her to drink more water. The Mucinex worked pretty well. I sat with her for a few hours and urged her to close her eyes every time she opened them. She slept for a while that night. I tried repeating the same process again after dialysis yesterday, but it didn't work. I don't think she needs any more medicine IF SHE WOULD JUST GET SOME SLEEP. I'm tightrope walking on my last little tender nerve. I keep explaining to her that she needs to go to sleep because the body and mind need sleep to heal and function correctly, and she does this crazy, delirious debating that doesn't even make any damn sense. Grrr. Go to sleep!