Once upon a time, I had a blog. Now I don’t. The end.

No, really though, unbeknownst to me, if you let your host and domain expire, and just don’t pay any attention to that shit for like oh, I don’t know, a year(!), you are forever removed from the annals of history. (I.E., the internet.)

This I learned the hard way, when I decided to start writing again (therapy) and tried to search my website (no longer in existence). All good, I’m starting fresh. It’s going to be bigger, and better than ever, (I say now but will in all likelihood stop writing again in a few months, because depression.)

It’s easier this time, too! Back in the day, you had to muddle your way through creating a website, but now AI assists you. <edit: It’s still a gigantic pain in the ass>. This site isn’t great, but the old one was very archaic and just didn’t scream ‘Read me!’. Also, no one really knew about it, so there was zero pressure on that front.

In the spirit of full disclosure, though, the lack of ease really kept me from using that website very often. It was an anxiety attack just opening the damn thing. There were empty blocks of space, and links that led to nowhere, because I didn’t know how to add content. It was like the Winchester Mansion of web pages. Don’t go in there, you might end up climbing the steps to the attic that has do door.

Anyway, my plan is to start copying over all my previous posts (which were saved on this very computer I’m using now) to the ‘new’ site with the old name, and see how long I can stay on track this go-round.

We had some severe weather in our area yesterday. It started with a torrential downpour for about 4 hours in the late morning/early afternoon, but I didn’t really think anything of it. Just a few short years ago we had what they called a “500-year flood”, so I figured we got that out of the way and everything will be fine. Adorable, I know. But I SAW the rainbow!

The rain had stopped by the time I left work, and there was nothing alarming about our situation when I returned to my domicile, so the whole incident was quickly put out of my mind. That is, until my precious baby beagles Gracie and Beasley asked to go outside. I went out with them, of course, and it felt like it was cooling off. Seriously, a 20-degree temperature drop since I got home 45 minutes prior. Looking to the sky, we were surrounded by black clouds on all sides, and still, I’m like ‘Meh. It might rain.’

Right around that time, the winds blew a tree branch across the street, and over the fence, where it crash-landed a few feet in front of me, it occurred to me that something might be amiss. I shuttled the girls into the house, and McCarthy the cat actually beat us to the door. THAT is when I knew we were in for a doozy. (Side note: that’s a meteorological term. ‘Doozy’).

Within a few minutes the tornado sirens were going off, and I received the customary text from my friend Emily the storm chaser, telling me to get my ass down to the basement toot sweet, so off to the basement we all went. As a family.

Sitting in the damp basement, listening to the world swirling around us, wondering if the wind was going to tear the actual roof off the house, I was taken back to a childhood memory (this time it wasn’t in the form of a flashback). I was SUCH a nervous child, and was always, always, always worried about tornadoes. I had a few really big fears (besides my family, of course), and tornadoes were definitely on that list. Pretty high up on that list.

There was a constant need for reassurance that I never received, until one day during a particularly dreadful storm, my dad got tired of listening to my whimpering and said “Dani! We aren’t going to get a tornado! You know how I know? Because the house is insured, and it would actually be a good thing!”

It could be argued that that is probably not the best way to handle a frightened 9-year-old, but as I sat in my basement last night, trying to calm Gracie and Beasley, who were upset for two very different reasons (Beasley is scared of storms, and Gracie wanted to watch it all unfold), I realized he was right. The house IS insured, and we’re going to be just fine.

We emerged unscathed from the basement about 45 minutes later, to the sounds of ambulances and fire engines going by, and a new alarm sounding. This was the complimentary text from the weather service letting us know to expect flooding. The drainage systems in our town were completely overwhelmed, and all roads in and out of town were flooded and/or sink holes had opened in the intersections.

I wisely decided to do the only thing I could do in a situation such as this…shower and go to bed. We were hunkered down in all of the pillows and blankets, sleeping the peaceful sleep of the privileged, only to be awoken by {glug, glug, glug}. It was one of those sounds that makes your eyes snap open because we have instincts that are always on alert for danger lurking in the night, such as, but not limited to, robbers, murderers, bears, sharks, and zombies. Maybe that’s just me? I don’t know.

As I’m lying in bed, wondering if that noise was real or part of a dream, I heard it again {glug, glug, glug}. By this time, Beasley the beagle is standing on the edge of the bed and lets out a hearty “Barroooo”. Good job, sweet pea. Now the prowler knows exactly where we are.

I put on my bathrobe and wander out of the bedroom, toward the sounds emitting from the (Hopefully empty? Do murderers stop to pee before locating their victims?) bathroom, when suddenly my feet become cold and wet. Then I can hear the sound of the toilet tank continuously refilling, and I think “Oh, okay, it’s just a toilet issue. That’s an easy fix.” As I reach down to turn off the water supply to the toilet tank, I hear the sump pump in the basement below kick on. Then it kicked on again. And again, and again, and again.

My thoughts are brought back to the current situation, when from behind me I hear {glug, glug, glug}. I spin around, throw back the shower curtain, and see that the bathtub also has water in it. Water that is noticeably rising. Shit! We’re gonna need a bigger boat.

I walk through the house, open the basement door, and there at the bottom of the stairs is a majestic waterfall. My senses are a little thrown off, because the roar of water that I can hear doesn’t match this new, built-in water feature I’m seeing at the bottom of the stairs. Ideas and solutions are running laps through my head as I begin my descent into the mist.

Let me tell you why I’m a great person to have around in a catastrophe. I don’t freak out! I don’t freeze up, get angry, cry, wonder ‘why me?’, I just deal with shit! My childhood was ABSOLUTE chaos! You’ve got to be able to plan when you don’t know from one day to the next if there will be food to eat, and you need to think and move quickly when you don’t know from one moment to the next whether someone was going to snap and throw a half-full can of beer at your head. (I’m kidding! They would never waste good beer.)

But you catch my drift. Be alert! Alert, alert, alert! All of my formative years were spent having to think on my toes. Think on my toes? Is that the expression? What does that even mean? Think. On my toes. What a strange idiom. I’ll have to come back to that one at another time.

The thing is, I adapt. I was adapting when I was awoken by the first {glug, glug, glug}; I was adapting when I noticed the sump pump kick on; I was adapting when it occurred to me that the tub was also filling with water; and I adapted when I reached the bottom of the basement stairs (avoiding being caught under the beautiful new waterfall of ‘what the hell kind of water even is this?’) only to see that the washing machine has filled to the top, and was cascading onto the floor that is gently sloped toward the sump pump. Aaaand boom! Mystery solved!

I am not a plumber. Although I do often show plumbers crack when I bend down, because no pants on earth are made to contain my big round ass, but I do know enough to get by.

For instance, I know that there is one big pipe that everything eventually feeds into, and that pipe goes out the basement wall, where it travels approximately six feet, before turning toward the street to connect with the sewer. I also know that with the washing machine overflowing, only to trigger the sump pump, which itself is connected to that main pipe, we’re just repeating the same cycle over and over.

Feeling that there is limited time until the drainage system/storm sewer/all water fixtures in the house just say, ‘fuck it!’ and let my entire home fill with grey water, drowning us all, I know that all I need to do is relieve the pressure. With that bit of knowledge, I run back up the stairs to the cleanout valve that is useful when Mr. Rooter needs to clear the tree roots out of the sewer pipe. With that thought, I tucked my tits into my robe, and raced to the front door. There, I opened the valve and released a geyser of water, hoping that the yard didn’t flood so much that the valve itself was below water.

With that, I’m going back to bed. As I laid my head on the pillow and closed my eyes, I heard the first pelt of raindrops hitting the rooftop.

Tomorrow, I’ll start building the Ark.

We put my grandma in an assisted living facility last week. By ‘we’, I mean ‘not me’. I’ve not been to see her yet, and honestly didn’t realize how much it would bother me until it happened, and we entered this next chapter in her life. I think the fact that she’s less than two weeks shy of turning 97 has tricked me into thinking I’ll be okay with the grandma-shaped hole that is going to be left in my life.
I mean really, whose Tupperware containers am I going to rearrange while she sits in a chair in the kitchen, instructing me step by step? Who is going to explain to me, quite angrily, how to put a fitted sheet on the bed, and tell me that need to wash fruit before I eat it? How am I going to go on without grandma telling me that you don’t eat the core from the head of lettuce? (I secretly do know all of the things, but it makes her feel like she’s still in charge when I let her boss me around.)
Honestly, I can’t say which would be worse; if she had passed suddenly in her sleep and that was that, or this relentless dragging on that she ABSOLUTELY HATES. This lady does not want to be alive any longer. She has been telling me for at least 7 of her actual years on this planet that she wants to die. It’s depressing.
It’s not that she’s ungrateful for the life she’s had. Quite the opposite, in fact. She loved the life she had and the people she has known. She and grandpa had 62 blissful years together before he passed on. Well, passed on is too gentle a euphemism for a man whose body could no longer remember how to swallow, so he lingered on for 8 long days waiting to starve to death. Also, ’62 blissful years’ isn’t totally accurate either. 60, yes, but the final two were torturous for my poor grandma, who had been relegated to being called ‘that bitch who works here’ by her once adoring husband who no longer remembered her. What an injustice!
Prior to that, grandpa was the sweetest man the world. He and grandma had their own thing, and it worked for them. Never once did I see them argue (although grandma’s catch-phrase did seem to be ‘Dammit, Chuck!’), which would always be responded to with a sly grin because he knew he was annoying her, but what’s more, he knew she loved him anyway.
It wasn’t even a gradual decline. It was literally a moment where his conscious mind decided it was done. Too much brain tissue had been eaten away by the Alzheimer’s that no one knew he had, because there were no obvious signs. (We’re not an observant people) It was so unexpected in fact that grandma and the friends they had over to the house to play bridge/canasta/euchre/whatever old people do with cards thought he was joking when he stood up from the table and knelt in front of the television set to talk to his real wife, Rachel Ray. (Yes, that Rachel Ray).
The more merciful thing would have been for him to just grab his chest and keel over from a massive heart attack, as terrible as that is to say, because regardless of the fact that he was 80 then, and his grave marker says he lived to 82, grandpa did die that day.
I didn’t even really know what Alzheimer’s was before that happened. Now don’t get me wrong, I’d heard of it, I didn’t just slither out from under a rock one day, but…just how devastating it is? News to me! It was awful! He turned into a total douche, (not his fault), but it was admittedly hard to not be offended or think differently of him.
Looking back, I try to forget those last times we saw each other. When he wandered off, and everyone (myself and grandma) was frantically looking for him, only for me to discover him out by the road waving his penis at strangers as they drove by. I really hope no children saw that, and I wish to hell that I hadn’t.
Or the time that grandma gave me a suit to wear to work (one that I absolutely would never wear), forcing me to try it on so she could see how it fit, and he yelled from the other room ‘You look like a man!’. Of course I look like a man, my dude, I’m wearing a baseball cap and a leisure suit from 1978! Have you always been this sassy?!
It was very alarming when he would have war flashbacks. You haven’t lived until you’ve innocently walked into your grandparents home to the cacophony of your grandfather yelling ‘Pop the smoke!’ before tossing the television remote across the room, and taking cover behind the recliner with the BB gun your dad had to give him so he wouldn’t use a real rifle, while struggling to get a gas mask out of his ruck sack. Why does he still have that?! The war was over 60 years ago!
Prior to that, though? Salt of the earth guy. Loving father, grandfather, great-grandfather. He worked his whole life, and ran a farm on the side, just for the hell of it I guess? Probably so his kids could be exposed to the working life. He often temporarily took in other peoples children to raise as his own, until they got their collective shit together.
My dear grandma told me a couple years ago, after grandpa has long since kicked this coil, that they had a plan for the afterlife. Grandpa told her many times, before Alzheimer’s stole him away from us, that if he goes first he’ll wait for her at the moon. When her time comes, she’ll go to the moon to pick him up, and they’ll travel to heaven from there. Isn’t that sweet? But for real God was probably like ‘No. You don’t make the rules. I make the rules.’ (God will probably still let him meet his bride at the moon though, because He’s cool like that.)
Grandma has taken me on a different adventure, though. I’ve seen her with countless UTI’s that have robbed her of her sanity in a different way. Man, the elderly can’t handle those very well. She once called me at work, crying hysterically that she’d been kidnapped. This was after the whole family had decided that she was headed down grandpa’s path, and would never be the same again, only to find out (thankfully) that a UTI was wreaking all that havoc. (She wasn’t really kidnapped, she was actually taken to my uncle’s house to recover because he and his wife are both retired. Unfortunately, I only found that out that bit of news after I’d involved the FBI.) Kidding! It was just the state police.
We’ve had fun, though, and I’m happy I’ve gotten to know her for this long. I did learn that I could never work in a nursing home or assisted living facility, though. The first time she asked me to rub Icy Hot on her soft, mushy, pliable back meat, it was all over for me. I’m sorry, it was just uncomfortable.
We went to her house last Thanksgiving, just my dad, his wife, and me, and we were all sitting in the living room waiting for grandma to wander out from the back of the house, when my dad told me to go make sure she was still alive. I know! It sounds awful! But think about it. She was 96 freaking years old at that time, and odds were that while she was still living at home, one of us was going to find her. It’s not morbid, it’s just realistic. We’re all adults here, and you know I can handle shit!
I was tiptoeing cautiously back toward the bedroom, whispering ‘grandma?’ in my meekest tone, hoping she was still upright and breathing. I found her sitting on the hospital bed in the bedroom, where grandpa slept in his last years. This is how our conversation went:
Me: What’s wrong?
Grandma: I don’t feel good.
Me: Oh no, I’m so sorry, what’s wrong?
Grandma: I’m 176 years old!
Me: That would do it. Do you need any help? We don’t have to do this today, if you’re tired.
Grandma: I want to, but I need help getting dressed.
Me: (reaching toward her shirt)
Grandma: No, not yet. I have to put my bra on first. I don’t want my boobs to sag.
Me: …(wondering if I should mention that they’re already sitting on her lap, so we can probably skip the formality of undergarments, before deciding to leave her with her dignity)…That’s a good point! You tuck them in, and I’ll hook the back.
Later, when I was back home pondering over the day, it occurred to me. It doesn’t matter how old you get, or how much your body changes. All women need to feel like they’re doing whatever is necessary to stay beautiful.
I just wish it wasn’t such a long goodbye.

***Disclaimer. Some of the following may be upsetting to certain readers. It involves a frank discussion about dysfunction, manipulation, and a visit to the nursing home. I don’t come across great in it, but it’s honest, and if it isn’t relatable then you can count yourselves lucky. Discretion is advised. ***

Well, I need a hug. It’s Monday evening, and I’m still processing my first visit to grandma in the nursing home (on Saturday). Normally, I would have written about my experience by now, but I’m having a lot of trouble processing what I saw, smelled, heard, witnessed, experienced, the list goes on.

Looking back now, I can see that I was naïve, and my expectations were unrealistic. I went into this experience (yes, I’m making this story about me, although it’s my grandma who is in the home) expecting to visit my grandma. Instead, I visited the shell of what used to be my grandma.

I’ll start at the beginning. Rather, I’ll start where my previous essay ‘The long goodbye’ left off…

Saturday, I awoke with the plan to visit my dad for a few hours and then move on to where grandma has been living in what I had been told was an assisted living facility. Grandma moved there the previous Friday, and I thought she should be settled in, and working into a new routine, by this time. How foolish and young I was, those short 82 hours ago.

The visit with dad went as expected. We talked, I fixed his blood glucose monitor (it’s our semi-monthly tradition), and I did my best to catch up on grandma’s situation. This is when I learned that she isn’t in an assisted living facility, she is in fact in a nursing home.

He said she does nothing but complain, which has frankly been my experience with her for the past 17 years or so, and that she keeps trying different ways to manipulate the situation to where she can come back to her actual house, which unbeknownst to her is currently on the market. i.e. she’s trying to get herself evicted from the nursing facility.

In the first six days of her stay in the home, she had my dad make 12 (that’s twelve, as in 10+2=12) special trips to the next town where she was staying. 12. All hours of the day or night. This man needs to set some motherfucking boundaries.

I listened as he told the story of her seriously injuring herself by (forgive me) inserting something sharp into her rectum. Her plan was that they would send her to the hospital (they did, due to all the blood), and the hospital would tell the family that she’s better off at home (they didn’t, because she just proved to everyone that she isn’t to be trusted taking care of herself).

I listened, in abject horror. The dread of visiting my own grandma was growing by the minute.

Before I left my dad’s house, I said to him that I would keep the conversation light and focus on the positive. My take on the situation was that things are what you make them, and we can either adapt and live our best life, or we can make things more unbearable. This is a defense mechanism I developed VERY early in life, because of survival. It seems that grandma went the other way with it.

I arrived at the nursing facility, and was unsure which building to go to, so I started with the first one. Lucky guess. They buzzed me in through the security door, and when I helplessly wandered into the sitting room, the first thing I observed were four lovely looking grandmotherly figures. They were each sitting by themselves, and I felt a pang of pity and hoped that they would have some visitors coming soon. I don’t want the elderly to feel forgotten, like I know I will be if I get old.

One of the ladies in scrubs asked who I was there to see, and when I said my grandmother’s name, she got a look on her face that said ‘Yeesh. Have fun with that.’. I knew instantly that these ladies had already given my grandma a nickname. Been there, done that, it’s just one of many ways people in the service industry blow off steam. No hate from me, I get it. (Although, full disclosure, I would like to know what they call her.)

As I approached door #12, I was still stupidly hopeful! I fully expected to tap on the door and walk in to see my grandma sitting in her mechanical lift chair, watching Gunsmoke. That is a sight I have seen countless times in the past, albeit, in a different room of a different structure, one town over.

What I got was silence. I tapped on the door again, a little louder this time. Silence. I turned the door handle, and opened the door a crack, saying ‘grandma?’ quietly, so as not to disturb the other patrons in this strange motel-esque building with the paper-thin walls. Also, a LOT of people here answer to the name ‘grandma’, and I didn’t want to start a riot.

When I walked into the room, softly and gently calling out to my grandma (I’m delicate. Like a flower.) I noticed something that I was NOT expecting.

The first thing I noticed was the smell. It was the smell of stale, rancid, human waste. Imagine a porta-potty on a hot day. Are you there? Now imagine you tripped and fell into it. Still with me? Now a helicopter flies overhead and drops a huge load of vomit on you. We’re on the same page now. This was the first shock that I encountered that day, but I pushed on until I reached the twin bed where my grandma was laying, facing the wall, sobbing like she just had her heart broken.

All the oxygen was instantly sucked out of the room, and my heart fell right out of my ass. I had NO IDEA that this is what I would be walking into, and a little fucking warning would have been nice. This wasn’t summed up well at all, by ‘she’s just complaining about everything’. My first instinct was to run! She hasn’t seen me yet, and she hasn’t heard me. I can slowly back away and just run.

NO, I CAN’T, BECAUSE SHE’S MY GRANDMA AND I LOVE HER! FUCK!!

I quietly approached the bed and walked around to where I could see her face, and she could see me. I sat at the edge of her bed and asked her what was wrong. She whimpered, through her tears and sobs, that she wanted to go home.

I feel for her. I really do. As I’m sitting in that motel-esque room, looking around at the furniture that isn’t hers; the carpet squares that are made to be easily replaced when a guest checks out (euphemism not intended); the SMELL coming from the bathroom; the crumbs all over the floor, all over the dresser, all over the bed. The television from other rooms that can be heard through the paper-thin walls. There’s moaning coming from somewhere, (why is no one checking on that person?! Perhaps I don’t want to know). The sounds echoing from the kitchen staff on the other side of the wall. This is not how grandma lives! She’s been alone, on her own, for 18 years, in her space, doing things her way, in her time. I feel that.

Grandma said she needed to use the bathroom, but she couldn’t get up by herself. Dad didn’t mention that she’d had a stroke or anything, so when I leaned down and gave her my right hand to hold onto while I looped my left around her back to lift her up, I was surprised at how weak she is now. I saw her two weeks ago, and she was hustling around her house with her little walker, making cookies. What?! Happened?!

I got her into the disgusting bathroom (scanning around for some Tidy Bowl. There is shit smeared on the walls, floor, toilet, seriously what is happening?), and perched her onto the toilet. I left her to do her business (she kindly offered for me to stay in there. No, thank you.), I needed to just sit down and process some things.

I was overwhelmed, so I sat in the visitor chair that was unfortunately stationed JUST outside the bathroom and tried to gather my bearings, nauseated by the stench and sounds coming from my grandma. Most of which were complaints aimed at my dad, aunts, and uncles. For real, she has NO reason to complain about her kids.

Stomach turning, bile rising in my throat, I begin to assess what I’m seeing. Grandma most definitely DOES NOT live like this, and I begin to unfold the mystery surrounding me. Two weeks ago, she was fine, albeit dementia has rendered her unable to safely live on her own.

This is a huge adjustment for sure, but she will be 97 years old in 6 days. She got to live in her house for that long, which is something very few people get to do. She has six children, five of whom cater to her every need, want, or whim. The other one has disowned us all, because 20 years ago grandma ran her mouth one too many times about his kids.

She’s had a good life. She’s had everything she ever wanted, taken care of her whole life, and now she’s being told she must stay where she doesn’t want to be. She’s told when she can eat, she’s given her medicine on schedule, she’s supposed to get two showers a week, but she’s plotting, scheming, and manipulating until she can once again get her way. It isn’t working, and the result is her acting out.

I am the opposite. I make do with what I’m given. I wasn’t raised in privilege or given anything I ever wanted. Really, I think it’s better this way. My expectations are low, so I’m usually not disappointed. Will I be placed in a good nursing home if I get old? No. I’m alone, so I’ll be a ward of the state. There won’t be kids there to make sure I have everything I need. That is something that my dear grandmother will never understand.

ANYWAY. I get her back into bed, notice that there are feces on her pajama bottoms, and on her socks. Not a little. A lot. I said ‘Grandma, we need to change your pajamas and socks’, and she said, ‘No, I want my girls to see how I’m living.’ The tumblers in my mind start falling into place. Grandma doesn’t live like this.

I started looking around the room. There are crumbs everywhere, but she said she hasn’t eaten in three days. Dad was here yesterday, and he wouldn’t have left with the room looking like this. There are feces on her clothes. There are foam cups and paper plates on every surface. There are feces on the toilet, wall, floor…she hasn’t showered in days, her hair isn’t combed, her teeth aren’t brushed. Grandma doesn’t live like this, and dad wouldn’t leave her like this. This was all done after he left yesterday evening, but before my aunts (HER GIRLS) will arrive today.

This is intentional.

I’m sitting in the guest chair, with grandma once again lying facing away from me, and she tells me I can go. Ummm, no, I’m not going anywhere until I see my aunts. I asked again if I can change her pajamas, and she again declines. Okay. A text is sent from my phone to both of my aunts who are on their way, and I warn them of what they’re about to walk into.

At about that time, I decided to go to work on the television because my dad had mentioned that it doesn’t work. The menu was set to French, and we’re not French, so I switched it back to English and problem solved. I’m smrt.
Just as I was fixing the television with all my geniusness, I heard a noise and looked up to see my two beautiful aunts walking into the room. I’ve never been happier to see anyone in my life!

Let me tell you a little about my family. They’re not affectionate. Like, at all. I don’t know where I get my cuddliness from, because I come from a bunch of people who are like ‘Ew, stop touching me!’ It was all I could do to not launch myself across the room and into their arms. However, I knew how FUCKING AWKWARD it would be when they shrunk back in fear that there might be some actual human contact. So instead, I said, ‘Hey’.

The look on their faces when the smell of the room hit them pretty much summed up the way I spent my afternoon. Aunt Donna walked over to me, with a horrified look in her eyes, and I knew that my warnings of what they were about to witness weren’t taken as seriously as they could have been.

Aunt Darlene stopped at the bathroom door, gaping in horror, and then walked back out of the room. Aunt Donna pulled me aside, to basically ask ‘what the fuck’, and I’m like ‘told you’, and THAT’S when I break the news that it isn’t just the room. Her mom, my grandma, is covered in her own shit and refuses to shower or change her clothes. She stepped back out of the room, to have what I’m sure is a conference with Aunt Darlene, and they put together their plan of attack.

This is where things take an even weirder turn. They came back with a vacuum, some fresh linens and bedding, and a lady in scrubs following close behind. The lady in scrubs said ‘We’ve been trying to give her a shower and clean up, but she tells us to leave her room. We can’t force ourselves on her.’ Scrubs and I make eye contact, and nod to each other in solidarity before she’s excused by one or both of my aunts.

Aunt Darlene said, ‘get up, Ma, we’re going to give you a shower!’ and Grandma SAT UP. ON HER OWN. Then she STOOD UP and WALKED TO THE DOOR! I couldn’t believe it. She was practically paralyzed from the neck down 10 minutes ago! My back hurts, by the way!

I’m standing there, staring at her, and Aunt Darlene asks if I would rather shower grandma or do some housekeeping. I quickly said I would play housekeeper. Then, I change the bedding, vacuum every surface, and clean up so.much.shit. (Yes, it was disgusting!) But the whole place was spotless when they came back.

As they’re bringing grandma back all cleaned up, with her bathrobe cinched around the waist, and the shitty pajamas who-knows-where, I’m glad they aren’t by me anymore, my beautiful and saintly aunts sit grandma on the bed and ready themselves to dress her. I’m walking toward the bathroom area, so they can have their privacy, and that’s when I heard it…

Aunt Donna: “Do you want me to spread her cheeks while you apply the ointment?”

I knew right then and there that I had made the right decision, staying behind to clean up her room.

Grandma used to see people who weren’t there, and people thought she was crazy.

This goes back literal decades, with two women in the kitchen/dining room area and three kids in the living room. It gave me chills once, when she was describing the two women in the kitchen. It wasn’t long before she ended up being placed in the home, but she was having some struggles with her memory. Furniture was being moved (heavy furniture) from one room to the next, and she would find herself standing in the kitchen facing the sink in the middle of the night.

Grandma, 97-year-old grandma, all 5’1” 110lbs of her, would go to bed and wake up in the kitchen at 3 a.m. facing toward the sink, with the oak rocking chair from her bedroom sitting in the middle of the kitchen behind her. How does that physically happen?

I walked into her kitchen one day, toward the end of her days at her own home, and her broken necklace was sitting on the countertop. When I asked what happened, she said that she was trying to take off her sweater, but the two women in the kitchen wouldn’t help her. They were whispering and giggling, and when she asked why they wouldn’t help, one of the women looked her straight in the eyes (grandma said she had bright green eyes), reached behind grandma, pulled the kitchen shears out of the butcher block, and handed them to her. That’s how grandma cut her necklace while she was cutting down the front of her sweater.

I suppose it’s understandable that the women wouldn’t know how a sweater works, because Grandma said they’re both wearing flowing nightgowns.

The kids are a different story, though. They’re well-behaved and would sit next to her chair while she watched television. Two girls in frilly dresses, and one little boy with wool pants, suspenders, and a paddy cap. They would whisper and run around the dining room, playing a children’s game that she couldn’t see.

I’ve never seen anyone or anything in Grandma’s house, but I stayed there alone one night. I slept in the recliner, facing the television, and wouldn’t look behind me because it felt like I was being watched. It was a scary feeling, but it might not be considered ominous. More like something was there that shouldn’t be, so I thought it best to keep to myself.

Why am I telling you this? Well, it’s simple. Grandma has been in the nursing home for four months now, and she has yet to see anyone who isn’t really there.

Grandma is moving on….to a new nursing home. The one she’s in isn’t accommodating enough, and she refers to the staff as the Gestapo.

Ever since she moved in (approximately four months ago), there has been a resident named Rita whom we’ve all become familiar with. The first thing everyone is told about Rita is that she has Alzheimer’s, and she’s looking for her husband. Rita always looks like she’s on the verge of tears, and she waits by the front door expecting her husband to come back for her.

The story we’re all given is to tell Rita that her husband is getting the oil changed in the car, and he’ll be right back. So, for four months, every 2^nd Saturday when I visit grandma, I’ve been met at the door by an almost crying Rita and let her know with as much confidence as I can muster that her husband just took the car out for an oil change.

This is heartbreaking, as I imagine the husband used to visit this dear lady regularly, until his untimely passing, probably from his heart giving out due to the stress of his 65-year-old wife being lost to him so soon, to the cruel disease that Alzheimer’s is. Now he’s gone forever, and she’s lost to her own memories as her brain deteriorates more and more every day. The saving grace is that her brother will occasionally visit to check on her.

This was what I thought, until Saturday. I went to the nursing home, rang the buzzer to be let in, and was greeted as usual by Rita. She looked devastated, so I asked if she was okay, to which she replied no, so I asked if there was anything I could do for her. She didn’t know the answer to that question. I asked if she needed a hug, and she smiled, so I hugged her and told her everything would be okay. (Would it, though?)

I spent a few minutes on the visit with grandma, listening to her tales about the terrible food, the terrible ‘bitches’ who work there, and the wonderful men who work there (grandma is a flirt, through and through), when my grandma said, “You’re not going to guess who came to visit this week! Rita’s husband! He’s alive!”

This story starts with me being approached at work by my friend Sarah, seeking out my involvement in a River Days raft building competition.

Contestants were supposed to build a raft from milk jugs and race them down the river, meeting at this weird bridge-like structure that people in our city are obsessed with, (for some reason. I’ve never understood why). I’m assuming that is where the race was set to end, but we never actually got that far into our first annual watercraft competition because naturally Sarah was scheduled to work on the day of the race. Another plan thwarted by the man.

We were kind of bummed out about not being able to participate, but the notion of creating an aquatic monstrosity, the likes of which no one had ever seen had already been planted in our minds. That was when I got a brilliant idea (spoiler alert: all my ideas are brilliant). I remembered a river canoed down (Once. Six-year-old me was pulled under by some rapids and almost died.) when I was a kid and figured we could build a raft with our own specifications. Sarah agreed that this was a fabulous idea, and we arranged to have the following Wednesday off from work, with plans to create a magnificent water vessel and travel down the very river that had almost killed me as a small child.

But first, we needed to set some ground rules for ourselves. It had to be reasonably tricky, because we were the only team entering the competition and we didn’t want it to be an easy win. This would be no cakewalk.

Rule number one: No tools allowed in the preparation and/or construction of the raft. No saws, no screwdrivers, no hammers, et. al.

Rule number two: No more than $20 can be spent on the raft. This was in 2013, so $20 could actually buy you something tangible.

Rule number three: We would have fun. Sarah and I are both very laid-back people, and all the stuff we’ve been through together since our friendship began in September of 1997, we have never argued once. This would be the true test of our friendship.

Rule number four: We both needed to survive the trip (this was the most important rule, but was an after-thought to the guidelines, because we thought only three rules seemed a little amateurish, and we consider ourselves to be professionals.)

Now, don’t go thinking this was all spun sugar and orange drink. There were a few hurdles we needed to overcome as far as creativity was concerned. Not only the strict rules we had implemented (which we were complete sticklers about, by the way) but couple that with the fact that both Co-Captains to the ship and all building materials needed to fit into a Chevy Cobalt Coupe for the trip up North, and our dreams for building the coolest water vessel ever to sail across our state were starting to crack around the edges.

But, like all great adventurers before us, we persevered. It was a tight fit, and the backseat of that car would never be normal again, but we loaded everything into that tiny car, and for my dad’s house to begin assembling our watercraft. We first stopped at what would be our “exit bridge” to check the water depth, just to make sure we weren’t wasting our time. It looked great, about four feet deep with clear water and a steady current. We gave each other a high-five and set up the task at hand.

Since our allotted raft building fund was $20, our entire budget went to purchase two rolls of duct tape and three 5-gallon buckets with lids. Including the buckets we got for free from work, that gave us ten buckets with lids.

That’s not enough acreage for both of us to fit on. We scrounged in my dad’s garage and found two more buckets (no lids) and two bungee straps. (There had been no rules set into place against theft.)

Our material list now included:
12-5-gallon buckets
10-bucket lids
1–5-foot board
1-4.5-foot board
3–4-foot boards
19-bungee straps
2 rolls duct tape

Essentially, what we ended up with was a base of three boards (one that was actually long enough) with four buckets each duct-taped parallel onto them and all bungee-strapped together to form a raft of 3×4 buckets. As for the two buckets without lids? We duct-taped them into the shape of a barrel, what would you do?

We were now ready for the maiden voyage of the Norwegian Cruise Liner Ashake (Ashake because it is a compilation of Ashanti and Burke, and Norwegian because I’m pretty sure I’m Irish, and I don’t know what Sarah is, so Norwegian was neutral). Fun fact, Ashake means “shaking or trembling, especially continuously”. You know…unstable…what an interesting foreshadow.

Once we finished production of our amazing raft, which weighed approximately 80 pounds, it was determined that there was no possible way we were carrying this beast from my dad’s house to the next road over where our “entry bridge” was located…about three miles away. Fortunately, my dad’s wife was home, so we loaded the Ashake into her van and headed for the river that I remembered from my youth.

It turns out that a lot can change in 25+ years, and what I remembered as a beautiful flowing river was now a green, slimy trickle of a ‘crick’ about five inches deep and three feet across. That simply was not going to work, so we went to a place where we knew for a fact the water was deep. We went to our “exit bridge”.

The East side of the “exit bridge” is in someone’s yard now, and they have flower gardens that we didn’t want to trample. The West side of the bridge is a rock wall with a three-foot diameter hole that is so deep you can’t see the bottom (I’m 97% sure a family of pythons lives in that hole) followed by a four-foot drop to a butt-load of rocks that you get to climb over before you reach the actual water. I felt so cozy and safe whilst we were juggling our 80-pound bucket raft down this embankment.

But, at last, we made it to the water. That was when we realized that we weren’t even sure the Ashake would stay afloat on its own, never mind with us sitting on it. So, in one of those surreal moments in my life, when everything goes slow-motion, nature is silenced and I think to myself “Oh, my gosh, what was I thinking? It’s too late to turn back, I’m going to look like an idiot. Oh, that’s right, I don’t know how to swim, what will my obituary say if this doesn’t work out? It’s too late, too late, too late…”, I held my breath and jumped on. And it stayed afloat. Sarah jumped on next, and it still stayed afloat.

We high-fived each other, picked up our four-foot deck board oars and took off down the river. Slowly. We waved goodbye to dad’s wife, who was watching from the bridge to proudly photograph the historic beginning of our epic journey, undoubtedly happy to be in such close proximity of the genius that is us, and off we went.

We made it about 60 yards before we hit the first barrier reef. I have never seen so much gravel in my life that was not part of a parking lot, and looking ahead of us in the river all you could see were currents with large, jagged rocks protruding from the water. Still, we remained hopeful and proceeded down the river…on foot…pulling our raft behind because the water was too shallow to ride it.

At last, we came to the end of the Great Barrier Reef, and jumped back onto the raft. We high-fived each other again, because our sparkling awesomeness would finally pay off and we would cruise the river on our super-cool raft, until about 27 feet later, when we bottomed out on another gravel patch. Sigh. Whatever.

It went on like this for quite some time, and then we reached our first beaver dam.

I don’t know why we were surprised, really. The name of this river is Beaver River. I’m not sure why it surprised us that there would be beavers in this river, or why it never occurred to either one of us until that very moment that we might encounter at least one beaver dam. But it didn’t. Not for a second, until that moment, when I’m sure we were both thinking the same thing but neither of us voiced it aloud. This was going to be a long, difficult trip, fraught with misfortune, and we weren’t even entirely sure where we were headed. Toward the ocean, maybe? Toward a lake, probably?

The last house we passed was who-knows-how-far back. I remember it fondly because it was the first deep part of the river we had come across since the beginning of our voyage. We didn’t know how deep the river was at the time, and it wasn’t until Sarah moved the wrong way on the raft and flipped off backwards that we discovered we were finally, fortunately for her, floating on more than two feet of water.

But here we were, lifting our 150 (I could have sworn it was only 80 when we started) pound raft over this beaver dam, and scurrying after it so it wouldn’t get away without us. Then the river went shallow again.

Me: Nice day for a walk, hahaha.
Sarah….
Me…..
Me: If we see somebody, we should ask where the nearest bridge is.
Sarah: Yea, you can introduce us as Pocahontas and Sacagawea and tell them Lois and Clark abandoned us on the river.
Me: Lois and Clark? You mean “Lewis and Clark”?
Sarah: Oh, hahaha, yea, Lois and Clark were Spiderman and his girlfriend.
Me: You mean Superman?
Sarah: You know what I mean. Idiot.

…Meanwhile, our raft is floating down the river and we’re following behind, when we come to an even larger beaver dam. It was more of a beaver dam/waterfall/Mother Nature’s attempt to drown people.

We flip the raft over and watch it float away without us, and then I try to climb after it. Funny thing about this dam, the water on our side was about eight inches deep, but if you step over to the other side it dropped off to four feet. I didn’t know that but figured it out pretty quickly when I lost my footing and landed straddling a log. I rolled away from that log, tripped over another log and almost took a backwards tumble into the river. It was only my cat-like reflexes that saved me. (Not really, Sarah grabbed my hand. I was just trying to make myself sound much cooler than this story hints at.)

We weren’t sure what the river had in store for us next, as we watched the Ashake disappear behind the next bend in the river. It had been quite some time since we worried about letting her out of our sight, as we were fairly certain a rocky ledge or a beaver dam would hold her until we caught up. But the experiences we had up to that point didn’t prepare us for what we saw when we turned that corner. (On foot, of course, because this whole rafting excursion just wasn’t panning out like we had intended. I mean, who wants to actually ride ON a raft when you can just carry it down the river, right?)
Me: What is that? It looks like the river dead ended.

Sarah: It’s a huge beaver dam. It goes all the way across, and it’s too high to climb over. Plus, there might be spiders. We’re going to have to carry it ashore and go around.
Me: Right, let’s check out the path…

I’m heading ashore on the bank to the right, to see how easy it will be to haul the Ashake in and dry-dock her until we’re past this big-huge-astronomically-ridiculous beaver dam. I expected the sand on shore to be nice and stable; perhaps my feet would even sink in a little for traction. Instead, what I got was the most deceptively slippery muck-slime we could have come across. I don’t think it was even from planet Earth. Some little E.T. motherfucker must have spilled something out of his spaceship when he landed here to drain all the water from the river.
I’m slipping and sliding in this muck, my arms flailing about, my legs kicking as though independent of my body, doing a weird sort of dance on the side of the river (which is probably how river-dancing started. Someone built a raft and then Boom! River-dance). Somehow, with all the helpless kicking and flailing, I managed to make a 180-degree turn, so I’m facing Sarah who is laughing so hard she probably peed in the river. I caught myself from falling about 17 times, unable to free myself from the oily muck beneath my feet, when finally, I just gave up, fell on my ass and rolled into the river. Sarah had her camera ready by the time I hit the ground and was able to capture the moment on film.
We then decided that since we were stopped cold, we might as well rebuild the raft for stability, since it had taken quite a beating by this point. Once the repairs were completed, we carried out 237-pound raft ashore and set her afloat again on the other side.

We continued for about 30 more yards, when…
Me: I wonder where we are.
Sarah: I’ll check the GPS on my phone…okay, we’re on Long Road…no, we’re on Peterson Road…no, we’re on River Road. Oh, never mind. It just gives us a general vicinity.
Me: That’s helpful. There’s a fence, we’re behind someone’s farm. I’m going to climb out and follow the river to see how long this dam is…
…7 minutes later…
Me: HEY SARAH, CAN YOU HEAR ME?
Sarah: YEA
Me: CAN YOU SEE ME?
Sarah: NO
Me: WELL, I CAN SEE YOU, YOU’RE ABOUT 30 YARDS AWAY. THIS DAM IS HUGE, I’M COMING BACK.
….7 minutes later…
Me: This dam is huge Sarah, there’s no way through it, and we’ll have to go around.
Sarah: You have got to be kidding me.
Me: …as funny as that is, no, I’m not. We’ll have to take the raft apart again and haul it downstream in pieces.
Sarah: Okay, but we’re not going up this side, there was a spider. We’ll go up to the other side, where those concrete chunks are.

As it turns out, our options for getting out of this river were a steep, spider-infested dirt slope or a steep slope covered in broken slabs of concrete, at the top of which stood a fence. We disassembled the Ashake once more, throwing all the pieces to the top of the side with the concrete and tried to climb up after it. That didn’t really work out and resulted in a miniature landslide of concrete that seems extremely dangerous now that I look back on it. Jesus was with us on that river.

Deciding we would rather not drown in this river, crushed under concrete slabs, we clambered up the sandy riverbank instead, figuring we could cross over again once we got past the beaver dam. We would then circle back to our raft pieces, carry them back down-stream, and reassemble the Ashake once more. Easy-peasy, lemon squeezy!

When we got beyond the dam, we discovered that getting down into the river from this side would be no easy task. It was a five-foot drop onto a sandbar, then a quick walk to the river. I went first, preparing myself for the drop, praying that my knees and ankles didn’t give out on me. And 1…2…3…jump!

I’m not sure what I landed in, but sand it most certainly was not. I sank shin-deep into some sloppy, soupy, pudding-like concoction that Mother Nature belched up from the bottom of the creek bed (or E.T. emptied from the septic tank on his spaceship). I wriggled my way out of it (surprisingly without losing a shoe) and turned back around in time to see Sarah sink shin-deep in the same glop. I understood then why she found it so funny when I had fallen earlier.

Walking back upstream to pick up the pieces of our broken dreams…I mean raft…I glanced over at the fence and noticed the bottom two cables were wire, but the top one looked like clothesline. And in a momentary lapse of good judgment:
Me: Hey, this one isn’t electric; it’s just a rope…

I reached out and squeezed it between my thumb and two fingers. Just as I did this, I looked over at the fencepost and saw the connectors, realizing my mistake too late. Time stopped. I noticed Sarah out of the corner of my eye, running toward me in slow-motion, screaming…

Sarah: NNOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!! DON’T TOUCH THAT, IT’S…

…I didn’t hear the rest of what she was saying, because I was being electrocuted. Later, I would find out that Sarah was telling me the fence was, in fact, electric.
Me: OW! That went through my whole body; it felt like someone punched me in the ass!
Sarah: Are you okay?
Me: Yea, but that’s not like any electric fence I’ve ever seen. Good thing my hands were wet! Don’t touch that, it’s hot.

Back to our chore, we once more recreated the Ashake Liner and were on our way…following her down the river. And once more, we encountered a beaver dam. And once more, we pulled our 517-pound raft over, trying not to disturb the dams.

Trekking onward, we see another dam just 50 feet ahead. This is when we realize that this was not so much a ‘river’ as it was a ‘beaver habitat’; so, we pulled the Ashake onshore and dragged her through the underbrush, altogether abandoning the river, as the river had so cruelly abandoned us.
We’re dragging the Ashake, all the while being eaten alive by horseflies and mosquitoes, the razor grass and stinging nettles cutting at our bare legs, when we come to brush so thick we can’t drag the raft through. We decided to drag her back down to the river and continue, hoping to find a bridge or a road so we could just go back home.

We trudge through the river for about 1/4 mile, and once again come to beaver dams so plentiful that we’re forced to once again drag our 976-pound raft from the water.

Onward we went, in the water and out of the water, through the brush and over the dams. Our legs were burning from the stinging nettles, our arms bleeding from insect bites, and then we reached a part of the river that we thought may have beaten us.

A 60-foot tree had fallen backwards, causing a huge roadblock, and just ahead, another 60-foot tree had fallen across the river…that was when we saw a spider, approximately the size of a squirrel, watching us from a bush. He introduced himself as Ted and asked if we wanted to get high. We politely declined and continued going about trying to find our way out of the forest.

Me: Time to go.
Sarah: Uhhh, yea.
Me: What do we do? Climb over the tree? It’s going to be hard dragging this 1,342-pound raft.
Sarah: I want my Mommy.
Me: Dude, you’re 30 years old. Let’s just go around. It’ll take a little longer, but it’s safer.
Sarah: Okay.
Me: If I had this day to do over again, you know what I would do differently?
Sarah: Not come on this trip.
Me: Nah, I still would have done this. But I would have quit when we saw the electric fence. I would have just followed that fence around to a road. How long have we been at this?
Sarah: I have no idea. A long time.
Me: I’m ready to be done. Whoever said “quitters never win” was a moron. As a matter of fact, if it weren’t for quitters, no one would start anything.

On we went again, around the huge tree, our legs being cut to shreds. All the while, I’m hoping she doesn’t remember this was all my idea. We pivot around when we reach the “top” of the tree, and head back toward the river so we won’t get more lost than we already are. I am praying to God to help us out of the woods at this point.

Me: I hear a helicopter. I hope my dad didn’t call ‘search and rescue’. I wonder where we are.
Sarah: How about if, from this point forward, I just assume that you wonder where we are?
Me: That would be awesome, that way I wouldn’t have to keep saying it. Is that a fire extinguisher over there?
Sarah: No, it’s a red bucket.
Me: Look on top of that hill, above the bucket, that’s page-wire fencing. Let’s cross the river, climb to the top of the hill and see if it’s someone’s yard. If it is, we can cut through to the road and call my dad.
Sarah: Sounds good to me, let’s go.

We headed across to the other side, falling into another unexpectedly deep pool one last time for good measure. Truth be told, it felt amazing on my raw arms and legs, even though I was concerned about river amoebas getting into my bloodstream through all of my wounds.

When we were on the other side of the river, we left our 2,978-pound raft at the bottom and climbed up, just in case it wasn’t what we hoped for. It was exactly what we had hoped for, so we went back, drug the Ashake up the bluff and started walking through the yard toward the road, which was about half mile away. Driveways in the country are very long.

Sarah: Look at the van behind the garage, it is so creepy here.
Me: I know, I hope we didn’t go all this way to accidentally end up in a serial killer’s yard.
Sarah: If it is a killer, we should run back to the river. In movies, people always stop just before the river and the killer gets them, but we should just jump in and go upstream.
Me: We’ll do that. If it’s a killer. I saw a movie once where these two girls were in the wrong place at the wrong time, and this guy who was just evil chose them at random and had them get on their knees like he was going to execute them.
Sarah: Oh, no…
Me: Yea, then he threw a hunting knife on the ground and said, “whichever one of you kills your friend, I’ll let live.” It was totally messed up, and one girl picked up the knife.
Sarah…gasp
Me: I know, right? And her friend was all “what are you doing?!”, so she put the knife down. But the other friend picked up the knife and stabbed her, and the bad guy was all “finish it!”, so she did. And then he shot them both anyway.
Sarah: That is horrible.
Me: I know, I would never stab you.
Sarah: I would just hold your hand, say a prayer, and tell him to kill us both.
Me: True, but after we prayed, we could just run at the guy.
Sarah: But he has a gun.
Me: Yea, but there are two of us. I saw on a movie once where a guy was in a similar situation, but he just threw sand in the bad guy’s face, and the bad guy was like “AAHHHH” and threw his hands up in the air….
Sarah: ….but that was just a movie.
Me: No. Well, yea, I know, but so is the girl with the knife thing and we’re talking about that like it’s real…

Anyway…by the time we finished debating what to do if a serial killer lived in the house of the yard we were cutting through, we made it to the road. No one was home at the killer’s house. We made it to the stop sign and were shocked to find that we were on the road we had started on…after seven hours of flipping that raft over beaver dams, dragging it through the woods, hundreds of cuts and insect bites, poison ivy and dehydration…we had made it less than a mile down the road.

We turned and started walking toward the house, dragging the war-torn Ashake behind us. We made it about halfway when my dad picked us up on the side of the road, and the maiden voyage of the Ashake was officially over.
After all was said and done, our operation was deemed a successful failure.

Successful in that we:
-Used no tools to create/recreate the Ashake (multiple times)
-Used only $19.71 of our $20 budget to create the Ashake
-We not only had fun, but our over-the-top awesomeness pulled us through more than we imagined would happen on that day
-Most importantly, we both survived

It was a failure in that we spent less than 10 minutes of seven hours actually sitting on the raft. It was more like we just took a long walk through the river, carrying a really heavy burden. But we challenged ourselves and won, and if you don’t challenge yourself, you never know what you can accomplish.
There will be people who read this story and say we are stupid for trying such a thing. Well, haters are going to hate; I can’t change that, and I won’t waste my time trying. But I will say this…

People who do ‘stupid’ or ‘crazy’ things are usually the ones people want to talk to or about with their friends. Nobody is EVER going to say “you would love hanging out with those two, they’re so much fun. They bake cookies sometimes, work full-time jobs and try to make sure their bills are paid.” No, they won’t say that. We’re women who built a raft out of buckets and duct-tape and went down a river alone. Did it work out perfectly? No. Do we regret doing it? No. Why did we do it? Because we could. Would we do it again? …Not on that particular river.

**Disclaimer: Parts of this tale may be greatly exaggerated.

It’s 2 o’clock in the morning. I’m sitting on my couch, eating Doritos, and watching Looney Tunes. My left eye is closed, because I’m tired and I would like to sleep, but my right eye is open because I really want to eat Doritos and watch Looney tunes. I’m a woman without a country here.

I should just go to bed, but I had an interesting day, and I would like to write about it before I forget, although I doubt I’ll ever forget. I’ve had a rough go of it lately. I hit myself in the head (hard) with a drill back in June, resulting in a head injury that came very close to killing me. Up until then, the MDD was under control, it had been under control for years, but that knock on the head brought it back.

I’m hopeful this order won’t last long, but the panic attacks are the worst I’ve ever had, and the doctor is trying different medications to take me back to where I was, which was happy. I will be happy again. In the meantime, I’m going to do what I can to distract myself just like I used to do. How do I distract myself from the horrible and invasive thoughts? With hobbies like reading, writing, carpentry…this is where I segue to my story.

I was headed to Springfield this morning. I woke up early, unable to sleep, and got around pretty quickly because it’s Saturday, I have today and tomorrow off, and that’s a lot of time to fill. I get to feeling very lonely now, and I need to make absolute certain I don’t slide downhill too far.

Why Springfield? I have a hobby. So, why Springfield? Because my hobby is carpentry. I’m a carpenter, don’t judge me. Okay, so why Springfield? Because carpentry uses wood, and I don’t have any at home. Right, so why Springfield? There’s an abandoned barn in Springfield, and I’m going to get wood from there.

The drive was nice. I felt better just knowing that I would have something to do soon, and that little piece of mind really meant a lot, I could feel my spirits lifting. The old barn is on Buzzle Road, and I haven’t been to it in years. My Dad and I used to get apples from the orchard there, during deer season, so I’m familiar with the area. Imagine my surprise when I pulled up to that drive, and the orchard was grown over with four-foot-high snake grass. Gross. The bushes and foliage had grown up so high around the barn that I wasn’t sure it was even still there. Now mind you, I haven’t had an adventure since the great bucket-raft trip of 2013, so this was surely going to happen today.

Let’s face it, I’m not one to back down from a challenge, and my mind was made up, so I was ready to do this thing. I backed my car into the drive, which could now only contain the length of my car. That was another surprise, as I recalled how my dad’s truck used to drive so easily through the valley by the barn (there is no valley now). I got my trusty hammer, and trying not to think too much about snakes, I headed toward where the barn once stood (and maybe still does. Who knows at this point?).

There was a very large, felled tree about 20 yards into my expedition, so I needed to make a choice, go left, or go right? I always pick right, because I’m right-handed and it just feels natural. The rationale behind this is that, were something like, say, I don’t know, a chupacabra were to jump out and attack, I could deflect the attack with my left arm and swing my trusty hammer with the right. It’s called ‘situational awareness’; I’m kind of bad ass that way.

Going out toward the right side of the barn, I realized I had made a mistake in judgment, and what I was greeted by was a small, rocky ledge that dropped down about eight feet. The good news is, the barn was in sight, so it still exists. The bad news is, I had just traversed for what seemed like the length of seven football fields through a mystery swamp that must surely have been filled with snakes and alligators (exaggeration), and I had to turn around and go back.

This time, I took a left. The left path was much more traversible than the first, with the four-foot-high snake grass thinning out to a clearing. It was filled with stones, dead tree limbs and what I’m pretty sure was a cat skull. May have been a raccoon. Too late to tell. I left my mass spectrometer in the car, so I couldn’t pull a DNA sample.

The clearing tapered down with an incline that was so sharp that I begain to wonder at the success of my mission. I can clearly make it to the barn, and pulling off the planks would be no trouble, but getting them back to my car looked to be a bit of a conundrum at this point. But like I said, my mind was made up, and this was going to happen. I headed down the steep incline, stumbling over the stones that lay at the bottom, and clambered up the other side.

This was when I first got the feeling that I was being watched. I looked back toward the direction of my car, and realized I was so far into the underbrush that I couldn’t even see the sky, let alone my car, let alone the road. I was surrounded by this canopy of bright green, which was cool but also kind of eerie when I thought about the fact that I was completely alone, and no one actually knew where I was or even what town I was in. For fuck sake, this is how people end up on the news.

I took in the full 360-degree view of my situation, still feeling that someone was watching. They may have been watching from inside the barn, or possibly hiding in the underbrush, but hey, I’m no quitter, so I pushed on ahead. It was probably just my vivid imagination playing with me anyway.

I walked past the barn initially, more out of curiosity than necessity, and I can honestly say I’m glad I did. What I found behind the barn was an opening that led to a field, and the foundation for several out-buildings, one which had to have been the original homestead. Most might find that boring, but I love history, and I enjoy picturing in mind how things must have been, as well as what they could become.

Daydreaming aside, I did recall that I was there for a reason, and it was time to do it to it before someone became suspicious of my car and called the police. I walked back toward the barn, which looked to be a death-trap up close, but all that really means is I’ll have to be more careful. This end of the barn had a three-foot(ish) ledge that you had to step up to. The steps had rotted away long ago, but I knew this was still my best entry point, because I had seen the other end of the barn from my rocky ledge before, and it was at least six feet up into it. I was exactly where I needed to be to pull this off.

In I went, testing the boards with my feet to make sure I wouldn’t fall through. Standing just inside the doorway, I again took in the view, not just from the desire to not die a horrible death in this old barn, but from my natural desire for detail. To my left, I saw the remains of what a stairway to a loft had once been, which no longer existed, and to my right I saw the remains of what appeared to be a family of squirrels. Lots of dead animals in these-here parts.

Along the right side of the barn were three small stalls, probably for goats (sheep?), as I can’t think of what else may have fit in there. Across from the third stall was a slightly larger stall, and in my imagination, I could see how this barn had looked when it was part of an active farm. They must have used two of the stalls for milking/breeding female goats (or sheep?), one for a male and the fourth for the kid goats (again, sheep?) that would be later sold at auction or used to feed the farmer’s family.

The remains of the small stairwell on the left led to the loft, where the hay and equipment were probably stored. Looking through gaps in the floor, where planks had rotted away, I could see larger stalls at the ground level beneaht me, which would have contained the horses that plowed the field out back. There were still hooks on the walls where the rigging had hung. These were all memories of the forgotten homestead of a family whose lineage may have already ended, as I know this barn was abandoned well before my dad was born. I took a moment to respect what all this must have meant at some point in time.

With that depressing thought, I walked down the barn aisle gingerly, making sure to only set foot on floor joists and the support beam that ran the length of the building. I was just past the second stall, when I heard a strange sound that I felt sure must have been my imagination. But there it was again…. (ssssssssss-chk-chk-chk) ….my adrenaline started pumping.

…. (ssssssssss-chk-chk-chk) ….”what animal makes that sound?”, I wondered to myself, as I stood perfectly still in the center of that aisle. “And more important, was it behind me, or in front of me?”…. (ssssssssss-chk-chk-chk) ….”Seriously. In front or behind? I can’t get a bearing on it, and this is information that I really need right this very moment.” I didn’t want to risk turning back, and I was already half-way through the barn, so I made the fateful decision to push forward.

Looking back, I have no idea why pushing forward seemed like a good idea at the time, because all that was waiting for me at the other end was a minimum six-foot drop to the ground below.

I was stepping carefully along, listening for any sounds; rustling of leaves, the debris from outside or inside the barn being skittered along by whatever animal was watching me…. (ssssssssss-chk-chk-chk) ….”that was close.”….”it’s probably an anaconda, and it’s probably wrapping itself around this entire barn right now, unhinging its jaw, waiting to make its move. Why did I watch that movie? Oh yea, James told me if you’re afraid of something then watch a movie about it. That didn’t work with ‘It’, I’m still afraid of clowns! Why did I watch a movie about a giant man-eating snake?! JAMES!! Why, James, why?!”…. (ssssssssss-chk-chk-chk) ….”Okay, pull yourself together, you’ve got this under control. Don’t let it smell your fear.”

I took two more careful steps, and I can’t understand what the hell happened next. With the second step I took, I saw movement ahead and to the right, from the corner of my eye, and I could hear the shuffling as it moved along the barn floor. What I CAN’T understand is that I didn’t stop, and I didn’t run, I just kept walking towards it, like some unstoppable moron. Two more steps…. (ssssssssss–chk-chk-chk) …. two more steps, still I walked toward it.

You know how, when you’re watching a scary movie, and the person in said move doesn’t just LEAVE. WELL. ENOUGH. ALONE! That was me! I will never again yell at a movie screen when I see someone approaching an unknown danger. I mean, really, who am I to judge at this point…. (ssssssssss-chk-chk-chk) …. two more steps, and I could see its grey head, bobbing along behind the half-wall, exiting the final stall, and walking toward the aisle that I was currently occupying. Two more steps…. (ssssssssss—chk-chk-chk-chk-chk-chk-chk-chk-chk) …. I was in full view of it, and it was in full view of me, and that’s when I realized that it wasn’t an ‘it’, it was a ‘them’.

I stood frozen for what seemed like…seconds, but what were probably…milliseconds, and my mind took in everything, as my mind usually does. Time really does stand still when you’re face with mortal danger. They were about thigh-high on me, so around 30 inches tall, their beaks were blackish orange, their eyes were black, and their wings stuck out awkwardly at their sides. One was more aggressive than the other, but the other one wasn’t exactly what I would call shy at that moment.

I was instantly hit by two very real thoughts. 1-I was the first human these things had ever seen, and they did not seem impressed. 2-Their dark-grey feathers looked downy and soft, which meant these were huge baby birds. These were huge…baby…birds? These baby birds were huge. Oh my gosh, were these baby birds huge. And mad. Only two birds that I know of could have babies this large. So, either these were bald eagles, or I discovered the last two remaining pterodactyls on the planet, and they just thawed out from some giant ice block that was belched from the bowels of the earth. Probably not the latter, so these were baby bald eagles, which means mama and daddy bald eagle are coming back. Soon.

While my mind whirred with these thoughts, I stepped slowly back, and they stepped slowly forward. I took three steps back, they took five steps forward, and so we danced…(ssssssssss-chk-chk-chk) ….”It’s time to go. I’m almost half-way to the door, but these little babies aren’t my problem anymore, their parents are my problem.” My two steps back quickly turned to four, and still they came forward. These may be babies, but they’re already territorial. Three steps back, and almost to the door…I made my move.

Doing a backwards-leaping about-face, I jumped from the barn, alarming the would-be killers, but knowing that I didn’t want my legacy to this world to be ‘woman’s skull and bones found in abandoned barn, surrounded by fluffy grey feathers.’ My daring attempt at escape was not without its consequences, because it enraged the birds even more and they let out a frightfully shrill squawk that must have been heard in as faraway places as India, Zimbabwe or…I don’t know, I don’t know, Portsmouth. I hit the ground running, hearing the predators shuffling along behind.

I was running like an Olympic track star, jumping over debris and vaulting over downed tree limbs, forgetting completely about the rocky ravine that I’d had to ascend to get here. The memory of it came screaming back rather quickly, when I barrel-rolled down the slope and landed at the bottom of said ravine…or gully if you will (definitely too small to be a gorge). I have never felt safer in my life than when I was laying bruised and broken at the bottom of that gulch, waiting for a family of giant birds to come tear me apart limb from limb. <sarcasm>

I scrambled up to the other side, mindful of the jagged rocks, as they weren’t mindful of me, and was on a full sprint in the direction of the road. I was very much aware of the fact that I had at least parted company with the babies, as they didn’t follow me down into the chasm; they were too smart for that, so it was just me versus the parents, who I could picture in my ever-vivid imagination swooping down to lop off my head like a ripe melon.

By now, I was on the four-foot-high snake grass, which although it seemed like something to be feared when I started this journey, it now made the perfect camouflage. I would like to say I ran as gracefully as a deer back to my car, but we all know that’s bullshit. I had bruised my ribs, twisted my ankles, and let’s face it, my hips will never be the same. I was running like a baby hippo with an inner ear infection, but I was running. I got to my car, threw my hammer on the seat, and got the fuck out of there.

**No scary bird monsters were harmed while making this memory.

“Why don’t you just take them out yourself?” he asked, and I looked down at my hand. I saw the black threads poking out from the tip of my index finger, and tried to think of something to say. The threads remind me of spider legs, and I’m momentarily disgusted by my own hand. Stitches are so unnatural, and I had woken myself up in the night, pulling on the threads in my sleep, because part of my subconscious understands that they’re foreign to my body. On the other hand (no pun intended) my conscious self knows that they’re in my flesh for a reason, and my subconscious needs to just calm the fuck down until it’s time to have them removed by a professional.

…Eight days earlier…

I’m replacing some damaged laminate floor planks in the dining room. (Waterproof, my ass) It’s a simple project though, and shouldn’t take more than a day, so I decide to tackle it on a Sunday. Saturday evening was spent emptying the room, and now it’s the basic matter of removing the old planks with a saw, and gluing in the new. In theory…

In reality…after breaking two oscillating blades, burning through about 12,000 Dremel cutting discs, and trying out a very dangerous experiment with a circular saw, I’ve back peddled to just removing exactly half of the entire floating floor, because safety. I’m not sure the exact composite of this flooring material, but it’s almost certainly carcinogenic, so the less sawing and burning through with saw blades the better.

After sorting out the unusable planks, I begin to reinstall the first plank. Beasley was sitting next to me, watching with curiosity, and I was talking her through each step. Placing the tamping block on the edge to protect the tongue-in-groove, I hit the block with my mallet, once, twice, and then —. My own reaction rang out across the room before I felt the pain. It was only one word, and then I stared down at my own hand, trying to understand why there is so much blood pooling on the floor beneath me. I turned my hand over to investigate, unsure what else to do, and as everything went quiet around me and I felt the cold sweat begin to seep from my pores, the room went dark.

I awoke alone. Beasley didn’t sign up for this, and apparently at the first sight of blood, she noped back to the living room to sit with Gracie. Feeling dizzy and still sweating, I made my way to the kitchen to wrap a towel around my hand, then sat on the sofa unsure of what to do. Have I had a tetanus shot? I think so. Do I need stitches? How would I know? Do I go to the Emergency Room? I don’t want to bother them. Do I go to Urgent Care? I don’t want to bother them, either. Is there anyone I can call? No.

Deciding to take another look to see how bad it is, and acting from there, I start to unwrap my bloody stump of a hand. The feeling of fainting sweeps over me again. Leaning against the back of the sofa with my eyes closed, waiting until the dizziness subsides enough that it’s safe to drive, I make the decision to go to Urgent Care, where apologies will be made to the staff that the moron who sits before them can’t handle looking at their own mashed pile of finger meat.

It’s a long drive, and by the time Urgent Care comes into view, there is a lightning bolt of pain in each finger, the wrist, and going up to my elbow. In the parking lot, there’s a lady unloading a car seat from her vehicle, and I decide to hang back a bit so the baby can go ahead of me in line. By the time I get across the parking lot and into the lobby of our local Urgent Care, I’m dizzy, sweating, and shaking like a salmon in a bear hug. I chastise myself for being such a weakling and pull myself together for the interminable wait.

When it’s my turn to be checked in, the lady at the desk asks what I’m there for, and in confusion I stammer that I’m not really sure why I’m there. This is greeted with a look of disdain from the older lady sitting across from me, who now holds my very life in her hands. I try to explain that there is an actual injury, it’s not a psychological issue, and as I hold up my bloody towel-covered left hand and point to it with my blood-covered right hand, she starts to put the pieces together.

I apologize, letting her know that I’m not sure how bad it is, or if I should even have come in, sheepishly adding that when I tried to assess the damage I had passed out, and I just really need help figuring out what to do. Since I have a terrible need to please anyone around me, so they won’t get mad and yell at/abandon me in my time of need, I add hopefully that it doesn’t seem to be bleeding at this exact moment.

She gives me a clipboard with some forms to update, and I take them to my seat to fill out, wondering how disgusted she is going to be with me when I hand back the forms, clipboard, and ink pen and they’re covered in my blood. They should really hand out wet wipes when you check in to these places.

As I sit in the waiting room, waiting, I reminisce about the good times I had when all of my fingers were in one piece. I do remember hitting this same finger with a hammer when I was much younger, and the pressure of the direct hit to my nail actually blew out the end of this finger, so it was already heavily scarred. I passed out that time, too. When my dad brought me back to the house, blood still pulsing from under the fingernail, my parents immediately went to their bedroom to have sex. What about that moment was a turn-on, and how had I forgotten that fucked up episode of my life? I’ll take that nugget to my therapy session on Wednesday.

It occurs to me that the waiting room reminds me of the waiting room from Beetlejuice (Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice!). No one is talking. We’re all just sitting there, quietly, waiting for our turn amid the sound of elevator muzak. I remember that there was music playing from a Spotify playlist before this all went down, and the soundtrack to my agony was ‘All she wants to do is dance’, by Don Henley. The 2014 remastered version. Music is great! Until it’s interrupted by the prehistoric scream of a woman who has just mutilated her own body because her mallet aim isn’t on point.

A young family has wandered in. A mom, two young children, and a toddler. The kids are running around the already crowded waiting room, throwing a pickleball (?) back and forth. Occasionally, the pickleball hits the floor and the toddler picks it up and starts biting it. I don’t want to imagine the germs, bacteria, and potential bodily fluids that the baby is putting in her mouth while their mom stares at her cell phone like a zombie.  

The kids are being so loud that when a nurse comes out from the back to ask who’s bleeding, she can’t hear me from the other side of the room. The kids swarm her as soon as she walks out, and she gets too distracted to follow through with her mission, so I’ll just sit here and bleed out, that’s fine.

A very nice nurse fetches me after some time, and when I explain my predicament, she tells me to look away so she can check out my mangled finger and clean it up. I immediately feel better, and she tells me that I will in fact need to have my finger flap sewn shut. While she’s cleaning up my bloody hands, the pain starts to subside. It’s amazing how much being cared for can help, and I wonder if the aches and pains I’ve felt over the years, seemingly for no reason at all, don’t have something to do with loneliness.

My new favorite nurse has me set up for an x-ray, because if there’s an open fracture I’m more susceptible to a bone infection, and I’m not trying to be taken out by a smashed digit just because my finger pad is flayed open like a roast beef sandwich. Could you imagine having to have your arm amputated at the shoulder because of a problem in one fingertip? I shudder to think that has probably really happened to some poor soul.

The doctor comes in a bit later (about an hour and a half after my ass fell asleep, sitting in the super hard, yet easy to clean if it gets blood on it, chair). She lets me know that the finger probably isn’t broken, but I’ll be given an antibiotic to take as a precaution, and some stitches will be had. But first, I’ll get a nice shot of Lidocaine so I won’t feel all the meat-scraping/cleaning and stitching. For this, I am truly grateful. Until I see the needle she plans to use.

The doctor goes over to the counter, and begins to ready some stuff for the task that lie ahead. I hadn’t even paid attention to the counter with all its accoutrement, and when I glance over I get nervous for the first time. I recognize the syringe she’s holding because there’s one just like it in my kitchen drawer. It’s the same Butterball syringe that I got with a marinade kit years ago. I still use it to inject apple juice into pork loin before I grill it. Is that going to be put into me?!

When the doctor comes back to where I’m sitting, she asks if I want to watch, which I politely decline, and take the question as my cue to stare at the wall to my immediate right, like a petulant child. She says I’ll feel a poke, and then a burning sensation, but after the initial poke (which I most certainly did feel), she said “oh”. I made the mistake of turning back toward her, careful not to look down and accidentally see my own blood. What I see if a confused look on her face, and a moment later there’s a geyser of Lidocaine from below.

Apparently, somehow, the syringe blew up, spraying Lidocaine into both of our faces, numbing our eyeballs. She reloaded the syringe and tried again, this time sinking the needle approximately 14 feet into my finger meat. The injection itself did burn like hellfire, and before long I felt my hand begin to swell, until it resembled a Mickey Mouse hand. (This effect was all in my head, but since I wasn’t looking at my hand, it was real to me, and actually kind of cool.) After a couple minutes, she tested to make sure I was good and numb, and stitched my finger meat back together on my cartoon hand.

Back at home, I return to the scene of the crime and there’s O-negative everywhere. I haven’t seen this much blood since I hit an artery in my arm with a carpet staple while I was working on the living room floor. There is so much of my DNA in the house that, if they ever take up the floors, CSI will surely be called in to investigate.

Later in the evening, it’s time to unwrap and clean the wound, and I can’t find the bottle of peroxide that’s been under the bathroom sink since 2006. How the hell did I lose that? How can I clean this pulpy mess? I think I read somewhere that you aren’t supposed to use antibacterial soap on wounds, because it kills good bacteria. Or are you supposed to use antibacterial soap on open wounds? Unsure what to do, I decide to put some Dawn Power Wash spray on it, because Dawn is supposed to be good for everything, including baby ducks.

…Present Day…

Over the last several days, I’ve assessed the healing, kept it clean, and taken my antibiotics. As time has passed, the finger transitioned from feeling like a hot dog in a microwave to a hot, throbbing mess, and now it just itches like crazy.

“Why don’t you just take them out yourself?” he asked, and I looked down at my hand. “I can’t take them out myself. They told me to come back and have them do it. Probably so they can check my finger flap, and make sure the tissue is still alive.”

I’ll tell you what I’ve learned:

-The number of vowels in the word Fuck is not constant. The number of u’s vary, based on how hard you hit your phalange with a hammer. This fact has been proven by science, in an experiment that was carried out on my dining room floor.

-Beagles don’t handle their people being hurt very well at all. I’ve no doubt they love me dearly, but when shit gets real, they can’t bear to see it, and will leave me to fend for myself.

-Nurses are amazing, and/or I’m starved for attention.

-In continuing the flooring project, I attempted to use my foot to hold the tamping block, in a bold move to protect my wounded finger. That was dumb. From that angle, it’s somehow easier to hit a foot than your hand.

-It’s hard to type when you can’t use one of your index fingers. Typing this story has taken forever. But I am Dr. Frankenfinger, and this is my monster.