Tuesday, September 29, 2015

Scream Queens

Tonight, the second episode of Scream Queens will be shown on the Fox Network.  If you're not watching it, why aren't you? It's a pluperfect hoot!

I taped the first episode last week and howled through it when I watched it a couple of mornings later...

Basically, it's a take-off of all the "nubile young things being threatened by a diabolical killer" whose identity is always concealed - a hockey mask for Jason in Friday the Thirteenth films, or a William Shatner mask painted all white for Michael Myers in the Halloween franchise.  In the case of Scream Queens, it is a figure in a red devil costume, complete with a hard plastic mask.

Jamie Lee Curtis, Michael Myer's chosen target who always managed to elude him years ago in Haddonfield, IL, the setting for the Halloween movies, plays the dean of students at the mythical university in which this farce is set. She plays her role with her tongue firmly planted in her lean cheek.  Her character is hardly a paragon of virtue.  Of one thing we are sure, she detests sororities and sorority girls. (Probably due to her own misfortune at their hands in her college career...)

They have guest stars (all under 25) who play the members of the sorority in question, who are invariably murdered during the episode by our red garbed villain or villainess...it's impossible to tell.

Scream Queens reminds me of my own sorority days.  Although I didn't belong to the snooty, rich girl chapter at my school.  I belonged to the chapter, losing members, who were desperate enough to take on a maverick like me...but I am familiar with the type portrayed in Scream Queens. Our campus was filled with them. And yes, they dated all the jocks, dressed in designer clothes, and walked about wafting expensive perfume around them, along with the distinct scent of entitlement.

Anyway, if you're in the mood for silliness to the max, and watching the rich girls bite it in fulfillment of their Karmic load, check out Scream Queens.  You'll get at least a giggle or two, if not full-fledged guffaws.

Until next time, I'm back......and will write another post soon.

Tuesday, September 15, 2015

New Day

Well, this is a brave new world today.  Yesterday my dad moved into his new apartment in a senior living community...He called me several times last night and started calling me at 6:20 this morning complaining about the "hotel" and demanding to go home.  He said he didn't know how they'd gotten his furniture and clothes there, but he wanted it all taken back...

After three more calls this morning from him, I finally called the facility. I learned they have a concierge service to have employees take the new residents to meals, to activities, all for a fee...I said YES, I'LL PAY IT!!!!

I told him later this morning that a couple of young ladies had been assigned to him during different times of the day and one of them would take him to lunch.  Haven't heard from him since.

It's good but I'm not celebrating just yet...I don't know if I can trust this brave new world I met today. It's been so long since I was free to do whatever I choose on any given day, I'm hesitant to put more than a toe in the water, so I can jerk it back when the alligator surfaces.

I actually got some work done this morning.  I met the shredders at the house where they dumped the forty years worth of financial records in their big tubs, carted them to their truck and weighed them...My niece and I went through 295 lbs of paperwork...I KNEW I COULDN'T CARRY THOSE BAGS...geez.

Is that the sum today of 40 years of a person's life? Well if the person is my dad, it's the sum total of 40 years of meticulous record keeping, anyway.

Later this morning, I actually cleaned my place.  We were drowning is dust-covered doggy hair.  My Tzus and I have all been sneezing and coughing...funny thing about that. I'm going to delve into more domesticity in a few minutes and change the sheets, then wash a load of towels. I hope I remember how to work the washer...

In this strange lull of emotionally charged activity I'm uncertain, cautious, concerned it will not last...

I'll give it the final test.  If I'm not awakened in the morning by an angry call before 7:00, I'll know the new day is finally here.

Take care everybody.  Keep dry if you're in my vicinity.  Rain's pouring off the patio overhang once more.

Sunday, September 6, 2015

Wonder Woman - Aging Gracelessly

Sorry I haven't been on my blog since August 1st.  Oh well, what's a month or so between friends?

Actually, I've been rather busy lately.  As my dad enters a new phase of his life, with the help of my wonderful niece, I'm helping him transition.

Well, that sounds nice and bland compared to the reality of my current life. Nothing in the previous sentences gives you the visceral, emotional, physical jarring experienced by adult children caring for elderly parents as they watch them disappear.

You know my all time favorite superhero was Wonder Woman.  Sorry, Captain America, sorry Thor, I was a budding feminist even as a child. I didn't know it then but I did know girls could do just about anything their brothers could, with a few anatomical exceptions.  Not a popular opinion in those days, but hey, I was nothing if not progressive.

As most children believe, I thought I was invincible. And that attitude stayed with me well into my adulthood. I was in my fifties when the first blow struck.  My mother, after several years of illness, was diagnosed with colon cancer and too weak to take the prescribed therapies of the day.  She could have fought to grow stronger, but she opted not to. She opted to do nothing, so after seven months of being confined to bed she died, holding my dad's hand. My father took excellent care of her with the assistance of Hospice staff.  I watched as he waned with her and worried he would leave soon, too.

He survived the last twelve years since her passing, but not without gradually fading.  Five years ago I made the decision to move across the country to assist him however I could.

These last five years have been calm in places and horrendous in others, watching him decline, watching him disappear and become an angry, verbally biting stranger at times.

So we came to the inevitable decisions, should he stay at home or go to a place where he could have 24 hour care available? I let him make the decision, as it's his life.  I wanted him to have autonomy as long as he could. We put the house on the market and began looking for places he could move. The first time the house was on the market and there was an interest expressed by a potential buyer, he knee-jerked and took it off the market.

We waited another five or six months before relisting. Finally, there's a buyer in the picture, and now the time is coming to move Dad, prepare for and hold an estate sale, and close on the house, walking away from their home of thirty years.

Folks, I never lived in that house, but this is hard...all the memories of my childhood, my parents, my brother,my grandparents, cousins, aunts and uncles, are all wrapped up in that home.

For the last month or so, I've been cleaning out possessions, marking other things to come with me, as my niece and her parents have as well.  Bit by bit the "things" are going.  It's funny how inanimate objects spark memories, old feelings, make you confront unresolved issues of the past. The latter is the hardest part of all. You fall into an exhausted sleep at night and first wake up to face another day, your natural good humor lasts about ten seconds, until you remember what hurdle is scheduled for today.

My niece and I have gone over about forty years worth of financial records in my dad's office.  We've got eleven giant trash bags filled with them and two large plastic tubs filled with his taxes for the last five years, as well as information for his 2015 taxes...

Dad doesn't keep his ac on very much, so in Florida, even my fit, athletic niece broke into a daily sweat through the process. I looked like a wrung out mop at the end of every day, covered in the dust of old paper. I went home exhausted each day to be greeted by my puzzled, elderly shih tzus who would come sniff me in wonder...What have you been doing?

As the stress builds, I am increasingly short tempered, growling like a bear.  My family knows to back off now when mato sapa (black bear) appears...

As with most real estate deals, we've had some stumbles along the way.  Now we are being forced to replace the roof on the house...sigh. There is a schedule in place for what needs to happen...Dad moves on a certain day, the next day the estate sale people take over the house and spend three weeks cleaning out, rearranging, staging, preparing for the sale...did I mention it's a BIG house with lots of stuff in it?

Now we'll have the added issue of roofers hammering away...I just keep telling myself it will all be what it is. I've done all I can and couldn't change the outcome anyway.

Lesson for all of you out there, never ask What more can they do to me? You will find out in short order. I asked that once, parked at a park under the trees leaning out the open window in a fit of depression years ago.  I barely finished the sentence with a bird pooped right on the top of my head...Like I said, don't ask.

Someday, hopefully when the weather turns, I'll get back to my life, watching movies, reading books, seeing television shows and blogging about them.

Til then I remain a disheveled, perspiring, depressed, droopy Wonder Woman, with no stamina and little impetus to write...

Take care.