Monday Moaning: Dementia Moved In

The image is click-bait but that's always been part of the game, and a major part of my game since I started blogging at Sporting News back in 2007...But I always found a way to tie it in with the post...I carried it on with me here and at the now defunct YouGabSports....

-I had a couple of masterpiece blogs in the bullpen...They were going to get me noticed by Barstool Sports who would offer me a job...(yeah, right!)But with the murder of George Floyd, the ensuing protests, the hate spewed by the President and his ignorant supporters who hold the Confederate Traitors in such high regard, I scrapped those...I didn't blog...I just carpet bombed social media facts, truth, reality, history, and quick rants...I got flagged on Facebook for things that were factually correct but Anti-Trump and Anti-Racism...I got unfollowed by plenty of people, which is fine...If you're a racist...If you are ok with people flying Nazi and Confederate flags, I don't want to know you and don't want you around....I got suspended on Twitter twice...A week for tweeting at Drew Brees that he "is a fucking idiot"....My first tweet back was at Twitter and their owners, pointing out the hypocritical bullshit standards they have...And then I retweeted porn clips that are allowed on twitter at them...

-One blog shredding MLB for being a bunch of greedy fucks who are killing their game and are about to lose the dog days of Summer to the NHL...The NHL is planning to have their playoffs (the best playoffs of all sports) in July, August and September...Pushing the start of next season back, and if they stick with it that way they can continue starting their season later, and having their playoffs in the Summer, sports dead zone, when many people get extra casual with Baseball until it gets closer to September....But with Billionaire owners and millionaire players fighting over money, more and more people are going to care less and less about a sport who's core fanbase is dying...


-I had done  series of "COVID Blogs"...Those stopped This next section was going to be one in the series...A month into the COVID shutdown, we moved my Mother-in-Law in with us...My wife, three kids, two dogs, myself and my dementia riddled Mother-in-Law...She was in assisted living and was locked down, stuck in her room for over month...No visitors allowed, no activities, no dining room...It scrambled her already fragile brain even more...When we saw her outside of the place on her birthday, my wife and I knew we had to get her out...So she's here with us...My Father-in-Law went down this same road so we knew to some extent what we were getting into...But it's bad...It's hard...

The kids were doing school from home...The wife works from home...there's limited separation people can get...We get bombarded with the same questions over and over again...The last 20 years don't exist...She doesn't know who I am, except that I cook for her and answer questions...There are times she doesn't know my wife...

We made a answer sheet for her to keep...When she starts asking questions we tell her to look at it...She would ask a question, you would answer and she would ask it again immediately...She looked at the sheet and said, "This is my daughters house?" I said yes...She then said "Is she still alive?"...Which was when the most blunt thing I could say fell out of my face..."If she was dead you wouldn't live here."  I felt awful, but she forgot it within seconds...

My day often starts with making her Tea and toast or an English muffin with orange marmalade...Once she is sitting down eating and working on a puzzle I go and check to see if I have to mop the floor in her bedroom, the hallway and the bathroom, as she likes to take her diapers off during the night and often leaves a trail of pee.... 

It's hard seeing someone fall apart in front of you...It's hard on my wife, as her mother often seems ungrateful for what we do for her...At night she becomes child-like, wants to "break rules" and gets pissy with my wife...We had to put up a baby gate to try and prevent her from roaming around the house at night while everyone is asleep...She loves to search for cookies between 11:00 PM and 4:00 AM...We have signs on doors to help her and prevent her taking a header down the basement steps....

The one thing makes my wife nuts...Her mother will go to the bathroom door wide open, doing her business, everything hanging out...But then when she's done, she pulls the door shut behind her...WTF!?!

If 2020 didn't suck bad enough, especially for the kids, my oldest having her senior year of high school kicked in the balls...She gave up her room for her Grandmother and moved into her little sister's room...And Grandma has no idea who our kids are...She had lived everyday for over two months with them and looks at them like strangers...We spent so many weekends visiting...Personal time and vacation time spent with my in-laws...Moved to fucking Erie to take care of things for them....and she has no memory of them or any of it...There are moments when I talk to her and she looks at me like 'Who the fuck are you and what are you doing here.?'

As frustrated and annoyed as I get, I have to remind myself that my wife is watching her mother's brain turn to pudding right in front of her everyday...I don't know how my wife deals with it so calmly...Well, she does like to hit the bottle like the piece of click-bait at the top of this post! 

That's what's been going on in my world...

Have a drink...Stay safe...Stay strong...Don't be a racist...Help fight for positive change in this country and world...And love...Love your family...No matter what, love your family.