Cool Will Rule

The heat wave that has been hanging around the Western U.S. for a couple of weeks has moved East. Sorry, Midwesterners and Easterners and Southerners, Mr and Mrs North and South America and all the ships at sea…now you'll see what we've been going through for most of July. It's been 100º or better for quite a while, a couple of days hitting around the 105º or 107º range. I know that doesn't seem like much to you folks in Tucson or Phoenix, Arizona, where you put on your winter coats if it gets under 95º, but to me, descendent of Northern Europeans who spent thousands of years in their frigid climes freezing their asses, 100º is just too damn hot.

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Monday was my mom's 85th birthday. She's in an Alzheimer's care center, where she's lived the past two years. Despite the fact that Mom sometimes knows us and sometimes doesn't, despite her not being able to walk since breaking her hip in April, 2004, despite the fact she mistakes me for my dad with whom she had major issues, she seems to be doing very well.

She's well medicated. She's on an anti-psychotic for her paranoid delusions, she's on the antidepressant, Zoloft, she's on Ambien so she can sleep at night (insomnia has always plagued Mom, and unfortunately, I inherited that tendency), she's on three Lortabs a day to manage her pain, and Aricept to slow down the process of her disease. Mom likes to sit in the hallway and watch the world go by. She has the proverbial three hots and a cot, like we used to say in the army. She has no responsibilities, she can participate in activities or not, she has my brother visiting her every day. Her daily life is not empty, as we tend to think life in a nursing home would be.

We visited her on Sunday, taking our 19-month-old granddaughter, Bella. Bella is a big hit in the nursing home, but all of the people making over her scare her. She's a good sport to put up with it for a while, but after that she wants to get out of there.

Today one of the secretaries I work with told me her husband has been diagnosed with Alzheimer's. I feel very sorry for her; it's a long road to travel, and always comes out a dead end.

Despite all of that, Happy Birthday, Mom! I know you won't be reading this, and even if someone reads it to you it won't mean anything, but I hope you had a happy day.

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I found this VIP cartoon which with a few pen lines and pithy one-line caption perfectly captures my paranoid boss.

Ciao for now, El Postino