Oh, Bother.

It's been a busy week at the Hula-gen ranch. Papa T. is still in the hospital. This was day sixteen, and he cannot get home fast enough. He is much, much better, but his pneumonia has been a bit slow to clear up. More worrisome than anything though, has been his thinking skills. This whole bout of sickness has done a bit of a number on his thinker. Most of the time it's been due to his low oxygen level, but sometimes he gets fuzzy when his oxygen is fine, and we're not sure why. He'll start a sentence with one thought and wander into another. As Winnie the Pooh once said, "“When you are a Bear of Very Little Brain, and you Think of Things, you find sometimes that a Thing which seemed very Thingish inside you is quite different when it gets out into the open and has other people looking at it.” Papa T. has always been a bear of very great brain, so it has been frustrating to see him so confused. Yesterday he was completely out of his head. Today he was clear as a bell. We're just not sure what to think about it. Nevertheless, his lungs are clearer, and we're hoping he might go home in the next day or two. Please, Lord, let him go home. We are all tired of the hospital. These past two weeks have certainly verified for me that I have no business working in the medical field.

Hubby is worn out. His patience is shot, and he needs some alone time that doesn't include napping in a hospital chair. He's a good man to take care of his parents so well, but it is hard. It really does take its toll after a while. One of these days, I'm going to write a book on taking care of the elderly. It will be an honest account of the stress, frustration and humor involved in nurturing another human being. I want people to know that they are not alone when they feel all of those mixed emotions. God bless people who make a career out of it. As far as I'm concerned, they get the Fast Pass into heaven.

I had one of those don't give a fig days.  I suspect it's just welling up from a very tired place somewhere within my being, and it shall pass in a day or so, but right now, I just can't get too worked up about anyone else's problems.  I'm too mired down in mine.  I'm a bit snippy, too.  I noticed it right off the bat this morning when, less than a half mile from my house, I glared in the rearview mirror at the SUV tailgating me and hollered at its driver, "Do you want to buy the arse of my car?!"  I must have looked like I meant business because he backed off.  Way off.  And to be completely honest, I'm still not sorry about it.  What's that line in the Rickie Lee Jones song, "A little lonely, a little sad, a little mean."  Ha.  That's me, minus the lonely and sad. 

What makes us that way sometimes?  Why is it so easy to resort to mean and ugly when we're feeling sorry for ourselves?  Papa T. had a couple of days like that last week.  In fact, we had a little come to Jesus meeting last Wednesday 'cause his attitude was all wonky, and it was making us and the hospital staff very cranky.  But I get it.  I get why he was taking it out on us because I'm guilty of doing the same thing.  I just don't like it when someone does it to me.  Will there ever be a day when I'm mature enough to get past that kind of behavior and just clamp my mouth shut when mean and snippy is at the back of my throat?  And listen more than I speak?  Probably not.  If only I could be more like Pooh.  “If the person you are talking to doesn't appear to be listening, be patient. It may simply be that he has a small piece of fluff in his ear.”