Author: jae

1. grandfather still in GMH. his former Greene Oaks roommate, one Robert Dobbins, has recently died.
2. i must now buy my grandfather’s car, and fully insure it. my own insurance is ~$800/year, and that’s before the ticket i recently got for doing 16MPH over in a speed trap. now it’s going to triple, or worse. cannot handle.
3. new bass guitar had a crack going all the way through the wood, the entire length of the body. pal Tony’s luthier dad is fixing it dirt cheap.
4. have domain, but losing hosting. no time or money (or computer) to keep it up anyway. bye bye transmothra.com, it’s been [virtually] real.
5. have rearranged apt w/ great results. if you don’t count the newly demolished kitchen.
6. probably came awfully close to splitting with Lisa recently. things are just fine now, though. ides of March indeed! no worries. now i just have to, er, remove [co-worker] Mike. (just kidding. he’s ok. i think.)
7. will be straightening hair tonight.
8. Dan Brown is such a fucking hack writer. seriously. my god. i didn’t even have the fucking READ any part of Angels & Demons.
9. finally taking steps to get my finger diagnosed & fixed. am sick of being in such heart-arrestingly excruciating pain so often. have now seen 2 doctors: gout is not ruled out yet; had x-rays & filled prescriptions.

today, i woke up in a different world than the one i went to bed in. or, hell, it might have happened years ago for all i know. what i DO know is this: in the alternate universe in which i grew up, a man named George Washington Carver invented the peanut (through cross-breeding, or hybridization, or something. i don’t know or remember how it was told to me at the time).

i know you people here probably think i’m nuts for saying that. but it’s true: until today, i actually believed that a person invented the peanut!

if anyone here is from my own former plane of existence, check this out.

inexplicable! how did it happen?! it’s PROOF that there are alternate realities!

or perhaps you lot are already familiar with those as well…?

i’m sorry, the Amazon link for the new H2G2 movie is here.

i just got to say that my girlfriend rules.

i’ve just finished watching all ten episodes of The History of Rock and Roll. and i’m enjoying the first beer i’ve had in many days (AA, anyone?). and i am absolutely convinced that just because she knows i get it, she gets it by proxy.

i love my girlfriend, more than any other human being on Earth (excepting my grandfather, of course).

Also: everytime there is a documentary about music, i see it. i have seen every single film ever made about Rock and Roll; and i must apologize to mjb, because i don’t think this is the exact doumentary he is looking for.

i didn’t even mention this:
my girlfriend is away at her home right now. i love her. it just kills me how much i think she just plain rules. she hid a Valentine’s Day card in the bathroom, behind the mirror. i found it ON Valentine’s Day. It was the sweetest thing i’ve ever read:

Maya Angelou: “Strength Partnered with tenderness makes for an unbeatable combination.”

inside: “I am humbled by the comfort, passion, and endless giving of your nature. I am grateful to be within the circle of your love.”

and inside she wrote things that just made me feel like i haven’t felt in maybe forever. thank you, my sweet darling. you make me feel so much better than i probably deserve!

trouble is, she thinks she’s gonna come home and the house is all gonna be all cleaned up and shit; maybe even all rearranged. well, i haven’t done a goddamn thing but watch her videos and read her books, and that’s IT. that is IT. what a boyfriend i am, huh?

last week, i read the 4th Harry Potter book, and i can tell you that if you think you’re too old to read that chicken-shit kiddie crap, think the fuck again, bean-bean. that shit is fo’ REALS, yo. just dig the way that shit ends up. that is some dark muhfucken shit, man. some CRAZY DARK muhfucken shit. (like, if they make the 4th movie true to the book, there ain’t no WAY they gettin away with less than an R rating!) so i am now practically a fan-boy. i’m about 1/3 of the way through the 5th book, and i can’t wait to see what the 6th and 7th books are going to have. this shit is getting seriously heavy! i’m totally loving it! just trust: the first 3 books are fun enough and all, but the next ones will have you flippin’ ya lid. this is some Jedi shit, man. fucking CRAZY.

this week, i gave my grandfather my brand-new sweet-assed electric razor. i happen to be in the po’ house again, so i’m growing a beard, i guess; at least, until i can afford to get another razor. what can i say? it was either that, or go out to his house and bring him his old-assed blunt piece of rusted crap. so if anyone has a Remington ES-1000 they (JHVH-1 forgive you) don’t like, let me know.

btw, in case you didn’t know, my hair is now way long (and utterly unruly) again.

i may try to get that PC fixed here soon-ish -ish. we’ll see. i got an awful lot on my plate right now.

Amazon should have it up very, very shortly. Watch it there if you can.

click on this in case Amazon doesn’t have it up yet.

“man, today, man. today.

i’ve been on the verge of tears all day today, y’know? like, i went to see my grandfather in the hospital. he thinks my uncle is on the way in from NYC. he’s not doing real good, man. y’know? like he’s… he’s just confused, and forgetting things… he can’t figure out the simplest things. like just yesterday he was pushing on the volume dial of his hospital remote thing. pushing on it! pushing in on it! he can never get the hang of all the gizmos in his life anymore. and most of it, it’s like, y’know, no more complicated than the Army radio sets he used to use. fuck, wait! fuck that – he used to be a fucking navigator, for fuck’s sake, man! he used to fuckin’ fly airplanes and shit! i mean, big freakin’ military planes, with all the dials and instruments and, y’know, all that crazy shit, right? and now he can’t figure out how to turn up the god damn volume on this white plastic thing that only has two other buttons on it.

the Tower of Power. that’s what he used to be for me. man… y’know? like this big towering mass of stability and certainness. and now he’s all jumbled…. jumbled up and haywired and… ya know, he’s just so messed up all over on his insides.

he’s still got it up here, though, man. i’m pointing to my head right now. i mean, he gets confused and all that, right? but he can still crack a joke. even at himself. he can still talk shit with people. he’s just… i don’t know. all fucked up or something, y’know?

and then, right? like, i come home and i’m all alone because my girlfriend is up in Indiana somewhere doing stuff with her family and stuff. and i come home, and i put on the TV and pop in these DVDs that she got me for Valentine’s Day – hey! do you remember that History of Rock miniseries they had on PBS several years ago? like interviews with people now, and film clips from all these, y’know, vastly legendary performances, and interviews from the past and all that, like? yeah! she got me that. and all i got her was a couple of lousy old books. geez.

anyway, so i come home, and i’m watchin’ this one about, like, basically, the Sixties and the hippies and the whole thing with all that stuff, right? and you know, how it all went to shit in the end, because some people couldn’t handle the responsibility and just wanted to fuckin’ party all the fuckin’ time. you know. i mean, that’s just me, though, saying that, although they did kinda sort of touch on that whole thing. at the end, ya know.

and that’s just it, man. the end. the End, man. THE End. that’s all i’ve been able to think about for months now, all i’ve been able to think about, like it just consumes my every waking thought, practically. right? i mean, i’m just fucking obsessed with this thing.

i mean, i can feel it. right? i mean, i can feel it. happening. or starting to happen. or something. i dunno, all i know is that it’s coming. it’s on its way, and all i can think about is how fucked up every thing is, and about how we fucked up. we fucked up! like, we ALL fucked up! the ball is rolling, and now we can’t stop it.

so there’s now this whole goddamn human interconnective emotional thing that’s just welling up inside of me, this terrible sadness, the awful chaotic eruption inside of me, of all the thoughts… all the… i dunno… it’s all the suffering we all have now, all the suffering that every human being has always had to go through all throughout history. and it’s just this sort of snowball sort of thing where i feel it all coming down on me, like it’s all of the suffering combined, y’know? and it’s like, i mean it’s almost like it’s just all right there, for me to feel. the Human Condition, like my friend Melissa used to go on about, i mean this sweet, wonderful person who really emoted about this thing, and i’ve always been very aware of it, and… i mean, but now it’s all coming to an end, and what was it all for? what is going to be the end result of all our pain and suffering and humiliation and grief? i mean, will there even be ink on the page still? jesus. even if there is, if that’s all that qualifies the existence of the entirety of the whole human race, then, i mean… jesus. shit. it’s just too much. it’s all just so… too much.

um… look, i gotta go. i mean, ok? alright… see ya ’round.”

in early November, the day i started live on the floor at the call center where i work, my grandfather got badly sick and had to go to the hospital. he hasn’t come home since.

today, my first day in my new job at the same call center, i’m getting ready to get ready for work and my uncle calls.

my grandfather’s running a 102 degree temperature and is in the ER.

fuckity. fuck. fuck.

i can’t get ahold of my dad.

i’m off to work. nothing i can really do but check in from time to time.

1) my grandfather is STILL in the nursing home/comeback center. he’s alert and all, but he hasn’t eaten more than a meal or two’s worth of food since December. he’s got a stomach feeder-tube. he’s down to ~144 lbs. every time he sees that pureed crap they bring him, he vomits almost instantly. last night, when i went in to see him, he vomited within a minute of my arrival. from the looks of things, though, he probably hadn’t been around any food for at least a couple hours, however. lacking common sense, he attempted to vomit with his head facing the ceiling. i cursed him, grabbed a trash bin, and made him turn his head as far as he could. i fear. oh yes, honeys, i fear.

2) being burnt out on everything remotely associated with my life, i have stopped visiting him daily and now only see him once or twice or thrice a week. i work 50 hours a week and my commute is an hour round trip. Greene Oaks, where he’s at, is a further half-hour away from my home and my work. add it up. my energy coefficient doesn’t quite equal the amount of effort it takes to keep this all together.

3) finances! Medicare runs out this month, and the family can’t support the level of health care my grandfather is currently getting. turns out, we are far less fortunate than even i had once thought. so we’re going to see if he can take assisted living. right now, he can’t, because he simply needs more 24/7 help. you’d be shitted how [literally] prohibitively expensive health care can be.

4) so i’ve begun spending nearly every penny i make on music gear. i’ve got an electric-acoustic, a bass, and a mic preamp on their way right now. and my eye is on plenty of other stuff, including a Les Paul-style hardtail guitar that i can track rhythm with, without going out of tune (those Floyd Rose tremolos are a blessing and a curse). plus effects out the wazoo, a more (ahem) modern drum sequencer, a large-diaphragm condensor mic, etc..

5) i start a new job at my work today. off the phones, on to email-based customer support. the hours are late, which i don’t care much for.

6) Lisa got a flat-panel for her PC. it’s sweet. i need to get Travis’ PC working soon. hopefully, i’ll have less hours at work soon. next month, if Ralph can get into assisted living, he may be living a bit closer to me. i hope; but i dread also, dearies.

(see the cycle? see how it works/doesn’t work? i am trying so hard not to break.)

7) i am becoming more and more convinced, as the data pours its way like brown, tainted blood into my mind, that the world as we now know it will be ending within ten years.

8) i’ve started stuttering slightly on occasion. and the infrequent dyslexia… i did go to the doctor about my hand, though. baby steps.

9) so much more to talk about, just not enough time in which to do so.

adios!

O despair! i just got back from Green Oaks, where i spent an hour with my grandfather begging and pleading me to take him home. the last half hour was him telling me, in his hoarse whisper, that he wanted to go home so he could die, or kill himself. he was just miserable.

i can’t tell how much of it is real, and how much is just hospital madness.

he told me at one point: “I know you think you’re doing the right thing, and I think you’re doing the right thing, but…” (the rest i couldn’t understand). so there were points where he seemed more than vaguely lucid. he also said that if he died there (at Green Oaks) that i’d feel terrible. i agreed.

i don’t know what to do. am i doing the right thing? is he going to get better? or should he come home, so he can die in the comfort of his home?

eight o’clock came, and with it, visiting hours were over. i tried to prepare him for my departure, but he begged me not to leave him. he wouldn’t let me leave, and in the end, i just had to turn and walk away. what else could i do? it is breaking my heart to hear him talk like that, and i don’t want to believe that he could be Telling It Like It Is. not in his condition. if he stays, he’s still got a fighting chance at survival, at least in the short term. what the hell am i supposed to do?

it is maddening, distressful, and it makes my heart hurt far more than any woman ever could. i wish i could trade him places.

lest anyone think that this whole last month was simply natural and inevitable, let me just state for the record that my grandfather was, until Saturday, 11/06/04, an active and capable man, whose only daily problems were the fact that he was getting old and starting to show signs of a little wear and tear. he could be forgetful at times, and was often frustrated just because he couldn’t think of a word he was trying to say right away. other than that, he worked in the yard and frequently puttered about the house on various projects. we had planned to go out for dinner the week he went all haywire, and he was going to drive, as usual.

this is a guy who has had leukemia for over thirty fucking years, which is a testament to what a tough motherfucker he is. the fact that he’s still alive at all at this point is an even greater testament, if you knew exactly what he’s been through the last month. it’s amazing that he’s still here.

but his mind… i hope beyond hoping that it’s just hospital psychosis. but still. it’s frightening to hear him tell you (outside of a [previous] context of mind-altering sedatives and/or painkillers) that there are ten-foot-tall, big-eyed, pro basketball-playing Indians around here, with saucer-wide eyes and a look of genuine concern on his face. my grandfather hadn’t a racist bone in his body, more or less, and if you accused him of such a thing he’d get enraged and point to his hero Chappie James, who he admired and served under in Tripoli, during the time when Ghaddafi took over Libya.

“listen: they’re talking about it too.”

“…and alligators!”

my heart has been breaking so bad lately i could just die. very often, i want to. i will not take my own life in my despair, for reasons too numerous to discuss, but i do so dearly want to spend my paycheck on a big fucking gun and blow my miserable head off. there’s just too much amiss. but also too much i’d miss. besides, i’m just a big drama queen. still, it’s hard not to be completely thrown for a serious emotional loop when every goddamn iota of your life is going haywire.

this is a cursed season.

also: an LJ-friend [i regretfully hardly communicated with at all] is now dead and gone, too. Paula Anderson, a larger-than-life writer without precedent who lived an amazing and untamed life, is free in infinitudes now. and i practically barely even knew of her. thanks to her editor, the equally impressive Jackie Corley, a good deal of her work is available for reading online or purchase. it is so terrible and sad to see such a richly talented young American writer leave the fold; thankfully, hers was not in the least a wasted life.

just received a hoarse phone call from my grandfather at the Green Oaks.

“Grandpa passed away.”

this is maddening.

not well, am drinking.

today is my grandmother’s birthday. happy birthday, Grandma. we miss you.

my grandfather is off his respirator now. he can’t talk very well. it’s a low, gutteral rasp, and extremely difficult to understand. his mouth doesn’t form specific phonemes very accurately. it’s a lot of “weh wuh uh wharh eh wuh-yih uarh” and the like, and about an octave or six lower than usual.

the general idea is that he may have had a stroke at some point during his stay. his left side is alternately not as mobile as his right or just immobile altogether. i think that sounds about right.

my dad, today, mentioned home health care; he said the response from ICCU staff was something like, “it’s going to take a lot more than that.” this is going to get more difficult, i can see.

he definitely seems to remember who we are. he even smiled when i told him of Matty (his goofysweet dog) the other day. but my dad just now reported that he asked where he lived before he came to live in the hospital. he also didn’t understand the football game that was on his room TV, and asked what they (the players) were doing, apparently thinking that they were fighting.

so, y’know. got that going for us. ugh. it doesn’t bode very well.

got a lot to do today.

one thing i’ve got to somehow make time for is getting the computer that Travis gave me fixed up. i bought a new ribbon cable to see if that might help me to connect all the internal drives up finally, but i haven’t been able to find the time, seeing how my fucking work has had me scheduled for so much stinkin’ overtime lately. luckily, i’ve been able to VTO out of a decent portion of it, but i’m still away from home the vast majority of the day.

11:00-11:30am: wake up
noon: drive to work
12:30: start work
10:00-11:00 end work, drive to GMH
11:30-12:30: come home, hyperventilate and/or weep
(drink, repeat)
(repeat all)

my car’s not doing so hot, either. my turn signals are out, and it ain’t the fuses. the brakes sound like metal scraping against concrete at the end of a deceleration from higher speeds. at least one cylinder is out, and so it shudders slightly and acts like it wants to shut down sometimes (luckily it doesn’t). this i have to drive through Deer Country, in deer season, to and from the hospital at night. i am going to die very soon.

i’m falling apart at the seams.

my grandfather seems to be vaguely stable. he was really going downhill at an alarming rate. he hasn’t actually improved much, however. poor guy. i love him so much. i don’t know what i’d do without him. it’s only been through his machinations that i’ve had a decent life and any possessions to my name.

someday, i will tell you about the bird i tried to save as a kid, only to kill it while trying to feed it worms with a dropper. well, that’s all there is to it, really, so i guess i’ve just told it already. the moral of the story is that i should let the nurses do the feeding, because when i do it, he winds up choking and gets pneumonia. i realize i may be blaming myself needlessly, that he choked when anyone gave him a little bit of water.

my uncle drove straight through the night from Manhattan.

my paycheck was fucked up and now i’ve somehow managed to OWE my employers. shit.

my work won’t let me take off any more time unless i get somebody to cover it. my work is an asshole. no wonder people bring bitterness (and Desert Eagles) to work. i wouldn’t do that, of course, but i certainly feel hostile about things. i may need to quit, though, and i want to be re-hirable, so i might have to just shut my big fucking trap and get over it.

called off work again, grandfather in ICU. he’d be getting better care at any number of other hospitals (rant to come later), but this one’s closer to his preferred doctors.

one set forward… two steps back.

summary: grandmother, three years gone; grandfather, 84, not doing so hot in hospital…

sunday morning my grandfather calls me at 2:00 in the morning. i thought it was my drug-addled irresponsible potential trainwreck friend J, so i answered the phone most impolitely. once i realized it was him, it was too late, and i had to call him back. he didn’t sound very good. i’d just spoken to him that afternoon, and he said he was exhausted, and sounded very so. the line was busy, so i hung up quickly and the phone rang again. he’d been vomiting and had been having diarrhea. i phoned my dad and rushed over.

he wasn’t looking so hot, so eventually we all agreed to call the ambulance and have him shuttled over to Green Memorial Hospital.

he wasn’t doing much worse, or much better sunday. i called off work. it was my very first day out of training.

monday, i went to work.

three years ago monday was the anniversary of my grandmother’s death. it was a miserable, miserable day.

i don’t remember anything at all about tuesday, except that i’m pretty sure i was at work, and that i hadn’t gotten up in time to go give grandpa a visit that day.

sometime tuesday night, the shit hit the fan, so to speak. even my normally-stoic, “everting gwan be all rite” father said he’d been upset. he and the hospital both said they called me. i checked my voice mail: Tony’s daughter Abbie, my girlfriend Lisa, my buddy Travis (saved prior); checked my answering machine: Kirsten Dunst, Bill Clinton, my buddy Travis (saved prior)… nothing new. normally, i get my messages without fail. apparently this must have been the result of a ripple in the space-time continuum. sorry for any upsetting messages you might have received, Sal Rosenberg of Scranton, PA!

anyway… my grandfather’s white cell count was sky high (nurse this afternoon: “highest I’ve seen in anyone, ever”) (he’s had leukemia for 30+ years now, believe it or not, the ox), and he’d had a bad reaction to the Fenergan they gave him for his nausea. he ripped the IV out (now has swollen left arm), and i hear the old room was left a pitiful wreck. his kidney’s not doing so great. 102° fever. very low blood pressure. and a fibrillating heart, pounding fast to beat hell, and with a terrible clashing rhythm like Keith Richards on a nine-day smack bender. they moved him to Telemetry, where they could keep a better eye on his vitals (and whereabouts, as it were).

i called off work again (one half of my PTO balance now gone) and saw him today; it was so sad. he was fairly alert, but incoherent. he couldn’t communicate, because he was on oxygen and all dried out with no more voice. he looked desperate and uncomfortable and anxious. he was disoriented badly. i could go on and on. some of it was cute, in a sad, hallucinogenic sort of way. mostly it was just sad.

at one point, some asshole oxygen merchant came in while i was alone with him and our friend’s friend Katherine, and asked me if he was a FULL CODE. i looked at him like, “huh?” and he explained in the bluntest fucking possible terms (speaking about a foot away from poor old Grandfather) that i should have known whether or not we wanted him to be resuscitated should he start to stop. i said, “er… is that a very likely possibility at this point?” and he just said that i should know and that sure, anything can happen. i wanted to rip out his goddamn lungs and spit on his face. tactless fuck. the law here requires them to do that, unless told otherwise. had anyone said anything OTHER-wise? no. in fact, we’re all for defaulting to trying to keep him going until it becomes reasonably unreasonable. common sense, man! again, what a moronic and tactless fucking worthless waste of cells.

i watched my girlfriend holding his hand with tears welling up in her eyes. it was a bittersweet day in many ways.

i just called the hospital a little while ago. i felt so guilty for not having stayed the night, and so scared that he was going to rip out his catheter and IVs (he’s got about 50 of ’em, it looks like), and fall and smash himself open. seeing that as a likely scenario, the nurse had put him on Atavan. Atavan, my arch nemesis. Atavan, which had reduced my grandmother’s already cancer-boiled brain to mush. Atavan, relentless slayer of logic and awareness.

thursday, friday dot dot dot

we Jarratts are all very optimistic that he’ll be out working on the fence or doing some other damn thing this weekend.

also: just found out i am overdrawn on my debit card. fuckity fuck. that’s at least three overdraft fees, i think.

because i don’t know shit about ‘puter guts:

Q: what happens when you have more drives than you have working ATA/IDE ports? is there any way to connect more than two devices to one port? i have 2 hard drives (one 8Gb for XP, one 80Gb for various documents and programs), and a DVD Rom, but only one of the socket thingies seems to work… at least, i think that’s the case… when my pal Travis sent me his old (but still pretty bad-ass) gaming rig, i could never get it to recognize the DVD drive, after i had taken it off the ribbon it was on in favor of running the 2 hard drives on the same ribbon [definitely correct jumper settings be damned].

hey, shut up – i can still out-CSS you AND your cousin!

p.s., this may be of some interest, should you ever find yourself needing to play musical drives while trying desperately to get your PC to boot up after having suffered a sasser-like defeat at the foul hands of iomdisk.sys (and/or sasser itself, who knows?): http://hardwarehell.com/jumpers.shtml

still without a computer… i either got Sassered straight into Digital Oblivion, or my external Iomega burner[‘s driver] torched me but good. i may well have lost everything i ever had, either way. too bad i never made a backup, owing to my burner’s penchant for being a piece of crap. also, the operator is lazy and incompetent.

birthday #34 (counting Firstday) wasn’t too bad. was a Gray, briefly, for All Hallow’s E’en. sorry about the angry, drunken voicemail, Tony.

next friday, the one after this week, i should FINALLY be in the clear financially, more or less, so a couple of you can expect a payback. sorry it couldn’t have been sooner!

those of you (Americans, that is) who do not vote one way or the other will be promptly and forcefully BUH-LETED from my friends list, once i come back online and peruse the textual evidence. no ifs, ands, or buts. i am dead serious about this, people. i love yas, but not nearly as much as i love participating in this Great Experiment we here like to call a fuckin’ Democracy.

been having loads of computer problems lately. between virii and external CD-R drive problems, things have not been good. to say the least. i’m frankly really lucky that i got the thing working just now.

that was a total lie. i didn’t get it working at all. my wonderful and geeky girlfriend did. i love her.

so… i might be offline for a while, unless something amazing and magical happens.

hail eris.

(p.s., does anybody else have adware that pops up Infernal Exlpoder regardless of whether it’s the default browser (which it is NOT), admonishing you to donate your money to some online casino? spybot and adaware both have failed to determine its cause.)

almost none of my RL friends ever check out my site, blog, or LJ, and CERTAINLY not on a regular basis.

just curious…