I know I’ve been awfully quiet lately…

…not blogging much, or updating much, these days. In truth I haven’t felt much like doing it, or doing anything. Work has been rough lately due to the Christmas rush and they’ve kept us late a lot. I’ve come home just wanting to sleep all day, and often I do. However, the Christmas rush is almost over and hopefully things will pick up around here again.

I certainly hope 2010 is a better year for me than 2009 or 2008. The last few years of my life have been difficult: health problems, personal problems, financial problems. But I see light up ahead. I’ve already thought up a few New Years’ resolutions. I was actually able to keep two of mine for this year.

Anybody know anything about geriatrics?

Putting a feeler out there because this is a most puzzling and vexing situation:

My grandmother is 86 or so and confined to a nursing home. She moved in a little over a year ago. She does not have Alzheimer’s Disease or any form of dementia, but she’s got diabetes and Parkinson’s and she can’t walk due to a broken hip. Grandpa is healthier but quite feeble himself and lives in the home with her.

Four days ago my grandmother, from no apparent cause, suddenly went stark raving mad. As in, throwing things at everyone and cussing them out, threatening to commit suicide, repeatedly trying to escape from her wheelchair and the nursing home itself (in spite of the fact that she can’t even really stand up on her own), accusing everyone of secretly hating her and conspiring against her, refusing to eat or take medicine, placed on a 24-hour watch for her own safety, etc. My mom thought perhaps grandma had a urinary tract infection, which can make old people go a bit funny in the head. But then yesterday, just as suddenly as it started, the madness stopped. Grandma has returned to her normal character and started eating again and taking her medicine etc. Clearly, it wasn’t a UTI, or it wouldn’t have gotten better like that. Same with her diabetes, that couldn’t have been the cause either.

Everyone — Mom, doctors, nursing home staff — seems to be at a loss about this and we are all concerned this might repeat itself. This is a matter of concern for me, besides for the obvious reasons, but because whenever Grandma has a crisis Mom goes insane too and starts taking out her stress on everyone else and making their lives miserable, especially my father’s and mine.

Anyone have any ideas about this? I figure — anything y’all suggest can’t hurt, might help, and if it does help it will make a lot of lives easier, not just my Grandma’s.

UPDATE: Case closed. It turned out Grandma did have a UTI after all. Why she suddenly regained her wits no one knows, but now she’s on antibiotics to clean out her plumbing.

Going all out for Christmas presents

I like getting gifts for people more than I like receiving them. I’m having fun shopping this year. So far I’ve gotten:

A digital camera for my boyfriend Michael
A book called Wicked Plants: The Weed That Killed Lincoln’s Mother and Other Botanical Atrocities by Amy Stewart for my dad (he is a botantist)
A Thomas Kincaid painting for my mom
A Memory Foam mattress pad for both of my parents
The biography Young Stalin for my brother Ian (an awesome book, btw, possibly the best biography I’ve ever read)

I plan to get a certain t-shirt for my friend John, and gift cards for Michael’s parents (I hate giving people gift cards, it seems to scream “I didn’t care enough to think of a specific gift for you so here’s this instead” but they asked for them), and a stuffed syphillis microbe for my brother Colin. (We hate each other. Seriously. Every year for the last few years, I’ve gotten him a stuffed microbe as a token of my disaffection and lack of esteem for him. So far he’s gotten gonorrhea, flesh-eating disease and the ebola virus. He has never commented on these gifts. In fact, we basically haven’t spoken to each other in at least five years, even though we’ve shared the same house for much of that time.)

I still haven’t decided what to get for my other friends and relatives. I’m sure I’ll think of something. I’ve got almost a month.

I have officially overindulged this week

Books currently checked out from the library:

Bluebeard: the Life and Crimes of Gilles De Rais by Leonard Wolf. 259 pages.
A Plantation Mistress on the Eve of the Civil War: the Diary of Keziah Goodwyn Hopkins Brevard, 1860 – 1861, edited by John Hammond Moore. 137 pages.
The Last Jews in Berlin by Leonard Gross. 349 pages.
Herschel: The Boy Who Stated World War II by Andy Marino. 226 pages.
The Floating Brothel by Sian Rees. 236 pages.
Looking for JJ by Anne Cassidy. 319 pages.
Wicked Women: Black Widows, Child Killers, and Other Women in Crime by Betty Alt and Sandra Wells. 187 pages.
Cranioklepty: Grave Robbing and the Search for Genius by Colin Dickey. 308 pages.
Say You’re One Of Them by Uwem Akpan. 358 pages.
The Dangerous World of Butterflies by Peter Laufer. 271 pages. Renewed once.

Books I bought at the discount bookstore yesterday (and got a really good deal, $26 for all of them when the list prices totaled $87):

Catastrophes and Disasters by Roger Smith. 246 pages.
Everyday Life in Traditional Japan by Charles J. Dunn. 198 pages.
50 Really Exotic Pets by David Manning. 191 pages.
365: Your Date With World History by W. B. Marsh and Bruce Carrick. 683 pages.

Total:

3,619 pages.

Rate at which I’d have to read to have all these finished by the time I come back to the library next week hungry for different books and tired of lugging these tired old ones around:

603 pages a day.

Likelihood of this happening:

Slim. But not impossible, if I really put my mind to it and dedicate my week to it and neglect all other aspects of my life. And I am perfectly capable of doing that for books about vicious killers, prostitutes and stealing dead people’s heads.

Me and the light of my life

Today I scanned a portrait photo of myself and my boyfriend, taken for his family’s church bulletin in late September. Presenting me and Michael! (I thought about just posting it on here, but that would mess up the current “no pictures” status of this blog. Plus it’s a pretty big image.)

So now I have a recent photo for Mom to give to the cops if I should ever disappear myself. I know it’s unlikely, but of course it has occurred to me. The last time I had my picture taken was in January 2008, back when my hair was still long.

A new member of the family

My boyfriend went out and got an eight-week-old kitten today. Her name is Carmen. She’s a brown tabby with hazel eyes, long hair, white paws and a white bib. She looks like every other kitten in the world — that is, adorable. Pick her up and right away she starts purring like she’s got a little motor inside her.

That makes a current total of four pets: Carmen the cat, our two rats Gypsy and Belle, and Alley the chihuahua, who actually belongs to my boyfriend’s roommate.

Only six degrees of separation?

I thought it was cool when I found out I know someone who knows someone who went to Oxford with the Crown Prince (now King) of Bhutan. My friend said her friend said the Prince was a jerk, which I guess is to be expected.

But now I’ve found out I know someone who knows someone who went to primary school with Daniel Radcliffe! That’s even cooler. Everyone knows who Daniel Radcliffe is. No one knows who the King of Bhutan is, and most of them don’t even know Bhutan is a country in Asia. My friend said her friend said Daniel Radcliffe was an “emotionally stunted weirdo.”

It’s a pity I don’t personally know anyone really famous. Robert Cormier was only semi-famous (about as famous as a young adult author can be, but that’s not saying much) and he is now deceased.

Happy birthday to me, happy birthday to me…

I am twenty-four years old today. Woo.

My parents gave me a sweatshirt (handpainted with a stack of books; I didn’t have the heart to tell Mom she spelled the word “Heroes” wrong in one of the titles), a pair of hand-knitted socks (I collect them) and money to go get myself a massage. Meh. I will wait to see what Michael and his parents have in store for me.

Last year my friend Jeff gave me a $150 bottle of absinthe. Then I accidentally broke it before I could try any. I was seriously pissed off.

Weird computer glitch

For some reason, my computer is showing only 450 files in the “M” folder of my “Cases” folder. (This is on my computer itself, not on the internet.) I thought perhaps all the others had accidentally been deleted, and started to FTP all the missing ones off Charley into the folder, but FTP told me the files were already there. And I did a desktop search for a few of the missing files and they are, in fact, there…but my folder still shows only 450 files.

What gives? This has never happened before.

I use Windows Vista. Any ideas?

UPDATE: Okay, I checked out the properties of the folder and it said the files were “read-only.” I unchecked that box and reloaded the folder, and now there are 2,332 files again. Problem solved.

I hate, hate, hate the month of September

Once again I am struck with my annual bout of severe hay fever. Claritin and Benadryl haven’t really helped and I haven’t been able to sleep due to the coughing, the runny/stuffy nose and the crap dripping down the back of my throat. Got the chills, too. I’ve now been up for about 30 hours. I wanted to miss work, I felt so terrible, but I’ve missed work so much this past summer due to all that went on that my boss had a little talk with me recently and told me I had to stop doing that or I was fired. So I went to work in much misery.

Damn you, pollen! Damn you to hell! Damn you, overactive immune system, which can’t even tolerate anti-allergy cream.

There’s a 60% chance of rain today, which might clear the air…if it actually does rain.