I’ve been on vacation, hence the silence. We went up north, and stayed at my favorite childhood spot. My kids had a blast. My husband ran out of green, and became moody. He gets anxiety, and then I get anxiety when that happens, but I mostly had fun.
We also picked up my father, who has been in an awful situation for quite some time. He was living with his ex-girlfriend. They haven’t been together in a few years, but continued to live together in some weird arrangement. My dad is nearly 72, and she is 46. And insane. I’m fairly certain she is a pathological liar. When I was home last year for my father’s surgery, she and I had to sit in the waiting room and make small talk for the few hours that the procedure took. She told me that she was just offered a job working for Hilton Hotels in New York City, and that she put a deposit down on an apartment in upper Manhattan. Are you kidding me?! If you knew this person, you would know she is neither getting job offers for Hilton, nor does she have money to live in upper Manhattan.
Anyhow, to make an incredibly sad story short, his ex-girlfriend has a new fiancé who introduced her to heroin. Not because she is in pain and has no other means to cope, but for fun. So now they, my dad’s ex and new fiancé, hang out in the bathroom all morning long as they are too fucked up to leave until early afternoon. Once they come out of their heroin-induced state, they drive to the fiancé’s house, and sometimes won’t return for weeks. I’m fairly certain they’ve been abusing my dad, emotionally and physically, and they have been taking all his money, which isn’t a lot. He gets social security and a small pension payment. He is by no means “well off”, but in their eyes he has enough to pay their mortgage, along with some extra for utilities, food, and heroin. It has been sickening to see, and they give my dad enough attention to make him feel as if they care. But they don’t. I recently bought my dad $300 worth of new clothing, and he told me the fiancé took it all for himself as it fit him. When we got my dad, he was wearing the clothes the hospital game him when he was there a few months back for his mini-stroke. Absolutely unreal. My husband went to pick him up as he didn’t want me even going to the house. He said it looked like a murder scene inside, and was equally creepy on the outside.
That chapter is over. My dad told me he didn’t get all his clothes, and might need to go back. I told him absolutely not. I would buy him whatever he needed. He is never going back there.
On a different note, it is going to be challenging to get through this transition. My dad is blind in one eye. He recently had a mini stroke. He has trouble walking. He has horrible aim when he goes to the bathroom. And his pants and underpants often slide down his backside giving everyone in my home a nice shot of his rear as he likes to stand in my kitchen and lean on the counter for long periods of time. I’m working on making my basement a more comfortable place for him so he doesn’t need to be hanging out in our space all the time. I don’t mind sometimes, just not all the time. Things on my list are a television for his room, some TV trays so he can eat on the couch in the basement, a mini-fridge for his beer, and maybe a K-cup coffee maker. Still trying to determine if he is able to live on his own, or if this is a forever-with-us kind of thing.
Either way, I’m glad he is out of the situation he was in even if that means I need to clean up his piss off my bathroom floor.
Mrs. Mama. Manager. 