Tales from the park side

 Visiting with my dad yesterday. We were doing a FaceTime.  His medication was off and he seemed tired.  Mentioned he wasn’t sleeping well and he can’t shut his mind off.   I informed him he has medication to assist such as melatonin and some valium derivative. 

Anyway, we had a brief conversation about my employment situation and was explaining an opportunity that may come together.  As I was talking to him drool came out of his mouth. Twice.  He didn’t even notice.   Then I asked him what he thought. He said ‘I don’t know. I’m not following what you’re saying.’  He's looking at me as the conversation passes by.  With Parkinon's masking it's hard to know if a face void of emotion is checked out or just a neuro muscular symptom that comes with the brain unable to initiate and control muscle movement.

He mentioned his physical therapy is going well his therapist says his balance in improving   I inquired about speech therapy.  She only comes once a week.  I understand they help you with exercises to do during the week.  Yeah.  Do you do them? No.  Okay - do you want to pause the speech therapy until your medication situation is stabilized?  No.  Are you maximizing the benefit if you’re not practicing between sessions?  No.  Okay?

My Dad is a prideful man and I’m sure the decline is harder on him than it is on him than it is on me.  Cognitive testing is going to scheduled.  Will the information be gleaned be useful in or merely serve as confirmation? 

The last cognitive test he underwent was hard emotionally on him. That’s when his relationships went off the rails with the starwood staff. He was raging in frustration and anger.  I don’t see how putting him through a 2-4 hour cognitive assessment is going to be beneficial. If anything it will be blow to his confidence in his abilities and confirmation there are cognitive gaps and he is on the decline. 

Our family moved  to Texas in 1975. My parents didn’t have to walk the aging journey with their parents.  My Aunt and Uncle took care of my maternal grand parents.  My paternal grandfather died in 1979 from cancer.  My paternal grandmother died in Austin from esophageal.  My dad moved her to Austin while Laurie and I were dating.  She died when we got back from our honeymoon.  I don't remember how long she was living her.  My sister walks my dads aging journey third person through me.  She is tremendous support. And it's not the same as dealing first hand with the challenges of seeing a parent on the skids.

 A once capable man being overcome by advancing Parkinson’s.  It's eroding his quality of life.  When we got on facetime, the first thing that struck me is he is losing more weight and his face is looking more skeletal and thinned out - losing tone and 'fleshiness.'  

Am I stuck in employment purgatory until his time on earth ends?  Is this the universe knowing something I don't?  Divine intervention?   

Soul Crushing

 Does anyone understand how soul crushing it is to receive an automated rejection letter stating I am not qualified for a job when my resume and experience matches their desired qualifications line for line? 

It's devastating.  

My career is worthless.  

I'm worthless.

Tales from the Park Side

 My dad started sending me message at 1237 last night.  He was completely off the rails because he was ringing his call button for a tylenol.  Then he called the owner of the company and said there was no one on duty.  There was someone on duty.  She was outside smoking a cigarette or something.  My dad then sends me all these messages how pissed he is and the facility isn't doing their job and the owner wasn't monitoring the call buttons and didn't come when we wanted his tylenol.

When the messages started coming I turned off my phone.  I'm not getting pulled into a temper tantrum about tylenol.  I wonder if they facility used their secret stash of medication for when he starts climbing the walls.  Like the time he accused a caregiver of throwing his mouse in the garbage.  Or the most recent time when he started acting like Mr Wilson from UP because he didn't remember the attendant came in to take his blood pressure.

Last time, I went over they and met with the staff for an hour.  I listen to them and talked to him.  Like all HR related BS, the truth probably lies somewhere in the middle.  

This time, I did not get involved.  I didn't return his call.  I didn't acknowledge his tantrum.  I didn't call the facility.  

If he can get out of bed and go into the kitchen wearing nothing but his underwear, why can't he do the same thing to go into the medicine cabinet and get himself a pain reliever??

Later in the day he sent me a message in facebook about the pastor from the childhood church on video taking communion and walking to his seat.  He called him a loser.  This usually gets a reaction out of me because i can't stand the guy.  He looks like a typical 80 plus year old elderly man.... he practically tripped going through the communion line and he was holding his wife's hand.  I wonder how bad her health is because she looks like a zombie every time i see her.  At any rate, I didn't respond to his outreach.

And again later in the day, he sent over a social media campaign the church is doing to attract new attendees.  A video of the organ and a video of a scene from the stained glass windows combined with a song and some biblical text.  I told him that was nice and asked who was doing it.  He didn't know.  He did share that the campaign was 10 years old.  The conversation didn't go any further.

I'm always there to advocate for his care and well being.  Being upset about a tylenol or the attendant smoking a cigarette?  SOmething bad could have happened.  Well.... it didn't.  

After the last melt down about the vital sign thing, it's not appropriate to gear up for battle.  Gotta pick wisely.  Especially knowing he is experiencing gaps in cognition.  Like when he can't operate his computer, hearing aids or phone.  Or when he can't count backwards from 20.  Or when he doesn't remember what he had for breakfast.  

When he was assessed for speech therapy, he told me he failed the cognitive assessment by one question and that it was no big deal.  That one question may have made him fail - but how many questions did he get wrong before the one question made his score a failure?  Like if there were 20 questions, a failing score could mean he got 8 wrong to bring his score down to 60.  So it wasn't one question that caused a failure on the assessment.  It was 9 questions causing a failure.  But... what do I know?

I don't know when I'll reach out to him again.  He has ANOTHER neurology appointment on the June 11.  I'll contact him and the facility for sure on the 10th.  Until then...  we'll see.  I'm not interested in dealing with escalation over pain killer or a chain smoking overnight attendant.  Not going to engage with mending strained relationships over trivialities.

5 years

 Based on my informal research it looks like the people excelling in their careers spend approximately 5 years in the same role or the same company.   They go on to bigger and better things.  

My experience has also shown that spending 20 years at the same company may as well be career suicide.

Loser. 

There’s no way

 There is no way all these Indians and Muslims popping up everywhere is organic.  There’s no way their New Driver please be patient stickers are organic.  There’s no way all these mosques and Indian businesses popping up all over the place are organic.  Now if it is organic.  It’s a broken immigration system with loop holes the Indians know how to exploit. 

Why don’t Muslims immigrate to other Muslim countries?  Why is every country they come from a shit hole?  Why do they degrade every country they come to?  Do they make anything better?  No.  They want to bring their Muslim bullshit wherever they go.  Their halal food.  Their mosques.  Their dress. Their culture.  Their religion. 

Look at mamdumi bringing prayer rigs into city hall.  Calls to prayer in time square.   They don’t like dogs. And they don’t like bacon.  How about I get a dog and name him bacon just to anger then?

I went to discount tire to have tires rotated and balanced.  There was some clown dressed like an Islamic cleric.  This pain in the ass was giving the sales person a hard time about the cost and getting a free tire that had 65000 miles on it. Listen asshole - the tire has been used its expected life span.  Shut the fuck up and pay the goddam bill or leave.  

It’s like friction is part of their culture  bargaining.  Haggling.  Whatever.   When I worked at the airline, theee people would rather argue then pay their extra bag fees either due to weight exceeded or too many pieces.  The only way to get them to shut up and go away was to throw down the gauntlet and be outright rude to them by our cultural standards.   Then they’d shake your hand.  Get out.  All these doctors, lawyers and skilled people.  Not even.  These people are cheap bastards.  

Stay in your own third world garbage dump.  We don’t you them accelerating our delicate into a third world shithole. 

Society

My wife and I made the trek to Schertz TX for a reservation required VIP Portillo's pre-grand opening event.  It was free and only cost 50 dollars in gas to get there and back.  Or something like that.  The food was exceptional as always.  It took 1.5 hours to get there and, strangely enough, 1.5 hours to get back.  

One the way I was AGAIN struck by how much I despise Austin.  It's like all metropolitan areas and the roads between them have been ran through like a cheap, torn up crack whore trying to fund for her next high..  My family moved here in 1975. Back then there were fewer than 300,000 people.  Now, there's over a million. 

The city I know has been stripped of any dignity and culture it once carried.  Everything is ruined.  The only pride remaining is the work of satan and his minions.  People are everywhere - I call them undesirables.  Traffic is congested.  All the time.  It was three lanes of bumper to bumper traffic.  Both ways.  The scenic landscape is a dystopian garbage dump.  Construction everywhere.  No open space.  

As we were coming up the interstate around 7th street I looked to the left.  Just disgusted by what it turned into.  Or, precisely what it has evolved into.  Pretentious eggheads.  Undesirable immigrants from the third world.  Part of me would rather be dead than live or work in that metropolitan cesspool.  Death is a better option than being there. It no longer feels like home.  It feels like a dystopian garbage dump you'd see in Pixar's Wall-E.  

How could we, the long time residents, let this happen.  It's like a giant pile of dog shit is now where Austin used to be.  My wife says I'm resistant to change.  Am I?  Or am I merely resistant to the enshittification of everything?  Ran through; like a prostitute's glory hole. Ruined.  Neither will never be the same.  Thanks for the memories.  Burn it to the ground.

Luce

 Maybe the Luce is positioned for the poor, Greta thunberg and China.  Maybe the Netherlands too. Maybe it will become their first mainstream, mass-produced car. After all, what do Tesla uograde to?  Is it an aspirational car?