The Covid-19 pandemic continues to wreak havoc on the Earth. Why? Because people just won’t accept the most basic fact. We CANNOT reopen without a vaccine. Until one is developed and disseminated to the masses, we are stuck.
Masks, handwashing and physical distancing are partially effective but until we can wipe it out with a vaccine, it will continue to do what it does.
Countries that have it under control are enjoying a temporary reprieve. As soon as they start mingling among themselves and foreigners, the virus will return.
We CANNOT send the children back to school. That can have no outcome other than massive transmission.
There is only one fact and whether you believe it or not, it is THE FACT. Denial will NOT work. We need to sit tight and wait. Get used to it because that’s the way it is whether you accept it or not.
With my mom in the hospital again and possibly near or at the end of her life, I’ve spent much of this evening in a daze. It’s probably not as dire as my sister-in-law makes it sound. She has been overly dramatic in the past as well. She’s a nurse and has seen these things so I can’t deny what she is saying but it is likely that mom has a little time left. She has a strong will.
It’s up to her in the spur of the moment in the hospital by herself but I am going to think that she will opt for dialysis and feel better. That will give her time to come home and plan for her final days in order to end it as she wishes. It will still be extremely unhappy for everyone but will allow for closure and final goodbyes. She certainly won’t make any rash decisions without contacting us first. It would have to be a sudden decline for her not to want to continue just a little longer. She has a DNR so it could just suddenly happen.
Depending on how she feels and if she can handle ongoing dialysis should it be necessary, it would be far better to end it at home after saying goodbye to everyone rather than just disappearing in the hospital where nobody can visit.
Dialysis is not a big problem for healthy people but the elderly may not tolerate it as well. It IS possible for the kidney to recover somewhat if they can determine what caused it. I think it is most likely medication poisoning so hopefully, the docs will admit it and help minimize damage.
I haven’t been able to get ahold of her on her cell phone this evening but if she is currently in dialysis, then she probably doesn’t have it with her. The hospital has my number and haven’t called so perhaps no news is good news. She said she would call me when she can.
In the meantime. I’m going to stop the negative thinking and hope for the best. I know she’ll never be back to her strength but I’m hoping we have enough time for finality and goodbyes.
It looks like Mom may be coming to join you very soon. She was in he hospital last week for a severe nosebleed because of all the blood thinners she has been taking. She lost so much that they had to give her a unit of blood.
When she came home, she was weaker than ever. We attributed it to the loss of blood. Even standing up was difficult for her. Yesterday I took her to a doctor appointment and they did some blood labs because there seems to be a problem with her kidneys. Her legs were very swollen and even her arms were beginning to swell up. The labs came back today and the doctor called this morning. Her GFR level was 15 witch indicates Kidney Failure. That explains her weakness and tiredness lately. I’m pretty sure it was caused partly because of all the medications she is on.
I took her into the hospital today. Visitors are not allowed because of the stupid pandemic so I watched them wheel her away. All I could do was to go home and wait.
The doctor said they would probably try hydration and dialysis.
I texted Jody. (A form of digital communications using portable phones) His wife, Margo, who is a nurse, called me and filled me in a little on what to expect. The outlook may be pretty grim. There are two likely possibilities.
Dialysis weekly or more if they kidneys don’t heal. This can be unpleasant on its own but will extend her life.
Do nothing and let the end come soon.
I expect she will get the initial dialysis and decide where to go from there. Her life is not currently worth living. She really can’t do anything for herself anymore. Every day is a struggle to find comfort. It’s hard to make such a decision but I think if I was in that position, I would decided to take the opportunity for an easy out. Kidney failure may be considered a gift from God to painlessly end the suffering of future years of disability.
From what I’ve read, it is a relatively painless way to go. You get more and more fatigued and fall asleep. Your lungs could potentially fill with fluid to make breathing difficult but there are medications to minimize that and so far she has no symptoms of it.
I’ll support whatever decision she makes. I just hope that if she chooses option two, it happens quickly. I’m hoping Wanda will be with us as well so I’m not all alone when it happens.
I think she is pretty much ready to go. Her affairs are all in order and her work is done. 90 years is long enough.
It would probably be best to leave this existence soon anyway. The whole world is quickly going to hell in a hand basket. I don’t expect that the life we now know will exist for much longer.
I’m getting close to crying as I write this. I don’t cry easily.
If there’s anything you can do to make this transition easy for her, please do so.
My 89-year-old mom had to go to the hospital the other day for a bad nosebleed due to the overuse of blood thinners. It’s not uncommon with elderly people who are taking anticoagulants to prevent stroke. She was in the hospital for approximately four days mostly due to a slow response for the lack of doctors during the pandemic.
They packed her nose and left her in a bed for a few days then decided to give her a unit of blood before letting her go. I picked her up.
She was weak before but now she is almost completely immobile on her own. She needs help sitting up and standing up. Fortunately, she can still use her walker at an extremely slow pace. She is very unstable and almost helpless. I can only hope that once her blood returns to normal, she will regain some of her strength.
I know I am being selfish about this but I am extremely upset for myself. It has been my worst nightmare and greatest fear for the last 20 years that I would spend much of my early-retired life tending to her while what’s left of my un-lived life slips away. I spent 52 years working hard and doing without life and love to achieve the last third of my life to be lived in peace and tranquility with freedom and travel. Perhaps I would finally find friendship and god-forbid, love.
So now I’m likely to have to virtually move in with her to tend to her for who knows how many years to come. Neither of us wants this for ourselves or each other. We would both prefer a quick death without being a burden on others. Death is quite the asshole. He takes from some of the young and ignores the old and suffering. She has a Do Not Resuscitate order but is not sick in that way. She is still sharp mentally but physically almost incapacitated.
Fortunately my sister has agreed to help but I’m not sure how helpful she will be. She has a spare bedroom in her house but I can only hope that one option will be for mom to move in with her. I live only 10 minutes away and can be there quickly and often. I’ve mentioned that to my mom but I don’t know if the both of them will talk about it.
I live in a one-bedroom house and don’t really have the space though something could be set up. Still, I’m not appropriate to help with women’s stuff and if it ever comes to ass-wiping, there is going to be a problem.
Another alternative would be to move into an assisted living place. That costs approximately $3,500 a month. Not realistic. She doesn’t have any insurance to cover that.
In-home assistance might be affordable but I’m not sure how that works. Can they come to help her get up to go to the bathroom three times during the night? Maybe. Google searches turned up a number of businesses in the area but their websites are sparse with the information and pricing.
A caseworker from Wellmed is expected to visit with her soon. I’m hoping they will have some information on our options.
In the meantime, I’m afraid. If I have to be the caregiver then I will become dangerously depressed very quickly. At least during the pandemic lockdown, I have little else to do so that makes it slightly more bearable. I just want to live in my new house that I built over the last year and a half. That’s all I ask for out of life.
As horrible as it may sound, I wish we had the option for assisted euthanasia. I, myself, would chose that option if and when I am in her situation. I’m pretty sure she would chose it now as well. I hate to see her suffering. Nobody wants to live when they are old and helpless.
I don’t know. I’m glad I took the time to write this. I feel a little better having talked about it. Thanks for listening.
It appears the coronavirus was the match that started the fire that burned the earth to ashes.
I’m not talking about global warming or climate change here. That stuff is minor compared to the great unrest that is now consuming the planet.
We could sense it coming years ago. Something big was on the horizon. We could feel it in our bones. It finally happened in 2020. People were already on edge for various reasons and the virus tipped the scales. Now that the infection rate is on the rise again and no vaccine is readily available, people are starting to flip out.
The Race War and Political Correctness are out of control. The unnecessary war with China is ramping up. Murder rates are rising. Fights are erupting in the public concerning masks. People are stuck at home. Children will not be able to go to school. Without school aka daycare, adults can’t go to work if they even have a job to go to. People with too much time on their hands are protesting anything and everything. The Presidential Election is just a couple of months away and it is guaranteed to be a hot mess of biblical proportions. The Federal Deficit is skyrocketing. The economy is screwed and the false stock market rally is setting up a lot of desperate people for a big fall.
These are just the big things. All the unrest among the common folk is stirring up the mental frenzy and the flames are on the verge of exploding.
We are due for a seriously unpleasant time during the next few years unless we can somehow pour some cold water on everyone and get them to calm down and act rationally.
I’m warning you now that you need to get yourself prepared. Stock up on supplies, get your shit in order, and do it quickly. Don’t be caught off guard when it hits the fan. This time will make the Great Toilet Paper shortage look like nothing. (And I don’t mean just toilet paper.) Supplies are just the beginning, have alternate power and water sources. Have MONEY on hand.
I don’t know what more to tell you. Just be ready. Just relax and stop adding to the frenzy.
We all wonder what happens to us after we die. It’s pretty much the basis for all world religions.
Nobody has the answer because dying is rather permanent and nobody has ever realistically returned to tell the story.
Do we Go to Heaven?
Do we reincarnate?
Do we evaporate into nothingness?
Do we exist eternally as a bodyless spirit?
Do we go to Texas?
Any outcome is equally possible since reality is what you make of it. I expect most people, Christians at least, go for the Heaven option to spend Eternity with their family members. That’s not for me. They’re very nice people but a lifetime is long enough. They will have to do the rest without me.
Buddhists prefer reincarnation. You can come back as a higher or lower life form depending on your proximity to enlightenment. I certainly don’t want to come back to Earth in any form. I can’t handle that again. Once is enough, thanks. Another planet maybe, but I have a better idea.
I’m already in Texas and I can’t recommend it. It’s big, hot, dry, full of people, and generally unpleasant.
Evaporating into nothingness is a second choice for me. I find it soothing to not have to expect anything to be happening to me anymore. When it’s over, it’s over. I don’t want to experience any type of existence, physically or spiritually, no matter how nice it might be. I find existence in any form to be tedious and I’ve had quite enough of that.
My number one choice would be, if possible, a body-less spirit with the ability to travel all throughout time and space. My first task would be to go back in time and observe Earth’s history first hand. I would especially like to spend a lot of time on World War II and see it from all angles. I would like to travel the planet and see it unfold from the beginning of time until its final destruction in 2032.
Once I’m done with the Earth, I will roam the universe to see other worlds. Other galaxies. Other civilizations. A Spirit Tourist. I’m pretty sure this will take up more time than exists in the universe. I will reserve the right to sleep for millennia at a time between experiences. When I’m done, I’ll evaporate.
That’s my plan when I die. And if I can’t do that, then I won’t care because I’ll be dead.
A few year ago, a war was declared on the old practice of putting two spaces between sentences. I haven’t looked up the reason but it seems that the One Spacers have won the war. I think it has something to do with Lazy Millenials.
In this time of inclusion, tolerance and racial non-discrimination, you would thing there is plenty of room on this particular planet for both Spacers and Non-Spacer parties.
As a member of the Double Space Party, I decided that I could do whatever I want. I like the double space because it just gives your sentences more room to breathe. The words don’t run together and your eye can better see where to stop and start. It just looks better.
Sadly, WordPress has decided to automatically remove the doublespace.
It makes me sad. Not only will the future be more difficult to read, we are losing our freedoms one micro-step at a time. Considering all the unpleasant changes going on in the world right now, I’m pretty sure that we are heading toward a Fascist future. Don’t get me started about how great life used to be when we were young. As history is being erased before our very eyes, I fear for the children. Those little frogs in a pot of water have no idea what they are doing and will have no history to guide them.
Last week I woke up one morning and decided I was way overdue for a road trip. The Corona virus is raging in Texas but my plan didn’t involve much interaction with the masses. I packed up a few supplies, loaded up the Prius and hit the road.
I left town around 9:00am and headed south for 168 miles to my favorite secluded spot for some naked beaching.
My favorite spot (Exact coordinates) is a self-proclaimed nude beach on North Padre Island near Corpus Christi. I mean it’s self-proclaimed because I proclaimed it myself. Many years ago I posted a report about this particular spot and it was picked up by a number of nude beach websites. It became A Thing and I discovered it. How cool is that? (If I didn’t actually discover it, I made it a thing.)
It’s not an official Nude Beach because there isn’t one in Texas for reasons I cannot understand. It’s UN-official because there is nobody around for miles due to barriers against vehicle travel. You have to either walk or ride your bike for about a mile and then you’re free to be free. (I recommend the bike option.)
Look to your left.Look to your right.
There’s nobody around to cramp your style. The only thing to be concerned about is the park ranger who drives by occasionally in a four wheeler. You can see him/her coming from miles away so there’s plenty of time to put on your speedo or get in the water. Rumors are that even if they catch you they won’t bother you about being naked unless you are being unpleasant. It may depend on the ranger himself and whether he’s had his coffee or not so it’s best not to press your luck. The regular people are unpredictable. Don’t let that deter you. Like I said, you can see them coming way down the beach.
Why can’t we have an official nude beach in Texas? Life is too short to be denied the simple pleasures. It’s kind of like being told you can’t have any water in Texas. You’re like, “What? Seriously?” This is Texas after all. Isn’t freedom one of our favorite things?
I was there alone as usual. I spent much of the time playing in the sand and water while wishing just ONE of the people I know could be here with me. None of them are nudists which makes it the same as having no friends at all. I use a tripod to get a number of pictures of my naked self to keep as memories of this wonderful trip.
I used plenty of sunscreen and didn’t get sunburned after almost two hours of frolicking in the strong sun.
Eventually I figured that was enough so I put my speedo back on and biked back to the car. I was hungry and had planned to pick up a sandwich at subway but when you’re at the coast, you kind of want to take advantage of the availability of fresh seafood. I decided to take my chances and eat at a restaurant.
The Combination Plate at Snoopy’s Pier
I Google Mapped nearby seafood and found a place called Snoopy’s Pier just on this side of the causeway. It looked properly unsophisticated for my short shorts and tank top attire so I took the short trip to get some grub.
They had the usual virus countermeasures in place of course. I wondered at the no shirt, no shoes, no service sign. What’s that about? I would love to dine without a shirt and shoes.
Being on vacation, I thought I would splurge a bit both economically and healthfully. I ordered the Combination Plate that has some fish, shrimp, oysters and fries. It was pretty good. I enjoyed looking out the window as boats went in and out of the marina.
I had considered making it a two-day trip and getting a room somewhere. It was still kind of early in the day but there was nothing else to do so I decided I would just save the $60 and head home. It was about halfway home when it suddenly felt like I had been driving home from Mars. I guess roadtrips become too long for one day at around 252 miles. I managed to make it home around 6:30pm. It was good to be able to sleep in my own bed.
Overall, it was a worthy trip. If you just need to get naked and get some sun, I highly recommend Johnny’s Beach at 27.477176,-97.273903. Bring friends or call me.
I can’t say I’ve ever really had “Cabin Fever” before. There was always something you could do.
Now is a strange time though. Due to both the Coronavirus running rampant and the 105 degree summer days that turn the ground into lava, there is literally nothing to do other than stay home and read or watch TV.
I would take another road trip but everything is closed and nobody wants to go with you.
My house construction is complete and there is little to do. I’m actually ready to get a part-time job but that doesn’t seem wise right now. I could do some online gigs but I don’t even want to deal with that. Maybe I’ll give it a try. Couldn’t hurt.
For the foreseeable future, there’s nothing to do. I wonder how the regular people are dealing with it.
I could consider it a, “License to chill.” Learning to relax has always been an issue for me. I’m far more chill now that I’m retired but I still don’t feel like I’ve become one with the universe. I think I’ll work on that.
I’ll get back to my meditation practice and let the Vortex of Stupidity going on in the outside world do its thing. We’ll just see what life is like on the other side.
I woke up early this morning and had a great idea for a device that will suppress loneliness. It is basically a masturbator that you can use in the morning while you brush your teeth or shave. I’ve noticed that orgasm is the best cure for loneliness. The only problem is the effect is short-term.
There are plenty of vibrating devices out there but they are generally designed to work slowly so you’ll have a good time. That’s fine most of the time when you are feeling like that but what I’m thinking about is a little different.
Spending your day wallowing in pain because you are so lonely that it hurts is a serious waste of valuable time. Time is something we don’t have to spare. Consider your morning routine where you get up, brush your teeth, shave, put your penis in a device attached to the counter and in a few minutes you are ready to start a productive day.
I expect it would vibrate but it would have to be far more powerful than sex toy vibrators. It needs to get the job done quickly as possible without requiring an erection. It would have an easily removable catch container and be simple to clean. It would plug into a nearby outlet so it could be super-powerful and not require batteries.
There would only be a model for men because women can’t, by definition, be lonely. All a woman has to do is go up to someone and say, “Please be my friend.” If a man did that, he would be shot, stabbed, punched or at minimum: arrested.
I did some searching on the internet for some kind of device but came up with nothing usable. I guess I’ll have to invent my own. Good thing I’m good at that. I imagine I could make a fortune selling it to all the lonely men out there but I don’t have the energy or the skills for that. If you like my idea and want to make big bucks, I’ll give you my idea and design and all you have to do is give me 1% of the profits. You keep 99%.
Buying Time 