But, computer mind, what am I doing here? Should I be writing a country music song? What? In the meantime I have become addicted to Facebook. Pandemic... Crap behavior.
I'm not even being good to mom. Horrible.
What am I doing? Why am I not looking for a job? Why am I not freaking out when I'm about to lose everything....
Hung out with Chuck tonight. Maybe that's better than just taking a long unhappy nap, then broken up sleep.
The regrets of the drinking life come at you full bore. Tragic.
You're in a house of drinkers, and you're the one who can't handle it. And yet, you get energy out of it.
You want to quit, but if you did, well, you wouldn't have the energy to write the tale, so it seems.
Every night you have to think of what to do for mom for dinner. We are easily worn out.
I drink, and I put weight into my own thought processes, when really I should cede to the great works of scholarship and literature that are here already, and who cares what I have to say...
We took the cat down to East Syracuse off of 481 and 690, mom on me the whole way please slow down, I can't take anymore, how fast are you going, please, I can't take it anymore, (starting to snivel and cry oh boohoo, I can't take it, you're going too fast, the old car can't take it,) and meanwhile I'm thinking of the poor cat with an abscess under his jaw quietly in his box that he fits in. If I'd been quiet and done my research in the night instead of having a beer with old Chuck, who has cat with an amputated real leg himself, if I'd been on the ball I could have taken our cat down to the emergency vet clinic in Baldwinsville open all night sunday,... I could have avoided all this.
What's healthier now? Go for a walk, or write... while mom is calm upstairs today...
But this day feels very weird. After taking the cat down, he seems mutable, changing, even though he is back to his old sleep places. I feel weird in the head from the tree pollen, as if a different person had stepped into my body.
Yesterday, caught between mom who now wants the cat back or go use the bathroom. So I'm on the phone with the people at the veterinarian, they want to test a sample of the drained pus from this wound, for two hundred dollars extra, and then okay, we settle for just getting him a shot of antibiotics, and mom is pleading constantly about her bladder, over and over, and angry with me now, getting out of the car even in the damp rain as if to chase me down to go in and demand to get the cat back to the car, except of course you can't go it, and there's a sign, in this old car-lot dealership type of office building of two stories in this reclaimed marshland under the highways, the closest restroom is across another major road beyond a big parking lot, at The Home Depot. None of this is in my control, and it was an hour drive getting down here with the wind strong and the car making a lot of noise so I can't even hear NPR news, and mom is telling me constantly to slow down, it's an old car, I can't take it anymore, when are we going to get there, is it soon, and the rain picks up on the way down as we negotiate past the ramps of 481 crossing over 81 north south, and good thing I have my iPhone map voice telling me where to turn, what exit, how long to be on 690 another dreadful road, to get onto Bridge street, and a good few disorienting off ramp roundabouts, and mom crying, and I'm ashamed of myself for not knowing the Baldwinsville Animal Clinic, also an emergency clinic was open all last night and I could have dealt with all this by alone in the quiet while mom slept, god how easier that would have been... instead of this living hell.
We get the cat back finally, and I get mom over to the Home Depot parking lot, to find this bathroom, and of course the place is a huge hanger of a building, with massive aisles, stacked up high, and the nice woman with an orange vest, says, yes, go down to aisle nine where it says lighting, and then the restrooms are all the way in the back, and mom shuffles slowly behind me, and then back out into the rainy parking lot, and now we just have to get out of here, looks easy, right?, as I see a sign ahead that says 690 East/481, and as we come out of the circle on-ramp, this is not an easy merge to make, with fast Beltway like traffic coming up behind you and you have to get over into the left lane, and mom's got my head in such a bad place I suddenly don't know what gear I'm in, and there's a guy behind me, and what to the lane markings mean, and I can barely make the turn to the left, almost getting us killed, not quite, and this too shakes me. At least then after this in this weary flat land flats and reads and gravel beds and high tassel reeds like bullrushes, dried out, at least we are on the right highway road, 481 North, going past the thruway tollbooth, and the rain is steady now, and mom is back at it, please don't go so fast almost crying again, and with the rain now there's a drip coming down from windshield.
Mom comes down the stairs now after some strange eerie peace and quiet as I find myself still messed with by yesterday not to mention the cruel swelling the poor cat had, still sleeping it off. And so I can't think anymore. Then she starts pretend singing, as she can't remember much of yesterday...
My head feels lost and swoony, almost if I could faint. Was it the wine followed by the cider last night? Was it the horror of realizing I have no idea what I'm doing up here, 'cept taking care of mom, and she just told me she put all of her books on "a different bed," "organizing them."
We stopped at the McDonald's at Fulton. We pulled up into Oswego, a new massive construction project going on along 48 above the mighty river and the canal locks, across the bridge and I was so exhausted by then we simply went back to mom's townhouse. Got the cat in his carrier into the apartment, put away the McDonald's extra coupon sandwiches--I ate the first one, quarter pounder with cheese, they give you two slices, there in the car as mom had her crispy chicken sandwich, bun and all, no more fight left in me, and the horror of the East Syracuse urban highway sprawl, will this be where I end up, working one of those jobs down there with all those nightmare roads... I could cry. Oswego, a whole lot simpler, but even now, the construction is coming, ruining that old magic transport of the river viewed as you finally came in off that long bugger of a drive up from DC.
And through out all of this, my boyish memories of my father, so competent and unafraid of things, just go and do them, like take me to the doctor when I wiped out in the grit of the road from the winter snow plow sanding trucks coming down Champion, or when Tim Hubbard banged my locked door into my head somehow. So on top of things, with stoic patience and wearwithall, getting the thing done that needed to be done, without any complication, without any fright, just like my brother carries on the tradition, getting things done, like taking me to Syracuse to see the bone doctor when my growing pains in the knees came up.
And he had to deal with mom too, my dad. In the car. And everyone has to be a mind reader with her too. But she knows of no wrongdoing on her own part whatsoever.
And I've been a drinker, no wonder, and this is sad, given the heavy and rising costs of all that, the general toll it takes, the kind of constant lying.
But at least, but at least, I have an outlet still, even mocked alone by the breaks of life events beyond the control. I have to listen to too much for too long from my mother anyway, talked out.
Mom is being quiet today. She's taken time longer than usual, upstairs in her room.
I'm cooking a bone in chicken breast over a mushroom sauce, baking it in the oven. A strange feeling from the pollen.
I finished watching The Sound of Metal on Amazon Prime, being able to take it only in parts, not wanting it all over me in one sitting.
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