60+ year old thread.

are ya kiddin ? this was me when i 1st saw his post....

 

Good morning all.

 

LOL !!

 

Got up late this morning to drizzling rain…about time! We can certainly use the moisture. Great day to stay inside and work on taxes, sort through stuff to donate or take to auction, rebuild a drippy faucet, work in garage, reload, etc, etc, etc. Hopefully a productive day.
Enjoy your Saturday everyone! Last chance this week to accomplish something.

 

Good morning everyone


Had fun yesterday with my Camaro !!!

Can't believe how easily it starts up even after sitting in the garage for 4.5 months . The sound of a Shafiroff racing engines 427sbc with a 600" Hydraulic roller put a smile on my face and made me forget about my health issues

I'm going to take it out for another drive today !!!

 

If you lived here, drippy faucet, ever since they started buying water from a different community our water bills aren't that reasonable anymore

 

Done? Good Morning Porch Pals & Sue! We survived what brought a very nice 1.4" last night - they were 6 hours off on the forecast (earlier), and I got frustrated with the most passive aggressive forecasting I've heard in a long while? "Tornado, Hail, and High Wind threats are low for the whole broadcast area, but we're all going to DIE!" I just wanted to know if I wanted to cover the cars (not really when they are dirty). The low threat of dime size hail was up to quarter size at the 4 PM, ping-pong ball at 5 PM, and up to EGG SIZE by 6 PM! There was no hail. Wonder how much calichi dirt washed off the truck? First hand wash with the coating is today.

Great day everyone!

 

I went through it a few years back. I’m in Florida and mom and dad were in NJ. I chatted with mom every Saturday morning at 10 and one weekend she just didn’t sound right but she said everything was OK. I was a little suspicious that something was up so I called again on Monday amd told her I could be there as fast as I could find a flight but i got the same story, that everything was OK. Still not convinced, called again the next day and finally she admitted that maybe it was a good idea that I come up for a few days. I packed four days worth of clothes and grabbed the next flight out of Tampa to Philly. I got to the house and stepped into Hell. Mom had fallen and as we found out later broken 4 vertebrae. She was pretty much stuck in a recliner and was coaching my dad who suffered from dementia through simple tasks like making meals and taking out the trash. As soon as I walked in I asked her who is calling the ambulance you or me because you’re going to the hospital. So off in the ambulance she went and I spent the next 4 weeks shuttling between the hospital and my childhood home caring for my dad. When mom was finally released to rehab, my sister flew out from Idaho to relieve me. I went home and my sister spent weeks shuttling back and forth between rehab and caring for my dad until rehab released my mom. Mom could no longer care for my dad and placed him in the memory unit in an ALF. I asked my cousin to check on my dad and found that mom wasn’t well enough to visit my dad and my dad really had no advocate. I couldn’t stand the thought of him being abandoned so I made arrangements for him in a facility near me in and flew up and brought him here. That was good, I was able to visit and sit with him every couple of days, take him to doctors appointments and generally make sure he was getting the care and attention he needed. Then I went to work on getting my mom down here to stay with us for at least the winter. She was alone in their big 3-story house and still couldn’t manage stairs or driving. My wife and I thought it was a good idea, my wife’s mother had been institutionalized with Lou Gehrig’s disease since my wife was a teenager and we thought this would make up for missing the adult relationship she never had with her own mom. Boy, were we wrong. That strong independent woman that raised me was gone and we were left with a bitter, snarky opiate-addicted version of her former self. This lasted about 5 months until my wife hit me with an ultimatum I had to chose because either my wife or my mom had to go. So we got my mom into and independent living facility nearby and I flew up to NJ and met with the movers and got a bunch of her stuff shipped down to Florida. But mom was anything but independent. So instead of the every Saturday phone call it was Saturday morning grocery runs, taking her to doctors appointments, picking up prescriptions for her and that quickly turned into phone calls all hours of the day and night for all sorts of mundane things like can drop what I’m doing and run over and set her wall clock. Or can I leave work and drive across town to pick up her prescription because she doesn’t trust Walgreens delivery service. And I did these things, I looked after my dad and did what I could for my mom the best that I could. Moms health continued to decline but dad was starting to thrive in the ALF, he put on weight started reading again even doing crossword puzzles. That was until my mom felt compelled to tell him his brother had died. At that point dad just shut down. He wouldn’t sit in the day room and have coffee with me and shoot the shit like we had been doing, he just quit. After a couple of weeks I got the call from his nurse that he had passed and she was there when it happened, he just exhaled and was gone. My dad”s last words to me were the same as they were every time I left him, “take care of your mother”. So for the next two and a half years I dealt with the errands and phone calls as mom became more and more frail and drug addled until she was so frail she broke her ankle getting dressed. She never really recovered from that and spent the last year of her life bed-ridden and bitter. My sister convinced her to move from independent living to assisted living for the last few months as her health continued to decline. My wife and I continued to visit regularly and eventually she was put under hospice care. The hospice team gave me almost daily updates, your mother only has a few weeks, your mother is maybe days away from passing. I happened to be working from home when I got the call that if I planned to gather the family i should do it now because she only had a few hours. I finished up what I was doing, told my boss what was happening and told my wife I was heading over to see mom. Before I could leave the house the phone rang again and she was gone. I am glad neither of them died alone but I am wracked with guilt that I wasn’t there for either of them. I’ve had family and friends tell me I did the right thing, I did everything I could do but it doesn’t relieve the guilt. Maybe I’m not sure what I did for me vs what I did for them and sometimes I wonder what would have happened if I hadn’t got involved at all and let things play out in NJ.

 

Morning all:

That would put a smile on my face also, sounds like good therapy!

 

Well, stand by, it’s going to happen again.

 

Darn Kevin, sad but interesting story, you aren't the first or the last to go through what you experienced, it is what it is, and it sounds like you did about all you could do considering the circumstances.

 

I'm tempted to comment but I'll leave it at, been in your shoes maybe not as long, but after experiencing what both my parents, older sister and mother in law went through I want to go like my father in law did. Living every moment till he went to work and dropped dead without warning.

 

That was moving, Kevin. I hope you come to terms with this, find peace..

 

You did what you could, and what you thought was best, @Kevins60 . More than most would.
Don't make it harder on yourself. Been there myself.

 

Well, purely for entertainment purposes, what did I learn today from my first handwash of the ceramic version of LBR? I have foam bottles for both garden hose, AND the power wash. Calichi mud from having to drive past a construction site washes off the truck pretty easy. The tires, not as much - gave them some black foam, with a light brushing. I am actually not expecting real life is what they predict for tires anyway. Washing by section, using the lambswool mitt - stroke, NOT swirl, sure takes some time. Rinse and then air blow and I discover I need more powerful leaf blower than my "construction clean up Ridgid". Left water spots. Hand wipe final as needed with microfiber. BUT, when I'm done, the truck is beautifully "waxed" and shiny. Something to get used to for sure. And, this afternoon, I got just enough pollen rain that I had to go wipe it off!

 

I wash my 1st gen anytime it gets dirty. Same routine every time, wash blow dry with old craftsman leaf blower then hand dry with microfiber towels. A every 3 or 4 months she gets a hand wax with Meguiar’s carnuba paste. For the wheels and tires I use Armor All Extreme Wheel and Tire. I’m sure the neighbors think I’m nuts but the results speak for themselves. Original 20 year old paint and it shines like it new

 

Beautiful truck, Kevin!

 

Thanks @Oldie2007, I’m kinda OCD on the maintenance and upkeep and I usually get a couple of comments on it just about every week. I’ve never been a fan of Armor All products but that tire and wheel cleaner is the stuff. It takes all the dirt stains out of the tires and you can see what it does for the wheels.

 

Good morning fellow Porchatonians!

I've learned that we can't tell anyone how to feel, so I won't do that @Kevins60 . I've been down similar paths with my father, mother and my wife's parents. My mother-in-law is the last one standing and we moved her into assisted living about 6 moths ago. Just know that I understand your feelings and, from having walked the path. I was there for the passing of 2 out of 3 but that was sheer luck. Hospice is an inexact science. You're a good person.

 

Good Morning Everyone Have a Great Day.