We took a road trip yesterday, loading the mutleys into the Vue. We arrived in Virginia in late afternoon following a good, if not long, drive. The dogs were exceptionally well behaved for the entire 5-1/2 hour trip. Shortly after arriving, I set up a wireless network at my mother in law’s house so that we’d have Internet access for the laptops.

Today is Amaya’s 1st birthday, which is pretty amazing, actually. The house was full with people and dogs for the party.

I snapped a few photos in between being in charge of taking video during the unwrapping or presents and cake cutting. I uploaded a few of the pictures on one of the shorter clips. The cake was made by Pennie’s good friend, Lisa, and it not only looked great, but tasted fantastic!

View Full Album

We had a lovely weekend babysitting our granddaughter this past weekend while her mom visited with a friend. I took many photographs!

View Full Album

View Full Album

View Full Album

View Full Album

View Full Album

Melissa and Amaya arrived on Thursday evening after a really long drive in Friday traffic with rain. She’s really quite a doll! Yesterday Pennie took them to a zoo to see the animals and then Melissa went to a friends’ house overnight for a party, leaving Amaya with us. The baby monitor in the bedroom worked great, though that meant that Pennie was up during the night when the started fussing. I, on the other hand, had a rather long night of sleep. I feel kind of guilty about that! I took a slew of photos and posted an album that you can see by clicking above.

I had planned to mow my parents’ lawn today, but that won’t be happening as it has been raining since early this morning and quite hard for the last hour or so with thunder and lightning. I will be heading down to see them anyway, since it is Mom’s 82nd birthday today. She may not know it, but my father will appreciate the visit.

I snagged this photo of Amaya from Pennie’s collection as I adore it (along with a bunch of others from this past trip)! Doesn’t she look happy?

I left work at noon yesterday so that the dogs wouldn’t have to be in their kennels for more than 7 hours. They were happy to see me, but not nearly as happy as they were when Pennie pulled into the driveway in the rental car and stepped into the house. They went bonkers! Of course, every time Pennie and I left them alone downstairs, they all gathered at the foot of the stairs waiting for us to return, with Razz whining loudly. When I headed downstairs to get ready for bed the mutley crew was quite relaxed and content that Pennie was back. I’m glad that she’s back, too.

At 9 this morning the phone rang and it was Pennie telling me that she was on her way home today. I was quite happy to hear that and calculated about when she’d arrive, assuming that she left by 10. After I finished feeding the dogs I grabbed the Swiffer duster and made a pass through the house from the basement on up. The attachment for the drywall sanding worked well, but not perfectly, so I wanted to get things looking real nice for Pennie’s return. As I was finishing up the top floor the phone rang again. It was now about 10 am. I went to the other room to get the cordless phone and, of course, it failed to work. Then my cell phone rang and it was Pennie again. She told me she wasn’t coming home today and wasn’t sure when she would be home since she just wrecked the car within a mile of her Mom’s house. She’s fine, just shaken up.  That’s the good thing. It could have been much, much worse.

I spoke with her a few times since and the best we can figure is that her right wheel or wheels went into the soft gravel at the edge of the road and she lost control of the car. Fortunately, she wasn’t going fast. Unfortunately, that wasn’t enough to keep the car on the road. The car skidded off the road and then wouldn’t stop as she slid onto the high, wet grass beyond the gravel. She ended up sideswiping a tree and landed in a ditch leaning against a cow pasture fence. Several people stopped and helped her from the car. The police were called and she ended up getting a ticket for failing to remain in the lane of traffic. WTF? He was going to give her a ticket for careless driving, but decided not to add insult to injury. Anyway, the car sustained lots of damage. Once it was pulled from the ditch, she was able to drive it back to her Mom’s house. There is no front bumper or cowl on the lower front of the car now. The right side is pretty badly scraped and smashed. The right rear tail light is probably broken off, perhaps just the lens. I’m hoping that the insurance company has a facility in Virginia that she can take the car to for an estimate. I’d prefer that she didn’t drive it home even if the frame, alignment and other mechanicals check out okay on Monday. If they do have a place that she can bring it to and it isn’t deemed to be totaled, I’d like to get it fixed down there and have her get a rental to come home in, returning to pick up the car when it is repaired. We’ll see. In the meantime, I don’t expect to see Pennie until Tuesday afternoon at the very earliest.

I call my father every day that I am not going to visit him. It has become a weekday habit to call at 3:30, just before I head out the door as that seems to be a good time to catch him. it irritates me when he doesn’t answer and I have to talk to the answering machine, because I don’t know if he was away from the phone or if there’s a problem. Since there was no phone in the bedroom, I got him a cordless one last year and explained how to use it. With Caller ID in the handset, he has the ability to take the phone with him anywhere in the house. Of course, it never leaves the bedroom. In fact, he’s been known to walk to the other phones when he was in the bedroom. When he has answered using the cordless phone, invariably he would hang up on me shortly after we began talking. I figured that he was positioning the phone to take his hearing aid out of the ear or simply holding the phone oddly. Yesterday I found out the cause of the problem.

He picked up the phone and we exchanged greetings. As I begin asking how he is doing, he hangs up. I wait a minute and call back. This time he doesn’t hang up, but I start discussing how he has to be careful not to push the Talk button or it will hang up. I asked if was taking his hearing aid out earlier and he said that he wasn’t. He did, however, respond to my point about the Talk button. Now I know  how and why the connection was dropping.

He picked the phone up from the charger base which has the effect of opening the line. I would say hello and he responded, but then before he would utter another word, he’d be getting the phone in a better position. The problem with this is that his finger was depressing the Talk button. As long as his finder was on the button, all was good. If pressure reduced enough for the switch to act, he’s have toggled the action and hung up the line. Which he had been doing literally every time he used the phone. I explained that the Talk button was like the switch on a normal phone. Hitting it was like hanging up the phone to close the connection or opening it if the phone was not on the base and a call came in. However, continually depressing the Talk button served no purpose at all. Maybe he understands now.

I had hoped that my visit to my parents would be less painful yesterday. It actually wasn’t too bad, but it was still painful and I spent entirely too much time dealing with junk mail again. The sad part of this is that my father had probably tossed out 1/2 of what had come in the mail since Saturday. The remaining mail was all junk, however. I went through the broken record routine once again, but I already know that it isn’t sinking in. I didn’t get angry or loud, though, if that’s any consolation. I did, however, tell my father that I was very close to taking the radical step of having his mail delivery halted. Basically, I told him that there were 3 options open to me:

1. Stop reviewing his mail and leave him to his own devices. Of course, this is a terrible option since it would mean a return to uncontrolled sending of money in response to just about every solicitation that came in the mail.
2. Continue reviewing the mail and dealing with the stress I am putting myself through and the misery that I know my father feels when I throw out 99 to 100% of the mail he’s put aside, and the pain he feels when I berate him for what he spent on his credit cards or by check before I had a chance to stop him.
3. Stop mail delivery and pick it up personally on a weekly or twice weekly basis, only bringing him mail that I’ve checked first. This option would upset him the most at first, but over time he might begin to accept it. The benefit is that I’d not have to spend an inordinate amount of time reviewing the pile of mail.

Today is my Wednesday visit to my parents. I’m hoping that I don’t have to deal with the lunacy of my father’s junk mail obsession for more than a few minutes this week. I’m really tiring of the need to argue with him about all of the obvious scams as well as the endless requests for donations to charities and special interest groups. I’d like for the visit to be short and friendly. I’ll take out his recycling, check the refrigerator for items that might need to be brought upstairs from the freezer to save him a trip downstairs, and spend a few moments with Mom. I don’t want to read every piece of his junk mail, nor do I want to have to go ferret it out from the various places he puts it for follow-up. So, my fingers are crossed for a painless visit.

View Full Album

View Full Album

Melissa and Amaya arrived on Friday evening and they were greeted by the dogs quite enthusiastically! Lily wanted to give licks and kisses, but so did the rest of the Mutleys. Well, except for Ruby. Ruby has been spending a great deal of time hiding under Pennie’s desk. She’s a bit cautious about our visitors, but at least she isn’t barking at them! Amaya is certainly getting bigger. On Saturday we picked up a few baby things at the 2nd hand baby store – a portable crib and one of those things that she can sit and stand in, plus wobble around some. She enjoyed the latter and we felt better about her being in a secure crib for sleeping.

If you have a look at the albums above, you’ll see that I even held Amaya for a bit. <g>

On Easter Sunday evening, we brought Amaya to meet my parents. Mom was a bit vacant, so it is hard to know if she knew that there was a baby there to meet her or even if she knew that we were there. I don’t expect her to know who “we” are, though. My father, on the other hand, had a great time meeting Amaya. We put her on his lap and I took a few photos. That Amaya is a really good girl with nary a peep about being held by people she hadn’t met before.

We also  brought some ham for my parents. Pennie made a great Easter dinner of a baked ham, scalloped potatoes, and beans. For dessert she made a delicious peach cobbler. All I can say is – it’s a good thing that I worked out before dinner!

I didn’t do much this weekend. It rained most of Saturday and it was rather chilly on Sunday, so tilling the back yard will have to wait until this coming weekend. Hopefully the weather will cooperate!

After work yesterday I made my usual Wednesday visit to my parents’ house. My father has been complaining about a sore/stiff neck for a few days now. He woke up with a pretty significant pain on Monday morning and it didn’t get better by Tuesday, so I suggested that he go to the chiropractor on Wednesday if they would see him. He did call Wednesday morning and they scheduled him in for 10:45. He’s due back for another visit on Friday. He told me that they took x-rays of his neck, too. My father has a pretty pronounced hunch and his posture is terrible, with his head tilting forward quite a bit. I assume that this is due to years at a drawing table as his career was as a graphic artist for medical advertising for most of his life.

Last night, the chiropractor’s office called me to let me know that they also took my father’s blood pressure and that it was quite high. They had told my father to contact his doctor to have it checked out. The reason that they called me was to be certain that he followed up with his regular doctor. I asked how high it was since I knew that it has been on the high side for some time. The last visit to the kidney specialist had it close to 160/90. I was put on hold and the chiropractor came to the phone and spoke to me directly. He told me that his first reading showed 200/90 and a second reading came in at 190/90. He stressed that it was very important for my father to get this checked out. I called my father immediately and stressed that he needed to call the doctor first thing in the morning and if he felt at all unusual before then, to call 911. Needless to say, I have been concerned since and wondered if I should not have done more immediately. I called him again this morning and he says he feels fine except for the neck, of course. He had not yet called his doctor, so I told him to do so right away. I told him that there was a very good chance that the doctor would put him in the hospital if his blood pressure was still that high today. He called me back to tell me he will see the doctor at 1:45 today.

My next call was to Visiting Angels to ask if they would be able to get someone to the house immediately for 24x7 care of Mom if the worst case happened. Thankfully, they told me that they would do everything possible to get someone there today if that was needed. At least that is one load off of my mind for now.

As for his neck pain, the chiropractor told me that the cause is neuro-muscular in nature. His neck shows signs of arthritis, which isn’t a surprise, and his posture has been putting undue strain on the muscles. The muscles are now in spasm perhaps due to a slight strain or sleeping in a position that caused a cramp to develop. He feels that the pain will subside, but probably not completely and not for a while.

I really wish that my father were not so stubborn about having more help at home, preferably 24x7. I know that he doesn’t like the idea of sharing the house with someone else, but the reality that he won’t face is that he cannot continue to be the primary caregiver for Mom and also take care of himself. I hope that I am not as stubborn as him as I age.

Update:  I called this afternoon to check on him after his appointment. While his blood pressure was still high at 150/90, it was not an emergency situation. The doctor wants to see him again in 2 weeks. I’m breathing easier.

Yesterday afternoon, as I was getting ready to head home from the office, I decided to check in on the Kennel Cam to see if the dogs were still in their kennels or if Pennie had arrived home yet. The first time I loaded the page there was Finnegan standing up and looking towards the door. I thought that this might mean that Pennie had arrived home. I waited a few minutes and reloaded the page (the camera uploads a new photo every 3 minutes). The picture at the left is what I saw. The lights are on and Razz is standing in front of the freezer, probably waiting for the commotion to quiet down so she could join every one outside.

The drive North was apparently quite unpleasant for Pennie, with snow falling a good portion of the way. Since we know that the roads are loaded with incompetent drivers, the drive was pretty stressful. I know all about that kind of experience, having driven the same route in the opposite direction with snow and sleet falling. I had no idea that the roads were bad, so I wasn’t extra worried about her drive. I am quite happy that she arrived home safe and sound.

My father did quite well between Saturday and yesterday with his junk mail. He did fill out a “survey” and send a contribution to the organization that claimed to be fighting to save Social Security, and I had to scold him for that, but he had actually disposed of most of the mail and sorted the rest fairly well. I located some mail that had not been added to the piles or junked, but not much. I still had to spend a fair amount of time explaining that sending donations to 2 worthy charities or causes from each bi-weekly mail review was still too much. If we assumed an average of $20 per approved item, that still added up to more than 10% of his actual income from Social Security. While the risks of running out of cash were greatly reduced by limiting it to only a few causes, it still didn’t make sense for him to send that much money out, in my opinion. The pile of “I want to send money to these” was much smaller and didn’t include many scam deals, but some of them were still questionable.

What I found most interesting was the letter that I found on his desk. He had typed up a letter, apparently to one of the psychics, that started with, “Dear ___. I have bad news. My son has taken over my finances and he thinks I am spending too much money…” I trashed it, of course. Though I have to wonder how many of these went out this week. He had started responding to junk mail with apologies quite some time back and I repeatedly tried to get him to stop. Well, he did, but only because he had an “endless” supply of money from his Reverse Mortgage. Since I am keeping a close watch on his spending, I guess he’s back to that early behavior again. I want that to stop, too, but I’ll be glad if I can at least stop him from sending the money without asking me first. And, I’ll be even happier if the pile of “I want to send money” junk is greatly reduced, meaning that he disposed of much of the mail himself automatically.

I can’t believe how late I slept in this morning! I didn’t get out of bed until just about 10 am. After slowly waking up and taking care of reports for work remotely, I got to work vacuuming the house in anticipation of the arrival of Pennie’s mom, daughter and granddaughter. Pennie started cooking and the house began to smell quite lovely with the roasting turkey scent.

They arrived just before 4 PM and I got to meet Amaya for the first time and so did the Mutley Crew. Pennie’s mom brought her dog along for the trip, so we had quite a group for the meeting. I took lots of pictures! Lily was absolutely fascinated with Amaya as you can see from the photos. Finnegan was very happy to see Melissa and everyone settled in quite nicely. Dinner was awesome and I’m still stuffed! Overall, it was a lovely Thanksgiving day – with lots to be thankful for. I called my father and wished him a good Thanksgiving. I will be bringing some turkey for Mom and cranberry relish for him tomorrow.

I didn’t get to leave work too early today and I ended up getting home very late. My first stop on the way home was at the very crowded grocery store to pick up a few items that we needed for tomorrow. Then I headed to the bank to visit the cash machine. I stopped at Pequannock Appliance to check on a washing machine for my father. My sister is willing to go in on the cost, so I figured I would see what they had locally rather than heading to the big box stores. I got a nice basic unit that will be delivered and hooked up Friday. Included in the price is the removal of the old machine, too. It was in line with what I would have gotten at Lowe’s after paying for the delivery and removal and this was a name brand – Whirlpool.

I stopped at my parents’ house and that’s when the fun began. I headed into the porch to get the recycling and noticed that my father’s checkbook and register were on his desk. I started leafing through the register and decided that I had to confront him once again. Basically, I reviewed the details of November’s checks and deposits with him. He spent 3 times more than his income – Social Security and the required IRA disbursements. Granted, it included a $1500 property tax payment, but he withdrew $6,000 from his reverse mortgage and the checks other than his actual bills, including the Visiting Angels charges, roughly equaled the withdrawals from the reverse mortgage! He has been sending out hundreds of dollars daily in checks ranging from $15 to over $100 to various questionable charities and political organizations, psychics from Holland and other countries promising him the keys to wealth and happiness, and various sweepstakes/cash scams that requested payment to cover handling fees.

Basically, after outlining this to him, sometimes loudly and punctuated by swearing when he began to insist that the scams were indeed legitimate “companies” acting as agents for other companies, I gave him two choices, which I laid out gently and quietly. First choice was that all mail would be stopped at the Post Office, only to be picked up by me twice weekly, and he would only get that mail which I deemed to be okay. I would also invoke my power of attorney with his banks and the reverse mortgage company and would be taking his credit cards and checkbook from him. His second choice was to promise that he would stop doing what he was doing as he was on track to burn through *all* of his money within 2 or 3 years and then he would have to survive solely on the Social Security payments as there would be no other money available. That was a bit of a stretch, as he could probably go about 5 years at the current pace, but my gut tells me that the monthly outflow would only increase over time and possible exponentially. I asked him to explain to me how he sorted his inbound mail. He makes a pile of very important, important, and junk. The first and third being the smallest piles. I asked him to review this more critically and to make a 4th pile for me – those items from very important and important that he felt the urge or need to write a check for, excluding legitimate bills. I promised to review the mail twice weekly and expected to denounce or deny the legitimacy of 99% of the items he felt were due a check. He has to expect that and he can’t argue with me about them or I will invoke the first option and he will be cut off 100% from his mail.

I explained that he was very thrifty regarding groceries and had been cutting back on things he deemed to be too expensive – for example, not purchasing a washing machine immediately upon the demise of the current one. Well, he had spent enough money in less than a month to by 6 top of the line washing machines and had nothing to show for it. I asked him where the sense in this was. The last thing I asked him to reflect on was that his primary reason for being right now was to provide for Mom. I told him that he would be totally unable to provide for Mom and himself in a very short time if he didn’t stop. If something were to happen to him, there would not be enough money to get someone to care for Mom 24x7 at home and that she would end up in a Medicaid Nursing Home. I think that last part may have been the most effective of all of my “lecture.”

As I was getting ready to leave, I apologized for my harsh tone and anger, but asked him to understand that I was acting in his best interest because he was being taken advantage of and would lose everything very quickly. I assured him that his money is of no interest to me or my sister, but that I wanted him and Mom to be able to be comfortable for as long as they lived. He acknowledged that he believed this and said that he knew that I had to step in. He seemed pretty submissive at that point. I am hopeful that it sunk in and that I don’t have to follow through on my threat at this point.

I hope I got the spelling correct, since I don’t know if I ever saw it written out, but I awoke this morning to voice mail from Pennie.

She reported that Amaya was delivered by C-section at 1:02 EDT on 9/26/08. The redhead was 8 pounds, 7 ounces at birth and a full 20 and 1/2 inches long.

I guess I’m a grandfather now.

I took my father to the kidney doctor yesterday and got myself very aggravated in the process. On the drive I asked my father if he had taken a walk yet. Of course I knew that he hadn’t. After first telling me he was too busy, he then told me that he got dizzy when he walked to bring in the garbage cans. Twenty questions later I got an understanding of the facts. He only got slightly dizzy for an instant when bring in the garbage can from the street, which he carries instead of using the wheels. The dizziness passes before he even ascends the stairs to go inside, but does not come on when bending over to pick up the lid. He never gets dizzy at any other time. During the exam I discover that he has decided to stop taking the Lasix completely, despite his GP advising that he should either take one every other day or take a 1/2 pill daily. And, I learn that he decided to stop taking the pain medication prescribed for his Shingles pain and he has been taking an Advil daily. The kidney doctor specifically warned against taking a daily Advil or similar pill due to toxicity to the kidneys. Oi! His blood pressure is slightly elevated, likely due to the Advil and the fact that he’s retaining fluid again. On the way home I tried to get the doctor’s advice to sink in. Why does he think he knows better than the doctor? He makes me crazy!

I didn’t make it to Lowe’s yesterday. I ended up spending a little longer visiting my parents after work because my father had misplaced the return form of his phone bill. He had dropped it on the floor, but he was not moving from his desk while I was trying to assist in locating it, so I didn’t find it until I finally got him to get up so that I could start sifting through the massive amount of paper piled on and around his desk. The bigger problem, of course, is that massive amount of junk mail and why it is there. He reads all of it. At least once. And he responds to a great deal of it. Unfortunately, he sends money, albeit relatively small amounts, to the scammers that promise him wealth, health and the secrets to happiness. And, he sends money to lots of charity requests. All of that adds up and it irritates me. I’ve tried to reason with him a number of times, but haven’t made much progress. He still sends money to the scammers. And he sends a few dollars to the charities that, for the most part, exist simply to fund themselves, with less than a few pennies on the dollar actually going to the cause that they claim to be raising money for.

Yesterday I threatened him to get it under control or I would have to step in and take action – stopping mail delivery and taking over his checkbook. I don’t want to do that, nor do I plan to, but I still had to make the gentle threat.

He’s still pretty sharp for an 87 year old, but taking care of Mom at home, despite the few hours of help received from Visiting Angels, is taking a toll on him both physically and mentally. His junk mail is his escape, apparently.

The loss of the phone bill page was actually due to the fact that he had taken his part of the statement and typed a message, intending to enclose it with his payment. The bill didn’t reflect that he had paid the prior month, yet he had paid it. I looked at the bill and his note and informed him that his check had not been processed by them when the new bill was prepared, since he mailed it on the due date, which happened to be around the 4th of July. I told him to simply send in the new payment for the current month and next month’s statement would have both payments. The fact that I had to explain this to him bothers me and has me worried about his capabilities. I’ve got to keep a close watch and step in if it gets worse, though I don’t want to.

Nope. It's still Thursday. I need more coffee.

It is fairly slow here at work today. Fortunately, I thought to bring my father's tax papers (with the exception of the 2006 return and supporting folder) today, so I was able to get his taxes started. Of course, despite my outlining what he needed to provide, instead of the end of year Social Security statements, he scribbled the information on a piece of paper, so I don't have a copy of the real data. I also don't have an accurate end of 2007 accounting of his IRA balances which are required. I went through this last year, too, unfortunately. The IRA part of his return is miserable as the tax laws are pathetic for IRA's. If you contributed before a certain year, was it pre or post tax when you added to the IRA? Are you taking the required minimums, more, or exact? And so on.

I think I'll go get Frank and we'll have some coffee.

Yesterday I stopped to see my parents on the way home as I do most Wednesdays. Typically, I gather up the paper recycling and his mixed plastic/glass/metal recyclables and bring them out to the cans in the garage. After doing this I went into the bedroom to see Mom. She was a little agitated about something because she kept saying "shut-up" while I was trying to talk to my father. When I came closer to her, and addressed her quietly, she reached up as if to grab or pinch me. I asked her if we were making too much noise and promised that we'd be quiet. This settled her down.

My father and I went to the Living room and I got ready to leave. He then asked me to look at something and he handed me a bundle of papers that turned out to be a variety of sweepstake scams. I made sure to thank him for asking me to look at them. Of course, they were all scams. The premise was similar for all, but one. "Send us money for your guaranteed winnings." I explained the scam to my father. He seemed to accept my explanation and I told him I was very pleased that he trusted me to review this for him and I asked if he had thought if any of them were real. He responded that he didn't think so, but wanted to be sure.

The last one was not a sweepstakes scam, but a nonsense letter about an inheritance that my father was going to get because he had followed the previous instructions. I assume he sent them money - between $25 and $50. This letter now reported that he could get additional money by sending another $30. It saddens me that my father and countless other people fall for this crap. I was able to take all of these letters with me to toss out. I suggested that my father pick up some lottery tickets if he felt that he could win something. He would actually stand a better chance than actually getting anything out of these scams and it would be cheaper in the long run, unless he started buying many tickets each day. I don't expect him to go crazy, though, as sending a check in the mail and using a few dollars on stamps doesn't seem like gambling, while the lottery tickets are indeed gambling.

I hadn't expected that he would be willing to do this so soon after I convinced him that that flat screen TV nonsense from Saturday's mail was a scam, but I'm happy that it apparently sank in. My next effort will be to clean up all of the piles of junk mail in his "office" that he has been unable to fully process. I've taken quite a bit of it away on my own, but I'd like to do it with his blessings.