Things I Saw Today Deux

1. A brownie with walnuts on a clear plate.

2. Three gulf fratilleries liteing on and off on the jasmine outside my window.

3. A photo of a man who had been hit by a rocket in Afghanistan while driving a tanker of fuel to a northern town. One arm was gone and the right index finger on the remaining arm was frozen in a position as though he was constantly pointing.

4. 23 bags of red t-shirts sitting on a table in a kitchen.

5. A horse that I once thought was dead standing in a corral on the corner of Krameria and Dauchy.

6. A flu shot schedule.

7. A cheap silver skull ring that a punk kid was wearing on his pinky finger.

8. A portly lady with a car jammed full with kids getting a ticket for parking in a loading zone for at least a half hour.

9. Six crows acting like crazy people on the wind.

10. A black and white picture of a lonesome cowpoke sitting with his horse on a bluff that overlooked the world.

Elder Care

My mother, who passed away in June, was a member of the nomadic tribe of unfortunate people who spend their last days on earth being bounced around assisted living facilities. She spent the last few years moving from one place to another and hating them all. We hated them too. Except for the last one, which was great. But by then it was too late.

My friend Ben Wah recently found it necessary to put his mother in an assisted living place, a fancy one by assisted living standards. Respectable.

But he told me a story the other evening. Seems his mother had a large chunk of money stolen from her whilst in her residence. Well, Ben and his brothers were a little pissed about this. So they placed a camera in his mother's room, and as Ben put it: "We caught the bitch!" The Bitch being one of the in-house staff. On film. With Mrs. Wah's $. Interestingly, the same "helper" worked for a time at one of the places my mother was living.

So, if you have a relative in elder care, advocate hugely for your loved one, be a high profile visitor that asks questions, makes yourself known, wants to see the med log and taste the food. And believe everything your loved one says, even if you don't believe it.

And get a camera before things begin to disappear.