In the Nursing Home

Remember the film IN THE BEDROOM...well, it has just morphed into IN THE NURSING HOME. The script is already percolating in my brain.

It has been a long day dealing with the stresses of family when a family member becomes ill. Tensions and tempers run high, egos take arms, and I am finding it difficult to keep things cohesive and C-A-L-M.

I talk to myself as I would counsel a friend or student, and constantly have to put things in perspective and decide what really matters.

I went to see my mom. She was pale, very depressed, and pathetic. I don't know if she isn't eating because she is depressed, or depressed because she can't eat. Since she can't talk, it is difficult at best to really know clearly what goes on in her dented damaged brain.

The visit to the nursing home is never fun. Since my mother never leaves her room, I am relegated to sitting in an uncomfortable chair in a room with far too much stuff in it for its size, staring at a TV set with either the news of all the disasters of the world, or an old movie on Turner Movie Network. On my walks about the place to find nurses and doctors to talk too, I see the elderly and infirm, staring empty down the hall, moaning, crying, and picking their noses while they look at you. One tries to bite the nurse whose attention I need for a moment. Then there is the ... odor.

I have been talking to friends, and we have all agreed that we are saving our pills to take in vast handfuls in case we start to lose our dignity. We were trying to figure out how we could do assisted suicides without anyone going to jail.

It made me very sad and depressed.

So to crazy up things a bit, I am giving you some photos of some of the new "stuff" in my kitchen. I wanted to jazz up the light switch plate, so I collaged it with antique seed catalog pages (1800's) and I found this great Mexican milagro folk art cross for a dollar. Perhaps I will use it in an art work, but for now it hangs in la cuchina, awaiting a group of like items to join it in a wall of mysticism and funk. I also bought a bizarre chalk ware Jesus. I still have not decided what to do with that. He is a little too strange. Look at all of those chains around him, WTF?!!
Hmm..someone on eBay might like him. Maybe some seriously religious people will do battle for it and bid some outrageous price, like they do for pretzels in the shape of Mary, or doors whose wood grain looks like the face of Jesus. I need the money, and prayin' ain't bringing any home!!!

Off to finish a movie, or read some.
Hmm..some mango sorbet calls to me..that might be a nice treat to end the day.

Patti O Junk