Crashing Into An Old Folk's Home

Well, I was going to write another post about our Caribbean Adventure that my wife and I had about a week or so ago. I still might, after writing about this recent fiasco.

To begin with, when we came back from our trip, I found out my Dad had pretty much sold the house I grew up in for so many years. All I wanted to do, when we got back from our cruise, was rest, put our 266 cruise pictures in our photo album, give everyone their souvenirs we brought back and catch up on blogging.

But no, while the house has been on sale for nearly two fuckin' years, it wasn't until when we got back from our wonderful, yet exhausting trip, that the house gets sold and now we, only a few us us, have 30 days to get Dad's ungodly amount of crap moved to God only knows where. The options are pitifully slim. I have zero room in my apartment. My sister has only a little more room than I do. And my Dad, has hardly any space at all.

We are trying extremely hard to get him to agree about putting most of it in a storage unit but he gets angry over that idea because he doesn't want to pay a $41 renting fee for a month. And talking to him in a reasonable fashion (about anything) is incredibly difficult due to his vascular dementia, severe continuous anger, verbal abuse, confusion and him wanting to still control everything.

This business of moving means a whole lotta trouble for my sister and I and everyone involved, but mostly my sister and I. This means lots of moving of massive amounts of stuff my mother and father collected over 50 years. They would frequent antique malls over the years and buy copious quantities of crap that would be placed in every room of their substantially sized house. And this is on top of the normal furniture and normal everyday stuff.

Anyway, last night, after my sister, brother-in-law and I pack up just a fraction of his stuff in my truck, we go to the assisted living place, where my Dad lives at, to dump off his old heavy watchmaker's desk to be put in his small one bedroom apartment. As I'm backing my huge Dodge Ram pick up truck toward the secondary entrance down below, I crash into one of the assisted living place's flimsy ass roof columns. I hear the crunch, fear the worst and get out to see that my fear is not misplaced. One side of the arched roof is slanted slightly, with the right hand column totally set back a few feet, still crookedly attached at the top.

Dad, of course, goes into a screaming fit at the sight, yelling at me and so forth. My sister and her husband, after reaching the area below in their van just stand there and look, wanting to help.

Meanwhile, as with any situation that is horrible and unexpected that happens in my life, I go into shock. I can't talk, blink, jerk off or shit my pants.

Not that it would matter.

After Dad calms down from his hysteria, thanks to my sister (who is better at that than I am), my Dad and I go upstairs to explain the situation to the only nurse working there at the time. My sister creates a sign so no old people try going out the door below and are possibly crushed by the roof hovering above on one column. I give out my car insurance information after mumbling what I can out of my mouth.

In closing, I called the woman in charge of the assisted living place today to better explain things and ask if she needed any questions answered. She was nice enough about it. I know our car insurance is going to go up again. Hell, we might even get dropped after this incident. Why? Because we've ran into deer on two different occasions in the last two years in this heavily wooded area we live in. Plus, my wife had a driving accident two years ago due to lack of sleep from working two jobs.

Another thing that also gets to me is that the columns used to hold up this small arched roof is made of a hard plastic material. It's not that sturdy. According to the nurse on duty last night, a couple other people on different occasions have crashed into these columns, too,because of where they're positioned. And they're kind of hard to see because they're so freaking narrow.

At least that's my excuse.

When I got home last night, my wife knew there was something wrong by the look on my face. I wanted to talk to her later about it but she persisted until I told her and she, like my father, previously, flipped out and yelled at me. This morning, after waking up to go to work, she said she forgave me but I still feel like a major dumb ass.

If I didn't have bad luck, I wouldn't have any luck at all, folks. Suddenly, the category 4 hurricane I was facing down during the cruise doesn't seem all that big a deal right now.

Zippity Fuckin' Doo Da!