Sorry about not speaking up a bit this week, but this week was pretty tough on me... See, my Mom has fallen, she couldn't get up, so spent about three days on the floor, and it took a "courtesy call" from the local police to actually get into her apt to find her, in distress....... Once she arrived at the hospital, her temp was 93°. Her blood sugar had 500 numbers... Not good. Me and my big sisters are trying to figure out the bill to the hospital and her future, as the hospital is fast running out of rooms. Not good. Mom is not allowed to go home to her apt anymore, according to the doctors, so we have to do something. Lots of things... Very expensive things are happening in a hurry. And it's up to me and my sisters to do something quick.
Rick, I completely understand. My mother lived 3 miles from us for years. In 2002, when she turned 90, I had to take her car away after I saw her making a turn from the wrong side of a divided street. Some of her meds, like Coumadin were critical so I began making daily visits to cook her dinner and set up her pills. I bought a pill dispenser that had morning, noon and night bins and an alarm went off when each bin of pills was to be taken. I drove her to the doctors and took her food shopping. Most days she spent five or six hours at a senior center that had pickup and dropoff service.
A year into that schedule, she called me unexpectedly and said she fell in the shower (a 4'x8' monster) and was bleeding. Got to her condo about four minutes later and found her in a huge pool of blood next to the phone in her guest room. Called 911 and because the firehouse was two blocks away, they were there in about two minutes.
After transporting my mother to the hospital in Boca Raton, we were informed they don't deal with trauma patients and she had to be transported to the Delray Beach hospital to our north. The Delray Beach hospital emergency room was like a visit to one of the "Hostel" resorts in the movies. My mother sat in a wheelchair in a nightgown for more than an hour before a "trauma" specialist could see her.
As my mother's dementia progressed, she began "sundowning." One night she heard a little girl calling to her from the parking lot and went out to find her. She didn't bring her keys with her and was locked out of the condo building until someone arrived near dawn and let her in. Three in the morning was the same as three in the afternoon for her so I bought a 24-hour digital clock but it didn't help. Because some fart smeller talked her into buying long-term care insurance, she was able to return to her condo surrounded by all her treasures and memories with round-the-clock nursing care. When the insurance ran out, I made an illegal(?) offer for the nurse to stay on for an increase in her pay, full social security and medicare (paid on our side as her employer) and two weeks paid vacation each year (two more than her former company gave her). It cost all of my mother's social security and pension so all I paid was utilities, condo fees and food.
Mom passed away on Mothers Day 2008 after celebrating her 100th birthday in November. She was only 95 but was obsessed with living to 100 so I saw no harm putting the candle on her cake.
Bob, I once knew an uncle like that. Just a complete drunk. Worse than your stories... His eyeglasses were at least an inch thick. Just a complete failure. He did like frog legs for supper. Something the rest of the family didn't like. Thing was, he was married to my aunt, for a few years... My aunt wouldn't touch a drop of alcohol.. the marriage didn't last. Of course.
Rick, I have an addictive personality so I have to be careful about a lot of things. Much as I would love to pour some Johnnie Walker Black over some ice cubes, I know I would be a blackout drunk within a week. Same with a cigarette. One would lead to a pack a day habit just as fast as the JWB.
Sober and smoke free life with Liane is way better than drunk and puffing all alone in a cargo van.
The thing is.. with Mom, that she knows that she can never go home again, to her beloved apt. She knows this now. That part is kinda good. See, my sister had plans in place, many years ago. Mom decided to basically dis-own my sister... Over this very same thing.
.And so it it went for the past few years. Who am I to decide the same result? Mom can't live alone anymore, and we all know it, Mom is starting to realize that now. So, what my sister tried to start things, years ago, and Mom dis-owned her... And Mom is in the condition that she's in, nowadays, really shouldn't make me look like the bad guy, so much, anymore. At least I like to think that way.
I have two sisters, both older than myself. The older sister is a medical doctor. The younger sister of the two is an accountant. I'm just a lowly machinist. Ha. I have a neice that is an attorney. That being said gives me plenty of hope that we can make something work for my Mom. I have no doubt. But gives me reasons to not sleep at night and I'm taking Sumitriptan, again, for migraine headaches, lately. Once we get Mom into something stable again, I'll feel better. Mom is not allowed to leave Anoka County, we thought to bring her over the border, to Wisconsin, but don't think that would be good. My thoughts are just to do the correct thing for Mom. My sister lives within a mile away from her apt. If Mom can go there, she (Mom) won't be too far from my sister.
Rick, I visited too many relatives in nursing homes to ever wish that on my mother. When she was 90 and had her [in my opinion, unnecessary] annual mammogram, they found a small lump and her idiot oncologist performed surgery to remove the lump (a lumpectomy). Her sane primary care physician told her (and me) she didn't need annual mammograms because the damaged valve in her heart would kill her long before the cancer would. The mammogram people called my mother every year but the calls were intercepted until 2008, when she set up an appointment I didn't learn about until the night before. Sure enough, they found another small lump and the oncologasshole told me it was up to my mother to decide to have another lumpectomy. He performed the lumpectomy in late March and in April she developed pneumonia. She was unable to cough hard enough to clear her lungs. Her heart was failing and her primary care physician recommended Hospice care. She entered the facility on Monday, May 6, 2008, had daily visits with me, a visit from our son and his 7 children (her great-grandchildren) on Saturday, May 10 and I visited her on Sunday morning (Mother's Day) and she never woke up that day, passing away at 3 in the afternoon.
@Squankum, my policy used to be, let the bearing fail, be stuck at the side of the road, and then you fix. In most cases, you wait many hours for AAA to come by, to help, if they have nothing else to do, that day. I'm not complaining. They are very doggone busy, every time I ask for help. One time, Cheryl got herself into trouble, on a very winter-y day not far from home. She ended up in the ditch. She, after a while, actually walked home. (She was within a mile from home) It took my friends (AAA) about twelve ******** hours to come to her rescue. Cheryl left the "scene of the van in ditch", quite well away from traffic, and left the four-way flashers working. By the time my friends (AAA) showed up, the battery was long since dead... So we had to jump the battery before my friend (AAA) could start the van, to help the very small wrecker get the van out of the ditch, twelve hours later... Again, I'm not complaining, but their business model just *****, making you and everyone else wait hours at a time, for help to come.
Rick, AAA is like most insurance. You pay premiums as required but when you ask for them to provide the service you've been paying, time becomes relative. I'm pretty sure "Roadside Assistance" means they will help the side of the road as soon as possible. If your car is in the way, they may assist you to move it out of the way and fix the road.
@Squankum, that's exactly why I made my own pulley, and stocked plenty of bearings on my shelf...
But I've since learned about preventative maintenance, through ASE webinars. Their recommendation is to replace the pulley each and every 100,000 miles. They also said, that at that point, that pulley, that bearing has just spent something like about a billion revolutions in its lifetime. I don't know about you, but think if I put that amount of miles (equivalent) on my hips, I'm due for a replacement. Or at least a shot of grease...
Rick, I am on the "Replace the thing and attached pulley" because I don't own any precision tools.
It is kind of impressive that it goes that far just on grease. OTOH, it took Porsche to decide to put a bearing like that inside a motor.
@Squankum, I recall one dragster engine builder putting roller bearings in the bottom end of a Chrysler Hemi. It was fantastic and produced way more than expected horsepower. At some point either a clutch or some other piece of the drivetrain failed and the engine instantly turned itself into the highest revving hand grenade ever seen.
Is she still on parole for the bank heist?
Ruh Roh.
Ha, no. But it's interesting that you bring that up. Since I'm now poa, and My sister is not anymore, that creates some real issues as far as payment goes toward the nursing home, for the time being. We'll work through some issues for long term.
Rick, I've been paying Long Term Care Insurance premiums to John Hancock for more than 40 years so I don't have to depend on 'the kindness of my relatives.'
If I remember Porsche put a 2000 mile replacement on Porsche Cup Car hubs. At 2100 miles they just blew apart. Think the cost was 10k a corner. That was a money maker. Back when I ran a Turbo 944 in the ****** Endurance series they came out with a different shock package for each track. We did it once was a cash grab by Porsche. In 1985 I hit the Porsche parts trailer for lug nuts and they were 5$ each and they were not anything you couldn't have gotten at NAPA.
Michael, only Porsche could make yacht ownership to be a poor man's realm.
I have to say if you want to play with big boys you will pay. One of the reasons I stuck with being crew you win if he wins. My long time race friend was moaning about the cost to rebuild a Porsche Cup car Transmission it was 50k. He keeps his cars at a garage condo at NJMP. It is a common complaint from drivers about the cost of racing, but many seem to find the $ if they want.
I remember a 750 alignment in late 80's on a race car. The car was put together with out bothering to measure anything. We first tried an alignment and a corner weight the car was not square. So we took it all apart made the a arms match spent a lot of time with bump steer he took the washers out and didn't put them back the same way. So it took two days and a lot of work to get it right. But as always the driver bitched about the 750$ alignment not mentioning the fact he put it back together wrong. Usually the rock marks are on the bottom of the A-arm not the top.
A buddy at IBM raced a 1979 Datsun 200SX in an SCCA class and I joined his volunteer pit crew. Ten minutes into the race at the Daytona Infield Track his transmission tailshaft broke. We spent an hour on our backs pulling the transmission, expecting to swap in a spare. We couldn't get the input splines to mate with the clutch disk so it was dismantle and swap the input shaft. He got the car back on the track so it wasn't a DNF and he got a few points but it was not a pro team effort.
Bob: Just looked at the Natl weather...... Sorry, I forgot to close the door.
Gerry. the doc says my *** will thaw but it was touch and go for a few days.
It's been a few days since you've updated your thread. I hope everything is alright.
Kirk, I'm OK but my dislike for AT&T and resentment for their endless price increases made me sign up for Comcast Xfinity to replace my TV and Internet service. Went through a painful signup process on January 6 that included reading my bank routing and account numbers to a person whose first language was not English. Received texts on my phone and e-mails on my computer on the 7th, 8th and 9th welcoming me, thanking me for connecting to their service and letting me know my bank refused to pay the $25 signing fee and apparently charged Comcast for $25 for an unauthorized check via Plaid. Every text, e-mail and phone call to Xfinity took forever and I never got a response to my questions about service installation. They finally scheduled a 10:00-12:00 visit for Sunday (1/11/26). Van showed up around 11:30 and the person was unaware there was no Comcast wire of any kind going from my house to the pole in my back yard. I showed him the old Comcast cable stub on the attic wall above all the AT&T boxes near the ground. Said he would call the office and sat in his van for about a half hour. Came back to tell me everything would be installed on Friday (1/16/26) between 3:00 and 5:00. On Tuesday (1/13/26) Xfinity sends me an e-mail listing everything I've signed up for. Instead of the promised huge savings, their $322.80 per month is within $60 of my AT&T bill and if I chose to have the same number of set top boxes, Xfinity service is only $30 cheaper.
Tech shows up on Friday and has absolutely nothing needed for the install. He can't get through to his office on his cell (I live in a near-dead zone) so he asks to use mine. Coaches me on what to say and once again, the other end of the line provides no assistance. As he's leaving, another Comcast truck pulls in the drveway and asks what's going on. I explain that nothing has happended but based on texts and e-mails filling my in-boxes, Xfinity is thrilled to have me as a new customer and hopes I'm enjoying the service they are providing. The new arrival speaks my language and assures me everything will be fixed immediately. A tech will be at my house on Tuesday (1/20/26) to install the cable underground and hook up everything inside the house.
EVERY time I call Xfinity, they tell me I have to accept their free for one year cell phone service. I explain that I will be 82 this time next year and will have forgotten I ever signed up and a whopping new bill will hit my bank account. Based on my experience getting through to anyone competent at Comcast (Xfinity?), cancelling that no longer free service will be a long and painful process.
I begin receiving reminders of my upcoming appointment every few hours on Monday. More texts and e-mails on Tuesday and I open a window on my new monitor that shows my four security camera views. No one shows up at 3:00 or 4:00 but I get a reminder of my appointment and the need for someone over 18 to be at the home when the tech arrives. At 5:00 there are no new messages, no indication the tech is running late or that my appointment has been cancelled. Rather than calling to complain, I had dinner and waited until 7:30 to call. As usual, the automated answering system tells me to log on or text for assistance. Instead, I called on the land (VOIP) line and say: "Representative" a dozen times until I get a human. When they ask how they can help, I tell them to cancel my service and close my account. When asked if I wanted to cancel my cell phone service as well, I became rude. After several transfers, more questions about how they can make it right, I repeated cancel my service and close my account.
Believing I have cut my ties with Xfinity, I am surprised by an e-mail the next morning:

The sane member of the household asks that I contact Xfinity to be sure they aren't still going to bill us for services we never received. OOOPs, they are billing me for their $25 screwup. Another call to Xfinity, more screams of: "Representative" and the person directs my call to the billing department. I explain my experience, my disappointment with Xfinity and Comcast and just as I was having second thoughts about giving them another chance, I received their bill for $25 for doing absolutely nothing. When he explained it was my bank's fault, I suggested I knew nothing about running a bank and suspected Xfinity knew nothing about running a TV and Internet service based on my experience. I am then told these decisions are made by more highly paid people and given a promise of a phone call (TO MY LAND LINE) as soon as a decision is made. I reminded him this was determining my future relationship with Xfinity and $25 is exactly how much it costs for me to ever consider a second chance. You bill me, 0% chance. You reimburse me, 25% chance.
So
Kirk, to answer your question, I'm FINE (Frustrated, Incensed, Nasty and Exhausted). I'm sure I've done something else this month but i'll have to check what's on my camera memory card.