Dispatch to the D.O.N. of the A.L.F.

I’ve had this sitting in the blog drafts since November of 2023. At the time, I was the sole advocate and caretaker (facilitator of care is maybe more accurate?) for my mother. I had gotten her into a new Assisted Living Facility (A.L.F. for those not up on the lingo yet; and I hope you never have cause to be) and there were some administrative issues with insurance, benefits, etc.

It’s worth noting that my mom is a… challenging personality. She is the most charming person I’ve ever known. But she’s also the most vicious person I’ve ever known. And as with most narcissists, you get the version of that person that is most beneficial to them in the moment. And it changes. Quickly.

She was in the position of needing a new A.L.F. because she was kicked out of the previous facility. Ejected! A 60+ year old woman with limited mobility, who requires oxygen, found the energy to create such a toxic and hostile environment that they just said, nah. Get out.

So, once again, she became my problem.

I’ve found myself in the position of helping my mother “start over” more times than I can count. When I was 18, in the early aughts, I moved 7 hours away from her for college. After my second semester there, she turned up in the new town I was living in. I had not personally told her where I was going to school, but she found me.

She called me from a local number, so I assumed it was a friend. She told me she had checked in to a battered women’s shelter and was pleading to see me. We could move in together, be a family. She’d be a mom for me.

This was the carrot she dangled to me when she knew I was on the verge of disengagement. It was what she promised and withheld, over and over again.

But she was a battered woman. What kind of feminist would I be if I didn’t help a battered woman?

I was stage managing a show in the theater department, and taking an 18-hour course load, with two work study jobs. So I wasn’t able to immediately go and see her. She took this as an outright rejection, and called her abuser to pick her up. She exposed the location of the shelter to an abusive man. The Executive Director somehow got my number and called to make sure I knew how dangerous this was, and what the costs for increased security would be, etc. etc.

I don’t know how I was always left holding the bag for her mistakes.

It’s worth noting, that at this same time she was promising me that we’d be a family, her 16 year old son was living in a group reform home for foster children. She’d abandoned my brother, like, in the legal, official way. But she kept promising to come pick him up, and he’d pack his bags and wait. And she never would show up.

So he got mad, and acted out. Wound up in the group home in West Texas for troubled boys. Her care and love was also his carrot.

So there’s a lot of history, and complex emotions for me. So, in 2023, when I received an email from the Director of Nursing (DON) of the new A.L.F. that was a long list of rule violations, I was not especially surprised. And as an A+ rule follower myself, I was probably as horrified as the DON by her behavior. But some of the “rules” she said my mom had broken just didn’t seem to make any sense.

So I found myself in the bizarre position of having to defend my mother’s terrible behavior. Below is my response to one of the list of (TWENTY-THREE) “violations”.

From: Angela Johnson

Subject: “Laurie Johnson, rule violations”

Date: November 4, 2023

To: D.O.N. “Director of Nursing”

And on to the next item-regarding the oxygen tank. I asked my mom what happened. She said she borrowed a tank of oxygen from her friend, Nelda. This was during the period that she was out of her own portable oxygen, due to the insurance’s delay with verification that her existing tank had indeed malfunctioned.

When she recently received her replacement oxygen tank, she was able to return Nelda’s. This must be what the staff member witnessed. I’m reassured that she’s being minded so closely, since, according to your chart notes, she has been without supplemental oxygen for a month.

My mom denies that she was “giving away” oxygen. I believe she just wanted to breathe.

I apologize that this caused an issue; had I known my mom was completely out of oxygen, I would have informed her that borrowing oxygen from a fellow resident is (apparently) not permitted.

So, to summarize, she didn’t give the new oxygen to Ms. Nelda. Ms. Nelda had given some oxygen to my mom to cover the period of time when her room oxygen was broken. My mom was returning the borrowed tank. I’m hoping that by sharing this, I do not get Ms. Nelda in trouble. I think she had good intentions by ensuring my mom, who has COPD, could breathe.

If there are any further issues or questions about this, please don’t hesitate to reach out to me.
Warm regards,

Angela

I am large. I contain multitudes.

One of the most frustrating things about myself is that I can spend a great amount of effort planning and researching, well, anything.

A need for a new baking sheet can result in a dozen bookmarked reviews, price spreadsheet filterable by review rating, material (ceramic, aluminum, stainless steel), average lifespan, cost, and even avg cost per use which = cost/avg lifespan.

And on the other end of the research/obsessive spectrum, I’ll buy a new version of the AppleTV because I don’t want to replace the battery in the remote anymore.

Soft strength

---

When this minute is

too long

and too big

and too much

I curl up

and away

and into

worn leather shoes

and remember

They were

not always

this soft

What? Drawn and talk of peace?

It’s the return of “Adventures in unstored phone numbers”. An old nonfiction series I used to do on my old blog.

——

My birth mom gets a lot of telemarketing calls. She gives out lots of personal information, and is in general, a fucking nightmare. She once told me she was marrying a guy who turned out to be a bot.

I took the iPhone away and downgraded her to a flip phone after that.

She still answers EVERY phone call.

I’ve asked her to just HANG UP when it’s a stranger but she won’t. She talks to them and then when she buys into the “deal”/scam she is smart about it.

She doesn’t just hand over her credit card number (anymore). Instead, she gives them MY number for permission. 🤦🏽‍♀️

So, today I got a call from “Don”. When I asked to be placed on the do not call list he said no. When I asked for his business name he said it’s “Fuck You”.

Ok, Don. I get it. Being a telemarketer is a terrible job I’m sure. But just do the thing I asked and hang up on me.

But no, Don has a darker side. Don also knows that the FTC can’t touch him because by the time they look, he’s got another ghost number up. A new number every day.

And he just kept spewing profanities at me, like a teenager rapid firing every swear word they’ve ever learned. Then, tapping his more mature side, promised me hundreds of calls a day and added “You will never know peace.”

Joke’s on Don. I’m more of a Tybalt than a Romeo.

Another year, another list

A list of things on my mind in January of 2023:

• did we ever figure out why butter in coffee was a thing?

• sinkholes. 🕳️ that’s it. That’s the thought.

• what can I personally do to protect Democracy? Aside from continue voting?

• Sink holes 🕳️?

• will I ever solve the Sunday NYT crossword in one day?

• I’m entering my SEVENTEENTH year in SaaS operations and product management. 17! Almost half my life has been spent working in technology.

• I think LaaS (Life as a Service) will outpace SaaS revenue in my lifetime. Yes, I just coined this term and this industry. Yes, you already use some LaaS- instacart (SaaS that requires a human to do work), Uber, TaskRabbit, pretty much any “gig economy” job.

• I am not sure I want LaaS to succeed

• sink holes 🕳️

Places my passport isn’t

I’m going out of the country soon. For weeks I have wanted to challenge my wife to a passport quick draw.

I thought about making it into a silly game. “Who can find and show their passport the quickest?” But the very competitive voice inside me hasn’t allowed me to issue this challenge since I wasn’t absolutely certain I’d win.

Without any prompting, today, of all days, my wife says “I found my passport”.

Unprompted, unsolicited, and frankly, unnecessary bragging. Of course, she doesn’t know that I am not very confident that I know where my passport is currently. But maybe she should!

The clues have been right there for her. My own unprompted drawer clean outs. “Honey, I’m cleaning out this drawer, come take a look at every dog and cat medication and supplement we own. I’ve organized it. I just want you to know what we have…” not at all related to me misplacing anything

Now, I know that I put it someplace safe. Not in the locking file cabinet I recently bought, which has a folder for my birth certificate and other legal documents. No, too obvious. A passport is important. It should be protected. Even from yourself.

Here are the places that, so far, my passport is not:

• The legal file folder that has my dad’s death certificate and my birth certificate. It has my initial passport receipt but not the actual passport.

• The junk drawer in the kitchen where I once kept credit cards I needed to shred, thus designating it a temporary shelter for sensitive material

• The top drawer of the file cabinet that contains the extra folders and hanging tabs for the files below it.

• Inside of the book I’m currently reading

• Inside of the book I was reading and didn’t finish from my last trip

• Inside of the book I’m planning to read next

• My sock drawer

• My old travel carry on bag/purse

• My current work laptop bag

• The place where I keep my checkbooks

• The place where I keep my dad’s ashes

• The place where I keep the extra note cards and various batteries.

Tomorrow I’ll check my suitcase and every remaining bag and coat pocket I have. It will show up. I may have replaced it by then, but I know I put it someplace safe.

Sub X for Y Ad Nauseam

I have not felt overly compelled to say much about the overturning of Roe v. Wade. That’s not to say I don’t have an opinion to share, or loads to say, but talking about abortion just seems altogether besides the point.

Abortion has long been a wedge issue used to pit the left and the right against one another, each side on diametrically opposing ends of a philosophical moral spectrum. Or at least that’s what the far right would say. And the far left would say we are on opposing ends of an ethical spectrum.

I can list all of the reasons that an abortion should be allowed, and I can get granular with noncontroversial use cases of when an abortion is appropriate (incest, r*pe, medical conditions, etc., etc.) but, really it’s none of my fucking business. I’m not hanging out in doctor’s offices checking to see if I agree with the decision the doctor and their patient arrived at after considering all of the circumstances of any other procedures and treatments. So, why are we focusing so much on this one?

Well, one idea is that it’s much simpler to say to voters “do you believe x or y? If x, vote for us, if y, vote for those idiots over there who hate you/America/etc”. Sub x for y ad nauseam. Another thought is that controlling reproduction (if, when, how) is vital to upholding the patriarchy.

What I observed this weekend as the collective conscious grappled with this (and a few other) Supreme Court Rulings was essentially two sets of group think reacting in real time, thanks to social media. Two sets of temporary profile pictures erupted across facebook, the same stories were shared over and over. As an amateur anthropologist (emphasis on the amateur) these types of impactful events are powerful to observe. I found myself doom scrolling for far longer than I intended to. But I did find this handy Abortion Resources image floating around, so I thought I would share it.

While I am unlikely to ever need an abortion, I rely on the due process clause on which Roe v Wade was upheld on a daily basis. For a sitting Supreme Court to threaten my marriage so unnecessarily was…sobering. Mentioning Obergefell v Hodges was not required for the Roe v Wade ruling to be overturned. It was the worst kind of “virtue” signaling.

So, what do we do? I don’t know. I’m somewhere between expand the Supreme Court and Abolish the Supreme Court. Both seem equally pointless.

So, for now my practical approach is to contact an estate planning attorney to get the bare minimums covered:

• Durable Power of Attorney

• Medical Power of Attorney (available for free at most hospitals)

• Living Will

• Triple checking that my wife is on the title of our home, mortgage, cars, insurance policies, 401ks, and bank accounts

• Saving all online account logins into a shared password manager that’s encrypted

• Uplift Abortion Funds and workers who have been in the conversation longer than me (yes we will all drive someone “camping” but there is a network that has BEEN set up for YEARS doing this critical work)

• And finally, even if it seems frivolous and unimportant, make lots of time for joy.

Life may feel extra, extra hard right now for a lot of folx. And that’s perfectly understandable. Finding joy in between moments of intense worry or anger is a radical act of self care. For me, I take a few swings in my hammock with my ding dong doggos and my cup is replenished enough to send another email to John Cronyn or Ted Cruz for no other reason than to remind them I’m here, and I’m pissed.