TRIALS OF ST TIMMY'S 43 ================================================================= THE TRIALS AT ST TIMMY'S -- The Continued Saga of Paul Ess's Rehabilitation ================================================================= "MAMA MAMA MAMA MAMA MAMA MAMA..." This is Hortencia. She's Mejicano and as crazy as a loon. When riled she calls for her mother and cries and carries on most pitifully. They haven't found the correct HaapyJuice[tm] for her yet. She was in line yesterday to see the optometrist. The optometrist comes all the way from El Lay or at least Santa Barabara -- according to which rumor you believe. I wonder why they can't get one from someplace in the Bay Area. Must be another one of those sweetheart deals between the tardfarm operators and their friends. He's going to look at a half dozen nutty LOLs, have his cute assistant mark "nonresponsive" on their chart, and collect his usual fee from MediCal. Welcome to episode 43 of the Trials. What a procession they make, the little old dears all in a row, their tardchairs up and down the hall. Most of them are too out of it to benefit from staring at a teevee. There is virtually nothing to read around here. No one comes to see them. They're parked in this benevolent prison until something vital freezes up or stops working, used-up taxpayers all. Why do they need eyes? We're all going to leave here in due time, most of us in a plastic bag. We'll be barbecued in a cardboard coffin, one final bill to the county. I got my new glasses. I do believe these are highly refractive plastic. They must've run out of Coke bottle bottoms to grind. Miss Ralph dropped off my new specs in her rounds yesterday. It appears the optometrist could care less about final fitting. I am wearing my old glasses. They fit on my nose better. George is complaining about his new glasses. He says he can't see out of them. The optometrist said the rear of his eyes show signs of an alcoholic history and that George's eyes will shift in their refraction from time to time and he cannot be well fitted with lenses. Sounds like hogwash to me. George has ample opportunity to get hold of hooch. He shows not the slightest interest. Mary Quite Contrary across the hall is whining incessantly. WILL SOMEBODY PLEASE CLOSE MY WINDOW? WILL SOMEBODY PLEASE OPEN MY WINDOW? WILL SOMEBODY PLEASE CLOSE MY DOOR? will somebody please open my door? I NEED TO GO TO THE BATHROOM. I HAVEN'T HAD MY LUNCH YET. Her son and daughter wait on her hand and foot. They visit her quite late in the evening, probably after a hard day's work. This morning it was our fearless leader Gretchen who had to get her up and walking with a walker. She called Gretchen a bitch. Gretchen lit into her, LISTEN, MISSY, I DO NOT _LIKE_ THAT WORD! I'm not surprised. She's more cunt than bitch. They now set Frannie up in her wheelchair right in front of the nurse's station all day long. She sits there half asleep with her food bottle and pump on a pole. They plug her into the wall and let her be. She won't pull the tube out of her stomach if she's being watched. They need to make her sleep in the hall as well. Every night she pulls the tube out and goo runs all over her and the bed. Sometimes she does this twice in one night. Her screaming is getting clearer and longer. I think she's going for an operatic quality and will soon have it with sufficient practice. Monsewer Jean next door must be getting better. He doesn't cuss the nurses quite so much. One told me his bedsore encompasses most of both asscheeks and is tunnelled and goes to the bone. I don't see him ever recovering from it. I wonder what sort of hell hole he was in to be neglected so. Cookie, his roomie, is even more off in left field. I don't even try to reason with the old boy over the loudness of his teevee. I found that my remote will operate his set, so I just roll in over there, give Monsewer Jean a fish-eyed look, and zap the teevee volume down to something below deafening. We had a patient care conference with the new director of nursing. Miss Ralph was there along with a couple of other yes- women(!) I bitched about the noise at night and about the food. Miss Ralph told me later the new DoN intends to address problems. The former DoN is not here any longer because she didn't... Even so, you should have seen the oil slick yesterday's "veal" "parmagiana" was. Here is this wad of blended ground beef heart and ground dark turkey covered with canned mushooms and sitting in at least three tablespoons of grease. The mashed potato was out of a box as usual. The veg was spinach with enough margarine in it to slide off the plate. I ate the canned fruit cocktail. I didn't even eat the bread because it was all clotted with slime off the "meat". The mushrooms were so greasy you could use them as Tucks to lube your 'rhoids. I went in to see DoN about this. She was not happy to see me even before I described the meal in substantially the same terms as I have here. I rarely raise my voice, but otherwise I am not really polite when I am pissed off. We agreed I would go from a Regular NCS [no concentrated sweets] to an ADA [diabetic] 1500- calorie diet. If this change is not honored or does not substantially lessen the enormous amount of fat in my diet, I will stop eating altogether. And if they think they are going to declare me incompetent and stick a hose in my nose, they have another think coming. Miss Ralph just brought me my paratransit "membership" card. Now I can call up a place in Coketown who coordinate the service and get a ride wherever I want to go provided it is within 3/4 mile of an established bus route and/or a rancid trapid station. To and from the public transportation I will have portal-to-portal assistance. I can even bring along the equivalent of two grocery bags (don't tempt me; I like eating out of cans) and someone as an "attendant" provided this person pays the same two-dollar fare I do. What surprises me is that this program covers trips to and from San Francisco; not just East Bay trips. See ya's at the mall... Today Mr Cheez and our new friend Demon from the Midwest came to see me. George came out onto the porch and said to Mr Cheez, The marijuana, the marijuana. He remembers when Cheez shared the blessed sacrament of the weed with him. Demon was amused. Demon has never seen the openness we have in the Bay Area with respect to Forbidden Activities such as smoking dope and being queer. I'm sorry to report that Demon's TQ (Tastlessness Quotient) is disappointingly low. When Mr Cheez and I were discussing the finer points of stir-frying baby mice, Demon appeared bored. Earlier in the week Miss Kooky and Demon took me for a ride to the City. It was My First Time ... using a sliding board to get in and out of a car. It went much better than I ever thought it would. Using a somewhat longer board made of Fibreglas did the trick. The thing's slicker than snot on a doorknob. It was my idea for us to go to the San Francisco Centre vertical mall with its four levels of shoppes and four levels of Nordstrom, the Bloomies of the West. The place has nothing curious, of dubious taste, or amusing about it the way I remembered it. The huge bookstore is gone, broken up into boutiques which made me think of Laugh-In's Tasteful Lady [Lily Tomlin]. They've been replaced by a Warner Brothers souvenir store and some overpriced yuppiescum rag traders. Have I committed inside-out tastlessness or have I just sucked dirty donkey dick? All the baubles for sale appeared useless, vapid, or overdone. Frankly, I couldn't imagine anyone wanting, let alone needing, 99 percent of the crap for sale in there. I often spent an hour poring over the vintage gewgaws in As Time Goes By, a shop specializing in Deco-era originals and reproductions. It is but a choice memory now. I owe both Miss Kooky and Demon a severe rimjob for not yelling This Place Sucks (which it did) and leaving my tard ass on the gummy bricks of Market Street. I'm not sure if the basement john is worth cruising any longer. The big department store next door to the Centre is closed. When it was open there was a great parade of darling, bored, young men hanging around while their spoosockets spent up their money. The view from the caffe of the escalator had much of its old alure, a crotch-accenting view of shoppers descending. But it was nice to see something besides these four walls and wall-to-wall tards for a change. Thank you, guys. =================================================================