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Steps of Frustration

I do not feel expansive in my writing efforts tonight. Instead, I will list a bunch of issues that are helping me to feel like crap:

1. The continual run-around in health care issues with my elderly mother's latest health issue.

She was discharged from the ER stating she NEEDS home oxygen. It has been over 48 hours of numerous phone calls and visits and she still has none. The assinine agencies governing oxygen service say they cannot accept the oxygen reading from an emergency room... it needs to come from a hospital or clinic. Trying to get an appointment for an oxygen reading (all it requires is a damn device that you place on your finger and it reads oxygen saturation in 15 seconds) is like pulling teeth. Some of the assinine people I have spoken to have offered an appointment for MONDAY! It is bullshit.

2. The continual interuption of any time I have for myself to actually get work prepared and ready for the Fall semester.

The workshops I idiotically volunteered to do 10 months ago, the several hour ER visit with my mother, the babysitting needs relatives have heaped upon me, my wife's crankiness requiring me to tiptoe around and take 10 times longer to get any of the b*llsh*t household crap done. The continual influx of students needing "advice" during the few moments I can actually spend in my office. These items and more are interfering so much I do not have a single syllabus ready and classes start in just over two weeks.

3. The lack of getting to do any form of exercise (walking prefered).

With all the sh*t happening, all attempts to walk flew out the window and I don't end up having a moment to spare anymore. My work day has been starting at 5:30am each day and from that moment on it is nonestop doing all of the above and more until I can finally sit and relax at roughly 10pm. I may watch one show (often I fall asleep) on television, then I help everyone to bed at 11 -11:30. I travel down here for a few minutes of peace and end up often writing my entry for the blog (the one relaxation besides the hour of televsion), then I try to do some of the work I did not get to do in my office each day. Finally, I typically get to head to bed at roughly 2am.

4. The rather cryptic and ambiguous posts of my friend, Andrew at 4th Avenue Blues.

Andrew is a good friend who has been having some really harsh issues with a relative of his. This relative is trying all sorts of obnoxious and rude tactics on him. This rude relative loves Andrew, but he seems to be obsessively controlling and literally wants to institutionalize Andrew. Unfortunately, Andrew vascillates between standing up for himself and cow-towing to this relative's wishes. The aggrivating part is that Andrew has now started to write in a crypitc manner about being sent away, and yet has not explained what is occurring. I and many others are worried about him and feel in the dark.

5. An obxnoxious and conniving student at the U.

There is a student named Samuel who is trying to play very loosely with the truth about what others in the Department have said. Sam wants a prerequisite waiver and has lied repeatedly about being granted permission to break this prequisite policy. I have refused to give in to his demands, but I suspect he will travel up the administrative ladder to higher and higher people and try to sway their answers and make me, my chairperson, and my department look like mean, bad people. He became so irate at the assistant chairperson that he swore at him and called him an *ssh*le.

6. My elderly mother's weasling and whinning about eating and drinking.

She is already starting the same unbelievably aggrivating tricks to not eat or drink that she did previously. We are getting into some heated discussions because she is stubborn. The fact is she needs to eat a certain amount of calories a day and drink a certain amount of fluids a day. I despise having to be almost a policedog about it and cajole, and coax her to eat and drink.

I guess my post is longer than I had anticipated. I shall stop with the gripes here. I am sorry that most of the crap I have written about lately is always complaining and dull. If and when this current situation relieves itself, I think I will be able to get back to the rather more fun, exciting, scientific, philosphical and artistic discussions I much prefer to have.

The only question is WHEN?

PipeTobacco