This 4th of July holiday slipped past me as if in a dream. Because we don’t make plans, because, lately, our friends are traveling, or preoccupied with life issues, there are no invitations to cookouts lately, and we don’t have traditional jobs so because having a 4-day weekend isn’t the special thing it used to be, it is easy to forget this is a holiday.

In a holiday week, the trash and recycle pick-ups are delayed one day. So when I was gathering the bags from various containers, Ed reminded me, with some pique, that it wasn’t going to be picked up the next day, but the day after. And I said, the overflowing garbage under the counter and in our various receptacles doesn’t know it’s a holiday, it only knows it has been six days and it smells without regard to is it a holiday or not … so my getting it ready now, stashed in the big can, and put outside even if it isn’t picked up till a day later works for me.

So we spent a quiet night watching re-runs of NCIS (always good) and Ed was listening to opera on YouTube and I was reading again Bill Maher’s book published a few years ago, New Rules, which has some really funny stuff in it that still holds up. His political jokes are centered pre Obama.

Then, I washed my little face, and did other nightly ablutions and the phone rang, and it was Cape Coral hospital calling with regard to one of Ed’s newbies, a former ph.d. therapist, now with MS, losing cognition, and living in the Woodlands, a facility that he hates because everyone is old and can’t hold a conversation It seems Steve had gotten suicidal, called 911, and had himself signed into the hospital. The nurse said he was calmed (anti-depressant administered, no doubt) and ready to be discharged, so Ed got dressed, and I joined him because this is tedious business and company always helps.
It was important that Steve be gotten and returned to the facility because a “friend” of his, a woman (he says he was never “involved” with her) keeps showing up, takes him out of the facility, straight to the bank, and has him sign over assets to her. The facility and the police have to keep constant watch to be sure she is barred from getting him again. The last time she succeeded, he was gone two days, and lost ground akin to being gone a month. He does not have the ability to resist pressure. And what is always tragic in these cases, is that he remembers enough to know he used to be smart.

So off we went. Steve said, after being settled into our car, that he was not going to stay in the Woodlands, no way. Ed said he would get him into a better venue with younger people, more activity, etc., but couldn’t do it until he was officially his guardian, to be settled at a court date two weeks from how, and could he please bite the bullet till then. So Steve said okay, but I am guessing he’ll forget again and start agitating. And Ed is working on a restraining order against the woman.

That was our 4th. Happy birthday USA.
xx, Teal