I'm Working On It

Have you ever dreamed of what you would do with 100 million dollars? Buy an island, cure disease, help family..... etc. I am fairly certain i would be willing to spend A LOT of money to make a certain person's daily routine hellish just for a month.

I would require my lawyer (since I have 100 million i am assuming a lawyer comes with it) to deliver no less than 3 letters by courier daily, to the office of the person currently annoying the hell out of me. I would also instruct my lawyer to be certain this person would have to hire a lawyer to answer EVERY single letter.

You may be wondering why I would go that far and what the guys is doing. My company is a subcontractor for this person's company and he is currently annoying the shit out me. One of these people who feels the needs to illustrate that they believe their brain is bigger than mine, actually the jackass wants to prove he is better in every way. He feels he has to prove he can twist the language of the contract to his means..... blah blah blah, he's a bully and was probably that kid in high school who got picked on and never got over it so chooses to be an ass whenever he has power.

It's a pissing contest or as i like to call them - who has the biggest wanker contest. he sends unwarranted letters, accusing me of lying and being an imbecile. The real kicker is I KNOW i am right, I have spoken with a lawyer who says basically, "yeah you would win but it will take many thousands of dollars to do so, does that pencil out for you?" No, it doesn't. I can't spend say 5,000 to get back the 2,500 i never should have had to lay out to begin with. Which is why this guys ANNOYS the hell out me.

The really really real kicker is - I DON'T CARE. I feel like calling him and saying "yes your wanker is HUGE, HUGE. Congrats. No really it's the BIGGEST wanker I have ever seen. Perhaps that's why you are such an ass, having to carry around that HUGE wanker all day every day has to be tiring." because i really don't care about his need to feel big and powerful.

I really could care less about the power contest..... ALL I WANT TO DO is the complete the project and be done with the moron. Yet this dumbass writes stupid letters full of crap for no other reason than he knows it will costs me more money to fight him than to just complete the work. Which takes me back to why i would to send him letters, upon letters, upon letters that he would have to spend money to respond to. And if I had a 100 million, I would be just petty enough to do it. Which is probably not a good thing for my karma, but it really would make me feel good to aggravate this SOB.

I sat with cancer gramps today for quite a bit. He was asleep with i first arrived, but perked up quickly when he realized someone was there to see him.

A few days earlier I had taken him for a walk in his wheelchair and he had told my mom later i was a "shitty driver." Even though his eyes had closed I asked if would like to go for another walk. he scrunched up his nose, pursed his lips and shook his head no. I said "oh wait, you told mom I was a shitty driver" His eyes eased open. He looked at me, eyes so clear, they were the eyes of old. Eyes that are a blue in color like the cavern of a glacier and suddenly there he was..... grandpa, just like he had never left. Like he had never gotten sick, or never had his body ravaged by cancer all over and weeks of the waiting..... waiting...waiting for death to come. He had not slipped away to where ever he goes to wait for death, as he regularly does. He was still with me, and he laughed. Not a lot, just a few bars, a chuckle I suppose. It was the best moment of my day. A simple joke between me and him like we used to and for a few precious moments it eased the pain, his and mine.

Then he said he had to "get to it." Get to what I asked him. He looked at me and said "dying." "Why can't I just die, I wish I could just die." I said I know grandpa and I'm sorry I wish there was something I could do. I know this sounds funny but I wish it for you too." The tears slipped down his face and he nodded. He reached for my hand and I held him as i wiped away his tears and tried to stifle my own.

We spent most of the rest of visit that way - him asking why he couldn't just die and me holding his hand on one of mine and 2 wads of kleenex in the other to wipe away tears. One for him and one for me.

i am a firm believer, either you laugh or you cry, and I tend to be a laugher, even when it's not socially acceptable. So this post might seem mean or hard hearted, I promise you it is not, instead it's almost an homage to cancer gramps, he tended to be a laugher too.

Sunday afternoon I went over to cancergramps and he was chilling on his couch. As a side note, these are the ugliest of couches. They are leather and i believe the color is mauve or dark red velvet set off brilliantly against the mid pink carpet. Grandma loved the pinks and reds. You get the idea. So for a dying man to lay there on a couch of that color, does nothing to brighten any one's day. Maybe the couches would be okay not on pink..... doesn't matter.

We spoke for a bit, his lips heavily chapped and his voice failing. They he started to cry. He said again he was ready to go. I said all I could think to say, because i don't think there are words to express the depth of both my gratitude and grief for him. I told him to go, he is a good man, he has lived a good life and if he wants to go he can go, we love him. He closed his eyes and nodded is head. I asked him if he had seen his late wife, he said no, not yet, but he told "him" he was going at 6. Going where I asked. Then he extended his finger pointed and himself and then up to the ceiling. Heaven, I clarified? He shook his head again and I touched his hand, and I said, "Grandpa I don't know if God takes reservations, but if you've got it worked out, it sounds wonderful to me." He chuckled and said for him, they took a reservation. My Dad asked what cancer gramps and I were laughing about and when I explained, my father laughed as well.

Earlier in the day he had told my father that God sent him back twice. Who the heck gets sent back? and TWICE? He more frequently sees his mother and his late brother now as well. (who decided to use the word "late" for someone who has passed? I always think the person just hasn't shown up yet, I digress.) He has asked to go "home" and when we explain he is home, he says "the house with the stairs." He could mean his childhood home, heaven or another home, we just aren't sure.

He spent the rest of the evening not making too much sense saying it takes "his girls" a while to get going. Or making jokes when my father would tell him of people who have called to say hello, cancer gramps waives and simply says bye! in an almost upbeat manner.

He shot up off the couch about 2 hours later and said he was ready to go. We assumed he meant for bed and my dad maneuvered over to help cancer gramps stand up. He was up and then he was down. He just collapsed, no words at all. I looked at the clock and it said 558, and I thought to myself, "I'll be a son of a ....... if he just died I swear to god."

He had past out and was back within a few seconds. He's teeth had fallen out in the fall and I'm looking at a scene, well I can't really describe it. Here's my grandfather, almost indian style, without his teeth and nothing more than skin and bones really. He's whimpering a bit and unable to move himself towards the couch. Here's my father trying to get cancer gramps on the couch so we can get the wheel chair in a place where he can get to it easily. Here I am standing with the chair, feeling absolutely helpless holding the wheelchair, looking at his teeth on the ground. And I thought to myself, this blows goat ass. Plain and simple, blows goat ass. No one should be reduced to this. No one.

We got him settled in his bedroom and I gave him a kiss, and told him I loved him. He said "if I don't see you tomorrow, you're my girl."

My Dad and I stood outside a bit after grandpa had fallen asleep and my usually stoic father, a man i have never seen actually have a tear on his face, had a few slowing making their way down. He hugged me for another unusual minute or so, and I asked how he was keeping it together. He said some of the wisest words ever spoken, "you just keep putting one foot in front of the other. It's not easy, but it's all part of life and it goes on."

I prayed on the way home through my tears and I said "I don't believe I know more than you but.......God........ I don't know if you sent him back twice, but if you did, next time you see him, if you can let him in, I'd really appreciate it, I'll take one for the team if necessary, but next time you see him, if you could let him in."

Today is Tuesday and he's still here, waiting for his table in Heaven.

**********Edited************
Is this something we the people really care about? I personally don't care if he decides to have an ostrich, a camel, an iguana or a ferret for a pet.

WE HAVE BIGGER WORRIES THAN A PET!!!

And while I am at it, I am hearing the government wants to send out another round of stimulus checks (500 a person, 1000 a family). Keep the friggin money!!! Not that either sum is insignificant on its' own, however when viewed in the larger scope of our economy's troubles it is nothing. People need a way to refi a mortgage they are upside down on, people need jobs, not 500 or 1000 bucks.

And another thing, this business about building roads and bridges..... I'm in construction, and let me tell you, roads and bridges are not job creating. They are equipment heavy, but not labor heavy. They need to build buildings that require interior finishes and furnishings.

Plus, where the heck did all the bailout money go? I think we should start a movement and every company who received bailout money and then gave out bonuses should have to return the bailout money immediately. If you can afford to give people bonuses you didn't really need the money to begin with, and if you used bailout money for bonuses that explains why your company is in the crapper!!! You can't give what you don't have.

There must be some accountability here!!! I mean come on the F on....... These people (the government) work for us and yet we do nothing to hold them accountable, they have handed out billons of dollars, BILLONS, with no appreciable difference in our economy. We need a full accounting, what goes in - all taxes and then what goes out.

Something has to give in this country. Either people are going to be willing to give up 50% or more of their income, or we start letting companies that are unprofitable fail. I for one vote for unprofitable companies failing. Yes, in the short term it will have a great cost, increase unemployment, foreclosures etc, however the recovery will happen a lot quicker as those unprofitable companies fail and/or are bought out, opening back up the market, which means jobs will return as will profits. Everyone needs a bit of help some of the time, but not everyone needs help all of the time unless you are disabled.

And the other little piece of info that the government doesn't want to tell you- big corporations just pass taxes onto the consumer, they do not absorb those taxes. The windfall oil tax - yeah that would find it's way to your pocket just like to government making, I believe, 18 cents a gallon in taxes on gas. Historically the only way to grow an economy is to reduce taxes.

It's beginning to get very tricky.

Very Tricky.

i thought i would be stronger when it came down to this time in my granpda's dying. I walked in to his house this evening and was shocked how he had declined since Monday. He lays propped up on pillows on the couch and stares at the ceiling mostly. He's in absolutely no pain (THANK YOU GOD) and is very confused most of the time. He speaks of seeing his mother, and wanting to go to her. My father has told him if he wants to go it's okay to go. I firmly believe those who have gone before you head south for just a bit to ease your northward journey. So some may say it's the pain meds, or the cancer, or the death standing by his side; but for it's his mother waiting to be the angel who will carry him across.


We were speaking and somehow pedicures came up and I asked him if he ever thought would have started getting pedicures at 80 some odd years old and he responded by saying no, but he never thought he'd be this sick either. I guess life is full of the unexpected. He drifted off into the quite stillness that racks his life while the cancer ravages him.


I had to leave the house, I couldn't hold it together for one more minute. I didn't want to upset grandpa or buddah boy so I went out front and cried, big old, heavy, sorrowful, drowning tears.


My Mom came out and hugged me, reminded me he isn't in pain and has been the only she has ever known who says he did everything he wanted whenever he wanted. And those are good things. Very good things. But my grandpa is dying and that wounds my heart. Wounds me in a way i wasn't when my 2 other grandparents passed. Palpably wounds me. Wounds in a manner I am unsure will heal with time, if at all.


I cried the entire way home, the hyperventilating, hiccuping, snot dripping, gawd awful kind of crying. My grandpa is dying and there is nothing anyone can do to make that better or easier for him and that devastates me. I suppose I am crying because I will lose him, because it aches, because the world will lose a kind of man we need more of, and because I can do nothing to stop any of from happening.


Cancer sucks.

2008, so long, farewell and get your big ugly ass out of here.

2009, may you usher in hope and change and a renewed faith.