Rant #2,468: Limbo Rock

In my world, I am doing the limbo today, trying to get under that bar and trying to understand things that are going on around me.

I am doing the limbo with my father.

He is sick. There is no doubt about it.

He is weak, so skinny, a shell of his former self.

But through the great work of the doctors and nurses in the hospital that he is in, he seemingly has pretty much recovered from double pneumonia. It took about a week and a half, but he appears to have knocked that out of the park.

But the lingering effects remain. He has to be watched closely because he has a tendency to continue to aspirate, meaning when he eats food--what little food he is eating is pureed--it has a tendency to not go to the right place, which can lead to complications.

As I said, he is weak, needs to be on a breathing apparatus, and he acts very confused most of the time we have seen him in the hospital.

Do we put him in a rehab facility after the hospital stay, or do we do what he has asked us to do, which is to bring him home?

This has gone through our minds, and we have gone back and forth with it.

If he were to go to a facility, he might continue to be totally confused, and when he has been totally confused in the hospital, he has not helped himself by, among other things, ripping his connections to machines out of his body and trying to get up out of the bed without assistance.

If he were to come home, he might be familiar with his surroundings, but we would need nursing help, for sure, because my mother simply cannot do it alone. And there is no predicting how he will be at home, even with familiar surroundings.

But during lucid moments, he has told us he wants to come home, so we have decided to grant his wish, which could be his final one. He is going to come home probably either today or tomorrow.

I think we will find out within a day or two or three whether this was the right thing to do, but honestly, my father has never asked for much during his entire life, and if he wants to come home, then his wish is going to be granted.

We aren't the genie in the bottle granting wishes, but if you remember all the genies that granted wishes, they told the ones making the wishes that there are consequences that go along with these wishes that they might not see now, but will come up after the wish is granted.

We fully realize that, and we are keeping our fingers crossed that we are making the right move for both him and my mother.

And on another plane, there is a genie in Washington who tried to grant the wishes of all unemployed people, but he has been rebuffed by others, so his wish might not become reality for everyone involved anyway.

Say what you want about President Trump--and yes, there is plenty to say about him--but he did the right thing by signing an executive order to grant an extra $400 a week to those out of work.

People who have been out of work had been getting an extra $600 a week, but that situation lapsed more than a week ago, and it has put people like myself and my son in complete limbo about our future unemployment payments.

This is a different time to be unemployed. The national percentage is about four times what it was before the pandemic hit, and in reality, the percentage of people out of work is much, much higher, probably in the 20 percent range at the very least.

Jobs are not plentiful, even though we are being told they are, but people are really, really struggling today to pay their bills.

Sure, there are stragglers and moochers, people not doing much to find work, but I think the majority of people are trying to find employment; I know that I have been doing just that for 10 months, and it is really frustrating, because I and millions of others have been frozen out of the market for one reason or another.

And then we have Congress, which simply wants to argue during a presidential election year and not come to any consensus for the very constituents who put them in office. They--and I mean both Democrats and Republicans--should be ashamed of themselves. The grandstanding and electioneering has been pitiful at best.

And then you have the president, who took the bull by the horns and signed the executive order granting a middle ground payment--$400--to those out of work, while Congress fiddles away and does nothing.

This has rankled both Democrats and Republicans, and one of the main things that has upset our legislators is that one quarter--25 percent of the payments--are to come from the states themselves.

The states themselves are cash strapped now, so how are they going to foot 25 percent of the bill?

Funny, but many of the states led by Democrats--including New York State--has continually had its hands out for money covering one thing or another, asking the federal government for more money while on the other side of its mouth deriding the Trump for one thing or another.

They have acted like spoiled babies, babies that want their bottles and they want it now, or they will throw a temper tantrum.

Governor Cuomo in New York States has been particularly double talking since day one of the pandemic, praising the federal government when they do as he had asked, knocking them when they do something he doesn't like, yet always extending his hand for more, more and more from the administration.

Cuomo is the leader of the same state whose mayor of the most important city in the word decides to waste taxpayers money by painting idiotic "murals" on the street. Sure, that money to do that is miniscule compared to the money we are talking about here, but don't you think that that money could have gone to the very social programs that the mayor touts as the saviors of the city he is running into the ground?

Cuomo has opted out of the unemployment payment, and has ripped Trump every which way for even attempting to get something done. The last time I looked, the governor had no plan of his own to suggest, so New Yorkers like myself and my son sit here with nothing.

And as far as that part-time job I think I might have ... I am sitting in limbo on that, too. I have not heard back from them at all, and I am beginning to wonder ... just beginning, of course.

So yes, I am doing the limbo right now on a couple of levels, and since I am not spry as I used to be--heck, at age 63 some people think I am as old as, let's say, indoor plumbing is--it is getting harder and harder to get under the limbo stick.

All kidding aside, I hope my family and I are doing the right thing in bringing my father home.

The other stuff I was talking about ... well, like someone else once said, "a mere bag of shells."

One thing at a time ... one thing at a time ... one thing at a time ... .

"How low can you go?"