Maura's Illuminated Manuscript

Hurricane Idalia – gotta love that hillbilly-sounding name – has passed through north Florida, delivering to my hometown of Gainesville the highest winds that it's seen in my lifetime so far.

Said my son the news maven, trees got blown down and cars got flipped, but there was no flooding in Gainesville. My friend fizzgig described it as a "yard cleanup event". Florida, man.

So it looks as if Gainesville continues to lead a charmed life, as in many ways I did when I lived there. The same can't be said of Cedar Key, FL, a sleepy little beach town on the Gulf coast due west of Gainesville where I've been many times. My parents loved it. It's underwater right now; we'll see how well it recovers.

I've texted the Death Doula. She's fine, and as far as she knows, Mom's memory care facility is too. Most of the city has not lost power, but those falling trees took some power lines with them in outlying areas, natch. Honestly, a quarter million people without power across the state isn't that bad by hurricane standards.

But in case you're wondering, a hit this hard has been historically rare in the northern half of the state. Idalia is the worst in that part of Florida since 1896.

I've now spent a majority of the days I planned on spending in Florida.

I have yet to experience a truly bad day with Mom. Maybe my sisters really did break her in for me. Maybe it's the drugs that were a condition of her admission into rehab. Maybe it's time. Maybe it's because I'm still the favorite. Gift horses. She's been better to me than she often was on the phone. And let it continue for me and for my sisters. I must say, though, that Mom's starting to get inquisitive about what happens next. I'll leave it to Good Sister to deliver news Mom probably won't like next month.

I had a brief freakout this morning when I found one of Mom's hearing aids on the night stand this morning, and I couldn't find the other one. Providence sent a physical therapist, giving me an opportunity to search the bed and find the other hearing aid. Moral: Don't leave those things in Mom's ears when I bug out for the day. I thought I was being considerate to everyone else around her, but I guess that can't happen.

Today I learned: While using a walker, one must stand up straight and step into the box described by the feet of the walker. Mom's been pretty resistant to walkers in the past, but I'm hoping that resistance broke along with her hip.

Yesterday I got gussied up and went downtown for ramen, followed by hanging out in Gainesville's only gay bar, the University Club. Gainesville is a college town in a warm, humid climate. You know what that means: lots of younger women running around not wearing much. I'm OK with that, to say the least. It's even more OK when they chat with you, however briefly. In the actual UC I met adorably square, politically active gay dads and I saw, across the bar, a dude in a peach polo shirt and a puppy hood. Oh, Gainesville.

There's a small contingent of twilight walkers in my mom's neighborhood that I appear to have joined. On such a walk a few minutes ago, I spotted a tricked-out black F-150 pickup parked on my mom's street. I would have assumed it to be another Southern standard douchebro vehicle were it not for original Pride and trans Pride stickers on the back windshield. Not everything and everyone in my hometown is terrible.

I keep having to insert the word "mom's" above. Yes, this neighborhood and this street used to be mine, but they're not anymore. I wonder if I know anyone else is this whole subdivision anymore.

When I talked to my thoroughly worn out Good Sister last night, she went into some detail about when it's good to be around Mom and what to do. Like many dementia patients, Mom "sundowns", i.e. she gets crankier and confused as the day wears on.

But in my mom's case, it starts well before sundown, more like 1400 Eastern/1100 Pacific. GS's advice was that I show up as early as I can to be with Mom, bring things to read both for her and for myself because she won't want to interact with me all the time, and bug out once Mom starts to lose it in the early afternoon.

So maybe I can't sneak away to the beach this trip*. But maybe I can sneak away to the University Club, Gainesville's only gay bar. Or to the oldest part of town where the good architecture, street art, eats & drinks are. The question then becomes, with whom shall I sneak away? I do have a few candidates, but not many these days. Gainesville may be where I'm from, but it hasn't been my home for some time.

I should probably spend at least a few evenings destroying paper that Mom can fixate on, or removing tripping hazards. That's for my sisters to decide.



*But I'd be a fool to go to Florida without my bathing suit.

So after the morning chores like a run to the drug store and emptying Mom's bathroom trash to prevent another inappropriate flush, I did something I've wanted to do since I got here: I fucked off to the beach*. Specifically, Crescent Beach, the nearest (Atlantic?) beach to Gainesville, and the one that my family always went to when I was a child.

Sometimes I screw up and things just work out. When I got to A1A, the road that's nearest the ocean, I couldn't remember whether to turn right or left, so I followed the herd. I ended up at a public park that wasn't the usual one. It had a smaller parking lot and a much smaller covered picnic area. An hour's walk south took me to the park that I'd been looking for: much bigger, but the parking lot was completely full, as usual by late morning. Go me!

Yeah, zenning out in the sun and constant breeze; watching the little fishies, dawgz, and kids; discreetly checking out younger women in bikinis; feeling the warm water on my feet; and noting the lack of visible Trump trash on the beach. For two and a half hours, it was the life. That's about the same amount of time that it took me to get there and back. It was so worth the drive.

When I got home, I had to remind Mom when I'm leaving: tomorrow morning at 0900 eastern, or not much later. She said she would miss me. She said, "I think you're wonderful."
"You called me an asshole yesterday – no, Sunday."
"Oh."
I left her in her room and started practicing Spanish on the couch. She eventually found me there. She didn't remember calling me an asshole. "'Asshole' isn't in my vocabulary."
"That was the first time I remember hearing you say it, but it hurt. A lot."
"I hadn't had anything to drink."
"But you sure wanted to. Mom, you wanting a drink that badly is a problem in itself, never mind me."
"I don't have a problem."
Well, she doesn't have a problem for me to deal with, that's for sure. I didn't pursue it any further. She wanted to give me old photos of Dad's family, and she wanted to get my address, which she already had. Of course I had to get it straight in her head who I am. Le sigh.

Was this trip necessary? Yeah, I guess. Am I a better or happier person for having made it? Just get me the fuck home already.



*I did invite Mom, but she said no. She has so much trouble walking that walking on sand seemed like a really bad plan to her, and I think she was right. She can't step up a curb now. What a difference four years makes.

Mom told me to get on the next plane home and called me an asshole because I didn't buy her as much wine as she wanted on Thursday. She also complained about the wine itself* but nevertheless put away a bottle in at most two days.

I got her a 750ml bottle of the cheap, nasty dessert wine she likes.

Then I went to the UF campus to walk around. Hey look, Trans Pride stickers on a lamp post! A new building on the lawn where my dad used to collect toke pipes the morning after movies! Gatorade from a vending machine and a needed, sparkling restroom in the student union building!

Then I went downtown, walked around and reminisced some more, got OK ramen outdoors, went to University Club and was the lone customer as I told the bartender my sorrows; the irony is not lost on me. And he answered a question I had: all those people who look straight at UC most likely are, because Gainesville's laid back like that.

I got back to Mom's around 1815, shortly before the shift change. I'd been away for five hours.

Something I haven't told many of you because it hasn't come up is that Mom used to behave like this when I was in high school.

This wasn't an easy entry for me to write. I want out of here. And at the moment I'm OK with not seeing my mother "alive" again. Good Sister says each time we see her now may be the last. If only.

Fortunately, I have more plans outside the house for today: lunch with Funny Lady's friend A and her trans daughter, and sushi with fizzgig. I can't, however, escape taking Mom's trash out because she might flush another diaper if I don't.



*Which was good once but had started to turn. Publix sux.

I took my mom to order a new pair of glasses, and in the process learned that:

1. The glasses she's been wearing for the last six months aren't cheap ones as she said, but somebody's well-made progressive lenses.
2. She doesn't know the difference between credit and debit cards despite Good Sister's best efforts to teach her.
3. She loses control of her bowels with some regularity. It happened while we were out for the second time since I arrived. Gosh, I hope I can get that odor out of the rental car before I return it.
4. I think sweets for meals are a regular thing with Mom. All she had for lunch yesterday was soft-serve ice cream.

Loss of bowel control and not eating & hydrating properly are... not good signs. I've watched that happen to a dog; her end came in months. Mom's terrified of the prospect of leaving this house, but I can't imagine how she can stay here another year if she declines at her current rate. But as regular readers know, she's peed away a majority of her assets on scams, including the reverse mortgage on the house, so there's nowhere else for her to go for long unless Good Sister & her mouthpieces can do what they need to do. Luckily, GS's retirement savings are more liquid than mine, so we can buy the house back from the bastards.

So it was with Good Sister's encouragement that I fulfilled a longtime moral obligation: I went to the only queer bar in Gainesville, FL, namely the University Club. It opened in 1990, five years after I graduated and moved away. It's three small floors in what must be one of the oldest commercial buildings left in town. I must say, it's the best decorated queer bar I've seen anywhere, and that includes San Francisco as well as Seattle. The crowd skews young, as you'd expect in a college town, and it's a pretty mixed bag: Goth girls, apparent normies - which for women means femme down here, a few mixed-sex couples, queens, and unlike Seattle, plenty of Black people. The bartender on the top floor, i.e. the chill floor where the pool table is, put out fudge & chocolate turtles.

I talked to a couple of bartenders and found out that there was at least one queer or queer-friendly bar in the Gainesville area that was contemporaneous with me. I, of course, never made it to them, but I bet my Evil Sister did. Back in the day that would have been her jam.

And I also found out what was up with the young man in the Blue Lives Matter hat. Not only was it irony; it may have been active camouflage. The kid's a car thief who's done three years in prison for at least some of the crimes he's committed in at least two Florida counties. He's been 86'd from the UC.

I had a lovely time. Pity I can't go back until the next time I'm in Gainesville.

But on to today. I took Mom to an ATM at Good Sister's direction - we don't want her to run out of cash again while all her family members are unavailable over the holidays - and to Wal-Mart. Yeah, the latter was Mom's idea. That was... not a pleasant trip. She argued with me about the necessity of going to the ATM. I also made the mistake of relying on her for navigation to Wal-Mart; she knows how to get there, probably, but she can't communicate it, at least not in a timely manner. But we did get it done, and I made sure she ate a reasonable lunch. I'm hoping today was the worst of the visit.

The weather is, of course, perfect: 72°F and sunny.

Good Sister just informed the rest of the United Sister Front that my mom has filed a petition with the court trying to get her financial independence restored. She's going to get re-evaluated, but our lawyer has a) sent the original committee's reports to the new evaluator, and b) informed the new evaluator that Mom, contrary to what she said, actually attended the hearing in which she was placed in guardianship. Our lawyer says, again, there's "no chance" of restoration.

It bears repeating: my mother can't remember going to the hearing where the court placed her in guardianship. To quote Evil Sister and myself, wow. She's still slipping further away, and as nasty as ever. I don't envy this new evaluator; he too gets to tell her that she's lost her marbles, and she won't take that well.

ES expressed the worry, and not for the first time, that Mom can still drive legally. But as GS points out, since Florida is packed with geezers who vote, it's more difficult than elsewhere to take away their driving privileges. The tiny piece of good news there is that judging from what I've seen and heard, Mom is much more likely to get lost than pull a bonehead move while driving.

I called Mom from the bus yesterday to warn her that the zit on the face of humanity that is Richard Spencer is coming to the University of Florida, and that she should avoid the UF campus while that's happening. It turns out I needn't have worried: she knew who he was. She also knew that the president of the UF had originally planned to deprive him of a platform, but what I didn't know was that the UF's board of directors had caved in to the threat of a lawsuit and allowed Spencer to come. She also knew that Florida's governor had arranged for a heavy law enforcement presence. I'm relieved in more than one way that she's on top if this situation.

I've mentioned this before: the UF campus was my second home growing up. It was my happy place to be a nerdy closet trans girl. And now it's being defiled by chickenshit, broken-headed racists. I hope Gainesville gives them hell.

My father, who was a professor at UF and death on racism, is turning in his grave.

But first: yesterday evening the Wendling decided to, in the words of his mother, stay in his bedroom in his underwear rather than take his malfunctioning phone to the store. Over the phone I heard her lie to him about my having plans for Friday in an unsuccessful attempt to get him to do it right away. I gently told her to cut that out. I'd already bought dinner ingredients, but he wanted to stay last night with his mother in the other end of the city and handle it this morning. OK, kiddo, I'll cook your dinner and put it in the fridge.
No wait, said Ex, he just took a cooking class and should cook; the new agreement is that he'll do that once a month.
Next week, said I, and made with the chicken as originally planned. This is all a long way of saying, Good grief, the pair of them.

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But Ex & the kid are probably in need of slack at the moment: Bigpuppy has cancer. As of this writing no one knows just how treatable that cancer is, but we should know in a few hours. To her credit, Ex hasn't hit me up for vet bills directly even though I once shared custody of the dog. Poor beast. Poor Ex. I don't know how attached my son is to his dog - we got her right before I came out to him - but we may be about to find out the hard way.

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And from the Dept. of Old Testament Stuff, about half an hour ago I saw a prediction that Hurricane Irma is going to buzz right up the spine of the Florida peninsula, packing hurricane force winds all the way to Georgia. And who do I know who lives right on that path? My mother, of course. For my whole lifetime and probably centuries before, Gainesville has been far enough north and inland that nothing worse than a strong gale came through. This time is likely to be different.

I called Mom. She seems pretty calm about the situation, possibly because her location has protected her all this time, or possibly because she's run out of fucks now that she's pushing eighty. She says there's no gas to be had, so she has no plans to bug out. I asked her about shelter - basements are hard to build and rare down there - and she said she plans on using her bathtub. (!)

Sure, I almost didn't notice the full moon last night because the wildfire smoke had dimmed it, but I'll take a few days of scratchy eyes over the possibility of losing my roof and/or getting my house crushed by blown-down pines.

Yesterday: I can barely remember. Grocery shopping for Mom. I introduced her to snobby beer. Dinner at fave local pizza joint, Leonardo's. Hung out a bit with cardinalximinez & fizzgig_bites. Tried to hit University Club alone, but despite being fabulously dressed, it was closed.

Today: Attempted to visit the nearby giant sinkhole that is the Devil's Millhopper, but it's closed on Tuesdays (!). So I went to a park that was our childhood favorite, got some Zen walking in the woods on the new trail across the street, laughed at how the outdoor pool I learned to swim in was "closed for the season" even though it was 76°F (24C). Went to UF's natural history museum with Mom and grooved on the funky Florida fossils. Giant ground sloths, anyone?

Tonight: Drinks with Mom & her friend M, packing. I'm ready to go home.

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The end for my Ex's father may come within the next 24 hours. Ex was in tears when I talked to her yesterday, and has been posting about making the decision to stop heroic measures. If she needs me to help out with logistics or our son, I'll be there.

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Lessons learned from this trip:

• Don't come here over Christmas if I can help it. College towns are dead over academic breaks. Yeah, I know: what did I expect?
• Make sure a non-maternal person will be here in the house when I am.

I'm not sure I've ever been down here over Christmas with just my mom, so I didn't know how meshuggah it was going to make me. Now I do.