the crips and the phlegms or what happens when you put a parent in assisted living

this has been quite a week for the flipflop fed. it all started benignly enough with recovery act report reviews and that lasted all of 2 hours before my world changed dramatically. my mom called a little before 9:00 am to say that she had been taken by ambulance to the emergency room the night before because she couldn't breathe. turns out she has pneumonia and was released in the middle on the night after some breathing treatments and a vicodin. of course, i felt bad, but since there was little i could do from my cubicle in the sky, i returned to reviewing reports. i pretty much stayed focused until my mom called again - that's when it all began.

after getting up from her vicodin snooze, my mom headed downstairs to get some coffee and it was there that she found my father unresponsive and slumped at the kitchen table. i'm going to leave out most of the next four days because it's just a lot of hospital stuff, but i will tell you that his sugar count was 39 when the ambulance arrived and he was in full-blown congestive heart failure. in his time at the hospital they were able to regulate his sugar and remove the equivalent of 17 lbs. of water from his body. he clearly had not been taking his medicine.

taking in to account all that has happened over the past 9 months, we decided as a family that my dad should be discharged to assisted living. the transition has been remarkably smooth - he's eating again and participating in taking his medicine. but the best parts are really all of the funny stories from the first few days -

he's one of the younger people there and all of the old biddies call him the "young fellow."

his newest friend is a 104 year old guy who doesn't look a day over 80.

he's taking a rug hooking class.

after being told that there are two wings to the building - east and west - i asked if there were gangs. my father quickly replied -"yeah. the crips and the phlegms."

humor definitely makes an incredibly difficult situation all that much easier.

a small village just outside of ... zambia?

watching the web series "venice" and i'm still loving it, but this recent episode had a little bit of a gaffe. two characters were getting to know each other, one telling the other that she had been in the peace corps. the potential boyfriend asked "where?" to which she replied - "a little village outside of zambia?" really? they couldn't have done better research to find out that zambia's a COUNTRY and there are thousands of villages on its border.

oh well, guess it can't be perfect ...

"i don't do diabetics or tripods"

i recently decided to do my part to honor bob barker's legacy and help control the pet population. our former neighbors' cats were breeding like rabbits so i trapped all 7 and then took them to a cat rescue to have them spayed and neutered and adopted out. that's when the fun began!

(what you're about to read is absolutely true!)

i met the transporter (helps the rescue operation by ferrying animals to and fro) in the parking lot of petsmart to drop off the cats. she was right on time, but on an "emergency call" as she loudly announced when i approached the car - she told me to go back to my car and she would be with me in a moment. (i knew it was her car because i was told to be on the look out for a maroon suv covered with paws and had the license plate "pawmoble.) it was like we were doing espionage or something. finally, i got to hand over the cats. we made pleasant conversation and it was at that point that she informed me that she too was in the cat rescue business, but that she didn't do diabetics (scared of the needles) or tripods (doesn't understand how they survive on only three legs).

tonight, we were summoned to the rescue to pick up the two cats that would be going back to our former neighbors (too old to be easily adopted). i cannot even begin to describe the scene. the place was literally crawling with cats - all well fed and cared for, but way too many for my taste.

god bless these women, but that's just a wacky life's mission.

give to haiti, but do your research

all of the big outlets are picking up on a story on the smoking gun questioning the finances of yele haiti - wyclef jean's charity. seems that they're not very good accountants, nor do they get that, if you'd like to avoid scrutiny, you're better off not "giving" money to your friends' businesses.

there's no doubt that haiti needs money and that we all should give generously. but, don't just make the "hip donation." research your organization - do they have people already on the ground? how long have they been in the country? do they have experience with disaster work? are they connected to the larger relief community?

wyclef's got his money so please consider donating to these organizations that are solid, viable, and have been doing this kind of work, in haiti, with haitians and haitian partners forever -

mennonite central committee

american red cross

partners in health

there's "lesbian" and then there's "subaru owner"

every group has its stereotypes and the sisters of sappho are no exception. i definitely don't fit most on the list. for example, i love my dad, would love to have a child and i don't drive a subaru. oh wait, i DIDN'T drive a subaru until today! yep, the flipflop fed bought an outback - the number one car for lesbians as voted by lesbians! the best part is that it's a really good car and we got an excellent deal.

denzelyahu haNavi

just came from seeing "the book of eli" - the hughes brothers post-apocalyptic retelling of the story of the prophets elijah and elisha. (absolutely no desire to see this movie save for a bored teenager who said - "let's go see the one with denzel.")

would love to give it a two thumbs up, but it was really just an overly-violent spectacle aimed at the males of the war generation (and there were plenty of them there). it was VERY preachy and VERY traditional christian. and i wondered throughout exactly how many of them actually got the deeper meaning. there were however a few things that i actually liked -

1) the elisha character (mila kunis) was a woman

2) the elijah character (denzel washington) ascended into heaven from a small rocky island perched in the san francisco bay. that's right, instead of crossing the brook kerith to get to elijah's hill, this elijah rows across san francisco bay from the shores of baker beach to alcatraz. (i'll get back to you - or you fill me in - when i figure out the deeper meaning of alcatraz.)

bottom line, no need to spend any money on this one - you can read the story for free in the book of kings.

nothing more christian that saying "you deserved it"

a few years back pat robertson blamed the devastation brought on by hurricane katrina on abortion. pretty illogical at best. and now pat's back with some more words of wisdom in the aftermath of another natural disaster.

according to pat, yesterday's earthquake has nothing to do with the fact that haiti sits on a fault line or any other reasonable explanation; rather the decimation is the direct result of a pact the haitians made with the devil in the 1800s. not wanting to do this profound and utterly insightful assertion any disservice i give you the entire quote -

haitians "were under the heel of the french. you know, napoleon iii and whatever. and they got together and swore a pact to the devil. they said 'we will serve you if you get us free from the french.' true story. and so the devil said, 'okay. it's a deal."

i don't know about you, but i want to read the historical account of this meeting between the entire haitian population and the devil. who invited who? did they share a meal? was it a back room deal or was there coverage from the press pool? cause even though pat says it, i'm not entirely convinced this is a "true story."

and the copy editors are still sleeping

can't wait to see a show at the "jiffy lube live" pavillion. catchy isn't it - but hopefully not in the std sort of way ...

too sharp's pretty dull

dc is not immune to crime and therefore not immune to plain old dumb criminals. i could attempt to tell you the story of a band of inept criminals who decided to target a known drug dealer, how one of those criminals ended up killing his accomplice - his father no less - and how another was an on-duty dc cop. but, i would not tell it half as well as paul duggan did in monday's post. you couldn't have made this up if you tried!

who's tougher - mpd or the nba commissioner?

the big story around here is gilbert arenas and his guns. not his bicep "guns" but the unregistered firearms that he brought to work. unregistered firearms are illegal in the district of columbia and any other schmo would have caught a charge if they had been so brazen as to bring their guns to work to mess with a colleague. but not gilbert - our stellar police department gave him a pass. yep, they invited him down to the federal attorney's office to "talk" about the situation. instead of landing on "do not pass go do not collect $200," gilbert was only required to apologize! now that's top notch enforcement!

and the federal attorney were probably still giddy from meeting a real-life professional athlete and celebrity, the unfortunately, it seems as if the apology was a fake because, not long after, he was observed mocking the decision and pretending to "shoot" his teammates before the beginning of a game. i would love to say that it was THAT that pissed off mpd and they arrested him, but that would not be true. it was however that action that finally got someone to take a stand. while the mpdnba commissioner took a stand and hit gilbert where it hurts - indefinite suspension without pay.

and yet nothing beats the original

yeah, chandler parsons hit from half court this weekend, but the original had to be the buzzer beating, game winning half court shot made by early "pearl" washington in 1984. syracuse, after a back and forth game, was about to lose to boston college until pearl got the ball. that's when -



i was 13 when that happened and sitting at half court. made growing up in the land of the concrete sky totally worth it!

pretty fly for a white guy

check out this buzzer beating, game winner from yesterday's florida nc state game -

why kids hate efficient and effective snow removal

what's the difference between snow removal in the district and snow removal in places where they know what to do? a kid's biggest nightmare - no snow days. over the weekend, more than 44 inches fell around the town in which i grew up - most in less than 24 hours. and while the dc area still has piles of snow on corners more than two weeks after the only 15 inches fell, kids in these towns were on their way back to school this morning - not even a delay to be had!

was the copy editor in the bathroom or something?

check out this headline from cnn.com. something tells me that the editorial board conversation went something like this - "no f***ing way! they say a colony might fit in that moon hole. what a set up! we've totally got to smash this softball out-of-the-park."

through the eyes of a child

tonight we're hanging out with the little girls who previously lived next door. (they've only moved up the street and around the corner, but it seems a world away.) they made cookies and quesadillas and now they're playing with the wii. i'm truly amazed by their innocence and the joy they have for the simplest things.

THIS is how to enjoy life!

i would LOVE to have a t-shirt from this bowl game!

looking at a list of the 2009 football bowl games and came across the -

st. petersburg bowl presented by beef 'o' brady's

i probably would have turned down that invitation because it's one that may never be lived down.