20%

Last weekend, my grandfather (dad's dad) moved into his new apartment at The Seasons in Northbrook, IL after living on the east coast (NYC, then Connecticut) for all 89 years of his life. Then Tuesday night he was having trouble breathing and his legs were all swollen and he has a bad heart, anyway, so Wednesday morning they admitted him to the hospital. Wednesday was also my brother's 17th birthday. My mom and dad were both at the hospital pretty much all day while my brother, who is on spring break this week, called and text messaged me constantly because he was bored and his friends are all out of town. I did not get any of these messages until almost 6 PM because I was at work all day, going a bit nuts in the office trying to get out tax letters and thank-you cards to recent donors. It's a bazillion step process that is extremely inefficient but for now there's no better way of doing it. I spent a solid 5 hours running around and all I had to show for it at the end of the day was a stack of maybe 20 envelopes to be mailed. Kids Klub was a joke since all the kids were picked up by 5, so I wrote an email to a mom and then headed out to Oak Park for my brother's official birthday dinner at The Cock Cafe*. I ate too much (that's what happens when my parents pay for steak) and was exhausted, but I didn't have to work until 3 on Thursday and I felt bad that my brother's birthday was sucking, so I agreed to play with him.
Thursday was going to be reptile day at Kids Klub, so I wanted to get one of the Crocodile Hunter movies from Blockbuster. My brother and I were standing in line with the one Steve Irwin movie they had when my brother was flipping through the clearance DVDs and found the first Animal Planet Crocodile Hunter movie for $2.99! Why rent when you can buy? So now I own a Crocodile Hunter DVD. Thank you, Mark.
The thing Mark most wanted to do for his birthday was take his big bag of quarters to Baker Square and clean out their stuffed animal claw machine. My brother is obscenely good at those things, and after watching him go through quarter after quarter for almost an hour, he had four new hideous stuffed bunnies and a huge ugly stuffed chick to show for his efforts. He was disappointed with himself for not getting more. We shared a piece of triple berry pie so it didn't look like we'd just come to play the stupid crane machine and left. I was absolutely exhausted at this point, but it was 10:30 and he wanted to play pool. I do enjoy spending time with the boy and love him very much, but the real reason I ended up agreeing to go was because I still felt bad he'd had such a shitty birthday. We went to Oak Park Billiards, where I spent way too much time in high school and the summers before and after my freshman year of college. It's dark and smokey and the tables are really old and the bumpers and cues aren't really straight and there are tons of bizarre figurines (mostly things you'd get in Chinatown) and scary old couches in dusty piles along the walls. Ted and I used to play a lot. I was awful. Turns out, my brother is even worse. I have no power whatsoever, but I'm fairly accurate if the ball doesn't have to go too far and I know the angles. My brother knows the angles but has no fine motor skills so he basically whacks the cue as hard as he can in any given direction and hopes for the best. I won all but the first game, when I scratched on the 8-ball. Thank God the pool hall closes at midnight and I was allowed to pass out at my parents house with Freud trying to kick me off the bed.

Thursday was insane. I woke up and was out the door of my parents' by 9 AM, ran a few billion errands, went home showered, and went to work. After all the regular employees had left, a delivery of 600 lbs of school supplies showed up and the delivery guy refused to take them upstairs due to "insurance issues." I'd actually talked to someone from his company the day before about the problem of the school being on the second floor and they assured me they'd work it out before anyone showed up. Oops. So I ended up spending an hour dealing with the fact that the temple didn't want 15 large boxes hanging out downstairs all night (the women's seder was getting underway as the delivery truck showed up) and there were a number of other issues (I'll spare you the details) with getting the shipment upstairs. I the end, we hid the boxes under a table outside the temple office and the school's office administrator spent today carrying them up about one every half hour. Stoopid. And it was reptile day! Sure, it wasn't a big deal for Elizabeth to be in charge and stick them in front of the Crocodile Hunter movie, but I had so many things to say and do! Damn you, delivery company!
Right as all the issues with the boxes were getting resolved, my dad called and asked if I wanted to meet him at the hospital to see my grandfather. Since I was already up north and my dog had been out pretty much from 9 AM until 2:30 PM, I figured it'd be nice and not particularly difficult. Lo and behold, it was actually nice, and not particularly difficult! Strange to see my grandfather finally seeming old. He's turning 90 in May, and it's kind of to be expected, but it's been just this past year that he's more visibly declined. He's still funny as fuck, even while he was all cranky and stuck in the hospital, but his hands now shake and you can see the big weird lump in his shoulder from where his pacemaker is under his skin and he gets confused mid-sentence sometimes. Still, when a nurse asked him if he was on oxygen at home he responded, "Yes, 20%." When my dad and the nurse thought he was just confused he had to explain to them room air contains 20% oxygen. And you wonder how I got my sense of humor...

I took a 2 hour nap after work today but I'm still exhausted and it's now after midnight so I quit. I'm going to bed NOW. Or at least I'll sit in my bed and eat Cheerios and not write anymore.