Long, rambling entry.

So, my father is in the hospital. My mother called me yesterday and said he had received an IV and antibiotics and was sitting up in the chair and looked much better - then she put him on the phone.

His speech was so slurred I had a hard time understanding him. I was able to glean that he was going home on Monday, and that the hospital was feeding him what he kept calling "hard food," and "real food." He's on a feeding tube and gets nothing by mouth.

My mother took the phone back and I asked what he was talking about and she said she didn't know, but would find out.

So I talked to her last night and she said he was just confused, he gets nothing by mouth. This did not seem to concern her much, but it concerns me. I have had firsthand experience with single-handedly taking care of a mentally confused patient 24/7, and it damn near killed me. My mother is 80. If he is as confused as he appears to me, this is a serious issue. My mother of course is minimizing it - I did give her a bit of a lecture last night that I was concerned for her health and well-being, and she needs to discuss this issue with the doctors. I can't have her pulling all-nighters at her age, sleeping with one eye open in case he gets out of bed or gets tangled in his oxygen or accidentally takes it off or whatever. If this confusion continues we may have to have a talk about placing him in a care facility - something I know she will fight tooth and nail, and so will he with whatever faculties he has. I hope it doesn't come to that, but after I got off the phone with him yesterday I am very concerned that it will be necessary, if not immediately, very soon.

I do not know whether it is true that he is going home tomorrow. It may be part of his confusion. I'll call his primary tomorrow and ask him what's really going on. I have several major meetings on my plate in the upcoming week and I really don't want to have to go over there if I can dodge it for another week.

My son is looking for a new apartment, without success. The great condo conversion boom has drastically reduced the number of apartments, and the few available have gone sky-high. He makes over $30,000 a year and lives well within his means, but is having trouble finding an affordable one bedroom apartment that isn't a former meth lab in a crime-ridden area. Combine that with our soaring crime rate and Orlando is becoming increasingly unliveable. He is thinking of moving to Asheville, NC. He has friends there and it's still tolerably affordable. He can sell houses to other displaced Floridians.

I had dinner with A, the Lawyer Formerly Known as Boss, last night. We caught up on a lot of things. A lawyer we both worked with is writing very amusing Florida-based fiction, I have to keep up with that and share the details if he gets published. He tells hilarious legal war stories in person, and A says his fiction is even better and funnier. I thought again about how I went from being an English major with an interest in photography to a land development and construction paralegal who hasn't written a word outside of work or the blog in decades, and who no longer owns a decent camera.

I have vowed to change the camera status this month. I was looking at a Canon, but after reading reviews I'm now thinking this Olympus may be the winner. It comes with two lenses, and since the number of Canon lenses I currently own would be ZERO, there is no point in buying a Canon other than that's the kind of SLR I owned back in the day. I don't have that camera or any of its stuff anymore. The Olympus lenses are especially made for digital cameras and I liked the comments in the reviews I read, that this camera feels better in the hand than the Canon. I need to make a decision in the next couple of weeks because the rebates all expire June 30.

I've started crocheting squares for the bed throw - the Cotton Tail 8 is very nice, very light. I've made 8 squares so far and they form a stack that is barely over an inch high, so it's going to be a very light blanket. I'm thinking of adding other colors to the milk chocolate (which is a soft cocoa color, not a dark brown) to create something with a beach-y feel. I think I will use the cocoa brown as the base and scatter soft blue, cream, and seafoam green squares randomly. The problem is that I can only find the Cotton Tail 8 on cones, and I don't want that many cones. I'm afraid of mixing a different brand of cotton because if it behaved differently in the wash, shrank more or whatever, it could ruin the entire blanket.

Random unsolicited product endorsement:Olay Regenerist Thermal Polisher. My skin looks SO much better I'm about ready to skip foundation entirely, (something I haven't done in a decade or so) and it feels so good!

I'm off to Costco for bulk-packed boneless chicken, and to fondle cameras.