Ooft. Where to start tho? i need to vent.  I hate to throw anyone under the bus, especially family.... but sometimes, you just have to throw someone under the fucking bus when they keep leaping out in front of it and won't listen to anyone else, y'know?

Right, so i talked about the flooding at my grandma's condo and the remodel of the entryway and all that back in the Spring, yeah? If not. That was a thing. I'll circle back to it. Eventually. this is a fuck of a story. It's not gonna seem like i will, but I will.....

So, yeah. back in December, remember my grandma had a bad fall and was on the floor for a long time and my aunt couldn't drop off groceries and so i ran over with the extra set of keys (which i have as the one who takes grandma on the vast majority of her errands but i keep at work so my parents and uncle who work here can get it in case I'm out of town or they can't reach me -- and my aunt could always swing by to get it if needed.

Wait, back up. You know that I've stepped up more and more to take my grandma to her appointments, take her shopping, take her to the bank to run errands, etc. I generally spend about 4-12 hours assisting her per week, sometimes more like 16-20 hours if she has a lot going on. Obviously if I'm out of town I don't, but like, that's one of the things I do to fill my time as well as work and all the concerts and travel i choose to do. I spend a lot of time taking care of my grandma because she needs it and I can.  Like, to the extent that it's now a standing joke with my closest friends that when they ask, "How are you doing Dani?" the very first thing I blurt out is, "I need to call my grandma."

Right. So. The fall in December.

My aunt wanted me to just let her in, already had groceries she bought while at the store at the front door, and impatient to get inside drop them off so she could go to her friend's to dance because it's her "one night of freedom."  So my aunt barrels past me while I'm still turning the key back round and round to pull it out of the front door (it's a tricky lock, you have to turn it around several times, and the key is not one you can copy or take anywhere to get copied except at the original locksmith that barrelled it and that requires a handwritten note, in person, from the condo company to get extras made. No joke.) So my aunt barrels through, gets to the door of grandma's unit (unlocked)  and shoves the door open into grandma's knees on the floor. She drops the groceries just to the right of the door, where the grandfather clock is then stands over grandma freaking out, "MOM ARE YOU OKAY?! DANI SHE FELL! DANI WE NEED TO MOVE HER!" By the time I'm at the door, my aunt is straddled over my grandma's hips right in the angle of the open door and grandma's legs are blocking the door from opening further and I physically cannot get through between the door, the bags of groceries, my aunt, and the grandfather clock to even get inside the door..... I have my phone in my hand to call 911 and I'm trying to tell my aunt NOT to move her and asking grandma the questions about how she got there and my grandma is insisting she can't stand. My aunt insists, "I'M AS STRONG AS ANY OF MY BROTHERS, I CAN MOVE HER!" And I'm telling her, "Lin! STOP! You CAN'T move her!!" and she says, "OH YES I CAN!  SAME AS ANY OF MY BROTHERS WOULD!" and I tell her and grandma, "But Lin, they WOULDN'T move her! If she fell on her back or neck, you could kill her or paralyze her trying to move her. I need to call an ambulance NOW, so EMT can do this right!" and she just bends over, puts her arms under my grandma's armpits and says, "Wrap your arms around my neck ma, trust me." At this point, my grandma is lying on her back, my aunt is straddling her hips in the hallway and bending over lifting my grandma up facing her with her arms under my grandma's armpits trying to lift her -- I could physically slam the door open and potentially snap my grandma's legs to try to get inside to physically tackle my aunt into the wall to stop her and that's physically it -- and all of the I'd have to do over the top of my grandma's prone body on the tiles of the living room where we don't know how she fell or what she hit....

So then my aunt lifts her up that way, arms under the armpits curving grandma's spine, grandma's feet dragging and insists on carrying her to grandma's bed.-- smacking her arm into the doorframe multiple times to do this leaving massive bruising and a fracture. My choices at the point I can even get in the door are to let her do this unassisted, try to tackle her and have her drop grandma, or at least help grab grandma's legs so they aren't dragging and smacking against the ground. I chose c.

The night only got worse and more chaotic from there. I kept insisting grandma had to go in, my aunt only wanted to get paid for the groceries she had bought then go to her friends house, and every time I got grandma (who clearly had some mbt issues from her fall) to agree to let me call, my aunt would fly in in a tizzy insisting it wasn't necessary and didn't want me to stay because she had to leave etc etc. Finally I got my aunt out of there by telling her we'd done as much as we could for grandma right then, walked my aunt to her car and she was on a high of adrenaline thinking how great she was and how impressive and proud everyone should be at the strength needed to move grandma -- and I just can't wait for her to leave so i can get my grandma to the fucking ER to get her x-rays and MRI to check what damage happened in the fall and then after my aunt moving her. So my aunt leaves, and I get my parents to come because if I can't get grandma to let me call an ambulance for her, I want my da (who is bigger and stronger than me) to be there to lift grandma in and out of a wheelchair to take her in......

So my parents come and they're FURIOUS but they know how my aunt is and after seeing how I described it in the hallway they understood the physical limits, and my parents took grandma to the ER with my da lifting her in and out of the chair. And there they got an earful from the ER about having moved her instead of calling an ambulance and when they explained about what my aunt had done over my objections, the staff in the ER were even more livid but agreed that by that point, it was the best could be done and reiterated the "never move someone who has fallen onto their back/neck and can't get up on their own which we three already knew.....

Now, unfortunately, over the objections of everyone else in the family, my grandma had made my aunt power of attorney and power of medical in an emergency about 10 years or so ago and it has never been changed. the logic being that her husband is a doctor so she'll make the best choices. And my parents are too busy with the business that it would be a burden on them. And her other two sons are...not the best... with money matters. Right.

So while my grandma was in hospital with a vetebral fracture from the fall, massive bruising and swelling in her arm from my aunt banging it against the doorframe, an mbti from the fall (this is typical with a hard fall to give yourself a minor concussion) AND we learned she had some form of infection raging through her that they started her on antibiotics to solve. So during this time, while my grandma is concussed, my aunt tries to bring in people to declare my grandma mentally incompetent and invoke power of attorney and power of medical.... the compromise is home health services will be stopping by for everything my aunt signed her up for (PT, OT, and LT which is really to assess for dementia.) My aunt schedules all these things, doesn't tell my grandma or anyone else when they are, then freaks out that she can't be there for these appointments and my grandma didn't know about them so didn't want to let strangers in for appointments she knows nothing about.... So my aunt tries to use this to prove mentalincompetence and then instead I end up saying I'll take on the appointments with home health care, I call them to apologize and reschedule and explain that my aunt who set the appointments never informed anyone else about them, including my grandmother, and had assumed my grandma would just let strangers in without anyone being there -- but henceforth i would get there early and be there for appointments and put them on a calendar for grandma if they scheduled with me and I would be present but silent unless needed at all appointments unless they decided I was in the way.

Fastforward to the end of all of these appointment where I had to go over to grandma's literally every day of the week, but in late January they released her deemed that grandma's memory was fine after extended observations though she was a bit more vague on some details than any of us would like. I continued to take her to her appointments, including her regular doctor with an added gerontology appointment for late April to get a full assessment of her cognitive functions JUST IN CASE and to allay Lin's insistence she's incompetent. Thus far, Lin has failed at getting two medical doctors to say she's incompetent, which is what's needed to get power of attorney and power of medical transferred without grandma's approval.

So then, in mid-February, i head out to visit my sister in Kirkland. While I'm out there, Seattle and Kirkland specifically are the epicenter of Covid-19 in the US (mostly because it's where testing was done by a doctor doing a flu study despite CDC telling her she couldn't test for covid-19) and right down the road from my sister's place was the nursing home where 19 residents died form someone bringing it in. That happened the Sunday before I was flying home on Tuesday.... So I and all my family (except my aunt) agreed that even though I spent almost all my time alone in their house/garden while out there, I still MAY have been exposed on the few times I went out or from my family or at Sea-Tac and thus I needed to self-isolate from grandma, any high risk people I knew, and anyone who would be going to see grandma (who's 83) for at last 2 weeks after my return. Grandma had a cavity fill dental appointment that we had to scramble for someone else to take her to since I couldn't and my aunt wouldn't (she doesn't work -- she keeps house and works in a massive organic garden while her husband works at the VA hospital and she has to pick up the girls from school and have dinner ready for him when he gets home or he gets ornery) so one of my uncles was taking off work to do it. But then my grandma was dizzy and cancelled anyway.

Right, so then, because I had no symptoms and had encountered nobody actually sick with it, I chose to go to several more Socks in the Frying Pan and WB3 shows before the rest of the tour was cancelled and while i was careful with distancing at shows and doing my best, I did not fully self-quarantine and did attend those shows because I figured with the numbers of it in WI, me being careful as long as I had no symptoms was LESS LIKELY to get anyone sick than people not being careful not caring who were already carrying it in the crowd. (Nobody I've interacted with out in Kirkland OR at the shows has gotten sick nor have I had any symptoms. So I have no guilt about my choices.)  This did mean restarting my 2 weeks of self-imposed isolation from my grandma and anyone visiting her or coworkers with risk factors to start March 13 instead of March 3.

In the space of that time, my aunt started insisting that SHE was washing grandma who couldn't bathe herself, change her clothes, or cook for herself and whose memory had deteriorated to the point she nearly microwaved a spoon in the oven and couldn't turn off the stove and was a danger to herself.... My grandma, meanwhile, was insisting that she could shower herself and did but that the lightheadedness and dizzy spells were getting worse and when they were bad she wouldn't shower for fear of falling.

IN MY TIME OF ABSENCE WHILE SELF-ISOLATING FROM MY GRANDMA, my aunt created and filled out legal documents for my grandma to give her power of attorney control of her bank accounts and ordered new checkbooks with my aunt's name on them as well as my grandma's (none of this with my grandma's approval) and took my grandma to a bank drive through to have her sign this document saying that grandma okayed it because otherwise my aunt wasn't allowed to help pay her bills for her. (Not even true.)

Then, Evers cancelled school as part of safer a thome. And suddenly, my aunt decides she doesn't have time and can't be managing my grandma's affairs because she has to be at home to home school the kids so they won't fall behind where they should be for next year. Not school assigned curriculum -- her created curriculum for them. So she declared earlier this week that if I won't agree to bathe my grandma twice a week since  my uant won't, then my aunt is going to hire OUTSIDE ASSISTANCE to do this during covid-19 lockdown. All of this over the objections of EVEREYONE ELSE in the family including my grandma insisting she doesn't need anyone to bathe her and she doesn't want ANYONE coming into her home unnecessarily during the pandemic, but if anyone must it should be family who are being careful and she wants to know where I am and when I'll get back to buying her groceries.... I told my aunt that I'm not comfortable bathing grandma in a sliding glass door shower that isn't handicapped accessible or meant for two people, particularly as I lack the nursing training for how best to assist her to reduce the chances of her falling from my attempts to assist -- and to wait because there has to be another solution than hiring someone for assistance nobody but my aunt thinks is needed or asking me to fight my grandma force me to bathe her against her will in an unsafe set of conditions when i do not have the training to do it safely so she won't fall. My aunt said grandma chose her to make the decisions and she was hiring someone to come in regardless what my grandma or me or anyone else in the family said. (I also HAVE been to visit my grandma earlier this week and to take care of some things for her and to talk to her because that's part of what i do with her -- I'm someone she talks to about her grief over Richard's death and her loneliness and her anxieties.... And she told me that around the time I got back but couldn't see her, she was struck by intense profound loneliness....and we had a long talk about that.... And I checked through all the things my aunt insisted had to be done -- by someone else -- and none of them needed doing.)

So then starting Wednesday night, the night after my visit, my aunt went full blown Napoleon, refused to listen to anyone's input but her own, told my dad he legally couldn't do anything about it and she was calling the people to come in and take care of her because she didn't want this ruining her relationship with her mom that nobody but her was going to bathe grandma and she didn't have to listen to anyone but her own self about it as long as she knew she was acting from a place of love. So my parents, my uncle in town (the other is out in Montana right now doing some work on my parents place out there), and I have all been scrambling to do whatever we legally can to stop my aunt from ruining my grandma's life and getting her killed by being mentally incompetent for not letting strangers in or potentially introducing covid-19 into her house.

Anyway, my parents got a fmaily friend who does air vent work in with UV light to FINALLY check for mold spores as I've been insisting since the flooding hi to be done but I couldn't make happen without my grandma or aunt approving and they both kept pooh-poohing me. And after the fall and my grandma's dizziness getting worse and worse and that unknown infection and no other medical reasons for the dizziness because we tested for them, i CONTINUOUSLY asked my aunt to let us test for mold after all that flooding (told you I'd get back to it) because I KNEW it had to be there with how bad the entryway was and my aunt flat out told me to shut up about the mold and to help her focus on helping grandma who wasn't competent to live on her own anymore..... So my parents got their friend in and cleaned as much as we could get under UV light and put a UV filter on her HVAC units and my mom put the fear of God in the condo management company that they hadn't properly done ANY of this in their "assessments" of the unit and how this has longterm led to the decline and symptoms of an 83 year old unit owner.... AND my aunt came in during the check for the mold,s aw it all under the UV light, realized how terribly she'd fucked up, and my dad confronted her in front of my grandma about her having hired outside people to bathe grandma who were to come in that day (my grandma didn't want to believe my parents or me that my aunt had done any of this behind her back) and that got canceled at least (because unbeknownst to my aunt, the company she picked is actually a client and owned by a friend of my parents).... And my grandma's unit is scheduled for remediation for the mold but she's still in there not allowed in the other two rooms but the primary HVAC has the UV filter on it and they're going back to do some further work with the air vent heating friend (who is in full protective gear and thus not a covid-19 risk.)

Also, throughout the entire time of my absence, my aunt has been stealing the key she "happened to find under a flower pot to get in and when I've said, "You mean Renée's key?" (grandma's upstairs neighbor) my aunt kept saying, no it was grandma's extra. And I've been saying, if it's the one udner the flowerpot, it belongs to Renée so she can get back in after taking her dog Max (a Sheltie, very nice dog) on a walk if someone closes the door and she left her main keyring upstairs.  So on Thursday, my aunt just took that key so she'd have it to let in the people she hired on Friday -- and Renée came down asking if anyone had seen her key during the middle of all of this with the mold cleaning and confronting my aunt etc. I mean, I couldn't write this level of TV show comedy comeuppance if i tried... I can't believe my aunt fucking stole Renée's key because she felt entitled to it as hers to access my grandma!!! I mean, I CAN given all the rest, but OMG!!!!!!

My grandmother has insisted she CAN bathe herself just fine, especially since the shower bars the OT and grandma and I discussed and laid out have been put in, she would just be more comfortable if someone could be present in the unit IN CASE she falls with how lightheaded and dizzy she's been getting (from the mold spores) but she can absolutely do it herself. So I will be there next week to be present but not bathing her and to do her shopping. My aunt said she'll stop by 'for a visit, but refuses to do anything further but pick up groceries at places she's already going that day to do her own shopping."  My aunt refuses to take her name off the bank accounts and my grandma won't believe it til the checkbooks come in to prove it... Which should be further along in the remediation for the mold so the vagueness that's been getting worse that my granda's been fighting should improve markedly....

Do I want to be visiting my grandma during lockdown? No -- I'm really afraid I may be an asymptomatic carrier to her and I promised my sister not to let anyone make stupid choices that get GiGi killed. (my nephew and niece call her GiGi -- when we were kids, my sister and I called our great-grandmas GGB and GGL and GGH to stand in for great-grandma and then their last names. Thus GiGi for my grandma R they've met and GiGi Mitsy for my grandma D.)  That said, I set my own hours (our business is deemed 'essential" and so I still have a job and what i do requires I be there in person sicne I have yet to master telekinetically alphabetizing and filing paperwork) which I do mainly at night and weekends through this to minimize contact with other people and I only shop early morning hours where possible. Honestly my biggest vector is taking my dog on a fucking walk because people are housebound stir crazy, entertaining themselves by going on unnecessary walks, not giving enough social distancing space on sidewalks or trails.....

But if I don't go take care of her, there's nobody else to do it except my aunt who refuses to help if she can't just make decisions and be trusted to make them in grandma's best interests and around her schedule of her choosing to homeschool the twins, which means we can let my aunt make an even bigger fucking mess of things (and imperil my grandma's life by her choices) by hiring people in to do these things... or i can do it. And I can control how many vectors of contamination I'm opening myself to -- I can't control some hired service we don't need to be hiring and we're trusting they're "clean" because they don't have a fever that morning coming in to my grandma's house. And the remediation for the mold is enough of a concern.....I'll take my chances on me and what I can control given this hand.....

I've still never had any symptoms, nor has anyone I know or have been in contact with... but still. It's a roll of the dice for ANYONE entering her home. If we can minimize that to me and I can minimize my human interactions down to just me and the dog at night, at the office, the door handles in my condo building, anyone I run into at the grocery store (Willy St Co-Op has VERY strict rules about how many people can be inside though and they have from the start) and then me  only taking the dog on walks off peak hours or in commercial areas where there's nobody out, then it's the best I can do here.....

There's still more battle with my aunt to deal with to untangle this fucking mess. AND there's the question of getting the mold out of my grandma's system and her condo and getting her mentally sharp enough to realize and remove my aunt from all power of attorney and power of health -- and then it'll likely fall on me and I've said I'd do it PROVIDED there's a clause that I discuss with all 4 of her kids and come to a majority consensus prior to me doing anything.....

But yeah, all of that has been going on in my life throughout my since Eric's decision to go live on the band insta account and ignore every means I attempted to tell him why that was unfair and ostracizing fans that i reached my internal breaking point of, "FUCK BRITTANY AND ALL OF HER FUCKING MIND GAMES AND FUCK ERIC FOR PLAYING THE FUCK ALONG AND NOT HAVING BACKBONE ENOUGH TO STAND BY 'WRONG IS WRONG IS WRONG' AND TO CALL OUT EVEN LOVED ONES WHEN THEY'RE INVOLVED IN DELIBERATE SYSTEMS OF INJUSTICE OR OSTRACISM. I DON'T HAVE THE NERGY OR PATIENCE FOR THESE FUCKING GAMES ANY LONGER!"

O thinking of which! I heard Eric breaking inside tonight (last night now) even more than he has been since the 30tj (I do hear how hard he's hurting and struggling to distract himself from facing that hurt - but I've been pushing it away from my consciousness because I can't save him from himself and his choices,  he must choose differently before I can reopen the ties between us.) So hearing his inner struggle and depths of hurting,  I had a momentary weakness was going to go search up his insta check in on him now that I unfollowed him. And EVERY time, I tried, my Insta would lock up tell me, "Unfortunately, instagram has stopped working" and I could click report or okay. And I could not for the life of me get it to function til I internally said, 'Alright! Alright! I'll not check in on him. No matter how much he hurts, this is of his own making and only he can fix it and only by addressing this major fuckup that brittany created and has spread to poison everything done in the name of the band on their official instagram as a result of her refusal to acknowledge the wrongs she did and her mistakes. If he can't clean up this mess he made by enabling his sister's ego sicknesses, then there's nothing there for me and I need to keep my cut ties cleanly cut." And as soon as I accepted that truth from the Universe, my Instagram started working again -- as long as I stayed away from search and stayed strong in the fact I wasn't going to let me reattach cords to Eric if he wasn't willing to face this and fix the mess that his sister created and he took active part in making worse.

But it was funny, how random yet specific that was.... It was like the Universe telling me that even if I'm moved by compassion to relent and ease his hurting,  that Door must remain closed til he learns his lessons and becomes a better man who understands why this behavior of Britt's and him being an active enabler of it was so ethically wrong.  The Universe is making it clear I did all I could,  these were his choices that closed the Door,  and so only his choices can  ever reopen it.....

O and then also, for no reason at all other than me mentioning on Weds that Weds wasn't a great day due to me waking up after subluxating my shoulder again in my sleep and the bad pain then having to shove it back in and now in a bit of constant pain until those ligaments heal up again (this happens to me intermttently -- too flexible in the arms and shoulders) so Dave released a tune of him and Mohsin from Talisk on his personal insta, dropped in on Fergal's live hour (the band have a schedule so they're giving something to fans every day and taking turns at it) AND tonight did a solo acoustic "thank you we love you and we want to help get you through these times" of Light In The Sky posted to the closed group for Crew AND he dmed me checking in on my shoulder. Like he's already doing so much, to then do extra tunes and recordings and reaching out to me just made me feel so spoiled....

Didn't burden Dave with any of the stuff about my grandma in detail, just told him that the family drama was mending as best as it could be forced to med and unless he wanted the whole saga we could leave it at that.

And. i have to say, I'm so impressed with Dave and the strength and purpose and light in him that he's found to help him hold others up and lift them up through this time.  I'm just so very proud of him and how he's handling all of everything with his quarantine.....