WOW!! Now I know that you are being a bit silly here, but you really have unusually good timing.
My BFF, who has lived on the shore of a lake...they have a dock in their yard, that close...for almost 40 years, has lost her mind and I'm really upset...REALLY UPSET...about saying nothing vs. saying anything.
She has just gone through chemo, and blames everything on "chemo brain," but most of this crap started before the chemo. (And, in the interest of full disclosure, her mother was just a hateful bitch who ended up dying of/with Alzheimer's.)
My BFF used to be a really nice, funny, giving person. Now she is, in her daughter's words, "meaner than a snake." Hateful. Pretty much cruel. And dumb and in denial about every possible negative thing. She is perfect...everyone else is an idiot.
Examples, prior to diagnosis and chemo:
~~She visited me earlier this year. Insisted that my husband and I go without her--she likes slot machines and we could have dropped her at a casino--while we went to doctors' appointments that would get us back home in two hours. In that two hours, she called me three times, deprogrammed our televisions and flooded the kitchen counter trying to make coffee in the Keurig, even though we showed her and walked her through making a cup before we left. (Not rocket science...they have them in hotel rooms these days.)
~~She insists that texting is stupid. She does not understand that you can send/receive text messages in areas where the reception is too poor for voice communication. She panics when I don't call her...from the middle of nowhere...but won't even check incoming text messages.
~~She will use the cell phone ONLY for voice calls, okay? She sees an ad for a new smart phone for a penny. I explain that it will require a more expensive contract which will include a data plan that covers services she will never use. She still thinks a penny is a good deal.
~~She and her husband were going to the doctor because she was sick. It's a 90 minute drive each way. They live in the woods in Wisconsin. She told him to not let the dog out because it was cold. The dog escaped anyway. Her husband, a native of Switzerland where it gets really cold, said it wasn't all that cold, the dog is morbidly obese and hangs out at the neighbors' houses anyway, and was going to be just fine. She took off and left husband standing in the driveway. She was sick enough that she was admitted to the hospital and stayed three days.
~~She says her husband can't hear anything. Yet, when I called him to tell him she was admitted to the hospital, he heard me just fine. He just ignores her because all she does is bitch and moan.
~~She has, for about two years, been bitching about her old, slow computer and how she needs a new one. She's had that one for "ten to fifteen years." Funny. The people at Apple think they built it in 2009. (Yes, that IS old enough to replace. But all she does with it is email and and all she really needed was to clean it up a little and maybe get a plan that provides a little more speed. But she got a new computer, even though she was afraid to take it out of the box and plug it in....duh.)
~~She announced last February, dead of winter, that she was going to throw the dog in the car, pack a few things and come out west until spring. She was going to drive cross country alone. She's 76 years old...frail...and
on Butrans and Tram_adol...and is convinced she's a great driver.
Many, MANY more examples, but I get depressed writing them all down.
Post-chemo:
~~While we were there, her husband made a big old pot of soup and some cornbread muffins. First she yelled at him for not using muffin/cupcake paper thingys. After we ate, she kept going into the kitchen to see if he had, yet, remembered to turn the oven off. And laughing, like the black-hatted villain who tied the girl to the railroad tracks, as she came out whispering that he was so stupid that he'd leave it on forever and so mean he'd yell at her for saying anything. I guess turning the damned thing off herself was too big a burden.
~~A tag on the sweater I was wearing was irritating my skin. I handed my husband scissors and asked him to cut the tag off. She jumped up, grabbed the scissors and INSISTED she could do it. She did...including two holes she cut into the sweater. (It was the first time I had worn it.) I think this is how well she drives.
~~She has decided she needs to take a mortgage out on their paid-for house so that she can replace her carpeting and kitchen counter and floors. I had to lie to her that I didn't feel up to the drive to take her to pick out carpeting. Considering that the carpeting is of excellent quality and she and her two cats and the MO dog occasionally have had accidents on that carpeting, it looks GREAT!!
~~She bought some headgear to use after her hair fell out. Her husband told her that the scarves and hats looked good, but the wig did not. She started snarling at him that she hoped he'd get cancer, too.
Many, many more.
She will find out next week if the chemo has worked. But I find myself avoiding her...my best friend of almost 50 years...and whether chemo worked or not, there is no reason for her to spend her last years with everyone who used to love spending time with her avoiding her...even if it is the lake's fault.
