Here Be Dragons

2009-05-02

I�m finally feeling like my many different paths are converging with a solid solution. I�ve had to rescue two different things, my father and his business, and today I finally feel like I�m getting a handle on both. Until now I�ve had to run to lawyers and doctors and hospitals and assisted living places. I�ve had to choose one and then transfer prescriptions and medical information. It consumed almost all my time for the last month, as well as visiting him and making him feel better about his forced hospitalization while we ran tests that confirmed his disability of early dementia.

I wanted to protect him from this diagnosis and the information that he now has a caretaker/guardian but too many changes made him suspicious and of course he�s not totally deaf and he�s heard key words. He asked too many questions and my family is notorious for being bad liars. It was a relief to tell him the truth. He only processes it in small pieces anyways and so it has to be repeated to him over and over and each time he fits another piece into the jigsaw puzzle of his life.

I�ve informed him that my brother and I are his guardians. I�ve read to him the doctor�s and psychiatric examination results. He�s been told that he no longer makes judgment calls in his best interests and so we had to step in. He�s been told that if we didn�t then a stranger that doesn�t love him and who won�t care if he wants to go to work will be assigned and he/she will stuff him in a nursing home and sell his business and buildings.

He is certain I am lying and makes every effort to call a lawyer but he�s disabled and blind and so far he�s failed to fight us legally and waste what monies he has left. But he knows that he�s going into assisted living and that he can�t control his medicines anymore and that he will have housekeeping and be clean and change his clothes every day. We�re entitled to two showers a week but I only asked for one which is about 3 times more a month than he�s had. The assisted living place will get him up and dressed and pack him a sandwich and we�ll pick him up for work. The place is about 3 miles from his work.

On the work front I finally had a day to sit with the ex-bookkeeper and do a month end. I am not afraid of the software, the computer or the accounting in general. I think she generated an awful lot of paper over the years but her practice of her job was impeccable. I even offered her her job back and she�s thinking about it although she�s pretty mad at my Dad. They had a falling out awhile back and she left after being there ten years so it was pretty serious. I think she may come back on a part time basis like if I take a vacation under the table. I hope so. I thanked her for the job she�s done for so many years because I said, �Because I know for a fact that my father didn�t thank you� She almost broke down in tears. She was the heart and soul of my father�s company and the only reason it existed as long as it did. When she left it all fell apart.

But anyways I feel that I can be capable as a bookkeeper, order taker and accountant and shipper. I�m fixing errors and reports that haven�t been done in years. He hasn�t reported his employees and wages last year so his workman�s compensation audit was incomplete and then it was cancelled. I had to re-open the audit and file the papers or we would have been cooked. Now my brother is looking at insurance for the properties as that was cancelled. The server broke and Dad almost lost all his data and monetary history as well as his customer database and accounting package. The server was 12 years old!

I can feel it coming together in my head and my stress level has gone from overloaded to just a little peaky. I think it�s going to be ok .. finally

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