Bonnie’s mom is the most unhealthy person I know. My dad has a chronic form of leukemia, and Bonnie’s mom is still the most unhealthy person I know. She’s overweight with high cholesterol, diabetic, and her kidneys and liver barely function.

She’s never exercised a day in her life, eats whatever the fuck she wants, usually meat and sugar, and now, at this late stage of her life, she’s in severe pain all the time. Pain that can’t be managed because she abused opioids in her 60s, so Kaiser labeled her a drug seeker, and now they won’t give her any pain meds. Isn’t that fucked? As much as I dislike and resent her, I still think that if she wants to be a junkie for the last few years of her life, why not let her? What does it matter? She doesn’t drive.

Having her in the house is like having a big, untrainable dog with the ability to open the refrigerator and reach the countertops. So, really, it’s like having an ill-behaved, 250-pound toddler in the house. She has absolutely no self-control, so if food is left anywhere that she can see it, she’ll eat it. Last Christmas, she walked into the kitchen while I was taking gluten-free sugar cookies out of the oven, and she spent the next two days tearing the kitchen apart looking for them.

One might say, so what, she’s old, she doesn’t have much time left, so let her do what she wants, but the problem is, she’s on two-dozen different medications that barely keep her body functioning, and when she over-indulges, even a little, it makes her crazy. Too much sugar, and she’ll start pacing around the house like a caged animal. Or, she’ll go for a 1/2 mile walk when the furthest she’s walked in months is the distance between her bed and the kitchen. It causes a lot of problems when she’s allowed to eat whatever she wants, and then Bonnie and I have to deal with the consequences of her actions.

So, today, she took a Dr. Pepper from the fridge, put it in her walker, and headed back to her room, but she stopped by the bathroom on the way. While she was occupied, I covertly swapped the Dr. Pepper with a Waterloo. Normally, she drinks Waterloos because she doesn’t know they’re just water. She thinks they’re sweet. With the option between the two, though, she opted for the Dr. Pepper.

I swapped them out in part because she absolutely doesn’t need the sugar, and I don’t want to have to deal with her all hopped up on high-fructose corn syrup. Mostly, though, I did it because one of my kids bought that Dr. Pepper, and while I’m sure they wouldn’t mind sharing with their grandmother, they don’t need to be subsidizing her poor dietary choices. It’s bad enough she’s derailed our plans for the future, finances, and sanity because we’ve had to take care of her for more than two and a half decades; I won’t let her do that to my kids.

So, while running back to the living room after doing my admittedly dubious good deed, I pulled a muscle in my calf. It’s not as bad as when I tore the same muscle in the other leg, but it still hurts, and the pain is only getting worse. Karma’s such a fucking bitch.