Yep, the Flozberks SUCKED as caretakers, and the examples presented here will be but a few of many.

Mom and Dad were very grateful to them.  As the stunning Neila's Silly Ass video and Tiffany's deranged "Monster" letter reveal, they had no trouble patting themselves on the backs and even being downright intimidating about it. The image they shoehorned into the landscape was one of clockwork excellence and saintliness.

No matter how much trouble they dragged along or how bloody much they cost, the one thing The Flozzies had going for 'em was that they were exquisite caretakers for a sequence of elders. The best. Apex. Blue ribbon. Gold medal.

But upon closer examination, they SUCKED in almost all aspects while having been very, VERY well-paid.

Cardinal aspects of caring for an elder include:  Companionship, medical, nutrition, cuisine, hyrdation, hygiene, safety, stimulation, compassion, regard, special needs, pets, results, and mayhem. Were Dad to write this list, "pets" likely would have been first.

Many of these things will be examined closely elsewhere on this site, but a consolidation is very warranted here.  Mmmkay, let's GO!

Companionship
We rank this #1. The Flozzies, especially Reagan, generally strove to spend the least time possible with Dad. We almost always strove to spend the most time possible while having interesting things to chat about. A late topic was the superb Svalbard Global Seed Vault, before that the Arkansas River lock and dam system that mitigated the floods that used to regularly wreak Flozberk on Dad's beloved home state.

And, Dad was a fine storyteller who loved to talk about his back-when experiences around the world. He was pretty cool to hang with, especially after he got out of the grouchiness-inducing apartment biz.

Very lonely after (and before, really) Mom died and blind as a mole, he lived in his chair, staring into blurry nothingness. I set him up with a laptop with good external speakers, aids to help a blind guy start and stop the playlist without wrecking things too terribly often, and opera, country, classical, and bluegrass works he requested.

Otherwise, about the only other things he had control over was taking Tasha out and turning the TV on and off.

So, we made it a point to mitigate the void as much as possible with companionship carefully-crafted to fit his lot in life. He responded very well and was most certainly starved for quality, meaningful interaction.

Neila would usually send Reagan to Dad's as she too often sat on her fat ass and watched shit like Dr. fucking Phil. Reagan would blaze through, throw some subpar food his way, do the breathing treatment, put the TV on Fox News, and jet outta there.

Had we lived 2500' away and been persons of leisure like the Flozberks, it would have been intolerably gut-wrenching to imagine Dad sitting there blind and lonely, and one or both of us would have spent much, much, MUCH more time with him and Tasha.

The Q: "Are you going to be eating?" A: "I always do." part of the Neila's Silly Ass video at 17:45 shows the differences in our approaches regarding companionship and Dad. Neila asked that in bad faith, but it made for good insight.

Medical 
Medically, those dumbfounded dipshits were a disaster. The reckless, disgraceful, and possibly malicious drugging of Dad is one of the most offensive things I've ever been exposed to.

A ruthless pill-pusher who uses the literal closest strip mall sports medicine drug pusher hack doctor to her home in a huge city has either not done her homework, isn't greatly concerned about the excellence of care, or is getting exactly what she wants from the clinician.

Regardless of the most accurate answer, Neila SUCKS.

When we asked Dad if various critical aspects of his maintenance had been addressed by either The Flozberks or their "Dr. Flozzie" dope pusher hack, the whole damn bunch of 'em fared poorly. Their mission statement seemed to be keeping Dad drugged, quiet, and somewhat alive.

His skin was an especially conspicuous shortcoming - arms looking terrible with skin like paper. Regular lotion resolved things in a few weeks, but that issue with the body's largest organ was glaringly disregarded. And Dad was their FIFTH old person, damn it! One wonders how much experience would be needed to deliver them from cluelessness.

I made an appalling mistake in entrusting Dad's medical care to Duh Flozzies and declare with zero reservations that his quality of life absolutely would have been much better had we much more involvement in his medical care.

Sorry, Dad. Seriously...sorry.

Nutrition 
They fell short here, just not as badly as the bullwhippin' in the town square disgrace thing above.

We went to great lengths to make damn sure Dad was well-nourished with balanced fat, carbs, and protein, vitamins and minerals, micronutrients, and lots of colors of produce. We would generally show up with totes and coolers in a mobile catering operation for three ready to have fun making the meal, for Dad was always into cooking.

If part of a meal was not a nutritional winner, such as Dad's beloved Campbell's Tomato Bisque soup, we always augmented it with a colorful produce dish to round things out.

The Flozberks tended to show up with a bag. 7-Eleven hot dogs + chips, Jack in the Box tacos, or Neila's half-assed attempts at cooking were prominent. Horribly bland, overcooked pasta in pale tomato sauce with nasty chicken sausage seemed her signature dish. The lone thing she cooked which rang Dad's bell was what he called the best pancakes he'd ever had.

My frustration over Dad's nutrition led to The Monster Clash incident with Princess Corn Log after he had surgery and especially needed strong nourishment.

Cuisine
Not all nutrition is cuisine but all cuisine is nutrition. The culinary aspect relates to how much Dad enjoyed his meals and, since he was a man of few pleasures, we took this very seriously.

His palate was ruined by Big Pharma, so the range of things he enjoyed narrowed much. Lisa aced his favorite dishes, then refined them to suit his preferences.  We tried various combinations of seasonings, got input from Dad, and took notes to find his sweet spot. It was not accomplished overnight, for sure.

Yes, taste is subjective, but it's fair to say both The Sue Chef and Princess Corn Log were poor chefs. Dad did not like their food, yet was too much of a gentleman, too grateful for the care he received, and too intimidated by Neila to speak up. Just as with year after year with Mom, he took what was given and shut up.

An example would be a slaw they'd make, called "flaw slaw" or "blah slaw" by us.  I love cabbage, ginger, and peanuts. Dad, too, was cool with same and we used those ingredients often.  In their hands, though, a hot mess somehow resulted, both bland and overbearing (if such is even possible), unpalatable to all three of us. It SUCKED.

He always did the same thing after a meal that made him happy - lean back, look at us with a smile, and utter the exact phrase, "Well, I enjoyed THAT."

Flozzies, how many times did you hear that? I'll answer - few, at most.

Dad would eat like a man who had been lost at sea when we'd return from out of town and put our chef hats back on. He told us, documented, that not once in all those years did Reagan ever prepare him anything - it was always carryout food or Neila crap that he largely disliked.

We tried to make meals a total experience, getting Dad involved as much as possible in the perparation and always sitting to eat with him. Those things truly mattered.

Hydration 
This critical part of the human condition was ignored by both the The Flozberks and their dope-pushing doctor, much to the dismay of Lisa, aka "Aquagirly." To them, water was a vehicle for pushing pills into Dad's metabolism and a media that made his swimming pool much more fun.

For a wide range of concens from his respiratory/phlegm woes to constipation to skin health to balance to vision, hydration was foundtional, PERIOD, yet Dad was often drinking less than 10oz of suitable fluid per day with coffee and beer/wine often the majority of his liquid intake. Dad suffered some true indignities at Dr. Flozzie's addressing things that just a few glasses of water and some psyllium likely would have resolved.

Hygiene 
Here they miserably failed, right in tune with their historical pattern. They are just low-knowledge, low-effort, nasty-ass people.

When Mom died there was a lake of decayed muck sloshing around the fridge produce drawer under an assortment of rotten goods. The needless second fridge in the garage was so covered in black filth that I gave it and its contents away.

A mysterious gnat storm turned out to be from a rotten bag of onions in the pantry and even the fruit bowl on the prominent kitchen table often held rotten food.

The underside of the foot-controlled lid on the trash can Dad used as a spittoon for his brown, noxious phlegm was often covered in mold, releasing billions of spores every time he activated it. Later, I would be scolded by Neila's attorney for not taking that gross, unemptied trash can home with me from storage after Dad was killed. I wasn't even comfortable being on the same continent with the damn thing.

Reagan liked to use an absurd soap-holding dishwand that shouldn't even be legal, failing to replace or even store it properly and disregarding advice to do so. We replaced kitchen sponges on the first of each month and always stored them so they'd get air circulation.

The HEPA filters I got to help Dad with his chronic respiratory respiratory infection and Tasha's allergies were turned off and left off often, once SEVEN straight times. Dad said Reagan was doing it so he could hear Fox News better. Hey, Hoss, ya wanna hear the TV better when you're there, fine, but turn the damn Dad's Health Machine back on when ya leave, right?

Tasha's food/water station, contacted daily by Dad, was routinely biohazard-gnarly.  Her food bin was coated in a rancid slick that had been there for years. The large front room, later dubbed Tasha's Piss Parlor, was uninhabitable when Mom died, requiring hundreds of hours of starkly unpleasant labor by me and Lisa for partial resolution.

Duh Flozzies habitually left their clothes on the poolside furniture, sometimes for months. We treated motels better than they treated Dad's turf.

Once I arrived to find Dad on the back patio holding a yellow wad to his face, smelling it, trying to figure out what it was. Blind, bored, lonely old men sometimes do curiously ill-advised things, see. The yellow wad was moldy baby clothing left wet (and not necessarily by water) on the patio table.

Perhaps worst of all, twice I found Dad's breathing treatment nebulizer with dark-colored funk on it. We communicated clear standards for cleaning the thing, but they, like so many other important things, were largely disregarded.

This disaster fits perfectly with Neila's oft-stated favorite restaurant - The Spaghetti Warehouse downtown, a truly infamous swamp of subpar food and wretched cleanliness. Even back when Lisa did live sound gigs in the 90s, it was known as a place to avoid by performers and crew. There's just something about projectile vomiting and butt-squirts that detracts from a performance.

Behold the Yelp reviews of that dump, put out of its misery in 2019:

This establishment is disgusting. They literally set up an industrial fan to try and blow the smell of mold out of their dining room. This place smelt like crap from the kitchen window, with a whole other nasty smell in the dining room. I almost fell THROUGH their FLOOR on two different occasions due to the floor rot... the men's restroom's only faucet doesn't work, so let that seep in for a second.

Place was dirty and dank like an old bar from the 70s.

The floors were sticky and the tables clearly weren't wiped down. There was a smell of urine and the stairs were unstable.

The dining area is filthy and outdated. The bathrooms were an absolute disaster. The toilet was leaking onto the floor in the back and trash was overflowing onto the floor. The floor was gross and sticky.

Yep. Perfectly fitting.

Those walking Petri dishes we call The Flozberks were infamous since the 70s for being gross and the most sickly, disease-ridden people we'd ever known.

We are now in discussion with a photo gallery to present a collection of our documentation of Flozberk filth at Dad's tentatively entitled "Mold - Old - Gold."

Safety
The Flozzies were not even good custodians of their own safety, much less Dad's. At least three times I went to Camp Flozberk to find nobody home and their front door wide open. At least once (I think it happened twice) they got rolled for their phones by leaving their vehicle unsecured at the gas pump while they went inside to get overpriced convenience store junk to gorge themselves on. Of course, Dad got the bill.

Twice, I found Neila's key left in Dad's unsecured front door for anyone to grab. One of those times it was turned fully CCW to the unlock position before the task was strangely abandoned. Baffling. Might being distracted by her phone - perhaps what led to our corn-logging by Tiffany - be the culprit?  Who knows. And why would Dad's key not be on a keychain? She always drove there. WTF?

The drugging of Dad by Neila's crony was especially hazardous to his safety and certainly may have been a factor in his death. I got him off the benzos with great results but they kept pushing the gabapentin on him, with his rate of falling directly related to use and dosage.

Benzodiazepines...are not recommended for treating insomnia in older adults and are considered inappropriate. In addition to causing memory impairment, falls, fractures and motor vehicle accidents, data now show that sedative-hypnotics account for a substantial number of avoidable emergency department visits and hospital admissions. Even episodic use is associated with harm. A lifetime use of more than 90 doses of benzodiazepines, equivalent to twice a week for 1 year, has been shown to confer a 50% higher risk of dementia and to double the risk of death...increasing with higher doses and concomitant administration of other centrally acting nervous system drugs.

Dad was taking 365 doses a year for 5+ years AND took multiple other CNS-acting drugs.

Potentially inappropriate medications (PIMs) continue to be prescribed and used as first-line treatment for the most vulnerable of older adults, despite evidence of poor outcomes from the use of PIMs in older adults.

The more involvement The Flozberks had with Dad, the less safe he was. In a final example, we came back from vacation to find Dad complaining his vision had much worsened. Turned out his glasses were filthy. Cleaned them and things were back to his version of normal.

Know that Neila and Reagan both have used corrective lenses since I was a kid.

Stimulation
Another biggie with us largely ignored by them. We saw to it that Dad fired as many neurons as possible as much as possible, often cramming it into otherwise-mundane things.

For example, to time Dad's breathing treatments, Neila would simply squawk, "Alexa, set timer for five minutes."

We sorted our huge music collection by length and chose songs in the 4-6 minute range to act as the timer, often first doing a theatrical lyric-reading and pointing out things to listen for ("note the fantastic snare drum work mid-song," "listen for when they seem to put alligator clips on the singer's testicles"). It was fun for all.

The material would range from Gene Krupa to SRV to extreme metal like Cattle Decapitation to hundreds of others. Guided exposure to new things keeps old minds humming, and seeing Dad bob his head and mouth lyrics around the nebulizer mouthpiece was a delight.

In our short-lived search for caretaking assistance, we insisted on Eng/Esp bilingual. Dad, having spent time south of the border as an engineer, spoke passable Spanish and engaging a second language has been shown to foster cognitive enhancement across the board in elders.

We are herpers.  Many keep their snakes in barren drawer units, engaging them primarily to feed and clean. We prefer to build them playgrounds, interact, and watch them do things long thought not a part of snake behavior. In the herp world, that's called enrichment.

I could write for hours about this, but for now let's just say that to the Flozzies, Dad was like a drawer snake and their primary interest in enrichment was inward and material, not outward and transcendent.

Compassion/Regard
Another biggie. The Flozberks were represented as big time bangers in this quality by one Princess Corn Log in The Monster Clash:

And they provide this care with more love and compassion than most people ever receive.

Another highly dubious claim from FlozWorld.

For starters, Reagan is not a notably loving or compassionate man. He's an even-tempered, low key, amicable fellow who is emotionally remarkable only in his emotional unremarkableness. So, let's dispense with any notion that he's a world leader in those fields.

Neila is a more complex matter. When bursting with greasy, plasticky forced jollity and saccharine grandstanding in her dog and pony show, she can seem attuned to the needs and feelings of others. Closer consideration of behavior within single events and across years of patterns screams otherwise.

Behold in the Neila's Silly Ass video how she repeatedly interrupts Dad as if he didn't exist, tries to redirect his train of thought, brushes him off when things don't go her way, puts him on the spot, and intimidates him, all wrapped in a display of suckin' on his head and mouth and fussin' over him to nauseating wretched excess.

Kindly go watch that if you've time. After, I dare you to try and tell me Neila had authentic compassion and regard for that poor man. That's just NOT how she rolls, man. I'm skeptical she truly understands the concepts.

Real compassion and regard are seen in interacting with others in good faith, active listening, understanding and affirming others, seeking common ground, admitting to and atoning for errors, good manners, gratitude, and keeping promises. Neila has fallen short in all of these qualities. We, like all worthwhile people we know, have not.

Special Needs
Dad was legally blind with ARMD and glaucoma. He could see well enough to get around his 1981-built home and perform very basic tasks, but that's it.

Neila was a bloodhound when it came to digging up and organizing data for her endless court dramas, but otherwise she was big time low-info, more attuned to Dr. Phil and The Bachelor than details about issues that hit dead close to home. During one conversation about Ryan, she showed a cringe-inducing lack of learning about things she should have been eyeball-deep in.

When the mother of a longtime heroin addict asks you what "smack" means, things have gone remarkably poorly.

Lisa and I put much effort into studying the blind man's world, including networking with blind people, to better understand how to function there. We learned how to most effectively and respectfully interact, describe things like movies and football games as they played out, identify tasks where he could gain more independence, and find products to facilitate those gains.

Pets
Elders who have lost their mates are often especially bonded to their pets. Dad was no exception.

The Flozzers did a terrible job with Tasha, and that's "smack" in line with their wretched history with dogs and the overall subpar canine showing from The Flozberk Way.

When Mom died in 2015, Tasha was in needlessly poor condition. She had not been bathed, or even brushed in months. Her nails looked like damn Brazil nuts (yes, in the shell) and she was having trouble walking because of them. Her dry food was rancid, with the food at the bottom of the 5 gallon bucket likely years old.

A critical aim of caring for Dad was ensuring Tasha's pistons pumped for as long as possible. Within a month of us taking that over, she was like a new dog after years of suffering for no good reason. Tasha was my friend and, like with Dad's health care, I badly regret my failure in not intervening sooner and smarter.

We did, however, manage to much improve her (and, consequently, Dad's) lot in life by making her upkeep part of our schedule and greatly improving her nutrition with much better food that, in turn, stopped a decade-old vomiting problem cold in its tracks, further improving her nourishment.

I think Tasha was viewed as a threat by Neila. Our meticulous care for her elevated our value to Dad. Tasha kept him tied to his home and last vestiges of independence. The poor job caring for her, Neila's repeated walking on her, and her lack of reaction to walking on her ("She doesn't miss a beat!") on the aforementioned NSA video all suggest Tasha was not of great positive concern to The Flozzarinos.

Results/Mayhem
Finally, we come to this. What's the bottom line? What results have the concerned parties produced?

The Flozzwads carry a stunning history of failure across 4 camps of old people, plus their own children and even their and others' dogs. That's much of why we're here, see. They are catastrophists. Have they done a lot of good and been a ton of help? Absolutely, and uneven help is often better than none. But, their history cannot be denied.

We have a history of producing excellent results, often way against the odds. Dad, once an engineer and outdoorsman, gets much of the thanks for this, for he taught me the qualities and methods that lead to better outcomes. Engineers have to get things right and nature demands that we pay attention.

However, as I'll say more than once here, it's the negative you do, not the positive, that ultimately defines one's character. Camp Flozberk has racked up a lot of negative. A whole, big, steaming bunch. It's quite impressive, really.

We hold dearly one's obligation to try and leave a positive net stamp on interactions, and everyone we know exceptin' fer Duh Flozberks is adamant that we've nailed that. Make things better than ya found 'em, leave places cleaner than ya found 'em, embrace the good with gusto, fight wrongs with ferocity, inspire others to do same.

On the last lucid afternoon of Dad's life, in front of an entire law office with an excellent reputation for ethics, we had this exchange:

ME: Have I, in, say, the last 20 years, done anything that made you significantly question my judgement or integrity?
DAD (after carefully thinking for a good 10 seconds): No. Can't say that I have.

We did an excellent job taking care of Dad and Tasha and documented his feelings about that on video. The Flozberks SUCKED, and when reminded of that fact, the result was an bizarre, unhinged outburst and polar shifting of reality in a veritable orgasm of gaslighting that will never cease to fascinate and sadden me.

I know you and Lisa are incapable of caring for another human being...As a human being, it would be unconscionable of me to punish my grandfather with your inept care.
Princess Corn Log - "Monster" - September, 2018

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