Last week I said that I was finally catching up a bit. I should not have said so “out loud”. Fate had more in store for us.
Thursday morning my mom - 90 years old, still living alone, and having problems recently - telephoned me. She needed something she had in her garage and could not carry it into the house as it was too heavy. Could we stop by later in the day and bring it in for her. “Sure.” Oh, and could we bring her a burger to eat as she did not have food (which I took to mean in her house). “Sure”. We went to Wendys for our usual lunch and planned to buy a burger for her before leaving and bring it to her. I told husband I was going to pick up some groceries on the way to her house to hold her over. I knew that on Saturday she was going to my sister’s house for the weekend to go have and have her hearing tested and for Mother’s Day. I telephoned her and said that we would also bring some deli turkey, what kind of bread would she like and what else could we bring. “I have plenty of food in the refrigerator.” Huh? “Mom you said that you had no food!” “Oh, that is up here in my bedroom. I am too frightened to walk down the stairs.” OH BOY! We bought the burger and drove to her house.
Mom was upstairs. I went up and walked down her down the stairs step by step. She sat in the kitchen and talked to my husband while she ate the burger. She thought it was wonderful. (She had never been to Wendys before she went there with us a couple of months ago and had been surprised at how good their burgers were - this is not an ad for Wendys.) I looked around her kitchen. We had been there on Monday and while her house always has stuff around - don’t we all - the kitchen had been clean and neat. This time - only 3 days later - there were dirty dishes and the like all over and food out and rotting. I washed the dishes, etc and tossed the garbage.
I then suggested to her that she go to my sister’s house early (based on conversations with my sister I knew this was okay) and she would mostly not have to deal any stairs while she was there. She agreed. We then started packing clothing for her - she told me which drawer to get clothes to pack - “why are you bringing so much, I am only going for 2 days?’ “No mom, it is at least 4 days.” She has started sending her laundry out to be done and there was a sealed package of it which had been returned clean to her. I took that package also - despite the towels and bed linens also in it - the more the better. We took her medications - complete bottles and weekly box. We took both of her walkers and her cane - none of which she has been using, but has started to. All was thrown in plastic bags.
My sister met us and we got mom in. Our thoughts were that she can no longer live alone and we would keep her at sister’s house bit by bit until we managed to get her to agree to stay. That night we had call from my sister. Mom could not get up the sofa - even with help - and kept falling asleep so they were at the hospital near my sister. Mom was there for at least the weekend. There was a decision that one of her meds was too large a dosage and it was cut back - it was making her too groggy. She had been scheduled to go to a psychiatrist on this past Monday to deal with the meds, I called and canceled it as the hospital had dealt with them and if she was going to be living a county away, she should have a doctor out there. I also called her regular doctor and canceled an upcoming appointment, explaining the situation and saying that we would tell the doctor handling it out there to call him about it.
We spent Mother’s Day at the hospital. (All three of us daughters, our husbands, and her grandchildren were there at varying times - even without planning it.) I joked to someone yesterday - maybe this was her way of making sure everyone visited her for Mother’s Day. She was transferred to a rehab facility on Monday and they are working with getting her walking better. We still have to figure out where she will be going on a permanent basis. We have not talked to her about it. (No, she doesn’t even know I have a blog - so she does not read it so she will not know about any of this.)
Yesterday I had to go my client in NYC - what a mess - somehow she had bounced checks - from customers and then as a resort her checks which had paid bills - and had several situations with customers credit card payments and cancellations. (Client is not much younger than mom.) I was ready to scream between what had gone on with mom and what was happening at client. I work at client on a desk maybe 2 feet wide and 18 inches deep and it filled with all sorts of stuff around the edges - so I couldn’t spread stuff out to work. Her vault is behind the chair I sit and she seemed to need to open it - and open the door more fully than normal and was constantly hitting the back of my chair. Oh, and I had left earlier in the morning to go to her to deal better with the overcrowded parking garage - and it still took almost 2 hours after I got there to get a space (and I really had to go to the bathroom when I pulled into the garage and had to wait) so I had about an hour less than I planned and needed to do all of this. I actually took photocopies of many things to go over them again here at home.
In the middle of all of this, I heard husband’s ring on my cell phone - in my brief case on the floor in a plastic bag (concerned about bed bugs in the place) beside me. I was about to scream, but knew if he was contacting me it was IMPORTANT. He had gone out for lunch in our van and after lunch at (yes) Wendys, it would not start. He called the auto club and they got it started and he drove to our mechanic to be looked at. Our RV was already at our mechanic for the annual state inspection. The RV was finished so he drove it home and left the van. He had texted me to bitch about all this. My response “Much the same here.” I got an apology from him.
I have made arrangements to forward her mail to my sister. In the interim until that starts we are going to her house and picking up her mail. Today I said to husband that the weather was nice (rain tomorrow as it is most days lately) so I wanted to drive to mom’s house and pick up the mail and make sure that there were no packages of stuff she had ordered before all of this there. He was not happy about the time it would take, but agreed. Only junk mail of course, but lots of it. I think my mom gets more mail in a week than we get in a month - lots of catalogs and strange magazine offers. On the way home we stopped to gas up the car as I had used up a lot yesterday and we are thinking of a day trip to PA on Friday.
As we drove home from the gas station (closer to mom than us), which we have used before, the car started acting funny when we were stopped at lights. Sooooo, we picked up the van and left the car! There is a new fellow working for our mechanic (I met him once, husband met him twice as he was there yesterday) and we went in and explained. I also told him that we do not normally have serial car work done. :-) So far the costs for the vehicles have not been bad, hope this one is not expensive.
In between all of this I have managed to catch up a bit more - the “to do” pile is getting noticeably shorter. The “to scan” has gotten slightly taller though. I have managed to get an email out to a friend who husband told me had posted on FB that she needed a source for food trucks for an event - told her about a large event in that area and they must know who comes to their event. I also scanned in the “who is bringing what to the June luncheon meeting” of my embroidery chapter - both because I intended to send it to the membership and because one of the members who had not been at the last meeting to sign up had asked. Scanned and emailed out to the members. Hopefully there are more of us coming and I am not the only one bringing something other than some sort of salad.
THOUGHT FOR THE WEEK -
We never know what is going to come our way. Unfortunately it tends to be problems more than solutions. Each item has to be dealt with - to overlook it will make bigger problems down the road. When I am ready to scream about everything I think about all of those with much larger problems. Mom is aging and needs more help - but she is still with us. My client is driving me crazy, but she is a nice person and I do like working for her - most of the time (and we need the money). The vehicles are driving us crazy at this particular point in time - but they normally run fine and don’t end up costing a lot of money for repairs. New rule - van will be driven at least every Wednesday as if it had been driven more often than twice a month or so, it might not be having problems lately. I am not a “Mary Sunshine” but I know that the problems we are having are not as bad as others have and we can deal with them. And they give me something to write about. What do you think are the chances we will go to PA this Friday?
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