This morning, I headed out with my daughter while she did the morning feeding. We were hoping to catch some more kittens for the rescue.
The kittens are definitely more comfortable around my daughter, and were willing to come over for cat soup while she was right there, and she was able to pet them. When she tried picking them up to put in the waiting carrier, though, that was too much. These kittens are a lot more skittish than the ones we took in yesterday.
Sweetie, of course, didn’t help much!
After a while, my daughter and I talked about it and decided it would be better to wait. We made sure to leave the big cat carrier out, door open, so they could go in and out as they pleased and not find it scary. The white and grey singleton also came out, but it’s even more nervous that the littles.
We will try again tomorrow – if the weather holds. We’re supposed to get heavy rain in our area overnight and all day tomorrow. It’s supposed to be worse to the south of us, and the city is getting flash flood warnings, so we shall see.
Once inside and having breakfast, I remembered to tell my brother about the chainsaw mill. He would have seen it by now, but I wanted him to know that he was welcome to use it at any time, since it’ll be a while before I am able to. While we were chatting, I mentioned my plans to go into town to buy a birthday card and visit out mother, since I wasn’t able to do it yesterday.
He was planning to visit our mother today, too, so he offered to drive me in his car, which was very sweet of him. I had enough time to head outside again to move some hoses, as my SIL said she wanted to mow the inner yard for me, then I picked some Orange Currant tomatoes and even a few Blueberry tomatoes for my mother. I figured she make snarky comments about them being so small, but thought she would still enjoy them.
We dove out in their recently acquired electric car, and there’s a charging station almost across the street from the nursing home, so we went there to top the charge up, then walked over to the dollar store, half a block away. I found a card but decided against looking for the other stuff I had been thinking of on this trip. My brother had already brought a card last weekend, but found an actual 95th Birthday card and got it for her, too. Then we walked over to his car to fill the cards out inside.
We had brought my walker along and, by then, I felt that I was going to need it, so he got it out for me and we headed in. It was coming up on lunch time, but my mother was asleep in bed when we got there. Once she was awake enough to realize we were there for a visit, she got up and moved to her corner chair.
The visit was… draining.
My mother almost immediately went at my brother, going on about how she wanted a “good” radio – she simply will not accept that the station she wants to listen to cannot be picked up in her room, and insists the problem is the “junk” radio. My brother had not intended to tell her yet, but he ended up explaining that he did get her an internet radio, like she asked for, and had spent the last week setting it up. She can’t understand any of it, but when she gets it, she’ll only need to push a button to get a Polish radio station. It was not easy, since the one station she wants doesn’t broadcast online like most others. It took him 4 days to figure out how to get their website stream connected to the radio. It was just that one station that was an issue, but none of it was easy. The next step is to activate the new internet that was installed in her room. He tried to explain all this, but she kept interrupting him and complaining.
The rest of the visit did not get any better.
She mostly dismissed the cards we got her. She mocked the tiny tomatoes, then was wondering where her garlic was. She had asked for a bulb of garlic, which my sister had brought, but apparently it wasn’t good garlic (small?). Then she asked me if I had garlic in the garden. I told her no, it’s harvested. She glared at me, asking why. I told her, it’s September. It’s all harvested. She then went to talking about how my sister and her husband eat garlic every day, and that’s why they are so healthy, so she wants garlic.
My sister and her husband are not that healthy.
Then she went on about how she’s gained weight (she hasn’t; she has water retention and bloating) because they feed her too much and keep “pushing” snacks, and “they” put chemicals in food and that’s why she’s gaining weight and why people are getting cancer. She’s cutting our beef and pork, convinced it’s the cause of her “stomach problems”. Then she started talking about something she saw on the news (she doesn’t have a TV, so I’m guessing in one of the common rooms?), except she was clearly combing two completely different things into one, but that’s why everyone is dying of cancer. ??? Then she started on how, after she’s gone, she wants my brother, sister and I to all get along and not fight and push each other away – clearly she had imagined some sort of scenario and believes it happening or will happen, or… I don’t know, but she was making a big deal of it. Not the first time, though the first time she assumed we were behaving a particular way. Then my brother mentioned she’s used our sister for something (he didn’t even try to cover how badly she had stabbed him in the back and broke his heart in the process) and I mentioned she has specifically told our sister to keep it a secret from us, pointing out that she is the only one doing things like that.
It went over her head.
On and on it went, until someone came in with her lunch. We helped her set up with her table and tray to eat, then my brother said he and I would be going out for lunch now, leaving her to eat.
I think we were there for maybe half an hour.
My brother is a saint. I would have left much earlier. Mind you, by then the pain killers were wearing off and I had very little patience in me.
We did not go out for lunch. Neither of us had the energy for it.
Once at home, I had to pretty much lie down right away and my brother, being my brother, had many projects to work on. Later, he said that with all the manual labour he did over the next few hours, none left him as tired as that half hour or so with my mother! I’m glad we were able to go in together. If it had been just him, she would have been much worse. *sigh*
I eventually made it outside again, too, and get into the garden, but that will be in my next post.
See you there…
The Re-Farmer
The Re-Farmer 