Today’s high was just a bit above zero, so it was pretty much a completely indoor day. I spent most of it working on a crochet experiment that, in the end, I was quite happy with, even though I had to modify my plans because I was running out of the yarn I was using.
I did get outside at least a little bit, though, to get a meter reading. As I went to the pole in the outer yard, I spotted a cat toy from the isolation shelter I’d forgotten about. I’d washed it with the others on the sidewalk, but never noticed it was missing. It’s a round pink ball that lights up when it bounces. I grabbed it and tossed it back into the inner yard and Midnight, who had been following me, ran after it like a puppy playing fetch! He was quite hilarious.
I got my reading and started back to the house when I saw it in the grass and decided to toss it towards the sun room door and kibble house set up. As soon as I threw it, there was an absolute stampede of 5 cats, thundering after it! I don’t even know where they all came from. They just exploded after it! It was so funny!
On another note, I heard from my brother and SIL today. They were on their way to my mother’s with a new wheelchair for her. She has the one that was my late father’s and she wanted a new one. My brother had talked to her about what she wanted and ordered one from Amazon, and they wanted to get it to her as quickly as possible.
She hated it.
My brother, thoughtfully, took video of her trying it out and was able to send it to me after they got home – with the new wheelchair that they’ll be returning. On seeing the video, I understand why she wasn’t happy. She couldn’t use the armrests at all! It’s made for a smaller person. My mother is pretty tiny, but overweight, and it just wasn’t right for her. She needs a bariatric wheelchair. Not because of her the number on the scale – as I said, she is tiny, so “overweight” for her is still below the weight limits of non-bariatric chairs – but for the dimensions.
Then, in the video, she started talking about her current wheelchair. My late father’s wheelchair.
She is absolutely convinced it’s not the same chair. Someone “traded” it (something she accused my father of doing for as long as I can remember). She thinks someone took the chair at one of the TCUs she was in before finally getting to the nursing home and replaced it with an inferior one.
That chair had been stored here for some time. I brought it to my mother. Before I did, I cleaned it, oiled the moving parts and conditioned the vinyl. One of the foot rests had been stuck and I had to fight with it, and some WD40, to get it moving again. I recognize that chair very well. It has not been changed.
I now regret removing my late father’s name tag that had his picture on it, that the nursing home put on it while he was there.
I ended up sending a link to my brother for a bariatric chair in a style that would suit my mother better – and suggested getting anything but black (which would be hard to find), so the chances she’d believe someone switched chairs on her would be almost nil. We’ll see how it works out. He’ll have to return the chair and get his money back, and I don’t know if he’ll be able to order a bariatric one before then. Those things are not cheap!
On another note, I was rather taken aback by my mother’s appearance. Her face was quite grey, and she has dark circles around her eyes.
As I was writing this, I checked the sun room critter cam and noticed both a skunk and a raccoon in the sun room. I headed out to chase them away, and found not one, but two giant, fluffy raccoons (they have their winter fur and look massive, this time of year). As I chased them out, I noticed a cat bed had fallen off a shelf and went to put it back. Gouda and Fluffy had been snuggling in another cat bed and came out for pets. I got to give Fluffy some thorough pets.
It wasn’t fluffy. It was the one the girls call Lady Grey. She looks like Fluffy, but has a white chest. She had always been one of the more feral cats, but the girls have been working on her. She kept looking like she wanted to run away, but still let me pet her! That is just huge!
Now, we’re not 100% sure she is a she, with all that long fur hiding things, but the girls are convinced she’s female. If she is now allowing pets, even when it’s not feeding time, we should be able to finally get her spayed!
Or neutered, if Lady Grey turns out to be Lord Grey.
Anyhow…
That’s how today went. Rather quiet. We’re supposed to get a fair bit warmer over the next few days, so I hope to get more stuff down outside.
I know I’ve said this quite a few times already, but I am so appreciating this mild weather we are having this year. It’s allowing us to slowly get things done out there, as we are physically able to.
Next year, I suspect, is going to be a lot more productive in comparison!
Today was overcast and rainy all day, as predicted.
Which meant I was feeling sleepy all day.
This is on top of already getting tired quickly and sleeping a lot more than usual since the surgery. A double whammy of sleepy. I didn’t even make it outside to do any cat feeding, or even doing my usual walkabout.
I did get a couple of things done. We had taken one of the turkeys out of the freezer and my older daughter roasted it last night, for us to enjoy today. She set aside the neck and bag of innards for me. Last night, when I found myself awake and ended up writing a blog post, I stayed up until past 6am. Before going back to bed, I got out the meat grinder my younger daughter and I had picked up at the second hand store earlier this summer and used it to grind the set aside turkey bits. It came out to quite a decent amount, which I packed up in a take out container and set in the old kitchen (which is uninsulated and currently refrigerator cold, even in this mild fall) for my daughters to use to make cat soup with. That seemed to work out rather well.
No one has succeeded in getting close to Sweetie to treat that horrible ear of hers. It’s probably the worst case of ear mites I’ve seen – or the worst damage from scratching. Yet none of us can get close to her, even while she is eating. We used to be able to pet her! Sending her to the rescue for spay and trying to adopt her out has really set her back. It’s been months, and still no progress.
I didn’t even get any crochet done today. Instead, I’ve been trying to catch up on my desktop. I haven’t been keeping up on visiting my blogs as regularly. I don’t do it on my phone, as I find it so much harder to read anything on there, never mind constant issue with tapping on a screen. I haven’t been keeping up on my emails, either, which is mostly newsletters and subscribed stuff, including bloggers I now follow on Substack. Personal communications are more often through text or Messenger, not email, these days. It’s remarkable, how quickly those emails build up. I won’t be able to catch up on them all today, that’s for sure.
Tomorrow is supposed to be chillier, but we should be getting some sunshine. I look forward to getting outside, even if it’s just for a little while!
I got a call from my mother today. I have to say, her calls have been wildly difference since I got my cancer diagnosis and surgery. She actually sounds cheerful. When I ask how she’s doing, she just says “the usual” in referring to her long list of maladies she likes to blame on some food or other, or on the staff for trying to kill her by giving the wrong meds, but doesn’t actually talk about them with me anymore. She saves that for my brother and sometimes my sister.
She has been refusing to dress for the day, staying in one of three long, thick nightgowns she has. She has suddenly decided that she needs more of them, but my sister has not been able to find any that my mother will like. She tried going at my brother about getting her clothes, because she has soooo much money (she doesn’t), and she’s entitled to new things. My brother, meanwhile, knows nothing about her clothing. That’s my sister’s specialty. She knows my mother’s measurements and will usually tailor store purchases to fit my mother. So when she started telling me about talking to my brother about clothes, I told her he’s not the one to talk to about that! That’s when she mentioned that my sister had said she would buy fabric and sew something for her. My sister used to sew all her own clothes, for many years, including clothing of her own design, so she is definitely the right person for that. In hearing some of what my mother was saying she needed, I told her that there are places that specialize in clothes for people with mobility issues. I’m sure there’s one such place in the city where the nearest Walmart is. My sister works at that Walmart, as lives just a 15 minute or so drive away. My mother liked that idea and I promised to pass the message on to my sister.
My mother has been at the personal care home for 5 months now, and has been basically living in those thick nightgowns the whole time. From how she was talking to me, I get the impression that she is seeing how other people living there are always dressed so nicely, and she would like to do that, too. If that’s what it takes for her to stop insisting on not dressing for the day, I’m good with that!
Hopefully, my sister will find – or can sew – things that my mother will like. She is very hard to please, but also doesn’t give much information about what she actually wants!!
It’s coming up on time for me to take my evening med and supplements.
I don’t think I’m going to finish going through the tabs of things I’m trying to catch up on tonight. I might just grab some supper to go with my meds, then go to bed!
I can’t remember the last time I went to bed before midnight so often – and actually slept! Even with waking during the night, I’ve been sleeping for about 10-12 hours a day.
I think this is the first time in 9 years blogging here, that I outright forgot to make my daily post!
So here I am, at past 2am, making up for it. 😄
Actually, it’s past 3am.
Our province no longer does daylight savings time, but not all our devices are connected to services that have figured that out. I have an old tablet that’s used only to display the weather, time and date. It, and my desktop, think we’ve changed time. Our phones, however, didn’t change. In theory, we should be able to manually change the time. The old tablet was my husband’s and we both tried to change it. It didn’t stick. I haven’t even tried on my desktop.
The funny thing was when I went online to confirm the time for our province – and got two different official answers!
Too funny!
Anyhow…
It was a lovely day outside tod… er… yesterday, and today is supposed to be even warmer. It’s also started to rain in the evening and it supposed to continue all day today. Most of the prairies right now is also under a fog advisory, with near 0 visibility in places.
I had a nice surprise yesterday, in the early afternoon. I got a message from my brother letting me know he’d just visited our mother and would be coming out here. I had a chance to go out and talk to him for a while. My mother, he told me, was once again complaining about the internet radio he got for her, because it’s all just one station.
Yup. She reprogrammed the buttons again.
He went over it with her again, explaining to just push the buttons, don’t push and hold. She isn’t even holding for long. He told me he’d actually contacted the company he got the radio from (again; he’d needed to talk to them quite a bit while trying to get it to connect to her favorite radio station), recommending a firmware update. He suggested that they make it so you have to hold the button for 5 seconds to program it, rather than the 1 second or so it is now.
He’d also spent some time working on her wheelchair. She says the staff is saying that it’s hard to push her in it. This is the same folding wheelchair that was my late father’s when he spend his final months in this same nursing home. The front wheels, my brother told me, were very wobbly. He thought they had always been like this, but I remembered cleaning the wheelchair before taking it to my mother, and oiling all the moving parts because they had become stiff and, in some places, starting to rust. So there was probably some play in the wheels, but nothing like what he was finding. He ended up McGyvering it for now, but he thinks it’s the bushings that need replacing. My mother has been asking for a new wheelchair, though, so he had showed her some pictures and I think she picked one.
Of course, she gave my brother a hard time about a lot of things, and he’s very worried that she’s going to do something stupid that he’s going to have to fix. I tried to reassure him by reminding him of our conversations with doctors while she was still at the hospital, then later with the nurses at what should be an annual meeting at the personal care home. It is officially noted that my mother no longer has the cognitive ability to make legal decisions or sign any legal papers. If she does, nothing is legally binding. I think the reminder helped him relax a bit. She had already stabbed him in the back so badly a few years ago, and there is nothing he can legally do to fix it. She still doesn’t understand how badly she screwed herself up at the same time. As her PoA, all he can do is try and hold the pieces together, while she remains oblivious to how much he does for her.
One of the things he did as we were talking was clear the maple suckers that had regrown behind the pump shack. Power to their caravan is sourced through that back wall, and he wanted to make sure it was all clear. He was going to clear the stump at the other end, but I asked him not to. I had “harvested” those in the spring, so they were a lot smaller, and I told him that is my coppice and I’ll take care of it in the spring and use them. So he left them for me.
After a while, I had to head inside, though I did get out again to do my walkabout before the rain started. At one point, I started getting all sorts of gate camera notifications and discovered my brother, sweetheart that he is, added some new fence posts to replace a couple of rotted ones that wouldn’t stay up anymore. When they brought their stuff out here after selling their property, it included a whole bunch of fence posts. He has a post pounder, too, which we don’t, and that made the job a lot faster. Even with an injured arm! He told me he got an MRI recently, and I got the story behind it. He had torn his bicep – three years ago!!!! – and only now was able to get to a doctor to have it checked. Not sure what his next steps are, but he’s been using that arm in pain all this time. To see him moving around, you’d never know the arm was injured.
My family is notorious for that. It’s partly why the girls are so severe with making sure I stick to my recovery restrictions. 😄
My brother was able to finish what he’d come to do and head out before the rain started up in the evening, though we’d had light rain on and off before then. We’re not getting anything heavy, but it should be enough that we won’t need to water the haskaps and the little spruces still in pots. It also means we’ll continue to have much warmer temperatures, including overnight. As I write this, we’ve been at our high for today of 11C/52F, and it’s supposed to stay like this all day. Overnight temperatures are supposed to stay above freezing for a couple more nights, and even after that, in the 10 day forecast, we’re expected to just barely dip below freezing overnight.
Which means we don’t need to put the hoses away yet. We just need to make sure the water is shut off and the spray nozzles are open for the night.
I am so appreciating our very mild fall, and holding out for an equally mild winter. I don’t mind the snow so much – we need that winter moisture for the spring – but I could really do without the sub-arctic temperatures!
I would love to have the life our cats are living. 😁
Today, the plan was to do the Costco shopping trip.
Last night, my older daughter let us know she was feeling like she was coming down with something and would be avoiding contact as much as possible to avoid spreading something.
Then my younger daughter also started feeling ill.
Which meant I would be doing the Costco trip alone.
Okay. Risky, but okay.
This morning, I found myself feeling like I was coming down with a cold, too. Very mild. Could have been something else. I decided not to take a chance, so when my younger daughter came in after doing the outside cat feeding, I told her Costco was out. It turned out she was working up to coming along with me, even though she was still not feeling well. Once I told her I was staying home, she went back to bed and crashed for several hours.
I tried to do the same but as soon as I started showing signs of being awake, I got covered in cats wanting attention, so that didn’t work out well. My husband was the only person feeling well enough to throw something into the oven for breakfast, which is saying a lot.
I’m glad I didn’t take the chance of going to the city. Before I was finally able to get up, I was no longer feeling like I was coming down with a cold. Instead, the pain levels started kicking in and the bleeding suddenly increased, after several days with no bleeding at all. It kept getting worse, even as I was just sitting at my computer, until I finally had to lie down. If I had done the drive to the city, then tried to walk around a Costco, without my daughter to take over with shopping and driving, I would have gotten much worse and would have had to wait it out before I could safely drive myself home.
When I did finally lie down, I figured I should phone my mother. I haven’t been able to visit her for quite some time, though my brother has, and kept me up to date. He had been able to set up internet in her room that allowed him to get her an internet radio that he programmed for all Polish radio stations, plus the one local multi-cultural station with a Polish hour that she used to always listen to. He was also able to set up a regular large button telephone for her, instead of the senior’s mobile phone, with an internet phone number. With that one, he programed the phone numbers for himself, our sister, plus two for me – one the land line, one my cell phone – all with photos of us on the buttons. My mother would only need to push a single button to call us.
When he got there, neither was working. Someone had taken away the device he’d set up that allowed both to connect through Wi-Fi. The phone and radio were working fine, but had no internet to connect to. He talked to someone at the front desk and they did find a note in the maintenance log about it, but nothing about why it was taken away. They found another one for her, so he got that set up again and working.
Which is when he discovered that all the pre-programmed buttons on the radio had been re-programmed, all to the one multicultural radio station. My mother had been button mashing again. She also had trouble understanding which knob to use to turn on the radio, which is also the volume button, and was instead using the knob to manually change stations.
*sigh*
While talking to my mother on the phone, she told me about her radio only having one station. I asked her if she was pressing a button and holding. She very proudly said yes.
That’s how the buttons get programmed. Instead of simply pressing a button and letting go when trying to change stations, she pressed and held and programmed the button for the radio station she was trying to move away from – and did it with all the buttons, then couldn’t understand why all the buttons had the same station.
I explained it to her a bit, but it will have to wait until my brother visits next for it to be reprogrammed, and he won’t be able to do that until after Thanksgiving weekend.
She wondered about my sister not visiting and I reminded her my sister was still out of province for a festival with their church. She did not ask me when I would be visiting next, though, and instead asked how I was doing. Nor did she say any of the other things she usually goes after me about. Which is quite unusual. I guess that’s one benefit to having cancer. My mother is behaving better towards me! Sad that this is what it took.
I did tell her about the huge number of trees we ended up getting through my brother. She was curious about how this happened, so I briefly explained. She was pretty thrilled about the idea that we might eventually have enough berries to actually be able to sell them, like she used to do with her raspberries.
In the end, it was a rather short call, and my pain levels were still spiking and I had to say good bye, which got no argument from her at all.
As difficult as things can sometimes be with my mother with her not being able to understand some things – things she used to have no problem with, like phones and radios – we are grateful that she is doing remarkably well overall. My FIL, who was in supportive living since my MIL passed away, had a fall a few weeks back and is still in the hospital. Physically, he’s doing somewhat better, but his cognitive decline increased substantially. He won’t be able to go home, has been diagnosed with dementia, and they are going through the process of getting him into a personal care home. The frustrating thing is that we are completely unable to go visit him. My husband simply can’t do the trip anymore, without being incapacitated by pain just from the drive. My FIL is more than a decade younger than my mother, but is in poorer physical and mental condition than she is. A reminder that, in the end, age has nothing to do with it.
I’m happy to say that my own pain levels did eventually recede, and I’m now feeling much better. I was even able to take a walk outside, and I did the evening cat feeding. Which had an unfortunate surprise for me. My daughter had noted this morning that we were out of kibble, and I told her there was another 40 pound bag of donated kibble left.
I was wrong.
Looking at the stack of bags where I thought there was kibble, there was only litter pellets. No kibble bag left at all.
So I “stole” some from the inside cats’ kibble bin. Enough to last until tomorrow morning. After that, we’re going to have to go out to get more kibble. Thankfully, we can do that at the general store the post office is in, and not have to drive to another town.
The girls were feeling better by the end of the day and considered digging more holes for those last haskaps, but we were starting to lose the light by then, so they will work on it tomorrow, instead. Ten more large pots, then as many of the little ones that we can find space for. We should at least be able to fill the last measured out spaces my brother had tilled, tomorrow.
My daughter and I are then going to have to go to bed early tomorrow and, hopefully, get a full night’s sleep, because we’ll be getting up quite early to get to my brother and SIL’s place to leave the truck while she drives us to my appointment in the city.
Today, meanwhile, was very much a non-day for all of us. We all felt unwell for one reason or another, and got next to nothing accomplished.
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.
The complete and utter destruction of our corn patch. Clearly, the motion activated noise maker did nothing to deter the raccoons!
I found a whole three cobs that looked untouched. You can see in the last image, what was in them. Basically, just one cob that had anything remotely like ripe kernels.
This is so, so disappointing.
The rest of the day wasn’t much better. Ended up spending several hours in bed dealing with pain that painkillers had no affect on. Then I got a call from my mother who immediately began ranting at me about how nobody is visiting her, and why didn’t my brother or my sister visit her? By the time I had to cut the call short and hung up, it had gone from, no one is visiting her to trying to say I should visit her because she provided the roof over my head and “gave” the farm to my brother to the staff is neglecting her because they are paying more attention to other residents than her to wanting to know very specific details of why I’m getting surgery that are NONE of her business to saying I should make sure that I have a white doctor because brown people don’t care about white people and brown doctors make mistakes.
By then, I was more than done with the call.
The day has gotten better, though. My daughters were able to clear a path and get the big aquarium into the basement. They were able to get the living room actually useable again. There is now a charcuterie and a movie about to happen.
As expected, we lost little Batman last night. I kept an eye on him on the critter cam and knew he was gone when I used the camera to chase out the raccoons in a kibble tray nearby, and there was no movement.
He is now buried under where I plan to plant another tree in the outer yard.
We were never able to socialize him, but I’m still going to miss that little guy.
Today, the plan was to go into town and pick up some fruit for my mother, then visit her for a bit, in the afternoon. I figured, with the festival winding down, it wouldn’t be too bad. It did mean I would be out at a time when my pain levels tend to get bad, so I was pro-active about it. I was up by about 5am and outside by about six, first to feed the outside cats, then bury little Batman.
Then I did my usual rounds and checks, gathering a harvest from the garden. After I got back inside and had breakfast, I made a point of lying down for a couple of hours, at least. Not necessarily to nap, though I did doze a bit, but just to make sure my body rested before I headed out. It worked. I did not get hit with the pain later on, even when I was doing quite a bit of walking around.
As I was eating my breakfast, I got a call on my cell phone. That it even came through was the first surprise. The second was who we calling. A friend from high school. She was in town for a short while and was hoping we could get together. I told her I was going to be in town later, so we worked out that I would contact her before I went in to see my mother, and we would get together when the visit was done.
While getting ready to head out, I was surprised to see my brother out front with his truck and trailer, already partially loaded. He was getting the appliances and other metals on, to take to the scrap yard once he could get the time off work to take it in while they are open. As I headed to the truck, though, I spotted something loaded among the old freezers, furnaces, washers and driers I did not expect to be there.
The antique enameled sink that was leaning against the pump shack.
I was surprised as said, that doesn’t go! He said, yes, it goes. The junk goes. I told him I had planned to use it. We went back and forth about if for a while, as I told him where I’d planned to use it. He mentioned the stainless steel sinks in the sheds and garage (yes, we have a collection of those, too), but I said I don’t want a stainless steel sink. I want that one! In the end, though, it’s his sink. He can do whatever he wants with it, and I wasn’t going to argue. I was on my way to town, anyhow.
When I got to town, I was happy to see there was not a lot of traffic on the main road, though the temporary traffic lights were still set up. I headed to the grocery store and picked up apples, grapes and a few bananas, and decided to pick up some crackers, tiny cans of Ginger Ale and a container with a lid that she could use as a fruit bowl.
I also remembered to bring her old fan that she had asked for.
Thankfully, the nursing home has its own parking, and there was one open spot when I got there. The festival was winding down, but not finished yet, so public parking nearby was out of the question.
As I got to her floor and walked past the nursing station, I greeted the nurse, then turned around and came back to ask how my mother has been.
Not good, it turns out. She’s been yelling at them. Things like, when she didn’t get her tea fast enough, yelling “I want my tea”. Sadly, none of this is unusual or unexpected. She has always been one to be abusive towards those who are trying to help her. The nurse actually wished me luck when I continued on to my mother!
Thankfully, I had my friend as reason to leave earlier.
The visit actually turned out rather well.
She did try to do her usual digs and insults, but they didn’t get very far and I was able to distract her. She was happy with what I brought her. I washed the grapes right away and put them in the container I’d brought, and she started eating right away. Oddly, she was spitting out the skins. I asked her why, and she told me that she has to be careful with her digestion. Turns out, she has decided grape skins are hard on her stomach. ??? She decides all sorts of things are “bad” for her, but grape skins are a new one to me.
She tried to grill me on where my brother was and what he was doing. She had treated him so badly the last time he visited, and has zero understanding that this is a problem she is causing. Oddly, when I told her he was very busy, and only has a short length of time to get things done outside of work, she told me not to speak for my brother. I told her, then don’t ask about him. At which point, she started crossing herself. 😕
She complained about how they staff don’t “want” her to see a doctor, or a dietician. Which I know isn’t what’s going on, but she apparently told them that if they don’t want her to see the doctor, she’ll get us to take her to another doctor. Who that would be, I have no idea, but I told her, we can’t just take her to see another doctor. It doesn’t work that way. She’s under the care of a doctor already. She just doesn’t have the health problems other people living here have. I explained the nurses go through her file with the doctor regularly, along with all the other stuff (turns out she convinced them to put her on an inhaler again; only a doctor can write that prescription), but she refuses to accept that.
Then she got around to why she wants my brother to see her. She wants to talk to him about her health. Then she started repeating a story of how, back when she was about 25 years old (so… 70+ years ago) she had the same pain in her chest she has now (very unlikely) and the doctor gave her a prescription and she felt better. She wants us to find this medication and get it for her. All she remembers of it is that it had cherry and orange in it.
I tried to explain to her (again) that whatever she took 70 years ago probably doesn’t exist in that form anymore and, based on what she has described, it sounds like an early version of the “pink medicine” (Pepto) she takes now. The cherry and orange would be flavours, not the medicine.
She still wants to get my brother to find this mystery medication, because she’s convinced it is the only thing that will magically make her all better again.
She still complains about her breathing at night. I tried to suggest she try and take advantage of the hospital bed to sleep sitting upright, with her knees supported, but she stopped listening to me and started talking over me about something else entirely.
*sigh*
I had told her about my friend from high school being in town and asked if she remembered her. She didn’t, but when I gave her name, my mom just wanted to know her ethnicity. When she heard her married name, she wanted to know that ethnicity. When I told her I didn’t know she asked, what kind of friend can this be? I told her, a friend that doesn’t care about such things! Then she mocked her married name because it means “without clothes” in Polish.
I looked it up when I got home. The word in Polish is vaguely similar, but it is not her name at all. But “similar” is enough for my mother.
Much to my surprise, she didn’t give me a hard time about leaving fairly quickly to meet with my friend. Possibly because I mentions I see her only once every year or two. It was only as I was leaving that my mother thought to ask about my own health, since I’d told her I had been to the ER when she’d called me, wanting me to visit her that day. I told her I was going for surgery, party to find out what is actually going on, because so many tests are coming back normal. Something she would understand very well.
She did.
As I was heading out, I called up my friend and found out she was at a particular shop she visits every time she comes out here, trying on dresses! So I headed that way, though I had to park several blocks away. If the nursing home parking hadn’t been private parking that I could stay in, the walk would have been shorter! Which is fine, though I was glad I did that lie down this morning.
I caught up to her and, this time, I got to finally meet her husband! The building this shop is in used to be a butcher shop and grocery store. The owner had a secret recipe for steak spice that is the best ever. When they bought the building, they bought the recipe and regularly have it available, tucked into a corner of the store among completely unrelated items. So while my friend was in the fitting room, I popped over to see if they had any in stock. A customer was in front of the display so I started waiting, but as he and his son were talking about things, I could see they would be a while and just excused myself to grab a bag – then asked if he’d every tried it. It turned out he was local enough to remember the butcher shop and grocery store that was there before, and I told him the story behind the steak spice mix, and that it was the best we’ve ever had.
Then I grabbed a second bag, because I didn’t know when I’d be back.
I saw him walking out of the store later, carrying a bag of steak spice. I know he’s going to love it!
After my friend was done, we paid for our stuff, then worked out where we were going next. She wanted to go to the park where the main festival activities were still happening. We walked while her husband went to their car to try and find a closer parking spot. This gave us a chance to catch up on all sorts of things. She was having difficulty with an injured knee, so I just had to extoll the virtues of having a walker. She told me, she was trying to stay away from that. I told her that my husband had done that for a long time. When he finally got one, he wondered why he waited so long. It is such a huge improvement in quality of life. I don’t know that I convinced her, but I think she’s more open to it.
We took our time walking to the park, resting whenever we found a bench.
The park had the carnival rides still going, as well as a vendor village. All the little tents with the usual stuff you find at carnivals, but a few that were a little more unusual. One that caught my attention had a display of drinking horns and wooden steins that caught my attention. They had the style of drinking horn like we got for one of our daughters for her birthday a few years ago. The also had DnD items, “Viking” jewelry, and other interesting things. I saw grab bags for “hair weapons” that I just had to ask about. I was directed to a display of hair pins in the shape of medieval style weapons – swords, war aces, and the like. The grab bags were cheaper than the display ones, of course, so I grabbed one for each of the girls. We caught up with my friend’s husband and wandered around a bit more. After a while I spotted a donair food truck. We haven’t had real donairs since we left the city. The local restaurant has gyros, which are not quite the same thing. So I got four of them to take home.
Which did mean I had to leave right away, while the food was still hot. They ended up giving me a ride to where I parked my truck.
My daughter had actually done it a while ago, but this was the first time I saw this part of the truck in full daylight like this, instead of in the shadows of the garage.
My husband had messaged me for something, so I made a quick stop at the grocery store again before heading home. By then, my brother and SIL had left for home. My brother loaded so many washers and driers on that thing. Why were there so many washers and driers? I thought it was funny that we found 6 old toilets around (my brother found the 6th one, buried in the junk pile). There was the one washing machine we brought out to the junk pile when we replaced it. The rest were in the warehouse and storage sheds all over the place. Along with a couple of old furnaces, the remains of a wringer washer, and a couple of huge old chest freezers.
I also got a message that my brother had taken out the enameled cast iron sink and left it for me. That was so sweet of him! It’s a gorgeous sink; the kind with a built in drain area. Antique collectors and interior decorators would pay a pretty price for it. Especially in such good condition. Not that I’d ever sell it. That design is just too useful.
So today turned out to start off sad, but ended well. Even the visit with my mother was okay. I also didn’t get hit with pain after all that walking around, either.
Tomorrow, though, I’ll be walking around at Costco. Hopefully, my younger daughter will be able to come with me.
I’m not looking forward to it, but at least it’ll be on a Tuesday, not a holiday weekend!
As expected, today broke 30C/86F. I don’t know what the humidex was. I was outside by 7am, watering the garden and it was starting to get too hot before I finished. It’s past 7:30pm now, and it’s just barely starting to dip below 30C/86F now.
I do have to chuckle a bit about when I do the outside cat feeding these days, both morning and evening now. There are at lest 4 little skunks that come out almost right away. I found myself with an extra tray that I ended up setting under the rail I hang the end of the hose from as an extra kibble and cat soup tray. After feeding the cats and getting ready to water the garden, there was a little skunk under the hose. I used it to rinse off the soup bucket, and it didn’t turn away. It got all foot stompy and chittering, but didn’t run. It was famished and kept eating, clearly struggling between wanting to run away and eating.
Which is the only reason I don’t chase them away. These little ones are famished – and I’m not seeing a mama with them. I suspect something got the mama and, right now, we might be their only reliable source of food. I am not setting out any extra for them, but I can’t begrudge a hungry baby its sustenance. They get along with the cats and, other than leaving poop in the sun room, they don’t make a mess or cause damage. So I let them eat. I only chase them off if the big one comes out and starts bullying the littles. Pretty sure that one is a big male.
Meanwhile…
I got a couple of calls from my mother this afternoon.
*sigh*
I had to hang up on her, the first time.
I saw the call display, so I knew it was her when I answered, but when I said hello, there was nothing. I said hello again. Still nothing. I checked to make sure the line was still open, and it was. I said hello again, and she finally answered.
???
We had barely said our hellos when she started. I’d asked how she was doing, and she started talking about all the commotion outside her window from the “big celebration”. This would be the annual festival that has been happening in this town for more than 100 years, and has been getting bigger and bigger over the past two or three decades. An entire “village” with historical re-enactments gets set up in the park next to the nursing home, and the parking normally used for fishing boats or people parking at the marine across the road gets set up with at least a dozen food trucks – and this isn’t even the main event area! All the carnival rides, stage performances and indoor exhibitions are at another park, across town.
“Across town” being about 4 blocks.
When she mentioned it, I told her I knew it was on – and that it was why I was not going anywhere near town today or tomorrow.
She then started saying she thought the parade was happening tomorrow (it is), and that I should “bring the children”. I needed to “bring the children” and get them around people. Get “the children” doing things.
I finally cut her off and said, “they’re not children. They’re adults.”
She just doubled down. I needed to take “the children” to see the parade.
Never mind that we’ve never really liked parades. Never mind that both daughters have health problems and one of them almost died not that long ago. We’ve only told my mother they have health problems, because we know she doesn’t care, and couldn’t understand it anyhow. So she doesn’t know the details, but she does know that none of us are well. The last time she called was when she wanted me to come visit and I had to tell her I’d just come back from the ER. She didn’t ask anything about it. She just kept hammering at me that I needed to take “the children” to the parade.
As she kept going, I told her to stop.
She didn’t.
I told her to stop again.
She ignored me.
I said good bye and hung up.
The entire call was less than 1 minute.
I had started to update my brother and SIL when the phone rang again. It was my mother, so I answered.
I got a dial tone. She hung up before I had a chance to pick up.
So I finished updating my family on the group chat we have specifically for discussions about our mother, when the phone rang again. It was my mother. I answered and said hello.
Nothing.
Hello?
Nothing.
Hello?
She finally said hello.
She then spoke as if the last call never happens. This time, she launched into how she wanted me to come over so she could give me money. “Lots” of money, so I could buy her some fruit. For some reason, she really felt she needed fruit.
I told her again, I was not going into town today. At the earliest, I could go tomorrow afternoon.
Not today?
No. Not today. Tomorrow afternoon at the earliest – partly because the streets in front of the grocery store will be closed off for the parade.
Oh, as long as the grocery store is open.
…
Then she started listing off the other things she wanted me to bring. One, her oscillating fan, I can do. The other two items would require digging past other stores items blocking the way, and digging through boxes. One of them was an old radio that she is convinced will be magically able to get the radio station she wants, even though it’s not any better than the radio she already has. When I told her no, it was in storage, and I can’t get at it, she wanted to know why. Was it locked? I couldn’t exactly explain to her that I have so many things from her apartment here, we can barely used our own living room. I just said, there are other things in the way and I can’t get at it.
She did, eventually, accept that.
Then she told me she didn’t know how to turn the light off on her phone. The light by the neck strap. As near as I can figure out, it’s the built in flashlight. She somehow turned it on, and now doesn’t know how to turn it off. She keeps pushing buttons, she says, but it won’t turn off.
I told her, don’t button mash!
Then she told me she had tried to phone my sister, then my brother, and tried to phone me, but was only able to reach me.
Which explains the earlier non-call.
She doesn’t know how to use the phone. She needs a “real” phone. I told her, my brother got her the simplest, easiest phone he could. He and I had looked at all kinds of phones, and he picked the easiest one for her. Oh, she leaves the technology to my brother.
*sigh*
Oh, and it’s been a long time since my brother visited, and did I know where he was?
I told her, he’s been busy trying to fix their car – which is true, but he’d come out here to fix his tractor, too. I wasn’t going to tell her that. Especially since the part he got turned out to not work so they went back to the city this morning – I saw them drive by while I was watering the garden. They didn’t get back until this evening.
I told her I would pass on to my brother and my sister about her wanting fruit, so whoever got to her first could bring something. Amazingly, she actually let me go shortly after that.
After messaging my brother and texting my sister, I finished eating my supper then headed outside.
As I was finishing setting out the kibble and the cat soup, I saw Batman, loafed in front of the sun room door. I stepped outside and pet him and he didn’t move so, right away, I knew something was wrong. He normally runs away.
When I came back, he was still there. I picked him up and put him near a tray with cat soup in it. When I came back moments later, he was loafed again, and using the edge of the tray as a pillow, barely breathing. I don’t think he ate.
At this point, I just tried to make him as comfortable as possible, and gave him pets. He’s never allowed pets before, but he seemed to appreciate them. Every now and then, I’d come back and find he’d moved a bit. When I found him next to the water bowl, I found a shallow water bowl and set it beside him with fresh water. I don’t think he drank.
After a while, I set up a soft bed for him, instead of the hard concrete, but later found he’d gotten off, then lay on the concrete.
I don’t think he’ll last until morning.
The only external evidence of illness that I can see is on his back end, where he’d clearly had done some messy business, but just as clearly, it was not recent.
I kept checking on him as I got things done. We had high winds today, so I walked around the yard with the wagon to pick up fallen branches, mostly from the willows. It was too hot for some of the jobs I meant to do, and too windy for others, but I did get the folding table out of the garage and set up behind the kibble house. I brought the canopy tent over, too, but it was too windy to set it up. Over the next while, I hope to be able to empty the sun room and give it a proper cleaning, and some things need to stay out of the weather. I also expect to be harvesting the garlic soon, and I’ll be hanging them to cure across the inside of the tent.
With the heat, the garden needed another watering, but it was still too hot. I went inside, planning to rest and hydrate before going out again, but by then, the pain was kicking in and I knew I wouldn’t be able to. My older daughter, sweetheart that she is, went out to do it for me.
As for myself, I’ve taken my tramadol, and it doesn’t seem to be doing a thing. In fact, the pain has been getting worse as I have been writing this.
My daughter just came by to update me. She has seen Batman moving around but, being covered in bug spray, she didn’t want to touch him. I’ve been warned he is now directly under the door between the old kitchen and the sun room, so to watch my step. Also, she had to chase both a skunk and a racoon out of the sun room! She also had a chance to talk to my brother while she was watering the garden, which is nice. Since she works nights, she doesn’t get a chance to see them much.
As soon as I’m done writing this, I’m going to have to take my evening supplements and lie down. Just sitting up at my computer is getting too painful.
My husband’s condition has stabilized, and he is feeling so much better. He’s looking a lot better, too – though some of that is partly because, with the heat we’ve been having, he finally shaved his head and most of his beard off, a few days ago. Today, however, was a much cooler day; more like our typical summer heat.
We had predictions of rain and possible thunderstorms for the afternoon, so I did not water the garden this morning. I did end up adding more rods to the hoops over the bush beans on the high raised bed. The onions planted with them were starting to poke through the netting. It’s now as high as the netting can go and still be secured around the edges. No sign of beans, though. Lots of flowers, but I’m not seeing a lot of pollinators. I’ve pretty much only seen bees on the poppy flowers. Nothing in the flower beds. With our spring lurching from hot during the day to almost freezing at night, that would have affected a lot of our emerging pollinators.
Our corn started to show tassels a few days ago. Today, I saw my first corn silk. Those, at least, get pollinated by the wind. In the next image of the slide show above, you can see the sudden burst of poppy flowers that opened this morning. In the last photo, we have two yellow zucchini flowers open – both female. No sign of male flowers.
While doing my rounds this morning, I also finally had a kitten sighting, enough to take pictures! I hadn’t seen the kitten in so long, I feared a coyote got it, but then I spotted it in the junk pile. The pile that has since had stuff removed from to the bin (which got taken away today), and other stuff sorted for other types of disposal. That area is going to be disturbed quite a bit before it’s all finally cleared away by winter but, for now, it’s still the place they can hide in! I am happy that Sprout is bringing her baby to the food bowls. We now have a chance to socialize it.
These are not the best pictures, since I had to zoom in so much. I didn’t want to scare them away before the kitten had a chance to get to the food bowls!
Later in the morning, I headed out to town, with a stop to visit my mother before I ran errands.
*sigh*
Before visiting her, I stopped at the nursing station to ask about the swelling in her legs. It’s not at a stage they are concerned about, so I asked if there was anything else. She told me my mother was being mean to people more often. It turns out she’s been going into the hallway, sitting there and mocking the guy in the room across the hall from her. They’ve had to have talks with her about her behaviour.
*sigh*
Then there was the visit itself.
I barely made 40 minutes before I had to leave.
When I asked how she was doing, she was feeling terrible, then started talking about how the staff is neglecting her because they want her to die. They want the old people to die, because there’s so many of them and they want to open up the rooms.
Then my mother brought up our vandal’s funeral, asking me what I thought of it. She has asked me this before, but I don’t think she remembered. Before I could say much, she started telling me how proud she was of him, how he had done so well for himself, etc. All I could do was stare at her as she spoke. I had no clue what she was talking about. Then she mentioned how SO many people were at the funeral. That’s when I clued in that she was rewriting her mind to make him out to be some sort of saint, instead of the person who stole from her, verbally abused her, squeezed many thousands of dollars from her over the years, demanded she pay for things he wanted for himself, vandalized things after we moved here, stalked and harassed us, left the most awful messages on her answering machine, continued to verbally abuse her and, the last time she saw him, he got up out of his wheelchair and walked out after she refused to pay for his funeral, which he’d already told her weeks before he’d taken care of. She saw lots of people at the funeral, and people said nice things under his obituary that my sister printed out and put into a binder for her, so now all the stuff he did no longer matters. She mentioned one comment in particular that I looked up, that included a story about horses. I told her that, when we moved here, he had two horses, but one disappeared. I later found out what had happened to it, and it was basically injured due to neglect and had to be put down. Mentioned that to her, and reminded her of how abusive he was towards dogs.
She changed the subject.
There was no way that I could tell her about the stuff going on around here. Especially the health related stuff, which meant I didn’t have much to talk about with her. So I tried showing her garden pictures, and photos of some of the maintenance stuff I was doing. During the conversation, it also came up that her lunch would soon be delivered, and I mentioned I wouldn’t stay to watch her eat (she wanted me to stay and watch her eat), and I’d be going to the grocery store then going home to have my own lunch, before the storm hit.
*sigh*
Every time I said anything, or tried to describe things I was doing to maintain the property, she somehow twisted it around. She was upset because I used the word “kill” when telling her I got rid of the vines that were killing trees and bushes. She accused me of talking only about “bad things” and complaining, when I was trying to describe how I was fixing things and making them better. She got upset because I was doing things she didn’t understand (she thought I had pulled up the grape vines for some reason), using words she didn’t like, and thinking about other things besides her.
Literally.
She got upset when I told her I was going to the grocery store, because I should only be thinking about her and visiting with her.
It got to the point where I finally said, that’s it. It’s time for me to go. She said no, she wanted my company. I pointed out that no, she did not want my company. She doesn’t enjoy my company. She doesn’t like me, she doesn’t like what I say, she doesn’t like what I do. It was time for me to go. As I walked out the door, I heard her staring her “remember your mama!” line that she uses so often, when she tries to guilt us about how when she’s gone, we will “remember your mama”, so we should go whatever she wants now.
*sigh*
From there, I did get my grocery trip done, focusing on stuff my husband requested. While I was driving home, I heard a notification from my phone and somehow knew exactly what the message was. When I got to the highway we cross before the gravel roads, I was not at all surprised to see a big truck coming up. Sure enough, it was the truck hauling away the bin of garbage – and the notification was my husband letting me know it was picked up! 😄 Talk about timing!
After I was home for a while, however, things started getting painful again, so I had to take some painkillers and lie down for a couple of hours. It did get interrupted by a phone call from my daughter, from her doctor’s office about her upcoming surgery. Then I got a call from the tree company.
Twice.
The first was to let me know they should be able to come by later this week, which is great news. The second was to let me know they’ll be able to come out tomorrow afternoon!
That tree in front of the kitchen will finally get taken down. No more big heavy branches over the roof! They’ll also take down a dead spruce that is tall enough that, if it fell, it could also hit the roof.
I still had my phone appointment with my doctor at 4:15, though I knew it might be a while before he got to me. She’s just back from vacation and would have a lot of other phone appointments to catch up on, too. It was closer to 6:30 when the call finally came in.
The first thing she wanted me to do was tell her exactly what was going on with me, and so she could connect it to the ultrasound results and figure out the next steps. Two of the ultrasounds came back normal, but one was not what it should be for a woman my age. I’m going to get a referral to a specialist and will get a biopsy, and then she gave me a prescription. I found all this quite hilarious, because so much of it is matching my daughter – we’re even on the same prescription now. The causes are different, but the symptoms and current treatment are the same. Even my daughter, on finding out the details, thought it would be hilarious if we ended getting “bulk surgeries”.
Yes, we joke about stuff like this.
Oh, I did ask and the doctor told me there was no sign of any cysts. I’m actually a bit surprised by that, since I am prone to them, but it was good news.
Meanwhile, this afternoon, we did get a very brief, very heavy deluge and thunderstorm pass through. After today, things should be both cooler – meaning average temperatures for this time of year – and no rain. I should finally be able to catch up on things outside. I should finally be able to get the electric chainsaw out and take care of that last big piece of tree that’s still lying in the middle of the west yard and cut that up for fire wood for the fire pit. Maple will make for great cooking fires. I also need to get the push mower into the maple grove. The Creeping Bellflower is taking over and starting to bloom, and that’s the last thing we need! That stuff is just as bad as Creeping Charlie.
I am so looking forward to when the tree guys get here. It will be such a relief to have those to trees down! Every time we have high winds, we half expect pieces of tree to fall on the roof.
The yard cats are not going to like it. They won’t be able to get onto the roof and peek through the upstairs windows anymore! 😄
So this has turned out to be a much more hectic day than expected, but at least most of it was good news. Yes, I consider the doctor’s call good news, too.
Thanks to the generous donations from the rescue, one of the things I’ve been able to do for the outside cats is to use the freeze dried cat food powder to make a thin cat soup. Not a lot, but enough to spread around several bowls, in hopes to lure the more feral cats closer to the house.
Sweetie has finally discovered this. For the past while, by the time she showed up to eat, the other cats would have eaten all the cat soup. They absolutely love the stuff. (Interestingly, the inside cats keep trying to get into the boxes, but once it’s mixed up, they have no interest.) I mixed up a bowl of cat soup then leave it to rehydrate while I put out the dry cat food. I actually spotted Sweetie this morning, already at one of the food bowls under the shrine, looking for food. She ran off a bit when I came out and put food into the bowls in the area.
Not only did she come back for the soup but, when other cats bullied their way in, she went into the isolation shelter and found the cat soup in there!
You can just barely see it in the first image. If you click through, there are two short videos, too.
I didn’t do the morning watering today. Partly because I was heading into town for a meeting at the nursing home, and partly because we were supposed to get thunderstorms this afternoon.
I got a message from my brother and SIL, letting me know they were on the way. My brother had to take a day off work for this. I ended up getting there about half an hour early, and met with my brother in the chapel to wait, as the meeting room was being used for another meeting. Their grandsons are still with them, so my SIL took them out around town and to the nearby beach.
The meeting is something that will be happening every year, though when they found out my brother took a day off work, they said future ones could be done over the phone.
Being the first one of these meetings, there was a fair bit to cover, as we gave them some background information that would explain some of my mother’s behavioural issues, etc. There was some discussion about my mother’s cognitive decline – something my mother notices in herself, even if she doesn’t have the vocabulary to explain it. One of the people looked through the binder of my mother’s files and found the past several cognitive test results. One she had done 2 years ago had a score of 14. One she had done this year had a score of 29.
Out of 30.
That is a huge fluctuation. It does match what we all have observed. In many ways, and on her good days, my mother is extremely sharp. On her bad days, she can’t understand some of the most basic stuff. What we have no way of knowing is, when she’ll be having a good day or a bad day!
The meeting went on for about half an hour. My plan had been to visit my mother, then do some grocery shopping. My brother had brought another radio for my mother (she was unusually cruel about the “junk”, high end radio he’d provided for her before, not understanding that it’s simply difficult for any radio to catch a frequency where she is) because she complained he’d taken her radio away.
…
He hadn’t planned to actually visit her, though, but when he called my SIL to let her know we were done, she said their grandsons wanted to visit their great grandmother, and they were already on their way.
So we all went to visit my mother, very briefly. She turned out to be in bed, asleep, when we got there and was very tired.
For a short visit, she managed to make digs and each of us. Not the boys, thankfully, but… yeah. She actually complained a bit that we were there, asking what the “celebration” was. My SIL explained that she was driving the boys back home tomorrow, so this was their last chance to see her for a while. I told her I was going the the grocery store and was visiting her first. We didn’t bother telling her about the meeting, as she would not have been able to grasp it. As it was, she never got up at all. Which was fine. Lunch was going to be brought over, soon, so we didn’t want to linger. As we were leaving, she twisted something in conversation into an accusation against my brother, then told him that she wanted him to come visit for longer… by himself… because she wanted to “talk” to him.
My poor brother. He practically ran from the room after saying his goodbyes.
From there, they invited me to join them for lunch so we could fill each other in and catch up on things. It also gave me a chance to see the boys for a bit longer before they left for home tomorrow.
After we parted ways, I did a small grocery shopping trip. Most of what I got was on sale, but it still came out to almost $130. I did finally get a decent amount of butter, though; it was on sale for under $5 a pound. At least the house brand butter was. With other brands, the half pound sizes cost more than that.
Oddly, by the time I was packing things up at the truck, I was hit with a wave of sleepiness that did not stop. I felt weary to the bone, and could barely stay upright.
What I got fit into three hard sided bags (I even remembered to grab some, since the back of the truck cab is filled with my market supplies) so I messaged home, asking if someone could meet me at the garage to grab one, so I wouldn’t have to pull up to the house or make two trips. Then I started driving, so I never saw what the response was.
I had also picked up an energy drink for the drive home.
It didn’t make any difference, that I could tell.
Much to my surprise, when I drove up to the garage, my husband was waiting for me! He’d gone over with just a cane, not his walker. When I asked him about it, he told my that our younger daughter had been up all night and had finally been able to fall asleep, and her sister has had a relapse and couldn’t walk to the garage.
!!!
We got everything in and I put it all away, and then went to bed. I pretty much passed out for a couple of hours, with the exception of when several cats decided they absolutely needed to use me as a bed.
I didn’t realize how hard I’d fallen asleep until the phone rang. When I answered, the person on the other end asked for my older daughter. From the tone of her voice, I knew immediately is was about her relapse. There was a distinct sense of urgency, almost alarm, in her tone. Talking to my daughter yesterday, she told me she intended to take the “use as needed” medication she has, and that they intended to phone the doctor at the women’s hospital today (her sister being the one to make sure she didn’t put it off again!).
In the end, she was told to go ahead and take the “as needed” medication again. The nurse that called was going to consult with the doctor about any changes in her prescriptions, and will hopefully call back tomorrow. My daughter has her pre-op appointment on the 17 and she was instructed to not worry about that at all and, if things get worse, get to an ER right away. For now, my daughter says it is manageable. When she filled me in on this later, I made sure to tell her that I will drive her to the ER, even if it’s 2am, if necessary.
After my much needed nap, I headed outside to take care of the cats, then stayed out to try and get as much of the lawn mowed as possible.
For all that I waited for things to dry out after the last rains, the grass in the more overgrown section of lawn I focused on was so wet, it actually clogged the riding mower ejector opening, several times!
Then it started raining.
*sigh*
At least I got the tallest grass done. Hopefully, I’ll be able to get more done tomorrow, because the day after is market day, and I don’t expect to have the energy to do it when we are done there. I’m doing the riding mower parts, though, so we’ll see.
Also, there are SO many frogs! Many times, I had to reduce my speed or stop outright to avoid running them over. This makes me very happy. More frogs means less slugs and other nasty bugs! They don’t do much about the mosquitoes, unfortunately, but we’ve had a lot of frogs for two summers now, and I haven’t seen a single slug in the garden! 😁
Meanwhile, I think it’s time to pain killer up and head back to bed. That wave of sleepiness is coming over me again. The only thing keeping it from getting as bad as earlier is my increasing pain levels.
*sigh*
Less than 2 weeks to my telephone appointment with my doctor.
Being broken really sucks.
Being broken and not knowing what’s going on makes it that much more frustrating!!
