Night-Night, Mom!

My mom’s been torturing us for months. She’s abusive on the phone. She physically fights caregivers and nurses and gets skin tears and then sees them later and thinks that she’s being abused, and it makes her angry. She sees people she doesn't like and talks about killing them. She has angry episodes almost every day. Her daytime caregiver can calm her down, but it’s having its toll on her and the nighttime caregiver, her daughter. We haven’t been able to secure weekend caregiving since a crackdown on casual caregivers in my mom's community. We’re almost out of the woods, with an agency in place, but mom hates every new caregiver she meets, and she acts out. Yesterday was no exception. I had to orient a new caregiver, and then spend time with her and mom. I wanted to take her for a drive, which she wanted to do, but she just futzed around in order to wind me up. She called me lazy when I let the caregiver put on her sweater and said that that was why I was so fat around the middle.

Two hours after I made my escape, I got a call from the caregiver because my mom was out of her mind, yelling "Get out!!". I counseled her to give the phone to my mom so I could keep her busy and make sure she doesn't fall. Go to the nurse's station and ask for Ativan, and grab my mom's favorite Pal, who was on duty that day. It all worked out, but I had to hear my mom's frequent refrain that "I'll REMEMBER this," which is funny because she has Alzheimer's.

I’m done.

A few days ago, the daytime caregiver and I took mom to the doctor’s office to fill out some paperwork for the community where mom lives. Something I heard, something that I already knew, struck me in a different way. The Physician’s Assistant said that we could give my mom more medication but that we haven’t because she has a strong caregiving presence in place and we (mostly the beloved daytime caregiver) can turn her episodes around. 

Wait. So we’re making the choice to allow her to torture us because we can take it? Why should we do that?

Basically, fuck her. It’s our life or mom’s and she’s 95.

So I wrote to my sisters yesterday, while mom was mid-meltdown with a new caregiver and told them I just can’t do this any more.

I am tired of her abusive rants. I’m tired of not knowing if she will accept new caregivers. I am tired of not knowing whether my time is my own. I am tired of all of the thankless tasks. Of carrying my phone in my hand wherever I go. Of feeling sorry for all of the people she interacts with because she is so awful. I have deep trauma about this. I cannot fucking stand my mom, but I am unfailingly nice to her. My sisters and I do things for her every day.

Surprisingly, my middle sister responded to my email and said that she agreed. She could have written the exact same thing. She’d had her own meltdown that day and said to herself “I can’t do this any more”.

I will not back down from this. I don’t care. I feel like I have spent the last 8 years in bondage to my mom. It's only getting more challenging.

Drugs. I want her to have more drugs. I want her to have a peaceful sleepy life so that we also can have a peaceful life. 

Happy Friends Brunch!

Sometimes you just gotta. You gotta make it happen. And when it does, it's lovely.

We had a great brunch this weekend, with my good friends from library school and our mentor. For the purpose of this post, we will call them Mentoria, Beauty and Snugglebunny.

It was so delightful. I went to Grocery Outlet (nee Canned Food Warehouse), which usually has a fine selection of breakfast items, and found only Mandalorian-themed waffles. They cracked me up, so that’s what we had. I made apricot compote, applesauce with allspice and strawberries, and glammed up the table, which I *really* enjoy doing. That last part where I find things in the garden to make arrangements with is my favorite part of the setup. Mrguy, as always, made the house shine.

It was so good to be with my people. Mentoria is just that. She was my cataloging teacher in my first semester of library tech school. She took me under her wing, helped guide the essays that got me into grad school, and told me about scholarships that I didn’t know about otherwise. Once in grad school, she was our professor in the class where I met Sleeping Beauty and Snugglebunny. They married a few years after we all met. Our cohort, in general, was really tight. They supported me in so many ways, as I, who had no experience in the field floundered about, but eventually found my way with a lot of their hand holding. I look back and realize how lucky we were. I have stayed in touch with Mentoria, who occasionally has come for lunch at work. Beauty and Snugs not so much, but I’m so glad to reconnect. 

I have missed them.

So during lunch we traded home made preserves and talked about families, and also shared stories of oddly familiar family situations with siblings. Who knew? And afterward I felt so darned relaxed. It’s a wonder what being with people who understand and accept you will do.

Our sweet boy cat was quite the entertainer, and he quickly claimed his spot after we cleared the table :)

Friday Gratitude, Observed

It's been a tough week. My mom has been especially awful, to the point where mrguy suggested that I should take some time off from seeing her because it is not good for my mental health. Hasn't been good for my physical health, either, and I sometimes have gastric issues after I see her.

On the upside, we have some temporary help in my department at work that has two of my best guy friends working with us temporarily. Clam's husband, who is my friend and neighbor down the street, and a friend who we formed our Hawaiian band with many years ago are both temporary archivists. They and another really great lady who we're borrowing from another department are helping us with our backlog, which has gotten large quickly due to various large acquisitions from long-time employees.

I've been so cranky lately, and I have my crank on pause here for a few minutes in order to gratitoot ;)

This morning was the coronation of King Charles III. Now that it's over I'm sure he's as relieved as the rest of us. I invited the precious family to come over in the middle of the night and drink hot chocolate, which they did. We had hot chocolate with marshmallows, which I served in various royal mugs, and they brought me treats from England where they'd just come from the other day. They brought official Marks and Spencer shortbreads, which are amazing tasting and amazing looking and come in a commemorative tin. And they also brought me an official coronation mug. I wasn't expecting a present. I was simply happy that I could suggest they show up between 2 and 3am at my house for hot chocolate and British royal festivities and that they would even want to do it. I had their mugs warming for them when they arrived.

So it's belated because it's Saturday gratitude, but gratitude nonetheless. I feel super blessed.

Bonus points -- after I went back to bed for a while I visited my mom, and she was surprisingly sleepy, happy and delightful. I brought her a mason jar full of hot chocolate, along with marshmallows and shortbreads. We watched Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer. I know nothing about the MCU, and she couldn't really understand what was going on. "Is this in a movie?" was her common question. Neither of us really cared about the answer to that.

Passover, Part 1

We're waiting for layoffs. Confession -- I wrote this last week.

Right around Passover they announced that there would be layoffs in April. There was a first set, which was small and expected, but as they were doing round one, they told us that round two would be in April and that would be the big one. Rumor has it that our part of the company would not be affected by that layoff. Then they announced at a shareholder meeting that there would be a third round that would happen at the end of Spring or end of Summer 2023.

Morale is challenging sometimes. We were told to come back to the office and work there 4 days a week beginning in March. I didn't want to do this but held out hope that I would come to like it. And guess what? I started getting some stuff done that was super satisfying. And then more, and more. Heavy lifting stuff that I wasn't able to get to before, or was afraid to do. I feel energized. It's hard to be depressed when you are feeling a sense of accomplishment.

Tomorrow begins the second and biggest set of layoffs that may affect people I work with who sit at our factory but are employees of our parent company. Rumors are flying, and our parent company has let it be known that this set of layoffs will begin tomorrow and continue through Thursday. No layoffs on Friday. How's that for specificity?

The layoffs that my part of the company will be in are the next and final set of the year. They have been described as happening in the next few weeks. It's maddening to know and wait.

The other night I was reviewing a handoff to the archives from a friend who died. Two members of the executive team came over and we were figuring out how to deal with all of his hard drives he left behind. They wanted to help go through things, and it isn't practical -- they run the company (but also basically grew up with our friend who died). At one point I said "Not to put too fine a point on it but layoffs are coming and in four months we might all not be here. We need to think about whether this is the last thing the company wants us to do."

So here I am, trying to decide when the right time is to daub blood on the doorway. They even announced these layoffs right before Passover. Jeez.