Last Sunday

Weekends are a challenge for my mom, and therefore us. We have a Saturday caregiver who can tolerate her. And we've lucked out with our current agency caregiver who works on Sundays, but even she has a hard time with mom, who is horrible to her. And unfortunately we need to replace the Saturday cg, who is a pain in the ass. We will replace her with an agency caregiver, and so far the agency caregivers have mainly not worked out. With that in mind, none of what happened last Sunday bodes well.

Saturday night: Sunday's caregiver calls in sick. I hear this from the agency, which is on the lookout for a substitute. This means that I go to bed knowing I have to go deal with mom and caregivers in the morning because I will either BE the caregiver for the day or have to train someone.

I report to mom's before 8. A substitute will arrive at 9. Yay!

I hang out with mom and mom's helper from memory care brings breakfast. It's not the usual, incredibly capable and nice person. Mom and I have "cozy bacon time" in which she eats breakfast and feeds me bacon.

There's a knock at the door and the substitute caregiver arrives. Mom immediately starts to act out, yelling and interrupting and throwing things as I try to explain what the cg needs to know.

Mom makes squinty eyes and buck teeth faces at the caregiver. Flips the bird and makes some other gestures that could mean something, or not. "No no no. I don't know her. Go away!"

The caregiver goes to see when my mom is going to get her medication that makes her slightly less of an asshole. While she's out of the room mom repeats the unpleasant mantra about the person she's with "I don't know her!! I don't want her!!" She starts spilling her water on the floor on purpose. I clean it up while she continues to say unpleasant things. I never do this, but I've had it with my mom. Like forEVER, so I say "Fuck you, Mom!! You are a TERRible person" 

It doesn't make me feel one way or the other, I tell my current therapist in our last session ever.

I leave. Since the day is already made poopy by my mom I compound the whole thing by having a long-scheduled discussion on the phone with my sister about replacing our flaky Saturday caregiver. This means that I will have to train and retrain caregivers until we find one who my mom doesn't hate. 

By the time I get home I have the song Evil Woman, by ELO, stuck in my head. I take a three hour nap with boy kitten. 

I wake up. One of our beloved regular caregivers texts me to say that she needs a right-now loan of $2,000. I got you, beloved caregiver.

Sunday suuuuucks.

Where Are The "Three Dot" Journalists When You Need Them?

In other news my almost 90-year-old brother-in-law is considering asking for back child support from the descendants of his biological father...

Holidays 2023

The holidays felt brief, but good. It was the first time that I had a Christmas without my mom ever. And after last year I was going to keep it that way! Mom had caregivers that day, but unfortunately mrguy got a migraine, and then another one. And one yesterday. So it was kinda solitary. But I'll take it.

During December I went on a walk with a friend:

And I saw X for the first time, with a different friend (and did not get Covid). Upside: seeing a friend from the forklift factory who I haven't seen IRL in years. Downside: the rest of the show was a recreation of the Talking Heads' Remain In Light, and it was apparently a singalong. This may be payback for that time in the 1980s when I saw Donovan at a small club. I'm sure everybody hated me. I remember thinking that it was ok because my voice was so pretty and everybody would enjoy it. For real.

Fact? We do these things because we are selfish assholes. Now we know.

Anyhoo, X was great. RIL was well done, but not Talking Heads as I saw them perform it at the Greek.

Also great? Nice talk with my brother, who is going through some problems with his extremities. Or as he put it "If my body lets me live any longer, I don't think my toes will be along for the ride". And he sent me this beautiful mid-70s Kamaka 8-string. Wow.

Somewhere along there we had a white elephant exchange with the 'ohana. All of us together! I had a great gift stashed away -- a horrible plastic rock with cute plastic bluejays and cardinals on it. Touch the rock and piercing electronic bird calls issue forth. The friend who received it gave it to his mom, who really loved it and took it back home with her on the plane. Another friend, who I'd given a history of the Coco Palms hotel to, gave that to *his* mom. I'd bought it from one of the aunties when we were in the big ukulele band and I never read it and our friend is from Kauai. Well his mom LOVED it, and that made me so happy. And she went on Amazon to buy a copy for a friend and it sells for $450!! Wowza. I found it for her in some local libraries on Kauai, but I can't do better than that.

I also saw Cack and Blick, who were in town visiting family. Mrguy was down with one of the migraines, so we went out to dinner and froze to death indoors. But it was great to see them, as always.

And before the migraines, mrguy and I went to a party. We don't think we've done that since 2019. It consisted of a bunch of retired punk rockers comparing notes about their parents with dementia. One of my friends and I were talking about how awful my mom is, and she told me a story about her grandmother. She was visiting her gran, who started saying disparaging things about a local newscaster on tv (Asian). She turned to her and said "Hey, Grandma. I didn't know that you were Hitler's girlfriend." Grandma started to sputter and then just got quiet and said "Well shit."

Love it. Will use it. Probably won't work.

Finally, on New Year's or such, we opened our Christmas presents. Mrguy bought me divorce cheese. I was extremely impressed that it had been in the fridge so long that it was beyond its "best by" date. Mrguy's comment? "Well that's why they call it 'divorce cheese' and not 'trial separation cheese'"

Attaboy. So delish.

And then I went to see Godzilla with Hitler's girlfriend's granddaughter and grandson-in-law.

That's probably more than I did in all of 2022, in terms of socializing.

What was I thinking?

Nothing Changes on January 1!

One of the joys of the season is that as we were leaving for our holiday break nobody said "Thank goodness 2023 is over." I think people have largely gotten over the idea that we are promised a new start just because the pages fly off the calendar. It made me happy, because January 1st is basically December 32nd. Feel free to choose a new start but one is not arriving today.

In keeping with that theme, my mom is strong and passionate. I had a great New Year's Eve, but her caregivers (and my sister) did not. In the words of my sister:

"The caregiver asked me to call because Mom was crying and screaming. 

When I called, Mom took pains to tell me how she was proud that she could scream so well, and for so long!!

We had a 15-min convo and Mom started out by telling me how mean her "maid" was. She was also fixated on how much she owned: everything inside her room, and the building, AND the whole block... Oh! and the birds outside her window. That was a new one."

Contrast this with the sadness of my co-worker's mom's passing, in her 70s. So devoted to her kids, but deeply into her own thing (running and Iron Man). Ranked at the top of her age group and usually outrunning the age group below her, also. Struck down by the lung cancer that sneaks up on non-smokers. I wish I could have given some of my mom's years to her. It's so unfair.

But I guess my mom is deeply into her own athletic event (screaming) and proud to outpace everyone else competing.

She is in a class of her own, to be certain.