Coronavirus Sheltering

While we can shelter ourselves at home, that wasn't a possibility for the mama, and we have caregivers to think about and it brings a different level of complexity to this situation.

We moved her into the Airbnb, which is beautiful. But settling in required a lot of last-minute wrangling, while listening to mom's non-stop litany of questions and general yammering. We had to put everything away that we'd brought with us, as well as hiding beautiful items that the owners had set out. The mama likes to pick things up and examine them, and she breaks a lot of things, so we hid many objects in the closet.

In the meantime, she took out her hearing aids because she wanted to not hear my sister, who was devotedly transporting her from her house to the new place, an hour-plus ride. So when we were all together in the new place she complained that we were speaking too quietly. We weren't speaking to her, so whatever.

Have I mentioned that I'm kinda *over* my mom right now? Tired of the slings and barbs, and the recent relentless wheedling about how everything would be perfect if she could have her #1 caregiver all the time, not #1s daughter, #2. We have explained to her that #1 is an extraordinary person who could not be duplicated and who has her own life to live outside my mom's. So we have #2, temperamentally different from her mom, who is really nice and completely competent and works mostly nights. Mom is never satisfied.

The awesome thing about the mama is that she doesn't seem to feel bad about herself *at* *all*. Her impression of herself is that she is completely capable: "I could have helped you with that!" (translation: it's your fault that you're working so hard on my behalf because I could help you and you don't ask me to), "I could just drive over there if I wanted" "Don't you think you could have told me that?" (translation: I can't remember, but it's your fault). She does not really understand that the fact that she has had caregiving for the last 5 years means that moving to an airbnb means that she will have caregiving there, also. And we have to have conversations about this stuff and it's exhausting.

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Update: we're half a day into the process. We brought the mama to her new digs, moved in her clothing and some food. Upcoming tasks include figuring out the tv situation, setting up her shower bench, trading some meds with the nurse at her apartment building and getting a urine sample.
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Happy thought of the day: all this mom stuff keeps my mind off the coronavirus, even though we're doing it because of the coronavirus. Funny!