Good News, Bad News

So the bad news is mrguy bought us tickets for Bryan Ferry and got a migraine.

The good news is I had taken the day off, and now I am flopped in bed with my toasty boy cat and get to watch sumo with one friend and chat with another. Earlier in the day I also:

1) Picked up my new glasses at the eye dr.

2) Dropped off a dog anchor at my friend's house. The dog anchor was new, and I found it during the coastal cleanup two weeks ago. My friend said that if she wasn't home I could leave it in her car, so I did.

3) Had custom plexi cut for a table, which is now creamy white with a bright red plexi top. 

4) Had two other pieces of plexi cut, one for a table that I bought for five bucks and also had powdercoated white, and another to top a tiny bureau that I got for free. The frosted white plexi didn't quite cover the marks underneath it but...

5) I went to the hardware store and bought white and black paint so I could

6) Repaint the house numbers on the street in front of our house (currently drying, and not as straightforward a process as one would think) and I

7) Successfully painted the marks on the top of the tiny bureau but got lots of overspray on the drawers, so I had to use a lot of acetone to get the paint off. Top looks great now.

And Amazon delivered my other spray paint today and I have spray paint experience now for painting out the dumpster boobs.

Oh wait! And I also printed out documentation for mrguy to use when shipping something to my sister in Minnesota. Granny bought these erotic / "medicine" dolls in either Japan or Hong Kong in the 1950s. They were in glass fronted cabinets in our dining room when I was growing up. My sister really wants them and I have had them in my garage for years because I wasn't sure how to ship old ivory from state to state. Turns out that there isn't a problem because they're over 100 years old and no money is changing hands. But I printed out documentation anyway. And this will be one more thing I don't have to think about. Thanks to mrguy.

Woo! 

Framing Session

A month or so ago I was looking for artwork to spiff up the new new bathroom. I bought a really great poster from Palisades Amusement Park, but it turned out to be a reproduction. I wanted something fancier for the bathroom. Still, Palisades makes a great zoom backdrop, bookended by two velvet paintings we've had for 30 years.

Then I read or listened to a profile about a female acrobat (whose name I can no longer recall) and my research led me to an active auction of circus posters. I fell in love with a few of them, especially the ones that did not feature animals.

My eldest sister offered me a day off on Saturday, and I finally was able to take the posters and a few other items that I've wanted to frame during the pandemic to the art store. Yes, I usually do conservation framing, but honestly what for? It was still a ton of dough.

So here we are! And yesterday, when my mom was napping, I was able to determine the location and date of the Elkton circus performance. Elkton, Maryland, 1941.

In two weeks I should have the posters back.

Breast Reduction

I am so tired of seeing titti grafitti while walking to and from the archives.

Amazon is delivering me some green spray paint today, and I will use it to de-tittify the alley, while a quiet voice inside says "Fuck the patriarchy."

Developing...

Update: now isn't that better? I had the spray paint in my bag and was ready to use it, but I also brought some nail polish remover (i.e. acetone) with me as backup. And when I was getting it out of the trunk where I'd stashed it I found an old mama sock. And then as I got to the dumpster I saw a guy eating lunch on the sidewalk, so I went stealth mode. Acetone, applied with an old lady sock worked like a charm and it only took two shakes of a lamb's tail to remove the breastses from the alley where I have to see it all the time.

Now I kinda want to go back and make it not look so smeary, but I will restrain myself.

Turns on a Dime

Our caregiver and I did the trade-off after the octopus died the other night. She sensed that my mom was hungry but mom said she wasn't, and then she was.

I do not cotton to tennis, as we have discussed, so lately I tell the cable remote to bring me Shark Tank. Mom was hungry so I went into the bathroom (has water and a counter) to fix up a plate of peanut butter crackers and banana for us to share. While my back was turned she had filled two coasters with cheezits, one for each of us, which was completely adorable. Then she plussed the peanut butter, topping it with cheezits. Note: she eats so many cheezits that I always offer her prunes "Nature's candy, Mom!" so she doesn't get all plugged up. We both love prunes.

In this last photo she is using the coaster to try to split the last prune, but fails in her efforts and ends up biting it in half for me. Baby bird that I am, I accepted her half prune.

Ah the nurturing instincts of motherhood. Also instinctual? When I went to leave and her PAL was tucking me in she urged me to stay the night. When I responded that I was going home she fixed her gazerbeam on me and said "I suggest that you stay or I will tell everybody your secrets."

I gave her a cheery "Bye Mom!" and scooted out the door, past Janice and her cohorts asleep in club chairs in the hallway.

Improvements Are Happening

I would say that things are on an upswing in memory care, a month in. Of course that all could change.

Mom is no longer talking about her old place and old friends, as if that seven years didn't happen. While I was gone, my family had to deal with some really psycho talk, but I haven't had much of it. In addition, she now wants to join everybody in the activity room for a movie after dinner. And she actually watches!

Last night I came in and they were watching My Octopus Teacher. I had always wanted to see that movie, and mom and our caregiver were transfixed. My sisters texted that they'd had some good conversations with her this afternoon and then I whipped out "We're watching 'My Octopus Teacher'" in the main room. 

That went over quite nicely with my sisters. I know how to reach my audience.

I want for them to see the place like I see it. I want them to see the residents as people, the same way we want people to see our mom. If you take the time, you see the life they lived and the family that loves them or the interesting and quirky behaviors that can sometimes be delightful and charming if you open your heart to it.

I'm going to start using people's names, because I want to keep track of them. HIPAA be damned. On the weekend I learned a few things. Max used to be the chair of the English department at a major research institution. Joseph sat with us at dinner on Saturday. He puts words together in an interesting way that is like conversation but not. And the convo is definitely male. He likes to talk about his work. I was able to piece together (because I grew up around here) that the long thing he described was the linear accelerator and that he'd worked on either big ass bombs or missile defense systems. Janice, who is very loud, is similar to Joseph in that she likes to talk, but her words are about feelings. She gestures to her heart when she talks, or clasps her ropes of Mardi Gras beads. She wants things to be different and wants to know how other people got to the Neighborhood and she wants to talk to people about what she doesn't like. The purposeful walkers are Sally and Al. Sally carries a cane and a purse and "needs to get downstairs" because someone is waiting for her. She walks up and down the hallway. Al also is a purposeful walker, and when he wasn't listening to Janice's life story during the movie yesterday he really found his purpose. Usually he walks up and down the hallway and in front of us all while we're watching a movie, but he was using his tremendous energy to push one of the wheelchair ladies around. I liked that use of his talents.

There's a beautiful lady. Goodness she's captivating. I've never heard her speak. Super soignee. I was determined to get her to engage with me (and hopefully my mom). I just started smiling at her, the way I did with the ladies over at the Subway all those years ago. Eventually they dropped their barriers and engaged with me. And so did the lady in the Neighborhood. I let myself in on Sunday and she beamed at me and said "Hey, pretty lady". I returned the compliment and she and I have had eyeball wocka-wocka ever since. Same with Jane. She walks with a walker, in a gait that can best be described as a stutter. Little tiny jittery steps. She's kinda verbal. And she can smile. I give her my eyes. I try to give everyone my eyes. 

If these are my mom's people, they are also my people. 

Cleanup

Mrguy is the king of continuing mama cleanup. Every day he goes to the recycling center or figures out how to deal with E-waste or ships something to my sister. I'm getting around to my own things as I can.

When he and neph and I moved, I asked them to put any hearing aid and bed alarm parts in one bin as they found them. There were tons. Over the years there were repeated complaints from my sister about the bed alarms not working. I replaced them often. And then I'd find where in the apartment she'd stashed them and they'd all be working. The last replacement happened when she somehow lost a unit between our nephew's house and a different nephew's house. Not sure how this occurred, but I came to anticipate the losses, and that she'd forget to take things out of her purse (keys, credit cards, disabled parking card) when she traveled home and would have to send them back when we discovered them missing. She does a lot on behalf of mom and the family, but this forgetfulness is part of the tradeoff.

A few weeks back I matched up all of the pairs of motion sensors. They all found their mates and all worked. Except for the one part that lost its mate. That gizmo went to E-waste.

Yesterday I also matched up all of the hearing aid parts, in their crazy mosh of boxes and instructions. At this point I don't even *care* whether I know how they work. The chaos of it all makes me insane. Boxes and stuff are now down to a minimum.

Last night I put the bed alarms on my buy nothing group and they're going away. Ahhhhh. Note that in this photo there is a label that says "unit 2". At one point I labeled them neatly and matched them up. On the other item there is some masking tape that has writing that says "works with unit 2". Duh? What happened to the label that said "unit 2"? Like they're both part of unit 2. All in the past, but we continue to work in such different ways.

Thank you for your service, bed alarm!

People Blowing the Scene

Last night a sweet friend completed her journey. That's what they called it. It was my friend's mom, who started seeking my counsel about senior living communities. It was so lovely to have these talks with her, with an older woman whose wits were so intact. The last time we saw her we were invited over for dinner. She later spoke to some of us in her room at our friends' house. She talked about a wonderful group of women with terminal diagnoses at her ashram who talked about life, spiritual stuff, getting ready, and whether or not they will wear socks when they are cremated. She gave me this bracelet and necklace. I've been wearing the necklace all week. Her Caringbridge invitation came the other day. And now I'm headed over to pay my last respects.

Can I say that the hits just keep coming? In the last few weeks my cousin died, friend at work, my friend's mom, and I got another Caringbridge invitation this week (work friend who has had successful lumpectomy surgery). And on Thursday our work day was hijacked by another person's Stage 4 diagnosis (we will pull all of his designs and photos so that his family can see how beloved this very private person was). I will be going through my work friend's material this week, and have had to reach out to people who know his family re: the items that he texted me that he wanted returned to the factory after he died. Or as he put it:

"Anything I have from Hammerslag is all willed back to Hammerslag when I kick the bucket." followed by a list of what that was.

I will follow today's viewing by a day with my robust mom. She was in good spirits yesterday and today I'm hoping for the same.

Leaving Town

I haven't gotten on an airplane or even been away from home for more than a few hours for the last three years. And my oldest neph and sister made it possible for me to blow town for days. Admittedly I'm working a convention and it's really tiring, but I desperately needed to fill my eyeballs with something different for a while.

My role? To be a charming representative of my people at a trade show. To help them take photos of themselves for Instagram. To give a presentation.

My hotel room had a super gross feature: a leak. I washed my hands, went to dry them on a towel and realized that it was fully saturated with water. And that it had a green streak down the middle, that was the same verdegris color as the pipe hole above it. Grossss. Second room (king suite) also had pipe hole, and dripped cold water on me while I was bathing.

These things have also actually happened:

• I have touched hundreds of strangers' phones
• I gave a presentation this morning that was lightly but enthusiastically attended
• A woman in costume was so intense with us that three of us simultaneously stepped backward out of our own booth to get away from her
• I walked 2 miles home from a restaurant at night in my platform clogs
• A woman heckled me in the hotel hallway for how I was walking to my room. My feet hurt so badly at that point. It wasn't really funny.
• I met hundreds of really nice people
• I had a good time
• My uber boss said he loved me and that I'm a star

I am super grateful to my sister and neph for their encouragement and filling in for me with my mom. Now that I've had some time away I'd like to figure out how to have a life again while still making my mom happy, because since she's moved I haven't had any time with mrguy or much to myself. 

Work in progress.

Two Days In Paradise -- Sunday

And Sunday!

A banner day because one of the PALs got her to take a shower. And then, like when you get your cat back from the veterinarian's office, my mom smelled like someone else's perfume all day. Something with vetiver. Quite delicious.

I had decided to take mom on a long, exhausting drive. And right before I left the house I saw a fb post that a friend was doing a poke pop-up at his commercial kitchen, only a few miles from where the windy road we drive on poops us back into civilization. 

It was kinda nice. I drove us through city streets rather than going back near her old neighborhood. Then up the hill, onto the freeway, onto the windy road that we really like. Mom was super digging it, and often complimented me on my driving or asked if I like to drive. Then we pooped into the suburbs and it turns out that the street we poop on is the street where my friend's business is. Who knew?

Unfortunately the parking lot was too hilly for me to bring her to my friend, and he started having a lunch rush, so he couldn't go to the car to meet her. One of these days. He's such a nice guy, a Catholic school teacher whose brother is even a priest, whose slack key guitar albums have won Hoku Awards, whose other passions and achievements are so vast that I often refer to him as the hardest working man in Hawaiian show business. The kind of guy who makes you look good to your parents because he's so charming and personable. Anyway, I bought us a plate lunch and some poke and the bubble burst because it turns out that miss picky doesn't like poke. How could she not like poke?

So I asked Siri for the location of the nearest McDonalds. Oh well. The magic hours were starting to fade away, and soon she was stuffing her cheesy saucy fish filet bun into my cup holder (gross!) and her back was hurting and she wanted me to drive us back but she didn't want me to do it while she was eating. 

Sunday I had gotten smart and decided to take the wheelchair, which made our re-entry more smooth than the day before. S, the program director, was talking to the residents about happiness and fulfillment and contentment, which I thought was pretty remarkable. We rolled on past, because we were tired after driving for a few hours, but S is one of the best things about this place, and they are only 20 years old. 

Mom and I took a long nap, then we looked at family photos on my laptop, then we navigated a phone call with my sister, in which mom was amazingly lucid. The only real hiccup was when mom wanted me to put makeup on her before dinner. It was locked in her cabinet in the bathroom, and  it was kindof  an emergency almost-meltdown that was forestalled when I made her up. Then we had dinner, where people were smiling at us. The ladies at memory care pretty much like me. I mean, who wouldn't? I try to learn their names and give a nice smile and break through their gaze and give them a moment of attention. My model is James P. Sullivan from Monsters, Inc. "Hey, Marge! Did you lose weight? Or a limb?" 

At dinner we sat with one lady who is kind and sweet and acts as a quiet echo, lightly repeating and agreeing with whatever you last said, as if you were singing in a round. She actually turned to us and wished us a nice afternoon, which made me feel happy and hopeful. I went home early and mom didn't complain. She didn't ask about her caregiver too often.

Again, a banner day.

Two Days In Paradise -- Saturday

At least compared to last weekend. 

We navigated death and jury duty, and this was my weekend to be with mom. In the meantime my sister wants to investigate whether mom would qualify for a lower level of care. If it doesn't include nightly monitoring I am definitely not down. It's the only thing that keeps me from having to spend time there, and I am already spending a few hours every day plus the weekends.

In order to navigate memory care, you need to be curious and open. What are the good parts of it? Where are the stories? Every person there came from somewhere, is loved by others. The residents have problems. Our person has problems. You -- judgy person -- have problems.

Saturday started with a cluster. My sister wanted to talk to mom but she didn't have her hearing aids in. Mom needs q-tips before hearing aids. Q-tips are in a cabinet in the bathroom that is locked so she doesn't drink her lotion during the night. Find a PAL to open it, put on the clothes that the PAL did not put on my mom earlier (bra, r-shirt). Oh! Mom unplugged everything during the night, so the phone isn't working. Call mrguy for technical advice on the phone. Get phone working again. Help mom and sister have phone call. Discuss why I feel it's too soon to talk about moving mom to a different level of care. My sister just wants to know that this is our only option.

Also, all of the Tongan ladies are talking about my mom and how they feel sorry for her because she cries when our caregiver is not with her. This is not helping, because our caregiver is such a lioness when it comes to my mom (which is what you want) but she is not patient. Nobody is, apparently.

I brought mom to our house and mrguy ate lunch with us, which is what she wanted. She wants the company of men (but has stopped harping about her imaginary boyfriend). Then I put her to work. This turned out to be a good idea. I let her prune plants in the aku room, and that enabled her to do what she does well, plus look out the window at the view that she loves.

I had no plan b, so I asked her if she wanted to help me clean up the plants on the porch. She said "Yes, let's do some work." So I pulled a chair up to the pots and she got going. I knew that this might be a bit of a bloodbath for the plants, but if it makes my queen happy, the world is good. In the end she did a great, if choppy job. But we almost had it out when she wanted to prune three little branches in one of the pots. I do not want them pruned, because they have buds and are about to flower. "If we take those branches off it will look more balanced," she said lucidly as she often does when she talks about flower arranging and pruning. Go figure. I got my wish, but my saying no was at risk of a meltdown.

We got back to her place in time for dinner and sat with some folks we've met before. There's E, whose husband lives in a different part of the building. She doesn't really talk. Then we were joined by J, who talks too much. And one of the many Ds, who lives across from my mom. He's handsome, and dressed for dinner, with a suit jacket and sweater, his hair neatly combed. If you could ignore the thick coat of dandruff over everything, he's pretty handsome. I want my mom to fall in love with him. 

I like to sit with my mom at dinner and figure out what's happening in memory care world. I am still trying to formulate a plan for mom engaging with others. Across the table, I saw something remarkable. E and J locked eyes. I felt like they were doing an imaginary battle, like the bathroom scene in China Ghost II. Pretty soon they'd be floating in the air and doing a tongue battle or something. Then somebody broke the gaze. Wild...

Back in the room we were watching Serena Williams, when there was pounding at the door. It was D. "Can you wake me up at 5 or 5:30? I need to catch the bus to (name of place) tomorrow." "I can do that, I said," and closed the door. Then he kept pounding and asking, and finally I said "D! Your room is there. Please go home!" In the hallway, MK was making her rounds (which are actually lines).

I finished the day unscathed, with no insults or psychic bruises, just fatigue. 

And that, my friends, is really a good day.