Day 1
I do not believe in magic—how could I?
I can’t but I did
Saw me in half in a box that’s gaily painted
I will show you how. The lingering warmth of a stranger’s hand, on the last grocery cart available at Christmas, transports
So nutmeg.
Algorithms are not magic. If by magic you mean Add vaseline to coca cola and just watch
Thumbprints in Roma plastilina. I can smell you through the television during Rudolph
The best story is visible in the background
Not sure how I arrived at this as a writing prompt, but sometimes I do a meditation on the senses, in rotation. Today it summons memories of the week.
Things I:
Saw
So many old buildings with potential, through the fog and drizzle on my way to buy a pie.
Tasted
Sad, sad green beans whose great age had converted the flesh to bean as happens over time.
Smelled
Overcooked pancakes, filling the kitchen with smoke, in a lovely way that reminded me of my dad
Heard
An old friend who recently learned my phone number, calling to say hello. Who uses the phone any more, and how amazing was that?
Felt
The handles on the shopping cart were still warm to the touch when I claimed it from its parking spot on one of my final grocery shops of the year.
I was late in finding this, but please enjoy and know that there are more ancient holiday post cards coming your way. This collection was saved by mrguy's grandmother when she was a child.
I would like the black cat to know that we share his feeling of horror in seeing two pumpkins kiss.
Let's have one, shall we?
We have a baseball game. It's Trans Day of Visibility. I made pretty eggs. Let's do the damned March 31st thing!
I made eggs yesterday, using a regular Paas egg dyeing kit and brown eggs. The colors turned out insane. For some reason I'm really attracted to the goldenrod one, even though readers of mrsguy are aware that it is my least favorite Crayola color. The magenta one turned out streaky and beautiful, but the most stupendous one is the purple.
I was trying to recreate the color from last year, where I mistakenly made a black egg. I had no idea how I did that, so I just tried some stuff. And there were imperfections in the egg and maybe I sat the egg in the dye before it had completely dissolved. I don't know what led to this peacock egg, but I could not stop looking at it. And photographing it. So lovely.
On Monday I dropped a few things off at my mom's place. Depends, q-tips and another color of nail polish. It's that last request, on behalf of her caregiver, that made a trip to Walgreens take 20 minutes rather than 5.
The yucky comments. The disagreeable expression -- what color will she not make me feel shitty for buying? In the end she said thank you and liked them all. But experience has taught me fear. Here's what I chose:
Pinky-white, just in case that was something she'd like. Pink, in case she'd go for something "loud". And her current go-to -- something that would look appropriate on a white person's artificial limb. Check out what was already her fingernails. And look at the bottle of polish on the right. Do I know my mom, or what?
Thank you, Sally Hansen, for making that quick-dry polish. Mom has a habit of touching her fingernails while they're being painted, and with the quick dry formula our caregiver has half a chance. The next time I saw mom, on Valentine's Day, she was wearing the pink that I never thought she'd go for.
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.
We finally got Fred to a Coinstar location. Rather than go somewhere around here, in a supermarket where you sometimes have to check your rotisserie chicken for the right number of extremities, we went across the water to a super fancy market where the air smelled like...scallops. Truly. It was so much fun!!
Some Fred facts:
Weight prior to Coinstar: 13.8 lbs
Dollar amount before fees: $108.22
Dollar amount after fees: $94.19
My joke for today was that my mom was her own Halloween costume: angry old woman who wants to chop you up with a knife.
By the time I got to her place this afternoon she had been raging for hours -- breaking furniture (no really), swearing, hitting. My sister called me to see what could be done about her episode of mania and wanted to have her taken to the hospital. She was sad to hear that you can't have someone committed unless they are a danger to themselves or others. Because mom is pretty useless from the waist down, all someone has to do is to step away from her and they're safe. Sadly she doesn't fit the criteria for hospitalization. We would all love it if she'd get locked up permanently but that's not going to happen. The only thing I could do to change things was to leave work and go over there to try to interrupt the mania.
By the time I left her, mom was feeding me chocolates. Whew. And in between, I draped my arm over her shoulder on the sofa and patted her leg while she told me how she wasn't going to leave me anything in her will. Except maybe a little stuffed scarecrow that's in a potted plant in her room. "Isn't it cute?" I suddenly had an image of having her cremated with it if she loves that thing so much, and I burst out laughing.
I admit that I baited her a bit for part of my visit, because I'm tired of being nice. She kept saying that she knew something about me that the caregiver didn't know: that I like to fuck, and that if she were dead I could do it wherever I want. So then I made a game out of pointing out various places in her room, asking "Should I do it there?" "Over here where you're sitting?" This was amusing to our caregiver, and that was partially the point -- she definitely needed some levity.
But today started out even better, this morning, with an apology from my sister that we need fill-in help for one of the caregivers in a week, and that she'd forgotten to tell me. She wrote it down on one of her pieces of paper and lost it. And she was so proud that she'd started a new paper calendar but put it in a place so special that she couldn't find the calendar (like why would you tack it to the wall, or anything normal like that?). She was so distressed by her failings this morning that she was taking a pill to feel better. I told her that pills were good but calendars were better and she needs to start using our effing shared Google calendar. I know she can do it!
This is after the weekend, where I started planning caregiving for the holidays, and my sister told me of her plans. She's been invited to Christmas at our nephew's house, and she's thinking of taking my mom with her. Out of her secure locked mental environment, on a 3 hour drive to a relative's house where they will share the holiday with family? I mean what could go wrong? This is partly because I said I wouldn't take care of my mom on Christmas myself, but the cure may be worse than the original affliction...
This has been mrsguy's late night ramblings about her embarrassing family.
For those who don't understand the reference, it's from Harry Partch's Barstow
Easter is not my favorite holiday, by a mile. As a child it meant ham, church, getting pointed into the sun to take photos that were never good enough. Being heckled about squinting while the sun is burning your retinas while the un-good photo is being taken.
But at least there is candy.
Two weeks ago my sister asked if we had plans for Easter for my mom. I hadn't thought that far. She made plans to come out for the weekend, and asked our former sister-in-law if she could join us for lunch. I would make reservations for us in the public dining room at mom's facility.
A week and a half ago mom was having some bad days and my sister was waffling about coming out.
Last weekend the one sister asked my other sister and I to tell her whether she should come after all. We told her we understood her desire to stay home, and that a visit later was fine.
After hearing from us she said she was coming for Easter anyway.
That's what I thought the plan was until I read the whiteboard in Mom's apartment. My sister was coming mid-week after Easter, putting Easter back on my plate. Oy. Because my sister had made a fuss over Easter, I felt I had to do the same, even though I know that my mom doesn't understand holidays any longer. I got a basket on my Buy Nothing group, bought 50 bucks worth of candy (and Depends) at the drug store, bought a bag of mini avocados (egg shaped!!) to also put in the basket, ordered sandwiches from our sandwich shop for pickup today. Then I spent yesterday afternoon dyeing eggs and worrying about whether they'd be an acceptable color.
I had low expectations, but STILL.
I got to the sandwich shop and it is closed for Easter. And now I have to chase them down for a refund.
I pivot -- who else is open today? I go to the Japanese market and get shrimp, which she loves. Some salad, some sushi, and bowls for soy sauce. Make some nice plates in her apartment and...nothing. She's barely awake and not happy. Easter basket? No response. She was falling asleep, and sushi seems too complicated for her to eat now. She hated the shrimp (this has never happened in known history). Plus she wasn't really speaking to me.
As Harry Partch said in Barstow "Why in the hell did you come, anyway".
I asked the caregiver if it was too late to get lunch from the memory care dining room. My mom was asleep.
I snuck away, swearing quietly to myself as I walked through the garage to my car.
I am draining the hourglass, so to speak, on my holiday duties. The big finish was Christmas.
In the perspective of a person with Alzheimer's there is only the now. It doesn't matter that I spent the previous two days helping my mom see her loved ones. There was only the fact that it is Christmas and we were not doing anything fun. And she hadn't slept much the night before, so I arrived to find her grumpy and disoriented.
It was not a good day for anyone. I counted the hours. She spoke gibberish and was angry for a bunch of the day. I learned what a lot of her distressing behaviors look like in person and most do not scare me.
But there were things I'd never seen: trying to use a napkin as a spoon; trying to eat a napkin; spitting a cough drop into a tissue box...
Then there was the over the top stuff. She refused to let anyone change her underwear for the whole day. I kept watching the bulge in her pants grow, and along with it my concern. She has significant discomfort from rashes which are worsened by her sitting in wet pants. She insisted that she was fine and could use the restroom herself, but can't actually stand without assistance. So how is the going to the bathroom going to work? Or getting into bed from the wheelchair? Or getting into a car?
Mom registered her displeasure in a number of ways. She refused her meals. She cried "How can you do this to me" a bunch of times. She tried to break her own finger (ok THAT really freaked me out). She tried to eat a figurine. And she basically *seethed* all day. At one point I just aimed her wheelchair to a place where she could look out the window and not see me. I set the brake so she couldn't move. Then I passed the time by sweeping the floor, dusting, and polishing her furniture with diaper rash ointment.
We talked to my siblings on the computer. At least that was kinda nice. Mom didn't care, and there was a lot of gibberish that I couldn't translate, but it made the moments pass uneventfully. Eventually I brought out...the balls.
Mom's been aggressive lately, so I bought some soft Nerf-type balls that I thought we could make a game with. I brought them to her apartment with a hat box, figuring that we could use it as a basket and get out some of that aggressive energy and convert it to fun. I pointed her into the hallway in her apartment and tossed her some balls to toss into the hatbox. She thought I was crazy. Eventually she started threatening to hit me with the soft balls and I asked her to go ahead. She said that she wanted me to hurt the way that she hurts.
"How can you do this to me?"
"You've turned into something horrible"
"You are a sexpot"
"If you were in the bed with me I'd kill you"
and my personal favorite:
"You just want me dead so that you can go in the fields and fuck boys". She seemed additionally hurt that I wasn't hurt by the awful stuff she was saying to me. As if the fact that she couldn't hurt me meant I did not love her. At one point I wanted to say "I'm on drugs, and they pretty much prevent me from crying, so do your best". And when she said that she was never going to see me again I said "Great!" She was not really selling the idea of why I'd want to see her again, but you can't convince a person with dementia of anything.
But then there were the shrieks. I have rarely heard the kinds of shrieks she emitted when the helpers in Memory Care finally got her dirty Depends off of her. But when another helper and I got her into bed? Those shrieks were even worse. You would have thought that the Devil himself had slid a hot poker up her butt. After we got her in bed, however, it wasn't long before the Beast slept for a bit. And then my sweet mom returned for a few moments. And not long after that I ran away to eat dinner with mrguy.
We found a Chinese restaurant that was open after 8pm. Let's call it Zorba's Szechuan. The food was great but it was after 8pm and they were slamming all of the dishes around as they cleared the tables, and then they broke a bunch for good measure. Our ears were ringing, but we were fed.
Merry Christmas. Is it over yet?
John Deere gave us an extra vacation day last Friday. It ended up being perfectly timed.
It was dreamy. I went to the jeweler and they fixed my mom's favorite necklace that she ripped off her neck while raging in the ER. They fixed it on the spot and did not charge me. Then I went to pick up some salmon teriyaki plates for dinner. Then I took the long way home and happened to see that the doors to the record store were open. Wheeee!!!
I made a beeline to the back room where they keep all the stuff I like. Turns out that they had a vast number of Japanese records, and even two records of sumo wrestlers singing (which is a genre). I bought them both, even though I suspected that I already had a copy of one of them. I intend to give that extra to clam dip (who I think does not appreciate her nickname).
I totally scored. I doubled my collection of Japanese LPs with smoking dudes on the cover, bringing the total to four. And some of the music was actually good. This Spanish guitar record with a Japanese twist was excellent.
Here are the singing sumotori records. Kotokaze, in orange, is a former ozeki (second highest rank in sumo) who retired in 1985. I really like his record, which you can find here.
And the other guy is Masuiyama II, also a former ozeki. From looking at old posts I can see that I do have his record already, so I look forward to gifting it to clam dip. You can hear the record here.
Christmas and Christmas Eve were multi-part affairs.
Christmas is a holiday for the caregivers, so I got a Covid test last week and was the official caregiver for the mama on those days. And only two visitors are allowed at a time at her place, and our nephew's family was going to be in town. So...I picked her up in the morning and then we visited family at our house and then we returned to her place for dinner and sleep because our house is under construction.
I know that my nephew said we should do something simple, but I also needed to do something that registered as festive for my mom, since we weren't having a classic Guy Family Christmas. So I made lunch for us all with stuffed potatoes. It was so fun to see them, and the boys are cat crazy and chased the cats around for a few hours and the mama was happy. Then we went back to her place.
I had brought presents and a simple dinner with expensive ingredients: lobster and shrimp ravioli, truffle butter and fancy gelato. And wine. I brought wine.
First there was the wine argument. I made dinner and poured wine for us. Admittedly it was 4:45pm, but that is 15 minutes past mealtime in mamalandia. She did not like the idea of wine at all.
Mom: "Why are we drinking wine with breakfast?"
Me: "It's dinnertime, and wine is a dinner beverage."
Mom: "Don't we have any milk? We shouldn't be drinking wine because it's not ours to have. And what if they saw us drinking it?"
Me: "I bought the wine, I brought it here, it is my wine, and I will drink yours if you don't want it." [I'm just realizing that this has a bit of the Peter J. Haskett cadence -- "You drank all the wine. You drank alllllll the vodka. You will go to O'Looney's and buy me more vodka."]
Mom: "You are just too clever"
Then she got wrapped up in the time of day, since that had been confusing to her. This is her challenging the clock, which sits on the wall under the thermostat.
Translation: I think I'm more sophisticated than the other residents in my community and would like to live over there where people are more sophisticated and would understand me better.
Translation: I want to move somewhere else, I feel overwhelmed by my possessions, and don't know how to move to a new place and/or get rid of my stuff.
Then she wanted to talk about Christmas ornaments. She proclaimed many many many many times that this was her favorite one. It is, indeed, super cute:
