I visit Mom twice a week and I have about three hours each visit to get things done for her. On Monday I struggled to get one load of laundry done and the kitchen floor washed. I sent John to the grocery store so I could get it done. Not much to show for three hours!
I had big plans for today but so did Mom. As soon as I walked through the door she had her to-do list in hand and was reading it off.
Top of the list was to have John go out and read the number on the telephone pole out front. The street light has been flickering and driving her crazy so she called the power company to complain. They wouldn't send anyone out unless she knew the number on the pole. Simply giving her address and saying the pole closest to the house was not specific enough for them. She seemed to have forgotten that John retired from the power company and she went into a long winded explanation of where to find the number on the pole. She was all concerned about his boots because she didn't want him to get snow in them when he climbed the snow bank to get the number?! We could see the metal tag on the pole from the house and he did not have to climb the snowbank to get the number but she was concerned about his safety until he returned.
Mom can no longer go shopping so she gets catalogs. Lots and lots of catalogs and she is always finding things she has to have. Her latest order came in a box that just fit in the mailbox. Mom cannot get out to the street so my sister brought in the mail when she visited yesterday. The box was wedged in there so tightly that she had to go back in the house and find tools to help her get it out. Heaven forbid the mailman should walk an extra 50 feet to deliver a package to the door for an old lady! One of the items in the box was a sleep mask to block out the flickering street light.
Apparently the extension cord for her nebulizer has been getting tangled in the chair legs. Rather than mention that to us she saw a neat little plastic gizmo that will coil the extra cord and keep it out of the way. Of course you can't buy just one, you have to buy a six pack. I finally figured out the directions (my Greek is improving!) and after breaking two nails and enlisting John to help I was able to show her that there was no way that much cord was going to fit into that little plastic thing. I went out to the kitchen and found a wire tie and shortened her cord. And as long as I was sitting under the desk anyway I dusted too! She was very dissapointed that her little gizmos didn't work so I guess we'll have to shorten her phone cord or something next week.
It seems like once a week some light bulb needs changing so John took care of that while I ran downstairs to bring up the laundry I hung on Monday. Holy cow! It was almost 11:30 already so I sent John off to the store by himself again. Mom gets Meals-on-wheels but yet she still needs things from the store at least twice a week. Sometimes she has a list for my sister too!
While John was gone I decided to try and clean the table or at least straighten it up a bit. Mom never throws out anything. Still on the center of the table were the papers that came with her chair. _ The chair that we got her last summer. The manual was sitting on the desk (you never know, she might have to look something up!) so I stuck the delivery papers in it and tossed the two paper tags in the recycling bag. My mistake - letting her see me do it. She went right over to the bag, took out both tags and placed them neatly in the manual. What were the tags you ask? One was a square that said, "Made in America" - certianly something bad would happen if we got rid of that! The other was a - gasp - YELLOW CAUTION tag. It had to do with how to put the chair together and is covered in the manual. Um, Mom, the chair is already put together and working fine! I should just shrug it off as a quirk of old age but I so wanted to run into the bedroom and rip the tag off the end of the bed, the one that says, "DO NOT REMOVE UNDER PENALTY OF LAW." I restained myself figuring that that would just give her a heart attack.
Then she took five full minutes to ask if I would get mad if she asked my advice but didn't take it. No, Mom - you'd be in the majority if you didn't take my advice. She went on to say that my sister had told her to get more information first. Finalllly she got to it. The company that services her furnace had sent a flyer offering prepaid services and she didn't know what to do. So I took my sister's advice and called them. They want to charge her and extra $150 for what is essentially an insurance policy that will cover any needed repairs up to $750. I pointed out that she has annual service and has never had a problem so I thought she should just set the $150 aside and in five years she'd have her $750 saved up but would have parted with it if she didn't need to. Will she take my advice? Probably not!
I finally gave up any idea of getting anything done and we had a nice chat about her grandmother and other memories of long ago.
So the dust bunnies won this round but I will beat them back next week!
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