No, not those horrible movies (that I refuse to watch) but the 40 days, 40 bags cleaning out/de-cluttering purge. What a great feeling!
After we worked so long and were so tired Wednesday night, we decided that we would truly stick to the one bag per day idea. Once we had filled a bag, we were done for the day. That worked much better. It took about an hour for us to fill a bag and then we spent the rest of the evening relaxing and watching TV.
When I left for work yesterday, I started the dishwasher and I put a sticky note on it that said “clean” so M would know the dishes had been washed. Last night, I opened the dishwasher to load some dirty dishes and saw that he had put away the dishes from the bottom rack of the dishwasher, but the clean dishes from the top rack were still in there. No problem – I put them away quickly and moved on.
An area I’ve noticed M having trouble with is garbage vs. recycling. We have a trash area in our kitchen that has two trash containers – one for garbage and one for recycling. The town we live in has recently mailed out new guidelines on what can and cannot be recycled and we have posted those guidelines on the refrigerator. Not a day goes by that I’m not pulling garbage out of the recycling bin or recycling out of the garbage bin. Again – it’s not a problem . . . no one is hurt if a piece of trash goes in the wrong spot. It’s just that sometimes I get tired of being the one in charge of everything.
Maybe that’s the problem right there – I’m just tired.
Yesterday, I received the best news I’ve had in a long time – I don’t have jury duty today! I can’t begin to tell you how excited I was to find out that bit of information. Isn’t that terrible? Now, I have a teeth cleaning at the end of the month to look forward to. Ugh.
Leading up to yesterday, the first day of Lent, I had read about an idea called 40 days, 40 bags – where you use the time during Lent to de-clutter your home. So, M and I started last night with our older son’s old bedroom and dug into his former closet. Wow! We found his high school graduation cap and gown, his baby book, flyers from when he started a lawn cutting business as a teenager, report cards . . . it was amazing! There were also tons of clothes that M and I hadn’t worn in 20 years that needed to be purged.
It took longer than I had planned, because we did more than just one bag of “stuff” to donate or throw out, but I think from now on, we’ll stick to the one bag rule. We were exhausted by the time we were through. M was a great help, although he did want to hang on to some pants that he hasn’t worn since we moved into this house 20 years ago. I had him try them on . . . and that was all it took. They joined the “donate” pile.
The only glitch I noticed during the evening was when M saw that the trash can in the bedroom where we were working was full. He went to the kitchen to get a garbage bag and came back with a grocery bag from the last time we went shopping. I was expecting a large, 50 gallon garbage bag to hold all the things we were throwing away. It didn’t matter . . . it wasn’t important and the trash was easily combined in a large bag once we were done. But it’s more insight into how he’s thinking and what’s going on.
Yesterday, I had lunch with a group of women and we talked about being strong. Not in any particular situation, but generally speaking, how women are emotionally and mentally strong. I think most days, I’m doing well. There are blips on the radar, but I usually get through each day with few, if any, tears and with a positive attitude.
Until yesterday afternoon.
Not exactly sure what happened, or where it came from, but I met with someone in my employer’s HR department to talk about FMLA and insurance and all the fun stuff you have to think about for the future. I did get a little teary-eyed as I explained M’s situation and why I was asking all these questions, but that’s not unusual. But as the HR person handed me a tissue, I could feel a hysterical crying fit coming on. The kind where your chest is going to start heaving in uncontrollable sobbing and you won’t be able to stop. It took everything I had to hold that in and keep it from spilling over – because work and the HR office was NOT the place I wanted that to happen.
A friend asked me last week if my doctor had prescribed any medication for anxiety or to help me sleep. No, is the answer, but I told her that chocolate is my drug of choice, followed closely by carbs – namely good bread. We won’t discuss what these “drugs” are doing to my waistline or how they will affect swimsuit season (ha!) Right now, a sleeve of thin mint Girl Scout cookies is all I need to make me happy.
M and I watched TV last night and it was one of our favorite nights of the week – the night we watch all the Chicago shows . . . Chicago PD, Chicago Fire and Chicago Med. We watch on one of the streaming services. They’re fast-paced shows with interesting plots, but he watched all three with headphones on, listening to music.
Some changes have been so subtle and slow that I have hardly noticed them happening. Other have happened so quickly that it’s almost as though I’ve been hit in the head with the difference.
Yesterday, as he was getting ready to go to work, M complained that he wasn’t feeling well. Nothing specific, just not well. I felt as though I was trying to encourage a fifth grader out the door, “Just give it a try. You’ll feel better, once you get there and see all your friends.” When our kids were little and seemed to be getting sick all the time, I used to BEG him to take time off work and stay home with them so I could go into work and not use up all my sick days. He would say there was NO WAY he could miss a day or it would be a real juggling act to make it happen. Now, it’s rare if he’s at work all five days in a week.
He left for work, but he was back home before I left the house for the day. He said that he had gotten there, but had gotten sick in the parking lot. This morning, I asked more about it and he said he had gotten sick “a little bit.” I don’t really understand what that means – either you get sick and lose your breakfast or you don’t – but I have a feeling he won’t be working much longer.
Before I got home yesterday, he decided to run an errand (yes, he was feeling better!) and I saw I had missed a call from him during the afternoon. It took a while for us to connect and when I talked to him, he told me he had wanted to ask me what his PIN code was for his debit card – he couldn’t remember it. That made me realize there are several codes and passwords of his that I don’t know and I should probably have him write them down now. While we can.
Last night, I asked M to get a garbage bag and get the trash from the various trash cans around the house for garbage day today. He asked me where the trash bags are. I didn’t say that they were under the sink, where they have been for the last 20 years. I just pointed to the cabinet under the sink and said, “right under there.”
Does it seem as though this ball is rolling faster as it’s going downhill? Some days – yes. Other days – I would tell you that it seems as though nothing has changed. Those are the days I live for. Those days are becoming fewer and fewer.
Good weekend, challenging weekend. I guess it’s possible to have both at the same time.
One of the biggest differences I’ve noticed, living with M, is that I’m now responsible for all the driving. ALL the driving. And I really don’t enjoy driving. So when we drove 3.5 hours to the beach this weekend to visit family, I was the only one behind the wheel. I know, it’s not that far to drive and it shouldn’t be that big a deal, but . . . Friday night, on the way there, it was raining – and I was really uncomfortable and nervous driving in that. Particularly because a lot of the roads weren’t well lit and I wasn’t familiar with them. M was having a hard time following the directions I had stored on a memo list in my phone and Google maps wanted to send us on a different route than the shorter version I was trying to follow. Added to all that, we had our dogs with us, so every once in a while, there would be a whine from the peanut gallery. It was fun.
We really did have a great time there. M and I participated, with our sister-in-law, in a 5K race (they ran, I walked) and we got to go shopping, see our niece in a soccer game, join my mom and another sister-in-law for dinner, visit with friends for breakfast the next morning and take the dogs to run on the beach and play in the ocean. I can’t thank my brother and SIL enough for putting up with us!
And you can always count on your brother to hold you accountable, can’t you? At their house after the 5K, as we were gathering all our shirts and gear from the race, M picked up a shirt and asked if it was mine. I told him no, that since I was wearing my shirt, the one in his hand had to be his. My brother heard this exchange and chimed in, “All you had to say was no.”
At first I was annoyed. I wanted to tell my brother to mind his own business. But then I realized, he was exactly right. All I had to say was no. The shirt in M’s hand wasn’t mine. I’m still trying to get him to change his thought process and show him the “error of his ways,” I guess. But that’s not what’s needed now. I just need to answer the question. No, that’s not my shirt. Yes, I fed the dogs. It’s simple. But not easy. Believe it or not, I did thank my brother for reminding me of this. Even though I know he enjoyed it WAY too much.
Just to make this weekend even better, my wonderful SIL, who lives at the beach, gave me a beautiful Lokai bracelet, designed by street artist James Goldcrown, that benefits the Alzheimer’s Association. She is also riding over 100 miles in a bike ride on July 14th to #ENDALZ. She has embraced this cause with such passion!
I had a ton of fun yesterday. This year is the 80th anniversary of Gone With the Wind, so a group of friends and I took the afternoon off work and went to a 1 pm showing of the movie at a local theater. We had the best time! I had bought everyone a box of movie candy at WalMart over the weekend, so we all had snacks and drinks to last the four hours. So much fun! Nothing changed, though – Melanie died and Scarlett lost Rhett again.
When I got out of the theater, I had three phone calls, two messages and a text – all from M. Earlier in the week, I had received a call regarding his insurance and the representative needed to speak to him, directly. I had written down the information for him to return the call and we had discussed it the night before. He was calling and texting to ask what “x67235” on the note I left for him meant. It was the extension number of the person he needed to speak to.
I knew that it would be too late for him to return the call by the time I got to the house, so I suggested that he pick up the landline at the house (yes, we still have a landline), while I was with him on the cell phone, and try to return the call. Oh my goodness – what a PAINFUL experience. He was getting frustrated and I was trying SO HARD to have patience.
At first, I think he was not dialing “1” before the 800 and the remainder of the numbers. Then, I think he was adding the extension to the phone number, instead of waiting for the phone to be answered and requesting the extension. Then, of course, you have to go through phone tree hell to get a live person to request the extension – and THAT was a challenge. And I’m trying to help him from the lobby of the movie theater.
And here’s the worst part. When he FINALLY got through to the person at the insurance company – she told him that she had already gotten an answer to her question and didn’t need to talk to him, after all. Grrrr. If I could have jumped through that phone . . .
This morning, as M was leaving the house, I walked behind him to get the dogs a treat and I saw him reach for the garage lights, then stop himself and reach for the garage door opener. So now I’m going out with him and getting the dogs an extra treat in the mornings. They’re happy and he’s safe. Just one more addition to my day.
(Originally posted in Facebook on February 28, 2019)
On the heels of talking about driving yesterday, there was a moment with M this morning that gave me a jolt. He was walking out the door on his way to work and reached – as he always does – for the garage door opener to open the garage door. This morning, however, instead of opening the garage door, he hit the light switch, turned on the lights for the garage and then walked out to get into his car. I was walking behind him to get something from the garage and saw what was happening, so I opened the garage door and then, once I finished what I came out there to do, turned off the garage light.
But afterward I was thinking about it. What if I hadn’t been behind him? Would he have realized that the garage door wasn’t opened? Would he have backed into the door? Do I need to start walking with him to the garage to make sure he gets out okay?
(Originally posted in Facebook on February 27, 2019)
Peace, quiet, calm. The only negative in my life right now is that it’s raining. Again. Which means the house will be filled with muddy paw prints this afternoon. But I’ll take calm and mud any day over chaos.
One of the biggest changes in the dynamic between M and I is that I am now driving whenever he and I go anywhere. I won’t get in the car with him behind the wheel.
It was probably last fall when I made that decision. We had been running errands on a Saturday afternoon and he drove out of a parking lot, turning left onto a two-lane road. Fortunately, there wasn’t any traffic on the road because when he made the turn, he ended up on the wrong side of the yellow lines. I know I should have remained calm and kept my voice down when I let him know he needed to get to the other side of the road. I’m afraid calm, cool and collected didn’t happen. So, of course, he was rattled because I was yelling and I was upset because I felt like we were nearly in a head-on collision. It wasn’t a good time for either of us.
The first few times I took the keys and got in the driver’s seat when we were going somewhere together, he laughed and took it like a joke – as though it wasn’t going to last long. But it’s been going on for a good six months now and he doesn’t mention it any more. Naturally, he tries to find something to criticize about my driving – I knew that was going to happen. He’s always said the first time he ever put on a seat belt was the first time he rode in a car with me driving. Har dee har har.
I feel guilty because he’s still driving himself to work and back and I’m not entirely sure he should be. Of course, my parents are still behind the wheel and I’m not sure they should be, either. I’m really struggling with when all three of them should have their car/licenses taken away and how to go about doing that. Talk about tough conversations! This is one I’m NOT looking forward to.
(Originally posted in Facebook on February 26, 2019)
Yesterday was a good day – and I’m taking my blessings where I can find them. The sun shone all day . . . and after 10 days in a row of nothing but rain and gloomy skies, the sun was a welcome sight. It wasn’t all that warm, but it was beautiful to see. M not only went to work, but actually STAYED AT WORK ALL DAY! I was stunned. I completely expected to hear from him at any moment that he had started feeling sick and had come home, but he made it. Now I’m hopeful for today. And finally, I talked to my mom this morning and she and my dad are getting along just fine. The insurance people have already gotten a disaster recovery company to work on her condo and the wheels are in motion to get all that straightened out.
Wow.
Now, that’s not to say the day was perfect – there’s no such thing, but it was nice to have a really good day, for a change.
When I got home from work last night, M was watching his usual afternoon television, “How the Universe was Made.” It’s usually that or “Air Disasters” or something else he’s found on the Science Channel. When he’s watching a show, I’ll offer to go upstairs to the bedroom TV, but he insists that I stay in the den and we’ll find something to watch together.
I’ve noticed in the last few months that, no matter what we’re watching, he’ll invariably put on his headphones and start listening to music. And it’s always the same playlist – his ipod playlist of 1980s songs. If I ask him about changing the channel, he’ll tell me that he’s watching the show – but you know there’s no way he can be watching it and really paying attention if he’s listening to music.
On the rare occasion when he watches a show or movie without the headphones, he’ll ask me to repeat something from the show – “What did he say?” or “What was that?” and I’ll say to him, “if you can’t hear it, turn up the volume.” Then he’ll tell me he can hear it just fine. So then I’m left to wonder – can he actually hear it, but he wants me to tell him what’s going on? Or can he NOT hear it and doesn’t want to admit it?
We’re both getting older and we’re from that generation that turned up the music as loud as we could stand it and got as close to the speakers at concerts as we could. I’ve noticed that the volume on the TV and radio is louder for us than it used to be. Is this issue for him a product of age or something more?
(Originally posted in Facebook on February 25, 2019)
What does it mean when you sum up your weekend by saying to yourself “well, the most important thing is that no one was hurt” ? I think that’s your indication you had one doozy of a weekend!
Friday was very much like Thursday for M, as far as back pain and headache pain were concerned, but he did do a better job of staying on top of his medicine and eating, so he was in better shape when I got home from work. I also got out the heating pad for his back and that made a tremendous difference. Friday and Saturday were miserable days where we live – cold and rainy – and then late Friday, M started vomiting and couldn’t keep anything down through Saturday afternoon. I think he must have had some sort of stomach bug. He spent both days on the couch in front of the TV.
It looked as though Sunday was going to be another miserable day spent the same way, but he had been feeling better and had been eating since the night before. As I looked out the window, I could see patches of blue sky, and I almost didn’t know what they were, for a moment – it had been so long since we had seen them!!
Then my mother called – in a panic. She was across town, but had just remembered that she had left something cooking on her stove and would I go check it? I live two minutes away from her condo, so I jumped in the car and went over. As I opened the door to the building, I could hear the smoke alarm from her third floor condo as I was on the ground floor. I ran up the stairs and when I opened her door, the smoke was so black and so thick, I couldn’t see anything inside the room. I ran inside to the kitchen, took the pot off the stove, turned off the burner, then reached for my mom’s Yorkie, that was there in the kitchen. He was scared, of course – with the smoke alarm blaring, the smoke billowing all around him and me running in to grab him – and he bit me on the thumb. Stupid mutt! I finally got him by his harness and got him out into the hallway where we could get some fresh air and called 911.
The fire department was great and brought in fans to blow the smoke out and by the time my mom got there it was much better, but the whole top floor of her building stunk to high heaven of that burnt metal pan. This isn’t the first time she’s left something cooking on the stove. This isn’t the second or even third time . . . so we have now thrown the breaker on the stove so she can no longer use it. She’ll tell you she doesn’t cook, but she boils chicken for that dear, dear dog of hers and then forgets about it. Never mind there’s a grocery store within walking distance that cooks chicken every day that she could buy for the dog.
Even though there weren’t flames with this incident, the smoke damage is so extensive throughout her condo, mom isn’t going to be able to stay there until it’s professionally cleaned. The floor is sticky, the counter is sticky – and it’s all just from the smoke. And the smell – ugh! When I walked in the house from my mother’s, I just about knocked M down, just with the smell from my clothes. I changed clothes and brushed my teeth, because I had that horrible taste in my mouth – and last night, when it was time to brush my teeth before bed, my toothbrush had that horrible smell on it. Yuck!
I offered to have my mom stay at our house, but I knew she would be worried about her dog with our two rambunctious 40 lb rescued mutts. They’re as sweet as sugar, but they do play rougher than a seven lb Yorkie is used to. So that leaves my dad’s house. Although my parents get along relatively well for people who were married 51 years and then divorced (don’t ask) they do have several bones of contention, and they are in the middle of one right now. So I had to get both of them alone and tell them “Look, I have all I can say grace over right now. My plate is full. I can’t take anything else. I need you two to handle your business and get along. If you can’t do it, then I’ll do it for you and I can promise you, when I’m done, everyone will be unhappy.”
By the time we all went to bed last night, mom and dad were both at dad’s house, everyone was getting along, everyone was (relatively) happy and then M went to work this morning. Do I expect all this good fortune to last? No.
