Worry not, my pretties!

Here I am! Here I am! I have not forgotten about all of you (although an unexcused absense this long may have made half of you forget about me!!).

The fam and I are on a week-long trip to visit my mom, sort of like a family mission trip, I guess you could say.

Y'see, my grandmother came to live with my mom, and then her health got pretty bad, and then she (gram) had double knee replacement surgery in May, and has been either in the hospital or a nursing home getting rehab ever since. My mom and her husband both have jobs, rental property, plus run a business, and so therefore their life is usually run from early morning til way late at night trying to get all their stuff done. Add in trying to visit the nursing home daily, doing paperwork on behalf of my grandmother, and on and on, they were needing some help.

So, we came down here for a week to just try to clean the house, catch up on a few projects like lawn mowing and a mountain of ironing needing to be done, visiting with Gram, vacuuming the mighty dust bunnies that arise from having 2 cats and a dog, and so on and so forth.

So, what we've done is tried to do house stuff several hours today, fit in a trip to the beach every day that is good enough for it, plus visit the gram. Now we've got her coming home from the nursing home tomorrow, so I have literally been working since about 7am. (It's about 8pm now)

My mom has a rather large home with beautiful hardwood floors. I have been going room to room moving all movable items off the floor, doing super-precision vacuuming, then mopping, then buffing. Oh, I left out the dusting from top to bottom which I did before the floors. Then I did mirrors and windows and glass tabletops (of which there are many here).

Miles of polished beautifulness later, the floors are done. Just in time for a kid to spill a cup of apple juice, of course!

Later tonite I have to get all of our stuff out of my gram's room so that tomorrow morning I can roll out of bed, strip off the bedding, put fresh bedding on, and be ready for her arrival.

I had hoped to visit my grandmother today, but with all the housework I had going, plus the fact that I spent 5 hours on a visit to her last night, I decided not to go today. The nursing home is an hour away, and I am already going to be getting there around 8 or 9am.

So I called her up this evening to talk to her about it. She sometimes gets cranky (or worse) with my mom or others who care for her regularly. I chalk it up to a combination of being in pain, being out of her comfort zone, fear, and anger. She has never gotten rude with me, though, until today.

She sounded angry when she picked up the phone. I asked her what she was doing and she said she was eating her dinner. I asked her if she was ready to come home tomorrow. I don't know if she sincerely didn't know she was leaving there tomorrow, or if she was just pretending not to (she does both), but she claimed that nobody had told her anything about it. So I told her she was going to be discharged tomorrow morning and that I would come to get her and bring her home.

Instead of being happy, she immediately got upset because she doesn't have a suitcase there, and she thought she'd "have more time to prepare before I have to leave" as if they were going to put her out at the roadside at 9am. I assured her that I would bring a suitcase tomorrow morning, but that wasn't good enough because she said she can't move that fast. I told her that I would be able to pack her things for her (which amounts to maybe 10 items on hangers and some underwear, socks, notes and cards, and a walker) in the morning and it would be no problem. She proceeded to have long silent periods, and then tell me things like that she didn't like this, that she wanted her things packed in a particular way so that she knows what's what, etc. So, the bottom line, when I finally got it out of her, was that she wanted me to bring her a suitcase tonite so she can start packing. (which, although this packing would take me 5 minutes, it would take her hours, and she is less steady by evening, so she doesn't need to be trying to do any of this tonite)

Like I said:
-it's an hour each way
-I've worked a zillion hours today and am very tired
-I was just there last night for hours and didn't get back here until after 10 pm, and was also there with the whole family the previous day

So, I decided to stick to my guns. I was very kind but just told her what I had been doing, how tired I was, that I still have more house stuff to do today in order to be ready for her arrival, and that the thought of driving one hour each way in order to bring her a suitcase when I know I can take care of that in the morning is just too uncomfortable for me.

Her reply?

"Well, it's MORE uncomfortable for me! THIS isn't the way I do things!"

You'd think she had to pack her trunks for a steamer ship trip to China or something.

I told her I understood that this is uncomfortable for her, but that I just could not come in tonite, that I would help her in the morning to pack things however she would like it to be done, and it will be fine. (Heck--we could throw it all in a garbage bag and just put it away when we get back here.....WHO CARES?! I know, I know. Old people! That's who!)

She went silent for awhile and then said, "Well, it's your ballgame. I don't get any say in it I guess. So, I guess that's the way it will be."

So after some more silence I asked her would she like one suitcase or two, and is there anything else she would like me to bring to make it easier, etc?

And know what? She wasn't there. I think she hung up on me!

So now I've been properly christened as an abused caretaker. I'm now an official member of the club!

Stuff like that is really uncomfortable for me, but I was proud of myself for being realistic about how much I could do today. She isn't thinking clearly or else she would not have tried to guilt me into coming tonite, so I'm not going to worry about it, and hope she's happier tomorrow. If not, well, we're heading home on Sunday, so I can deal with it til then. Plus, I'm not opposed to letting her know all that we and others have gone through at great personal sacrifice to help her. I hate knowing that she treats my mom this way as well, knowing that my mom bends over backwards to help her.

But, anyways, I digress...

So, we're on a trip. We're 10 minutes from the ocean. The kids have had tons of fun playing in the waves, trying to use a boogie board, and so forth. I was so carefully getting sunscreen on all the kids the other day that I nelgected to get any on myself, so I have fushia legs that hurt. Not sure if I'll manage to get back to the beach once the Gramster gets here.

Probably won't get back with y'all until I'm back at home. Don't forget about me! :)