Why It Is A Good Thing I Do Not Have Children

Because I giggle myself silly every time I see this:

Especially the last two kids scenes. I would so send kids of mine there. I'm a bad person. I know.

French Toast Breakfast, 5 p.m.

Mom had a bad insomnia night Saturday. She was up continuously until at least 3 a.m. My brother heard her banging around in her room and found her, in the dark, trying repeatedly to open her bedroom door, without success since her walker was in the way. Apparently she'd been at it for a half hour or so when he found her and was too exhausted to argue when he told her to go to bed. (How I didn't hear all this I'll never know.)

As a result, she slept all day Sunday. I checked on her every now and then but decided not to wake her. At the 3:30 check she was sitting up on the edge of the bed. By four she was vertical and by 4:45 she was out so I made French toast for her (it being Sunday). Two hours later she had soup and a sandwich for "dinner."

I think we're seeing a little more deterioration either caused by, or a result of, the insomnia. Short term memory is going now. This morning (Sunday night was the least eventful night in a long time) I gave her a copy of the latest Smithsonian. I said, "Here's a new magazine."

She said, "Oh, I haven't seen that one yet." She stared at the outer wrapper, which is nothing but a huge renewal plea, and asked, "Should we renew this now?"

I said, "Not yet. It doesn't expire until November. There's plenty of time left."

She put the magazine down, picked it back up, stared at the wrapper and said, "Shouldn't we renew this now?"

"No, Mom," I said. "We'll renew it in a couple of months. It's O.K. for now."

She said, "O.K." and put it back on the table. After a sip of coffee, she picked up the Smithsonian and said, "Should we write a check to renew this now?"

I took the magazine from her, carefully tore off the outer wrapper, and handed it back with just the regular full-color cover showing. "We'll renew it soon," I said. "Right now, stop staring at the outside and read the articles instead."

She laughed and said, "Oh, I've seen all those already."

Planning Ahead

I went to turn on the lamp Mom and I use most often in the living room yesterday evening and it wouldn't work. Mom said she thought the bulb was out but it's a CFL and fairly new. I switched the bulb out for one from the lamp on the other side of the couch (also CFL) but that wouldn't work either which led me to believe there was something wrong with the lamp. Except neither bulb worked in the second lamp, either. So.

These lamps are on the same circuit as the microwave in the kitchen with which they share the wall and an in-kitchen circuit breaker. The microwave was fine. The circuit breaker was fine. The telephone, which is plugged into the same outlet as the first lamp was fine. So either there was something wrong with both lamps or there was something wrong with the top outlet of the double wall plug. I switch the phone and the lamp and . . . the lamp worked. So I moved the plug for the second lamp from the top of its outlet to the bottom. It worked. There was something screwy with the top half of both outlets.

Then my brother called from work.

He wanted to let me know that in an attempt to keep Mom in her room at night he had disabled the living room lamps on the theory that she would rather not just sit in the dark. He did this by flipping a switch over by the front door and had forgotten to flip it back again.

There is a switch, over by the front door, about as far away from these lamps as one can get, that does nothing but turn on and off the top halves of two separate outlets. That's it. The top halves of two outlets. Nothing else.

Who . . . when this house was being built and wired twenty-five years ago . . . ever thought that would be a necessary or desirable feature?

For Every Thing There Is a Season

My brother has been trying, for the last six days, to mow the lawn. The rain, however, has been timed just right to prevent any major cutting. He has managed to whack a few weeds around the plantings out front and along the walkway and part of the driveway. Since the lawn really needed mowing six days ago, it's starting to get real deep out there.

We (he mostly with a little help from me) did manage, as the lightning strikes were coming closer, to plant a few shrubs along the walkway which was about time. The opened bag of plant soil has been sitting around so long there were plants growing out of it. (So at least we know it works.) There are only about a dozen other pots of various species lined up along the driveway waiting to be transplanted.

Mom-Sequiturs: It Depends on the Meaning of "Have To"

When I got up this morning Mom was already up and parked on the couch. I went to check if she had coffee or if I needed to make some (I did) and she was sitting there on the phone with someone. Now, she can hardly hear anyone on the phone anymore and is easily confused by more than simple declarative sentences (she loses her way in subordinate clauses) even in person let alone when distorted electronically over the phone. She never dials out so this had to be an incoming call she had picked up.

When she saw me she sighed and said, "I can't understand this or make her stop and explain anything," and handed me the phone. I was all set to ream out someone who would use high-pressure sales tactics on an obviously old lady when I heard the female robotic caller say ". . . if [something something] press four, if . . ." and hung up.

I said, "Its a recording, Mom. You can just hang up. You don't have to sit there and listen to that."

She looked at me and said, "Then what else do I have to listen to?"

Jekyll & Hyde

I think I've just about given up on making Mom stay in bed at night.

We had a long conversation last night about her insomnia and how she gets up like clock-work almost every night, several times, and then sleeps until noon or later. (The recent exception was the night before her eye doctor appointment. She gets so nervous about oversleeping and missing the appointments that she actually stays in her room.) The problem is, she never remembers doing any of it even though the full ritual consists not just of getting up and dressed but actually making her bed before coming out. She also denies cursing me out when I tell her what time it really is which is the unnerving part: the personality differences between Daytime Mom (sweet, temperate, co-operative) and Nighttime Mom (stubborn, caustic, mean-tempered).

She promised to try better and to stay in her room. I told her to stay up until she was really tired instead of going to bed at "bed-time." She agreed and then went straight to bed. An hour and a half later she was out again, and a half hour after that and another half hour after that. She had no recollection of our conversation. She had no recollection of being out just thirty minutes ago. So I gave up. Told her to sit as long as she wanted. She was there on the couch when I went to bed and still there at 2:30 in the morning when my brother came home.

She did get up reasonably on time this morning in spite of everything, so I made pancakes. She doesn't remember a thing.