Wednesday, June 1, 2005
"Well, no, I can't guarantee that there isn't a Shit Devil...
...lurking down there planning to rear up and bite your ass as soon as you sit down. But if there is, I think my reflexes are fast enough to pull you off the seat just as I hear it gurgle, before it's able to strike."
My mother is, like everyone else in our hysterically (meant both ways) clean culture, loathe to sit on a toilet filled with shit. From movement to movement she also can never remember that if we don't let her shit ferment before flushing it, especially when she eliminates it with the prodigiosity of tonight, I have unclog her toilet which always leads to cleaning the bathroom floor. I try to lighten her load (pun intended) and transform the situation from disgusting to funny.
Yeah, I've been lagging on journaling a couple of days. First it was because I threw myself into our holiday weekend, tried to keep her up as much as possible because the weather was heavenly. I also cooked a magnificent holiday dinner for us: Pork roast, a divine ancho chile sauce, asparagus, hollandaise, no dessert as it turned out, neither of us wanted any, although I bought a flat of raspberries and made raspberry sauce just in case. My mother's spirits were high but her body was, I don't know, uncompromising in its desire to sleep. Because we've been doing so well with the exercises I, too, was uncompromising in my attitude and worked triple time to try to keep her up and moving. She won.
In one night's blink of the sun exhaustion and disappointment set in for me and I was unable to contain my sour spirit. I wasn't fun today. I let her do (rather, not do) whatever she wanted and made sure I wandered around the house muttering, "I give up, your lab results show there's no excuse for your lethargy but I don't have the energy, anymore to try to get you going," when she was awake. I couldn't even summon whatever it would have taken to respond to and pet The Little Girl. I announced I was taking the day off which, if you've read about these fits of mine previously, you know that this doesn't mean that I don't care for her, it means that I back off and do nothing but what is necessary.
My mother, of course, remained undaunted and in excellent spirits. She was up earlier than usual this morning so she got an extended dose of my despair. She took a long nap, but no longer than she's lately been taking. Once she was up she remained awake until just a few minutes ago, which was fine with me: I fed her, made sure she stayed changed and clean and that her programs and/or movies were up for her on TV when she wanted them...and then, the police arrived.
Although I don't allow her to touch hardly any buttons on the remote I give her free reign with the volume because even though we have the TV set to Closed Captioning, she misses a lot going back and forth between titles and pictures. As well, we had all the windows open. One of our neighbors "anonymously" complained about the volume of the television being too high. It was while she was watching the movie Dead Again. She especially has trouble with the cable movie channels because to her their sound is muffled so when she's watching something on one of them she usually manages to scoot the remote to full blast (and sometimes continues to press the volume button, to no avail). I've gotten used to it. I thought our neighbors had, too. They haven't changed since we bought the house in 1997 and she's been doing this since then. But tonight it irritated someanonymousone.
The officer arrived while I was in the middle of cleaning my mother after her stupendous bowel movement. While I was talking to him I had to yell encouragement to her to remain in the bathroom, which, of course, she did hear and to which she responded but which she promptly forgot and waddled out into the foyer with her underwear and slacks, in which she'd tried to redress herself, hanging from her thighs. The officer immediately understood. I barely had to explain myself. He didn't write us up. I told him I was surprised one of our neighbors had called, as they all know me, my Mom and the situation, and, yes, I knew that our TV gets pretty loud. He declined to "write [us] up", suggested that we close the windows surrounding the TV when she needed the volume up, which, of course, we do, but I hadn't checked tonight because I wasn't paying attention. I continued giving him a rundown of the situation for a bit and thanked him for his understanding. When he saw her through the screen shuffling into the foyer, calculated this mentally with her age and observed me straightening her garments and leading her into the living room (I figured, ahh, what the hell, I'll finish cleaning her when he's gone), he said, "Bless her heart, and yours, too. Do what you can to pacify the neighbors, but keep taking good care of her."
Seeing it from his perspective buoyed my sunken spirits. I explained to my mother why the police had visited us. She was astounded. Not at all intimidated. I discussed that maybe I should control the volume for awhile (I used to do this but couldn't seem to satisfy her Ancient Ear) and she needed to make a special effort to read the captions, especially since we're now in the seasons of open windows and, especially later, as the days get warmer and we really need to cool the house down in the evening, we'll be wanting to leave the windows open all evening long, which is usually when she watches TV.
Truth be told, she spent most of the weekend watching the first season of Mary Tyler Moore, much of it during the day, with the volume up and I'm guessing that listening to the theme every half hour for three days in a row probably drove one of our neighbors crazy and they cracked this evening during her viewing of Dead Again.
Funny what you get used to when you take care for a beloved Ancient One. The smell of urine and shit, ear blasting television sound, repetition, more repetition and then a little more repetition, a variety of stains on the carpet, mind boggling mental misadventures...
And then the police show up and suddenly you're more than glad you're there, your spirit securely wrapped around your Ancient One, seeing to it that she is allowed to live her final years in peace and security, surrounded with more love and laughter than you thought you'd ever be capable of mustering.
I can't help but recall what that young man said to me almost two years ago at the caregiving conference I attended: "If you're not taking care of someone, you're not alive."
Damn fucking straight.
Later.
My mother is, like everyone else in our hysterically (meant both ways) clean culture, loathe to sit on a toilet filled with shit. From movement to movement she also can never remember that if we don't let her shit ferment before flushing it, especially when she eliminates it with the prodigiosity of tonight, I have unclog her toilet which always leads to cleaning the bathroom floor. I try to lighten her load (pun intended) and transform the situation from disgusting to funny.
Yeah, I've been lagging on journaling a couple of days. First it was because I threw myself into our holiday weekend, tried to keep her up as much as possible because the weather was heavenly. I also cooked a magnificent holiday dinner for us: Pork roast, a divine ancho chile sauce, asparagus, hollandaise, no dessert as it turned out, neither of us wanted any, although I bought a flat of raspberries and made raspberry sauce just in case. My mother's spirits were high but her body was, I don't know, uncompromising in its desire to sleep. Because we've been doing so well with the exercises I, too, was uncompromising in my attitude and worked triple time to try to keep her up and moving. She won.
In one night's blink of the sun exhaustion and disappointment set in for me and I was unable to contain my sour spirit. I wasn't fun today. I let her do (rather, not do) whatever she wanted and made sure I wandered around the house muttering, "I give up, your lab results show there's no excuse for your lethargy but I don't have the energy, anymore to try to get you going," when she was awake. I couldn't even summon whatever it would have taken to respond to and pet The Little Girl. I announced I was taking the day off which, if you've read about these fits of mine previously, you know that this doesn't mean that I don't care for her, it means that I back off and do nothing but what is necessary.
My mother, of course, remained undaunted and in excellent spirits. She was up earlier than usual this morning so she got an extended dose of my despair. She took a long nap, but no longer than she's lately been taking. Once she was up she remained awake until just a few minutes ago, which was fine with me: I fed her, made sure she stayed changed and clean and that her programs and/or movies were up for her on TV when she wanted them...and then, the police arrived.
Although I don't allow her to touch hardly any buttons on the remote I give her free reign with the volume because even though we have the TV set to Closed Captioning, she misses a lot going back and forth between titles and pictures. As well, we had all the windows open. One of our neighbors "anonymously" complained about the volume of the television being too high. It was while she was watching the movie Dead Again. She especially has trouble with the cable movie channels because to her their sound is muffled so when she's watching something on one of them she usually manages to scoot the remote to full blast (and sometimes continues to press the volume button, to no avail). I've gotten used to it. I thought our neighbors had, too. They haven't changed since we bought the house in 1997 and she's been doing this since then. But tonight it irritated someanonymousone.
The officer arrived while I was in the middle of cleaning my mother after her stupendous bowel movement. While I was talking to him I had to yell encouragement to her to remain in the bathroom, which, of course, she did hear and to which she responded but which she promptly forgot and waddled out into the foyer with her underwear and slacks, in which she'd tried to redress herself, hanging from her thighs. The officer immediately understood. I barely had to explain myself. He didn't write us up. I told him I was surprised one of our neighbors had called, as they all know me, my Mom and the situation, and, yes, I knew that our TV gets pretty loud. He declined to "write [us] up", suggested that we close the windows surrounding the TV when she needed the volume up, which, of course, we do, but I hadn't checked tonight because I wasn't paying attention. I continued giving him a rundown of the situation for a bit and thanked him for his understanding. When he saw her through the screen shuffling into the foyer, calculated this mentally with her age and observed me straightening her garments and leading her into the living room (I figured, ahh, what the hell, I'll finish cleaning her when he's gone), he said, "Bless her heart, and yours, too. Do what you can to pacify the neighbors, but keep taking good care of her."
Seeing it from his perspective buoyed my sunken spirits. I explained to my mother why the police had visited us. She was astounded. Not at all intimidated. I discussed that maybe I should control the volume for awhile (I used to do this but couldn't seem to satisfy her Ancient Ear) and she needed to make a special effort to read the captions, especially since we're now in the seasons of open windows and, especially later, as the days get warmer and we really need to cool the house down in the evening, we'll be wanting to leave the windows open all evening long, which is usually when she watches TV.
Truth be told, she spent most of the weekend watching the first season of Mary Tyler Moore, much of it during the day, with the volume up and I'm guessing that listening to the theme every half hour for three days in a row probably drove one of our neighbors crazy and they cracked this evening during her viewing of Dead Again.
Funny what you get used to when you take care for a beloved Ancient One. The smell of urine and shit, ear blasting television sound, repetition, more repetition and then a little more repetition, a variety of stains on the carpet, mind boggling mental misadventures...
And then the police show up and suddenly you're more than glad you're there, your spirit securely wrapped around your Ancient One, seeing to it that she is allowed to live her final years in peace and security, surrounded with more love and laughter than you thought you'd ever be capable of mustering.
I can't help but recall what that young man said to me almost two years ago at the caregiving conference I attended: "If you're not taking care of someone, you're not alive."
Damn fucking straight.
Later.
