Parenting our parents

My husband's parents are a big responsibility in our lives. I usually take care of their shopping & errands, and I accompany them to almost all DR appointments, but this week there were no DR appts on the calendar, and my dear husband took care of the errands, effectively giving me a little break. We've been spending Friday evenings with Mom & Dad, playing cards & usually having dinner together. Tonight I started cooking supper, and he went to pick them up & run an errand. Here's a little summary he posted on facebook tonight:

So here is my life....I pick up Mom and Dad for Family Fridays! I decide to take my elderly parents to CVS....I think, "Surely, they can handle a trip to the pharmacy." Mom wants to buy birthday cards for Lynn, my mother-in-law, and me; Dad wants candy. So we enter the store and I show Mom the card section. Then I take Dad to the candy aisle and tell him to pick out two bags of candy while I go help Mom pick out cards. At this point Dad is passing gas and not to be gross but there is nothing as hideous as the gas a 91 year old passes. Another lady enters the aisle as I leave and I think, "Poor woman, she should run the other way."

I find Mom and she has picked out a card for my Christian mother-in-law. Mom picked it out in about 2 minutes flat and without her reading glasses. I read the card which starts out nice saying something about you deserve a day off, a day in the hot tub, a day to eat whatever you want, etc. Then on the bottom it says: "Do it all again tomorrow, what the hell, you deserve it." Not the right card for my mother-in-law for sure. So I help Mom pick out a better card and a card for my brother Lynn. Next I tell her, "I know you want to pick me out a card so I am going to check out these two cards and Dad's candy. After you buy your last card we will meet you in the car."

Dad and I go to the car and wait and wait and wait. I go in and find that Mom has been wandering the store calling my name, but now she is finally at checkout. When I go to checkout she not only has a card, but she also has a gallon of milk and more candy. For those who don't understand....Mom is a diabetic and she is constantly cheating on sweets (milk also is bad for diabetics). I freak out, but the lady already rang her out, so I decide to confiscate it when we get back to my house. However, there is one more crisis...she can't find her credit card. We look in every part of her purse and have no luck! I will have to look for it in her apartment later in the evening.

Oh, well that is a small snapshot of my life as senior caregiver! Pray for Amanda and me!!

The good news is that the lost credit card was found (after David checked two of Mom's other purses), there was room in our frig for the milk (she can have it on Tuesday, but not today...), and that we are finding the humor in these situations rather than just plain stressing out. The best news is, though, that Mom & Dad are in good spirits, they feel loved, and they love us. They're not the same as they used to be, mentally, but we're still making good memories--that is, David and I are making memories--and we're in this together, honoring our parents as best we can.

Like a bad penny

OK, so David and I FINALLY had a yard sale a couple of weeks ago. Ever since my parents-in-law moved to GA, we were not able to park a car in our 2-car garage because of boxes of our stuff, boxes of their stuff, and STUFF that just needed to GO. We sorted through linens, kitchen items, Christmas decorations, books, movies, tools, some furniture, and LOTS of miscellaneous stuff.

One of the parents' boxes I sorted was full of music books; there were "E-Z Play Today" keyboard/organ books (yuck!), along with some other books and sheet music that I did not want to add to my library. I actually threw away a lot of stuff in that box because it was illegally photocopied. Anyway, I digress. I arranged the music books in a box for yard sale customers to flip through, and I added some of my own piano books to it, since I haven't ever used them, and I need the room on my shelf.

Our yard sale was very successful; we sold blankets & towels, old bowling balls, spare light bulbs, kitchen gadgets, computer peripherals, even a broken chair. It felt good to sell so much stuff and make a little cash. We still didn't have quite enough room to park the car in there, so I took a bunch of our leftover stuff and donated to a yard sale at the retirement community where David's parents live. They have never been into yard sale shopping, and with their memory loss issues, I took a chance that if they DID go and look, they might not recognize some of their old stuff.

I was really busy the weekend of the community sale, and I did not go to it. Mom Latona called me that afternoon, and she was VERY excited because she had bought 3 books with some "WONDERFUL" music for me to play on the piano for her and Dad. Wouldn't you know, two of them were "E-Z Play" books that we had tried unsuccessfully to sell: "The Lawrence Welk Songbook" and "Songs of the Thirties". I'll give her credit; the third book was NOT originally her property... Of course, she asked me to keep the books at my house for her. For me, this classifies the books as "bad penny" books - they just keep turning up!

I have heard that there is ANOTHER collection of music books, leftover from the yard sale I presume, that they would like me to look at, because one of the neighbors knows I teach piano, and he thought that *I* could probably USE some of them. Every time we bring Mom and Dad over she says, "Oh, I forgot to bring you those books!" I'm suspicious that it may be the same method books that I cleared from my shelf just a few weeks ago. [sigh] On the bright side, though, I asked Mom if she saw any stuff of hers & Dad's at the yard sale, and she said she saw a pillow and a blanket. I said, "That's all?", and she said, "That's all." Well, there was a WHOLE lot more of their stuff in that sale; I'm glad they didn't buy any more of it back!