Weekend Warriors

There's something to be said when going back to work on a Monday feels like a very welcome vacation. I've spent today sitting at my desk, getting lots of work done, while sipping on what I like to call a "Ghettochino". (Yeah, so it's not exactly the most PC name, but one of my besties and I made up the name for the coffee concoctions we'd make when we were too poor to go to Starbucks. It's simply this: Regular coffee, hot cocoa mix & creamer. The name just made us laugh, back then, and it stuck.) This feels like the most relaxation I've gotten in weeks.

Last weekend, my family & I finally moved my Mom into her new home. The new home that she kept thinking was a "hospital" that she was in because "she's sick". As of yesterday, I still wasn't sure she realized that she'll be living there. All of the personal belongings that we were able to keep were arranged in her new bedroom, but she still didn't quite understand. I feel a tremendous amount of guilt for taking her away from her friends at her former independent living residence, but there was really just no choice in the matter.

Mom ended up in the hospital on Christmas Eve and, again, four days later. It turned out that the medicines they gave her to try to slow the effects of Alzheimer's made her violently ill, caused her realistic nightmares and made her even more nervous than she is already. While I went home to try to take a nap and pick some things up for her, she got dressed and tried to leave the hospital. She was completely disoriented in the hospital setting and thought she was back home...3,000 miles away. At that point, her doctors got a social worker involved and they determined that she could no longer live "alone". The independent living place is for seniors and a lot of people actually live there, but each of them have their own little apartment.

My husband, sister-in-law & I spent all of last weekend (and most of last week) cleaning out the old apartment. Have I mentioned that my mom has hoarding tendencies? Fun and games for the whole family! We worked for days to clean out the old place and make the new bedroom feel like home. We hung artwork and pictures of family. We arranged the closet and furniture so that it'd be as close to "normal" for her as possible. We spent quite a while dealing with an unforeseen sleep number bed fiasco, where the remote was broken & customer support was closed. Fortunately, the in-laws had a remote we were able to borrow, so that Mom would have a place to sleep. In between all of this, I was running my Mom to doctors appointments, waiting for nurses to show up at our house, and taking her to the hospital for more tests that were required to move into her new place. I don't think I ate more than one full meal a day, and I was running on fumes and coffee.

Where's the FUN in all of this?

1. Getting the chance to laugh hysterically at a photo my sis-in-law took of me hanging upside down from a nightstand, while trying to screw in a plug adapter.

2. Seeing my mom lull my cats to sleep with her adorable, yet beautiful singing voice.

3. My mom's hilarious imitations of her new weekend caretaker.

Sometimes, it may be hard to find the fun, but trust me...it's there! ;)