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Fall update

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It’s hard to believe we are into October already. We have been enjoying unseasonably warm temps up until today so it was easy to deceive myself otherwise.

I have been at my job for half a year already. Three more employees started working after I was hired so I guess I am not really the new person anymore. My old perfectionistic workaholic ways are catching up to me. I haven’t called in or taken a day off yet, instead I’ve been picking up extra hours and working overtime. I’ve already climbed to a position of respect amongst my co-workers. The management still sucks though, but for now I’m staying. I really like the chaos of working in an ER setting.

Arabella had her day in court and her felony charges have been dismissed. She is off probation and head over heels in love with her new boyfriend. It seems the feeling is mutual. I have a feeling she will be moving out in the next couple months.

Angel will be heading out of state this weekend and won’t be home until the holiday season. While she was back home, her husband rescued a stray kitten hanging around their camper and now they have two cats. I finally set up the graduation trip with my daughter. Back in 2020 when Angel graduated from college, we told her instead of a gift or money, we would like to make memories and take a trip with her. Well, I guess I don’t have to tell you how that turned out back in 2020. Finally I planned a trip for next March with my husband, and Angel and her husband. The most exciting thing is that it is a mystery trip. Angel gave me ideas and I am planning a big surprise.

On a sour note, Alex and his girlfriend broke up. She was seeing other guys behind his back. One night when Alex was playing at a gig out of town, Arabella and his girlfriend went out. Once again, Alex’s girlfriend got really drunk and this time hooked up with a random stranger at the bar. She told Arabella not to tell her brother about it or about her still seeing other people. She told Arabella if she did, she wasn’t going to be her friend anymore and would never see her again. The next evening Alex’s girlfriend was hanging out with him at our house when Arabella came home from work and told her brother everything. Alex took the break up really hard and is really struggling right now. Thankfully instead of closing himself off, he has been open and talking to us.

Paul is just finishing up his summer seasonal job and is toying around with the thought of working a winter seasonal job. Today I spent my day off washing windows and getting everything ready for winter. Soon will be the great purge of getting rid of the old and bringing in the new. Soon we will be going through my parents house and starting to empty it out. It feels good to empty myself of the garbage in my life.

The fall, winds of change

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Even though autumn is my second favorite season, I always feel sad to see the end of summer. I don’t feel like I enjoyed summer as much as I should’ve. The end of summer brings another change, and not just with the seasons.

Tomorrow Arabella has her last court date. After two years, she will now be off of probation. She spoke with her lawyer, and told him she has since been diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder. Hopefully she will be able to have her charges dismissed. Her crime was classified as domestic abuse, without consideration she was in a manic state with psychosis. She didn’t have the diagnosis at the time of her criminal offense, her mental illness was just beginning.

The first couple months out of jail was a rough ride, but once she finally got a proper diagnosis with the proper treatment she has become the daughter I’ve always wanted her to be. Perfect, no. But finally getting her life back together. She has been holding down the same job for the past two years. My son Alex recently told Arabella he forgave her for hurting us and his hatred towards her. She is a different person now, a better person who wouldn’t think of hurting anyone. This past week she started dating someone new. He seems like a nice guy.

Alex starting dating someone too. He is with Arabella’s friend, the girl who went to rehab a couple months back. This past weekend Alex was playing with his band. By the time Paul, Angel, and I got to the show his new girlfriend was wasted. She was hitting on everyone. She met Angel for the first time and it didn’t go well. Angel tried to tell her she was Alex’s sister but Angel thought his new girlfriend saw her as competition. This girl was drunk and out of control in front of Alex while he was playing. At one point, she could barely walk so we sat her down with some water.

When Alex got done playing, he was upset and wasn’t sure what to do. We thought perhaps their relationship would be over. The next day, Alex told us he gave her an ultimatum. He told her if she wanted to be with him, she had to stop drinking. He told her in return he would quit drinking too. I have been really concerned lately about my son’s alcoholism. Since he started with this new girl, both of them took drinking to a whole new level. She wanted them to do shots first thing in the morning. He has been black out drunk several nights in a row for weeks, maybe longer. I don’t always see it.

It won’t be easy to turn away from alcohol in our culture. When Alex plays, fans often buy the band drinks and shots. The last week or so his eyes were opened. While playing he had the opportunity to see what hard core alcoholism looks like, how it can destroy people and relationships. He said with or without his new girlfriend, he was going to give up drinking because he doesn’t want that to be a part of his future.

I see a lot of change in the air.

Assisted living

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I scheduled an appointment to visit an assisted living facility with my parents after my mom’s birthday in early August. They had two immediate openings for two rooms next to each other with a shared bathroom. They were willing to take both my mom and dad, although my mom needs memory care and my dad has a physical disability. We jumped at the opportunity. Finally a windfall!

My aunt threw a birthday party for my mom on her birthday which I attended. My mom expressed anger with me at her party for allowing my brother, whom I am guardian of, to have an unrestricted diet. It was all very awkward, being reprimanded by my mom in front of everyone in a public place. I told my mom we could talk about it later but at the moment we were there to have fun and celebrate her birthday.

My SIL also threw my mom a birthday party at the family cabin. It would probably be the last time she goes up to the cabin and maybe the last birthday she will be somewhat cognizant for. That in and of itself was depressing. Once again, my mom expressed anger towards me about Matt. I helped Matt make a plate of food for himself and my mom took half the food I put on his plate and threw it in the garbage. She was upset I forgot to bring his applesauce for him to take his pills. I also forgot a few other things I had no idea she wanted me to bring. She was so upset she wanted to leave.

Then last weekend arrived, the weekend my parents were set to move in. On Saturday we went up north and closed down the cabin for the season. Then my brothers and I sat down and talked for several hours about the plan going forward. What are we going to do with the house, cabin, their vehicles, finances, cleaning out the house, etc. My brother Luke said he was living off his faith to get through it. I said I was burning off my anger. It’s hard to have to grieve your parents while they are still alive, even more so because my relationship with my parents is complicated. I feel a lot of anger about how I was treated in the past and how the mess they made, we are going to have to clean up. Because of their hoarding tendencies, I think it’s going to take years to clean out the house. I hope I am wrong.

Then moving day came along. We went to my parents house to load up some of their belongings. My mom kept grabbing things to put in boxes. My SIL took them out and put them back. I decided to go outside with my mom to keep her out of their hair. My mom wanted to take a walk to her church down the road. I was the last one to walk with my mom down the only road that I could remember her living on. My mom stopped along the way to pull out weeds along the ditch. She carried them over to to a grassy area on an uneven pathway. I was afraid she might lose her step.

When we got to the church, mom wanted to walk around the cemetery and talk about people who died. I saw the gravestones of my ancestors and familiar names. My mom asked if I knew them, the graves of my great-great-grandparents. I said I did, but I didn’t really. I softly cried on the walk. My mom was always a fast walker, and I had to struggle to keep up. But this time she shuffled along and I was afraid she might not have the strength to make it all the way back.

This time my mom was kind towards me, almost childlike. I watched her say good-bye to her house, the only house I’ve ever seen her live in. The grief slipped from anger into sadness. My mom is gone now. She is leaving more and more every day.

The end of June

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How is June almost over already???

I’m just trying to keep my head above water. It’s a big adjustment going back to work full-time. My days off tend to be filled with running errands, cleaning, and checking in/doctor appointments. I am thinking my mom will be ruled incompetent soon. My dad is listed as POA and I am secondary. Either my dad will take on being POA so he can force us to let them stay at home or he will resign and it will be on me. Neither are good options.

Meanwhile, I am changing things up with my brother Matt who I am now guardian of. I switched his account over to a professional payee which will be easier in the long run but is an adjustment right now. Things are getting really messed up because my mom is still getting some of the notifications about bills and doctor appointments. Then she is making arrangements for him incorrectly that I know nothing about. It has lead to a lot of confusion all around to the point where the group home thought he was missing a couple times my mom cancelled his transportation.

At times my mom still wants and thinks she has full control over Matt. She has been very unreasonable with his care and I am going to change that. This has lead to stress on my part. I had a nightmare that because of the changes I made that he became violent again. There is a sliver of doubt in my mind. What if my mom was right? What if I do the wrong things for the right reason? It’s a lot of responsibility.

Arabella had her doctor appointment in there as well. The doctor is decreasing her dose of her anti-psychotic medication due to weight gain that didn’t get better on weight loss meds. We’ll see what happens with that.

Alex’s car broke down, so I have been giving him some rides to work when I can. He moved back into the house which I have mixed feelings about. He is incredibly moody and can be hard to live with but I love him anyway. He is more of a responsibility than help most of the time.

Angel is still in the area. Thankfully since confronting her stalker neighbor, things have gotten a lot better. There haven’t been any issues. Dan has been on the road all month and will be coming home soon. But after that, they have no idea what they will be doing which has been stressful for them.

Paul has been working a lot too. I am thankful for him. He offered to take Matt to his doctor appointment for me when I was scheduled to work. However, the doctor’s office ended up rescheduling Matt’s appointment and I picked a time when I can take him.

I think I’m going to call this the summer of responsibility. I try to catch little breaks when I can. Yesterday I had the day off and went to lunch with my friend Jen. It’s the little things that keep me going right now.

Middle of April update

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I am getting into the swing of things with my new job. Last week I had the online orientation. This week I took two classes, yesterday and today. Monday I shadowed an employee doing registration in the ER. It was a hectic day as one of the employee’s called in. The person who was training me said it’s always busy there and they can barely keep up with the work. The company I work for manages two ER’s, one is always busy the other is not. Most people want to work at the ER that is not quite as busy. But I, along with the trainer, would rather be too busy than not busy enough.

Next week I will start training with the ability to login as an employee instead of just watching. I will be working full-time next week which is going to be super crazy busy with the NFL draft in the area. I am going to be seeing a lot of things. It seems like in the one day I already have.

All is well in the home front. My mom made it to her MRI appointment without me having to take off work. I had a marvelous weekend, although once again I stayed up way too late. This weekend is going to be a lot more low key. We are planning on having people over for Easter, but nothing too big. I have to work all day Thursday and Friday. Tomorrow night I am planning on doing stand up comedy.

This week I washed the windows and put on the screens as it might get into the 60’s.

We found out yesterday that my daughter Angel and her husband will not be home for another month. We thought they would be home by the end of this month. This weekend Dan will be done with his job in Virginia and they will be moving their camper to another job site in Georgia. Dan hasn’t been home since Christmas. Angel stayed home through January which was a bit of a problem as her next door neighbor wrote her a love note in January. She wasn’t comfortable there by herself because of that. She recently got footage on her Ring camera that her neighbor was looking into her windows. Thankfully when she comes home, Dan will be with her to have a conversation with the creepy neighbor.

That’s all for this week. So far the new job seems interesting and I think I will really like it.

Happy Easter!

April begins…

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I am scheduled to start working in less than a week and I still haven’t gotten my schedule yet. As a planner, it’s been driving me crazy. My mom and Arabella have doctor appointments the next couple weeks and I don’t know if I can take them. Tomorrow my mom has her appointment with the psychiatric nurse and the following day she has her first appointment with the neurologist. Thankfully, I will be around to take her to those appointments. Unfortunately, my mom doesn’t live all that close so just the driving to appointments takes 2 1/2 hours of my time. Hopefully we will be closer to answers on the type of dementia my mom has and closer to options for treatment.

My follow up appointment with the doctor went well to check on my thumb where a chunk of nail down to the base was removed to get out a sliver. No signs of infection. However, it is going to take months to heal if it ever does heal properly. I will still need to wear a Bandaid as there is a thin portion that remains which tends to get snagged on clothing.

I got the sliver while vacuuming against a wood railing. Last week after cleaning the house the switch on our well pump went out. Mind you this happened at 5 PM on Friday while I was rinsing veggies to make supper. We ended up without water for the weekend. It would work briefly if someone tapped on the switch. So just enough to hand wash the dishes but not enough to run the dishwasher. Ironically, after the water turned off inside it started pouring outside. We had heavy rains, thunderstorms, sleet, some snow, and an ice storm before the system left late Sunday night. Monday morning service people came out to do their magic and we have water. Today I cleaned the house again. Hopefully nothing bad happens. I’m starting to doubt a little cleanliness never hurt anyone.

Despite the lack of running water, the weekend went well. I finished writing my memoir. I know I’ve said that several times and then a lot of things happened. But I think this time I am really done.

This week I am looking forward to doing stand up comedy again. Then Paul and I are going out of town for the night to see Alex perform with his band. It’s one little last hurrah before I start working next week…if I start working next week. Hopefully I’ll get my schedule soon!!

Hopefully the next time you hear from me I’ll be complaining about my new job. Just kidding. I used to really get into April Fool’s Day jokes. But it really doesn’t interest me too much anymore. Maybe that’s a part of being a ‘mature’ woman.

March on to the end

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Life has been pretty quiet since last week. I still have my thumb bandaged up and will be seeing the doctor tomorrow for a follow up. I never realized how much I used my thumb before. I haven’t been wearing pants with a zipper and a button because what happens if I need to go to the bathroom and struggle with limited use of my thumb. Unhooking my bra strap. Tying shoes. Opening pill bottles. Cleaning to name a few… I hope it heals quickly, but I am not sure my nail will ever look the same.

I start my new job in a week and a half. I still haven’t gotten my schedule yet so I have been hesitant to plan anything. Thankfully my mom has her neurology appointment set up for next week so I should be able to take her. I will be working 4 days a week and every other weekend. I am content with this schedule as it will leave me a couple days off during the week to volunteer and take family to doctor appointments. But before I start, I need to go through 6 weeks of training which might be either in person or online 5 days a week Monday through Friday. So until I find out more, I wait.

I am starting to make some headway with transitioning over as Matt’s guardian. For the past several years, my mom has struggled with financial tracking and balancing Matt’s checkbook. She has been paying all the bills and I want to transition over to a payee. Thankfully, my husband has been helping her with this and has been wonderful with the financial end of things. He has been an enormous help with record keeping which I need to set up a payee through the county. He was able to answer questions I had no clue about. The whole process to set up a payee will take 2 months. In the meantime, I need to pay all Matt’s bills without a lot of information on how to do it.

Also, the county has been marvelous to work with as well. Over the decades, I heard a lot of negative things about the county. However, I found the opposite to be true. They have been very diligent and supportive throughout the transition process. I’m starting to feel like everything is falling into place.

Arabella is continuing to make improvements. She is starting to wear makeup again. It might not seem like it, but it’s a big deal. She stopped wearing makeup over a year ago. She didn’t care much about her appearance and had no motivation to do anything about it. Plus her old anti-psychotic medication was making her hands shaky which made it almost impossible to do her eyeliner. I know it doesn’t seem like much since most of her peers are getting ready to graduate from college. I wish she could have a normal regular life too, but she does not. She is in a good place now and any proof of that is worth celebrating.

In the next couple days I am looking forward to: doing stand up comedy, having a game night with Paul, Arabella, and her boyfriend, coffee with friends (I want to try a coffee flight), volunteering at the cat rescue, and trivia night. I am in the process of finishing my memoir, which has been 6 years in the making. Next week I will be very busy tying up loose ends before I start working full-time. I have something going on every day.

What is coming next

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I want to start blogging more again. Maybe I can try for once a week. I realized today I have been blogging almost ten years. It takes some form of dedication or insanity to continue that long. One of the hardest parts for me is finding people I connect really well with and then they are gone. Maybe their blogging experience is only temporary. Sometimes bloggers pass away. That component is harder for me then finding things to write about.

This past week has been difficult/emotional in different ways. The job search has lead to several dead ends. I was selected for the lucrative job I took the proctored exam for. However, I am sitting in limbo. It’s been over a month since I applied. When I reached out, I was sent a form letter stating that I am in a pool of applicants and if/when they need me they will reach out. My test results will be on file for two years and if I don’t hear anything by then I am welcome to reapply. But I am looking for a job now.

A friend told me over the weekend that she knows someone who works for the job I am waiting on. She said for the first 6 months they had to work 3rd shift until there was an opening in 1st shift. I am not willing to work 3rd shift, been there done that and don’t ever want to do that again. I would be willing to work those hours once in a while but not often. I AM, however, willing to work day shift (early morning is fine), 2nd shift, weekends, and holidays. I don’t want to work a regular Monday through Friday 9 to 5 job either. I just don’t think it would be possible for me at where I am in my life right now.

As of this last week, I am now the successor guardian for my brother Matt. However, I am not going to do everything the same way my mom did. I am not going to cater to his every whim. This is going to be an adjustment period for all of us and I am going to be pulling off the band-aid. At first I felt a tremendous amount of guilt for doing things my way, the way I think will be the best for Matt. But I had to remind myself that I have taken on the responsibility to be responsible for my brother for the rest of his life or mine. I never signed up for this. I don’t want to have a brother with a disability. But I was willing to take it on even though it was not in my best interest. There are going to be a lot of things I have to learn.

This past week my mom had her neuropsychological evaluation we waited 5 months for. We will be getting the results this week. My brother Luke went with my mom and I to the appointment which lasted 4 hours. We had around an hour to talk to the doctor about our concerns without our mom in the room. I think we were listened to and adequately described the situation. The last few months my mom’s dementia has gotten worse and she reached a new level of raw unfiltered obsessiveness and self-focus. I think she may have more than one personality disorder on top of whatever dementia she is facing. Spending time with my mom is very difficult. I have to limit it to once a week for my own mental health. I had horrible nightmares the evening of her appointment.

This is why I can’t look for a 9 to 5 job. I have several appointments during the month during the day for my mom, daughter, and will for my brother Matt as well. Also, I would like to continue volunteering for several organizations during work hours. My husband and I just finished facilitating an 8 week family class through NAMI this week. We had the opportunity to guide ten other people who are new to mental health struggles with family members. It was great to use my experiences to help other people. We had such a great group and I am sad to see the class is over.

Every week I am looking forward to several opportunities to de-stress. This week I am planning on going to trivia night with friends. The first time we did it, we won second place. This will be the second time. After taking two months off to teach the class, I had to take a hiatus from stand up comedy. I will be doing stand up comedy this week. This weekend my son’s band will be playing so I am looking forward to going with friends and family to watch them perform.

I am also planning on finishing the third edition of my memoir this week. Last year I was planning on ending it but so much more has happened to write about. I feel like I finally found a good place to stop the story. My plan is to have it completely finished by April 11, which would’ve been my grandma’s 100th birthday. Even though she has passed many many years ago, I want to celebrate her day and the life she has given to me. Without her influence in my life, I don’t know where I would be.

Other than that, my husband and kids are doing well. It’s great they are all in a good place right now. I feel like I am at a crossroads of sort. It is a very uncertain and anxious time, yet on the other side of the same coin is a sense of anticipation and excitement for what is to come next. I might take some classes and go a whole different career route. Who knows at this point? I think I should have a lot of answers this week.

Blue Monday

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Apparently I forgot to cancel the trial and tribulations subscription in time for the new year. It’s been a rough start and I am feeling frustrated.

Some of it is the little things. This past weekend my son was performing with his band. As I was scooting my chair closer to the bar, I smashed my finger. I didn’t realize as I was pulling it in that the seat separated from the base. I sat down on my finger trapping it between the chair and the base with my body weight. Man did that hurt! My finger swelled up and was bleeding from under the nail. It still hurts a little and my finger is bruised under the nail, so I’m hoping I don’t lose my nail.

Or we can talk about today. Today I found a worm on my cat’s backside. I had to give both cats, under protest, de-wormer and deep clean their cat boxes. As I was cleaning, dirty litter box water splashed on my face. Fun times! As I was taking the dirty litter out to the garbage, the bag broke spilling dirty litter all over our walkway. I had to clean this up so the dogs wouldn’t get into it outside while the temperature was twenty below zero.

Then there are the bigger things. Like our investment falling through, from when we sold our business, that we were planning on living on the next couple years. Now I have to go back to work full-time. All the things I have been planning had to be cancelled, like our road trip out to Virginia to see Angel and Dan who will be living out there for the next couple of months. I applied for a job over the weekend. I think I have a good chance of getting it. I will need to pass a proctored exam to see if I will qualify. That was even a big process because I had to update my resume and all the stuff that goes into looking for a job. I will also need to pass a physical as the job is very active. Against medical advice I started running again.

The other big thing is that my mom’s health is deteriorating rapidly. It has become apparent that I need to take over guardianship of my brother Matt. That is not as easy as it would seem. I had to take an online class and fill out a whole bunch of complicated paperwork. At first, my mom refused to sign the paperwork to resign as guardian. She doesn’t think anything is wrong with her. She is trying to hide her dementia.

My brother Luke came home to try to figure out my parents finances. They have several accounts that are an absolute mess and haven’t been balanced in years. My mom is refusing help with her finances. Finally on Friday my mom signed the guardianship resignation letter. Luke and I went with my mom to pick up Matt from his group home. Then we stopped at the grocery store which was insanely busy. Luke and I were trying to help my mom shop with Matt. If you can imagine what it is like taking someone who has dementia and is confused along with someone with intellectual and mental illness. Neither have any awareness of other people. Matt almost bumped into someone. I had to pull him out of the way. Luke and I were very stressed out. I almost started crying in the store. But everyone was very nice and looked upon us with pity.

I have an appointment later in the week to meet up with someone from the county to see if my parents qualify for meals and in home care. I’m still in the middle of the whole guardianship paperwork process. That is also going to be intensive with the financial reporting, needing to meet with doctors and the case manager. My brother lives 40 minutes away so it is going to take a lot of time on my part to get everything set up.

Not to mention doctor appointments with my own daughter. Arabella is doing well on her new medication, but it is causing her to gain a lot of weight. At the last appointment, she gained 13 lbs in 6 weeks, so I’m not sure if she is going to go through another med change.

I have a feeling it’s going to be a long year.

almost to the end

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Over the weekend, we hosted a Christmas party with my mom, my siblings, and our families. We also attended a Christmas party with my mom’s extended family. There has been no hiding that my mom’s dementia is getting worse. She no longer recognized her brother-in-law, someone she knew since she was a teenager.

After the first Christmas party, my siblings and I had a meeting to discuss the current situation of our parents. Then we spoke to our parents about some of the things we discussed. I was very stressed out before the meeting. Thankfully my brothers and I are in agreement about how things should be handled. The biggest problem is that our parents are not in agreement with us.

My parents should not be driving. I’ve received several calls about my mom’s driving. She got into a car accident this year causing an injury to another person. Her friend told me she pulled out in front of someone without looking first and her friend came close to being killed. She also drove across her friend’s lawn and face planted her car into the ditch instead of using the driveway. When my brother asked her about her driving, she told us that she was a good driver. My dad can barely walk and doesn’t see well. They refused to stop driving or look into options such as assisted living.

The only thing they said they were willing to do was give me guardianship of my disabled brother Matt. Honestly, I don’t really want to do it. But I don’t feel like I have much of a choice. I told my brothers I was not going to baby Matt or give him special treatment which he is used to receiving from our mother.

I can’t stand even being at my parents house because the level of dysfunction and chaos is almost more than I can handle.

It’s hard not having any sense of control and just stand by waiting for something bad to happen before any changes are made. But I’ve been through this before recently when my daughter started developing a serious mental illness. When someone is an adult, it’s nearly impossible to intervene on their behalf if they don’t want your help.

Despite the stressful meeting, the holiday parties went really well. Everyone was for the most part nice and respectful. With the exception of a couple days, I’ve been in good spirits. I joked around and laughed a lot with my family when others around seemed to be rather down with all the bad news. Maybe it’s because I don’t care as much anymore about the things I can’t control, which is freeing. Maybe I’ve gotten used to living with suffering all around me and I’ve become desensitized. Or maybe it’s because I’m medicated. Life is just too short to take seriously all the time.