And so it goes...

She is restless; getting into her “stuff” and trying to remember. Over the past couple of days Mom has retrieved coin folders from the top of her closet looking for her white pennies. She has pulled from her drawer an old zipper bag with “important” papers like payments for the truck she and daddy bought in the late 70’s I think. And newspaper clippings and pictures of people she does not remember including a newspaper picture of daddy from the same time frame. She has pulled out letters from people like our old next door neighbor, Mrs. Dowler and of course did not know who that was; Even a lot of her craft stuff – arranged in piles all over the dining room table. This happens every few weeks, mostly when she is bored or confining herself to her room for some reason.

Mom had managed to rescue a number of shallow boxes from things that came in the mail over the holidays and put her various craft pieces in them. They were on the spare bed and on the floor last week when I informed her that her supplies needed to go into the special chest of drawers I had put in her room for just that purpose rather than be on the floor because it was not safe for her to walk in her room. I did mention this several times but did not go in there and do it. The other day she seemed to be puttering in her room more than usual so I checked on her. She let me know that she was emptying the boxes for me. A short time later, she made not one, but two separate walks to the other end of the house to find me and toss the boxes at me to remark “here are the boxes you wanted.” Joe and I exchanged puzzled, amused looks. So now her craft stuff, when it is not in a huge tote bag or spread out on the table or bed, is in the chest in her room.

After dinner tonight, Mom was trying to tell me about some craft she had done today but being unable to make out what she was talking about, I tried to fill in the gaps. She was excited about it so she told me to stay there while she went to get it. Mom brought back one of the things she had purchased when out for her friends for lunch. It was one of small tin butterflies that she insisted she did not purchase because "what would I do with 6 butterflies?" Anyway, she had tried painting one of them - it was originally a muted yellow with some green and blue outlining some of it. But she had used some paints she had to paint it up. I told her how beautiful it was and it is going to hang on the wall of my office. If anyone wants some of her crafts, I am taking orders! Maybe I can get some pictures on this blog soon. No, I'm serious about taking orders! We have more than we need. Let me know!