A Need for Sleep, Glasses, Shoes, Hand lotion and other thoughts.

I wrote this last week but was interrupted before I posted it. I am posting it now although things changed drastically yesterday. I am going to leave this hanging with: Mom now resides at Tanglewood Oaks. And I will post more on that later.

This past Monday night was another one of those nights. Mom was up at 11:30, dressed and in the kitchen fixing herself a cup of coffee. House was dark, everyone was asleep. I put her into her pajamas and put her to bed. At one thirty, Mom was at the kitchen table, dressed in different clothes, going through a small pouch of junk jewelry. I got her back into her pajamas but she would not go to bed until we found her glasses. I could not remember if she had been wearing them earlier or not but I looked in her covers, under the bed with a flashlight, in the bathroom, etc. Finally I began looking through her drawers and opening the various pouches, boxes and bags that she stashes her stuff in. When I unzipped an eyeglasses pouch that she held some jewelry and pedicure scissors I found her glasses. At about 3:30, Mom was up again. She had been on her hands and knees and matched up her shoes beside the dresser. She had a white sandal and a black sandal that did not have mates and was agitated that "someone" had taken her shoes. The hunt began, same scenario as with the glasses and when I opend the bottom drawer of her dresser, there was one missing shoe under some pajamas - but she, of course had no idea how it got there. That satisfied her for the moment and she went back to bed dressed.

The best part about this was that Bonnie and Deena were here to witness what I have been blogging about for several weeks.

They have both left for home now but it was great to have them here. Much was accomplished in many ways. Mom did not connect with them at all and after about 4 days, was ready for them to leave, most likely because although the girls spent quality time with Mom, the three of us were gone a lot and did not take her. At one point on the day before they left, Mom confronted Deena with "I don't even know your name, nobody told me your name." We tried several times to get Mom to connect that this Deena was the same one that calls her every weekend. Did not happen. One day, Deena was looking around for a tube of hand lotion that she had purchased but could not find it, eventually thinking that it may not have made it into the bag at the store. The next day, she was in Mom's room and there on the dresser, was...you guessed it...Deena's tube of lotion.

I could write a book about all of the odd, peculiar, frustrating, amusing and sad moments in our days. But who would believe it except someone who has experienced it and if they have experienced, they don't need to read my book, they could write one of their own!