New Gate!

Next Wednesday we'll have been here 7 months and we finally have the gate that mom has wanted since day one! I hope she feels safe now. The sun motif works well with the entrance. I woke up this morning to the sounds of the gate being installed. The day in between the gate installation and the sunset was a mere 103 degrees! The photo of the sunset was taken from our front yard. I used to be able to take some fabulous sunsets from the backyard but the neighbors have planted trees that now obstruct a clear shot.

Paper towel Collage

The palette for this work-in-progress collage consists of titan buff, dark brown, beige, and black. The paper is Viva paper towels. Cheap acrylic paint.

Well the mystery of the possessed fan has been solved! It required an exorcism! Who knew that a remote control needed to be re-programmed?!

It hit 98 today! Yikes! I purchased an outdoor ceiling fan for the patio. One more thing for my SIL to do next month. I've been "road-testing" outdoor furniture and can't find anything I like in the price range I'm willing to spend. We have two metal chairs but we brought with us, but they're short on comfort.

The Eye of the Camera

Camera lenses can pick up things that I can't discern until I look at the final image; which never fails to amaze me. For instance on the top right side of the succulent two chicks are now growing out of the main plant. A nice bonus! And even though the Kangaroo Paw blossom is nearly devoid of color after a week of sitting on my desk, the digital film still thought that the red existed as it had last week and chose to capture that rather than the dull grayish color.

The background paper on the left is a paper towel mono print. While I was painting paper towels to experiment with I blotted each towel with the one above. It's always exciting to see what will happen when I remember to do this.

I heeded the weather report that I heard Sunday night and had new tires put on the car yesterday rather than wait until I felt up to sitting for hours in the lobby of the tire store! It's supposed to be in the triple digits by Friday and for once I think that the report might accurate. A pleasant 82 yesterday and today it's 98! I had visions of a tire blowing out on the a long stretch of bumpy road between the house and the dialysis clinic; the salesman concurred, "This one is ready to blow and the other three aren't too far behind." I hate the smell that new rubber gives off making the two hour wait a rough one. Vertigo started striking followed by nausea and a pounding headache; FM is fraught with interesting symptoms of which chemical sensitivity is often one of them. I decided to make an excursion to the grocery store across the parking lot. I browsed the aisles looking at items I usually pass by while rushing to get in line at the check-out counter. Purchases: matches that we've needed for the last 6 months, cheesecloth and flour sacks to paint, an "original" feather duster, two clips to hold bags of chips closed and a bag of red potatoes. Oh and a donut as my reward for getting the new tires!

For the last four months road work is in the process of being done on two of the roads we travel on and the bumps are awful. I felt pretty confident driving home yesterday with new tires underneath me. "Can't you drive another way home? You're going to ruin the new tires." Mom has a way of saying just the 'right' thing. The direct route home is 10 minutes faster.

Into the mist!

Having Alzheimer's must seem like disappearing into the mist. This week has been fraught with episodes so numerous and different from past ones that I feel as I'm spinning out of control! I can't keep up with where mom's brain is taking her and when I'm fatigued it's even more difficult to figure out what is happening or what she wants. Her list of complaints and needs grows daily and if I acknowledge the complaints and say that I'm sorry she's having a rough time like freezing at the dialysis clinic then her mood shifts. If I say that I'll look into whatever she thinks she needs she either drops it completely or brings it up over and over until I do something about it.

Last Wednesday Stacy didn't sit in her usual chair from treatment. Mom sits in a folding chair next to Stacy (I run errands and tend to things for the 3 hours they are there). This treatment station is near the AC vent and you'd have thought mom was in the deepest part of Alaska. She was so bundled up by the time I got back that everyone was looking at me with question marks plastered on their faces. I smiled and said, "Perhaps Stacy can sit in her usual place from now on. Mom seems to freeze in that spot." Of course the rest of the day was a bust, "they" had ruined her day and she must have been punished for something. PARANOIA strikes again. Personally, I would have loved that spot seeing how I'm always hot. Mom seems to be either freezing or roasting; her thermostat must be way off.

There was the episode of the missing book that simply got up and walked off of her bed while she was in the bathroom. Seeing how this isn't the first book that has gone missing I assume that she either finished it before the bathroom visit and put it away, or she hadn't been reading at all. She can never remember what book it was . . .

The missing outdoor figurines didn't get a rise out of me. I was beyond being able to deal with anything yesterday afternoon when she announced that they were no where to be found. "Maybe you put them away," I said. I had spent hours and hours in the yard planting more perennials, staking vines, fertilizing, re-potting plants and cleaning off the patio. An attack of vertigo struck and I was on my bed. "You'll never guess where they were," she announced about 10 minutes later. "I have no idea how they got there but they were under the sink in the wet bar area." Mmmmm, so she must have been worried about them be stolen seeing how the gate we've ordered is now 2 weeks behind schedule. Most things she misplaces and then finds are blamed on the fact that the gate hasn't arrived so she needs to hide things. I wonder what she'll blame the missing items on once the gate is installed. Should be interesting.

The overhead fan seems to be possessed as it turns itself on. A remote control is required to turn it on . . . For three months we had the chocolate obsession where she announced daily that I must go and get her more Dove chocolate as she was running out. Six bags in one week?!?!? "Well I certainly don't have them so you must have thought you bought them for me." In self-protection I had stocked up with a dozen bags and when the announcement arrived early one morning followed by a note on my shopping list I handed her the dozen bags. "Well, I don't need that many!" Two days later she sheepishly told me that she had about 19 bags of chocolate and she couldn't figure out where they'd all come from. It seems that she'd been putting the bags in different places and not into her nearly empty candy drawer!!! Sheesh! At least she hadn't been eating all of that chocolate. I've stocked my hiding place again in readiness for the next "empty drawer" announcement.

She had to have a way of having ice water in her room. Maybe a small refrigerator? We've been through this about a dozen times. I walk out to the casita with her, "Where would you put it?" She looks at me like I'm some evil person. "Well, if my apartment were larger I could have one."

It took me three stores to find an insulated carafe that is fairly easy to open and happily the ice cubes fit into the narrow opening. I felt like I'd won the lottery! But last night, "If I had a freezer in my room I could have ice cream when I want it." We had a dish of chocolate ice cream for dessert.

This morning she couldn't find the bread for her toast. It's either in the bread keeper next to the toaster oven or in the freezer. It turns out the bread wasn't in either place. The loaf was on the second shelf from the top which was beyond her comprehension. I asked her if she'd like waffles. "Well, that would be better anyway. How am I supposed to remember where you keep the bread in your house if you keep moving it." This from a woman who was the best problem solver in the world!

Lots of other incidents but the most tedious one is that the chocolate necessity seems to have been replaced this week by the need to wash the sheets. "I haven't washed the sheets in weeks! Is it okay that I do them today?" Sure thing, I'll get the machine started. Five times this week already!

Four times today already we've had the possessed fan problem, plus, the gate delivery anger, plus the need to change the ice and water in the carafe. And then there is the magazine saga . . .

I'm beginning to wonder, not for the first time, whether I should shut done my ExpressionVillage yahoo group. I can't seem to keep things together enough to post anything of substance. Membership has once again dropped and I'm certain it's out of boredom.

Quote:

Be pleased with what life serves you

and you will be pleasantly surprised

by dessert.

Sally Huss