For the Heck of it!

I started writing this as a reply to a comment Yowie made but it got long so I just made it into a post.

Oh, the old coot’s son, eh?

Keep in mind that the story you’re reading is the story from one person’s narrow-minded point of view. I’ll tell you a little bit from my husband’s point of view.

I know you can’t tell from reading here but my husband is bearing the brunt of the, oh God, I don’t want to say burden. But burden is the only word that really describes it. For one thing he goes to his mother’s house straight from work every other day and sometimes he has to detour to run errands for her. This makes for a very long day for him, usually 12 hours or more and he hardly has time to eat and watch a little TV before he goes to bed.

And he goes to her house at least one day on the weekend and often times both Saturday and Sunday.

There is a lot more I could do for the Old Lady to take some of the burden off of my husband but due to problems of my own I’m sort of a burden to him too, in a way.

The least I can do is take her to the doctor once or twice a month. That’s one less thing he has to worry about, and believe me, he has plenty. I should be doing a lot more for her than the few things I do but if somebody wants to bitch about me they can get their own blog! :p

When I do things for her I don’t think about it as doing something for her. I think about it like I’m doing something to help my husband. He is a good man so any little thing I do for her is one less thing he has to worry about.

But I’m not going to stop bitching about her.

I spent the day out on the town with the Old Lady yesterday. (Her doctors office and Bob Evans for lunch is the town for the two of us, hehe.) It was a stressful day for me but I can’t pinpoint the exact cause of the stress. I think it was an accumulation of things.

I had a hard time with the stubborn old coot (can females be coots?) when we got home. We have been using the same routine to get her out of the car and back into her house for over a year now and yesterday the routine got upset. Well, I got upset would be a better way to put it.

Normally I help her out of the car, run ahead, unlock her house door and run back behind her and help her to the steps. There are 3 or 4 steps but when you’re 84 years old it is like a mountain. So anyway, after I unlock the house door I usually run down and stand behind her while she leaves her walker at the bottom of the steps and uses the hand railing to help herself walk up. Then I bring the walker into the house.

Yesterday the routine was thrown off a bit because I ran ahead and unlocked the door, but I had to make sure Lilly the cat was still behind the gate we had put in the hall to keep her in the back part of the house. Lilly can jump over it but she doesn’t know it yet. I never know if she is going to be where she is supposed to be or if she will be standing near the door ready to make a run for it.

I don’t know why I agreed to this but when the mother-in-law tells me to do something I always assume the child role and feel like I have mind my elders. I was at the top of the stairs when she got there and she said “grab my walker and pull it up and I’ll hold on to it and go up behind it”. I argued but it didn’t do any good. I said we never do it this way. She said she didn’t want me to lift it by myself. LOL, I’ve been lifting it for a few years now – it isn’t that heavy. So when I said we never do it this way she said “I want to do it this way now!” so I felt like I didn’t have a choice.

I could just kick myself in the ass for Continue reading →