Is it Over Yet??!!

The Holiday Season is almost over, and as most folks feel about now, thank God! It's been fun getting with family and friends, dressing up for parties and travelling, but it's time to get back to reality. I cannot eat another cookie or potato chip. If I hear any more Christmas Carols, I think I'll rip out the sound speaker. And I hate shopping.

The Family Christmas
Instead of airing all my dirty laundry, let's just say that this Christmas was different. Thank God I took my kitties, Miss K (The Greatest Kitty Ever!) saved the day and her reputation.

To see your parents getting older and less capable of careing for themselves is a real heart-breaker and it's irritating when you want to help and they get hostile. They are happy the way they are, with poor reception on all the TV's, 50 years worth of clutter around the house, projects left unfinished or undone. Mom is doing her best with just keeping up with things, so anything new isn't welcomed. They get food from one of their friends, and when mom doesn't know what it is, she freezes it. Food is an issue, they only like certain things and don't really care to try anything new. They have lots of good stuff in the freezer, it's just been there for awhile.

They would be so much more comfortable in a smaller, less cluttered place with less they have to do. Mom goes around and covers all the windows with plastic, to help keep the heat bills down. She takes the cabana down every fall, and puts it up every spring. She brings in a ga-zillion plants in the fall and puts them out in the spring. She takes the screens out of all the windows and puts in storm windows, just to repeat the process in the spring. Now that Daddy can't help, someone has to rake and bag the leaves in the yard (1/2 acre), cut the grass in the spring and summer and shovel the driveway in the winter. I know she doesn't mind doing this, but she just doesn't have to. She's also managed to get my dad totally dependant on her, and it paid off (I guess) in their younger days but now she just can't do it all. She cooks and cleans, makes all of his doctor appointments as well as her own, keeps track of when he's taken his pills. Twice a day she sits down with her notebook and goes thru his myriad of pills and puts all the correct doses in a pill cup. Instead of putting out a weeks worth of pills in those weekly pill boxes you see in the store, she does it by hand twice a day. She takes out the trash, the newspapers for recycling and washes dishes ALL DAY LONG!

It's also very sad to put yourself in their place. They have annyoing children to nag them about moving to a nicer place, who will I have? I will be all alone, and it scares me.

Florence Nightenkitty
My sister chose to have some surgeries done a few days before Christmas. These took more a toll on her than anyone expected. To add to my mom's worries, she wanted to take care of her sick baby, but Baby Sis didn't want to come to the Old Homestead for a number of reasons and the Parental Units couldn't stay at her house for a number of reasons. Big Sis stayed with Baby Sis for a few days, then her family came up for Christmas and they all went home. Baby Sis stayed alone for one night, I stayed with her one night, then we brought her to the Old Homestead on Christmas Eve to spend the night. Let me just say 'Oh..My...God...' She had several surgeries done at once, which I will not recommend. She couldn't get comfortable, couldn't relax, couldn't sit up or lay down or turn over. She, thankfully, had her pain pills.

Tensions were running high, she is used to being on her own, an independant Pain In The Ass, just like I am. But now she was completely dependent on us. I wasn't ready, or prepared or even wanted to be the only Able Bodied person there, but I was. Having people be totally dependant on you is almost as bad as being totally dependant on someone else. Baby Sis was in pain and there was nothing I could do to help, mom and dad won't let me help them, so I was frustrated.

Every night around 2am, Baby Sis would wake up and eventually wake me up with her wimpering or moving around. To make a long, unpleasant story shorter, she was heavily drugged (not heavy enough, if you ask me!) and I wanted to be heavily drugged. We had harsh words and several unpleasantries but God Bless my kitty, Miss Katrina. She followed me into Baby Sis's room the first night, sat on my lap for awhile, but when I went back to bed, she'd staked out a spot on Baby Sis's lap and she stayed there the rest of the visit. Baby Sis calmed down, relaxed enough to go back to sleep and when she woke up again, Miss K was there and kept her calm. My mom and I would have fed Miss K lobster on a gold plate after that first night. I'm looking for a kitty sized nurses cap to place on the kitty in honor of her new responsibilities. We started calling her Florence or Flo, but I think K-Flo works pretty well.

And for the record, Baby Sis doesn't remember saying anything those nights, she just remembers the pain. We knew that.

Home Again
I'm home again. I drove 10 hours in the rain last night. I'm tired and still strung out from the visit. I stopped at the grocery store on my way in last night, but things looked strange. I had only been gone about a week, but things took on a different look for some reason. I know, everything was wet. It's been a LONG time since I've seen things so wet. Let's hope this keeps up like this.

More to come...
As things happen, I'll be posting. Thanks for taking the time to read. You're opinions are welcome but if you have to start calling me names, don't bother, I won't read them. As my Dad says 'Opinions are like a**holes, everyone has one.'