4/29/03 - ENERGY!

Today I got my energy back! Husband awoke feeling "sick" and I knew he had an appointment with our best client in Gadsden today. I said, " get up and come downstairs for some coffee and breakfast. If after that you feel $850 worth of sick, you may go back to bed and I'll treat you the way I love to be treated when I'm sick, OK?

He came down for coffee and pretty soon he was showering. Hard to turn down $850 in billing, you have to be REALLYYYY sick.

Between yesterday and today, I've done 4 loads of regular wash, one load of all area rugs, one load of linens, with one or two still to be done. I've cleaned 2 full bathrooms and have one half bath to do tomorrow, dusted and vacuumed upstairs, vacuumed the stairway, moved all furniture from the downstairs hardwoods, dusted baseboards and vacuumed, mopped and polished the floors, and still have the counters and dishes to be done. I took Jessie to an extra ballet practice in prep for her weekend recital. I invited 9 more folks to the 20-year class reunion, paid a couple of bills, and paid to have a new toilet installed. I've fed 6 people most their meals each day, wiped snotty noses, changed diapers, cleaned puke, doctored booboos, and bathed the baby. Tonight I bathe 3 more children after supper and dishes and sweeping, and reading homework. Got to bring in the area rugs from drying in the sun and fold that mountain of clothes on my bed and put them away. Sounds like another late one, but who knows?

Right now, I'm having a Rolling Rock beer, whole wheat tortilla and roasted red pepper hummus spread. Supper of champions, eh?

With all that activity, I did skip my walk today.
[ Mon Apr 21, 06:57:57 PM | Rebecca Montalbano | edit ]
Mom's Alzheimer's Disease - 4/21/03
This Alzheimer's Disease is just a horrible theif that loves to tease. Here is my mother, but she's not in there. Cousin Michael Owens(an Episcopal priest - spent YEARS in South Africa with Desmond Tutu) says that this time is for me to say my goodbyes. The goodbyes are for me, not for her, and I'll be glad for this time when she is gone.

I'm really trying hard to stay upbeat, trying to see what's ahead and prepare. Like Mom, I have my good days and my bad days. I'm so trying to hang on to that woman. When I'm talking to her, that person that she used to be . . just isn't IN there behind those eyes. Parts of her are, little bits and pieces, but it's like a paper doll. Turn it sideways and it disappears, look on the back and there's no printing - just blank cardboard.

So, I have her here every day. I sit her on my sofa. I talk at her, I listen to her talk at me. I know she loves me. I put my baby in her arms with a bottle. She knows what to say to the baby, she remembers what to do with a baby. I fix her food and help her up and over to the table. I watch her pick at the food - she's never really hungry, she never really tastes the food.

I answer her questions no matter how many times she asks them, and I can keep pretty upbeat and act like it's the first time she's asked. (That took a while to master that new skill!)

I listen to her invent places she's staying and homes that she and Daddy own, other than the little one-bedroom apartment they've moved into just down the street and the house they called home for 34 years until February. I listen to her tell me about ship voyages that she just returned from where she lost her huge diamond ring. I listen while she tells me that I just moved into this house in the past couple of months, knowing I've been here 6 years.

I've been able to stop arguing - on most days. I've accepted that the truth means nothing and my denying her reality - whatever it happens to be that day, that moment - only causes her pain and doesn't benefit her in the least. And my truth, and Daddy's truth, well that's just a life-draining, exhausting, joy-sucking kick in the teeth.

I need to go and paint now.