Mom's Little Dog

For Christmas, Mom received a wonderful little robotic dog. 

As her health has continued to deteriorate, she finds herself wishing for things that used to be. One of those things is a dog. She wants a dog.  Her favorite dog of all time was Geraldine.  Geraldine was a Beagle that my parents brought into their life when they got married.  Geraldine was Mom's companion while Dad was in college. Mom worked to support Dad while he went through college. Geraldine kept her company. When I was born, Geraldine kept me company, sleeping under my crib and standing guard while I slept. I don't remember Geraldine, but Mom still loves that dog.

My husband and I don't have a dog. We have a cat. And the very last thing we want to do is take the cat - who hates card rides - for an hour-long drive down to Virginia and then back up again. 

I found this adorable robotic dog at the Alzheimer's Association Store.

It interacts with the patient when they talk - barking, moving its head towards the sound of the voice, opening and closing its eyes, and moving its ears. You can scratch it on the head and it will have some vocalizations and move it's head around. 

As soon as we took the dog out of the box, the first thing Mom did was turn the dog upside down to see if it was a girl or boy.  She decided that "she's a boy, and her name is Benji."            

 Mom loves her little Benji! She sleeps with him. When she wakes up in the middle of the night and can't go back to sleep, little Benji is there with some nudges and makes some wonderful little noises while she pets him until they both fall asleep. 

If you're interested in finding out more about this little dog, you can find the link here:

https://www.alzstore.com/doll-pet-therapy-dementia-s/1516.htm?utm_source=bing&utm_campaign=Alzheimer%27s%20-%20General%20-%20Exact%20-%20tRoas&utm_medium=ppc&msclkid=76d9cad4994b18f0cc08a91fd7fbfa82

"I'm going to get a dog"

 Last time I saw my Mom, she told me that she was going to get a dog.

And she was going to tie a man's tie on it.

And she was going to name the dog Ty.

Then she told me she was going to get a horse.

And ride it over to the White House.

And pick up Joe.

And then they were going to go riding together.

There was so much more! She was in rare form when I was there! 

Mom's Hydrangea Bush

In my Mom's yard, she has a beautiful, vibrant hydrangea bush.  Every summer, this bush bursts forth with the most luscious purple blooms you have ever seen, and then holds onto this purple crown well into the fall.

 

Mom moves on Monday.  Over Labor Day weekend, we were at her house, pulling items for the dump, and receiving a sofa for our house.  One last thing that I did before we left for the day on Saturday was to cut some branches off of her hydrangea, to see if I could root them.

 

 

 

These are the branches that I cut.  They don't look very good, do they?  When Mom was getting the house ready to sell, she had a landscape crew come through and mulch everything.  I'm convinced that the hydrangea was a victim of the mulch.  Surrounded by a sea of dark black mulch, I think that the leaves were burned with the heat from the new mulch, and they had started to droop.

 

 

Most of the leaves on my cuttings looked like this when it came home.  Hard to believe, but they were the healthiest branches on the bush.  I stuck all of the cuttings into a jar of water and hoped for the best.

 

 

 

It's been a 7th grade science experiment in here, that we have been watching with some fascination.  This leaf was just as curled up and dried as the one next to it.  Over the course of the day yesterday, I watched a tiny, small band of healthy green spread through the leaf.  Look at the leaf around the stem in the center!  I took this picture early this morning, and this is the spread of water through the leaf.

 

Now, to hope that the roots magically grow!

Update on My Mom

 A couple of weeks ago, I mentioned that my Mom was having issues with her eyes.  She has blood pooling behind her retina.  You can read the original post here:

http://mini-van-mom.blogspot.com/2013/07/moms-eyes.html

So, in the past couple of weeks, things have moved along very quickly.

She has bought a house down the street from my sister.  She has lived in her current house for 35 years.  The house is in an ideal location, as it is an hour away from each of us.  This has made it a wonderful destination for family gatherings over the years.

But now, she's moving down the street from my sister.  It's well over 2 hours from here, down Highway 95, around Washington DC, and through the hideous Northern Virginia traffic, and then down another hour south.  Life, it is a changin'.

She is getting her current house ready to sell.  Yesterday, we went down to her house and spent one of the most hellacious days I've had in quite some time.

Middle child hasn't been home for most of the summer.  The last time he saw Grammy was in May, just before his graduation.

Now that he's home, and this is his break between working at camp and going back to school, we made plans to go down to her house for the day.  We were going to take Mom out to lunch, run loads of stuff to Goodwill, and let middle child have some quality time with Grammy.

I was in for a rude awakening.  We got to Mom's house just before noon, and my sister had decided to come over for the day.  She was loading up stuff to take to Goodwill.  She had already taken the chairs that were supposed to be mine - given to the family by my Grandmother on my Dad's side 30 years ago.  They're gone.  So are my Fisher Price toys that I specifically asked her to save out for me the last time we talked.  So were the handmade inlaid wood pictures my Dad had made that I had asked her to save.  So was the shotgun my great-great grandfather carried when he fought in the Civil War.  By the time I got to Goodwill, they were already gone.  I would be okay if they had gone to my sister's house, but no, they went to Goodwill.  Family heirlooms, given away to strangers in a fit of whatever it is.

But still, this isn't about me, it's about my Mom.  We need to do what is best for her.

We pulled in, and she immediately put the kids to work loading stuff into her car.

Then, she pulled out to go run errands, and told us she'd be right back.

I told Mom that we should head out and get lunch, or head out to a restaurant and then text my sister, let her know where we were, and have her meet us there.  No go.  Mom refused to budge until my sister got back.

My sister pulls into the driveway behind me, blocking me in, brings in a rotisserie chicken- one chicken for 6 people - eats about half of it, and then starts cleaning like a ferocious, angry, possessed woman.

Meanwhile, my youngest child is with me, and she is a vegetarian.  Mom hasn't been to the store in over a week, so there is very little in the house, and there is nothing for a lactose intolerant vegetarian to eat. 

I asked my sister if she could move her car so that I could get out, and she told me she "wasn't moving her car until the house was cleaned."  Frustrated beyond words, we began cleaning.  I cleaned out the tracks in the windows.  I sliced my finger open on the tracks... Youngest child was beyond starved, but I had nothing to give her, and my car was sandwiched in.  No way out.

I cleaned baseboards.  I cleaned cobwebs.  The kids pitched in and cleaned windows and magic erasered the walls.  We loaded the stuff for Goodwill that was still sitting in the front yard.

Throughout it all, I kept reminding myself that this wasn't about me, this was about my Mom.

At 5, I told my sister I had to leave.  I loaded my kids in the car, and at 5:30, she finally ambled out with Mom and her youngest daughter and they took off.

We were starved.  I showed up at Mom's house having had a Starbucks coffee and a piece of pumpkin bread.  At 1, I split what was left of a chicken thigh with middle child.

We went straight to Wegman's and grabbed dinner from the hot bar.  We went upstairs to eat dinner, and recover from the emotional stress of the day.

At this point in the day, youngest child had had a piece of pumpkin bread, a banana, and two popsicles.  She downed  a salad, a bag of nuts, and a hunk of bread.  The poor thing was starved.

But again, we reminded ourselves that this was about Grammy, not us.  Grammy's house is going up on the market a week from this coming Sunday, and she wants to move the house quickly.

After our fruitless stop at Goodwill, we finally left for home.  The hideous Washington traffic was worse than usual, and it took us 3 hours to get home last night, even though we left Northern Virginia after 7:00, when traffic has usually begun to die down.

This morning, I looked through my e-mails and found a note from my Mom.

"I just realized" she wrote, "That she had nothing to eat.  There was no food for her, and your sister wouldn't let you get your car out to go get food.  I'm sorry.  I should have realized that was what you were trying to say when you kept saying "I need to go to the store and get something for her to eat."   I couldn't understand why she wasn't content with the chicken."

I know, I know, this is about my Mom, and what's best for her.  It's not about me.

But I'll tell you, when I couldn't sleep last night, it was all about me. 

I really do need to let this go somehow.  But how?