I Love Me A Light Box

Working on the black one.

Love me a light box.  This is the one I had to replace from the one that lived under the water line.  McGee (seen here in the photo minding his own beeswax) didn't seem care whether the other light box lived in a box or not.  He REALLY had strong feelings about this one, so it cannot live in its box.

I have a suggestion for camera manufacturers.  Make a camera that is bright orange and says, I am over here! in a loud voice and I will buy it.  Or I am going to need to hire a personal assistant to keep track of all my stuff.

Andrew was sick yesterday so I picked up the baby in the afternoon and kept him fed and watered until his momma got off work
 

For Christmas we bought him a bunch of toys and stuff to keep at our house when he comes here. 

But the best toys are sometimes the simplest ones.

That quilt he is on is the only quilt my mother ever made in her entire life.  And she made it for a baby that Carrie might have even after she got married.   

So it is a special piece.  And it stays at my house too. 

Flashback to the Past!

Oh my!  I just randomly went into Frank's office to see if McGee was "looking out".  He sits in the window and watches things go by the front of the house.  The window is long and low and he can lay down, prop his chin on the sill and fall asleep.  Often DiNozzo joins him and they chill together.

So......I digress.......

I went into Frank's office and noticed these photos.  I wonder why he didn't say, hey, I found these, come see?

Here I am.  I was 17 and that handsome guy with me is Tom.  He was an ex-racehorse my Uncle Buddy got me when I was living with him and  Aunt Edith.  My evil Cousin Linda had a pony named Danny and we rode the neighborhoods together nearly every day.


This was like in 1969.


And these were my parents.  I have never seen these photos before.  They were in an envelope labeled Passport Photos.  They really didn't travel the world, but they did go on one cruise in the Caribbean after they moved back to Louisiana from El Paso, TX.  So that would have been mid to late 70's.

If you remember the show MASH, I am sure you do, there was an actor who played Trapper John, MD.  He looked a lot like my dad.  Dad's company always had a Sky Box in the Superdome for the Saints games from their very first season.   I think he went because because people thought he was Trapper John.  They would crowd him and ask for his autograph, which he would sign Herb Graci!

Better Today

Yesterday was such an emotional day for me.  I was exhausted.

Mom in 2007

I called my brother about the hospice thing, and checked in on his family.  They have their own thing going on and are in another city, and you know.  I rarely hear from them.  But we had a nice conversation and we are both on the same page, and it is OK.

I dealt with the health insurance crisis.  In January they changed the details of the reimbursement stuff and we no longer have a co-pay or deductible.  But no doctor's office or pharmacy understands this.  We are constantly overcharged and it is difficult to get your money back from the pharmacies and doctors who ARGUE with you when you show them the policy wording even!  It took me a week of calls to the benefits office at Frank's home office in Houston just to get a call back.  And when she did, she told me her child was sick and I should be more understanding!

And all the intake nurse and social work visits are being done through the Hospice and everyone calls me to discuss my mother.  Yesterday I explained to two pastors about our religious views and why we were comfortable with them.  I ended up just saying, go visit her, she has no idea you are even there.  Say what you want to her!  Make yourself feel better.

And on top of all that, I have 4 books on tape from the library and my Bose unit decides never to play CDs again.  I called Bose and they are willing to replace the guts of the machine for $99 plus shipping.  Frank won the unit at a Sales Meeting in 2008 so that is actually a good deal.  It will get shipped off today!

Chloe

And after listening to me for a while, all Frank said last night was:  do you think we can go get some more Klondike bars - I ate the last one last night?

And you wonder why I have dogs??????????

Oops! I Lost Our Correspondence!

My mother has been in the nursing home for over 3 years now with end stage Alzheimer's.   She is mostly non-responsive and gets just enough nourishment to keep her 85 lb body going somehow.  The first year at $4400-something plus supplies and services drained every penny she had to her name.  My brother told me not to expect anything from him and I could not support that amount myself so I made the decision to apply for Medicaid for her.

It is a double edged sword.  But that is another story.

So for 2 years now she has had no assets and no income except for the meager Social Security payment from the government from my father's account before his death in 1989.  Not much at all.  But it keeps her in hair dos and manicures in the Nursing Home Shop and gets her a few ice cream cones during the month.  It makes  her feel good to get her hair done.  I guess.

So  this year the IRS says to me, you can't sign her tax returns, she needs to sign them.  to which I replied, I have a power of atty that allows me to do so.  To which they replied, they don't accept POAs. 

Wow.  Then they can just go to the nursing home and see if she can sign her own name, if she even remembers it. They weren't happy about that.

So now, for the NSA's benefit and the IRS's record, if the NSA would be kind enough to pass it along, I had a computer glitch and all our past correspondence has disappeared.

Sorry.  Sometimes stuff just happens, to quote Lois Lerner.

Mom Falls, Too

Ann is better today, moving around and feeling stiff.  I am sure she is pretty black and blue today.  

Well, that is two falls.  Ann and my mom.  Be careful out there, things happen in threes!!!


My mom fell out of her wheelchair.  She was leaning over and fell.  I thought they had decided to strap her in after the last fall out of the chair.  But they must have eased off that idea.    She took a nose dive into the floor.  Ad to that, she is down to 82 lbs.  I can't help but wonder how much further she can go.

I finally got a picture of Ann and added my mom.  I stepped in to make it a threesome!

Slow Cat and Fast Airplanes

She doesn't care....

Here is where I got to last night before I quit.  I could have gone further, but my eye was bothering me.  All that cat pee is really getting to me.  Stupid cat.  Soon we will have tile and you won't have a place to go in the bedroom!  She won't even go in the litter box I put right there!  Stupid cat.

Cali still has power though.  All three dogs and the cat were outside and I opened the door tonight and called them to dinner.  The dogs were pushing and jockeying for position to get in the door first.  Ahead of them all, the cat slowly stepped on the threshold, stretched one leg, then another, then the third and then the last.  She arched her back in a high stretch and THEN came inside.  No one dared go past her or push her out of the way!

Got a call from the nursing home, my mother has lost another 4 lbs.  Because they have had her on
megase for three cycles and she has not improved, they are not going to use it again.  They assigned her an aide to help her eat last year, and that keeps her focused on eating.  And every bite is fortified with as much as they can.  She still loses weight.  Now at 85 lbs there is not much more than bones.  I talked to AJ, who was Chief of Nursing at Earl K Long, which is our charity system for many years.  She says this is pretty typical of Alzheimers.  And with the seizures she is having it is just time now.

I have another airplane finished.  I don't know if you can see it or not, but I have sketched in some clouds.  The white layer will be the fluffy white clouds you see on a beautiful day at sea.  There is another cloud layer and then blue blue sky.  I am really loving these airplanes.  I guess I will turn the edges of the clouds under and set them on top of the next layer.  The white is from a purchase at the Purple Cow.  It was a set of double bed dust ruffles in a kid's room.  Bright red ruffles and this white was the part the mattress sat on.

I need to pull some fabric to see if I can put borders on or if it is just going to be plain.  Plain planes!  LOL.

First Project on the New Quantum

I used one of the frozen oatmeal "pucks" for breakfast to see how it worked.  It worked pretty well!






McGee created art:


I wanted to sew something on the new machine to get a feel for how it handled.  It will come on the retreat in a few weeks and really need to be familiar with it before I get out in the middle of nowhere and have problems.

In my mother's stuff we moved into my foyer, there is a simple quilt she never finished.  She collected fabric and quilt magazines but never made a quilt.  Not because she couldn't, she was an expert seamstress, sewing since she was a little girl on garment construction for my grandmother's customers.  Everything we wore growing up was made by her, everything.  Me being a tomboy and my brother being a boy didn't stop her.  She sewed my brothers pants and my father's shirts and suits.  All my bedspreads and curtains, which I got to change every 4 years.

She was pretty obsessive and we had this schedule:

Year 1 - Her room
Year 2 - Living room/Dining room/Kitchen
Year 3 - My room
Year 4 - Kenny's room

So every fourth year I got to change my stuff.

She sewed a lot!  Even making our underwear and slips, my wedding gown and my bridesmaid's gown.  Frank got to rent a tux, lucky guy.

Chloe models her good side

So when she got old, she wanted to quilt.  And she would come here to Baton Rouge and I would cut and line stuff up, and she would run the seam through the sewing machine.  That way we put together a couple of quilts.  She found this material with safari animals and wanted to make it for her husband's great granddaughter's baby.  (I won't go into it, but his family was mostly unmarried with multiple last names.)  The quilt never got finished.  So I finished sewing around about 5 of the pictures.  It is a printed piece, nothing is actually pieced, and the back is this wild green.  See Chloe modeling?

So I found it and decided that since it was the very last thing my mother worked on, that when Carrie has a baby, I will give it to her.  Carrie is not as sentimental as I am, but it will make me happy.

If You will Have to Care For Your Parents...A Public Service Announcement

This is my mom at two different stage in her life.  I won't show you what she looks like today, it is far too sad for a person to bear.  She had her problems, and one of them was her image of what she imagined I should have looked like and been.  But she was my mother.

This is a head's up for you if you think you will be in any way caring for your parent/s.  And your parent may be cognizant but unable to wade through the mess and regulations that is our Social Security system.

They do not accept Power of Attorney from any aspect of any legal system in any form.  So don't think you have that covered.  I have a very comprehensive POA that allows me to do EVERYTHING as my mother.  But SSA will not acknowledge the POA.

They will only accept my mother, in person, face to face.  So the remedy to that is to become a "payee" on my mother's account.  That can be done by the parent agreeing to that in person in the local SSA office.  Now I have to go through the nursing home, affidavits from the doctor and the social worker.  The nursing home has to make a statement that I am not intending to steal from her.  On and on.

So my advice.  Go brave the SSA, you will learn a lot about our country as well (grin), brush up on your Spanish, and get that done before your parent becomes incapacitated and you can make decisions and administer their SS benefits.

It is a good thing to get a comprehensive POA as well and have that in the background.  My friend's mother had a stroke and nothing in place.  That was a nightmare for her.


Do it now while the parent is able to state their intentions.  I filed it with the state to make it official.  Only one place has argued with me saying they can ONLY accept the original and they wanted to keep it.  I brought my mom, dressed her up to look coherent, and took all her money out of that bank the next week.

glen

Insurance Rant - my foray into politics

It all started with the opening of the insurance bill for my mother.  My boiling point was tipped.

My mother is now destitute, having no assets and less than $2000 in the bank.  I applied for medicaid for her since I cannot pay for her care, my brother told me he won't give her of his money and insurance plus medicare does not cover what it costs in one month.

mom in 2005

I do have a medicare supplement and the prescription plan for her in addition to the medicare benefits my father worked all his life to earn.  Medicare does not pay nearly what it costs, and the rules favor those who have no money over those who have savings from their lifetime of work.

 I just got the notice that the medicare supplement and prescription plan will each be increased by $23 per month.

So exactly how did Obamacare make it better for my mother?

mom in 2007

I am certainly NOT in the to 1% however my tax rate is.  We are decidedly middle income and have both worked hard hard hard to pay off our house years ago and own what we own free and clear of mortgage and loans.  We have carefully invested our money and not bought things we could not afford.  We both have advanced degrees from big colleges and paid for our daughter to get a professional degree from a big college.  The insurance that Frank has through his company, a Fortune 50 company in fact, has sent out notices that they will most likely discontinue offering health insurance once the full Obamacare kicks in several years down the road.  They would prefer to pay the penalty than to have to continue providing health insurance for their employees.  It will save them millions and millions of dollars in their bottom line.

I am sure they are not alone in this.  It will be the way of the future.  I guess you know where I will be standing when the time comes to pull that lever.

I firmly believe everyone should earn what they get and that it not go into the pockets of politicians.  I want government to be responsible to the people who pay taxes not those on the welfare roles, and not make their office their lifetime job.  Those in the public sector should not have a guaranteed tenure job, but one based on merit like we do in the private sector.  And no one should guarantee welfare for you if you choose not to work, not to study, not to be productive.

But that is probably not going to get me any votes when I run for President!


glen:  ohhh........I feel better now........

Something must have worked........

The PT people called me late yesterday and set up an appt for my physical therapy.

Not sure why we couldn't have done it on the phone yesterday...........or is that looking a gift horse in the mouth?

I got some straightening done yesterday afternoon, then made some paperpieced tiny blocks for a round robin swap I am doing.  I can't show you that, is it Top Secret!  Then went to a meeting a Direct Buy.

I also had the discussion with the nursing home about my mom.  She got the cast off, and is now attempting to get out of the bed.  They cannot restrain her much more than they do now, so I guess she will be back at the emergency room soon.  Sigh.

Today, maybe get some sewing in, the round robin finished, and then some blocks for my Block Lotto Swap.  I didn't win last month so maybe THIS month?  I love the blocks this month, hint hint hint.........

glen

Ellies get trimmed

I trimmed the ellies tonight.  I sucked it up and just whacked them but good.  See the dog from my class with Judy Holley up in the left top corner?  He is sitting and watching me!  Waiting for me to make him some friends!


I went to see Stelly bowl in the International Bowling Tournament today.  We had never been to one before and I wanted to see Charlene and Stelly.  But the whole place was amazing!  The Bowling Tourney people bring the entire bowling alley right to your town and set it up in your civic center!  Just like that!  Here is a photo of the entire 56 or 58 lanes there.  Stelly bowled on #1 so we were at the far end of the center.  (It used to be called the Centroplex but now they call it something else.  The New Orleans evacuees from Katrina stayed there and tore up the place so they did a major remodel that finished last year.)  It will always be the Centroplex to me though.  Whatever you call it, it was just amazing to see the transformation.

I had a whole post here but the blog-s-sphere ate it so I am redoing it.

Here are Charlene and I cutting up.  And normal. (yeah, right)  See my new sexy blouse?  With the lace cut out sleeves!  Yes.





Here is Stelly bowling.  It was so wonderful to watch him do what he loves.  Wait, wait, wait......till he turns around..........(but he does have a cute butt!)

Here is the handsome guy!  He is so so sweet, I love him!


I should be heading to Lafayette tomorrow for a class with Sue Nickels.  But I got a call from the nursing home saying I could meet with the doctor before his rounds tomorrow.  I am sure it is about the darned feeding tube.  They keep asking me and I keep saying no.  So I will do so again.  Kenny should be here saying no too, but you know how that is.

Anyway, I shall be there.

And Tuesday I have a sew day with the Traveling Quilter Woman.  She is returned from her journey to the East to vast and exotic quilt stores.  I can't wait to see her treasures!

glen

Isn't it funny how things work out?



At Trey Yeun
about 6 years ago



When we were growing up, it was obvious that my mother favored my brother, who is 5 years younger than I.  it stemmed, I think, from the fact that I was not a girly-girl who wanted to be in laces and frills and dresses and do girl things.  My mother named me after the Good Witch in the Wizard of Oz because she envisioned a pink, blonde head with heaps and heaps of curls, and lots of sweet smiles. I turned out very Italian, dark straight thin hair and totally a tom boy.  She would tell me how disappointed she was that I was not like Glenda on the movie screen or the kids in the Leave It To Beaver sit-com.

When I was 16 I was not allowed to take driving lessons at school like my friends.  It was my cousin Terry who taught me to drive in his beautiful little 240Z.  We had one TV because they didn't want TVs in the bedrooms.  The same with the phone,  I was not allowed to do more than call my girlfriends to confirm a time to meet or something about school.   When Kenny turned 16 they bought him a car, he had a TV and a phone in his room.

When I was 17 and a Junior in high school and all my friends were making plans to attend some sort of college or training program, I was told that girls didn't go to school and that they were saving their money because Kenny needed to go to college.  Funny, now I have two post graduate degrees and was Valedictorian at Southeastern Louisiana University after finishing a 4 year undergraduate degree in 2 1/2 years even. 

When my father died, my mother gave Kenny his car.  I got his cuff links. 



about 10 years ago



Now that my mother is in the nursing home and hospice, I am the one making the decisions, paying the bills, and watching her slowly die.  My brother has told me not to expect money to care for mom from him.  Go figure.  All that college education they gave him didn't teach him about humanity.

I am not even sure that he or his family has been up here to see her since she moved to the nursing home last year.  But who knows.

I made my peace with myself a few years ago, it still upsets me though.  To think I now have charge of the one who wanted the other.  But I stepped up to take the job. 



moving into Assisted Living 3 years ago



So yesterday I made the decision to remove the medication that was supposed to increase her appetite and stop the weight loss.  We knew from the beginning two weeks that it really wasn't working anyway.

Isn't it funny like that, by all rights and priveleges, Kenny should have made that decision.

glen:  or at least pay attention

Beginnings of a Good-bye

Today I went to Laplace to set up the funeral planning for my mom.  My mom is fairly healthy as people in her situation can be.  She is 80 years old and in end stages Alzheimers which allows her to be in Hospice.  After the fall last year she is in the nursing home near the house where I can go check on her during the week.  I don't visit more than that because it upsets her to not know me when she feels she should know me and it upsets me that all this has to happen. 

I take her her cokes she loves and some peanut butter cookies, assorted chocolates and Mounds and Almond Joy bars which were her favorites.  But other than that she is in her own world just surviving.  She barely eats anything to speak of. 

And she is running out of money.  So I figured that the plot next to my dad was needed and the funeral needed to be paid for.  My brother has no intention of ponying up any money for his mother anyway, so I saved myself a lot of aggravation and hard feelings toward him by using the last bits of her money for this.

It would have been what she wanted me to do anyway.

So she is now the proud owner of a powder blue casket and a graveside service for immediate family at the cemetery. 

And at least this part is over for me now.

glen:  I couldn't resist this one --- a Mummy of course!

Never take an Alzheimer Person to a Raffle

Today was an opportunity for me to spend some time with my mom and for her to spend some time away from Lake Sherwood.  And Frank even wanted to go!  Surprise, surprise!  We picked her up and headed out to eat.  That is always an experience because she doesn't like anything cooked too little or too much; anything too spicy hot or actually having any seasoning at all; anything that has a skin on it, be it animal or vegetable; anything that has any fat on it or tastes like it had fat on it once upon a time; a lot of anything or too little of anything; or anything that is randomly chosen from some memory 60 years ago that happens to still be sitting on a shelf in her mind, shaken loose by the car ride.  So we went to D'Angelo's and I ordered a White Pizza with Roasted Garlic and Spinach and Roma Tomatoes.  Mostly because it was what I wanted and not because it was anything she would ever eat.  Another surprise when she actually liked it!

Then we drove to the CAAWS building where I searched for the Spay/Neuter Certificates I am supposed to be picking up but never found.  Mom enjoyed looking at the dogs waiting for forever homes and petting 12 of the biggest cats I have ever seen in my life in the Cat Room.  We had the run of the Cat Room because the rest of the volunteers are at the Cat Adoption Day at PetsMart trying to find homes for the 16 or so adorable kittens we have in stock.  Yet another surprise came when we actually left there without a new cat. (that is Josie over there in case you are wondering.  Up for adoption!)

Then on to the Fundraiser for a fellow quilter, who happens to be a man, who is undergoing a bad spell with cancer.  Women in the guilds get cancer all the time but no one throws them a fund raiser.  But that is another pet peeve I have.  Anyway. 

We get to the raffle and Frank immediately falls in love with a coral brocade blue jean style jacket bedecked with about 4 gorgeous turquoise necklaces.  It is on the Silent Auction Table.  I am surprised, very surprised.  He wants to bid on it.  So I register for a number and receive #168 which I am to use rather than my name. So we become Mr. and Mrs. 168 for the afternoon.  I show him how to make a bid by writing #168 and the amount just higher than the last person.  He picks it up quickly.  He bids $35.  And proceeds to stand there for the next 2 hours making sure no one bids higher than he does.  I leave him to his devices and mom and I head to the Raffle Room.

The Raffle Room holds treasures you can win by placing a ticket stub with your number on it, 168, into a jar next to the object.  At an appointed time, someone calls END! and they begin picking one ticket out of every jar and that ticket wins the object.  My mother never grasped the concept. 

She was really into several items.  So I happily bought her $10 worth of tickets (10 to be exact), wrote 168 on them all and explained what she needed to do.  Several times.  I walked her though a couple of items and then left her to check on Frank.  He was holding steady at $35. 

Back to mom.  I find her still perusing the tables.  Finally, she comes up to me, super surprise, and proudly presents me with about 35 tickets.  I realize she has TAKEN tickets rather than PLACED tickets.  I have no idea where the tickets came from, so I place the tickets back into some random jars, and beat the devil out of there. 

When the numbers were finally called, I'll bet there were some really surprised people who won things they never bid on!  I hope I made them happy!  My mom was very very happy when we left with her winning item!

Oh, and Frank won his item as well for the $35 he started out with.  And he was so excited, he called Carrie and got her all excited with the surprise.  She can't wait to come to dinner tomorrow to see what he got for her! 

I'd say it was a good day.  Frank was happy.  Mom was happy.  Carrie was happy.  And that makes me happy.

glen

The Laundry Fairies are real, don't cha know

I had a lot of errands to do yesterday, as you read in the last post so I won't rehash.  If you didn't read then just know it was a lot and had some added on to it as the day waxed. (college word, our family likes to point them out for each other.)

So I asked my Alzheimer Mom if she wanted to go with me.  Of course, YES!  So I pick her up.  I was going to pick up her laundry, and bring it back clean tomorrow.  But when I got there the basket was empty.  I asked, Where are your dirty clothes?  She said clearly, I didn't have any dirty clothes.

I tend to get frustrated, but I wasn't there just yet, I just couldn't believe that there were no dirty clothes after 4 days.  (I was incredulous, how's that for a college word?)  So I plunged back in with, What do you do with your clothes you take off every night?  She responds with, I put them in the dirty clothes hamper right there, and points to the empty hamper.

I tried a different approach in a different voice, When you get undressed, where does your dirty underwear go?  In the dirty clothes hamper, she replies, getting a bit outdone with me,  They come in and clean my laundry.  And they bring it back folded.  (which I know is not me because I don't fold her stuff.)

So I walk over and pick up the empty hamper and upend it (crossword puzzle word here), and head over to her dresser because I am pretty sure at this point she is taking them off and putting them back in the drawer, maybe?  I begin to go through her unmentionables, and smell them.  Well, how else do you see if they are clean?  They LOOKED clean, but did they SMELL clean?  That was the question.

But the system failed me because I have a very stopped up head due to the fact that I live in an alien world with pollen that is trying to kill me.  So I just began to dump her unmentionables and unsmellables into the dirty clothes basket.  Well, I needed SOMETHING to take home and wash, didn't I????

When we returned from our errands, I walked her to the lobby to wait for the oldie but goodie film that was being shown in the chapel.  I found the head housekeeper lady, who knows everything about everybody there.  And I asked if her staff was doing my mom's laundry.  I wasn't paying for this particular service but thought maybe they might have been doing it anyway...........as a goodwill gesture........

No, she says, they are not.  So the Director Delores comes over and asks my mom, what happens to your dirty laundry?  My mom says.......they come in very very early every morning and take my laundry and clean it.  Oh? says Delores, It sounds like you have the Laundry Fairies!

To which, my mom turns to me, puts her hands on her hips (looking just like a petulant 3 year old) and says to me with a really smug looking grin on her face:  See!  I told you they were doing my laundry!

The housekeeper had to pick Director Delores up off the floor and together they limped away trying to keep the laughter that wracked their bodies from being noticed by my petulant, smug mother. 

They left me standing there fighting convulsing fits of laughter!

I sure wish the Organization Fairies would come and clean up my sewing room........I promise I wouldn't laugh at them.

glen