On The Road Again.....
In my fav motel room in Marion Ohio. Home of Warren G Harding. You can tour his home place...Whoo Hoo...This is a little more than half way home for me, was going to try and get a little further south but heavy rain, fog, construction, 8 hours driving, I’m done in.
No immediate crisis but haven’t seen folks since I got them in AL mid December. Bazillion things to do down there....Check on folks, meet with realtor, go file stuff at courthouse, get new title for car....can’t find it anywhere.....Try and finish clearing out old paperwork, pictures, any valuables from house....And on and on.....
Neighbor lady visited mom and dad yesterday. Her report....Mom is still mad at me....Dad has lost his wallet and watch....He can’t even see his watch....I had cleaned out his wallet except for worthless cards and grandkid pics......Mom says she owes some gal money for buying her some clothes as I dumped her in there with nothing..omg.....And mom told her there was hundreds of dollars in their car....
And so it goes. God only knows what I’ll find when I get there. Staff tells me they’re doing pretty good. Dad hasn’t tried to break out and find his car for several days now, so that’s good.
Bad news....My realtor tells me the market is bad there now. Kinda over saturated suburbia. Probably gonna take a huge hit financially. Oh well......Had they moved and sold 5 years ago we’d have caught the tale end of the boom in that area. But , OH NO...WE’RE JUST FINE HERE....YOUR DAD CAN BRING MY PILLS TO MY ROOM....
So here we are. Could be much worse. They saved a good bit of money but now we’re playing the WILL I OUTLIVE MY MONEY GAME......
Total white knuckle crap....
Got to the old home place about noon, turned water on, hot water heater, and turned up heat. All systems (such as they are) go....then went to AL to see folks.
They were in their room, mom very lethargic and not making much sense. Dad making no sense at all but not agitated. Mom gave me the total cold shoulder at first but at least she wasn’t weepy and talking about me dumping her in prison/when can I go home and so forth. She slowly started coming round but it’s clear her dementia is increasing rapidly.
A neighbor lady had visited them Friday. She had called and told me mom said she had no clothes, Dad had lost his watch, wallet, and glasses. So the first hour or so I’m trying to determine what’s fact and what is delusional. At the house I found 4 pairs of dads old glasses and a working watch and had brought thevwatch and a pair of glasses with me. Sure enough, no glasses, watch or wallet. He put the glasses and the watch on and was quite happy.
A search of drawers and closet....Hardly any of mom’s clothes left!? Found caregiver...Moms stuff is in the laundry and will be back tonight. Ok.....
Remaining mystery: who brought the new Capri pants (Really?) two pair, and 6 pack of new undies? No staff had any idea, nor did mom and Dad. Hmmmmmmm....
Mom continued to perk up, telling me stories about life in the joint, p theraphy, it’s really hard, their dinner table mate E, she’s very hard of hearing, had four sons etc. ok...Im liking this version of mom.
At dinner mom and E carried on like they were at Girl Scout camp. Moms a little better off mentally than E and I could tell she liked helping E out by loudly explaining to her what was going on, the menu and so on. E seemed delighted. She is a sweetie. 90 years old and deaf as a stone, but she and mom seem to be big buddies.
Then mom tells me how she liked these college boys who come by and play guitars and sing. She really enjoyed it.
My god....I so wish I could have gotten her in here 5 years ago.
Dad is very confused. Couldn’t figure out where I was staying. BUT I THOUGHT YOU LIVED IN MICHIGAN? Yes Dad, but I’m staying at your house. WHAT HOUSE? The one 5 miles from here. OH I TORE THAT OLD HOUSE DOWN YEARS AGO......So I left it there.
OMG it is so friggin hot in that place. I can do an hour and I have to go outside for some air. It’s beyond me how people do 12 hour shifts in these places.....
So I’m pleased that the folks seem to be getting with the program. Of course that could change tomorrow but I think we’ll get there. Now it’s going to be a crazy week of house-bank-realtor-car-DMV-
and dealing with a dying sump pump. If that baby goes....I don’t even want to think about it.
Thank all you guys for the nice words.
It's all good. You have a good local plumber, yes?
Breathe. You've sure as heck got this!
And Becky, I don’t want to cast my fellow hillbillies in a bad light but ain’t much martini drinking going on down here......The state revenue comes from the George Dickel/ Jack Daniels guys....And other crap I don’t even want to get into.
Sometimes capri pants are best with short folks. Im 5'3" if I stand up really straight. I'll need capris and not petites in a couple of years!
Thank you for the update.
I have to agree with Barb, Capri pants work great for the short ladies.:-)
It sounds like things are going as well as can be expected. You've done a great job (and continue to do) for your folks. Good luck with selling their house. I don't envy you that process.
But the good news....Folks seem to be in the AL groove pretty much. Had dinner again with the other ladies, mom eating like a horse, complaining about all the food.....It is pretty gruesome. She and dad joke and carry on with the other ladies. Mom is just downright prissy! She loves making E laugh, but I don’t think the bar is very high for E to laugh.
On the other hand, mom is really going downhill cognitively, and can’t transfer to wheelchair without major assist, much less walk. But she seems happy enough. Maybe happy is too strong a word, but there’s no talk from either of them about WHEN ARE WE GOING HOME.....
Dad is very confused but not agitated and didn’t do any great escapes today.
Tomorrow: Actually cleaning mom’s room. The window sills...OMG
And before anyone suggests cleaning service, trust me, this is not deep cleaning. My goal is to declutter and febreeze enough so the real estate lady won’t faint dead away.
The every day visits were probably a mistake. They had been adjusting pretty well but my presence re kindled all the confusion and WANNA GO HOME stuff. So had to run through the whole chain of events, Fib, dodge and weave all week. Kinda put us back to check in time two months ago. But the dementia for both of them is such that I think they will get back in the groove pretty quickly. Mom has really gone down hill. She will be pretty with it, then look at me and go WHERES WINDY? Oh boy.....
Long story but am starting guardianship process. No originals of POA can be found. No prob with banks or dmv but prob with selling land. I’ve got a great realtor who hooked me up with a good attorney. And already have an interested buyer for the property
Trapped here thru weekend due to weather from here to thar. So will head north Monday. Not like I’ve got nothing to do. Forty trash bags and counting......
Wacky tabay?
wacky tabay??? - heard of wacky backy!
What did you do with all of Dad's workshop stuff? I called in a handy man who did some minor fix up in exchange for anything he wanted in my Dad's workshop. He would say when he saw something quite old "Good Lord, this should be in a museum".
I had a Goodwill close by so easy to carry stuff in good shape went there. I wanted them to pick up the furniture but one had to book them 2 months out. Well that wouldn't work, so I scheduled Salvation Army. Well, there was a glitch there, if the stairway was U shape, they couldn't move the furniture. They took just what was on the first floor. Then I had to call one of those hauling companies which took the rest. This all took a month of Sundays. A plumber who was at the house fell in love with an antique curve glass china cabinet so I just gave it too him, as I could tell from what he said he knew his antiques.
Then I had to play detective to find what was causing the water leak in the basement as water was pooling in one area with no trail. Sure, I have nothing else to do :P
My parents had been in their home over 50 years - and in the last 10 to 20 did very little in maintenance, let alone keeping it current!
But the house had “good bones” as the realtor said and it was cornered in a trifecta of very good neighborhoods. Well, two were very good and the third was experiencing a Renaissance,
popular with trendy hippies who had money.
But all the stuff! We - my brothers and their families, along with my hubby cleaned it out in one weekend. The trick? Rent a construction site size dumpster and don’t get emotional over it all.
I felt awful about tossing so much but we were under a time crunch - and my brothers made it clear they weren’t making Goodwill runs. I felt both better and worse when three different guys showed up with trucks and asked if they could go through the dumpster. It was kinda creepy but at least the stuff - everything a “valuable antique” according to my mother, (NOT) didn’t end up in a landfill. I swear I could have saved myself six years of caregiving had I told my folks the demise of their stuff. Both would have keeled over on the spot.
But desperate measures in desperate times, I guess.
The highlight of the house clean out was when I peeked under a corner of the 25 year old wall-to-wall carpet. Gleaming, pristine hard wood floors - in every room and hall on the main floor of the house. Gorgeous! We pulled up all that carpet and suddenly I had hope for selling the house. I will never understand why wall-to-wall carpet became the raging trend that it was!
Anyhoo - summarizing after my babbling trip down memory lane - Do get a dumpster. Don’t get mared down in sentiment. And, I’m wishing you a bunch of finding hard wood floors! Figuratively.
This is a small 2 bedroom house but it’s amaxing how much stuff has been compressed into it since 1957. One large dresser drawer would fill up 3 trash bags. Small closet.....6 to 8 bags.
My goal on this trip was simply to get out personal stuff, pictures (Huge boxes full. And this really derails you. Hours of going through pics back to 1920s ) declutter, and very basic cleaning which consisted of basically lots of febreeze and carpet fresh. So now the house is not disgusting and the garage has aprox 50 full garbage bags. Real estate lady called it “Very cute little house”. She was a great find. Been moving units around here for 40 years and knows every developer, contractor, county commissioner ....Truly remarkable lady......
I’m leaving all the furniture here as it’s all junk. The sofa appears in pictures from the early 70s. The house does have good bones, pristine oak floors under nasty carpet (Why did our folks all do this!?) and everything is in working order. Not pretty but functioning. For those not terribly discriminating, people could live here
It remains to be seen if a developer will shove it down for a subdivision or someone might want to remodel with additions. So I’m keeping the place on basic life support.
It will be sold as is, removal of furniture , possibly a negotiated issue in price. If it becomes a shove down the end loader can eat couches along with the walls. At this point I plan to do as little as possible with the place.
I’ve already gotten the good stuff, tools etc, out of the garage. I’ve been sneaking stuff out, especially power tools for about 3 years now. And just this am, bartered the trade of 2 dead tractors and 2 dead chain saws with some good ol boys who will fix the sump pump in the basement and build a small block wall around it. This was a job I was dreading and I’m am beyond happy with this deal!
Just waiting for all the weather to the north to clear and hope to get outta here Monday. Meanwhile...Got a dead car in the garage to screw with and several other fish to fry.
“Just in case”, be sure to give yourself some wiggle room on the house price. Even selling it “as is”.
Against my instructions my parents signed the contract with the real estate agent without me being there. The agent talked them into listing it at the bottom price they would accept - and quite a bit lower than I believe they could have gotten.
Sooo- even though it was an “as is” when the inspection found a crack in the sewer line my folks had to knock an additional $8,000 off the price to keep the sale from falling through - and then having to fix the sewer line - which would have fallen to me to arrange - and then starting over and relisting.
These older houses, lived in by even older folks can be land mines.
But this area is a little more affluent than most. Ill get some action but not at the price I could have a few years ago. My folks should have been in AL five years ago but hung on till the absolute end. Same old story we all know well.....
The reason for this, my parents left me with a bin full of photos. Many of the photos might as well be people in the witness protection agency. Since I have been climbing the family tree, which keeps getting taller, I would love to match these photos to the names. Oh how I wished I did that back when my folks were still around :(