52 bye bye truck

Well, the truck's gone. Sold it for the KBB value. My parents got into a fight over the money. What else is new? My dad wants to horde it in his personal checking account. My mom wanted to put it in savings to live off of. Mom won, of course, she does have power of attorney and all that. So they're down to one car. My mom was hoping to save on car insurance, but because my dad still has a driver's license, she has to keep paying for him to be insured, and because she got a 40% discount for having 2 vehicles insured, she really didn't save much.
It's obvious that my dad is never going to drive again. Why does he have to have a driver's license? There must be some other kind of state ID he can get. Then again, once you have a license, you've got one forever. Pretty stupid if you ask me. My husband's gramma Ag was completely crippled, couldn't walk a step, gnarled from a hideous case of rheumatoid arthritis, and every year the state of Florida renewed her driver's license by mail. And you'd think with their incredible population of elderly that they'd have a better system.
The people at the Alzhiemer's study got my mom to start coming to support meetings. They are only once a month, on Thursdays at 2 p.m. somewhere in New Haven. She wants me to come but I can't take off work for that. I'm glad she's found something. I've been trying and trying to get her to go; there's meetings right here in Wallingford for cripes' sake. Maybe now that she's gone to a couple of these New Haven ones she'll be more willing to go to the Wlfd ones. There's a lady there who my mom said has the exact same issues with her husband as my mom has with my dad so it's kind of a bonding thing for her. I'm glad.
I had lunch with them on Monday at Wendy's. My dad likes to get a chicken sandwich with bacon on it. Who knows why? But they are willing to put bacon on anything for $.50. But he's got to take the reciept and look at it and freak out over the cost of everything, saying it's too much. But if I don't get the bacon for him, he freaks out that there's no bacon.
Last Friday we went to Applebee's for lunch. I got there early and ordered mozzarella sticks, and the drinks for my parents and me. The sticks came just after my parents sat down, and my father got totally irate. Said something like "oh, that's it for me." and how he always gets screwed. Because he thought we were at 99 Restaurant and getting a free bowl of popcorn. He doesn't like cheesesticks but my mom and I do. He says "You can have them" and pushes them away, even though we no longer offer them to him. (he used to eat them and like them). Then he got even more angry that he didn't order clam chowder (didn't even occur to me) so I tried to get it added on, but the food was already ready so it was too late. It took forever for us to convince him that he'd eaten the chicken and broccoli pasta before (every time we come there, actually). He kept saying no. Then he had to "de-fat" the chicken, which consists of cutting off all the char marks. He must have thrown away 3/4 of the chicken. Then he cut and cut and cut the pasta until it was basically a mush, not even something you can eat with a fork.
My husband doesn't understand my father's obsession with de-fatting his food and cutting it into miniscule pieces. Especially since my father will cut and cut his meat, de-fatting it until there's nothing left, and then smother it in GRAVY. When he eats salad, he DRINKS the dressing left over. What's in gravy? Drippings. What are drippings? Melted fat. What's dressing? Oil. What's oil? Liquid fat. I guess only fat in solid form bothers him. He eats butter, he loves the popcorn I make which is made with butter-flavored oil and real butter. It's got a lot more fat in it than the char-marks on broiled chicken.
But it's like my grandma who thinks Frosted Flakes have no sugar in them unless added from the sugar bowl. How do you convince these people otherwise? Old and crazy and set in their ways.
My grandma's going to the doctor this week about her blood pressure medicine she claims is making her so sick. I can't spell it, and therefore can't look it up. Atteninol? My mom tends to pronounce unfamilar words very strangely so that might not be it. Supposedly it's been the news for causing strokes. Maybe I can find it that way. Here it is, from WebMD: Tenormin (atenolol) . But there's so many sites with conflicting information so who knows?
My dad said on Sunday when we saw him, "no more truck. My truck's gone." like someone took it. He didn't seem as sad as I thought he would be, just resigned. I talked to my mom today and she said he got his plates back ("ZZ") so he's happy about that. The strangest things make him happy. And I know those plates made people think he was a zz top fan, instead of being part of his last name. Whatever. It's a moot point now, right?
And no more pick-up truck in the family. Oh well.

51 selling the truck

I talked to my mom last night and she said my dad decided, on his own, to sell his truck.
He stopped driving on his own over the summer and my mom's been trying to keep both cars going, having to switch driving them, and do all the service and everything on both. Plus my grandma's hardly driving anymore, so my mom's been dealing with her car too. It's a lot of work. Too much work. The son of the guy who my dad "works" for is going to buy it. I did the Kelly Blue Book value on it for private sale, and I guess that's what he's buying it for.
It makes me sad, to think of my dad with no vehicle, my dad who sold cars for most of my life and always had a new "demo" to bring home and show us. (Car salesmen don't get demos anymore. What a perk that was, a free car.)
My grandma was quiet and sick on New Year's Day. I've learned not to ask how she is, not to say anything. I was trying to help my mom set the table and Gramma was hovering between the kitchen and dining room, basically just in the way (horrible to say) . I asked her to just move for a minute so I could get by and get into my chair and instead she sat down and totally blocked me so I had to go through the living room and in the other door and have my husband move so I could get to my seat in the corner. She ate about 2 bites. (Not that I ate much more; I had a bout of food poisoning over the weekend which I wasn't recovered from yet.) And kept sighing loudly. She didn't talk, just sat there with her mouth all turned down--what is known as "the puss on" in our family, as in "she's sitting there with a puss on" (what a stupid saying). We were about to have dessert and she wanted to be taken home. My mom was trying to deal with the dishes and clearing the main course and setting out the coffee and she asked my husband to take her home, and Gramma refused, saying it had to be my mother. She wouldn't walk down the stairs in front of the house (not that I blame her, I hate those stairs too) so Will had to get up anyway to move our car so she could go out the side door.
My dad didn't talk much during the meal, not even about the birds outside or the raspberry bushes, which are his usual holiday topics.
After the dessert we all sat down to do a puzzle, which is what we do now instead of cards. It was my parents, my mom's best friend, and me and my husband. The puzzle was of castle in Scotland--Stirling. My father did his usual method of puzzle solving, which is picking up 2 random pieces and trying to stick them together, and then saying "do these fit" and passing them around. Meanwhile I was going to town on the border and my husband had pulled out all the building pieces and was putting that together. Of course my father got frustrated and kept leaving the table. Or sitting there farting.
He's also been so damn flatulent lately. It's really gross. My mom says he has no idea he's farting. He'll stand right behind someone and let a huge ripping one loose. How could someone NOT KNOW? Argh. Some of them are room-clearers. If you say something to him, he says "What?" like he honestly has no idea.
So my grandma has to go back to the doctor for new medicine. She says this medicine makes her dizzy. And she's not taking the full dosage of her depression medicine either. I think by next Christmas she'll be living at my mom's house. She's stopped doing her sewing and stuff because it's "too much" because she "doesn't feel good" and her "mornings are bad" and all sorts of other reasons. Which means my mom will sell her car too. What my grandma will do if she can't go to church EVERY DAY and grocery shopping EVERY DAY and to the senior center (where she lives now) EVERY DAY I don't know. My mom seems to think it will be easier to have my grandma there under her thumb but I think it will turn my mom into a glorified chauffer. (I can't spell that damn word.) I am working every day, not full time, but enough that I can't help her much. I wish I made more money, for myself as well as my parents.
I just started selling The Body Shop at Home--I go around and do parties. Please help me and buy something from my special web site.

50 some observations

I haven't written for a long time. I've been really busy. I became a body shop at home consultant in October to make some extra money, and I like it A LOT. Plus I did NaNoWriMo (finished in 15 days this year, kinda slow) this month.
We've been doing puzzles on Friday night instead of playing cards. I like the puzzles better. My dad gets really frustrated, throws pieces, gets upset when he can't match them and I'm in the corner putting pieces together like clockwork. (Is that an apt metaphor? You know what I mean.)
I've been noticing a pattern in the odd behaviors of my dad.

• Hoarding napkins when we go to restuarants (could I make that up? no, I couldn't).
• Obsession with how much things cost.
• Always having to be able to see his things (coat, hat, etc) when he's not home.
• Taking lots of free pens and business cards when offered. (I mean, lots. He'll take a dozen if you let him. The people at the Alzheimer's study allow him to take handfuls, but most places don't.)
• Freaking out about seatbelts in the back seat of the car.
• ALways having to know where the cat is. (Is the cat inside? Did you let the cat in? Where's the cat? Where's my baby?)
• Cutting his food until it's puree, throwing away all the "fat" (which includes actual fat, char marks on grilled chicken, the coating & skin on fried chicken, and basically anything that doesn't match in his eyes).

Some of these things are about saftey-where's the cat, where's my coat, the seatbelts, but the rest are about control.
He's trying to control his environment because he can no longer control his own mind.
And what does control cover? Fear.
Basically, he does all these odd things because he's afraid. And that's SO SAD. I don't have words for it.
His other new thing, which comes and goes (I can only hope it goes away permanently, but I doubt it)--is that we're trying to poison him. The medicine is making him worse, and between the pills he takes every day (Namenda and Accricept, however they're spelled) and the study at Yale, he's degenerating, and that's because we're trying to kill him. He's got it in his head that he's got only 2 years to live. (In reality, he's got about 9--at his age, 11 years from diagnosis, and it's been 18 months). Some days he refuses to take the medine. I get so frustrated trying to reason with him "why would I want to kill my own father? Don't you understand that the pills are what's keeping you functioning at all?" Yes, he's failing, but he'd be failing worse without his pills, but I can't PROVE it to him. And proof means nothing. His world is an irrational one, and that means I can't reason with him AT ALL.
And my grandma's going off the deep end. Her blood pressure is through the roof. She isn't eating. She reads the side effects of her medicine and manifests them all immediately. She claims to be dizzy all the time and paces, paces, paces. She wouldn't talk to anyone at Thanksgiving dinner and as soon as we finished eating (she ate less than a child would) she made Will take her home (it snowed and she wouldn't drive). The doctor wants to see her this week. I told my mother to ask him to give her a sugar pill presciption and tell her it's for the dizziness. She won't. I will try to call the doctor but I don't think I have any authority over my grandma's care. We all have the same doctor--me, mom, dad, gramma, and Will. Talk about a general practicioner!! My mom thinks grandma's depression medicine isn't helping her anymore--either she needs to up the dosage (she takes 1/4 of a pill at a time) or change prescriptions.

49 Paranoia...

I took my dad with me to the vet today. I really needed the help--I brought 4 of 5 my surviving birds, plus I can barely get in & out of the car (if you've been reading my other blog, you know about my fall last week and my smashed coccyx).
I asked my parents to come over my house (usually on these excursions I pick up my dad) so they could help me catch birds, if necessary (I can't bend over either), and I actually asked my mom for help cleaning. My father just stood there, his coat on, his hands folded before him (his favorite new posture) fretting about how much gas I have in my car. And why couldn't my mom drive instead of me (because she was staying at the house to clean). And we should leave soon so we could come home soon (he can't comprehend an APPOINTMENT anymore, I guess). So we ended up getting there about 1/2 an hour early. Luckily they were able to take us right away. My father always asks for the cut feathers and the vet assistant gave him a whole bag of lovely feathers, macaw and Amazon and cockatoo.
We had gone out to lunch before that. My mom put my dad's coat, her coat, and her purse on the back of her chair. (We were at a table cuz it's too hard for me to slide in and out of a booth.) He kept turning around the check the coats. He wanted the coats across from him, next to me "so I can see them"--even though I could see them, I guess that wasn't good enough.
He was so upset that my car only had 1/4 of a tank left. He's seen how much trouble and pain it is for me to climb in & out of a car (that's why he didn't want me to drive). I said, "If you will pump the gas, I'll stop." but he can't do the credit card and I have no cash. So my tank is at 1/4 (slightly less now) which is completely unacceptable. The tanks on my parents' vehicles aren't even allowed to get to HALF. (I noticed that on vacation but thought it was an abberation--I guess not.)
So now I've seen my father be paranoid about money ("did they take off the coupon?" "Put some of that money away, that's too much.") and gasoline, and my mom's purse and their coats being stolen in an almost-empty restaurant with no one even sitting near us.
I can't imagine his frustration when he can't talk, either. Because he knows. He says, "I can't talk right anymore" or "that's not right." We try to correct him gently, without making a big deal. It's not like he can learn from his mistakes, like a person learning a new language. He's forgetting his only language.
But I've noticed that when he talks to my birds, and when he talks to the cats, that he talks okay. I wonder if he doesn't try as hard to be correct with them, and not being nervous about being right makes him better?
He also thinks my husband's name is Rick. I guess that's from his friend Rick, and Rick's son Rick. Too many Ricks, not enough Wills. He hasn't called Will "Rick" to his face, but when he refers to him and Will's not there, he calls him Rick. He also mixes up Joanne, my mother in law, with Janet, my mom's best friend.

48 "fix the tv"

I don't think my dad's getting better at all. His language skills are just dropping away. And he KNOWS it. This is horrible to watch, and too horrible to look away.

Sunday night when we were leaving my grandmother's, he came outside to ask us to fix the tv for him. Neither Will nor I knows anything about fixing TVs. But it became obvious he meant the computer. My mom's been having this weird problem where she can't get onto any secure sites on IE. And Netscape can't log onto ANY sites, secure or not.

While we were at Grandma's, my mom said she and Dad were going to come to our house and work in our yard in the morning. I suggested they stay for lunch and we'd make hotdogs and hamburgers, and I invited Grandma, who said her usual "my mornings are so bad" (but she never says HOW they are bad). She refused to eat the lovely pizza I'd made, saying she it would make her sick. Instead she had a salad with a single piece of bacon. Will, mom and I all tried to tell her she needs to eat more protein, that's why she's weak and dizzy. But she said she "can't" that she's got no appetite. But of course she ate an entire piece of cake for dessert.

The next morning, I go off to Walmart to get some Rustoleum for the birdcages and my car, and I called my mom to tell her there was a truck on route 5 being loaded for Katrina victims. I bought 3 bags of stuff--baby food, baby washclothes, soup, kid's water with flourite--and dropped them off on my way home after checking out gas prices, which seem to be stablilizing at around $3.19 for "cheap" gas and $3.49 for expensive gas.

I was outside washing a birdcage when my parents drove up. I could hear them yelling at each other. Obviously not a good day. Because our neighbors have at least 7 vehicles (no lie) they had parked one of them in front of my house, and both our cars were already in the driveway plus I had set up a bird cage washing station in the driveway. But my mother wanted to park in the driveway, and she wanted to back in, and no one likes to back into our driveway (it's very narrow). So that caused all kinds of commotion with my dad trying to tell her how to back up and me just standing there with my lovely new jet-sprayer in my hand hoping I wouldn't be run over.

My father comes up to me and says that he didn't know he was coming here (we had told him last night) and that he had other things do to, but he couldn't tell me what those things were. I am thinking that he wanted to go to the dump; my mom had put some branches in the back of the truck which she dragged to our brush pile behind the garage in the woods. His constant refrain is that nobody tells him anything. I think we need to start writing things down for him, with a date and time: Sunday night at 6:00: You are going to Bert's house tomorrow to work in the yard and eat hotdogs.

Our black cat, Zen, was outside on his leash being loveable, and when it was time to eat I also brought out Lance-bird (in his cage). My father sat right on the ground with a handful of potato chips to talk to the bird and try to get him to eat a chip (he doesn't like them; he takes a courtesy nibble and drops them). We had just finished eating when the phone rang and it was grandma; she was making the laborious 3 mile trip into Wallyworld. She hasn't been for years and it turns out she really didn't remember where we lived! But she found it okay.

During our conversation, my father was just zoning out, so I asked him to go get Zen, who was way up by the garage. He said that Zen doesn't like to be picked up and scratched and bit him. Zen LOVES to be picked up. He didn't want to go get the cat, and finally came back carrying him under his front paws, back paws dangling, way out in front of his body. It would have been funny if it wasn't so sad. Zen is a much nicer cat than his stupid Jasper.

After we finished painting the bird cage, my car, and the bulkhead to the basement, we went to my parents' house to fix the comptuer. Since Will wouldn't listen to any of my suggestions, I went upstairs to read and talk to my dad about butterflies. I noticed that he was talking to himself (or to the butterfly) and he sounded fine. But when Will fixed the computer (it was some stupid Norton setting) and came upstairs, my father said the butterfly was "swimming" in the garden. he's losing more words every day.

He said that his head and should hurt from the infusion and he doesn't want to be in the study anymore. My mom says he got the placebo even though she was convinced they'd give him the real stuff. She doesn't understand "double blind". Sigh.