Mom was very upset when I called this morning to remind her to take her alendronate. Apparently last night she asked Dad to take out the bin for pick-up this morning. Then this morning she heard the truck coming to pick up the bin and looked out to see that there was no bin out by their curb! She said it was too late for her to run out and put it out, which is what made her mad at Dad. She said she had neatly tied up the garbage bag to go out and Dad did not take it out, so it was now too late to put it out. I tried to calm her down by saying it was not gray bin pick up day, but that only made her more upset. When I asked if it was blue or green day she said she did not know because she was too disgusted to go out and look.
The way garbage and recycle pick-up works in Honolulu is that you have 3 color coded bins. The gray garbage bin is picked up every Monday. The blue recycle and green green waste bins are picked up on alternating Thursdays. Since this is Thursday it would be either the blue or the green bin being picked up. If it is green it is most likely empty, which would be why Dad did not put it out. If it is blue it is usually mainly empty, which would also be why Dad did not put it out. (It wastes the time of the driver and slows down pick up along the route if bins are put out when they are mainly empty. Mom saves so much recyclable stuff for other potential uses usually their bin is mainly empty. Until I come along and throw things out!)
Unfortunately, Mom is not able to follow the logic path to determine what color bin is being picked up today (I wrote it on the calendar at the beginning of the year), reason that if it is empty or mainly empty it should not go out, and let it go that Dad did not put a bin out last night.
I have always wondered about those tragic, very short news pieces where one spouse stabs or shoots the other spouse after 50+ years of marriage. They never say whether one or both suffered from dementia (or were dementia-free), but it would seem like a reasonable explanation for the behavior. I recall sometimes reading that the surviving spouse says something like, "I got tired of him/her nagging all the time." Which could mean the other spouse had dementia and kept repeating the request because they could not remember saying it. Or the surviving spouse had dementia and kept forgetting to do something that the other spouse was trying to have them do to allow them some responsibility. And if both of them had dementia it could go on indefinitely!
Mom now says she wants to move to Kohala so she can have a vacation. She says she is tired of all the work that she has to do cleaning and cooking and laundry, etc. But when I offer to have Safe Harbor come in and have Erica do it, she refuses saying she doesn't want anyone coming to the house. She even says she does not need anyone to drive her places. Mom says in Kohala the people from the grocery store and butcher used to deliver supplies to Grandma and there was a service where someone would come and take her to the post office to pick up the mail and take her to doctor's appointments. (There is no mail delivery in this very rural part of the island.) Mom says they no longer do this, but I don't think she really knows for sure. She doesn't realize that even if they had these services available she really can't be left alone by herself. Or more correctly, she hasn't accepted that she needs help from other people when I am not there. When I am there she is fine with me doing the cooking, cleaning, grocery shopping, everything. Even though she insists that she can do it all herself. And trying to reason with her doesn't help.
When I called a little later to remind her to take her pills for the morning, she thought that she had taken them but it was the alendronate that she had taken. She had forgotten about the bins and was on another task that was frustrating her. She said she was working on the phone book and started to tell me who was in it and why I needed to remember these people. When I asked her to write the information down next to each person's name, she then said it was actually Dad's phone book and she wanted him to write it down. Which is probably going to start an argument because he will have no reason to write it down but its important to her since she is forgetting who these people are and wants him to add the information so she knows who they are. This is the type of things that he has to put up with every day, which is why I don't want Aunty Daisy moving in with them; it would mean demands from another person that he does not see a reason to fulfill.
I'm still swollen but those 600 mg ibuprofen are keeping the pain manageable. I will be taking one every 6 hours until this afternoon, when I will switch to one every 8 hours. That's what I did the last time and I was able to handle the pain. I think I also took them for only 4 days and not the whole 7 days. We shall see how it goes this time. I've been spending a lot of time sleeping, getting up only to take my pills and call Mom to remind her to take her pills. Whenever I have to go downstairs to go to the bathroom, I stop and eat a little almond-based yogurt-style stuff that I don't have to chew; this system works well for me. (The pills and water are by my bed so I only need to wake up long enough to take them, then I go back to sleep.) Posting early so I can go back to sleep; don't think anything noteworthy will happen but if it does I will post it tomorrow.
Happy Birthday to Kektadose, Cynthia, and Andrea!
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