Mom's Care, w/Rudeness Advisory

Mom’s Care

My mother is the bestest, most dedicated and loving Mom and Grandmother. She is up there with the GOATs, (Greatest of All Time). Her reign always extended beyond our immediate family, including whole neighborhoods. To quote cousin Marty, her home was “an Oasis.” Everyone always welcome for a quick bite, coffee, news update and a family calendar not unlike Mrs. Weasley’s clock from the Harry Potter series, telling us where everyone was from preschool to United Arab Emirates. But this would be a whole other blog.

How is it a Mother so grand ended up with Ken and me as her issue? We followed in the exuberant wake of her sister and two brothers. Our Dad was a perfect match for this humor.

Because Mom is now immobile, Ken, myself, my two kids, June and Steven and their friends have all stepped up to provide round the clock care for her. As far as the kids—all college age— their youth, energy, and love of Pokémon is unrivaled in the world of care-givers. We have hired one of them, and Lea is the bestest, most dedicated and loving aide from Monday through Friday. She’s such a dear friend she’s often there on weekends hanging out. But…

The young people are one by one taking more classes or getting real jobs and we need coverage on nights and especially weekends. So it’s back to Ken and me, my husband, Russ, June and Steven.

Ken is complaining about the bills. Why the heck is PG&E so high? How much energy does Mom use? We laugh about Mom cruising the internet looking for naked orderlies to shower with. Uh, that’s Porn, Graphix and Erotica, not Pacific, Gas and Electric. Mom smiles wistfully remembering fondly the handsome young man that helped care for her during one of her hospital stays. Maybe we should look there for a weekend aide. Is there a Nurses-R-Us site? June suggests the ones in pasties and thongs. And old fashioned paper hats. I say forget the nurse, hire a pole dancer. Ken immediately volunteers for weekends. Problem solved. Unless Mom wants a Chippendale.

Now we are seeing a grander scheme for senior care. Maybe senior centers should be on the same site with adult book shops and erotica. Some oldsters would be vastly entertained, and I bet they’d get more family visiting. Better employees and more volunteers, too. There’s an Eagle Scout badge just waiting. Grey Bear enrollment doubles. Ken would have a place to try out his music. With a gift shop on the premises, every day is Mother’s Day or Father’s Day. I brought you a latex covered, pop-up birthday card, Mom. You always loved me best.

Whine and Lamesauce

You have heard the old cliché, aging is not for sissies. Aging is a foul joke on the body, and menopause is an acid edged comic without a heart. Maybe not all women suffer such a soul ripping change of life, I pray they don’t. Mother Nature is exceedingly cruel to this daughter. Raspberries.

Imagine being a gym rat for over twenty years, fit, buff, able to schlep your own bag up the stairs of any airport, through endless terminals, with small children, Bunny Dolly and Draggody. Work all day, dance all night.

Then you wake one day and your tummy is hanging out as if gravity has increased tenfold. The only think sinking faster is your skin, resembling the Devil’s slide on precipitous Highway 1, where erosion could only be remedied with a tunnel.

You don’t apply make up, you need a construction crew. Gawking at your trustworthy, capable hands you see something Lord Carnarvon might have excavated in the Valley of the Kings. And that is with the contact lens now required for your tired, blurred sight. You start wearing support hose and jeans to dance or your flapping butt cheeks make so much noise you can’t hear the music. Who would have thought hormones had so much to do with elasticity. It happened so fast, a week, when menopause finished cleaning house. Pooh-pooh head.

Does anyone else have an expiration date on them? I had no idea. Things were in working order when I departed. The contents certainly shifted during flight, with everything falling out upon opening. Time change indeed.

And why or why does my mind still think we are thirty or forty something? Personally I enjoyed my body more in my thirties and forties, so I’m not lamenting the twenties. My adolescence was early and long, extending into my twenties. Libido and fertility were well worth the price of admission, I’m just sorry the ride is over so soon. I bought an all-day pass, the sun is still shining, why do the amusements have to close early? Frig.

Would you wish for dementia? Would you want your brain to deteriorate like your exterior does in mid life? Very tragic when that happens.

Maybe it’s because I live in California where everyone is half naked most of the year (I live in the surf getto). Now I’m out of that camp. Makes me kind of wish we were fur clad. I could handle the silver, I love gray horses. Maybe the Furs are on to something? But you have to take the costume off eventually, and you’re stuck with the Shar Pei. How rude is that? Whine.

Enough. It is what it is. You readers have all been spared the emotional, brain lapse I endured. There is absolutely, nothing remotely funny about those dark ages of my spirit. The good news is it passed and ‘someone is home again’, the lights are on and the kaleidoscope of creativity has returned. The bad news as you already know is the house appears haunted and needs repair. You may wish this blog ended with a happily ever after, humorous insight that I am reconciled. I’m not, that is the point. Only a vacuum cleaner should suck this much. Double frig.

But alas, Cathy my trusted editor was right, reconciliation is waxing. Circumstances, in other words the inspiration of family and friends influences me to get over my shallow, lamesauce self. A visit to Smile Trail, or St. Jude’s…what a whiner. Wal-mart for God’s sake. Man, I’m doing cartwheels. And no, those aren’t spinnakers you see flapping. Raspberries with my whine and lamesauce.