Who Cares What Nansi Thinks?

How's that for a grabber???

My mom has been bugging and bugging about her stimulus check. I told her that since she had not filed a tax return in umptie leven years, she wouldn't qualify for one. All the old ladies around her were waving their $300 checks and Mom was sure she was entitled to one too.

I refused to help her. For two reasons, one--I'm tired and I don't want to do the research and two (they say the last reason is the real reason) the very last thing my mother needs is a bunch of cash.

To prove that my mother isn't nearly as helpless as she'd like you to believe, she got herself around and did what needed to be done to get that stimulus check. It finally came last week.

The nursing home is terrified that I'm going to sue them so they called me at work. God knows how many people were in the room, I was on speaker phone. "Your Mom's stimulus check came, what do you want us to do with it?" Great. I had them send it to me, which they did by registered mail.

So tomorrow, I take Mom to cash her check, and Lord Help Me, I take her shopping. I hate to go shopping with Mom. She wants every thing. She wants bags and bags and bags of everything.

I'm going to try to steer her into buying some things for herself that she can use. But if I'm not careful, she'll be bringing home trinkets and baubles and junk.

Funny. We go to a restaurant that sells these nifty "arrangements" of candy. It's become a holiday tradition. I get one for Mom at Christmas and Easter (about as often as I hit the church doors!) They're so cute. Whoever makes them is very clever. From afar they look like flower arrangements but they're actually candies put on sticks and stuck into some festive thing like a basket or a wreath.

At St. Patrick's Day this year, Mom took a liking to one of those arrangements in a big plastic mug. It was all green cellophane, lollipops, and white chocolate pops iced with green trim. (yuck-if it's white, it's candy-- NOT chocolate, but that's a battle to be fought another day.)

Last week, well after the fourth of July, I noticed that the St. Paddy's day "arrangement" was still in her room. The good stuff had been picked off and eaten. What was left were suckers, and dried out white candy (not chocolate, remember???), bare, candy-less sticks, and tufts of green cellophane. It looked like the prize in an alley cat fight. Raggedy!

I said to Mom, "You're done with this, aren't you?" I managed to talk her into getting rid of the ant magnet. I had hoped to save the green plastic mug for her to put pens and pencils in, but the green floral spongy stuff was hot glued into the cup. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn't get it to be just a cup. So I ended up tossing the whole thing.

She asks me about it every time I'm in. "Somebody stole my green arrangement!"

Mom loves her "stuff".

Oh! And she's got a new roommate. The two of them seem to really like each other. I hope it continues to work. Frances is her name. Her sons are spoiling Mom rotten. They never come in empty handed!

Mom has started taking Arocept. When I found out, I was a little sad. That's an Alzheimer's treatment and I'm not ready to think of Mom having Alzheimer's. I must say though, it's doing wonders. Before Arocept, a visit with mom would be sentences that were always interrupted with, "darnit! what's the word? I don't even have a mind anymore!" Or it would be an hour of the same exact conversation we'd had yesterday. I don't hardly hear her complain about her memory anymore. Mom can grab the word she's looking for with very little effort.

She's also starting to recall things a little more clearly. She hasn't been glomming things all together like she'd been doing. For instance, Mom stopped driving long before my son was born eleven years ago, but she'd say she drove right up to the time she entered the nursing home. The Arocept is allowing her to keep her thoughts more organized.

Today, things are nice with Mom. I think she'll have fun tomorrow. And hey! I don't work there any more, Let THEM figure out what to do with her bags and bags of shtuff!