How Many Children Do I Have Anyway?

he past several weeks, we've gotten into the habit of taking my Sister to church with us on Sunday mornings. Then, we bring her home for dinner, spend the afternoon together, go back to the afternoon service, and take her home after supper. It seems to be just the right amount of time for her to be home. When she spends the night, breakfast becomes very stressful for me. She is such a morning person --- I, on the other hand, I'm not. Most of the time when she's with us, she never stops talking, and what she says is just repetition over and over and over again. Don't get me wrong, I love her dearly. It's just that it does increase my stress when she's home for more than a few hours of time.

There's a lot more to monitoring her than some people might think. She needs to be watched all the time so that she doesn't get into things that she's not supposed to be into, very much like a small child. We've had trouble with her with everything from eating too much food to cutting herself with razors. She can't be left alone at all! For example, yesterday afternoon when she was home, I went downstairs for 20 minutes, and while I was gone, Mom and Dad went to take a nap. When I got back upstairs, sister had helped herself to a snack. It was less than half an hour after we finished eating.

One Sunday morning, we were going through the line at coffee after church. Sister started taking the amount of food she wanted, and then I had to have her put some of it back because she taken too much. I looked up at my pastor's wife who was serving coffee and shook my head. She chuckled and said, "How many children do you have now?"

You see, I have three children of my own. Two of them are grown and on their own, and one was at home with us. I have a stepson who is married, and they have a baby. I'm taking care of my parents, which is often like taking of children, except I can't discipline them. And then there is Sister.

Yes. I have nine children. And I am truly blessed.

The Results of Mom's Testing

fter several months of waiting for appointments, driving miles to get to them, and talking with doctors, we have finally found out the truth: there is nothing that we can do about Mom's memory problems. She doesn't have Alzheimer's, but the confusion that she's experiencing cannot be cured and will not go away.

We went to a neurologist in November and found out that the memory problems were not caused by her strokes. He sent us for neuropsychological testing. That testing happened in March. A week later, we found out there is absolutely nothing wrong with Mom'smemory Her memory is actually extraordinarily high for a person her age. Then, we went back to th neurologist , who really didn't tell us anything more than the neuropsychology guy did.  The only thing he did say was that Mom needs continual supervision.

And that's what we're here for. :)

The Things You Learn

hen Eldersitting your parents, you sometimes learn some interesting things.

My parents' relationship has not been very good in recent years. They are of the generation that wouldn't consider divorce, otherwise I sometimes wonder if they'd still be together. When I moved up here, I was disturbed to find out Mom wanted me to be her confidante and counselor. I wouldn't have thought I'd mind, but the things she was telling me! One day, she told me that Dad never even wanted to have children. That was the worst. Honestly, I could have gone the rest of my life without hearing that one.

She told me that when I was up prepping their house for us to move in, but I hadn't yet packed at home. I called my husband, crying, and told him what she'd said, and that I wasn't sure if I could do this. He reassured me that it would be OK, that even if Dad hadn't wanted to have children, he obviously loved us once he had us.

After that, I told Mom that I couldn't be her counselor and confidante. After all, I'm living with Dad, too, and I don't want reasons to not love him. She's been pretty good about remembering not to complain to me about him.

When I was a little kid, I loved the song, "Funny Face" by Donna Fargo. I would listen to it over and over on the 8-track player, at the age of 4 pushing the button repeatedly to skip the other songs on the tape. Dad started calling me "Funny Face". I never took it as an insult, even when I grew older, because of the next line in the song, "Funny face... I love you."

I love you too, Dad.

Low-Sodium Cooking

ad had a new problem a few weeks ago: his feet and ankles were swollen like elephant legs. He went to the doctor, got a 2-week supply of a diuretic, and was told to lower his salt intake and not to eat ham or canned soup.

What had I been serving for lunch every day the previous two weeks? Canned soup and lunch meat sandwiches. Oops.

What did I cook almost every evening meal with? Either canned cream of mushroom soup, dry onion soup mix, or chicken or beef broth/bouillon. I was appalled when I looked at the sodium count on those items! I've been killing Dad!!

So, I went to the store, determined to find some ingredients that I could cook with that wouldn't be horribly high in sodium. Low-sodium cream of mushroom soup: still too much sodium. Low-sodium dry onion soup mix: yeah, um, that one doesn't exist, at least not in the grocery stores in Big Town.

That meant it was time to find new recipes. Google, here I come!

So many recipes call for the canned and boxed items I'd been using that the first step was to find substitutes for those. And I found a wonderful site that has been very helpful in teaching me how to make homemade cream soup, chicken stock, and beef stock, for which I can monitor and control the amount of sodium that goes in. The site is Home Ec 101: Real skill for real people with real lives (what you wish your mama taught you).

From this site, I've learned to make:

• Bechamel sauce--a creamy white sauce that is made from butter, flour, and cream/half and half/milk. You can vary the recipe by adding chicken stock, vegetable stock, or fish stock and adding things like mushrooms to mimic cream of mushroom, cream of celery, cream of shrimp, or cream of chicken soup. I've learned that if you're careful with the re-heating process (heat it on low on the stove from frozen), it doesn't separate, and so it can be made in large batches and frozen.
• Chicken stock--chicken stock takes a lot of cooking time, but not a lot of effort, to make, so I made large batches of it and freeze it in 1 or 2 cup portions.
• Chicken soup--her homemade soup is delicious, and once you've made the chicken stock, very easy and quick to prepare.
• Dumplings--my husband loves chicken and dumplings. He prefers the firmer, almost pasta-like dumplings, and I always made the fluffy, biscuit-like dumplings. I found on the Home Ec 101 site that adding egg is what changes the consistency.

So now, I will be able to post some things about cooking from scratch.

Oh, and Dad's feet and ankles are back to normal! Yay!

Revelation

his week, I've had a revelation for relieving my stress taking care of my parents. I've been playing with them.


Not making fun of them or anything like that. But playing cards. They were big card players in their day, and when I was young, they'd go to someone's house at least a couple times a month to play cards. For many years, Dad hasn't wanted to go places. He's been depressed, but they couldn't find the right combination of meds to help him. Mom doesn't drive, so when Dad stopped going places... her social life almost completely cut off.

I never got into playing cards much as an adult, but my daughter is visiting from college this week, and she loves to play cards with her friends at the dorms. So, she's been teaching me and my son games over the past year, and this visit was no exception. And Mom, in turn, taught her how to play their favorite card game, Whist. (My son had previously learned when my brother was visiting a couple of weeks ago.)

Mom was fascinated watching us play cards Sunday afternoon. She didn't even take a nap! She didn't want to play the games we were playing, but she didn't want to miss out on watching us. So, I suggested we play Whist and let her in on the fun. We've played every day since, and I have been a lot less stressed out this week! My husband has learned to play, too, and let me tell you, he and my dad make a formidable partnership!

I used to work upstairs with Mom and Dad, cooking, cleaning, taking them to appointments, paying bills, and whatever else needed to be done. After our evening meal (is it dinner or supper?), I would immediately go downstairs, to "get away". But I'm finding staying up there for an hour is good for us all.

Been Awhile!

Well, after pummulting the blog with post after post for over a week, I realize today it's been two weeks since I last posted! One of my dad's brothers passed away, so we went to the funeral about 2 hours from home and spent the night. That was an adventure! The staying overnight part. The funeral part was sad. It's strange, though, how it's mostly only at funerals that I get to see my relatives, outside of my immediate family. Being with everyone made the sad occasion of Uncle's death a little more bearable.

I'll post stories about the trip as I get back into blogging.

Money

My husband is in grad school, so for the past two years, I have been the sole provider for our family's financial needs. When we came up to take care of my parents, it seemed like things would be good: we'd get free room and board, I could get a part time job, and if we ran out of money, Mom and Dad agreed to back us up financially. Sounded like a pretty good deal, all the way around.

Unfortunately, I haven't had time to look for that part time job, nor would I have time to work it if I had it.

In the past 6 weeks, there have been 4 days, Monday-Friday, that I didn't have to take one or both of them to an appointment. At first, it seemed to be just a convenience to them to have me drive. Now, it's of the utmost importance that I go with them because they and the doctors need to use my memory (such as it is).

So, every once in awhile, I've asked them for some money. Do you know how hard it is, as an adult, to ask your parents for money? Maybe it wouldn't be hard for some people, but it is extremely difficult for me. Once, I waited too long to ask, and we overdrew our checking account! To an extent, I feel like I should be here taking care of them for nothing. They are, after all, my parents (honor thy father and thy mother includes caring for them in their old age), and they provided for me as I was growing up, and helped me a lot when I was a young adult, too. But the fact of the matter is, if I had a job, I wouldn't be able to be here, and they would be paying a whole lot of money for assisted living. Not to mention they wouldn't be able to stay in the home they know and love.

This morning, I had a talk with them, and we agreed to an amount. It's a far cry from what they would be paying to go to Assisted Living, but is enough for us, along with room and board and some work-from-home things I do, for us to get by. My husband and I have both accepted the fact that God will not allow us to be rich, because we have too much pride and too little humility to use it properly.

And maybe God will teach us some humility in the process.

The sweetest part of it was when they asked how much I wanted to be paid, and I said I didn't know and asked what they thought I was worth, Dad smiled and said, "Far more than we can afford to pay you."

Not in Her Nature

Mom doesn't like to sit while she works. All my life, I've watched her stand while cooking, stand while folding clothes, stand while going through the mail. She probably wished she'd been born a man so she could stand in the bathroom!

Since she had her stroke (and went through physical therapy to relearn how to walk and do other everyday tasks), Mom has been instructed that for every hour she stands, she is supposed to sit for an hour with her feet up. That doesn't always go so well. Several times, I have tried to get her to stop working and sit down. We've had shouting matches over it--she seems to think that if I'm working, she should be working.

When I moved home, the first thing I did was clean out the basement so my husband and son and I would have our own "space". That was an ordeal in itself because Mom has hoarding tendencies, on top of the fact that she and Dad haven't been able to take care of the place properly for at least 10 or 15 years. Every room in the house, both upstairs and down in the basement, was full to the gills.

The first morning at breakfast, I asked Mom if she could come downstairs and sit while I sorted through the stuff. Dad said, "No, she can't." He's usually very quiet in the mornings because his head hurts so much, so I was surprised by his comment. I looked at him and saw a glimmer in his eyes like I used to see when he was telling a joke. He continued by saying, "She can't. It's not in her nature to sit down while she works."

How true, Dad. How true.

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Adventures in Eldersitting

For the past 4 months, I've been living with and caring for my elderly parents. Today, I realized, "Why am I not blogging about this experience??"

Seems like this will be a bit of stress relief. I will blog anonymously, to protect my parents' dignity, so I can say anything I want. It will probably save friendships because I will no longer wear out my friends with my diatribes about what happened this week. Not to mention saving my marriage. Plus, my husband says there is an app on our phones that I can use to publish blog posts from anywhere. Maybe that means I will no longer be irritated when I have to wait at doctor appointments!

I'm looking forward to this. And I hope that if others find themselves in a similar situation, they will be able to glean some useful information from my ramblings.

This is gonna be great!

The Elder Sitter