Pumpkin Carving, Halloween & other Stuff

 

Jack-O-Lantern, Neil Armstrong, Harry Potter, Windy the Witch

 

 

We attended a Halloween party this weekend.  Can you guess who went all out and thought up his/her costume 10 minutes before the party started?  Nope, wasn't me, even though I'm dressed in some cheap garb from Wal-Mart.

 

A few weeks ago we stopped at a roadside pumpkin stand and picked out a few pumpkins for the front porch.  The road side stands are a staple around here, many folks out in the country plant a few pumpkins and put them out with a self-pay box to get a little cash.  The pumpkins are usually quite a bit cheaper than store bought if sometimes a little less than perfect.  Ever since we brought the pumpkins home the kids have been jumping up and down to carve them.  Well finally got around to doing it today and honestly the kids were less than enthusiastic after I set them to gutting the gourds.  In fact after they half cleaned them out only Igor stuck around for the actual carving of his pumpkin, Sonny Boy wandered off and didn't even take a look at his when I carried it back out to the front steps.  I had purchased on of those fancy white pumpkins to break up the all the orange on the porch, I figured I'd carve that - well did you know those do not smell anything like pumpkin?  Who knew, more of a cucumber / cantaloupe smell.  Weird.  Anyway my steps are glowing with jack-o-lanterns and a spooky grim reaper with a strobe light on him in the window.  The town has finally decided trick-or-treating should actually be ON Halloween night this year so it will be the first time many kids here have ever trick or treated in the dark, heck before you couldn't even see the if the pumpkins were lit.  I also plan on making few luminaries along my sidewalk as we have a bag of sand for some unknown purpose and  some paper sacks. 

 

Not much else going on, things are the same on all fronts and I keep hoping for some change.  Oh well, gotta go fold some underwear.

 



My boy's got moves!

Where one of my children can't find the beat in a piece of music if I tap it out on his head with a drumstick, the other has a little rhythm.  This spontaneous piece of footwork happened in the kitchen this evening without any prompting.  Turn your head/monitor, I can never work the phone correctly on the fly.

Why do I expect different?

I've hit a wall of absolute frustration lately with Mom.   Forgive the horrible writing, as my thoughts are even more scattered than usual today.  The last few days Mom has been even more difficult to deal with, more resistant to doing her PT excercises, been in pajamas more than she hasn't, barely eats a meal but goes after junk food like she's starving 10 minutes after a meal, and done even less than usual.  Mom is sneaking out smoking after she thinks we are in bed and not taking her iron pills for some unknown reason.

Hubby declared the other day he's going to start calling her "Moss" because all she does is sit and take up nutrients without even blowing in the wind.

I can't begin to explain the frustration of having her sit on her ass all day.  It's not that she's not helping with the house stuff, I've done that for years pretty much alone so it doesn't phase me.  What drives me nuts is everytime I go to take a break there she sits, in MY chair, with MY blanket, watching some banal TV show I would never even turn on.  If she's not watching TV she's reading without regard to the fact I'd like to sit without the lamp on in the middle of the day.  Her bedroom is as trashed as the kid's room, it only lacks Legos on the floor.

Last Friday I got up and showered, I called down to her that I would help her get in the tub ( she does need help with the bad shoulder) when I got my hair done.  I finish my hair, etc and come down and say "your turn"  , she wants to finish her coffee which she nurses for half an hour, then she wants to finish her damn TV show.   By this point I've done half a dozen other chores and it's 11:30.  By now I loose my temper and just grab my keys and purse and leave.  I leave for all afternoon, I go eat a hamburger, I go get a massage, I read magazines in the library until it's time to pick the kids up from school.  I go get the boys, bring them home, sort thru the backpacks, do homework, suit up Sonny Boy in football gear and take them to football practice.  Hubby gets home from work and we dump the kids with her and go out and eat, rent a movie and watch it in our bedroom.  I pretty much avoided her all weekend, as I was trying to follow Hubby's advice of just ignoring the crazy.  Am I to be run out of my own home because she's freakin' nuts?

Crazy is what it is.  I realize she's mentally ill.  Tomorrow she sees a shrink and hope a barrel full of anti-depressants is prescribed.  Since she's been here though the doctor has adjusted her meds twice and I can't see any difference in her daily behavior.  I think she has sunk her self so far down in this deep hole she can no longer find her way out or hear what anybody has to say to help her get out.  I've travelled this road before with my grandmother, throw in some Old Charter and we could call it "history repeating it's self".  I'm so tired of beating my head against the wall.  There is a quote somewhere that "Insanity it repeating the same thing over and over and expecting different results".  Right now I don't know if I'm the insane one, or if she is.

Anybody got advice, answers, prayers?

Mute Monday

The duck hunting crew.  Sonny boy is behind the dog giving her a facelift along with his cousin.

 Boy's in the blind, Hubby & Sonny Boy

 Even tough football players need Mommas, and Momma needed a hat, hence the babushka scarf.

 Look at the camera!

 Sunday I raked / blew leaves ALL DAY LONG



Still Kickin'

Sorry for the long silence.  It's been a little nuts.  I actually had to go back to the last post to see at what point in the "Saga" I had left you hanging.

Wednesday morning Hubby and Sonny Boy got up early and loaded their stuff and headed to North Dakota for the big duck hunt.  Igor went to school and I went to the hospital to hang out with Mom.  I found Mom REALLY groggy, but not unreasonably so considering.   I hung out most of the day pushing fluids on her as the doctors had cleared her to leave as soon as she urinated (she'd had a Foley catheter for a couple of days)  ALL DAY LONG she did not pee.  She drank 4  or more big cups of ice water, a root bear, a cup of coffee and they hooked her back up the IV and gave her nice sized bolus of fluid that way, nyet, still nothing. The whole time all this is going on Mom is like a she is three sheets to wind, not making much sense, dozing off in the middle of a sentence and just generally out of it despite the fact she had only had tylenol since early morning.

When 2:00 rolled around I went to do my volunteer duty in Igor's classroom and spent a pleasant half hour outlining kindergarten kids on giant sheets of paper.  It was fun and nice break and I got to put some of the faces into Igor's classroom.  My duty was up just before school let out so I ran a quick errand to the post office and then back to the school to pick up Igor and go back to the hospital.

I took Igor to the hospital with me thinking that hopefully Mom had peed and we would simply be getting her dressed and out the door.  No such luck.  Mom was still way out of it, and was complaining that her chest hurt and got way overly winded when I walked her to the door of the hospital room.  The nurses called her doctor (who happened to be Russian - got a little story about him) who then decided to draw some blood and run and EKG.  Around this time I figure she's staying the night, the nurses are asking me if I want her home, or at the hospital as it's apparent I'm managing alone with a 6 year old who is sitting in the corner playing Angry Birds while Mom hallucinates that her brother is standing behind me.  I'm getting more than concerned at her altered state because by this point the only pain med she'd had was tylenol and the last narcotic was over  12 hours earlier.  I'm sure the nurses were having enough of me as well since I was on top of every odd thing.  The nurse that did Mom's intake on Sunday came in, unfortunately she was assigned down the hall but helped alleviate my fears that Mom wasn't having totally bizarre stuff, as she'd seen many older people respond to anesthesia like that (even the next day or two) and the lack of pee was likely due to her being behind on fluids since she was NPO for two days straight despite the fact she had an IV.  That nurse was very reassuring, and had her little angel wings on that day.

Well Igor and I stayed until the EKG was ran and there wasn't anything that made anyone go screaming for the doctor or pushing the code button on the wall and the phone battery went dead from hours of Angry Birds.    I got Mom settled in the bed, alerted the nurses I was leaving and drove through McDonald's to get us some supper and got us both of us into bed early.

The next morning after dropping Igor at school I find Mom much more coherent and the plan for the day is to give her a unit of blood (her blood counts were way off) and release her.  She had evidently started peeing in the middle of the night - every hour on the hour- according to her and the nurses.  Of course getting the blood started and the two hours it took to infuse, etc she was released at 2:15 on Thursday.

Since Thursday she's doing pretty well.  Her shoulder is sore of course, but she's doing surprisingly good about trying to use it and do the PT prescribed exercises sent home with her.  The first night home I gave her a percocet at bedtime and that wasn't the best of ideas as she told me she thought I was up gathering laundry out of her room in the middle of the night until she turned the light on and I disappeared.  Since then it's been Tylenol and really very little of that.  The color of bruising on the woman is impressive.  Not only is the shoulder bruised, but her whole chest and her breasts as well.  The most exciting thing is it's been 8 days since her last cigarette.  While in the hospital she couldn't smoke of course and when she got out I went and got her some patches and gum.  She's been changing the patches out daily but hasn't been smoking.  I think the success has a few degrees of help with it as her smoking had been cut back a lot when she moved here as we don't allow her to smoke indoors so she was down to about 1/2 a pack a day there, then when she was in the hospital for several days being nagged at by just about every health care worker through the door and realizing she had already gone four days without she's giving it a shot.  I hope she sticks with it.

Perhaps the most worrisome thing is that today I reminded her to change or orthopedic doctor appointment as it clashed with timing of her psychiatrist appointment and then went to pick up the kids from school and Igor to get his glasses fixed.  When I got home she had written the two down, Doctors and what for, times, etc had the phone number out but then told me she just couldn't do it, she was to anxiety filled to make the phone call.  She was really upset about it as she was concerned she wouldn't be able to function on her own (which I've been wondering for a while now) but things like appointments and such she has been able to handle on her own.   I don't know, I told her she definitely needs to tell the shrink that when she sees him next week.

In other news the boy's duck hunt was a success.  Sonny Boy had lots of fun.  Not too many ducks were killed, but Hubby proclaimed they let the boys do most of the shooting.  I've been busy selling stuff on E-bay trying to clean out some old kid's clothes and the like.  I've also been busy catching up with cub scout stuff - as in I was at cub scouts tonight and Sonny Boy was at football practice. 

and the Saga continues...

Well yesterday didn't quite go as planned.  Mom sat in her hospital bed in a fair amount of pain for the day not allowed to drink or eat since she was supposed to have surgery sometime around 4:00 pm.  Around 3:30 the nurse comes in and tells us that her surgery had been cancelled due to the OR's being booked up and some trauma cases etc etc.  I was BEYOND fit to be tied.  I get life threatening cases get priority, but don't people laid up in the hospital have priority over a surgery that was scheduled weeks out?  I don't know, I'd certainly had enough.  Anyway since there was nothing I could do I made sure they brought Mom some food, she was heavily medicated and went home for the evening.  I crawled into bed early, thoroughly worn out but try as I might I was too keyed up to sleep and ended up taking a benedryl around midnight.  The benedryl did the trick, but I paid for it this morning getting out of bed.

This morning Hubby agreed he'd go into work early and I would get the kids off to school and then come to the hospital since we knew surgery wouldn't happen until around noon anyway.  I get to the hospital about 9:00 or so and find out her blood counts are off and they are transfusing a pint of blood into her before surgery.  It was explained to me that this happens sometimes that there is bleeding from the bone.  WHAT?  Would this have even been an issue if you'd done surgery yesterday or even Sunday?  Anyhow they wheeled her upstairs for surgery around noon and I left the hospital armed with my cell phone.  I had to get some stuff shipped I'd sold on E-bay, and cripes sitting in the hospital is enough to make you go nuts!

The surgery went OK, I suppose, at least that's what the ortho doc told me when he called and I swear he was eating at the same time.  I made a point to be around when she came back from surgery and while the nurses have been really good Mom really needed somebody in the room with her as she was drugged pretty crazily and would sit straight up in the bed and declare it was time to go home!  Later she wasn't so sure as all the pain started REALLY kicking in and it took several rounds of pain meds to get it under control.   Right now Mom is finally zonked out after having enough narcotic pushed to down a horse.  I'm still at the hospital at 8:30 pm but I'm about to head home, I just wanted to make sure she was settled good before I left.

Tomorrow should prove interesting.  Nobody seems to know if she'll be released or not.  I'll get Igor off to school in the morning and I have volunteered to work in his classroom at 2:00-3:00 and he gets out of school at 3:20.  If they decide to discharge Mom during that time frame they'll just have to let her wait, and if they keep her she'll have to speak up for herself as certainly Igor won't be happy sitting around a hospital room any more than I am.

Well that's all the news.  Fun huh?  Now 6-8 weeks of her not having a right arm (she's right handed by the way) and the good Lord only knows on rehab.  I'm starting to feel like Job without the boils - give that time I suppose.

One Thing, after Another, after Another....

The end of last week wrapped up and frankly it was one I was glad to see behind me.  Hubby got home from France on Saturday afternoon, tired and jet lagged but happy to be home.  He enjoyed his trip.  Gosh wish I'd have been there.

Sunday morning we slept in.  I was cooking lunch/brunch/breakfast when I heard Mom yell, scream, swear and thud down the stairs.  Hubby and I went running and she was doubled over with her shoulder in pain.  We managed to wrap her arm to her body and took her into the ER.  I was suspecting it was dislocated, but alas nothing as simple, she broke the end of her humerous bone off and the rounded part of the bone that fits into the shoulder socket stayed.  Mom was admitted to the hospital last night for pain control and they will do surgery at 4:30 today.  I got her settled into her room last night and went over 10,000 questions with admitance and then went home for the night.  Luckily the hospital is only 5 blocks or so from the house.  The earliest I expect she'll be released is Tuesday and then who knows how long her recovery will be. 

If Mom isn't released on Tuesday we'll have a mess on our hands as Hubby and Sonny Boy plan on leaving Wed. morning for North Dakota and their hunting trip with Father-in-Law and cousins.  I don't know what the heck I'll do with Igor.  Thankfully he's in school through the day and if they keep Mom longer she may just have to be at the mercy of the nursing staff.

Currently I'm sitting in the hospital killing time waiting on Mom's surgery.  They are keeping her drugged but not too heavily.  Everytime she starts drifting off to sleep the bad shoulder will either spasm or most likely  relax a little from spasm and she'll yell.  Scares me out of my skin about every 4-8 minutes.  They cannot / will not give her more meds before surgery so it's a matter of riding it out.  I personally don't know how painful it is - I'm sure it hurts like hell - but I also know Mom has a low pain tolerance as well.  The nurses here are saints.  Frankly I'm surprised they haven't thrown Mom to the wolves yet.  I will say it's a whole world of difference than when she was in the hospital for months on end in Memphis years ago where I did a lot of the nursing duties because there wasn't a person available to help her.

I just got a FB message from my cousin that my aunt passed away this morning.  I'm sad to learn of her passing as I always thought her loads of fun as a kid.  I haven't seen her much in the last 20 years or so but we kept in touch.  I would plan on attending her funeral, but alas with Mom injured that won't happen.  With my aunt passing it will leave only one other aunt alive from my father and his siblings (there were 4 total) the one remaining aunt is her 80's, but I suppose she's in reasonable health.

Hubby's grandmother got moved into her assisted living facility last week.  By all reports she likes it so far and that's good to hear.  I honestly believe it will be good for her as she's been rather isolated the last year or two since she quit driving and now she's able to play cards and hang out with others when she feels like it and not depend on everyone to stop by and the like.

Well, I suppose that's that.  Nothing more to tell.  Roughly three hours till they take her back to surgery.  I wonder if the nurses will give me a bump of Mom's drugs?  ha!