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1. Remove 'dinger' from bell after Mum rang it 14 times last night
2. Fill mums bag with something in fact anything which prevents her throwing soiled pads in amongst her handkerchiefs - yuk yuk
3.Take the bloody clock and throw it away - or buy one that says the time every five minutes
4. Hire a helper and tell Mum its a friend so she thinks she isn't paying for it
5. Tell Mum Heinz have brought out a new roast dinner soup when you offer her smoothie roast dinners you have turned into soup
6. Replace the door bell for a light in my room so I don't have to introduce everyone to my Mum
7. Widen the already over width doors to about 8 feet wide so mum doesn't crash into them when going 8 steps from chair to toilet
8.Tell Mum Church has closed down for lack of attendance so she doesn't witter when she is unwell
9. Exchange mums pills for sweeties when she demands painkillers all the time - oddly enough the sweets seem to be more effective!
10. Write deceased on begging letters and put em back in the post without a stamp
You did bloody well Veronica I had to think a lot - something I find very difficult!!!!
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Hey Send
It's 3:00 am r u up?

I shouldN't read this when I'm punchy - I about fell out of my chair reading thankless' tale

My mom has decided that the only way for her to stay safe at her memory care center is to be scary so when a man approaches her that she doesn't like she'll say get away from me bringing a couple of men to tears

So tonight she announces she's not going to stay in this place and frankly I can't blame her - I'm trying to walk her down her hall since her caregiver is late and there's a new man outside her door in his boxers eating a cactus plant - decisions decisions - do I let someone know or do I say Bon appetite ?

So in her room we go and since we're still waiting for lab results to see if she has a UTI I suggest we try to wash down below - didn't go over well - she's had it with me and I'm not in charge of her and it's her body and yada yada yada.

When her overnight caregiver does show up she says to her thank god your here I can't stand that one referring to me - i usually leave some lifesavers and peppermint candy in her purse when I leave so tonight I decided to leave a different treat instead 🌵
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PD, two of my family's next generation down did Psychology degrees and headed straight from those into working with children with learning and behavioural difficulties. When I asked (encouragingly, mind, I wasn't being a wet blanket) why they were interested in that career path they said they enjoyed helping these kids. I silently wondered if they'd actually met any of them. Do they keep the more challenging ones locked up on Careers Open Days, do you know?
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My timer has just run out.
8/25/2016
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Thank God for that, Veronica! Can you imagine?!
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I used to have fantasies about hiring burglars to steal my mother's 4-drawer office filing cabinet, almost immovably heavy, and packed to bursting with a mixture of brochures, old correspondence, catalogues, all our school reports and God knows what else, and the ugliest piece of furniture you ever saw in your life. The howls of protest if I ever suggested going through and sorting it, so that at least all the drawers would shut properly. "That's my life you want to throw away!" mother would wail. Sad to think that in a way it was representative - hopeless chaos, with the chaff and dross completely burying any gems she might have enjoyed. Came the day we had to move it out into a shed to free up an extra sitting room for her, she was going through 'flat affect' with depression and we didn't hear a peep out of her.

I also swore to myself that the day after she died I would have the county's biggest ever bonfire, mainly of photos of penguins. I have at least got rid of most of the bloody penguins, but here we are 16 months on and I'm still painstakingly going through boxes.
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I do a lot of unrelated to caregiving bratty things. For instance, the mannequins you see in the men's underwear department. I once stuck a big sock in the pouch of one of them and hubby and I hid and watched people's reactions when they saw it.
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Gershun you just made me almost spit out my mouthful of pork lo mein... lmbo
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Okay - maybe I just had a bad day...and now as usual I can't sleep. It's midnight and it's still 82 degrees out. We have air conditioning but I smoke - usually outside but not late at night anymore - not since the aggressive raccoon incident. So I'm sitting here next to the open window - reading, posting, puffing...mind you, there IS a screen on the window but somehow bugs, attracted to the lighted screen on my phone - which is reflecting in my glasses are getting in - which means the little bastards are flying into my face. Since I have an inch of wrinkle cream on, I now resemble a windshield of a car taking a road trip on Route 66. Maybe it's the bad day, maybe it's the bugs.
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That makes 6th sense.
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Phoenix, It is well known that you would not intentionally offend with your hilarious sense of humor. The story was over the top because not many know what it is like to be living with such an unknown possibility daily. And yes, fear is part of it. So, the subject for many on here touched a nerve and not a funny bone
this time.

It is not your fault, it is not Countrymouse's fault, because you did not know.

Let's go back to behaving badly on purpose, all of us.

Love, from Send
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Not a deadbeat.
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Jude, I agree with the part we need to speak about it. Because of you, I am able to receive offense without getting angry. We will always talk about it.
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I apologise too if I offended anyone; but poking fun was the last thing I meant to do - the whole point is that I don't think there is anything 'fun' about the situation, and I sometimes think that the outside world - people who have no idea what it's like to love and care for someone with a disability, especially at the extreme end of the spectrum, let alone to *be* a person with a disability - has a pretty naïve and rosy idea of what exactly is involved. How else do you explain their complacency/apathy when it comes to offering support?
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Thinking back to dwelling on catastrophes, as you tend to when you're lying awake listening out for sounds of late-night roaming from the baby monitor in your mother's bedroom, I used to worry about fire when there wasn't anything more immediate going on. Mother's bedroom was at ground level so getting her out shouldn't have been a problem as long as I could get to her, but how was I to get out if the fire was on the route between my room, on the upper floor directly above hers, and hers? I usually dropped off while I was planning how to tie a bedsheet to the curtain pole so that I could dangle out of my window, start swinging, and then crash through her window and reach her that way.
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Veronica91

Brat awards
1. Install second steering wheel in the car so Mom thinks she is still driving
2. Get grandpa a duplicate set of car keys that don't work,
3. Install digital lock on outside doors and don't tell anyone the combination.
4. Buy several identical sets of clothing for your loved one who insists on wearing the same thing every day
5. Fill an empty ice-cream container with a vegetable smoothie for your ice cream diabetic addict.
6. Make a recording of your voice full of Uha's, Really and Gotta go Mom see you soon for the frequent caller from Memory Care.
7. Put a set of bells on Mom's walker.
8. Put fake Money in Dad's wallet
9. Swap Mom's credit cards for ones that have expired.
10. Put fake pills in prescription bottles so you can give the correct dosage of the real ones.
There I made it to ten.
No there is one more
Print up fake checks to send donations to fake charities
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Deadbeat

1. Remove 'dinger' from bell after Mum rang it 14 times last night
2. Fill mums bag with something in fact anything which prevents her throwing soiled pads in amongst her handkerchiefs - yuk yuk
3.Take the bloody clock and throw it away - or buy one that says the time every five minutes
4. Hire a helper and tell Mum its a friend so she thinks she isn't paying for it
5. Tell Mum Heinz have brought out a new roast dinner soup when you offer her smoothie roast dinners you have turned into soup
6. Replace the door bell for a light in my room so I don't have to introduce everyone to my Mum
7. Widen the already over width doors to about 8 feet wide so mum doesn't crash into them when going 8 steps from chair to toilet
8.Tell Mum Church has closed down for lack of attendance so she doesn't witter when she is unwell
9. Exchange mums pills for sweeties when she demands painkillers all the time - oddly enough the sweets seem to be more effective!
10. Write deceased on begging letters and put em back in the post without a stamp
You did bloody well Veronica I had to think a lot - something I find very difficult!!!!
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Gershun

I'm going to put Hubby's dirty underwear on top of his pillow.
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cwillie said:
My sis calls on the phone and will start a narrative about her day that can run from 30 minutes to an hour, I am only required to grunt occasionally, god forbid I should interrupt the flow with a real comment. Back when I was at mom's her main phone had a cord and it was torture!! I'm so grateful for my cordless speakerphone, last week I went to the bathroom and had a shower while she blathered on... is that bratty??
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Thank you everyone for your contributions!
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I "accidentally" took a pee pad and a couple of towels home from the hostpital and never returned them.A big brat!
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Luckily you are definitely a bad girl but I doubt they noticed. one thing I have noticed is that American hospitals are never short of clean linen unlike their British counterparts. Some friend had the hubby in hospital and his sheets got so soiled his wife brought some of their own in from home. This was recently not 50 years ago
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I love your idea Send...I'm going to put my husband's Dirty underwear on his pillow too!
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Luckylu, Was the pee pad dirty or clean?
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Gershun said that about where to put hubs dirty underwear.
I put my hubs dirty underwear in the hamper so he will be sure to wash them.
(After I ask him to do his own laundry-if he is not on another break, that is).
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Sorry Send....Thanks Gershun!Any more good ideas?
The pee pad was clean...I just pretended it was dirty.
They changed the name of the hostpital anyway so they probably got rid of those supplies.I'm SURE we paid for them in the end somehow.
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Being a brat came natural for me, as my parents were traveling from back east to California by train, or so they told the story, borrowed a towel from the train, used it as my diaper, said 'Union Pacific' across my bottom, in public yet. Can't believe that I am telling this now. I must be getting old fast, but parents were not old when they told the story. Or, were they the brats?
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Veronica,
Missed your post to Lucky a page back. When going to the motel at the beach we had to wait for clean towels. There were even instructions to keep the same sheets during a short stay due to the drought in California. Being a brat, the sheets were changed daily because my legs were being bitten. Also the floor was requested to be vacumed and sprayed, which helped. They tried, after all the beach has sand fleas, and they allowed dogs, not four stars at all.
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Well after two weeks mom is now on antibiotics for her 5th UTI since entering memory care in February - swell

She's still very agitated and was giving her personal caregiver a bad time at dinner refusing to eat because I was taking her out to dinner so I speak to her on the phone and settle her down promising To be there tonight after work and will bring a pie

despite several late nights at the office this week I rally and go buy pie - being Saturday night traffic is heavy and someone cuts me off - I slam on the brakes and my beautiful lemon meringue pie flies off the seat upside down on the floor -swell

I always Hold my breath when I arrive since I never know what the scene will be - thankfully it was not too bad - just mom and the three men she fears the most still up - someone took the remote to the tv so they can't even watch a movie

She's thrilled to see me and even more thrilled to see the pie box so I do my best to put the meringue back on top of the pie and pass it out to her and the 'boys' - after all it's not like it fell on the pavement 😝
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Ms. Madge,
It was funny to me that you were a brat and still served the lemon merangue pie in pieces after it had fallen. I would have eaten it in any condition, eben as a smoothy, because I love that pie, which my Mom carefully made as we were growing-the three siblings all totalled.
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