Sunday, July 24, 2011

A Note from the Rabbit Hole~

My Mom can't do just one thing at a time. She has always been this way, but since her cancer diagnosis, it has gotten worse. This means that simple, straightforward tasks like making breakfast means going off on tangents, like finding the almonds (already on the counter), doctoring the coffee, and going to garage RIGHT NOW to find the floral piece she needs to make the living room floral arrangement JUST RIGHT. This is followed by heating up the coffee, then going back out to get another piece for the floral arrangment from the box in the garage, and starting a load of laundry.

She finally sits down for coffee, which needs to be reheated. Then, she has to take out the trash, even though the coffee hasn't been finished. She puts the TRASH into the open washing machine and curses while digging it all out aagin.

When she finally comes back inside to have coffee, she remembers to take Lasix and Potassium, which have been sitting next to the coffee. They also make her pee. Since she can't swallow the pills with coffee, she goes back into the kitchen for ice water (with ice and lemon) She sits down and fixates on the bottle of Asacol, which has about 12 tablets left - a week's supply. Immediately, she must go get the FULL bottle from bedroom cupboard and pour the old bottle of tablets into the full bottle. This brings on some grumbling about the cost of the prescription.

She gets up again to go to the bathroom but pees pants and gets annoyed because she wasn't wearing a pad. She changes her clothes and takes the wet pants out to washing machine, while complaining about the Laxix and potassium.

She comes back into the house to return to the bathroom to fix her hair and put on her "face" because Dan is coming down to do some household repairs she has fixated on for weeks and weeks. Bright red lipstick and chola-girl eyebrows later, she comes into the livingroom to complain about the hair that she swears is falling out, although no evidence of this appears in her comb.

Finally, she comes back out to sit in her chair. She turns on "Sweet Home Alabama" for the 23rd time this month, grouses about the televsion and complains that "nobody will let me drink my coffee."

And it's only 11:00. In the morning.