Mother is still in the hospital

My mother is arguing about not getting her sleeping pills while she's in the hospital. She has generic Ambien and they gave her the name brand product. She insists she is not getting the proper medicine - because she refuses to believe the name brand is the same as the generic medicine. She is also demanding more pain medication. She can't have more pain meds than she is already getting because it would cause her heart to stop at this point.

These days, we never know if she will be coming home from the hospital. The time between hospital stays is becoming shorter with each crisis. 

Meanwhile, her personal assistant is being a very vigilant and loving care-giver. Being with Mom at the hospital, taking laundry to be done home, bringing clean clothes and cleaning her home. My sister-in-law was a bit concerned with the security involved with her having so much access to everything. I said, as long as she was not in charge of the checking account and credit cards, I had no concern whatsoever about this woman who is giving my mother the kind of care and attention she wants. It's really quite a God-send for now. Apparently one of the doctors took my sister-in-law aside to talk about how people too good to be true usually are. Since this is a woman who has a long history here with family who live in this area, it doesn't seem that she would want to burn anyone here. I told her that even if some things of value turned up missing in Mom's home, I was okay with that. The quality of care she is providing is worth more than anything sitting in a drawer somewhere in my mother's house.

Mother is back in the hospital

My sister-in-law phoned tonight to let me know that my mother is back in the hospital again. She's had fluid in her lungs for several days and they believe she has pneumonia now. Once again, she had too much trouble breathing and they brought her into the emergency room today. She is in CCU now with Adela, her care-giver, at her side. Some time late tonight, she will have her dialysis treatment at the hospital. I don't think they can do anything to clear the fluid from her lungs other than try to help her body do it. Hopefully, she will get some sleep tonight.

Thanksgiving 2015

Thanksgiving dinner at Casa WereMonster included rotisserie chicken from EarthFare grocery, roasted fingerling potatoes & brussels sprouts, fresh brussels sprouts salad ala Mario Batali, and fresh baked baguette with goat cheese and lingon berry preserves. Not bad for a simple meal.

Today, we went to see Crimson Peak at the $2 cinema. Quite a good movie, though I admit the dialog in the first few minute of the screenplay could have been better. Still, it is surprising that it is already in the second run theaters now. It's a deeply Poe-Gothic tale and visual eye candy.  After the movie, we tried out another Blue restaurant in High Point - Lulu and Blu. MonsterMustDie had the gnochi and I had the mushroom flatbread. I think he got the better dish. Although he said the gnochi was perfectly cooked, it had too many peas in it. The flatbread was wonderfully crisp and light but the topping went too far on the tart side. The flavor shitaki mushrooms and arrugula were completely overrun by very tart goat cheese and sun dried tomatoes. Made my mouth pucker with every bite.

Excelsior

I am in love with the look of this packing material. The color and texture appeal to me. Don't know what I can do with it but I like it.

Falling into Winter

People screaming about the war against Christmas are the thing that make me want to completely avoid the Holiday season.  All the fighting that breaks out this time of year makes the annual decent into winter hard. This winter will be as hard as last year, as I've had to drop everything I spent a ultra-slow year building to spend a month in Georgia and now I will be starting over again from the ground up, probably after the first of the year. That means another empty winter with no friends, even less money than last year with depleted savings, and no pleasurable activities. It means I am a year further away from the level of activity I once had. The house and yard still need a lot of work and money infused into them. We still have a retaining wall to replace, a fence to build, and stumps to remove in the yard. The house still only has one room that is actually finished. 

There is one improvement. A lot of cleaning and clearing has been done. There are not boxes everywhere - they've mostly been placed downstairs next to the decrepit furnace and that is the domain of MonsterMustDie. There is actually furniture to sit on and books to read upstairs now.

The electric dishwasher that came with the house died last night. This is not an appliance we must have, so I will be hand-washing more. I really liked it best for those very hard to clean tools like strainers, collendars, graters and washable items with many small connected parts. Those bits just won't be quite as clean as they used to be now. The Microwave oven died at the end of September, when the number keypad stopped working. We threw it out after a service person told me the board controlling it was now an unreplaceable part. It seems like such a waste, considering it spent nearly 10 years in a box from the time it was new to the time we finally started using it here in this house. One year of active use and it's dead. The dishwasher is very old and it was probably long past it's lifespan. The biggest concern we have is the furnace downstairs. We were advised that it was already long-past its expected lifespan when we bought the house. MonsterMustDie says he does not have the budget to replace it now so we just have to hope it will make it through this winter. We had hoped to replace the HV/AC system the first year here but that is no longer on the current schedule. We will replace it when it dies and not before. As smaller appliances are dying, we won't be replacing them this year. The only thing I can imagine that we would absolutely have to deal with the loss of immediately would be the Furnace/AC, the water heater, and the refridgerator. I think we can live withouth all the other modern conveniences easlily enough. 

Jules Perry shared a photo with you from the Flickr app! Check it out: https://www.flickr.com/gp/weremonkey/4pc65i

Tiny Lights

The holiday season lights started going up in High Point today.