We're reading. I'm reading.
    That's why I haven't been here, much. I finished archiving on the 11th, then, reading began. Mom and I are continuing to work our way through Anne Rice's the first Christ Our Lord book, the second reading of which we began when she was in the hospital. It's going pretty fast, now. I expect we'll be commencing our first reading of the second series book, Road to Cana, within a week or less. Mom is really enjoying the stories and I am enjoying her enjoyment of them.
    I have begun reading a book that was mentioned to me in a comment left by Mona of The Tangled Neuron well over a year ago: Dancing with Rose by Lauren Kessler. I must have followed up on the book from the comment because a phrase in a descriptive review, which appears on the back cover of the hardcover book, "...who sent her parent away to a 'care facility' as so many of us do, here attempts a small act of atonement..." [written by Ted Conover] haunted me to the point where, after I'd lost track of both the title of the book and how I came by knowledge of it, I was obsessed, periodically, with searching Google and a variety of online bookstores with various combinations of the keywords "nursing home+mother+aid [or "aide"]+atonement" trying to locate the book. I even had one of my sisters, who works in a bookstore, looking for it. These keywords never brought up the book, for reasons I now understand. My sister, who had also heard of the book, never found it. I searched all the caregiver websites I knew that listed books, including the website of the author of the original comment, but couldn't find anything that looked like it might be the book. From the description, I wasn't sure how I'd react to the book but I knew I wanted to read it because it was written by someone who decided to confront, brutally, the nursing home experience through which she put her mother. After I spent over a month of successive 8-10 hour days at my mother's rehab facility, which includes a live-in Alzheimer's unit, my curiosity about the book was rekindled and I tried, again, to find it, unsuccessfully. Then, when I was archiving, I ran across the comment that sparked my interest in the book and now I'm racing through the book. I'm sure I'll write about it, here, when I'm finished. My next reading project will be to restart and finally finish another book that was sent to me by MFS (the one who works in the book store). It fascinated me and I loved reading it but I started it around the time of the anemia crisis that set my mother up for her second blood transfusion and that took care of me finishing the book...or getting back to it, until now.
    So, how is Mom doing? Well, over the last few days daily reports over at Life After Death Sentencing pretty much cover that. She's doing well, relatively speaking. I still want to do a little reporting about stuff related to the last few Hospice RN visits, but not right now. Right now, Mom is taking her daily nap and I think I can cover a few more chapters of the book I'm reading before getting back to the book we're reading.
    Anyway, just wanted to mention why I've been absent...what I, and we, have been doing...and, of course, I'll be back...
    ...later.
- posted by Gail Rae @ 18:27  2 comments   email  this post

 
Some slightly shameful self-promotion...
...sort of. As I've been archiving (which is to say I haven't been thinking much about posting regularly and presently in the main journal), I've run across a couple of old posts the locations of which I want to remember and, secondarily, it occurs to me they might be useful for companion/caregivers to Ancient Ones who are looking for validation and psychic relief, so I've added them to the Mom & Me Too Special Posts over there on the right. The new ones are the last four posts. The titles are summaries of what the actual posts contain, so don't be surprised, if you decide to click into any of them, that the titles of the post are different than the titles of the links. As well, the link entitled Don't Support Your Local Caregiver is tongue-in-cheek.
    Although, as I think I mentioned before, I'm trying hard not to read posts or comments as I archive so that the job moves as fast as possible, the comments, especially, tend to attract my eye when significant words appear (which they often do). I have to say, in gratitude to all my readers past and present, what spectacular readers/commenters I've attracted throughout the years! Without you, I fear, these journals would be simply dead series of words and words and words...I am such a lucky woman! Thank you, thank you, thank you!
    I've guiltily given Mom an extra half hour, even though I've heard some feeble reconnaissance coughing since 1230 (which marked her 12-hour-sleep-mark) coming from her bedroom. Being who she is, she never begrudges me extra sleep time. I'm trying hard to work us back to normal hours and, so far, so good, so 1300 isn't completely out of the way. By Tuesday we should be back to 1100, which is good timing considering that this is the day of the week when our Hospice RN visits. Which reminds me, I actually have some stuff to post about the last few visits, but, for that...
    ...later.
- posted by Gail Rae @ 13:00  0 comments   email  this post