(no subject)

Mom moved into American House on Thursday. For her, the move took a few hours, mostly because she demanded to go out for Chinese in between.

For me, the move took the better part of a week. The assisted living facility she was in before was a furnished room, while American House is an unfurnished one-bedroom apartment. So in addition to the usual moving hoopla of signing a lease and setting up the utilities (water is included; gas, electric, phone and cable are not), there's been extra fun in the form of moving her furniture and setting up her apartment in a wheelchair-friendly way (which means "not at all like her house"). I've dropped $400 at Target on all sorts of small things-- a phone with huge buttons, an alarm clock that is easy to turn on and off, hand soap, dish soap and one of those cleaning wands, easy-to-open snacks, blankets to replace the ones damaged during the three days she was lying on her floor, and so on and so on. I owe many, many thanks to shaddoth, Brian and Julianna for helping move her heavy furniture, and to John for being John.

In the three days she's been there, it's obvious that she's much happier. Today we stopped by to drop off more washcloths and towels, and discovered she wasn't in her apartment. She was upstairs in one of the common rooms playing cards.

Getting her moved took a big chunk of time that threw off my maintenance schedule (most of Friday for signing the lease, half of Sunday for moving her furniture, most of Wednesday for waiting around for ComCast to install her cable, most of Thursday for actually moving her, and some of Friday for getting her settled and reminding her where things are in her apartment). I'm still out of sorts, but after spending the weekend washing and folding five loads of laundry, finishing my Halloween costume, cooking for the week, and planting about a third of the bulbs I had ordered before I realized that my summer was going to totally suck, I finally have a grip on my sanity again. A tenuous one, but a grip nonetheless.

(no subject)

Mom moved into American House on Thursday. For her, the move took a few hours, mostly because she demanded to go out for Chinese in between.

For me, the move took the better part of a week. The assisted living facility she was in before was a furnished room, while American House is an unfurnished one-bedroom apartment. So in addition to the usual moving hoopla of signing a lease and setting up the utilities (water is included; gas, electric, phone and cable are not), there's been extra fun in the form of moving her furniture and setting up her apartment in a wheelchair-friendly way (which means "not at all like her house"). I've dropped $400 at Target on all sorts of small things-- a phone with huge buttons, an alarm clock that is easy to turn on and off, hand soap, dish soap and one of those cleaning wands, easy-to-open snacks, blankets to replace the ones damaged during the three days she was lying on her floor, and so on and so on. I owe many, many thanks to shaddoth, Brian and Julianna for helping move her heavy furniture, and to John for being John.

In the three days she's been there, it's obvious that she's much happier. Today we stopped by to drop off more washcloths and towels, and discovered she wasn't in her apartment. She was upstairs in one of the common rooms playing cards.

Getting her moved took a big chunk of time that threw off my maintenance schedule (most of Friday for signing the lease, half of Sunday for moving her furniture, most of Wednesday for waiting around for ComCast to install her cable, most of Thursday for actually moving her, and some of Friday for getting her settled and reminding her where things are in her apartment). I'm still out of sorts, but after spending the weekend washing and folding five loads of laundry, finishing my Halloween costume, cooking for the week, and planting about a third of the bulbs I had ordered before I realized that my summer was going to totally suck, I finally have a grip on my sanity again. A tenuous one, but a grip nonetheless.