Okaasan and Me

FU%$#"ING Taiwan Bananas!

2012-03-01T12:50:00.003+09:00

Had ourselves some nice, expensive Taiwan bananas for breakfast today.
Nice. Not that special.
Think I'll stick to Philippine or Mexican bananas in future.

Okaasan refusing to eat the FU#$%&ING Taiwan bananas.
And I lost my temper with her which is NOT in the Dementia Carers 101 Manual.

After ripening them for a few days upstairs I'd reintroduced them to the kitchen fruit bowl and asked Yujiro to try at lunchtime to get Okaasan interested.
He tried and failed.
I tried again last night: LOOK! They are almost 100% yellow now, in fact this one is going black here...so they MUST be ripe enough to eat. They were a present, very rare, expensive, I bought them for you...and on and on and on and on....

She just wasn't having it.
Wouldn't even consider trying a taste to see if it was ok.
Absolutely certain that they had been picked too early and thus were inedible.
NOT the same as the Taiwan bananas she ate 70 years ago.
No way.

I got stroppy with her, which of course is stupid. She got more adamant. She didn't even have a level of politeness in her refusal: oh it's a present, but maybe they are not quite ready yet, maybe I will try them tomorrow or later this week.
It was just: No. Not good. Don't want to try.

Yujiro silently heated up the curry for dinner and put it on plates...then sat patting my back gently behind our chairs....to calm me down. Silent dinner apart from a few "delicious" comments on the curry.

AGHHHHH!!
I swiped the bananas off the table and took them back upstairs again.

It's pointless getting angry though: she is remembering and talking about a banana-eating experience 70 years ago, a happy memory - and THESE yellow/green things on the table now are not the same. Even if they were 100% yellow they would not be equal to her memory.
I lost the battle. Ate my own present and won't be buying any more...

We gotta talk...

2012-02-29T10:57:00.001+09:00

Know that gnawing feeling when you know you gotta talk? About "something".

It's with you all the time.

Shall I do it now? Or ...now? After dinner? At the weekend?

And then you find yourself just blurting it out all unplanned?

TWO Gotta Talks are lurking in my head at the moment.

With Yujiro and Okaasan.

Gotta talk to Yujiro about getting Okaasan assessed for daycare. Got to get him to start the process. Go along to the hospital and have an assessment or something.
I know it'll be a battle with her etc etc, but if one more student casually mentions how wonderfully their mother/friend/aunt is doing in a friendly, professional daycare system I might explode.

So, there's that.
But finding the time to have that conversation with him...hmm...when?

And the second? Gotta talk to Okaasan about using panty pads or sanitary towels at night. That'll be a conversation-and-a-half.
We had another bad toilet accident earlier this week. She shat pajamas and pants and left them on the nice recycle newspaper box my student made...and left the toilet outside bowl all dirty.....very very YUK.
I spent 30 minutes in the home center shop looking at fliptop trash cans, trying to find one with a pink top to suggest "for female use" - and one big enough for the old people diapers or pads.
Got one -15 L size with a pink top.

Just have to find the time to HAVE that conversation, woman to woman with Okaasan. Wondering whether I should show her the damaged flooring under her carpet...so she REALLY understands/remembers that she has a problem and takes action to help.

So. Thinking a lot recently about these two looming conversations. Thinking about how to argue my point and win. Thinking about how to say it in Japanese with Okaasan.

And then? Blurted out No. 1 Gotta Talk this morning....bugger.

Yujiro and I were talking calmly at breakfast about how to feed Okaasan when we go away for 1 night for my birthday (more on THAT another time) - and I found my mouth taking charge and starting the Gotta-get-Okaasan-assessed-for-daycare Talk.
All unprepped. Bugger.
But he listened. Didn't look happy. But sort of agreed. Maybe.
Was it a Japanese agreement? Just saying: Yes, I hear you.
Was it a real agreement...as in: Yes, I will actively do something about this?

Don't know. ;-(

One pair of knickers at a time..

2012-02-25T14:18:00.001+09:00

Progress...slowly...on the laundry system with Okaasan.

Used to be that we could only get her dirty laundry by sneaking into her room while she was out, whisking it away (at arm's length) into the washing machine, drying it upstairs in our apartment, and then sneaking it back into her room again - artfully scattering knickers in piles where she might come across them.
If I asked about doing laundry for her she'd say there was none to do, and then wash two pairs of knickers by hand while 25 others festered in one of two laundry boxes in her room. And I do mean festered...

This winter this system was getting harder because she didn't go out so much and sneaking in to the clothes store room while she was in the other room watching TV was TOO risky.

So I bravely stepped up the Help Action: marching into her room all brightly with a half filled basket of dirty clothes and asking if she wanted to put anything in the machine "because it is SO hard to do hand washing in winter isn't it!".
A few times she got in the "no laundry to do" excuse and I left it seconds too late to override that and march in and grab the stuff. against her will. Not that brave.

But generally it is working. I follow up the offer quick enough with a "let's have a look to see if you have anything".
This morning I got into the living room with the bright: "got any laundry for the machine?" and as she was muttering about laundry and standing up I moved quickly towards the door into the other room and got her to follow me inside where I pointed out the two laundry boxes...both sitting innocently covered with old newspapers...and Lo, and Behold! - opened up to reveal the usual army of knickers and pajamas.
I stood there with the laundry cue basket and she picked thru her bits put them into my basket...everytime she looked like she was hesitating I cheerfully gabbled on about how BIG the wonderful washing machine is "yes, yes - give it all to me!!"...and the other basket and finally out to the laundry room.
"When I was young we didn't have washing machines, we did it by hand" said Okaasan a little embarrassed, and I gave her the reassurances that it is "SO hard to hand wash in winter and you were sick last week and didn't have time to do it all did you etc etc etc".

An hour later I gave her back a bowl of 5 pairs of pants and a set of pajamas and a circle clothes hanger....and took the bulk of the stuff to dry upstairs. Thought it best to let her hang up some of the stuff - it took her ages...because the clothes drying rack in her room is covered with everyday clothes...well, if summer T-shirts and hula skirts can be counted as everyday wear in February.

It is sort of working as a system. When the bulk of the stuff is dry I will give it back to her.

Letting me do her personal laundry MUST be a slightly embarrassing and I'm trying to make it as unstressy, but no-nonsense firm. Mostly succeeding. But the whole transaction is finely balanced, a moment too late and it is hard to invade her private space and take her dirty clothes...and trying to keep the whole thing light and friendly and done with a feeling of helpful togetherness.
Stretches me as an actress it does!

Meanwhile....

These are Taiwan bananas. Okaasan's absolute favorite. Since before the war. She won't eat any other kind. Tell us all that endlessly. You only have to mention "Taiwan" or "banana" or "fruit" or "yellow" or "monkeys"...(well maybe not all of those words)....and the "Taiwan bananas are the best" story comes out for an airing.

Regular supermarkets don't sell these much, the Philippines and Mexico grow them cheaper. Okaasan is adamant that ONLY Taiwan bananas are worth eating.

Last night I found them in our local, cheapo supermarket. Bought them as a sweet present to my dear Okaasan to make her happy.

Happy???????????? Dream on.

See that hint of green up near the stalks? It is a clear sign that these were picked too early, so they won't be delicious. No, not even if we leave them for a week under the kotatsu . In fact...could it be??...maybe they are NOT Taiwan bananas!!! Maybe the label is a lie! Never have Taiwan bananas been seen with green bits like this. No!

After 4 rounds of THAT conversation I was clearing my lunchtime plates and making kitchen escape plans. Yujiro could zap the offending potatoes in the microwave the other night, I don't think that works with bananas. Maybe a pot of yellow paint would be a good idea!

So much for a nice present of your favorite food. :-((

Takes a lot of patience to be an Oyomesan.

* Good News: I haven't had my leg spasms for two mornings now!! I am drinking a LOT of water and eating almost healthily..and two boxes of chocolate are surviving uneaten. Maybe it IS dehydration? I am thinking of getting a humidifier machine to improve my working air.

Got lots of potassium in the bananas though!

All shook up...

2012-02-24T13:56:00.001+09:00

Had 24 hours with no thigh spasms, so crossing my fingers (cos it's safer than my legs), that I've conquered this problem.

Drinking LOADS of water.
Eating veggies and fruit. Banana growers in the Philippines are celebrating.
Turned on the steamer on the classroom heater to "high".
Stretching a lot.
Pushed the cats to the side of the bed.
Um...what else?

Yesterday morning I had some small spasms on waking up, and one at the computer table. I felt them coming and started stretching...seemed to keep them at bay.

Maybe.
Lots of advice from students and friends: WATER seems to be a main point.

Okaasan is back on track though: took herself out this week for a walk and went downtown with Yujiro yesterday to do some shopping. Eating loads again.

I talked to her about using the diaper pads at night and left the packet in her room. And I bought a toilet trash box to put near the toilet as a hint to use it for the wet pants. But actually the box is too small for the pants, so I'll have to get another one.
I don't think she'll use it now though. Last week's crises is finished and she thinks she can get up and go to the toilet easily. So she doesn't think she needs to use these "old people pads".
But I sort of hope that if the topic of these pads is in her life, slowly but surely she might accept the idea someday that she might as well use them....if she sees the packet in her room....she won't do it because I suggested it, but if it is there and someday she might....

Hoping.

Meanwhile our Alice in Wonderland life continues: the other night we had the Under cooked Potato event.

Eating Oden, kind of a table top pot full of fish paste bits and veggies. Okaasan really loves SOFT potatoes. But Yujiro has slightly undercooked them....by the 4th time of Okaasan commenting that the potatoes were hard and that really I like SOFT potatoes...he took my hint and took the offending tubers out of the pot and zapped them in the microwave to make them acceptable to her.
You can so easily understand how domestic violence can occur in families caring for dementia sufferers. Over such a small thing like this: she isn't really complaining. But because she says it so many times, with the same tone of voice you can't help but get irritated and feel your tension rising.
I watched Rain Man recently - Tom Cruise and Dustin Hoffman. Many of their conversations seemed eerily familiar! No - the maple syrup must be on the table BEFORE the pancakes arrive!!!!!

Grrrrrr: YES! The potatoes are UNDER COOKED BUT OK TO EAT!!!

Night visitors...aghhhhhhhh!!!!

2012-02-22T14:44:00.001+09:00

Woke up at 5 am today with the MOST AWFUL spasms in my right thigh.
Lay there scrunched up like a corkscrew moaning and gasping.

It stopped.

5 minutes later it started again.

And again.
And again.

Happened about 10 times between 5-7 am. Made slightly better with stretching and back pushing by my resident ski instructor - in between him on the computer doing internet searches trying to find out WHY.

10 times! Once I was half way up the stairs with two, luckily empty coffee cups - when it struck and I was felled into a gibbering wreck.

By 8 am he and I were at the local hospital, because unlike Okaasan I actually think these places can do some good.
The orthopedic guy had a good feel all over my legs and tapped me in various places. Then sent me for X-rays.

All came: Zilch. Nadda. Nothing.

All looks ok.

WTF?

I have no idea. Dr. Google has various advice about bad circulation and lack of potassium etc, dehydration, the other suspects are heavy cats on bed, too many blankets, favoring my right leg too much when I walk....and "r" in the month?
I don't know.

Now I am drinking lots of water and I'm going to eat a vegetable shop a day.
And go to bed tonight with trepidation.

Anyone any ideas?
This is like cramp, but not. After cramp you can't walk easily. After these spasms - each time- I could walk without any problem.
It was always the same place on my outer right thigh, where my hand touches if I stand.

Awful. Ouch. Blue murder.
Anyway, better go home now and get ready to meet the accountant for my taxes.
More pain incoming I expect.

Happy forgetting...

2012-02-20T18:57:00.003+09:00

"Good morning Okaasan! Here's the carpet all nice and clean, I'll put it down for you shall I? How's your neck today?"
"My neck?"
"Yes, you had pain in your neck since last week..."
"My neck? I did? I forgot....maybe it's ok!"

Oh, what a wonderful state to be in. Really. All the bad stuff just floats away and you don't remember it anymore.

I had computer/tax data worries last week....wish I could forget them. :-)

But Okaasan just knows that she is sitting there in her room, watching TV and the sun is shining, and in a few hours someone will give her lunch or clean laundry...and maybe later she'll go for a little walk.
And she is happy in her life: had a loving family, married a decent man, had two boys, traveled the world and saw amazing things, still proudly active and interested in TV and cooking shows, and the newspaper.

What more can a person want?

Climbing out of the abyss...

2012-02-19T08:26:00.002+09:00

She sits upright watching TV.
She gets up off the carpet and walks to the toilet.
She eats a bowl of rice, instant packet soup and a boiled egg left on the kitchen table.
She remembers to complain about the neck ache...sometimes.

I'd say Okaasan is getting better.

Phew!

But still not eating much: I don't want a bit of dinner....I will eat a little...no, I won't eat now....had that last night in the space of an hour. And ended up with a pan of cooked tofu and egg and a pack of heated up rice going cold...but actually I was happy cos it meant I could have my own dinner on a plate upstairs in front of the TV. Okaasan slept on thru the evening and never took any of the food I'd left out.

Upstairs I have computer parts and boxes all over the room and a large carpet dripping onto newspaper and hopefully drying, strung across the ironing board and a clothes-frame. The cats are sitting beneath it all watching the drips.

It's chaos.

But.

Yesterday: escaped it all and went DOG SLEDDING!!!!!

Can't upload pictures yet, cos the computer isn't set up for that yet....but here is my friend's picture of ...Oyomesan walking the doggies!!! Mush! Mush!

Oh it was FUN!!!!

We're still standing. A bit.

2012-02-18T04:05:00.000+09:00

OMG.
We did it.
GOT Okaasan up off the carpet.
Out of the dirty clothes.
Into a bath.
While we blitz cleaned her room.
Then with clean body and hair she was safely back - sitting in the kotatsu in front of the TV.

And we fell exhausted into bed by 8.15 pm. Which is why I am now here at 3.30 am.
AND I am writing this on the revamped home computer - which yesterday deigned to relocate my 2011-12 tax data thanks to huge efforts by Yujiro.

Huge efforts all round yesterday.
I sat in my classroom before coming home running over the conversations we could have with Okaasan to persuade her to stand up and walk.

Tried out all sorts of ideas (even though Yujiro was going to be there, as it was me driving this attempt I wanted to have the arguments ready in both languages).

Went home just before 5 pm.
Okaasan curled up on the carpet with pants/papers/supermarket flyers/wet towels/little bags/odd socks/God-knows-what all around her.
I told Yujiro the Action Plan. He agreed. We went in.

He used Appeal to Pride tactic: "Okaasan I am away for two days, dear Oyomesan is out all day tomorrow - we are worried about leaving you alone like this! Can you stand up? Show us you can stand up? What about a nice warm bath? Maybe you can't stand up, maybe we should ask a day care visitor to come tomorrow...etc etc etc. ".

Repeat for the next 40 mins until her pride kicked in "I don't need a day care person, I'm not nearly dead, I can stand up, NO! I Don't need that chair to help me, oh but my neck, oh but my head, I can stand up" on and on.

Her leg muscles were weak and it took a long time for her to sit, and then kneel and finally to haul her body. She stood up and wobbled on unused leg muscles to the waiting bath.

As soon as the bathroom door closed we cleaned her room, working as a team to grab and bag trash and move the carpets around. Another 40 mins of cleaning.

The carpet where she has lain the last few days was soaking wet. With urine.
Worse: it all soaked through the carpet, thru the under-carpet and stained the wood flooring. Don't think this was just from the last 3 days, we think it was long term.
Time to DO something about the incontinence.

We cleaned the floor, put down newspaper, rotated the under-carpet - switched the two top carpets and removed one for washing.
Did a massive cleaning in the room - put down a clean sheet and pillow.

After an hour Okaasan got herself out of the bath and sat down in her refreshed room and SAT watching TV for a bit, wanted a bit of light dinner!!! and..then didn't want it....watched some more TV and finally lay down to sleep again.

I looked out the big bag of old people panty-pads. I will try to talk to Okaasan about these tomorrow. Recently she told me she that the reason she has taken to wearing a hula flower skirt at night is so "I can go to the toilet more easily than pajama bottoms", I shall suggest a night-pad and hula skirt as suitable nightwear.

He and I sat in the kitchen eating curry and congratulating ourselves, then I washed the foul carpet in the bath by trampling on it with my jeans rolled up like a French vine yard worker....did that 3 times, and THEN discovered the needle, luckily with the palm of my hand.

whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa.

In bed, exhausted by 8.15 pm.

Helping ME, to help YOU.

2012-02-17T06:23:00.000+09:00

Badly in need of Tom Cruise's persuasive powers here.

Okaasan is still laying on the living room carpet in piss-soaked pants, refusing to eat and rejecting offers of help.

This is the third day now.

Both she and Yujiro subscribe to this: Don't Eat and It'll All Get Better idea, and Okaasan adds dollops of Don't Need Help, Just Let Me Be.

And so she lays there on the carpet, half covered with the heated table blanket, unable to stand up quickly enough and get to the toilet. The stench has reached the kitchen.

Still don't know what is wrong. "My neck hurts" could be anything.

Yujiro just lets her be, while he worries about our computer troubles and his own so-so health. I was out working all day and got home after 9 pm.
He said he'd given her some water to drink and helped her sit up to drink it.

Now is Friday morning and she has been like this since Wednesday.
Tomorrow he goes off for 2 days of ski work. I am going out all day with friends to try dog-sledding.

HOW much longer are we going to let this situation slide on?
As we went to bed last night I told him that if she isn't able/wanting to stand up and come to the kitchen table for at least a cup of tea by tonight - we should be getting outside help and he should be cancelling work this weekend.
I so, so SO want to call an ambulance and get a team of nice capable, bossy professionals to come in and sweep Okaasan off to hospital.

It is SO hard though to know at what point to intervene and help Okaasan. She is so proud and independent. So confident that she knows best in health matters. Hides obvious needs like toilet failures and gets angry if we try to do something for her.

I just peered into her room from the kitchen and I can see that Okaasan has managed to get to the clothes drawers and get out a clean shirt and put that on, and she has moved her position around on the carpet. That's a good sign.
I will go in a bit later with a bowl of hot water and a face cloth and get her to wash her own face and body. It's the least I can do.

It is so Not Good to see her like this. But stepping in to help is hard. He lets it slide on. I think today is make or break day.

Last one standing.

2012-02-15T20:00:00.000+09:00

Sorry, haven't blogged.
Too busy being the last healthy person in the household.

Yujiro stopped work finally after 3-4 weeks of non-stop skiing and taxi biking - came home Sunday night...and spent Monday and Tuesday in bed feeling sick (but apparently well enough to watch soccer games on his computer phone)....

Now Okaasan is complaining of a neck ache - which is almost certainly as a result of falling asleep slumped between the sofa and the table - so SHE isn't eating either and is laying low. As before, we'll let her do that for a few days until she forgets why she isn't eating and starts again...

But interestingly, she did remember that Yujiro wasn't feeling well on Tuesday and came into the kitchen to ask me how he was etc.

Of course: mother and son stopped eating in accordance with Nishi-sensei's creed. Okaasan gives over-eating as the cause of all sickness. In one wonderful moment recently she responded to my gentle, idle chat about the Emperor going in for a heart bypass operation with a comment which kind of suggested even the Emperor of Japan has brought his problems on himself by over-eating....I am imagining maybe the Emperor kicks back on the sofa with a mega-bucket of KFC and a bag of COSTCO potato chips.

Anyway. Yujiro is now back on track and able to battle with our on-going computer troubles...new computer seems to be a better use of money than repairing the old and my tax data may be rescued and fall emotionally into the welcoming arms of the accountant. Or not.

Me? Working, working and.....TUBING!!!!!

This is what bad English teachers do when a hiccup in the schedule gives them an out-of-the-blue Tuesday afternoon off work !!

Just a little side note: cos it isn't big enough to deserve a whole blog entry of its own. Our local city services free newsletter has a big feature this month about dementia and people who care for family at home and MRI imaging etc.

I left it for Yujiro to read and absorb. And then...I brought the extra copy from my English school classroom and slipped it into Okaasan's morning newspaper too.

I really wonder WHAT a person with dementia thinks about their own condition. Okaasan isn't so far gone that she isn't aware of her own failings, I am sure of that. I hope that reading about the newsletter advice about the importance of exercise/ chat with family/ helping out around the home etc will nudge her to think: "yes, I should be doing these things, otherwise these little memory lapses I have will worsen".

I don't think the newsletter advises being extra kind of your Oyomesan though....

Ignoring the right-thing-to-do

2012-02-12T13:43:00.002+09:00

Didn't do it.
Take Okaasan to the Snow Festival.
Made her go on her own. Alone in the dark and minus temperatures.
While I caroused with friends and enjoyed food and alcohol.

Is that bad enough to get the gates of heaven slammed in my face?
I expect so.

Just couldn't summon the energy to be that giving and nice.
Last week was a loooong week. I needed "me" time.

So yesterday I gave Okaasan lunch and sat chatting with her for a bit.
Then mid-afternoon I revitalised the leftover kimchee nabe dish from 2 nights ago by adding in more tofu and left it for Okaasan on the table-top cooker. Made sure she had some pocket money.

"So sorry Okaasan, tonight we have to go out with foreign friends from Tokyo - who are noisy scary gaijin that only speak English, you'd hate to meet them, so best to stay away...".
Well, didn't say the last part, but implied it.
"Oh? Is everyone going to the Snow Festival?"
"Yes, tomorrow is the last day - if you want to go you should go this afternoon!"

Okaasan looked a little sad to be left out of our plans....and be left home with reheated nabe. But, but, but - that is tough life when you get moved to live with the younger generation - sometimes they will want to do stuff without you.
It's the sad part of getting old and needing the life care of others, unavoidable because your life and the younger generation life aren't always going to neatly dovetail like a soppy Hollywood movie.

So. I left home and went by myself to the Snow Festival - after a week of people, people, people it was relaxing to just alone in the crowds down in the park - admiring the big snow statues.
Can't bring you pix because the desktop computer is in pieces on the carpet behind me and never bothered to put photo upload things into this laptop.

Later I enjoyed a Happy Hour beer in a bar overlooking the ice festival, then met up with 12 others for our annual Sapporo Couch Surfing hosts and surfers dinner and festival night walk.
We came home after 11 pm shattered and happy.

Okaasan had eaten the nabe. Burned the pan a bit. But the house was still standing.

Today I am home in my pajamas recovering from a Night Out. Had lunch with Okaasan and heard that she HAD gone to the festival yesterday and eaten and drunk something ( she can't remember what) in one of the covered festival eating sheds. She is still capable of going and doing something like this...thankfully!

So, at least she saw the festival a bit. And we did too. Separately this year.

....How late in the day is it ok to stay in your pajamas until?

and OH MY GOD ! Whitney Houston? I am so sad. So sad. What a beautiful lady and voice. So sad.

TGIF

2012-02-10T08:19:00.001+09:00

Snow Festival.
Couch Surfing guests.
Friend's parents and guest and a sushi birthday party.
Taking people places in my car. Hotels, suitcases, clean sheets for people.
HUGE melt of 2 days, and then the whole city refroze into an ice rink.
New students.
Potential new students.
Choose a text book for a class from April.
Work.
Shop.
Computer still broken - because he doesn't have time to fix it...
ALL my 2011-12 school accounts are IN the computer....and tax season is now.
This
That
More of this
And that.

TGIF.

Sapporo is REALLY icy now, after 2 days of April-level temperatures. Followed by freeze.
I stopped Okaasan going out on Wednesday, she really can't judge weather conditions and road surface.
But yesterday I got home and her little pink flowery slippers were in the hall and she was out in the ice.
I called Yujiro at work to tell him and he agreed to use the telephone GPS to find her downtown and bring her back safely.
He found her in the Seicomart coffee shop in the underground station area and took her for dinner, and then brought her home by taxi.

Funny - Okaasan was apparently surprised to know there WAS a Sapporo Snow Festival happening in the park above the coffee shop.....of course the city subway posters, the local TV, the newspapers have been full of nothing but Snow Festival news for days now, we've talked about it endlessly - but somehow none of that had actually stayed in her mind as a fact: There is a festival in the city center park right now.
I wonder if we should take her...or not?
I'd rather not. Just go and enjoy it all myself, or with a Couch Surf guest. If Okaasan doesn't really realize it is happening anyway....I guess she wouldn't feel disappointment in missing it !!!

Mission Accomplished

2012-02-06T08:08:00.000+09:00

Done!
2 weeks in my care and Okaasan is still alive. And I haven't gone stark, raving bonkers. (lovely old British phrase that...)

On the final day I slipped away early and took myself skiing, came home mid-afternoon to find the hallway full of bags and skis and boot and stuff. He was home.

Okaasan all happy to see THAT strange man in the house.
Cats predictably terrified by the sound of rustle-rustle ski pants.
Family dinner round the good old nabe stew pot.
Done.

This week is Sapporo Snow Festival week - a major event in this city. He is working as a bike taxi driver at one of the festival sites and will be home every night. I have Couch Surfing guests, and my friend's parents are in town....it'll be a busy week.

SO relieved that 2 weeks of care is done. Easier than in past years because I am getting less flustered with the cooking and the boring conversations....but still not a great way to spend 2 weeks.
All over for now - let the festival begin :-)

Here is the blog of a sometime-student of mine, she works as a tour guide and takes great pix of Hokkaido life and food....she did these pix of the festival yesterday.
Kimi-Tourguide's Sapporo Snow Festival 2012!

The end is nigh....

2012-02-04T20:50:00.002+09:00

Counting down the hours now...

And I went out on a double-header of meals with Okaasan. Lunch AND dinner.
Got power knowing the end is nigh!

Had hoped my friend and her baby might be here at lunchtime to ease the conversation load, but a sudden snow shower kept her home till later in the afternoon.

So lunch with Okaasan: easy reheated curry and chat about knives and forks and wartime supplies and crabs.
Then Okaasan branched off into a new tale about how "rough" wartime soap was on the face, it had bits in it and that scratched the face...
I sat there thinking: "funny, haven't heard this story before, wonder why she is talking about this directly from food topics etc"...and then I REALIZED!
Just before lunch Okaasan had gone to wash her face and hands in the bathroom, where the past week or two I've had out a nice soap someone gave me...and it has seeds in it, I forget what, but little brown seeds...and yes, they do come out onto your skin.
With washing hands or body it doesn't matter - a little skin rubbing - but on face I'm sure it isn't nice.

How interesting! I'm pretty sure that the just before lunch face washing stayed in Okaasan's mind, but somehow slipped into her usual wartime food/father brought crab/food shortages chat.
Maybe of course there WAS rough soap wartime in Japan, and the rough soap in our bathroom triggered her memory of that. Interesting.

My friend and her baby finally made it to my home mid-afternoon - she's lived in Sapporo 3 weeks now, but this is the first time weather and our schedules actually fitted to get her here.
We had coffee and cake time, while the cats bolted for safety at their first encounter with a human baby sound, and later Okaasan got introduced - which she enjoyed....chance to coo over a baby and it set her off on "when I had babies I didn't go out with them for months and months cos of infections"....tales which she told me again and again all over dinner.

And so.
He is home tomorrow.
And.....

...this afternoon in a quiet moment I....

BOOKED MY AIR TICKETS TO THE UK THIS JULY!!!!!!

NOW I am really going. July 25 to August 11. 17 whole wonderful days.
It's my reward for the past 2 weeks of Oyomesanning.....well, I am paying for it...so it's my reward to myself.

Oh yes. ;-)

Throwing beans at scary men.

2012-02-04T08:30:00.000+09:00

Bloody foot prints across the hall.
The victim stretched out sorrowfully by the heater.
OMG! OMG! OMG!

Detective Oyomesan was on the case.
But the fat cat victim couldn't talk, and his fur is so thick I couldn't find the wound.

And I had to go to work.

Came home early to take Popo to the vets...by taxi....
The vet too had a hard time hunting around the fat, plush pussy for a wound...but finally found a torn paw nail and a little bit of blood.
Phew!
Two years ago these two kitties came into our lives and I wanted to celebrate that happily, not with some rush-to-the-vet-with-credit-card-drama.

Two years ago they were like this: skinny and scared.

Chichi (left) and Popo (right).

And now they are fat, muscular and far too confident....

Popo (left) and Chichi (right).

ANYWAY. Back to the old lady. Cos this blog is supposedly about life with HER...not me rambling on about my cats....

During the day, thinking about how the cats came to us 2 years ago, I realized it was Feb. 3 Setsubun, the Bean Throwing Festival in Japan.

Originally I'd wanted to call the cats "Mame" and "Maki", meaning "Bean" and "Scatter/Scatter", but agreed to Yujiro's wish to delve into his childhood for manga character names instead - he chose the names of two wolf brothers, thus ensuring I will stand in the garden for years calling names which sound in English like Moulin Rouge showgirls.

Bean Throwing Festival is a driving out the bad luck, welcoming in good luck event. Families get dried soy beans and in the evening throw them around the house saying "Demons go away! Good luck come in!", then you eat the same number of beans as your age and eat a roll of seaweed stuffed with vegetables and fish facing in a different lucky direction every year.

Drive away demons! Great! Excellent chance to bond with Okaasan over a traditional event and drive away scary men ringing door bells. Yes! Bingo!

I bought the most traditional-looking box of beans in a supermarket full of peanuts, chocolates and even chocolate-covered soybeans (Hokkaido isn't so traditional) and bought two big sushi rolls.

Got home to whisk the cat away to the vets in a waiting taxi, found Okaasan washing underpants by hand in the bathroom....and wearing NO underpants....just a pajama top.

Just as well I hadn't brought my friend and her baby home as planned before injured cat saga. Okaasan is increasingly get strange about her clothing choice....this is the third ? time recently I've found her at home without underpants on...

An hour later Okaasan, finally wearing suitable clothes, decided to go out. I gave her money and off she went. I prepped the dinner: HER favorite fish salmon, potatoes, veggies, soup, sushi roll etc etc and a box of soy beans for banishing demons.

Dinner time. Okaasan didn't come back.

Happens all the time.....grrrr...I plan something....and she doesn't show in time, or doesn't feel like eating it.

Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!

At 7.30 pm I ate dinner alone. Read the newspaper. Washed my plates. Went back upstairs. Poured a glass of plum wine. Found a movie on the TV. Sat down.

The front door opened downstairs.

Grrrr.....back downstairs. Heat up the food again, chat, chat, chat.

Okaasan was VERY happy about the soy beans. All giggly. We went into her room, opened the window and she took a handful of beans and tossed them out into the snow. Then she gave me beans to toss too.

Hope THAT drives away the scary door bell ringers from her mind.

Maybe it'll just attract crows near the windows to eat the beans and the sound of their wings near the windows will give Okaasan all kinds of other scary imaginings.

Back to the kitchen where I served up her dinner and sat awhile talking about the lucky sushi roll and things. Then finally, about 8.30 I made the friend-telephoning-soon excuse and left her eating alone.

One more day to go! One more day to go! He just mailed me that he hopes to be back tomorrow afternoon. And then my Full-time Oyomesan Duties will be over, for now.

And will the doorbell ringer stop? I guess so.

Whether scared away by the sight of the car in the parking area, or the reassuring presence of Dear Son in the home....or by the magic of dried soy beans, we will never know.

Bells, bells..

2012-02-03T10:53:00.003+09:00

The Phantom Doorbell Ringer is getting braver.
According to Okaasan.
He came and rang the doorbell in broad day-light yesterday!

She says.
No - NOT the lunch delivery company, it was after that.
And before I came home at 3.30 pm.

Hmmm.....
I went and rang the neighbor's doorbell. Partially to see if that sound would get Okaasan scurrying to our front door, and also just to see if they'd had any similar problems.
She didn't. They hadn't. Nice couple. He walks his dog and coughs up his guts a few times a day, she delivers food plates to someone locally. She even came by later and gave me their phone number and said Okaasan should ring them anytime she is nervous and we aren't home. Nice neighbors.

But still. Okaasan believes someone rang the doorbell and then ran away by the time she got there. At this rate we'll have to disable the doorbell or reroute it only to the second floor.

I prepped her dinner late afternoon and went in at 5 pm to say I was "out to work this evening, but not home too late. Your dinner is all in the kitchen for you"....had to narrowly avoid Okaasan's kind offer to wait for me so we could have dinner together - Noooooooooooooo!!! I wanna escape! I wanna have dinner alone without you and boring conversations! Pleaseeeeee!!!

Actually an airy lie:"It's ok, sometimes my students at late, so I am late. I'll eat something later, don't worry!"

Unluckily, one of the cats escaped outside and hadn't returned by the time I left, so I had to leave the door a little open for him (and all the bad men of the area), after the class I got my curry as a take-out and came home to make sure the cat had returned (and that Okaasan hadn't lost all her pants to an intruder)....but it was STILL nice to eat alone with the TV and a beer.

Talking of which: one of you kind readers asked me if it is possible to eat dinner and watch TV at the same time with Okaasan. To ease the conversation.
Well, not really - the TV is away in her room, and not actually in the kitchen. We have watched and ate together at important times (when that judo star had a tacky public wedding on TV or when there is all-important Japanese ice dancing), but generally the TV is turned off during dinner.
Also - although it's a big hassle for me to do these dinners, it IS Okaasan's only conversation of the day. So it is valuable for her. She talks to nobody else. So....hassle is ongoing.

Silence is...silence.

2012-02-02T12:47:00.000+09:00

Another day, another night.

Last night's dinner was hokke/mackerel - one of my favorite fish, plus huge, gorgeous tomatoes from a friend's mother and the usual rice, soup, pickles.
Okaasan was ok...but not so positive.

As I was exclaiming over the delicious fish and the sweet tomatoes...she was saying: "hmm, has a lot of bones, I prefer salmon" and "do you think it is sweet?"....not actually complaining - but just not giving me warm positive stuff to work with.
This telling-it-as-it-is about food is very depressing - I usually take it personally and think it's an attack on my shopping/cooking, but really it's a Japanese thing....criticising the food. I see friends and students do it in restaurants with eachother - a great course lunch and they say "hmm, this fish isn't so delicious is it?" in some strange group whinge. I don't get it. Of course, in England - if the food really isn't good people say so - but I feel that Japanese people enjoy a good group-whinge about the food...and then eat it.

In a restaurant it is a bit sad, in a family kitchen when someone else shopped and cooked for you? Pretty unfeeling I'd say. But then - luckily - I am not Japanese! :-)

Anyway. It shut me up a bit. Can't work without some help here Okaasan!
Give me some positive vibes!

So I ate silently...for about 10 minutes.
It's hard to do. Eat and make only appreciative noises about the food.
No words.
I kind of waited to see what Okaasan would do, she sighed a few times and ate.
I ate.
She ate.
Finally....:"When is Yujiro coming home?"

This almost complete lack of conversation input is interesting. I wonder what is going on in Okaasan's head? Does she feel the silence stretching on and on...or does she think it's only been a short time since the last words...and is waiting for another word to come along?
But unless prompted into one of her favorite topics by me - she doesn't start a conversation, even something banal like weather/TV/food.....the familiar old band-aids of any conversation.

Anyway. Another night done.

Tonight I am taking myself out for a curry dinner. I have an early evening lesson and I'll slip home mid-afternoon to feed cats and set out leftovers in flasks for Okaasan...and then have myself some relaxing time with food, beer and a good book.

Onwards.

Routine, routine...

2012-02-01T06:40:00.003+09:00

Trying to banish all thoughts of scary men (and it IS always men isn't it!), I gave Okaasan a day of good, reassuring routines.

Took the newspaper to her room and chatted about the weather.
Started the morning bath running and gave her the hair dryer.
Left for work with a cheery "Goodbye! I'm going now!"
Lunch delivery while I was away.
Came home at 4 pm and my coming into the kitchen kick-starts her late afternoon activity - so she got up, got dressed and set out for a walk.
Laid the table for two and heated up various leftovers.
Okaasan home at 6.15 pm. More weather chat.
Dinner on the table at 7 pm.
An hour - an HOUR!!!! - of chat about flat fish, prewar fish supplies to Kawagoe, wartime food, fish types of Japan, fish prices, Okaasan's mother's family in Sapporo a long time ago (10 children !!), crabs, rich Chinese tourists, flat fish...

....and finally I washed my dinner dishes and she washed her dishes and we both retreated to our living rooms and TVs.

I didn't put the sign on the front door, and decided to switch off the outside light. There is a scattering of ice candles outside, in various stages of success as I battle with buckets and water, so I think any bad man can readily recognise that someone cack-handed is living here.

Not a scary man in sight.
I hope.

It's February!!!! He is home....???? Saturday??? Sunday???

This past week I've heard 3 different student stories about relatives starting day care center attendance. Sounds soooooo nice. Hope I can push the mountain of indifference (Yujiro) and get Okaasan assessed, accepted and willing to go to day care by next winter.
That's how I think of it: first have to persuade Yujiro that this IS something worth pushing for. Then of course, supporting him while he persuades Okaasan to go for a health check with a despised doctor...then beyond assessment and far, far into the future there would probably be a visit to observe a day center and then hopefully a grudging agreement to try it.

One day my day care center service will come.
;-)

Sliding into paranoia?

2012-01-31T07:38:00.002+09:00

Her. Not me. Although maybe I'm not so far behind....

Last night I had Couch Surfing guests (a Korean mother and daughter with the biggest suitcases in the world), so I was out making them welcome and got home about 9 pm.

I'd met Okaasan at 4 pm when I first got home and she was just heading out for a walk. Grabbed some laundry from her room, found the lunch delivery soup pot that she'd lost (it was in the microwave) and managed to do a bit of cleaning.
I cooked her fave flat fish in soy sauce and tofu soup, left it all out in the kitchen for her. Veggies, rice etc.

Got home at 9 pm and found none of it eaten. Okaasan asleep in her room.

???????? Had she come home and sat down by the TV while the soup was heating, and fallen asleep? Had she eaten while out? Was she sick?

Just now I went in to her room to check.

"Morning Okaasan? How are you? You didn't eat dinner last night, so are you ok?"
"I didn't eat dinner? Me?"
"Yes, when I came home at 9 pm from work (little white lie), the fish and the soup etc was still here in the kitchen. Are you feeling ok?"
"The suspicious person was outside, so I switched off all the lights."
"?????But the lights were on....about dinner...."
"There's that sign outside about Don't Ring the Doorbell. Why is that there?"
"Because last week you said someone rang the doorbell at 10 pm."
"Last night a man was in the street, I could see him. It gave me a bad feeling. I switched out the lights.".
"Well, it's ok....don't worry. We have a big strong front door. As long as you are ok, I was worried about you not eating dinner."
"Dinner? I didn't eat dinner?"

....and at that point at escaped!!!!!!!

Is her paranoia increasing and taking root?
Is this because Yujiro is away and she has an underlying feeling of anxiousness?
Or is there actually someone hanging around because the car is gone from outside the house 2 weeks, and lights are on all night in the house?
Or is the moon made of cheese?

Hmmm.....
Point 1: I must remember to take DOWN the door sign daytime and hide it, so that it doesn't trigger the whole story again. Maybe it is just reinforcing her paranoia. I should put it up just before I go to bed, when she is safely asleep by the TV.
Point 2: It will be very interesting to see if this story continues once Yujiro and the car are back next week. I'm betting it won't.

Mind you - we won't know if that's because the suspicious man has noticed the car and moved on to scare other old ladies, or if Okaasan is feeling safe again and her paranoia has subsided.

I think I need to go and have nice normal conversations with my English class students :-)

Half-way there...

2012-01-29T21:08:00.000+09:00

Only another week to go.
Seems he went away ages ago.

Good things: I get to use the whole electric blanket in bed. And the TV remote. And silence from noisy Japanese game shows on TV.

Bad things: oh you know....

But a good day today cos I escaped out and had fun in the sunshine and snow with the Hokkaido International Adventure Club - snow shoeing in the art park, followed by 20 people plus enjoying cheese fondue and mulled wine lunch.
WISH I could upload the pix of this...the sculptures of naked ladies and animals in the snow...and the food....but my laptop isn't set up for that. So they'll have to wait.
It was great to be outside working up a sweat, trying to balance on the snow shoes made out of bamboo, nylon cords and ingenuity...

I left Okaasan's lunch in flasks on the table, she was fine. Didn't go out again today. Pity, because the morning was nice and not cold....but of course she let that weather slip away.

Funny conversation about the mystery door knocker - who is of course called a "suspicious person" in English.

Okaasan asked me if the suspicious person had come back.
No, I don't think so. I didn't hear the doorbell in the first place. You did. Did you hear it again?
No. I was asleep.
Well, maybe the suspicious person didn't come then.
Yes, maybe....

I'm hoping my Please Don't Ring the Doorbell sign, and the signs of activity near the doorstep (I am trying to make ice candles) in buckets etc will warn off anyone who comes for a snoop.

Tired tonight. Fun in the sun and snow though. Bit tired having dinner with Okaasan, it was extra-hard to think up conversation topics. I settled for Korean food..Korea....travelling...Kenya...game parks....Chinese tourists have money....Koreans were looked down on by Japanese wartime...
It was ok. Okaasan gets far more chat time with just me - it is probably putting her dementia into reverse.
Not sure what it's doing to MY braincells.

Japanese Immersion Course.

2012-01-28T20:06:00.001+09:00

Japanese Homestay to Improve Your Nihongo!

Woman-to-woman conversations twice a day, with regular repeats to aid listening skills!

Wide range of topics: wartime shortages; cooking; sardine fishing; my father did black-market business with American G.I.'s; the health benefits of oranges; how to grill fish bones; child labor in wartime Japan; knitting with younger siblings hanging off you; knitting V-neck sweaters; how my husband choked on a fishbone.....

....and return to start again.

Catch it all a second, third time and then try our special service: Blended Stories. Can YOU tell where one story ends and another starts?

Come on up to snowy Sapporo - and get snowed/frozen in with a real-life Japanese old lady.

Enjoy hours and hours of one-on-one time to hone your Japanese language skills.

Soon. Please!

Ringers? Knockers?

2012-01-27T10:48:00.004+09:00

What DO you call people who ring the doorbell late at night to check if the house is occupied or not?

In old Hollywood movies there are little boys - probably called "scallywags" by an adult character - who tie strings to door knobs, rap the knocker and run away.

Not sure what the word is for the maybe-person who Okaasan thinks ring the door at night. I don't know in English, and I certainly don't know in Japanese!
I'm using the catch all "warui-hito" or "bad person" in my conversations with Okaasan on this topic.

Last night I was working - left Okaasan the remains of the fish paste and veggie stew thing on the table and hoped she didn't break her neck on the awful ice coating Sapporo roads at the moment.
I was home early afternoon and managed to get her OUT for her walk by 3 pm, at least in daylight.
I went off to work ...and a nice little sidetrip to my curry restaurant for dinner ...and came home after 9 pm hen Okaasan was already sleeping in front of the TV.

I had asked my evening student to write a large sign in Japanese: "Please do not ring the door bell after 9 pm".

I hung it on the outside of the front door.
Reckon that will at least make the bad person think twice....hmm...maybe there ARE people living in this house, even though the car is always gone.

This morning the sign was missing.
Okaasan had it in her room. She'd seen it through the hall windows when she was getting her newspaper in the entrance hall at 6 am.

"Look at this! Who put this here? xxXXXXXX'&%$#"#GBMJMHJ we should tell Yujiro, we should tell the police! dhmgt543uimkXXXXX!!+``====Look at this! Bad people come to the door and do this!"

(The symbols are the bits of Japanese I didn't understand. My Japanese includes words like "dorobo" or "thief" and "hanin" which is "suspect". I don't know about doorbell ringers.)

"Look at this! Who put this here? xxXXXXXX'&%$#"#GBMJMHJ we should tell Yujiro, we should tell the police! dhmgt543uimkXXXXX!!+``====Look at this! Bad people come to the door and do this!"

Not sure WHAT Okaasan thought the bad person was doing...making signs and hanging them on the doors of strangers....??????????????????

I told her I had made the sign. Three times. Then I got the speech above. So I told her I had made the sign myself. Again. I think she finally got the idea!

I don't think I'll tell the police. Not much they can do. A drive past by a patrol car is hardy going to make any difference.
Although.....it would be kind of fun to see a young police officer trying to take a statement from Okaasan....round and round and round again on the same story!!!!

Maybe I should tell her that I HAVE told the police....

Anyway. FRiday....

Dinners a deux

2012-01-26T18:10:00.000+09:00

Haven't murdered eachother yet.

Had two nights of dinners -a-deux: the dried tofu and radish stew the first night and then simmered fish paste bits and veggies the second night. All ok. I certainly have more "Okaasan-type meals" in mind now than 3 years ago - and not having to plan lunches too is WHOLE weight off my mind.

Okaasan very chatty at dinners about a range of stuff - New Card lucky numbers and lottery numbers, and pets and wartime good shortages etc.....and we went several rounds on the fact that baseball star Darvish is/isn't Iranian but could conceivably be Japanese.....
Have to say it: Okaasan is far chattier when it is just her and me. Having Yujiro there are the table turns us both into his audience, which is relaxing for me and maybe not so stimulating for Okaasan.

Anyway. All ok.
I washed and dried all the laundry from her room and just marched in and returned it to her....with the excuse "It's hard to do so much by hand isn't it...etc".

Okaasan set off so late again in the day for a walk. It's is SO not a normal thing to do. I got home at 5.30 pm and she was fussing about not having any money....and then started ready.
Outside was dark and minus 6 C, the roads were icy, the night was horrible...and Okaasan decided it was a good time for a walk to the subway, then she took the subway downtown and maybe walked on the underground street to the station. And then came home by 7.30 pm.
Old ladies usually don't choose to go out on a cold and icy evening.....but..

Okaasan also says the mystery person rang the doorbell last night again. At 10 pm. From our second floor apartment we can't hear the doorbell, so I don't know. I was actually awake at 10 pm...but heard nothing.
Hmm. Really don't know whether this is true or not. There is no car in our parking space at the moment...so it is possible someone is testing to see if the house is empty or not....or could just be Okaasan's vivid imagination.
She got a bit snippy with me when I suggested it could be next door's bell she was hearing - "I can hear ok you know!!!"......

I moved stuff around on the doorstep this morning, so an observer can see that things are happening at the house...maybe I should put a trash bag full of beer cans outside so it looks like a beer-guzzling guy is inside!!
Dementia sufferers do apparently have hallucinations, but until now we haven't really thought that much about Okaasan.
Hard to know.

And so. Writing this at work on my laptop, it is too heavy to take to and fro....my thigh muscles yesterday were a bit sore and swollen from carrying heavy work books. And I needed to buy a daikon raddish ;-))
Not having a computer in the house!!! VERY liberating! I actually read the newspaper, watch TV for more than 5 minutes and do other things I should do...but don't.....shhhhh...I could of course make Okaasan's lunch...but let's not go there!!!

OKAY! Here!

2012-01-24T17:43:00.001+09:00

Climbed out from under a mountain of pink, dirty underpants!!

I'm here!!! Daylight! Fresh air!!!

Yay!!!!!!

No. Actually....I switched on the computer this morning at home - and 10 minutes later it died on me. Nothing on the screen. Awful silence from the box-thing under the desk.
Computer engineer isn't back till Feb. 4th.....

So, had to wait until I could carry the laptop home from my classroom. Laptop or daikon raddish? Which is more essential to bring home.....??? both heavy. Computer won.

My God! A morning without a computer!! I READ a newspaper! I watched TV for more than 5 minutes. I Played with grateful cats. I even...made a sandwich for my lunch. Ran Okaasan's bath. Prepped my classes and left the house so early that I got to the classroom with the first student just-taking off his coat...instead of sneaking in an unfashionably-in-Japan...."just in time".
Like that awful weekend of March 12-13 last year....earthquake and tsunami weekend...oh...and my 50th birthday. Our home computer server was down and out (probably all the staff were sleeping at Tokyo Station) - that weekend we didn't have a computer at home and it really changed HOW we used our time. Mostly sat staring shocked at the Tv of course....

So. Here we are.

Okaasan and Me.

Day 1 ok - I came home late afternoon to find her boiling an egg and with a roaring heater because her room window was wide open to let in fresh air...probably since morning.
I had an evening class - so I faffed around and left her soup, tofu/raddish, rice, veggies and so on....apologised for being out...but she seemed ok with that...but a little impatient to get money from me for shopping.
Tried to get some laundry out of her room again...but she said "no I don't have anything" and I didn't march quickly enough into her side room to get stuff out of the laundry boxes.
In between meeting me in the kitchen at 4 pm and meeting me again in the kitchen at 5.30 pm she forgot...and asked me if I'd just come home from work. Amazing this - no memory of the egg cooking/open window conversation.

Came home later and she's only slightly burned the pan...and had left plates and stuff for me to wash. But all OK.

This morning she came out of to the kitchen to say Goodmorning...which is encouraging.
I got home at 4 pm - just in time to see baseball star Yu Darvish's farewell press conference in Sapporo Dome - and Okaasan was heading out.

Gave me a chance to get into her room, where the "no, I don't have anything" in laundry seemed to actually be 37 pairs of pants, 2 sets of pajamas and a pair of slacks. Meanwhile ONE pair of pants were lolling around in a bowl in the bathroom on their own....where Okaasan had half-washed them during her morning bath.

And so. Onwards into dinner......

Alone again. Unnaturally.

2012-01-23T08:30:00.000+09:00

He's gone. My partner in care. Gone ski teaching for Chinese New Year etc. Not back until Feb. 4th. Ski resorts out in east and central Hokkaido.

:-(

aghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

That's probably Okaasan's feeling too. All that time alone with me and my cooking. Enough to make an old lady worry. Her only social interaction for the next 14 days...is me.

Yesterday he was out working locally, I actually drove with him as far as the outskirts of the city - so we could just have 30 mins sitting together and chatting about stuff. Then I got out of the car near the end of the subway line and went home, while he drove on to the ski area.
I spent the day quietly at home doing stuff and he came back in the evening for dinner.

Noticed interesting thing about Okaasan. As I was home all day and in and out of the kitchen doing things.

Okaasan's body movement is different depending on the time of day!
Demetia sufferers do sun-downing - getting more mentally/physically active towards the end of the day. That's a well-known symptom. Okaasan's later afternoon decisions to go out for a walk...after the sunshine and daylight is just part of this.

But yesterday I noticed that the WAY she sits watching TV changes as the hours pass.

In the morning she is sitting upright under the heated table blanket and watching TV.
By midday she is kind of slumping...and after lunch she is slumping or actually laying down. Slumping and staring at the TV. Doing nothing.

But by 4 pm and after....she is sitting upright again and shuffling through the things on her table, picking up the newspaper and magazines, rooting through the many little bags she has scattered around, fussing over shopping receipts of years gone by.....still sitting in front of the TV, but obviously MUCH more active.

It was so clearly different. Middle of the day and late afternoon.

Anyway. Here we go. Countdown to Feb. 4th....

Lunches.

2012-01-22T12:25:00.002+09:00

There's a Peanuts cartoon strip of Snoopy moving the clock forward so he can get Charlie Brown to feed him earlier and earlier....

I get that feeling with Okaasan sometimes.

Eating times...such a fluid subject.

I fed her lunch yesterday about 11.30/11.45 am (that's actually how we refer to this task - either "feeding Okaasan" or "doing Okaasan") and chatted a bit in the kitchen with her as she ate rice, simmered fish paste and vegetables, salad, pickles, soup etc - explained that I was going out shopping with a friend and would eat later.
After serving Okaasan with her rice I put the rest of the cooked rice in freezer boxes, and left them one one side to cool down.

Then I left home and spent 4 wonderful hours with my recently arrived friend and her baby in a shopping mall and big recycle shop. Just wandering and shopping, chatting and stuff. She needed non-slip shoes and was thinking about an automatic baby rocker...I was ambling happily.
We were once room mates long ago, then friends through email and phone calls for years, with once a year meet-ups for lunches or overnight stays.
Now we are able to amble together on a Saturday afternoon. Still can't get over this really.:-)

I got home about 5 pm to think about dinner.
Lunch stuff was all eaten and the plates as usual were sitting around with bits of water in them on the draining board...ready for Okaasan to wash in that never-coming-"Later".

And one freezer box of cooked rice was missing. And the eggs were on the table.

Okaasan had helped herself to yet ANOTHER box/bowl of rice mid-afternoon. I guess she'd wandered out into the kitchen sometime between 1 and 5...seen the rice box and ....

In her room on the carpet I could see the empty rice bowl, with egg shells in it (Japanese people consider rice and raw egg and edible mixture) - I popped my head into her room to see if this all meant she didn't want dinner...

"Dinner? Oh yes, I want dinner! That rice and egg? Oh that was lunchtime...."

And so it was in her mind. Maybe after the first lunch she'd slept until about 2 pm....woke up and felt a bit peckish...wandered into the kitchen and found the rice boxes....the first lunch and chatting with me in the kitchen was gone from her memory (even though the dishes were still there where she'd put them) and this lady who swears by the mantra "Thou Shalt Not Overeat" had tucked into yet more food.

And then: at 7 pm we sat down (some ski teacher popped in for dinner and bed, don't know who he was...)....and Okaasan ate a large bowl of spaghetti, salad and soup.

I MUST make sure there are snack-type foods for her in the kitchen. It doesn't matter if she eats rice multiple times a day of course, but her increasing weight isn't going to help mobility etc...it would be better to get her snacking on a piece of fruit or a yogurt.

Okaasan sleeps a lot in her room. She wakes up and has no sense of what time it is. Yes, I know there's a clock in her room...but...

And today? Learned that lesson. I laid out lunch for her about an hour ago - I'm upstairs here hiding cos I can't be bothered to have lunch with her - and I've put some long stewing raddish and tofu potdish up out of sight on the microwave...so she can't: a) attempt to join in the cooking of it and b) eat it.

From tomorrow: the LOOOOOOOOOONG haul of solo-Oyomesannning. He is goes off tomorrow for 14 days...yes FOURTEEN days...of ski work out in resorts in the center of Hokkaido. He won't be back till Feb. 5th.

I've got lunch deliveries.
I haven't got the car.
I've got another bottle of homemade plumwine.
I've got my friend and her baby.
I've got this blog :-) and all you nice people!!!!

I'm buckling up for the ride.....14 days.......

In-to-lunch. :-)

2012-01-20T21:56:00.002+09:00

THERE we are. Great scene welcomed me back into the kitchen tonight.
A nice empty lunch delivery box. Food consumed and box nicely washed.
Not a burned pan in sight.

I could come in at 6.30 pm and start making the miso soup, the pork and veggies Chinese fry thing in a packet sauce, the rice, pickles and left over tofu/spinach something.
Okaasan got back in at 6.45 pm and she and I sat and chatted about how much money Japanese star pitcher Yu Darvish will get to play in the US and how much his ex-wife will get etc etc
And my tale about 3 students cancelling classes this week as influenza strikes led Okaasan into a new - a NEW! - story about how she kept her little boys at home and healthy for the first 3 years of their life and how 1-year old Yujiro went off walking on his own....told me THAT story about 10 times...obviously she loved telling it and giggling at exactly the same place on each telling.

I had a little tremor of fear when I mentioned the lunch delivery etc and Okaasan said: "There's no need to go to the trouble of ordering me lunch like this..."

I thought she was about to say: "I'll cook my own lunch and burn the house down for you!", but she seemed to be saying that she could go OUT to lunch etc.

I quickly stamped on that idea and talked about the weather and the icy roads etc etc....better to stay in at lunchtime and how this delivery system was SO convenient.....PLEEEESE just enjoy it...and let me get on with my working life. Well, I didn't say the last part.
I mentioned that when Yujiro is away it is hard for me to cook lunch and dinner every day etc....so "just while Yujiro is working away a lot let's use this service shall we?"...and Okaasan seemed to accept that idea...I think. Hope.

Oh God I hope.

So. Friday night. And look what I got!!! Two students gave me presents this week: homemade plum wine and strawberries and cream.......so that's what I am into tonight.....

**** Bit puzzled about this....my blog counter thingy on the side here says there have been OVER 200 blog visits today. I don't know why. Haven't been that many since we had our domestic violence interlude 2 years ago or when my Dad and step-mum died....or the recent F&%$#}{|! Sale story....why? Are old lady lunch boxes so interesting? I can't think that my topic labels of "dementia" "cooking" and "day care avoidance" or whatever could attract so many views.
Very odd.
Facebook is somehow now connecting Network Blogs...maybe it's that.....I'm not so sure everyone I know on Facebook really wants to/needs to read these domestic ramblings.
Very odd.

Getting in some help.

2012-01-19T18:54:00.000+09:00

Gonna have a lunch box delivery service next week, and maybe beyond, to give me a chance to breath.

So happy about that. A big part of my brain is jumping up and down making whooping sounds. ;-))

We did it before - 2 years ago? - and now we decided to bring it in again.

He came home last night with his ski teaching schedule into February ....day after day after day of being away basically. A night or two passing through home. But basically away till February 4.

I said I couldn't. Needed help.
No big drama. I just suggested the hot lunch delivery service and he agreed.

Making lunch for Okaasan ISN'T hard. It's troublesome, and in a busy working week it is One More Thing To Do. The past week we haven't had heavy snowfall, if we do, then clearing snow outside the front door will ALSO have to be factored into the morning duties.

Usually, sometime between a shower/getting dressed/packing my work bag/settling the cats/finding my house keys....somewhere in there I am usually in the kitchen heating up something/quickly cooking something to put in Okaasan's lunch flask, heating up the rice, cutting up some pickles, putting some kind of vegetable out, putting the instant soup packs in a bowl etc

Then, when I come home, I usually wash all the dirty plates because she doesn't. She thinks she will "after a bit of TV and a sit", but she doesn't.
And in between work I am thinking about the shopping for this: what kind of sloppy food I can make to put in the flasks.
The other day I risked giving her a half cooked flat fish, showed her the fish and explained she just had to heat it. Left her to it. Came home 6 hours later wondering if I'd find a burned pan...or worse. But she HAD managed to do it with minimal burn.

Okaasaan really can't cook. Just about heat something up. Put an egg in a pan of soup. Can't really use the microwave. She wouldn't starve. But she wouldn't eat well, and the kitchen would look like chimpanzee cooking day at the zoo....because she doesn't wash or put away stuff. And last summer we were getting to the 3 burned pans a week stage...which added a whole other task into the late afternoon...scrubbing the pans usable again.

So. Hot lunch delivery service commeth. Okaasan had it before and it was ok. But after a while she said she got bored with the food and wanted to go out for lunch. Was that winter? I don't remember.

So happy about this.
Yes, I CAN do it. But day after day on my own - not to mention the whole dinner duties too and what-to-talk-about - it is just grim. When he is here we take turns with it all, and it doesn't seem so bad. If he is away for a week and more - I think I might go pop.
Of course I could make more time in my morning - get up earlier, stop wasting away time playing Wordscraper games on Facebook etc...stop going to the gym in the late afternoon and shop and go home and pre-cook stuff.

But why should I?

I have a life. This isn't my mother. This family isn't poor. Paying for a hot lunch to be delivered to this old lady would be a BIG help.

I'll take it.

One of my students was so excited to hear about this today, she said it could be a first step in Yujiro accepting that we need outside help etc - and once again I got the Day Care Centers Are So Wonderful speech from a concerned, kind person.
I don't think this is going to lead direct to day care. Yujiro doesn't want to face THAT hurdle yet. Doesn't want to initiate the inevitable fight with Okaasan on that topic. Doesn't want to admit to himself maybe that we can't do it all.....
He is happy to let it all drift along - with he and I taking turns to make it all go smoothly. And generally it does.

But when he is away for more than a few days the balancing act becomes a lot harder and I'm reaching out for the support now.

Still have to do dinners though :-(

Ongoing Oyomesaning

2012-01-16T20:15:00.000+09:00

Just doing it.
Days and days of it.
Ski season is in full thing here, so he is working like crazy and away at different ski areas.
He works for a ski instructor agency, they supply staff to different ski areas as needed. He works two or three days, then appears here at home for a night or an afternoon...and then gone again.
Sometimes with the car.

So. I am The Decider. The Shopper. The Cooker. Usually The Washer-Upper too. The Okaasan Bank. The Okaasan Chat Machine. etc etc etc.

My friend has moved in down the road, which is SO strange...to think that she is here in the same city, and not hundreds of miles away in another part of the country. It'll be a new stage in our friendship, to be near neighbors at a different part of our lives. Once upon a time we shared an apartment, when we were single. Now she has a husband and child. And I have a ski bum and his mother.
Sapporo put out the welcome mat for her by having a week of minus temperatures.....how far can it go???? Tomorrow might be "Warm", only minus two daytime. We'll all break out the spring clothes.

Okaasan is ok.
I feed her. Chat her. Make my escape.
She has got out most days, and come home again on time.

I notice she is watching a lot of TV shopping now. Most people would find this boring and switch channels after a few minutes. She doesn't. Maybe she doesn't realise it IS TV shopping, with the same slogans and videos of amazing results and bargain prices - repeated and repeated.

Saturday night I couldn't face a dinner alone with Okaasan, so I slipped away and took myself out for a huge plate of spare ribs, a beer and a movie (Dominic Cooper throwing off all the Mamma Mia! traces by playing a psychopath and the body double - Saddam Husein's crazy son Uday. Good movie.)

Sunday morning Okaasan caught me in the kitchen and told me that somebody had rung the doorbell at 4 am. She'd gone to the entrance hall, but the mystery person didn't say our family name...and had gone away. She thought that was a bit scary.

I don't know. She might have imagined it. She sleeps with the TV on, so a doorbell on the TV and her in a half-awake state. Who knows? Yujiro was away with the car, so the house may have looked empty...but Okaasan's TV blaring can be heard outside. Was somebody trying the door?

But it WAS interesting that she actually TOLD me about it. Usually Okaasan hardly ever volunteers some information into a conversation. She doesn't relate incidents from her day, or something she's seen on TV. It's what makes conversations with her such hard work - because we have to do all the input.
But this time she, maybe, remembered something that had happened to her. And told us about it later. That doesn't happen much.

* Did anyone else in Japan see the Tv advert about dementia? I caught it last week I think. A family sitting round a table for lunch with a big tray of sushi. The man reaches for one of the sushi, and his elderly mother stops him saying "No! No! Don't eat that one, my son likes that. It's his favorite"...and the man and his wife exchanging rueful, heart-warming smiles about that.
Did anyone else see it?
I was surprised to see dementia used in a TV ad. Even in this warm, fuzzy way.

Anyway...off to relax a bit. Newspapers, the end of the beer, some TV and then bed with two cats.

Remind me...

2012-01-13T07:33:00.000+09:00

...never to move home ever again!

Yesterday tried to help - a bit - my friend and her family move into their apartment.
Boxes, boxes, boxes....5 adults and a baby in a smallish apartment....OMG.

Moving is hell, however you try to make it easy for yourself.
My friend was amazingly calm through it all, I'd have been knawing at the curtain rail.
I don't envy them one little bit having to do all of that. My friend's parents are here for 3 days (staying in a hotel) to help, but the trouble with unpacking stuff is that only the people who are going to live in a place can really unpack and decide where to put the stuff...there was a lot of hovering and "what can I do?" going on, which wasn't really helping.

It brought back memories of our move almost 3 years ago (wow time flies when you are having fun!!), when we moved Okaasan and ourselves, and the cat, and the goldfish - into this house. Luckily this is a big old house, with lots of space to absorb our stuff. I am sure there are things under the stairs I haven't seen since we moved in.
And made me think what will happen next. Our next move in life....when Okaasan goes into care or dies. This house is actually too big for just two of us and two cats, and not so well located that I could move my English school here. Maybe we could have a lodger.
When Okaasan....what? Is that bad of me to think of that? I can't help it. This is just a stage of our lives. It's been 3 years now, and she is still basically strong of-body...and mostly of mind. Living with us has slowed the progress of her dementia, I think.
She could go on...and on...and on....oh shit...at least another 10 years!!!

I'll confess: there is a small, evil part of me that hopes she will have a slip or a fall which will speed it all up a bit.....There. I've said it. I'm not so evil that I'll actually stick my leg out and trip her up...but y'know, can't help hoping....that "something"will happen and and then she'll be beyond our home care, and I won't have to struggle with Japanese cooking and underpants anymore.

I expect this blog entry will be used by the police as evidence against me when Okaasan DOES have an accident...

Meanwhile I am Kind Oyomesan.
Okaasan came home 2 nights ago with only one glove, and a left hand the color of a lobster in minus 7 C temperatures. Lost glove. Again. She spent ages hunting in her room for it. But of course she didn't go out originally with only one glove, so I'm 99% sure she lost it when out. Or the infamous Glove Thieves of Sapporo stole it.
So yesterday, after work I bought her some more gloves. She can't go OUT to shop for more gloves, without gloves on her hands....

Yujiro's away for 2 nights so I am on lunch and dinner/chat duty. Doing it.

Still here...

2012-01-11T16:23:00.000+09:00

Haven't disappeared under the snow...still here.
Just starting full schedule work week and he was home, so Okaasan care was less. And my friend's family are moving here this week, so I was getting heaters/unused curtains and stuff to offer them....etc etc
Sapporo hitting a cold spell - I think it was minus 4 C daytime here...tomorrow night could be minus 11 C!

Okaasan fine, as much as she does anything of interest.

It's funny what she remembers and what she doesn't. The short term memory is a strange thing.

Yesterday she was watching a TV program about Tahitian dance - which looks like Hawaiian dance but with more power - and when it finished she came into the kitchen where I was making dinner.
I commented on the program, and to my surprise she remembered it (from 30 seconds before) and we chatted about that. It sounds so normal, but for Okaasan it isn't - many times I comment on something I know she's been watching - cos you can see her TV from the kitchen - but she looks blank.
This time the Tahitian dance information was still there in her short term memory.

Her memory power varies, stuff you'd think would stick obviously hasn't...and then random things have taken root in there somewhere and she can recall them.
The strangest I reckon is the shopping - something Okaasan has bought, and brought home, by the time she has got back and it is in the kitchen...."did I buy this?".

But now I am used to saying "Good morning" several times in the space of 20 minutes, or repeating the first part of a story for her, or describing again where something comes from. Somebody gave me gingko nuts recently and Okaasan must have asked me 10 times: "WHERE do they come from?"...all in the space of about 5 minutes.

Memory interests me, maybe cos I am a language teacher and I wonder how and if students will remember vocabulary etc.

Okaasan's short term memory varies. Just when you assume she probably doesn't remember something...she surprises us and clearly DOES remember.

Let's NOT have a bath....

2012-01-08T07:38:00.000+09:00

"Let's NOT have a bath!"

Which part of that didn't you understand?

You know that old joke?

Conversations with Okaasan run along these lines - she gets the topic, but not the detail.

After we stood in the kitchen talking about bath - should I have one, no I had one yesterday, so maybe I don't need one, should I have one before the hair salon?, maybe no, it would take too much time, no bath is ok - I came upstairs to switch off the computer and returned a minute later to the kitchen to start prepping lunch.

Okaasan was in her underwear in the kitchen, fussing around with a towel and running a bath for herself!

No point in stopping her once she'd started in on the activity, so off she went to have a bath and I moved the lunch plans back an hour.

Dementia really screws up the understanding of conversations: the topic stays in the memory, but the details of it fly away as soon as they are heard. A decision isn't a decision 1 minute later. A need or a like - it has gone, or changed.

So, bath, lunch, get dressed, get ready to go 30 minutes early - and off we went together across the snowy local roads to the subway. Ride the train companionably into town. Guide her to the hair salon.

Do I have my subway pass? I usually get on the train here, I use this exit usually, where are we going, have I been here before, why are we here, did I come here before?....all the usual worries, the checking questions, the anxietes.

Delivered her on time to the hair salon and came home to relax.
Yujiro picked her up in the car on his way home, well almost didn't because he hadn't read my mails to his cellphone after work, but by 7 pm Okaasan was back home ok with a stylish perm and looking tired but happy.
All ok for another month or two.

Let's...............

2012-01-07T11:15:00.000+09:00

"Let's...." is an overused Japlish phrase which is used by businesses to encourage customers in the merry deed of parting with their cash. Usually ignoring any English grammar rules and combing the chirpy first word with any old noun.

"Let's Tennis! Let's Sale! Let's Cute Dog!"

And after that shocker of yesterday I expect there is a "Let's Fuckin' Sale!" somewhere in Japan...

I'm employing the Let's magic to chirp-along Okaasan into doing stuff. Or, allowing me to do stuff for her.

"Let's bundle up your old newspapers!"

"Let's make a hair appointment for this afternoon!"

"Let's skip having a bath before you go out, cos it will take a bloody long time!".

Suddenly thought I should get her along for a haircut and perm before I go back to work and I get busy with my friend's home moving next week. So...off we'll go this afternoon..probably hand in hand across the ice.

"Let's slip and fall together! Yay".

I've had 72 hours off Okaasan watch because my old boss came to town for 2 nights with a young homestay guest, and we enjoyed a night out at the Sapporo Beer Garden with BBQ lamb and veggies, and then long, long chats over a second coffee and dinner.

So we left sushi on the table for Okaasan the first night, and Yujiro came home from work and "did" Okaasan the second night. Okaasan let a whole nice sunny day slip away and then set out as dusk appeared at 4 pm. As usual.

My old boss was full of advice about How to Manage a Demented Oldie, but however kind it all is...the reality is different. I have to remember to let concerned people shower me with advice and not get het up about it.

Yes, I KNOW there are day care centers and assessments and professional help.

But I have a son who thinks his mum is basically ok. And a woman who hates hospitals.

Yes, I KNOW it is dangerous for her to go walking at 4 pm.

But, how the F}{~$# do you actually stop her?

Yes, I KNOW.........

Let's Lunch!

Let's Get Dressed into the right kind of clothes for January.

Let's Put on Boots not Shoes!

Let's Go! (Repeat for 20 minutes)

Let's Perm!

F%$!*`=)' Sale!

2012-01-06T13:48:00.000+09:00

Yes.

You are reading that right.

A FUCKIN' Sale.

This is nothing to do with Okaasan and Me (that's a F%&#!+*~ Something else sometimes), but this is doing the rounds on Facebook at the moment in Japan and beyond - a shop in Osaka and their January sales slogan.

Unbelievable!!!

Gallerie by Spinns.......that's the shop. And this is their current slogan.

There is some explanation for this, maybe....although I still think this is someone in their copy writing department who is hoping for a new job in 2012.

The explanation seems to be that "fuku" in Japanese means "luck", and Japanese shops in January sell fukubukuro or Lucky Bags. Bags stuffed with unsold stuff, which they bag up together and sell cheaply and customers hope to get something good inside...along with lots of stuff they don't need at all.

So a Fuckin' - maybe Lucky fuku Money kin Sale??

Or not.

(For Japanese readers: "Fuck" is just about the strongest swearword. Really shouldn't be used unless you know people very well. It's common in U.S. movies now of course, but really in polite, every day conversation you just DON'T use this....I use it to myself, to Yujiro when I am angry with him, to Okaasan secretly....).

Amazing....I think this will live as an Only in Japan story for years to come...like the old one about a Santa nailed to a cross in a department store...

Double act again. Phew.

2012-01-05T09:45:00.000+09:00

Cats enjoying a You Tube video about squirrels....

Back to the double act again.

He returned from skiing at the far resort, with the good news that he'll be working nearer the city for the next 4 nights at least. So out early every day and home for dinner.

I could relax. Just get the dinner to the table, sit back and let him chat on to entertain Okaasan.

I'd had a quiet day. Stayed home in the morning, got Okaasan to have a bath. Met no resistence to that idea. Recently I've just been TELLING her that her bath is ready - as if it is an already decided event. She seems to accept that.
While she was in the bath I took some dirty underwear etc from her room and hunted unsuccessfully for the soiled clothes following the toilet accident (WHERE did she hide it???).

Then had lunch with Okaasan instead of doing my 11 am-escape-out-somewhere.Talked to her about my friend who is moving here next week from Tokyo...got Okaasan talking about how she'd lived in Osaka as a young wife etc.
It was ok. One meal a day with Okaasan is doable without my brain imploding. Two meals is hard-going and I make an excuse or plan my day around having to be out between 11 am and 1 pm so I can avoid lunch with her.
To Carers of old people everywhere - you KNOW what I mean. Actually mothers of small children probably know too. I'm lucky that this "child" can be left to cope with some flasks of food on the kitchen table! It isn't Okaasan's fault that she is boring conversationally...but given the choice - I'd rather avoid having to eat with her. I do it if a) she probably needs the mental stimulation or b) the weather is bad and I can't be faffed to go out.

THEN I escaped - walked 20 minutes (being able to walk is still such a joy!!), to an old, local hot spring where I joined lots of old ladies in a good soak and a quiet think, and then took the free shuttle bus back home. Hot springs/onsens are really ALL over Japan, most tourists think of the classy hotels or the simple, rustic places at scenic spots. But here in a city the size of Sapporo, the hot water bubbles out of the ground at various places and there are numerous, small, unstylish onsen centers with slightly dirty tiled floors, ageing game machines in the entrance area, 40-year old lockers etc. I'd been to this one years ago with a friend who had a discount voucher. It's nothing special, but sitting in hot water in naked anonymity is very, very relaxing.

Overheard good conversation in the bath: one old lady telling her friend that her son's family came for New Year holidays and how the Oyomesan kept avoiding all the hard work of cooking and playing with the kids because she claimed to have a bad back ache....so...SHOCK HORROR...her SON - a MAN!!! - had to help his mother cook and take the kids to the park. I silently saluted an unknown Oyomesan who was tough enough to stand by her needs. :-)

Back in our home dinner was easy: a nabe/one pot hotpot with lots of veggies, the chicken bits that Okaasan didn't eat in the failed ozoni, fresh tofu AND yet more mochi/rice cakes all melted into the bubbling stew-like mixture.

We are STILL eating our way through the mochi rice cake a student gave me. This is a New Year tradition. Blocks of pounded, rice (the idea is to save rice cooking over the holidays) which are puffed up under the grill and then dropped all melty into the ozoni soup.
I tried twice to make the ozoni soup and obviously wasn't really getting it.
So two nights ago I gave up, and just made the usual miso soup for dinner - a spoon of miso paste and some raddish, long onions and a sprinkle of the little dried tofu bits from a bag in the kitchen cupboard.

Okaasan picked the bits of dried tofu up with her chopstick: "I've never seen these in miso soup, I've seen them in XXXXXX, but I've never seen these...."

Instead of quailing with fear and disappointment as I did, endlessly, a year or two ago, I made soothing noises, about how it was tofu and tofu is often in soup isn't it - maybe in a different form - but NOT so strange really etc And I told her that once I REALLY shocked her son by adding tomato to the miso soup. Joke, joke. Just let the complaint slip by.

Then today I happened to pick up the dried tofu package. And noticed the picture on the package:

It's miso soup. With the bits of dried tofu floating in it. This is the main idea of this product! The package back shows other ideas of mixing it with seaweed etc etc...but front picture? Miso Soup.

Don't know WHAT Okaasan was rambling on about. I can't believe she has never had this in her 81 years as a Japanese miso soup drinker. Maybe she thought the bits were something else? Maybe she is only remembering miso soup as a child - when maybe this product didn't exist.

Don't know. So glad though that I didn't expend too much emotion on her complaint.

And ANOTHER night...

2012-01-03T19:58:00.000+09:00

He was due home tonight.
But come 6 pm I got the call from the ski area...he'd got a booking for another day's work, sorry etc etc etc...but won't be home.

172vk3uiy.njlijｋｖアｓ；ｇｋィｑｗｐ９：ｇフイｑｍうｑ\ｋぁｗ：．￥：＞ＺＸ＿

That's actually how I feel.

But, good little Oyomesan. I put a smile on my face and cooked dinner for Okaasan and Me.

In fact, after a vast, 3-hour lunch with a friend at the French buffet in town, food was, unusually, the last thing on my mind...but have to go through the motions for Okaasan.
And hope she doesn't go thru the "motions" all over the carpet tiles.
I reckon this time the toilet carpet tile isn't worth cleaning and rescuing. Better to throw it out and put down fresh carpet tiles. The toilet bowl mat I cleaned this morning....while I was having a shower.....

Tonight.
At 6.30 pm I went into check that Okaasan wanted dinner.
She had her mouth full of something and waved her hand and shook her head.
You don't want dinner? I looked back at the kitchen where it was all coming along nicely.
Nohmmmmmmwwnnn!!!

???????????

"I don't eat".
??????
"You don't want to eat? You feel sick again, is it your side?"

"No, I don't eat at this time. I don't eat in the morning."

???????????????????????

"It's 6.30 in the EVENING!!!!"

"Is it? It's evening now? I thought it was morning? oh, ok...I'll eat then..."

And she did. And I guided the conversation around here and there and got her chatty. I did my duty.

But oh,,,, I so hoped he sould come home and make tonight easy.

I lied to Okaasan. Told her he was coming late tonight. Tomorrow I'll tell her he left early.

Okaasan's grip on time isn't great. is it January 1st now? This food will be delivered on December 31st....when is that? Is it afternoon? I was asleep...

MY grip on time is all too accute, I am counting the minutes and seconds till he walks back thru the door and I can take a back seat in the conversations...such as they are.

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Ozoni Part II

2012-01-02T19:39:00.002+09:00

Tried that New Year traditional soup again tonight, having studied all the Internet advice and my cookbooks.
Worked out ok, I guess, Okaasan said there wasn't enough salt in it and took a handfull to add to her bowl. But old people need stronger tastes, so I wasn't too bothered.

Actually today...nothing bothered me too much because my head cold settled in for a kick-around and I stayed in my pajamas all day...woke up at 9 am! And then after setting out Okaasan's lunch, I slept again from 11 am to 2 pm.
Spent a lot of time reading gossip magazines a friend sent me for Christmas.
Outside I could see the 90 year-old neighbor's family arriving with food and things to spend a few hours with her. The son and his family, the grandkids all chatty. That lady has the ideal family life - poor Okaasan had two sons, neither married and one of them lives with a woman who serves strange food. I can see why some of my older students worry about their kids not getting married - they face a lonely old age if there isn't anyone to play happy families with.

I reassured Okaasan that there WAS no ice outside now and that the streets were safe to walk - she simply can't get all our early to mid- December advice out of her brain - and finally at 3.30 she set out for a walk.
I asked her to buy carrots, for the soup, but of course she didn't. I spied on the mobile phone GPS that she took the subway downtown - for about 40 mins - and then came straight home again. Wonder why she did that? Who knows.

At 6.30 pm I went downstairs to throw the soup and other stuff together for dinner.
Found a major toilet accident all over the toilet floor, mat and into the entrance hall....oh yuk.
Cleaned that up and used a lot of floor cleaner.
It's hard to do THAT for someone, and then sit across the table and make polite dinner chitchat!

Okaasan was apologising for not having bought the carrots, and said she didn't want to eat much (my stomach feels strange)....but she ate through the soup and one rice cake and picked at a few more bits.

And so another day.

Ozoni help!!!

2012-01-01T20:41:00.001+09:00

Anyone got an easy ozoni recipe?
I used this ready-made stock tonight. I used 1: 6 stock: water...but the result looked very brown, so I added more water...and then I cut the mochi up too small and Okaasan said they were hard....and I think the chicken pieces were too small...and...and ...and

Oh help!
This is the hardest thing about Japanese cooking - this basic balance of stock/soy sauce/sake....

Anybody got a fool-proof ozoni recipe that I can try for tomorrow night's effort?

Grumpy New Year

2012-01-01T17:34:00.001+09:00

Have to laugh.
Otherwise.....

All the preparations for HAPPY New Year dinner as a nice, little family....

And....wait for it....Okaasan was a fug and didn't want to eat anything!

Yo ho HO! Please give a large bottle of rum.

New Year is a big deal in Japan. It's the time when families come together, even if they don't want to. There is special food, special Tv and first shrine visits, and special greeting cards etc etc.

We planned that Yujiro would be away skiing during the day, but late afternoon I'd take the train 30 mins along the coast to meet him, and then I'd drive back home, where our packs of instant buckwheat noodles (which Yujiro swears are just as good as the real thing), and a $100 box of traditional food would have been delivered by the supermarket.
We'd sit and enjoy all the food and drink some wine and toast another year together, and then retire to our living rooms to slump in front of the tacky TV singing show that dominates the airwaves every year.

So I fed Okaasan and chatted to her at lunchtime and set out to meet an old student for a coffee before catching the train. I put the instant noodle packs in the kitchen all ready to use, and left a note for the food delivery guy.
Okaasan had suddenly cottoned on to the fact that New Year = House Cleaning and was frantically scrubbing the carpet with rolled up bits of newspaper. I gave her the vacumn cleaner, explained how to use it and left her happily vacumning her room.
A few misgivings about that. Would she trip over the cord and kill herself on the table corner? Would she get frustrated with not being able to remember how to switch the cleaner off?
But anyway. Left her to it.

Coffee. Train trip. 30 mins. pacing up and down in a cold, tiny, village station waiting for Yujiro to finish work. Back to the ski school. etc etc. Finally, 6 pm we headed home. Took the expressway to make sure of getting there.

Burst in through the kitchen door just before 7 pm ready to do the whole Happy New Year dinner thing.

Large box of New Year food ready and waiting!

One pack of noodles was missing...
Okaasan had eaten it.

Her face looked all crumpled up and her eyes were squinty, she was clutching her side: "My side hurts, inside hurts. I don't want to eat anything. The noodles? Yes, I ate those at lunchtime (already fogotten tofu lunch with me), cleaning? No, I didn't do any cleaning. I feel bad. I don't want to eat. Maybe a little rice. My side hurts. I feel bad. Rice? No, I don't want to eat anything...."

And on and on.
Finally WE ate a lot of the boxed foods, plus Okaasan's soup and half the rice. And drank all the wine. She sat with us at the kitchen table and looked at the glorious arrangement above.

But didn't eat any of it.

30 minutes later we all retired to our living rooms. Okaasan fell asleep in front of the Shopping Channel and we slumped in front of the singing show....with wine and cheese and chocolate.

What on earth happened to Okaasan during the 5 hours I was away?
Did she trip and fall over the vacumn cleaner cord and hit herself? Did she get frustrated with trying to turn it off? Did she think we WEREN'T coming back and had left only instant noodles for her New Year dinner alone?

What? Could have been any of that. Or nothing at all.
At 1.30 pm she was fine. At 7 pm she was all gloom and doom, complete face difference. Voice difference.
So. All that train trip and driving and food ordering....for not a lot. I didn't mind whether Yujiro came back for Dec. 31st night or not. I'm beyond that. Happy with the TV and some chocolate me. We made all that Must-come-back effort to give Okaasan a good feeling!

Not her fault of course....but ...agggghhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

By 9.30 pm we were in bed....and that was 2011 for us.

Up at 6 am today January 1 2012 and drove BACK to the ski area. He had all day work and I used a discount ski pass and had 3 glorious hours in almost deserted courses to enjoy myself!!!

First sunrise of 2012...a special thing in Japan.

Arrival at Kiroro.

First run of 2012!!!!

The mountains! The sea! The snow!

Yipppppeeeeeeeee!!!!

Ringing in lots of good luck for New Year.

MY lunch. a bowl fo rice, topped with salmon flakes and roe.

roe.......................................

Left Yujiro up there to work and stay a further two nights. I came home to find Sapporo looking like almost any other day of the year, shops open and people rushing around. Hell, even our local supermarket was open?
This just isn't right. It's January 1st. EVERYONE....well apart from emergency workers, train drivers, ski teachers, hotel staff serving yummy salon roe...should have the day off....

Came home a little fearful. What state would Okaasan be in? Crawling around rubbing bits of newspaper on every surface and howling at the new sunrise?
She was sleeping and the remains of the New Year food box lunch were around the kitchen. So she'd eaten.

I've just been in to chat to her...and she still has the pain, just under her right breast (a fall and a bruised rib maybe?), I asked her to lift up her pajamas and show Oyomesan-world-medical-expert her right breast.... I can't see anything apart from the red area where she keeps rubbing it....I made her a cup of tea and delivered her one and only New Year card.

She says she wants dinner. I'd better start checking the cooking books about how to make Ozoni, the traditional New Year soup with rice cakes in it.

Onwards, onwards into 2012 and all the mayhem that will hold.

This is our New Year card for 2012. Designed by the son of my student, who did last year too. Dragon year. But can't show it to Okaasan...the way she is clutching onto my ample thighs isn't so great!!!!

Disappearing acts

2011-12-30T20:22:00.000+09:00

Guilt? Relief? I'll just close my eyes...

THIS little bugger went missing.
For 22 hours.
Had us real worried, he popped out just before dinner yesterday...and disappeared into the cold, snowy Sapporo night.
We slept and left the front door open. Today I hunted the local streets with a photo of him, called his name outside garage doors and even dug snow out of the drain pipes where he finds rats.
Nothing.
I had plans for an out of city daytrip to a hotspring with a friend...knocked that on the head and did a few hours of city center lunch instead.
Came home and hunted some more. When I was in Australia he disappeared for 48 hours. But that was autumn. Sapporo now is minus temperatures with large mounds of snow everywhere and killer-chunks of ice sliding off the subway tunnel roof.

Worried and worried.
Yujiro in between ski lessons was mailing and calling...worried too.
Bloody cat.

And then...as I looked out the window around 4 pm I saw a familiar skinny shape running down the street and in he ran, gulped a lot of water and food and looked a bit wide-eyed excited to be home....and we are none the wiser as to where he went.
Little bugger. But I love him.

And my other little bugger? Well, maybe shouldn't call Okaasan that exactly...although Lady Ga-Ga has her Little Monsters, us Brit's use "bugger" as a term of affection..as in "you daft old bugger"..

Anyway. Okaasan.
She didn't go out again today. Nice enough weather. But she didn't. This year she stays home much more.
Yujiro is staying at the ski school, so I cooked dinner for Okaasan and Me and had 45 mins. of the Korean-food-is-the-best-in-the-world-I-used-to-eat-in-a-Korean-restaurant-in-Ikebukuro-station conversation...oh I don't know..seven? nine? times. Same story. Easy to respond to.

And I has a little, significant success with New Year food cooking and Okaasan. The picture above shows the miso soup on the right, with burdock root and Japanese raddish and tofu in it...and on the left are sato imo/taro.

Last year, on that nightmarish shopping trip and cooking marathon, Okaasan bought these and peeled them and boiled them, and made the stock from fish flakes and seaweed, and then simmered them in soy sauce/cooking sake, sweet sake and a sugar plantation.

This year I bought a bag of them ready peeled and part-boiled. I added ready-made stock, a wallop of soy sauce/sake...and half a sugar plantation.

THEN after dinner I asked Okaasan's advice about the taste of the sauce.....everything was all done, she only had to taste the thing and comment.

"Hmm...nice. No, that seems good! I like these at New Year!"

THAT SEEMS GOOD! To MY cooking! Something very Japanese! GOOD!

It's a milestone.

Only taken me 3 years.

So, that's obviously the secret - do as much of the shopping and preparation of food as I can in secret....like a magician stuffing rabbits up his sleeve before a show - and then give Okaasan a chance to input at one final stage.....something simple - well actually for a British woman something like the taste of traditional Japanese food is something pretty hard. But something Okaasan can fuss about for a few minutes and advise and correct on.

Last year was awful as she couldn't remember how much of anything she'd added to the pan and kept adding more of everything in a never-ending taste balancing act.

This year: I did a guesstimate on the taste, erred on the side of probably not enough, presented it to her..and Bingo!

Phew. 3 years to learn that lesson. :-))

Roll on another year. Oh, there's another coming along in 72 hours. Lucky me.

Oyomesan powertrip.

2011-12-29T20:48:00.001+09:00

My old self came back today.
I did it all - and then some.

Got up at 7 am (well actually 3 am at first because I thought it was dawn already)....anyway...Yujiro was off before 7 am to ski teach, I was up and out the door by 8 am with my skis, walked to the subway station, took the subway to Makomonai and then the bus to the Moiwa Ski Area - this is Sapporo's real backyard ski area.
Full of grandparents in decades old brightly-colored ski wear and kids, all shouting instructions and screaming, various ski lessons for kids and ancient people skiing ever-so-slowly-and-carefully. I like Moiwa actually. The lifts are old and cranky, the views over the city great and it all feels local. There are animal tracks in the snow and it's where generations of Sapporo people have learned to ski.
I did 90 minutes of runs, getting more and more confident in my knee power and ability. Three years really of not skiing at the level I used to, so much to get back to. :-)

I finished about 10.30 and as I couldn't find a taxi and the bus driver told me he was returning to the bus parking area and couldn't take a passenger...I walked and dragged my ski bag and finally found a taxi down the hill and home.
Showered and changed for work, put together Okaasan's lunch and served it to her, then went to work for my last class of the year. Tidied up the classroom, took down all the Christmas decorations, put up a bit of Japanese stuff - it is dragon year and someone gave me dragon ornaments - and then...went to the gym!!!
Talk about Power! Only did 30 mins. But still. I feel SO GOOD that my body power is coming back to something like normal. So much of my early stress with Okaasan was because I was injured too and I couldn't get OUT of the house and get away to let off stream...she arrived...and 4 months later I injured my knee and couldn't even walk to the local supermarket.

Now? Ski/work/gym - all on the same day.

And then I took the subway home...and cleared 10 cm of snow from the parking area.

Maybe enough!

Bit of an incoming missile in the evening though: Yujiro got a call from the ski school making a probable booking for December 31, January 1, 2 and 3 at Kiroro...the big ski resort up in the mountains above Otaru. He COULD drive back and forth every day, but it would add a 3 hour drive onto the working day...so he usually stays at the ski school lodge.

My heart sank. New Year's Eve alone with Okaasan. Three nights alone with Okaasan.

;-(

I don't mind HIM going, that's just the downside of sharing life with someone who needs to work when everyone else is on holiday...policemen/firemen/medical staff/shop staff...everyone does it...but...3 nights with Okaasan...and December 31 in Japan is a big deal....special food, symbolic stuff.

Not happy. We've chewed it over. Latest thought is that I'll go and get him after the New Year's Eve ski work and bring him home for all the special food etc with Okaasan - and then January 1st drive with him back to the ski area and ski myself that day. A few years ago he and I used to escape the whole Japanese New Year Thing by going skiing...so maybe I can do that.

And only have 2 nights with Okaasan.
Compromise maybe.
I've ordered up a box of special New Year food and it really needs three of us to eat the stuff.

Okaasan didn't go out again today so she didn't buy anything....the fridge and its contents are still controllable.

Peeking through the dementia fog.

2011-12-28T08:31:00.000+09:00

Dementia isn't 24/7.

At least not at Okaasan's stage.
Anybody meeting Okaasan for a short time wouldn't think anything is different: just a nice old lady who says various stock phrases about the weather/food/names/traditions...and maybe repeats them a bit.
Spend a bit of time and you realize the phrases are repeated a lot and nothing much "new" is offered into a conversation, instead slightly inappropriate giggles and endless checking actions.
Living with her: silences and emotional highs. Sometimes fluid responses to chat and almost-normal conversations. Sometimes hamster-wheels.

And sometimes: wonderful moments of clarity.

Last night Yujiro and I had our usual pre-dinner glass of wine and nibbles of cheese upstairs when he came back from work.
Then I made dinner (stir-fried squid and ginger/cabbage/rice, soup, pickles - really GETTING this J-food cooking now :-)).
Called everyone to the table around 7 pm.
Yujiro came with the last centimeter of red wine in his glasss. I'd already quaffed mine and refilled my glass with water so I could take my menopause and cartilage supplement pills.

We all sat down and said: "Itadekimasu" (Thanks for the food, let's eat) standard Japanese phrase before eating anything.

Okaasan looked across the table at our wine glasses....

"Excuse me, but can I have something to drink? You've got red wine! You've got sake!"

??????!!!!!! Loved it.
Yujiro explained that he was finishing off some wine, and I'd got water, not sake.....and Okaasan was ok with that excuse and busied herself making tea (which took ages with all the checking of water and cup and tea and water and cup and tea..).

But it was sweet. Complete clarity of mind and expression of need.:-)
This on a day when she'd needed reminding to have a bath, needed lunch setting out for her, and has a wet towel in a bowl sitting on the carpet of her room....amid the dementia life-fog complete clarity of thought and awareness of surroundings.

Okaasan loves a drink. A bit dangerously so in fact, because she can't remember HOW much she has drunk and tends to knock it back unguardedly. Over the New Year holidays must remember to bring some alcohol to the dinner table for her. :-))

Slothing on...

2011-12-27T10:49:00.000+09:00

THIS is how much chocolate I can contemplate eating over the Christmas holidays!

One friend helpfully gave me a gadget called a Choc-O-Meter, which helps you work out how much you have to move your body to be able to eat more chocolate....

Slothing continues. I have half-classes this week and so I have late starts and early finishes.

Yujiro and I have reversed our housewife modes: he goes out to work early and I take care of the shopping/cooking/cleaning/Okaasan duties.

Out the front door...needs a little clearing after another 20-30 cm!

Dad's dog statue.

I can't imagine living with Okaasan and NOT doing it as a double-act with Yujiro. That would be some horrendous blog to be sure. Imagine if he went off early to the office every day and left me - working or not - with his mother day after day after day...and all the stuff that has to be done????? OMG!!!

There was a feature on Japanese Tv this morning about Men-who-Help-in-the-House. There is even a trendy word for it: Ike-dan. So stupid. If you live in a home as an adult you should do the things to make daily life work, whether you are male or female.
Yujiro gets this concept - always has - and now living with Okaasan as a giant blob of do-nothingness in our midst...it is essential that he and I balance eachother out with the housewifeing.

Okaasan doesn't do much in the house. She washes dishes (sometimes) if we ask her to do it immediatley after eating. She washes a few underpants. We do everything else. I wonder how SHE feels about that? She can hear/see us in the kitchen but hardly ever offers to help or does anything herself. This is fine by me, because it's easier without her, but it is strange that she has just given up on all the house activties of life and just sits and sits and sits by the TV.

So this week, he has the car and I am at home - shoveling snow and shopping and cooking...and eating chocolate.

This morning was "How about a bath?" time for Okaasan. If we say nothing I think she would never have a bath. We get her to have a bath about once a week. So, I started the bath running and then told her about it...three times...and now she is in there. Then I'll make her lunch and set off for my afternoon class and the gym.

Japanese New Year is approaching. This year OF COURSE I am NOT going shopping or cooking with Okaasan - because I read my own blog and remember the horror of last year.

I've ordered special food and I made an easy traditional dish with a supermarket packet set. Okaasan has bought one bag of seaweed and fish - I noticed it in the fridge - but I am hoping she won't go and get any more...and then need helping to cook it.
There will be enough that she will feel it IS New Year, but there are shops and freezers to help us through the holidays....

Chichi and Popo discover cat treats from England in the Xmas presies.

Slothful.

2011-12-25T16:54:00.001+09:00

How much chocolate can the body take?

I'm testing that.
If I eat anymore i'll be so hyper-happy I'll be throwing balls of wrapping paper for the cats...and chaseing them myself.

Having two slothful days of Christmas.
The weather has been great and I've got Okaasan OUT twice now. She even listened to my advice and set out while the sun was shining. And came home safely.

I've been a bad Oyomesan by avoiding actually having lunch with her. Left her stuff in flasks yesterday and disappeared to the gym...and today I cooked and served her the food, but busied myself with oh-so-important-housework....bad I know, but my Christmas goodwill doesn't extend to sitting and making conversation for 45 mins.

Above are the mound of parcels that arrived in the past week for me from friends. Amazing really! Thankyou!

But it's a bit embarrassing, because none of them appeared to be for Yujiro...so after he went off to work this morning I sat there with a cup of tea and the Tv and cats...and opened my presents in solitary happiness. Very strange really.
Fortunately ONE friend had included a present for Yujiro, and the cats - so with MINE for him and his for Me, it makes enough for us to do a second present opening this evening.

And..one present I opened this morning - which had sat in the warm living room for several days...err..was a chocolate cake! It was probably labeled as such on the box and I didn't notice....but...ymmmnknow....it's still ok....ymmmmyhh,,,:-)) Thankgoodness for food preservatives.

But I've had a nice quiet time. A lot of TV and staying home. Cleaning the house. Finishing the Japanese New Year cards which have to be posted by Dec. 25th to get a January 1st delivery....and walks in the sunshine....today the views over the city from my local park were lovely - all snowy and sunny. Happy feeling.

My working life is all people, people, people - for me to spend 3 days at home and in the neighborhood is...well...nice.
Last year I was full of a million emotions about Dad and Jane and loss of family. This year I am relaxingly slothful.

Christmas just sneaks right in.

2011-12-24T09:50:00.002+09:00

How did THAT happen?

I had a good Christmas! Two days early.

Roast Chicken prepping a la Jamie Oliver mode. Stuff a lemon in the bum.

Veggies a bit burned. Didn't baste enough.

BUT! GREAT taste!

December 23 is the Japanese Emperor's birthday - and a public holiday. This is handy for all the Japanese who want a day off work to celebrate a Christian festival with shopping and eating and drinking. I'm guessing that 99% of the Emperor's subjects don't know why it is a day off - but are very grateful anyway! I think there will be an out-pouring of grief when the Emperor dies and December 23 isn't a public holiday anymore...although maybe it will be renamed National Snail Day or something in honor of one of the Emperor's hobbies.

This year it was a Friday, so Christmas Eve (very important date/eating/shopping time in Japan) and then Christmas Day (not so important) are all over a long weekend.

Yujiro was away at 6 am skiing, so after I thawed out from cleaning 10 cm of snow off the car for him (years of training as a ski girlfriend, I know the way to his heart)...I spent the morning in my bathrobe, buried under cats...watching America's Next Top Model.

Escaped Lunch with Okaasan by prepping the stuff for her in flasks on the kitchen table and walking off to have curry and read the newspaper at my fave Indian restaurant.

Came home with the intention of getting Okaasan to go walking herself, but had to wait until 2.30 pm when she woke up - then went into persuading overdrive that NO IT'S NOT ICY NOW and YOU CAN GO OUT SAFELY!

It HAS been dangerous for over 2 weeks now, so it us understandable that she can't switch gears easily. In her mind Snow=Dangerous, whereas in fact Ice=Dangerous, and Snow=Safe Walking.

Finally, at 3.30 pm as the snow started again...Okaasan got dressed and ready and went out for the first time in 6 days. And I could get into her room to take out the dirty laundry and clear the newspapers and trash and yukky stuff going mouldy by the heated carpet (I think it was a food packet from a week ago).

That nice wooden box for recycle newspaper my student made? Okaasan has already started draping under pants on it....there IS no hope.

And then. Christmas dinner.

We weren't sure about Yujiro's ski teaching schedule over the holiday - so decided to be like lots of other Japanese households and enjoy our Christmas dinner on December 23....as I'd impulse bought a whole chicken at the supermarket on my way to work 2 days ago...and so....after Internet surfing for help I settled on it'll-be-easy-darlin' British cook Jamie Oliver's Perfect Roast Chicken recipe.

And you know what? It worked! Delicious. Stuffing lemons inside a chicken makes a big difference.

Great! Thanks be to Jamie. British panicky cooks turn for help to the 3 Kitchen Gods: Delia Smith, Jamie Oliver or Keith Floyd. This year Jamie came thru for me big time :-))

Yujiro got home at 6 pm with the excellent news that he'll be ski teaching close to the city for the next 4 days and thus home every night. And he brought cheap sparkling wine.

Okaasan got home about 6.30 pm, safely proving to herself that outside IS safe to walk alone...I hope she gets OUT there now and starts exercising.

And I finally admitted defeat in my week-long hunt for my parents' Christmas tablecloth, that I brought from the UK a year ago with nostaligic plans to use here in Japan. I have no idea where I put it! (it will emerge in time for summer I am sure...). Settled instead for another tablecloth from the UK, plus my step-mum's rose tablemats...all somehow joining Christmas dinners at dad's house over the years with now and here in Sapporo, Japan and Christmas dinner with my now family - Yujiro and Okaasan.

For better, for worse, richer and poorer, in sickness and in health - they ARE my family now....

At 7 pm the three of us sat down to the chicken feast and LOVED it.

Okaasan even asked for toast to help mop up the gravy!!! (maybe cos I'd actually added a spoon of soy sauce to the gravy to make it Japanesey for her....?).

And just as we were finishing....the doorbell rang and a poor junior staff member of the Suzuki garage was there with a small box of chocolates, yet more sparkling wine and a 2012 calender - ALL in the hope that we WILL buy a new car from his company in 2012. This is so Japanese...can't imagine a garage in England sending staff round with chocs and wine to soften you up to buy a car from them!!!

I'd better go to a Toyota and a Mazda garage and express car-buying thoughts...

After that, fell into the armchair and ate alcohol-infused chocolates (Thanks Takako in Shin-Sapporo!).

And that my friends...was a very, happy December 23 Christmas!

And...in the living room there are all sorts of boxes awaiting me that the postman and delivery people have brought this week....I am saving those for tomorrow.

So I'll just have ANOTHER Christmas on Dec. 25th. :-))

Maybe I'll find the tablecloth in time for that.

* And....that donating year-end-party monies to a Tohoku volunteer group idea - the first lot of students said they were happy to do it and the volunteer group said a surprised "thankyou" via Facebook...and so I hope some of my Christmas cheer is seeping southwards to earthquake/tsunami-hit areas.

Pre-Christmas guilt trip.

2011-12-22T15:47:00.004+09:00

Feeling guilty about Okaasan cooped up inside for days. She hasn't been out since Saturday...now it's Thursday.
Guess this means I'll be taking her somewhere over my holiday weekend.

The ice in Sapporo has been awful. We haven't had fresh snow for over a week, and the car tires just polish every surface they touch.

The result is this:

This photo was taken by a friend in Sapporo (and I've stolen it from her Facebook page), but it's an excellent example of almost all the roads here this week!

Of course, Okaasan can't go out onto these kind of streets. So she stays there, in her room - watching TV, sleeping, walking to the toilet, walking to the kitchen table for lunch and dinner, sleeping more, TV......

Does she feel bored? Or is she protected by the dementia in this situation? She knows she hasn't been out today maybe...and maybe for a day or two...does she actually realize it is 5 days?
I know this is like the question: Do goldfish get bored in their bowls?

I've been out working and doing all the Christmas rah-rah parties and classes, he has been out doing ski teacher training, even the cats have ventured out for a run in the snow under the subway line...but Okaasan.....sits and sits...and sits some more.

I saw a Day Care Center bus in our street, picking up customers to take them off for sing-alongs/ball-catching/blood-pressure checks etc and I wished that Okaasan was in that system. I wished that Yujiro cared enough about it all to GET her into that system.
But he doesn't care really - as long as she is there in the house day to day he thinks she is ok - and she is probably too proud to agree to join a Day Care system...."that's for old people who can't do anything"...I can almost hear her saying....and so...she sits, and sits in her room with the TV.
I hope when I am an old person I am not too proud that I won't take the chance to surround myself with people and chat and activity.

Going somewhere with other people and having conversations and activity would be good for Okaasan. She isn't an incapable person, she is still healthy enough to go walking on her own etc - but this icy weather just traps her inside.
We live in Sapporo because we love it. Okaasan lives here because her son is here. But it isn't a good place for her.

Two hours ago it started snowing here and the 3-day forecast is blizzard, which will cover up all the ice finally. Okaasan won't go out in the blizzard either, and he is using the car to get to the ski areas...so I guess I will be taking Okaasan out in a taxi to give her a change of scene.....

It will be my Christmas good person duty.

Christmas in Japan for Teachers

2011-12-21T09:12:00.002+09:00

So this is Christmas....
In Japan, for an English teacher.

Christmas week, you try to do slightly different classes - with adults and for kids. I have adults, and every year there are in-class "parties", which usually means students (the women in the class) bring cookies and snacks and drinks. The desks get moved a bit, I try to put on background Xmas music, I might wear a Santa hat or a bit of tinsel...and I try to think up some kind of quiz/game/activity which is fun and festive.
It is nice, in a slightly formal, polite kind of way - without alcohol Japanese adults don't really relax easily and people tend to sit quietly and wait to see what happens next. It's not a rip-roaring laugh fest.

The cake takes center stage at in in-class party.

The game part is VERY hit-or-miss, yesterday I tried an information matching card game based on the text we've used this year...but in my hurry to get it ready I didn't check the printer...and it cut some of the essential information OFF the cards.....leaving students even more bewildered that usual. Had to go into super-energetic, reassuring Teacher Mode to paper over the cracks in THAT mistake. very luckily, Japanese people are polite about things-not-going-as-planned and everyone assured me they had enjoyed the class....not so sure about that, but I accepted the warm feelings and wrapped myself up to set off for the NEXT party-in-class one hour later at a different place.

(Almost as non-succesful as the Halloween Theme class I tried to do with a colleague years ago, where we prepped Apple Bobbing, and NONE of the kids wanted to go anywhere near a bowl of water and put their faces in it...we did it a few times to demonstrate how fun it was...and they stood and looked at us with puzzled eyes!!!
Or...the Pass the Parcel I tried once, with questions in English taped inside every layer. But...my students, being polite Japanese, ever-so-carefully unwrapped each wrapping and the whole crazy, fun, frenzy of this mysterious foreign game was lost).

But yesterday, the English Christmas cake was a success...although not cooked in the center.....again.....must add heat/time to future cakes.

Some classes actually organise a meal out - a lunch or a dinner, plus karaoke. The teacher usually doesn't pay. There is drinking and merry-making.
Bonenkai are Japanese end-of-year parties, and while of course working people are obliged to do it with all their colleagues and bosses, non-working people do it too - with all the "groups" in their life, and of course with friends.
So the Swimming Club, the Cooking Class, the old-P.T.A. friends, the Residents' Association, the English class, the Volleyball Team at the Community Center - ALL will probably organise a Bonenkai.

This year I've already had a Bonenkai lunch (very nice tofu, traditional restaurant, private room, slightly formal), several in-class snacks and game parties and last night a pub/restaurant with food and beer and then karaoke private room. Got another pub/restaurant and karaoke tonight too.

And....this year I am trying...hoping...to go encourage students to help me donate money to a volunteer group in Tohoku. A group that is helping people put their lives back together after the March 11 disasters.

After all the eating/drinking parties I am giving each student a letter to take home. Inside is a Y1,000 bill (the money they paid for MY dinner and drink), and the details of the NPO's bank account, with a request that they send the money to the NPO on my behalf...and maybe add some more of their own money.
I feel guilty that all this money is being spent here - I know the Hokkaido economy needs the business - and this is the way I thought of pausing a moment during all the over-indulgence, and thinking of people still clearing up and trying to live after an earthquake/tsunami etc.
But I don't know how students will react. Will they think it is strange? Or even worse, rude of me to return their money? I hope they get the idea...

Anyway, this is all Chritsmas for English teachers in Japan. I've been doing variations of all of this now for 17 years, and the games and the snacks and the food and the karaoke vary a bit - but not so much.

It's exhausting, to be honest.
By the time Christmas actually comes I 'm a bit done with it all.
Happy to just sit and open a few presents from friends and watch TV.

Yujiro starts his ski teaching season today and so we don't really know which nights he is home for dinner. Yesterday he and I went to COSTCO but, apart from cheese and snacks, didn't actually buy any delicious Christmas dinner for ourselves because we just don't know when he is home. Okaasan will be happy with whatever I serve...a bit of supermarket chicken and a potato or two, with a bit of tinsel in the table to indicate that this is a Christmas dinner.

I'm ok with that. Last year I desperately needed a Party. And friends came out with me for cocktails and dinner etc. After two terrible years, I needed a party.
This year I will just eat my bousine cheese and crackers, finish off the mulled wine and relax.

Anyway....time to get going on the day....and get up the energy for another Bonenkai tonight.

The cake...

2011-12-20T09:10:00.003+09:00

Heading off for a class party with the BBC Good Food website's "Simmer and Stir Christmas Cake"...it had better be good...otherwise I can never show my face again.

Got two End-of-Year parties in 48 hours.....tough schedule.:-)

Tis the season to be merry!!!!!

2011-12-18T14:41:00.001+09:00

I DID it!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Yeah!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I am SO pleased and smug and over-joyed with myself. I am wonderful.

Skied today and did the '72 Sapporo Olympic Women's Giant Slalom course (easy side) at Teine Highland.

AND..........................................................

Got Okaasan to help me load about 40 pairs of smelly underpants into a general laundry basket and come with me to the washing machine and put them in it.

VICTORY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I think I need a celebration. Oh, I have it. I'm drinking coffee with cooking brandy. At 3 pm.

The skiing makes me SO happy. I feel glimmers of my former life returning. We went up to Teine Highland, a big ski area up above Sapporo city and did a few easy courses slowly. Then got to the bottom and thought: can do more, my knee is ok. Went up to the top and came down the big main course. This.

SUCH a great feeling. We came down the easy side, turning, turning slowly...but I felt connected to the ski area again...not piddling around on the family course as I did last year. And the knee felt fine. :=) I so, so miss getting out and away from the house and city to DO this. Two years of injury and the year before that we didn't ski much because Yuiro was recovering and Okaasan had just arrived.

AND. Okaasan's underpants. Which will shortly be launching their own blog. And book tour.

I came home all elated from the skiing and seized the day - or the moment - or in this case, the underpants.

Marched cheerfully into Okaasan's room with my laundry basket half-filled.

"Okaasan! Have you got any laundry for the machine?".

There was fumbling around and stalling, and excuses - I do it on a sunny day (yeah right), I prefer to do it by hand (yeah right)...there isn't much to do (yeah right)...I don't do laundry when there is an "R" in the month (maybe true...)...but I followed her into the Japanese-style room where she has two laundry baskets and stood over her - well hopefully beside her encouragingly - while she peered into the smelly depths and started picking out pants after pants and putting them into my basket....yippeeeeeeeee!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

"It's hard to do all that laundry by hand isn't it? The machine is easy! Let me help you! In Hokkaido in winter it's hard isn't it! etc etc"

Then swept away to the laundry machine, with Okaasan trotting behind, and showed her how to put the powder in and switch it on.

Victory! A deep and satisfying victory.

Until now I've basically been too nervous of her reaction to do this. Too afraid of all the excuses. Easier to take the sneak-in-and-grab-it-in-her-absence route.

But. Time has come. I remember an old student of mine, whose mother suffers from dementia. He said that his wife was able to get his mother to do much more than he. "I think she's a little scared of my wife, because she has that hospital professional air about her - even though she's a dietician and not a geriatric nurse". He thought that his wife, as not direct family and with a no-nonsense approach got the old lady to do more in the area of personal hygiene etc.

I've always thought that if I get up enough confidence with Okaasan and vault over the language barrier, I can maybe get her to do things. Just sweep her along with it all.

And today I did it. Maybe by tonight she'll be giving me the scary treatment at dinner. But for now.....VICTORY!

About half the underpants from this week.....

And yesterday: we did another Very Boring Family Outing to a shopping mall. Walked about aimlessly, had a silent lunch ( we are one of those families you see eating out together and not talking) and then a bit more wandering for exercise...and then home.

AND........you can see I am on a high here. Better cut back on the brandy....yesterday I made a traditional English Christmas cake stuffed full of fruits and brandy....from a not-so-traditional recipe off the BBC....I THINK it's turned out ok. This is actually for a class on Tuesday, for the class party, but the extra bits I cooked for us taste great...so maybe I can recommend this easy Christmas cake recipe!

Shopping assistant.

2011-12-14T07:12:00.001+09:00

Takes a man to go hat shopping with a woman.
Takes a saint to go hat shopping with Okaasan.
On 2 days in a row.

Me? I'm neither a man nor a saint. I was away working happily, getting my diary packed with year-end-parties by generous students...it's gonna be a tough eating time in the next 10 days.

Yujiro? Home alone with Okaasan and waiting for the ski season bookings so he can start work.
So he took Okaasan hat shopping. Brave guy.
Her old hat was somehow broken and with December temperatures free-falling into the minus range - daytime HIGHS! - we thought it was absolutely time to get her head covered.

First day he took her to the local SEIYU, a supermarket come cheapish store locally. They looked, and looked. No suitable hats. All to "young", according to Okaasan.

So, the next day he took her downtown to the big Daimaru department store...where she finally selected a hat costing..wait for it...Y13,000 or $160!!!! For a hat. I think it may also have a global positioning system fitted and make tea. It can't be $160 just for a piece of material to cover the head...can it?

Shopping with Okaasan isn't easy. She is a very picky shopper and of course the short-term memory loss means that she can't remember a decision she's made...she walks around looking at stuff and then goes back to the same item and makes the same decision. It's torture actually.
We could just give her the money and hope she goes and buys it on her own...but...but...the money might get spent on something else and she isn't going out on her own much yet in the winter conditions.

But he did it. A man and a saint. He stood by and helped.
I hate shopping. Going anywhere near a department store in the pre-Christmas madness for sure.
Thankgoodness he is a good, loving son. I am so very lucky! :-)

AND...we got a way to try and keep some carpet space free in Okaasan's room.
One of my students made a recycle newspaper storing box out of wood, and gave it to me yesterday. We opened it just before dinner time and decided it would be great for Okaasan's room - in fact she instantly collected all the old papers and put them neatly in the box. Excellent.
I use an old supermarket box upstairs for my English papers, but at least I can remember to use it. Okaasan usually has about 6 or 7 newspapers open at the same time and scattered around on the carpet and table - now she has a nice box to PUT them in...who knows...she may even use it.

AND....my Japanese sister just emailed me: the apartment owner says "ok" to her renting the place down the road from me. She and husband and family will be arriving here in January!!!!!!
Yippppeeeeeee!!!!

Family ice dance.

2011-12-11T17:59:00.001+09:00

Sapporo still covered with ice - and not enough snow to make it safe.
We took Okaasan out yesterday for another family-walk-and-lunch to stop her taking root by the TV.
It was actually a beautiful sunny day and we walked from the house, just down the road to the local subway station area for a bowl of ramen. Okaasan used the walking stick I gave her and with our help managed to do it all without breaking anything.
I think it's good to just walk locally, to remind her that she CAN do this in winter.
She enjoys walking with us. It is a simple thing to do. She is quite passive on these occasions. We dropped in to the supermarket so he and I could use the ATMs, Okaasan sat on a bench and waited and glancing back I saw her just sitting there staring at the supermarket shelves with a kind of vacant-look.

Last week was actually the THIRD anniversary of her coming to live with us. It slipped by and I forgot.
She's doing ok. Everything a little less than before. Less laundry-doing, less walking, less shopping.
I can't imagine her living alone. I think living here gives her a routine life that she just follows from day to day, without worries of food or money or decisions.
When she first came here I thought her condition was going downhill sharply, now I think she is just coasting along until something...something happens. It could be a fall or an outburst of anger.

No backlash about me delivering laundry to her room - so I am going to leave it a week and then go in with a big laundry basket and say: "Do you have anything to put in the machine?". Okaasan uses the machine to spin dry a few pants...but I think anything else is beyond her.

Quiet weekend really....

Yesterday I went to a wake following the death of a friend's father. She is living in England and couldn't get back for the wake or funeral, so I kind of went on her behalf. I think I only met her father once or twice, but in Japan people with small connections to the deceased go to funerals.
I missed the actual ceremony, because she'd given me the wrong address for the funeral hall, but I arrived to find the family in a side room enjoying food and beer - with the open coffin to one side behind an altar-like arrangement with a photo of her father and candles. So I sat and chatted for a while. Japanese wakes are nice like this, the family get together and have a meal and the coffin is just there for anyone to look at. I didn't actually look though...after sitting with my own father's body for an hour in the funeral parlour I didn't think I needed to see another body...didn't want to risk what memories that might bring back?

And today? We went skiing!! Well, him and me.....first, very, very gentle ski with our bad knees.
I did ok, my leg felt MUCH stronger than last year - he felt some pain. I think I might be able to do more skiing this year, which will be wonderful.
And we came home via my fave Indian restaurant and had a huge plate of tandorri stuff.....

And I did some more Christmas cards.

And played with cats. Risked putting up some decorations.

That was it.

Kind of boring blog really. Sorry about that.

A historic laundry day.

2011-12-08T08:02:00.001+09:00

Reached another stage with the laundry.
(Can't believe this topic obsesses me....)

Last night I put all Okaasan's pants (about 20 pairs) and some pajamas in a neat pile and walked into her room and gave them to her.
"Here you are Okaasan! Your laundry! It was drying upstairs. It's hard to wash all of this by hand isn't it!"

Triggered off a volley of "thankyous" from her...and I smiled and left. She sorted through the pants a bit and later took them in her laundry hoarding room. Probably put them straight back in one of the two baskets she uses for dirty stuff...

It IS time. Now with winter and Okaasan not going out for days on end - waiting for a chance to sneak in and remove/return laundry is hard. I've been keeping it at the top of the stairs...and when I hear her going to the toilet I grab some and rush down and throw it onto her sofa with all the other jumbled up clothes.

But. Time to "man up" to this situation and be more direct.
Yes, I come into your room. Yes, I wash some of your laundry. It's hard for you to do all of it. I am helping you.
Not that we had this conversation this time, she didn't debate the point of WHY I had her laundry...this time. But if she does, I'm gonna be as direct as possible. Helping you. We are helping you. I am sure she knows we come into her room and remove laundry, and on some level accepts it. I am hoping! :-)

If we get past this point of US doing her laundry we can maybe progress to going into her room with a laundry basket and asking her to put stuff in it once a week. That would be great. An end to the laundry sneaking.

And in other news...

It is almost certain that one of my Japanese-sisters IS moving to live about 10 minutes away from here in January, with her husband and new baby. They have checked out an apartment near the local station here and are talking a mid-January move.
I'm SO SO delighted. For me of course! I will have a close friend right here nearby. I will get to see her regularly in her new role as mum. I can vent to her about Okaasan...and as she has public health nursing experience...get a semi-professional opinion about Okaasan....
But beyond all that I am looking forward to ambles in the park with the pram...exploring my city with her (and pram)....and spending much more time with one of my favorite Japanese ladies. Years ago we shared an apartment in Saitama....years ago when we were single and carefree....

And...in other news...I treated myself to Christmas lights.....one of my neighbours has some and I liked them...so....it was bloody freezing work to put them up...and the supports of old ski poles etc don't look so pretty in daylight...but at night....ahhhhhhhhh!!!!

Fading stories.

2011-12-05T07:30:00.001+09:00

Dementia books often describe the memory loss as a row of dominoes - the most recent are already collapsed, those a bit further back are leaning....and the childhood memory blocks are still standing.
But sometimes, even those further back are flat and need to be propped up.

We know Okaasan's stories better than she and last night had to help her pick up the fallen domino.

A year ago or more, ANYTIME the words "wartime"or "school" or "Korea" were in the conversation, Okaasan would launch into her story about the schoolfriend who had a strange name, and the day after war ended she didn't come back to school - so Okaasan realized that maybe she was Korean and had gone back to Korea etc.

We knew the story by heart. She told it so many times.

Last night's dinner was kimuchee nabe, kind of cook-on-the-table-hot-pot with Korean-spicy-cabbage - so of course "Korea" and "Korean people" was the dinner topic.
Okaasan started well - she actually introduced the story that when she was a child Koreans did the dirty jobs like collecting the rags and people looked down on them, and how sad that was etc.
There were many Koreans living in Japan.

"Ah yes, your friend at school was Korean wasn't she?" I prompted.

"My friend? School? I forget...."

"Yes, your friend her name was Tamako or something, wasn't it....when the war ended she didn't come back to school."

"Tamako? School?".
Yujiro joined in with a few prompts.
But nothing. Okaasan had no memory of this favorite old story. It was bizarre.

After several minutes of us retelling HER story, she began to join in and finally was telling it again...sort of...not using the words she used to have for the story...more using the words we'd just used...but kind of propping up the memory domino.

Afterwards I thought - that story hasn't featured at all in the past year. At one time it appeared several times a week in connection with "wartime" and "school" or "Korea". Now it's almost gone.

Family walking.

2011-12-04T08:35:00.001+09:00

Four days stuck at home - Sapporo got the first real ice and snow of the winter and Okaasan couldn't get out.

Finally yesterday we took her out for a walk and lunch.
Helped her decide which clothes she should wear and then we set off by car and then subway to a city center station. Funny now how I am getting used to doing these things for Okaasan, standing in her room while she frets around about clothes and bags and gloves - trying to advice her. Progress I guess.

Walked through all the underground passageways and shopping areas with her - probably 1.5 km. A good walk. Along the way we saw free art installations and an interesting photo exhibition about the Sapporo Winter Olympics 40 years ago.
Then lunch at a department store - where we found a trick art painting on the floor....

Communication Malfunction.

2011-12-02T09:02:00.001+09:00

Japanese and English are swirling around in this house - not sure if that is good or bad for Okaasan.
I thought I noticed recently that she was looking very confused by my bad Japanese, and made a mental note that I really MUST communicate to her more clearly. I've read that dementia sufferers gradually lose the ability to understand - at first complex or long sentences, and bit by bit...simpler stuff. Listening to a foreigner's Japanese with all its odd grammer and word choice may be tough for Okaasan.

But yesterday's story shows that sometimes she is having problems with Japanese!

I was out working and collecting dry cleaning. So this is a second-hand story.

Yujiro had lunch with Okaasan.
They discussed whether the roads were ok to walk on, or whether she should stay home yet again.
"I think it's too icy still, sometimes we take you to a shopping center to walk, but maybe tomorrow is better to go out" he told her.

After lunch he was back upstairs...probably playing chess on his smartphone.

30 minutes later Okaasan called from downstairs: "Yujiro! Yujiro! I'm ready! What time are we leaving?".

?????????????????????????
He found her dressed and ready to go. To a shopping center for a walk. :-)

She'd heard "shopping center for a walk", but maybe her brain had latched onto that nice idea and the "sometimes" part was lost....poor Okaasan! Of course he couldn't do anything about it because I had the car....so poor Okaasan had to sit back down again in front of the TV.

The dementia books warn against information overload.
Don't say: I'm just popping out now to the supermarket to get some cheese, because tonight I think I might make that nice pasta sauce and it would be nice to have cheese on top.
Say: I'm going to the supermarket.I will be back soon.

* Toilet accident. In the spirit of fairness on this blog, because afterall I do talk about all sorts of embarrassing "toilet accidents" that Okaasan has. Um....how shall I put this...my advice from this morning's experience...um....DON'T mix two cups of coffee with a bowl of branflakes for breakfast. Bad idea. very. Do middle-aged woman lose bowel control? Oh gawd....I think I may need diapers.

Laundry basket case

2011-12-01T15:38:00.001+09:00

The hours we spent thinking about Okaasan's laundry....

Yujiro realized in the last few days that the reason Okaasan has asked him for money a lot recently is that she had three dry cleaning receipts (furthest back was for August)...so he gave her money, she bought other stuff, and then she rediscovered the receipts and asked for money again....each time she'd forget that he money was for the dry cleaning.

So we took the receipts and I went today to pick up the missing cleaning.
And - managed to get Okaasan to give up that grimy sweater she wears all the time - I spirited it away for cleaning with just a little prompting.

No wonder she wears the same thing - I picked up 5 T-shirts/little sweaters at the shop.

And getting the laundry going in the opposite direction: Yujiro sneaked into Okaasan's store room to return washed clothes to the jumble of stuff on the bed.
I'm too nervous to do it when she is there next door watching TV...but with all the snow and ice I fear she won't go out for days - so he ever-so-carefully slid open the door from the hallway and sneaked the clothes back onto her bed. She was next door watching TV and never heard him. I doubt she notices that there are suddenly clean pants and pajamas on the bed among all the stuff.

Crazy isn't it! I think the time is a-coming when we should just be more up-front about doing her laundry. March in with a clothes basket and get her to put stuff in it, "it helps you to do it in the machine, instead of by hand doesn't it!" etc - but I'm not quite brave enough to try it.....yet.

And so it goes. Very icy in Sapporo right now, I don't think Okaasan should/will go out walking in this.

I've noticed in the past few days she is looking at the newspaper flyer about dance classes at the culture school....I wonder if she'd like to go?

Memory and Emotion

2011-11-29T19:57:00.001+09:00

Orchid is a new reader to this blog and she posted a comment on the last posting, it was so interesting I thought I'd move part of her comment up here into the main section so it doesn't get missed!
:-)

Here is what she wrote:

First, Okaasan can't remember so many things, yet she remembers if the piles of laundry and garbage in her room are moved/altered. How is it that something so unremarkable can be remembered and she becomes angry? Surely the composition and height of the piles is something even people who don't suffer from dementia would not remember well. Also, she has been angry with you for long spans of time for cleaning her room, but how is it that she remembers what she is angry about for such a long period of time? Why does she remember her paranoid beliefs that you stole a magazine when she can't keep many other memories at hand for a minute?

Is dementia highly selective in this way? Is she storing new memories with an emotional component (those that make her angry or anxious) differently than those which have a neutral component? If so, can that be used to make sure she remembers things of importance which are positive?

I've studied neurobiology a tiny bit, and I know that memories are stored such that both the details and the emotions are locked in together. It is impossible for one to be elicited without the other, and ironically, when a memory is jogged by external stimuli, sometimes the details of the memory are not brought forth but the feeling is. This is why people have anxiety and don't know why in certain situations. The emotion stored with the memory of a similar experience comes out, but the memory itself doesn't make it. I don't know if this relates to dementia, but if your reading has revealed any answers about this selective memory situation, I'd be very curious to know.

My thoughts....

1. I think she remembers what is important to her - and the "you stole my magazine" 2 years ago was a good example of that. Magazines are important to her. She makes special trips to the shops to buy the latest, she sits and looks at them in detail and copies down recipes from them. That time I probably removed a recently bought magazine...now I am much more careful and I take out magazines from the BOTTOM of the piles....!

I don't think she notices the changes in piles of clothes/newspapers/trash around her room - but if she can't find a particular item of clothing WHEN she is looking for it - then maybe the knowledge that we go into her room when she isn't there comes crashing to the fore.

She appears to remember the real angry times for about 5 days - or at least the emotion continues for about 5 days...and then it is gone again.

I reckon she DOES know we go in and remove clothes for washing and take out trash - but she accepts it basically.

2. Positive or Negative emotions, are they stored differently? I don't know! But I think the positive are easier to retrieve if SHE is basically happy in her days.
So every single time we eat okonomiyaki (savory pancake) it brings to life her happy memories of eating it after school as a child. I guess we ALL bury negative memories...

3. I think dementia sufferers do have selective memory - and for carers it can be disconcerting - you are never quite sure if she has remembered or not.
I've even seen her lose the memory of one of her own favorite stories...she is telling it as usual, and then the next piece of information isn't there. The following day - same story and the missing bit reappears! Once or twice I've supplied the forgotten details - but that confuses her because of course there is no reason why I should know HER story (except I've heard it a million times already).

It's all very strange....and interesting...funny...and frustrating....

Fear of the guilty.

2011-11-29T07:40:00.001+09:00

Sorry. Been busy. TRYING to get Xmas presents and cards done and sent this year, before the post office has to charge me special prices for a personal jet to deliver each and every single one.

Almost done. Spent some sweaty hours in the shops at the weekend remembering why I hate shopping so much, came home and wrapped it all with the help of cats, and then surprised a rural post office yesterday by telling them there are places - oh wow! - outside Japan to send stuff too....got the counter lady, the manager and their trusty manual to process that transaction...

All quiet at home.
Almost too quiet.
I managed to sneak out laundry from Okaasan's room: the usual 30-40 pairs of urine soaked and smelly pants, some wooly tights, some pajamas, a blouse and a little summer sweater.
Recently at dinner she turned up the cuffs of the sweater and I almost gagged - inside was a murky area of grey/black dirt. Gross. She hasn't washed this for ages...a year maybe?
She used to wash some clothes, occasionally, or take them to the dry cleaners - HAD to be the cleaning shop way across town near the old apartment.

But recently? I think she hasn't done much laundry this summer. Occasionally a few pants.

It doesn't matter so much. She spends all day in her pajamas and a sweater. She only gets dressed to go out. Doesn't meet anyone anymore. It doesn't matter really if she is a smelly old lady for shop staff and subway passangers.

But...I feel I should try to do some clothes washing. Of course...this is hard ...if I suggest it to her she'll say: "no, no leave it - I'll do it myself later"...and then forget for another 6 months.
Hence: Sneaking Laundry.

But, Sunday night as Yujiro was making dinner, Okaasan shuffled across the kitchen to get a cup of water wearing The Mask. That strange, blank look that she gets.
Don't want any dinner.

?????????????????

Had she found the missing clothes? Or rather, not found them?
I was in a tizz....had I over-sneaked clothes from her room and now she was angry with me...had I tipped her over into a dark mood?
After our dinner we talked about it safely upstairs. He thought maybe she'd had a toilet accident and was blue, but couldn't tell us. Or had eaten too many snacks by the TV all day and just wasn't hungry.
I wasn't so sure. Nervous that we were heading into scary Okaasan time, with accusations and finger pointing and paranoia.
Except, it isn't paranoia is it when people ARE coming into your room and sneaking out your clothes!

I wondered how I could shift the laundry-doing into another mode. Ideally we'd go and offer to do some laundry for her about once a week and take the stuff with her blessing...but I really don't think she will let us do that...yet.
Okaasan is still too aware of herself, thinks she is in control to allow us to "help"...it is a hard topic - how do you "help"/"encourage" the life of someone who thinks they don't need you?
I'm sure she thinks she does laundry - but the boxes of smelly underpants in her room and the soiled, greasy sweaters tell a different story.

But. By Monday morning.　The black mood had passed. The Mask was replaced by a polite, smiling Okaasan again. I continued drying laundry upstairs in our apartment and while Okaasan was out yesterday Yujiro managed to put it all back in her room - spreading the clean stuff around on the bed and sofa and floor so she thinks it was always there.

I feel deceitful doing laundry this way...but I can't see an alternative yet.

All clear...down there...

2011-11-26T19:18:00.001+09:00

Got the letter from the hospital: my big intestine is cancer free! Maybe (I read that this shit test doesn't have such great accuracy, but I'll take it as a good thing for now...).

So, that's ok then.

I won't be spending my Christmas season in a cancer scare....

Meanwhile...we are waiting for Okaasan to come home and tracking her movements on the cell phone GPS. She is downtown and wandering to....and fro...and to...and fro....she doesn't go downtown alone so much these days, so this is a rarity.
We are wondering how much longer to leave her there...before calling her to come home for dinner.

Middle-aged. Really?

2011-11-26T07:48:00.001+09:00

How did THAT happen?

That ski bum boy I fell for....just turned 53 years old.
And the sliver of cake in the Italian restaurant was too small to get any more than 4 candles on it!

He and I left sushi for Okaasan (she must come to hate sushi dinners cos she knows she is eating alone), and we slipped away downtown with our Groupon vouchers for a Y5,000 course dinner for 50% price. We are a very cheap couple.

In the morning I jokingly reminded Okaasan that it WAS her son's birthday, and thanked her profusely for creating such a wonderful guy....joke joke. She enjoyed that conversation...but when he mentioned it again to her at lunchtime...she'd already forgotten it.

Was it only 3 years ago that I whisked him away to India on a surprise holiday? And we came back....and moved his mother in to live with us? Seems a million years ago. SO much has happened. Life has changed. Both of us became middle-aged and (almost) responsible...elderly care, sickness, death, lawyers, tax advisers, funerals....a lot of life.

Last night I started in on the Christmas cards. I'm using a bag of cards that I took from Dad and Jane's house a year ago, and they arrived here in Japan in my boxes of stuff earlier this year.
So, it was a little strange to be sitting down and sorting through Jane's Christmas card selection. Cards that she'd bought and kept...cards she'd bought with ME in mind. Talk about poignant. Apart from me, there is one other cat-lover in her family - niece Anna - so I know all the cards with cat pictures were bought to send to either Anna or I.

Pretty poignant. I was very, very loved. I felt Jane was there with me looking through the cards and deciding which to send to who. I'm sending many of her cards back to England to her friends and family members. Mourning never goes away completely, it just hides under the table a bit and waits for a leg to grab.

Sorry. Sad post. Not sad really. End of year blues maybe?

Better have a cute cat photo to cheer it all up.

Popo thinks he may be Super Cat. All he needs is the cape and the underpants.

Walking. Carefully.

2011-11-24T08:42:00.001+09:00

Little Family Outing yesterday.
Two days of snow and ice and Okaasan hadn't been out at all.
So yesterday we took advantage of sunshine and a slight thaw and walked with her to the next station down from us for lunch.
Okaasan NEVER goes here, so it was all new to her.

She is very dependent on Yujiro for help with walking on potentially icy places, holding into his hand and following his directions. Her walking is slower now, her balance not great - at one traffic signal crossing, Okaasan appeared to teeter on the slight slope to the curb...and as I rushed to hold her she grabbed the traffic signal to lean against it.

But all was well, she enjoyed the walk in the sunshine and looking at new things. It was a public holiday, so not many shops were open - but a good change from the living room and the TV.

She takes a long time to do things: folding up her shawl to drape it over the chair in the restaurant took several minutes, deciding HOW to put her handbag over her neck/shoulders...each decision seems to take more time.

At home we got done a whole lot of Prepping for Winter stuff, I even made a Xmas card list and thought about end of year things. It's a useful holiday.
I got my icky samples into the hospital the other day. Now I have to wait 2 weeks for the test results. If questionable, I will need a camera stuffed up a place where NO camera should ever go. In Japan these kind of tests are very regular - I am getting a free one as a 50 year old.I think in the UK only people on big company private health insurance schemes get regular tests.

Slightly nervous about the results.
I've never had much to do with hospitals in my life - until last year of course, when what I thought might be a stomach worm-infestation caught from the cat toilet box...ended up being multiplying ovaries and an operation to whip 'em out. But thankfully, no cancer.
Health can change so suddenly. In 2 weeks time I could get a call back for a closer examination, then suddenly Xmas and end-of-year could all be a hospital drama....

The other week I was just leaving a private student's home when she got the call from her sister to say that their mother has advanced lung cancer...the late-afternoon "feeling hot" and subsequent health checks had revealed a shaddow in the lungs etc etc. This family have just been celebrating the arrival of the first grandchild....so to have THIS news now is a shock.

So. Nervous. I am not ready for "Camera! Action!" in any part of my lower body....I am very grateful for all that KKR Hospital did fior me last year, but I don't want to spend Christmas there...

Just a little...what?

2011-11-20T21:23:00.001+09:00

Quiet weekend here.
We stayed home mainly and did stuff.
Went out on Saturday night with the Czech/Japanese couple - both of us got a bit too drunk. I remember reeling home with handfulls of chocolate from the late night supermarket.
Slept until 9 am Sunday.
Watched videos, read the paper, thought about doing-something-about-Xmas...and then didn't.
Took the cat to the vets for his second pill-popping, and I tackled the icky topic of sample collecting for a large intestine cancer check....cos when I took along samples in empty jamjars last week the nurse at the hospital was pretty shocked!!! Apparently you DON'T DIY. You take samples using little tubes and sticks they give you.

Anyway. Quiet weekend. Housework.
And...

Made cake!
Great recipe for sweet potato cake from the Internet, added in some blueberries.

Okaasan went out for a short walk late afternoon, in the dark and cold - both days. Sat and watched TV, slept.

Sunday lunchtime she wasn't great. Something just...off.
She looked terrible, her eyes were all squinty and tired. She just about followed our conversation. Sat silently eating.
Watching her do stuff around the kitchen I was aware of a slowness about it all, getting up and fetching the salt pot. Struggling to open it. Adding two spoons of salt, and about to do a third. Slowly going to get the tea cup and tea powder....standing for a moment at the cupboard looking at the shelves.
She seemed to be moving and thinking through treacle.

By dinner time she was ok again. We had the cook-on-the-table-nabe and she was standing up and down fishing stuff out of it. Eating loads.

But that lunchtime mood...oh...not a good sign....

Accentuate the positive :-)

2011-11-18T10:11:00.001+09:00

He's home.
My solo-carer week is over.
Oyomesan Mission Accomplished for this time.

And sweetest thing? I was out working the first night he was back, so he had dinner with Okaasan.
She TOLD him that she'd been to the Glenn Miller Orchestra concert with me, and that my father had liked Glenn Miller etc.....
She remembered!
All worth it. Created a happy, positive memory for Okaasan in connection to me.

Now time to get on with other things in life that need doing: vacumn the carpet, go to the hospital for the free large-intestine cancer check-up for 50 year olds, take the cat for medicine to make sure he didn't catch anything from the rat, change the tires on the car for winter, write Xmas cards, think about Xmas presents....err...err...life!

Yesterday, just after I'd left my downtown class and was out in the park taking pictures of snow...a local Tv camera crew found me. They were doing interviews with locals about how-do-you-feel-about-arrival-of-snow-etc....and the interviews were rather strangely done bending over and peering into a big pot with a camera at the bottom of it....so of course everyone's double-chins showed nicely.
Mine? Triple-chin I think.
Caught myself on local Tv in the late afternoon...very scary image. I'd better add haircut to that list of stuff to do!

"My wish: I want to go skiing soon!"
(50 year old English teacher)

Snow snow snow!

2011-11-17T08:52:00.001+09:00

Nothing to do with Okaasan - but we got the first snowfall last night and I woke up to THIS!

Mixed-up memories

2011-11-16T21:12:00.001+09:00

Down memory lane again at dinner tonight: this time Okaasan's parents and how they came to be in Kawagoe.
It was all ok...sort of...but got increasingly mixed up in the telling and retelling.
"Why am I talking about this? " she said a few times....
Her father got mixed up with her husband more than once, and then when grandfather was thrown into the mix...who knows???!!

Anyway. Quiet dinner.
I feel tired today. Getting a cold maybe? Off to bed early.

Kitchen table travels.

2011-11-16T08:34:00.001+09:00

Okaasan took me on a tour last night - from the kitchen table - to Israel, Jordan and Egypt.

We looked at the Wailing Wall, we dipped our toes in the River Jordan, we were disappointed at the lack of souvenirs, we learned about Christian history...

She was on great form in fact. Pretty lucid and clear in her conversation. Repetitive, but not hamster-like. Just a nice cosy chat with an old lady telling me about her travels.

When Yujiro's Dad died (a few years before I met him), Okaasan took on a whole new life - joined the hula class and started going abroad with a religion-study group. I've seen pictures of her riding camels and hiking Ayre's Rock. It must have been a wonderful time for her - free from being a wife and no need to be a mother or grandmother.

Dinner last night I served up fish and Japanese-style veggies and soup and pickles - and she talked. Students had given me persimmons and I mentioned that in England persimmons (if we can get them at all) maybe come from Israel.

"Israel" was the key word - and Okaasan was off on her travels....with me as her audience.

So, yesterday all good.

Lunch on the table and I doled out Y1,000 of spending money to her before I left for work. She accepts this - us giving her a little bit of money - it always surprises me really. How she accepts the passive role of someone who doesn't have money, but gets it from us.

I was home at 4 pm - as the skies of Sapporo darkened for the first snowfall of the season. Local radio and Tv had been predicting this event since yesterday, on and on, everyone was in "scurry mode" to get stuff done and get home before the snow arrived.

I got home and found Okaasan....preparing to go out.

She made it out ok, into the dark and cold with the first flakes falling.

She was back in under and hour luckily.

Yujiro called from yet another drinking party with old friends in the Tokyo area. He has a new Smart Phone with a SKYPE Ap. and like a child with a new toy he is endlessly calling me and asking me to shout "Hello" and wave at various drunk friends in bars. I'm not sure if it's the So Young Looking Foreign Girlfriend, or the Smart Phone with SKYPE he is showing off, after all these years as a couple I suspect the gadget has the greater appeal.

He is back on Thursday, so my Mission Oyomesan is heading into its final stages - and has been pretty successful I reckon. :-)

Thankyou for some nice comments this week : saying what a kind, sweet, generous woman I am.

Well, I am I suppose. I try. I think I fought this Okaasan situation for such a long time - giving me and her stress. Now I am accepting that this life is what it is...for a few years. I am SO LUCKY that Yujiro is the rare kind of Japanese guy who takes an active part in the caring, he shops, cooks, cleans (a bit). I am also very lucky that I have my own life and work to escape to.

And I'm lucky to have this blog to vent into!!!

Watching those dementia videos recently reminded me that Okaasan is probably at Early/Mid stage dementia now.

On a good day - like last night, she is just a rambling old lady, who needs someone to cook/clean for her and control her money. She doesn't initiate conversations and she can't decide and act on thoughts like "Have a bath" or "have a haircut". She has single-incontinence, sometimes double. She hand-washes a few clothes. Usually not sure what day or month it is, not sure whether or what she last ate.

She can: dress herself, go to the toilet herself, feed herself and go out for a walk and come home. She can follow a conversation and respond.

On bad days: she gets into a depression and confusion, can't operate machines, can't use kitchen things, hunts for "lost" things, accuses people of stealing stuff, has double incontinence and hides the soiled underwear.

Being nice and kind to Okaasan is a self-preservation act for me: Happy Okaasan = Easy to Manage Okaasan = Relaxed Oyomesan.

:-)

Just a Monday.

2011-11-14T21:38:00.001+09:00

Mondays I don't usually see much of Okaasan.
I'm gone at 9 am, back for an hour late afternoon and then out again and back at 8.30 pm.
Same today - left her food, came home and made her dinner and left it on the table.
Saw her briefly in the kitchen in the morning and she thanked me for taking her to the concert (should stave off a good few negative feelings about me I am hoping!), and then briefly again when I got home at 8.30 pm.
She ate all the food I left out for her in these hot flasks. Useful.

Tomorrow night I am home. Better cook something all warm and friendly on the table together - shared hotpot maybe - to give her some facetime.

That's the saddest thing about Okaasan's life now: she doesn't have any interaction with ANYONE apart from us at home and various shop staff. I feel these weeks when Yujiro is away must be even more so.
He seems reluctant to get her involved in yet another hula dance class. The class at the adult culture school where I teach is maybe good for her: small group, low level, and not too many stressy performace days.
But he needs to take her along to observe the class on a Tuesday lunchtime (I'm working then), and he's let 2 Tuesdays slip by without doing it. Probably exhausted by the whole hula-dance-will-she-won't-she-like-it-saga. Can't blame him for that. But it's sad that she doesn't have that social acitivity now.

She's asked about him a few times. Where is he? When is he coming back? This time we are honest that he is visiting friends in Tokyo area. She seems ok with it. Seems...who knows...

Chatanagachoo-choo...or something.

2011-11-13T20:28:00.001+09:00

Day out.
Done it.

Success.

A bath!
Lunch at home.
Subway to the concert hall.
Glenn Miller Orchestra - including a Christmas Medley and a clap along to all those great old hits.
Subway home.
Dinner a deux in a ramen restaurant.
Walked home together in the dusk.
Sleep for her - sleep...sleep...

A large glass of Chardonnay and a Johnny Depp movie for me.
Done it.

Okaasan was flagging towards the end, I think just being at the concert made her tired. And I offered her a taxi ride for the last section to the house. But she declined and walked it.
I bet she'll sleep all night now.

Bath: "do I have to?" she asked me....."err...yes...you haven't had a bath for a while, wouldn't it be nice before you go to the concert hall to have a bath?"..."I suppose so".....I started the bath running...then lots of chat about her bathtowels and the cute little logo on the towel...finally I encouraged her into the bathroom....and left her to take her own clothes off and go into it alone. She was in the bath for almost an hour...washing some underclothes too. But she wasn't keen to take a bath. I wonder if we'll have to start helping her bath sometime soon.???

Lunch: chilli tofu, miso soup, rice, tomatoes...."I'm sorry I'm not going to eat the miso soup, it makes your body smell so it isn't nice in a public place...."....chat chat chat...and she ate the miso soup without realizing.

Let's leave at 12.30 pm : all sorts of stuff about the handbag, the coat...the gloves...oh and the SHOES! and must change out of socks into stockings...but OH! maybe can't walk in these nice shoes...so had better take my comfy shoes too in a bag...half way to the subway station she changed shoes...then at the concert hall entrance she changed shoes again....

Toilet: ???? "no I don't need the toilet...." She refused every suggestion of a toilet.... for 6 hours. I hate to think what I'll find in her room tomorrow.

Concert: loved it. she clapped along and laughed at the American band leader's Japanese, and the songs and the jokes. Loved it. Very good concert. I remembered my Dad and my Grandad...they loved these songs. Little Brown Jug. Don't Sit Under the Apple Tree. American Patrol.

Home to our local station: "I didn't eat any lunch, so I'm hungry"??????????????......I took her to the noodle place and we sat in relaxed silence slurping noodles.

And home.

Done.
Pretty exhausting for me. I was On Duty since 9 am when I started running the bath for her. And Clocked Off at 5 pm when I got her home.

Success.

I think I'll go back to English teaching work tomorrow for a nice rest.:-)

Giggling our way thru the week ;-)

2011-11-13T08:21:00.001+09:00

Goin' strong.

Okaasan and Me.

Lunch on the table in the flasks and gave her Y1,000 spending money before I set out on my day yesterday.

Interesting day for me: helped a friend take her two cats to the vets, then went downtown to attend a seminar about Foreigners and Inheritence in Japan (two wills? do the siblings get anything? what happens if you aren't married and thus NOT on the Family Register?) and then to meet a young woman who contacted me thru Couch Surfing - she is thinking of marrying her Japanese guy and wonders what life as a foreign wife is like in Japan!!!!!!! oh wow....WHERE to start on that topic!!!!!!
I did tell her - check his family arrangements - who is likely to be caring for the aging parents in a few years??? Are there lots of helpful siblings living near eachother who can take turns? Will it be you alone???? Important stuff like that which you don't consider when you are just concerned with the romance of it all.....I am now VERY concerned about Foreign Oyomesans of the Future!

Home about 5 pm.
Okaasan just heading out. Another gorgeous autumnal day missed.

Easy dinner: freshly made soup for her, with a piece of fried fish, broccoli, rice, pickles. Leftover veggie soup and cheese for me.

She was back about 6.15 pm. She really doesn't go far or stay out long these days.

Okaasan got to the table, saw the fish and started giggling. At the fish! Hand to her mouth, rocking back and forth. Giggling.
"Oh! It's so small! This is so cute! So small!...usually bigger than this...." giggle giggle giggle.

This over-reaction to something is an Okaasan point I've become more aware of recently. This year maybe. A joke or a funny situation sends her into ratures of giggles/hand to mouth/whole body rocking in delight, something just a bit strange or if she feels a bit guilty - more and more giggles. She often comes home and walks thru the kitchen door - and giggles at us...
The other day I found her giggling at the kitchen wipe cloth that I'd left scrunched up in the sink, instead of hanging carefully on the dish drying rack.

Giggling. At a wash cloth! :-))

One of the dementia videos I watched the other day mentioned this too - loss of control of emotions. Of course working both ways - happiness AND anger. Luckily - oh so luckily - at the moment we see Okaasan's over-happiness about life. I absolutely intend to keep it that way.
Okaasan is basically a positive, happy, out-going person. Like mother, like son. She's always enjoyed life and seen the funny side of things and been open to new experiences (joined a hula dance class within weeks of her husband's death and signed on for the class trip to Hawaii immediatly).

So we are starting with a basically happy person here. It's my mission to make sure she stays that way and that we don't tip into darkness and anger and confusion and paranoia.

So. Giggling at the little, fried fish. Fine.

And then. I produced my trump card for this weekend.
The Glenn Miller Orchestra concert.
These are tickets I bought ages ago. Thought it would be a good thing for Okaasan and I to go and do and enjoy together. We do so little a deux that I thought it would be a good opportunity. Oyomesan and Okaasan bonding time.

So I told her I'd got concert tickets for this big band sound concert today - she and I will go.
Oh ! Such happiness. She poured over the concert flyer, read and reread all the list of songs endless times and went on and on about the music and post-war Japan and music.

A very successful dinner.
Thanks to a bit of fried fish and Glenn Miller.

Onwards.

Down memory lane.

2011-11-12T08:21:00.001+09:00

Send me your demented mothers!
Send me your aged parents who need feeding!
I'm getting good at this!
And smug.

Lunch in flasks on the table. OK.

Home at 6.15 pm to cook up another TV cooking show easy recipe - this time nira and natto, two of the smelliest foods in Japan...so Okaasan and I can't kiss anyone today.
But it was fine. Natto/Nira and rice, and soup and some tomato salad.

Okaasan at home and ready to eat.
We sat down a deux at 7 pm.
What conversation to get her on tonight? I thought last night that she looked a bit tired round the eyes, and was it my imagination or was she having problems following my bad Japanese? I've read that dementia sufferers gradually lose their ability to follow conversations and of course poor Okaasan is having to deal with a foreigner massacreing her language - so it wouldn't be too surprising.
Dinner with me is probably as stressful for her, as it is for me!

I tried a few conversation starts but nothing took. She laughed and made the most basic responses, but nothing took off for chat. We ate in silence a bit. At least this meant she was eating and not waving her chopsticks around while talking.

Finally I found the conversation trigger - I'd talked about helping a friend take her cats to the vets, but there was no response - none of the questions you might expect on that (which friend? why? how many cats? where?...nothing), so I used the pet topic and asked Okaasan -"did you have a pet when you were a child?" - and she was OFF with a story about how she had no time for pets because she was the oldest of 6 siblings and had to work to help her mother. Of course.
Actually, it was interesting snapshots of a Japan long-ago, a different age before cell phones and Starbucks and noisy TV shows. Repetitive talk of course, but interesting.

Okaasan's father was a truck driver/owner - pretty unusual in those pre-war days. They lived in Kawagoe, an old city north-west of Tokyo. Kawagoe made tansu, the wooden chests with many drawers that now sell for vast amounts in antique shops around the world. Mr. Okamoto delivered these tansu to customers all over the Tokyo area - the wood was soft and scratched easily, so responsible delivery was important. They were often delivered to brides who were packing up their stuff to move into the husband's family house and all the neighbors would come out into the street to watch the new bride arrive and judge her family status by the quality and volume of tansu she arrived with.

Okaasan talked about the tansu makers bringing their valuable creations to her father's warehouse in the morning, how they were all lined up and then loaded and he set off to deliver them.

Her other chat was a wonderful personal snapshot - the reason why she never had time for a pet of course.

"I used to go to elementary school, maybe I was 5th grade, and I'd walk with my youngest brother strapped on my back, and holding my younger sister's hand, and I'd be knitting as I walked...but it was ok because there weren't many cars or trucks on the road, so I'd knit while I was walking...I made a sweater for my father, nowadays people have sweater patterns, but I just guessed the shape and maybe the teacher helped me?."

And so: we whiled away our dinner hour with all of that. Japan long ago.
Finally about 8 pm I used the one-cat-is-still-not-home-I-should-go-look-for-him excuse and brought dinner to a close. Minutes later Okaasan was back in her room with the TV, and my evening up stairs could start.

She's looking a bit crazy and wild at the moment, she hasn't had a bath in over a week I think. Tomorrow I have tickets to take her to a big band concert and I'll get her to have a bath before we go to that. She doesn't initiate baths anymore at all, just a bit of water splashed on her face and some occasional toothbrushing I think.

And so . Onwards into the weekend.

Mission ongoing...

2011-11-11T07:57:00.001+09:00

Mission all a.o.k. today.

Left food in the flasks on the table for Okaasan's lunch and went off for work.

Came home late afternoon with a box of great, cheap veggies to create a stuffed-full of veggies soup I'd seen on a TV cooking show.
Of course the TV show chef had an underling chef to carefully peel and cut all the veggies for him, but it was ok - while Okaasan stirred herself up for a 5 pm departure ("I've been watching Tv today, I didn't notice the time"), I chopped veggies and made the soup, AND made the potato/cabbage fry up she likes.

There was a brief...very brief moment - when I considered asking her if she could help me chop the vegetables - but I beat that thought down quickly - Okaasan in the kitchen is just a whole performance of increasingly confusion and unfinished work. With 90 minutes of time for prepping and eating I don't need the stress of that and SHE needs to go out and exercise.

Checked the GPS at 6.15 pm and could see her heading home - so I started getting it all table-ready. She got home and did her usual trip to the toilet - walking from her room via the kitchen to the toilet - in her UNDERPANTS!!! Kind of strange to see her do that - in the house the kitchen is the shared-family space and pajamas are the norm for all of us, or I may dash across it late at night in a towel after a shower...I've never seen Okaasan in the kitchen in her underpants.

She and I had dinner together. I talked a bit about Yujiro going to Tokyo by a 20 hour ferryboat trip, but she wasn't so interested - and after a few non-starts of conversation she alighted on the word "Otaru". It's a port town in Hokkaido, and I was gabbering on about ferries and harbors...and she alighted on the name "Otaru".

OFF she went - Otaru!! - Ishihara Yuiro (the Elvis of Japan long ago) he lived there! - Otaru - Yujiro lived near my cooking school in Tokyo - my cooking school in Tokyo - Yujiro a BIG star - someone told me the Ishihara family house was near my cooking school - even my husband came to look at the outside of the house - it was near my cooking school in Tokyo - I went to a cooking school - someone told me Ishihara Yujiro's family lived near the school - my HUSBAND even wanted to see the house - Ishihara was a big star - my cooking......

At 7 pm I exited for the class, and left Okaasan happily eating veggie soup and potato/cabbage fry and rice.

All ok.

Yesterday in a quiet moment at work I was looking on the Internet at videos about dementia training workshops etc - and realizing we are still VERY lucky with Okaasan. After watching lots of videos of dementia sufferers in states of vacancy, shuffling silence, gibbering - I thought we are lucky to just have hamster-wheel stories/dirty underwear/dirty room/a fridge-full of yogurt/money-hair salon-dentist management and the endless checking questions ("There are two cats aren't there?").

Lucky, so lucky.

Mission Oyomesan.

2011-11-09T21:41:00.000+09:00

He's gone.
I am in charge. The Decider. For 8 days.

Done it before. Will almost certainly do it again, and again...and again.
Of course it IS getting easier - my general relationship with Okaasan is much better now and I have a stock of easy-acceptable ideas for food that she'll eat.
I hope there won't be any more hiding in the second floor rooms and peeing in a trashbox as I did in "Second Floor Ghost in Nov. 2009"

Now I am a mature, sensible, calm, organised Oyomesan.
Spend a week with Okaasan? No problemo!

Well.
Maybe.

He left at lunchtime, this time being honest with Okaasan and telling her he was going to Tokyo to see friends etc. Last year he lied and told her he was going on a ski instructors' course...in one of the biggest cities in Asia....and I had to perpetuate that lie for a week.

Today I came home late afternoon and shouted basic greetings to Okaasan from the kitchen...my coming home woke her up and 30 mins later at 5 pm she set out, in the dark of course - the evening walk.
I set the crab sushi on the table, heated up the soup and put it in a flask, made a quick salad and left the "I/We are out tonight, so please have dinner alone" sign on the kitchen table. I checked on the cell phone GPS that Okaasan was only at the local supermarket, and just after 6 pm I headed back out to work.
All ok. Evening class. A quiet dinner for me with the newspaper in a local cheapo restaurant.

Got home at 8.15 pm. One cat sitting on the doorstep to greet me....with my key I opened the door locks, tried again, pulled the door.....WHAT???????????

The security chain was on the door inside!!!
Okaasan had locked both regular locks AND the security chain!!!

I had to ring the doorbell and get her staggering blearily into the hall to let me into the house!
"I thought I was on my own. I thought I should lock the door, I forgot?"
"No! no! Yujiro is away in Tokyo, but I am STILL HERE! I was just at work!"

Great. Maybe the cats will have to show me the way to jump in via the shed roof....of course with a dead rat in my mouth.

Mission Oyomesan. The first night.
Over and Out.

Two blogs to recommend.

2011-11-08T20:03:00.000+09:00

Do you like food and travel?

If "Yes", like me - please check out two blogs I follow.

I've just added them to the My Blog List, which is on the far right of this page in the green area and scroll down.

んちゃって英語ガイド

is a blog by Masako, a Hokkaido guide and writer and teacher. A few years ago I helped her with a book (Pera Pera Hokkaido), and she writes about her travels and food experiences.

What Wonderful Travels in Hokkaido, JAPAN!

is by a sometime-student of mine Kimi-san. She works in Hokkaido as a tour guide too and often features amazing, close-ups of fantastic food. This week she is in east Hokkaido and took a beautiful sunrise photo.

Have a look at these two blogs if you have time.:-)

An evening of evenings to come.............OMG.

2011-11-07T20:07:00.002+09:00

Had dinner a deux with Okaasan tonight.
Haven't had to do that in a while.
Yujiro is out at a velo taxi drivers' end-of-season-piss-up and so I get the wonderful event of Dinner with Okaasan.
And on Wednesday he's off for a week of annual piss-up in the Tokyo area with old friends...and I will get night after glorious night of....Dinner with Okaasan.
Except I jumped at the chance of two students booking evening classes on Wednesday and Thursday so that's TWO evenings I can escape. Wonder if I could book classes on the other 5 nights too?

There was a brief ray of escape light when I thought Okaasan herself was going to drop dinner plans at 5 pm because she came rushing home in the rainstorm and said she'd slipped in our parking area, fallen and hurt her lip. No blood or anything, but pain.
And the next thing would be: feeling injured/sick...shouldn't eat any dinner......
But no. No such luck.

I cooked spagetti, salad and soup - all easy.
Got Okaasan to the table, fumbled around for a conversation topic and after a few false starts got her onto - Culture Day last week - lots of Japanese kinds of culture - you did flower arranging didn't you - young people don't know how to do it - and tell me everything again and again about your flower arranging classes in Tokyo 50 years ago...and she did over and over again.
The stories got all very mixed up - with cooking classes and flower arranging classes, and who said what and when, and where, and cooking and flowers....

The soup and the salad were sitting on the table while Okaasan waved her choptsticks around and chatted on and on. Finally I stood up and cleared away my dirty plates, washed up the pans, wiped down the kitchen surfaces...and finally remembered the Get Out of Kitchen card - some laundry hanging in the bathroom.
"Ahh this laundry didn't dry, I'd better take it upstairs to the living room heater, excuse me, so sorry!.....".
Laundry is always a good excuse for leaving the table and kitchen, because Okaasan thinks doing laundry is important and good housewifeing.

And so I escaped. 50 minutes of Dinner with Okaasan. Done.

Gonna be a long, long week.
Gonna be a whole lot of moaning here folks.
I fear, and tonight certainly seemed so, that Okaasan's conversation powers have declined since last year. With Yujiro she just sits and listens to him go on and on, making the occasional contribution. With me and my patchy Japanese ability she has to do more of the talking, I can't prattle in Japanese so well - and so I get her onto a topic, ask some innocent questions on her fave topic and let her run with it.
But getting her to eat dinner while running round memory-land is hard!

Gonna be a long week a-coming.

Upstairs, Downstairs.

2011-11-07T06:38:00.000+09:00

Ended our weekend with a couple-night out on the cheapo Groupon vouchers to a bar with Italian food. Finished up with one more beer and meat on sticks near the subway station.
Came home.

Upstairs: the cat brought home his second rat this week. Luckily dead. Luckily he left it out on the roof (and no, he didn't bring matches too, that's my later addition to give a size comparison to my circle of rodent experts on Facebook!).

And Downstairs: Yujiro went to the toilet and found Okaasan had been trying to hide a toilet accident, so he was dealing with soiled toilet mat and carpet tiles.

Yuk, yuk, yuk. Our life is so very glamorous.
So sorry if you are reading this blog while eating. :-)