Oyomesan duties...

Stimulating Saturday night.

Not.

Had 5 classes at work today and a pile of student diaries to read, so finally got out just before 6 pm and did a quick spin round the supermarket to buy sushi, veggies and tofu.

Took a taxi home with all the shopping and the diaries. And I think I saw Okaasan scurrying along as she does - heading to the Seiyu and Macdonalds...a favorite haunt of hers recently.

But that was 6.10 pm, so I knew she wouldn't be home for ages.

So I got back - started the pork and veggies soup, made the salads, fed the kittens, played with the kittens, made the bed, picked up a few tissue paper balls from the living from carpet....checked the soup and put on the heater in Okaasan's room....and found the window of her tatami room WIDE open to the street. 

I just hope no burglar ever thinks this house is worth coming into...in Japan they actually have a whole sub-species of Women's Underwear Thieves (I've lost mine twice from a balcony clothes line and a coin-laundry) - so maybe some WUT would like to come on in and rummage thru Okaasan's collection.

Anyway. By 7.20 pm Okaasan wasn't home. So I ate dinner alone in the kitchen with a beer and the newspaper. I called Yujiro at the ski area to check his phone GPS and locate Okaasan. She was in one of the local supermarkets near the station.

I continued eating. Finished. Washed plates and came upstairs.

She rocked home just before 8 pm.

I fed her and chatted a bit. Then gave her the "got to call someone" line and escaped to MY Saturday night finally.

Oyomesan  duties done.

And that's my life....

*  Yesterday I made a mistake in Okaasan's chat-along. She was wombling on as usual about how her mother's family had once lived just by the bridge over the Toyohira River on the road between Sapporo and Otaru.

"Ahh yes, you went with a taxi driver once didn't you and he helped you look for the place didn't he?" I prompted.

"I did? Me? A taxi driver?" she looked across at me bemused, until I gave her another prompt about how far it was in those days between Hokkaido and Kawagoe...and then she was off again on the usual storyline about Kawagoe and the bus to Omiya.

But it was a funny moment.

Of course I've heard the Toyohira Bridge story so many times and how she once came to Sapporo and got a taxi driver to take her looking for it etc.

But - for some reason - last night THAT part of the story wasn't in her mind and when I supplied that part of the puzzle she was momentarily thrown because it wasn't in her memory at all - and of course she believed she was telling me this story for the first time ever!

So, so strange.

I read about this in my dementia book - and there it was - a clear example of it, it's ok to give the prompts which lead a person with dementia off into another story, but you can't give away the fact that you've heard it all before.

The brain is a wierd and wonderful thing.

.....and my curtains are rapidy becoming wierd and wonderful too...the kittens are into climbing mode this week. I can see daylight thru the claw marks. I think I'll have to ask Santa for new curtains next Xmas.