8 years ago.....

EIGHT years ago!!!! - we started life together in our new home - the big old concrete box near the subway line in the south side of the city. 
Friends helped us move and clean - our small apartment spilled out into a large house with big closets, we ate sushi as a first night dinner and our old cat Bob and the goldfish were with us.

Life really WITH Okaasan began. The first four months she'd lived in an apartment 2 doors away from our home - but the carrying food between the homes, the cooking, the bathroom....it was all too much - so we moved.]

 

What a lot of life and death we have already seen here. Bob-cat died. The goldfish ? What happened to them??? I gave birth to a garden. We discovered we had a huge garden shed. And BBQ space. Then my step-mum in the UK had a car crash, then dad died, then my step-mum died......then my ovaries multiplied and ballooned up inside me and I had 'em out....then kittens that grew into fat cats....and...and...and..

And Okaasan's dementia steadily grew. 

When we came here she would wash clothes by hand,leaving half-finished laundry all over the place - and go outside and hang it up in the garden. Go and re-hang MY laundry up in the garden too. She would wash dishes, Heat up food in the microwave. Read the newspaper. Change TV channels if it was boring. Go walking for miles late afternoon, ride the subway.....downtown alone. Tell looooong stories about the war and trips to New York and Australia. About family and husband. Take bath when we told her to - and get out of it alone.

8 years she has changed. Not as badly as we all thought. I think that is our care for her.

There is decline in her abilities, but less because she lives with us and we do so much to fill in the gaps. 

Thankyou if you have reading this blog since those days - since the peeing in trash bins, the domestic violence drama, the fights....

And today? We are going out as a sweet little family: lunch. A shopping center walk for Dear Son and Okaasan. A sit in the car and Pokemon hunt for me...

My knee?

The MRI showed a tear in the meniscus. The doctor says it should repair naturally. The behind the knee ligaments and muscles are improving and today I may stand and take a step. I have been practicing standing the last day or two. Trying to put weight to my left.

Strangely, the day we went to see the doc I was in tremendous pain in the knee. Don't know why. I cried my way thru the doctor talk and happily took painkillers. One day later - pain gone. Don't know WHAT I did to get that.

 I am getting around to my work - with Dear Son's help with the car if I can't park near enough the work place. He is shopping and cooking and doing so SO much.

I'm frustrated. But trying to accept. Go slowly. 

Anyway. 8 years in this house. Seems faaaaar longer!