Could she? Breaking it down.

Okaasan whinged at Dear Son the other day: "I don't need  that woman, I can go out on my own in a taxi shopping.

"That woman" would be the wonderful, patient care helper from the local authority. Who comes for two hours every week to get Okaasan dressed and out to a local supermarket by taxi.

Dear Son told his mother bluntly - NO, your mental condition is far worse than you know. You need help in going out and in winter is safer with a helper.

I thought about it afterwards.
Could she do it alone?
What could she do? Couldn't she do?

Task:
Order a taxi, get dressed, get handbag/phone/gloves/key/money - go shopping. 
After shopping get another taxi and come home. Pay the taxi.

Well, to be honest it isn't that hard. 
What areas would be difficult for her? End in confusion.

Ordering a taxi.

Would she just sleep the afternoon away? After lunch fall asleep and only when we come home at 5 or 6 pm, wake up? So, too late to go out? Probably. Usually her days are spent dozing with the TV, hour after hour blending into the same time. The actual decision "Now I will order a taxi and go out in 30/45 mins" - the ability to make that decision and act on it. Gone.

Even with a taxi company number and her telephone - I don't think she could do it. Have the conversation to tell the taxi company where and what time. And then be ready for the taxi when it arrives.

Get ready for going out - don't think she could do it alone. I think the taxi driver would be hovering in the hallway, with the car parked in a narrow snowy street while Okaasan fussed about gloves, or heater, or key, or phone...impossible for a middle-aged Japanese male taxi driver to come into the house and assist Okaasan.

After shopping - coming home by taxi. Maybe she could get a taxi, give them the address to come home. Would she have enough money to pay each time, or would she have used it all for shopping?
And then if there was no taxi outside the supermarket at the moment when she emerged, would she try and walk home in the snowy, icy streets...

Yes - we could arrange it ourselves. Pre-book a taxi to come every Wednesday at 3 pm.
But we'd have to telephone her at 2.30 pm ...and 2.45 pm to make sure she was getting ready.
And still I worry about the poor driver having to hover while she fussed.

Mainly the problem is Okaasan WANTING to go out or not.
I can easily imagine a pre-booked driver arriving at the front door - and Okaasan peering out at the snow and saying: "Oh, a bit cold today, I don't feel like it, thankyou....I don't want to spend that money".

Part of the day helper reason is the cheerful conversation and interaction she gives Okaasan. Monday to Friday in front of the TV alone isn't good. If I am working nights, the amount of conversation with me is limited to a few sentences about the weather or the heater as I rush in and out.

So. We use a day helper.

That is the breakdown of why we don't think Okaasan could order a taxi and go shopping herself. Impossible to explain that all to her, of course. 
And in fact, we are VERY lucky that - until now - she hasn't tried to do any of this. She has a phone, she usually has some money, there is probably a taxi company number on a city public service newsletter - she could decide to head out independently. But she doesn't. Usually sleeping with the TV.

* And in happier news today.
I managed to get her into a bath, then she climbed out of the bath alone and I got the timing precisely right for me to go into the bathroom and start washing her hair. While she was sitting on the edge of the bath.
Just marched in, took the shampoo and set about it with what I hoped was a day service helper kind of brisk, friendly efficiency.
Success.

Now I've given her lunch.

And I am going out to a local cheapo steak place to gorge on steak. I have a cold coming on and my European body-in-the-land-of-tofu is craving MEAT. That will make a difference.

Head cold. Injured cat. Old lady and her bath.
Happy Saturday.

Will just have to open up yet another Adam Lambert video on YouTube and make myself happy.

Mother's Day

Today is the day to thank your mother. In Japan anyway. In America too? In England, a different date.

We bought the carnations and gave them to Okaasan this morning, with some jokes and laughs.

Actually, yesterday DS was off work - so we did Family Duty.

First, got Okaasan to have a bath.

We discussed about her hair washing: how recently it never looks washed. Has she forgotten how to wash her hair? Is she confused by the shampoo/treatment bottles in the bathroom? Is she only adding conditioner and not washing it out? Her hair looks dirty and matted a lot of the time. Not going to day care now, so not getting it properly washed.

DS says he sometimes opens the bathroom door when she in in there and gives her advice about the hot water level etc. I wonder if I can actually step over that personal line and join Okaasan IN the bathroom to help her?

This time he talked to her about the shampoo and treatment bottles. Maybe it worked, her hair looked a little cleaner. Afterwards I talked her through using the hair dryer and the brush - so the result looked good.

Maybe it is time we should start verbally reminding her about DOING and HOW to do hair washing?

Then we had family trip out to a local curry restaurant. Delicious curry. Okaasan loved it. Looked so happy. When our lassi drinks arrived she told us the tale about cows-behind-my-house-pre-war and how her mother told the kids to drink the warm milk...but she didn't cos mother herself didn't drink the smelly, warm stuff.

And then she told us again. And again. And again. Happily.

And on the wall by the table was an Indian craft hanging of an elephant.

THAT prompted a story about a similar hanging in a restaurant downtown...."Where I go and drink coffee sometimes"....or "where they have milk on sale"....each time she told that story it changed slightly. Mercifully really, so we could look interested eachtime!

So a gentle family-time lunch. She loves the soup curry with all the vegetables and rice. We do too. It's a good thing to go do together.
Afterwards we walked back to the car park via a disabled people's center street stall and Okaasan chatted to the stall holders happily. Then I drove us back via some local flowering cherry trees.
All happiness and smiles.

As a friend with children once told me: it isn't necessary to go out for hours and hours to a place a long distance away. Something local and fun, easy to go and do for everyone.
Just relaxing time. She is very happy and we can do it with minimum stress.

Day care.
The city office/day care center sent last month's bill and formal stuff about Okaasan quitting etc. Information about to start her up again.
And photographs.

Photographs of Okaasan looking pretty happy at day center. Drinking tea, eating lunch, wearing a Christmas hat, hair washed etc Happy pictures, of course.

Some of the other women in the pictures look a bit out-of-it - I wonder if those are the people Okaasan said "there's nobody interesting to talk to"? I do wonder if we sent her to day care a) too early or b) to a small place that didn't have clients with a wide enough range of mental ability.

I wonder. 

DS says he won't show her these pictures now. In case they just bring back negative memories. Maybe in the autumn, when we try to get her interested again. Maybe.

Hmm....I hope....hope...hope....

Me as Okaasan

Hi - sorry. Long week. Xmas holidays are over and it is back to work on a full schedule.

Me as Okaasan. Me as a mother. To Okaasan......

Wednesday was hair salon day.
I took Okaasan downtown to have a cut and perm.
All went well, she looked great afterwards and felt happy.

But, you know....these trips are feeling increasingly like me and my child. I don't have kids and this role is new to me. All the pre-thinking, planning and double-checking. How do mums DO it all every single day, with multiple offspring?

Hair appointment was for 11 am.

So that meant a 10.30 am departure in the car.

And that meant: should Okaasan eat something at home before we left? 
She doesn't usually eat breakfast, but a cut and perm starting at 11 am was likely to go on until after 1 pm....

At 9.30 am (after my own breakfast and shower and dressing) I was offering Okaasan a little bit of food. She didn't think it was necessary.
Fine. So countdown to departure. 9.45 am. 10 am reminder, 10.15 reminder....at 10.25 am Okaasan was STILL in her pajamas in front of the TV!

What IS this complete disconnect from time? She appeared to know we were going downtown for hair salon. The "10.30 am" time was repeated constantly..but still she made no move to get ready. Day care is the same, she is usually getting up and getting dressed right up against the time of the activity. It's getting worse - I am sure.

Is it actually not remembering what I'm saying? Or is it losing the ability for time management? If I am leaving the house at 10.30 am I should get up and wash my face and get dressed...and  those things will take time...

SO frustrating. My stress levels rocketed. I should have gone into her room at 10 am and started picking up clothing for her and offering her sweaters etc.

Anyway. Drive downtown and deliver Okaasan to the salon. Via: "Do you need toilet before the salon?" checks.  Lots of young male stylists on duty: so Okaasan looked happy :-)

I actually went out and bought her a rice ball and took it back to the salon in case she DID get hungry while it was all happening. Left my cell number with the salon.

Off to escape for a few hours of stuff to do downtown.

1.20 pm the salon called, and I go back - move the car near the salon doors, wait for Okaasan, go upstairs and get her, pay for her etc and get her back downstairs and into the car...and quickly drive away from downtown before she can suggest eating anything in a coffee shop etc.
Get her home and then prepare lunch for her and get her sitting down to eat it etc.

Rush off to work at 2.30 pm.
All duty done.

It doesn't sound hard. Just take someone by car to a hair salon. It isn't hard. But....arranging it all and making it run smoothly takes effort.
Gone are the days when Okaasan would look in the mirror and think "Hmm, very straggly, need haircut" and then book an appointment, go to the salon on time, have the perm and cut and come home and make lunch for herself. Gone are those days.

Dear Son came home for 1 night this week between ski jobs and is gone again. I did all the rest of stuff I usually do. MUCH easier this winter with the car. I can go shopping and get heater oil and cat food cans between classes.
Okaasan chatty at dinner times with me. Had a slightly disconcerting time slip conversation about how to cook the New Year rice cake decoration...."We should display this until January 7th, when is New Year? It isn't yet, is it?" - before I dragged her back to January 17th. Funny - she laughs about her mistake, but doesn't seem particularly shocked that it isn't the date she thought.

Day care good. Requests for non-smelly clothing etc. Spare trousers to change Okaasan after toilet accidents at the center.

**** EXCITING News! Nothing to do with Okaasan and me.
The stuff I had to do downtown on hair salon day?
Reserve rooms at a community center for April screenings of the documentary film "Hafu". It's about the growing mixed-race  community in Japan, people born between two (or three) countries/cultures.

I've been a supporter of this project for a while, even when it was in planning stage. Now the film is finished and getting showings around the world at community and film festival screenings. There were two screenings in Sapporo at a university and a school. 

Now I am trying to arrange a more public screening downtown, near the main station.

Reserved rooms for April 26 and 27th! Exciting! I wasn't quite brave enough to book the big hall for 90 people, But I went for a medium sized room for 70...but more likely 50 plus if we move the tables and chairs.

So: two screenings for 50 plus people. I've put in the application for the screening kit to the film distributor etc and am starting to make the contacts locally to get the word out.

Very happy and excited about it.

Here is the trailer for the film. If you are interested in organising a screening please check out the website for details. It's a great little documentary about Japan and its future citizens.

I'm guessing that as you are reading a blog about people in Japan you might have an interest :-)

Gadgets to make life...confusing.

Can't say when it was - but we kind of realised this summer???that Okaasan's hair always looked unwashed. Even the day she'd had a bath.

She only brushes her hair when she is going out. Usually round the house she has matted, dirty tresses. On days when we tell her to have a bath, we give her the hair dryer and she appears to have wet hair to wrap in a towel and dry. But after drying? It's often, still dirty.

I vaguely thought she was focusing more on washing underpants or her body - and forgetting her hair. Or that she was putting water on her hair and no shampoo.
The tiring family trip to the hot spring recently gave me a slightly better idea as I watched Okaasan befuddled by the shampoo/body soap plastic bottles with their push tops and nozzle dispensers.
Her confusion wasn't just WHICH was which, after all both bottles had Japanese writing on them. But the mechanism of the bottles appeared to be the problem.

We are used to Okaasan's daily confusions around the home: the central tap with lever swings to the left/right for hot/cold water; the electric kettle that she thinks every day is a constantly-hot water pot etc She sometimes uses the microwave...but forgets that she's put stuff in it...despite the "ping" telling her it's finished.

In our bathroom we have a blue plastic bottle, which we fill with shampoo. It has a push top and a nozzle. And quite a bit of English writing on it. But it does say "Shampoo" in Japanese.

Yujiro solved the riddle a week ago. He realised Okaasan didn't know that the hand soap bottle by the bathroom sink WAS soap. Or how to use it. He showed her. She couldn't get the idea of pushing the top down and holding her hand under the dispenser.

We realised she hasn't been washing her hair lately because as far as she could see: there wasn't any shampoo in the bathroom.

What form did shampoo take years and years ago in Japan? What form of container would Okaasan expect? I asked some of my older students: they said ordinary soap. Parents washed kids' hair with the same soap as for bodies...maybe.

Okaasan has a hiar salon appointment this week - I thought maybe we could get her to buy shampoo at the salon and maybe connect with that in future. Would that work? A squeeze tube maybe?

Yujiro solved it all today: he dug out our store of hotel and magazine sample shampoo sachets. You know - the stuff we all steal from hotels and in drugstores.
Bingo! Okaasan realised the sachet was shampoo - maybe because she used to travel to hotels a lot all over the world and must have used sachets many times in the past.

Wonder what else around the home will be confusing for her?

* haven't done anything about the possible stomach polyp yet. Too busy. Talking to people to find out about which hospital to go - somewhere that they will knock me senseless before they stuff tubes down my throat.

* But other health news is good : the knee and leg muscle rehabilitation has been a success. Much stronger now after weekly rehab/physio trips (it's called rehabili in Japan!). I am back to before condition or better. Just in time, as my friend has come back with her baby from a 3 week trip to her parents' home. I can be adoring aunty again.

* and cats....major jealousy/bullying going on between Chichi and Popo. Tonight they finally sat down near eachother. The plastic collar scares Chichi and he stayed out 2 nights, while we had to close all the windows and doors to keep his injured brother in.

Oh...and...and...Obama won again!!! YEAH!!!!! Loved the BBC poll which found that around the world...only Pakistan would support a Romney win. Thank goodness Americans voted for the right guy.

 

 

Hair-um scare-um

Took Okaasan to the hair salon yesterday.
Reminded her about an hour before Lift Off, and then kept reappearing in the kitchen to keep the thought in mind...and at 9.30 am Okaasan and Me trotted out, companionably and went to catch the subway downtown.


We get quite a few looks in public, the old Japanese lady and foreign family member isn't so common - so people are having a furtive gawk and trying to work out the relationship.
Old Lady and Slave?


It is just as well I take her, I am not at all sure she really knows where the salon is. Everytime we get off the subway train she turns to head to the same exit - the routine of her trips downtown. But, in fact, for the hair salon it is best to use a different exit and a hidden elevator.
Got her to the salon on time, made sure she had enough money for a post-cut lunch downtown, paid the salon in advance on my credit card and left them to it...went off to work.


By chance Yujiro got spotted by Okaasan about 2-3 hours later - as he was working with the bike taxi, she stopped him and asked him where she should have lunch...so he directed her to a restaurant.
I kind of wonder how good she is at making a decision (like where to have lunch) which is OUT of her routine downtown.


Anyway. Hair cut looks great. All trimmed and permed and tidy.
This is the hair salon that a student introduced to us. Obviously the hair stylist mentions this woman every time, as in "Mrs. O came in recently"...and every single time Okaasan comes home and says to me: "and you've just been there Amanda, haven't you?"...I guess she has never met Mrs. O, so the purely verbal information isn't quite sticking. Funny that :-)
So.
Ready for the great Folk Dance class debut on Friday.
I so, so SO hope this class will be a success.

The autumn family day out.

Just realize we are doing this every year: taking Okaasan out to see the autumn colors.


So today the weather played nice and we got out for that annual happy-family-thing. Got Okaasan to have a bath first (she never has one on her own decision, we always suggest it), and then via a quick panic about where-are-my-nice-gloves-that-woman-on-the-train-stole-them.....to the front door...and OUT!


Took the subway to the campus of Hokkaido University, one of the big old universities of Japan, where the Ginko Tree avenue was glorious in yellow and everywhere else was pretty goregous too. 
We enjoyed it. Okaasan enjoyed it - all very nice.

Mum and Son.

Okaasan and Yujiro.

Oyomesan!

We walked a looong way. Okaasan is amazing with this: she can walk and walk. By the time we got back to Sapporo Station she was looking a bit starey eyed and tired - hardly surprising really as she hadn't eaten breakfast or anything.

In the station we found a real autumn treat: deep fried oysters. YUM. After talking about it etc it was great to actually find a restaurant serving it and stuff ourselves.

And then we went home. Mission Accomplished.

Meanwhile....

I asked Okaasan if she'd telephoned the hair salon with the telephone number etc I gave her last week....a look of blankness. Last week I'd actually given her a A4 size piece of paper with the name and number of the salon etc all highlighted with pens, and talked to her several times about wouldn't-it-be-nice-to-have-a-haircut-hint-hint....but she hadn't done anything. Somehow dementia seems to have the effect of robbing people of decision making and carrying out a plan - Okaasan sometimes decides to go to the drycleaners and manages to gather the clothes she wants cleaned and go to the shop (but of course forget to pick up until the shop telephone months later) - but that's about it.

So, acting on all the good mood after the autumn colors viewing trip I marched into her room with the salon number again, dialed it on Okaasan's phone and handed it to so that SHE could make the appointment herself.

"What am I calling about? Who is this?"...and then she managed it, I sat by the phone too so I could hear the conversation and write it all down on the calender...because Okaasan had forgotten the day and time within seconds of putting the phone down.

Tomorrow at 2 pm. I'll take her downtown to the hairsalon. A weekend of family duty.

It's ok, has to be done. Last week he and I were working in the evenings three times, so Okaasan got a lot of left food on the kitchen table dinners. This weekend is time to give her some human interaction. 

She was GREAT last night: I noticed immediately. She came back from her evening walk and stood in the kitchen chatting to me, almost...almost normally...bring and  engaged and eye contact and everything...just forgot once or twice who we were talking about...but a very normal conversation.

But that conversation stands out because usually, it's a few stock phrases and not much give and take or conversation.

But this year's autumn day out was a success. :-))

Hair cut!

Okaasan had a haircut.
Finally. 6 months since the last one. Months of talking about it.
Finally.
I organised her into it, and it was a success.


And she looks so much better, and is SO perky!


Yujiro actually got her primed for getting out of the house on time and going to the salon because I had to go to work. Okaasan does really need someone nagging her to get along with getting out - getting washed, getting dressed, do you need to eat something, what do you need to take, etc etc.
Anyway he got her out the house and she had a cut and perm.
Seemed to enjoy it.
Came home looking all neat and tidy and was very chatty to us in the kitchen in the afternoon/evening.
 Obviously feels a whole lot better for the experience.


Maybe down the line she will complain about this salon and stylist and we'll start hunting again for another place, but for now all seems well and she doesn't look like a crazy old lady.
We could almost forgive her hamster-wheel conversation about the flat fish she'd bought and that we served for dinner...how DELICIOUS flat fish is!! Sometimes it isn't you know, but I asked the man in the shop and he said THIS fish was delicious. So I bought it. This fish is delicious, sometimes it isn't you know...but I bought it in a shop and the man said....(Chorus, repeat until the family finally escape from the kitchen and run upstairs screaming.)

Great dollops of... happiness!

I've whinged and whined enough in this blog.
Well, had enough to whinge and whine about really.

But today. Well, just little Miss Sunshine here. :-)

I rode a bicycle for the first time in 2 years. THIS is momentous, if you've been reading long enough here you'll know I was struck down 2 years ago with damaged knee cartilage, which I then continued walking around on...and it got worse. I couldn't walk anywhere, Used to go thru airports and to pop concerts in wheelchairs and on crutches.

But now? I rode my brand new bike from the house to the classroom - with the wind blowing in my hair and hardly a care in the world.
Then I walked around all over downtown, dropping off press releases to radio stations about the Walkathon, I did classes...and then come 5.30 pm I got on my bike and cycled home! Almost all the way, got off and walked on one hill.

It's amazing. To me anyway.

And come Sunday this weekend: I will be walking 2 km in the Eniwa-Sendai with Love Walkathon.

And THAT topic is the other source of sunshine.
People are SO KIND!

** Blog reader Clare in Australia bowled me over first by offering to sponsor both I AND Yujiro in our walking efforts. She'll pay her sponsor money in Australia and tell us the receipt number. This is a woman I've never met offering to donate money to Japanese earthquake/tsunami victims. Incredible.

** Then...I came out of my downtown NHK class to find Noriyo-san...she was a student until last year at a different NHK class. She was downtown doing something anyway, but she checked on the NHK website to confirm my schedule and actually came and waited for me in the elevator hall of the center JUST SO SHE AND ANOTHER STUDENT COULD SPONSOR ME!

** and THEN (we are just basking in the sunny rays here), I came home and found that Atsuko-san, another NHK student had read about the Walkathon and she had called NHK, and they called here because she too wanted to SPONSOR me.

** And two students at my English classroom also came today bearing sponsor offers...thankyou all!

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Amazed. And happy. And grateful. Thankyou.


Okaasan (cos afterall this blog is meant to be about life-with-her) seems fine, the weather is getting better and she is going out for walks. We've put the laundry stand outside now so she can soon enjoy hanging laundry and rearranging it for ages.
Her room is its usual mess with clothes and newspapers everywhere. We get in to clean it when she is out.
I scored a few Oyomesan bonus points this week by asking Okaasan if I could put two seed trays in her room by the  window because it is almost safely away from the cats. She is happy to be helping and I've left a spray can near it so she can gently spray the soil instead of her usual drown-it-everytime-I-notice-it style of indoor gardening.

I'm gearing up to really trying to get her along to have a haircut. Tonight I checked out the hairsalon near the station that Okaasan seemed to think might be skilled enough to touch her head. Nice enough owner and assistant and a good, clean Western style toilet.

Now. How to get Okaasan to go?
I can't book it and then tell her. That would be too managing.
If I discuss it with her and suggest she calls. She'll put it off until never.
The ideal would be if we are out walking and happen to pass the door and go in and they have time to do her right then.
But I hardly ever go walking with her.

Yujiro seems disinterested in the whole topic. He's a guy who gets a 10 minute buzzcut.

I think it's sad, but interesting that Okaasan doesn't take the steps to go to a hair salon. Most women enjoy the experience. When she looks in a mirror she must be disappointed at how she looks: all straggly, grey hair.
Has dementia made her SO uncaring about her personal appearance? I find  that hard to believe.
But another part of me wonders if going to a hair salon maybe isn't such a good experience for her - sitting in front of a mirror looking at yourself while a stranger forces you to converse. Is that too stressful a situation in fact? Is she instinctively shying away from that?

I know that in some of my darkest hours in the past two years, when Yujiro was in hospital, when Dad had died, when I was sick with expanding ovaries.....sitting in the hair salon was tough. I felt too exposed by the mirror and the kindness of my friendly stylist....the sad, bugeyed woman in the mirror was me. And I didn't want to look at her.

Maybe Okaasan doesn't actually like sitting looking at herself in a mirror while a stranger forces her to talk.

Hmmmm.....have to ponder this one some more.


So there we are. Happiness. Dollops of it.
About bloody time. I think I've done enough Serious Life Events to last me a while.

She's GONE!!!!!

OKaasan has Left the Building.
We are wonderfully, deliciously, estatically HOME ALONE for the first time in almost 2 years!

It's so good.
Last night we sat across the table from eachother (I usually sit next to Yujiro, both of us across from O), and we ate cheese fondue, and drank wine and played pop music. And after eating we sat back and chatted about things. It was so good to just sit and relax, sit and make eye contact with eachother and sit and chat.
We confessed that when O is there we are both trying to get away from the table as soon as possible, she eats slower than us and forgets what she still has in front of her anyway. We both tend to start clearing the table, putting leftovers in fridge boxes, de-tabbing beer cans etc - all displacement activiities so that we don't have to sit and sit and sit there....usually I escape with laundry or cats or fake phone calls to England and Yujiro washes dishes with Okaasan hovering around the kitchen with Japanese-tea-in-the-making-bits.
Dinners with Okaasan are very boring. Family duty.

But last night we relaxed. I didn't eat too much cheese fondue in case my digestion system went into shock, and I drank a small glass of  wine.
Normal life ;-)) until Monday afternoon......
Well, as normal as you can be with a 6 cm gash on your tummy....
it kind of limits the running naked round the house and wild sex games.
But late September in Sapporo it's probably best to put on a sensible sweater, some more socks and forget about running naked anyway...

Yujiro got Okaasan off to Tokyo safely.
She somehow managed to pack a a small suitcase, with constant reopening and checking to make sure she had everything. She made piles of clothes all over the room as if going for an expedition, and was constantly asking: Why am I staying in a hotel? Where is Hiroyuki? Where is the wedding?
But apparantly in the past week she had done some preparation for the wedding by taking clothes to the dry cleaners. But...no haircut. She went off to Tokyo looking wild and straggly.
I really think I'll just have to take this haircut topic in hand and book her an appointment somewhere. She seems to have lost the ability to make the decision to do it, make an appointment and go along to it. Of course in her talk on the topic: There IS no good hairsalon in Sapporo. It's only the 5th biggest city in Japan...

Anyway. Off she went. I stood at the door and waved her out. Reclaimed my home. Yujiro took her to the airprt and arranged for the stewardesses to treat Okaasan as an Accompanied Person, so there was less chance of her getting lost.

And then we settled into our Weekend Alone.
I stayed in my pajamas all day. Watched TV, ate chocolate (still at 54 kg!), protected my stitches from the cats with a cushion and drifted.

Yujiro got several phone calls from his brother about Okaasan: yes she arrived in Tokyo, yes she was ok...and then later in the evening: Does she have a coat? We can't find her coat and she doesn't know if she came with a coat!

Ha HA! NOW Older Brother - and other family members - are realizing How Okaasan Is. Realizing What We Do. Finally. Most of them probably haven't actually spent any time with her for about 3 years...so the difference in her mental abilty will be noticable: the constant checking questions, the confusions and the not-quite-connecting-to-it-all.
Yujiro already primed Older Brother that he must make sure Okaasan goes to the toilet regularly and he must control the amount of alcohol she has access to.
We can both imagine how she will be at a day-long wedding party in a strange hotel with crowds of people. It'll be confusing with her. And I fear she will have toilet accidents and lose things. And drink too much. I hope Older Brother and other family members look after her.

NOW they are gonna work for 2 days!
And we are going to relax.