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.

Shaking up the nest.

This is Okaasan's nest AFTER a massive spring cleaning. You can?? imagine what it was BEFORE.


First day of an 8-day holiday and what am I doing? Crouching on the carpet with Okaasan sorting through the trash on her table top, guiding her to putting it in Burnable or Unburnable trash bags and trying to make a dent in the trash mountain.


Yujiro was off on his first day of summer work as a bike taxi driver downtown. So after he'd left I swept into Okaasan's room and told her that the dry cleaning shop was offering a great discount on cleaning kotatsu blankets, so I'd better take it right now.
A kotatsu is that table in the picture. A low table containing an electric heater, all covered with a big soft blanket, and then the detachable table top goes on top.
Okaasan lives in the kotatsu. Sits watches TV there, sleeps. Eats snacks. Eats dinners when we are out there. Will probably die there.
She nests right there in the center - between the left-hand corner of the kotatsu and the clothes-covered sofa. Sits on the floor amid all this stuff.
There must be some part of dementia about needing to SEE possessions out all around you - not put away where you might not find them. But all around you. As you can see Okaasan has the sofa and the floor and the table covered with things-important-in-her-world.


I was in there an hour picking thru the stuff with her and getting 60% of it into trash bags.
Then I gave her another blanket for the kotatsu and whisked the other away to the dry cleaners.


Also moved her over-loaded laundry stand (covered with clothes and itsy bitsy shopping bags), so she can get in and out to the outside laundry stand in summer....and told her that the Glen Miller Orchestra concert she was excited about...was...err...sorry the one we went to LAST year, this is an old flyer....see?
But she did have a flyers for another big band concert THIS year, June in the local concert hall. In the afternoon - after a relaxing time at the gym and lunching with a friend - I went and bought her a ticket. One ticket. She is quite happy to go to concerts alone, that day I'll make sure she has bath and lunch and get her to the concert hall on time.


Okaasan remained shaken and stirred all day. The cleaning was a real shake-up to her nest and mind. She fussed around her room for ages afterwards, examining bits of paper and clothes. She even took out the old hula dance dresses from the closet and left them on the futon she has never used.


And in the evening she went out for her walk - took the subway downtown and got lost.


Yujiro had 3 phone calls between 6.30 and 7.30 - to and from Okaasan - and once to a helpful passerby who'd found her in an unfamiliar part of downtown. She was asking directions to the subway station near our old apartment - a long walk from where she was lost.
All topsy-turvey. The cleaning experience disturbed her calm quite a bit.


By 7.30 pm she got home and we had family dinner......and I stopped Yujiro badgering Okaasan about WHY she'd been in that part of town and why she'd been trying to go to the wrong subway station etc. No point in rehashing all of that.....


But see - that Okaasan nest above. That's clean:-)

Brought home by police car :-)

Okaasan was brought home by a police car tonight!


She's fine. But a bit angry at being the center of fuss.


"That high school boy I asked the way of - he must have telephoned the police! He shouldn't have done that! I'm not a senile old woman. I knew how to get home. I was just checking which road!"


She'd gone out at 6 pm to the local Macdonald's for a coffee. She hasn't been there in months because all winter she has gone to the Seicomart convenience store downtown by subway.
But today her subway card had ran out and while I was hunting around upstairs for the next Oldies Discount card she said she'd just go for a walk locally.
Fine by me. I set her off - with warnings "don't eat chicken nuggets because you'll spoil your dinner" (I have become a nagging mother to this old lady!!!).


Off she went at 6 pm.
7 pm came and went.
She'd forgotten her GPS-loaded mobile phone so I couldn't trace her.
By 7.30 I was hungry. So I ate my dinner.
By 8 pm I was thinking: "hmm, should I go and look for her?"


I heard a car pull up outside, voices....steps....


Two big cops were escorting Okaasan to the door. She was clutching a Macdonalds bag with a spilled coffee inside it. 
All apologetic to the police for causing them trouble etc


I managed to get her inside the kitchen, while I stood in the entrance hall and gave our details to the cops.
Yes, she does forget sometimes.
Yes, she usually has a cell phone with GPS.
Yes, she usually has the address written on a card...oh...in her subway card case that she DIDN'T have today.
Yes, we will look after her.


Unusual really. Okaasan's homing instinct has been pretty strong.
People are often surprised when I say she goes out alone, and comes home safely. The memory for streets and places seems strong - essential life information.


When she first moved to Sapporo she got lost several times - and once we called the police, and they quizzed us about whether there'd been a family row etc!
When we moved homes and came here she got lost a few times and she asked strangers to help her, or the police.
But she's been fine for 2 years or more.


I guess she hasn't been to Macdonald's for almost 6 months....even though it's only 15 mins. away from here - so she had just forgotten the street layout.


Anyway. She's home.


;-))