Yosakoi Soran Festival is a HUGE deal in the city we live.
A big 5-day dance event, over 1 million visitors and thousands of amateur dancers in crazy costumes perform through the streets behind trucks with massive sound systems, waving flags and shouting/singing.
It's here and there and everywhere. You can't escape it. The subways are full of dance teams hurrying to another performance place and streets are closed for the event.
I love it. Japanese people going just a bit crazy, in the best possible way ;-)
Saturday evening Okaasan came home.
She'd been to Odori, the center of town.
Did you see the Yosakoi Festival?
The festival? No, where is it? Is it near the university? I didn't see anything....
God knows WHERE she'd been - maybe walking round the underground shopping area with her eyes fixed on shops....
Hard to miss Yosakoi really. People try. But they fail. Saturday afternoon in Sapporo you'd think it would be impossible NOT to see it.
So, Sunday we took her.
Down to our local shopping area, where teams dance up and down the street, for the locals.
One of my old students and her husband run the drugstore, so we got given chairs and could sit on the pavement and let all the dance happen before us.
I think Okaasan enjoyed it. Maybe. It IS very noisy, and many of the teams we saw were scary looking youths wearing black and doing dramatic gestures....not quite Okaasan's kind of dance really.
NO flowers and plastic beads :-)
By 11.30 she was looking hungrily at the food stalls, as she hadn't had breakfast. So we left and had family lunch in a local "family restaurant", which was ok.
And then supermarket shopping.
We usually avoid this at all cost. Shopping with Okaasan: very stressful, because she shops at a different pace to us and examines everything carefully...and buys all sorts of random stuff we don't know how to cook!!
Between the carpark and the store doors she told us twice that THIS was the shop where she buys her magazines (we know)...and then once in the store she grabbed a shopping cart and went on ...and on...and on about "I need my magazine".
Yujiro craftily disappeared upstairs to get printer ink - leaving Okaasan and Me to shop together.
I managed to get her to stand 1 minute in front of cat food while I hurled cans in he trolley, but she was impatiently whining "my magazine, my magazine" JUST like a small child : "MUmmmmmmeeeee, sweeties, pleeeese!!!!"
When she needs something, she needs it RIGHT NOW. Of course she doesn't know that she expressed that need 20 seconds ago, 40 seconds ago...so she goes on...and on.
Finally I let her trolley away to the magazine corner, while I went back to the main entrance to get another basket - and do the food shopping in peace.
10 minutes later we all met up - by the Taiwan bananas :-) Which she bought, carefully. I'll be interested to see if she likes the fruit she has selected herself.
And so, on and on.
Sorry, this blog is pretty mundane. Life with dementia, lots of "same".
No great earthshattering stuff to report.
But my cats are cute. :-)
The socks are home. :-)
All neatly put away in the drawer in pairs.
They must be in sock shock - after a year or two left out on the carpet, split up from their partners.
Now, all safely as good socks should be - in a drawer.
For now.
:-)
Had coffee yesterday with a Japanese friend who is caring for elderly parents, although they live in an assisted flat near her home - she seems to do a lot of the running to and fro to make sure their daily life is ok. Her mother has dementia.
Much more advanced than Okaasan - and sad and frustrating tales of 3 times-a-day baths, dirty clothes, refusal to go to Short Term Stay-care so her poor husband can take a break....on and on.
Last night I lay awake thinking about Yujiro's refusal - or complete avoidance - of getting Okaasan fixed up for day care next winter. And I wondered what battles are ahead on that topic.
If he doesn't do anything by the end of August, I will start nagging again. And if THAT doesn't work - what next? I should go along to the city office myself and appeal to them to step in and help me? get a surprise visit from a case worker maybe? Invite "a friend" to lunch...who turns out to be a case worker - catching Yujiro and Okaasan unawares?
That kind of subterfuge sounds bad, and I really hope Yujiro will step up willingly to the topic.
But I worry that he won't.
I taught my Japanese friend the phrase: "Bad cop, good cop".
I'm the bad cop in this situation.
Meanwhile...in summer Okaasan is ok really. She goes out almost every day. She is interested in concerts and flowers and cats and festivals.
I dread winter: when he is away ski teaching and I am in charge, and Okaasan sits and sits and sits for days in front of the TV, unable to judge for herself anymore whether the road surface is safe enough to go out for a walk.
For now we shop and cook and wash dishes and do laundry and room cleaning for her, manage the money, make sure she gets to places she want to go to....life ongoing for her.
Gave Okaasan some damp laundry to hang up herself yesterday.
But, I made the mistake of also giving her the clothes hanger frame - which was a little broken.
She sat down on the sofa and started to try and fix the hanger frame.....which seemed a good idea - good use of her brain and hands...I thought.
I'd realized, too late, that there were actually two empty hanger frames already in her room, but she was already determinedly fixing the broken one. So I left her to it.
But.
I came home at the end of the day and found....still broken hanger frame...and...two empty hangers....and the plastic bowl of slightly less damp laundry sitting in the center of the room...
She'd given all her focus to the broken thing...finally given up on that...and forgotten WHY she was trying to fix it.
:-(
Socks: my neatly arranged sock-pairs in the basket arrangement has vanished.
The basket is there - empty on the carpet.
The socks, and the pegs keeping them together in Sock Couples, have gone. Maybe Okaasan has put them all away in drawers? Maybe. Will she find them again?
Yesterday I saw two old ladies walking downtown. One was helping the other. But one was like walking-dead-kind-of-face - that no-expression mask, just shuffling forwards, with no focus, mouth set tight...
I can spot 'em a mile off now - the dementia sufferers.
One day I'll probably become a bilingual, dementia care professional.
So happy Okaasan has enough brain matter to give some focus to broken hanger thingies.
oh - cat picture?
Here we are!
Is that how you spell maracas? Those South American, dry bean-filled shaking things?
Okaasan went mambo yesterday.
We sent her off to this concert and she had a great time. came home all energised and smiley. And then slept all evening.
She loves music, specially Latin-music and was delighted with the seat I'd got her near the stage.
She went alone - because she really doesn't mind going to concerts alone, and in fact is proud of the fact that she doesn't mind. Often tells a story about how a neighbor was amazed that she would go alone to music she loves...
It was in the concert hall near where we used to live, but Yujiro thought it best to take her - because her memory for places she hasn't been to recently seems patchy.
So he got her primed up in the morning, early lunch, changed the photocopied ticket I'd given her 2 months ago for looking at, for the REAL ticket....she was ready and had her coat on way too early - we had to tell her to go and sit down and chill.
Then he drove her to the concert hall and off she went.
We enjoyed a Saturday at home...well I did a flash clean of Okaasan's room and some of her laundry etc - but also my neglected garden...and a movie on TV...and stuff with cats...
And Okaasan came home all happy at 5 pm, clutching convenience store food she'd bought. And she slept, and he and I could have dinner together.
All good.
Different ramblings: I had an interesting discussion with two older students Friday about dementia, and how/if you would know yourself in the early stages.
One of my students is in her 70s, as mentally alert and on-the-ball as anything - but she sees friends with dementia and hears about Okaasan from me.
Do people know themselves that all is not well - early on?
I don't think so.
Dementia comes in many forms - not everyone even has the memory loss that is maybe the most known aspect of this disease.
Would you know about yourself?
Would things be more confusing and frustrating, arrangements and schedules hard to keep track of? Would it seem that people around you are being less helpful and obstructive to what you want?
Early signs are often - less care about personal appearance, housework, daily life things that need doing, less energy, more sitting staring at the TV, less social interaction, more sleeping...
If you yourself were doing all of this - would you notice??
Funny story from my student S-san - a friend of hers was so worried about getting dementia that she booked an appointment at the specialist and went along to get tested.
"If you're well enough to make this appointment and come along here today - you don't need testing! Go home!" he told her.
:-)
and...finally...for the blog reader who asked me for more cat pictures:
you are SO right. Can never have too many cute cat pictures!!
