Plan A.

The spirit of compromise is in the air.
Or, at least, the city office and day care manager aren't going to give up a paying customer without a fight.
Dear Son and they have agreed that:

Okaasan should go to day care on Tuesdays when the noisy woman isn't there.
The kitchen staff won't bring their baby to work.
When dance classes are on a Thursday they will send a car to get Okaasan and take her to the center just for that, so she can enjoy the dancing and avoid the noisy woman. (Did I mention that this woman is also a member of one of the Buddhist sects-bordering-on-cult?).

All sounds excellent to the care people.
To Dear Son.
To me.
To the cats.

Nobody has run this past Okaasan yet.
Until  next Tuesday morning...then we'll see how well Plan A goes.

Meanwhile she has been walking downtown several times. Random shopping etc. DS organising her daily life.

And I have passively-aggressively withdrawn my services.
No not THOSE services.
The room cleaning/laundry washing/TV channel changing services. Not doing them now. Waiting to see how long Okaasan and DS will let the stuff mount up. How long the wet knickers will be in the bowl in the bathroom. How long the hidden, rotting food will rot.

:-) Happy news: the cat is getting better....I was so happy to have him 10 cm from my head at 5 am miaowing loudly.

:-) And....DS and I did a "job" last week.....we appeared on stage with a folk singer, the Mayor of Sapporo and glasses of Sapporo beer - singing a drinking song for a TV program that will be broadcast next month.
It's a hard job. The "pay" was beer and lamb BBQ.
It was rent-a-gaijin-to-make-this-event-look-cool time. I AM a gaijin. DS isn't, but he can pretend.

Mayor and foreign females....and beer.

Evil enjoyment

Thankyou oh god of evil Oyomesans!
Just when I needed it.
A good, little evil laugh.

DS released Okaasan downtown yesterday afternoon.
Later he got a phone call on her cell phone....from the city center police station...

Sir, we have your mother here. She seems very confused and says she doesn't have enough money to get the subway home. She is asking us for money.
????????????? She has a prepaid subway card in her handbag! She went downtown 2 hours ago with that card. Look in her bag. She always has the card.

.......................................

10 minutes...

Sir, sorry to bother you, yes you are right. We've showed your mother the card and sent her to the subway station....


;-))))))

Need a LOT more of those kind of situations.....to make day center seem a good idea.

I am just bad.

In the aftermath of yesterday, calls to and from the day center manager etc. Will have see what happens. I'm not hopeful.

Day care - refusenik

Want to quit day care.
Don't need to go.
It's spring now, I can walking myself every day to exercise. So I don't need to go to that place twice a week.
And : I don't like one of the noisy, rude people there.
And : last week one of the kitchen staff was carrying her BABY on her back. It's unhygienic.

So. I don't want to go.

Cue small family crisis.
Just when you (and I) thought this blog was gonna curl up and die of boredom.

Aghhhhhh.

And even worse: Dear Son agrees with her and thinks she can quit for spring and summer and go again next winter.
Can she? I don't know. I worry she won't want to go and we'll have the whole getting-Okaasan-to-daycare saga again.

If you are new to this blog, or just need reminding - check out the September to December 2012 postings. Oh, the agony of me pushing him to push her into the mental health assessment and the day care search.
When Okaasan first came to live with us she joined several different Hawaiian dance classes at community centers. But they were all geared towards practicing for performance days and, while she is actually quite good at hula dance, she can't of course learn and remember new dance routines. So she was getting stressed and three? four? dance classes asked us to get her to leave the class because she couldn't keep up. She thought she was being bullied in the classes...
Which is when we realized she needed to move from community dance classes to gentler, same-every-week classes with teachers who didn't pressure.....and that classes at day care would be ideal.
Gentle, fun exercise AND the whole bathtime/care/mental stimulation of going somewhere and meeting people.

But now. No go.

I'm gutted, to be honest.
With her thinking AND his. I have no hope to fight against that.

I accept that Okaasan probably doesn't need day care so much in summer. She lives with family and gets daily interaction with us. She can and does go walking round the local shops and downtown on the subway. She can chat to random shop staff and occasionally the "friend" who she meets in the coffee shop by chance.

Physically it's enough. Mentally it is enough. Really. She has some kind of interaction with people every day. It's great too that she could clearly remember why she doesn't like the current day care place, and could tell her son her opinion and needs.

But I do worry that she'll get out of the routine of going. And that in October we'll have a big fight again about getting her to agree to go again.

Dear Son says she often asks :"Do I go in summer too?" and that this shows she enjoys it, and will go happily in winter. 

For me there is a huge reassurance that someone beyond him and me are involved in the care of Okaasan. That professionals are meeting her regularly and checking that she is doing ok. Having fought hard to get us into the system of support, I don't want to slip out of it.
In winter it is absolutely essential that she goes. He is away for weeks at a time working, and for days and days on end she sits and watches TV and has only me for company for a dinner time 3 times a week.

So. Bad day.
Dear Son will have to meet with the city office day manager for sure, and I guess the day center manager with have to explain why one of her kitchen staff had a baby at work....obviously bad...but..but...
Dear Son thinks she doesn't need it. He wants her to be happy. And she wants to stop going. So, it's a done deal.

I just have to go along with it. 
A little evil voice inside me is saying: maybe her dementia will worsen after a few months of day center absence and THEN he'll see the value of her going. But, in reality I don't think it will. Unless we have a crisis with her legs or teeth again and then it's only he and I struggling to get Okaasan to do stuff.

Anyway. Such is my day.

Oh. And the cat is sick. Vomiting for 72 hours. Spent all day at the vets. Had a barium shot. Poor little bugger. He is home again now. We've had a hard time....the vet isn't really sure why he is throwing up so much. Once - Popo was on top of the book case and was spectacularly sick from a great height.
But this morning - luckily - he felt well enough to go outside and sit in the sunshine.

Spring fever.     Both of them. 　 Cat and Okaasan.

Obstacle course

With the lack of anything else interesting to blog about - I'm reduced to creating obstacle courses for Okaasan to entertain us.

Yup. Had her out in the garden clambering over giant foam walls and thru plastic sheet tunnels....

She did pretty well, even caught the frisbee in her teeth.

.....

Tuesday was day care. No dance or anything, just go and have a bath and lunch and gentle activities like card games, karaoke etc.
At 8.35 am she was half dressed and up off the carpet getting ready to go.
So I took the chance to see how well she could do getting herself ready and out.
I hid up stairs.
Listening.
At 8.50 the day care staff came and Okaasan came out to do greetings.
And then the driver lady stood in our entrance hall...as the minutes went by...and Okaasan came in...and out...and in and out...going back to get stuff, check stuff, return stuff...on and on.

Usually, after telling Okaasan that it is day care day - I leave her to get up and start dressing, then by 8.45 I am in the room with her helping to put necessary stuff in the bags and chivy her along in dressing.

So, it WAS interesting to listen to how she fared on her own. The staff didn't actually come in and help her until the very end. I guess they have a rule about that - at what point to step in and physically help the client.
So the staff stood in the entrance hall and Okaasan shuffled around getting stuff together.
It took her almost 20 mins....the staff have soooo much patience!

Funny thing was hearing them talk about "where is everyone? The car is here? Are they out?".

Okaasan's suggestion:"Maybe they went out to eat?".

At 9 am in the morning?? I guess the usual reason we give her for being out is that we are a) working or b) have to go out and eat with a foreign, non-Japanese speaking guest. So her thinking in our absence goes to those possible explanations! :-)

Anyway. Finally the staff and Okaasan left and I came out of hiding to do the usual room-tidying.

Interesting. Well, for me anyway. Cos I have no life to speak of.
She CAN get dressed and get stuff together still, but it all takes time. The constant checking of necessary things....stuffing the bags with the same things over and over again.

Next stage: prepping the foam wall and tunnel now. I'll post video of THAT.

Random cute cat picture...cos.....well...just....why not?

Snow has melted....