Day-O!

Glutton. Punishment. I. Am.


Please select the best answer:
a) Will she?
b) Won't she?
c) Oyomesan needs her head examined.

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:-)

Slipping into normal?

One week no blog?
Have I accepted my fate?
Nothing interesting to report about living cross-culturally with a dementia-heading in-law?
THAT is a scary thought.
Was a time when I would jump to blog about the smallest event - now I'm not even checking in?


Sorry!!!!!


But in fact, it was a good week (Okaasan-wise), because I hardly saw her.


I was out working a few nights, helped a sick friend out by teaching her classes too, we had a couple dinner out on Groupon...and I think I only sat down to spend eating time with Okaasan once.
I delivered some piles of clean laundry to her.
Um....talked for 3 minutes about the cats.


That was it.


Tomorrow is the start of the spring holiday in Japan - almost 9 days of no work. But HE will start work as a bike taxi driver....so there will be more home-bonding-time-with-Okaasan and Oyomesan.


Watch this space :-)

Talking the Talk.

Day Care  for Okaasan next winter.


Ahhhhh.......I talked the talk with Yujiro.
Not positive about the feedback, but I am dealing with a Japanese male - so who knows :-)


Since the cat is now home and we can refocus on other things, I thought I'd add "Get Okaasan assessed for daycare" to his To Do List...maybe between Buy Beer and Buy Toilet Rolls.


Hmm.


"What do you want? Tell me?" he said, somewhat aggressively, in English.


"I want her to go at least one day a week to day care next winter, go in a bus from the front door here - go and join an exercise class, have lunch, chat to people - whatever. Have some human contact apart from us. Get OUT."


"And I want YOU to want it too - otherwise this whole process will be harder to persuade her on its merits".


He says he is wanting it too. I'm not sure. He was already throwing up all the problems he'll encounter along the way - that of course Okaasan will resist the whole idea...and I was telling him that I am sure every single family has the same problems - no old person wants to be shipped off to daycare. I am sure.
The city office staff must be skilled in dealing with all of that. We're not special.
One of my students, a super energetic 75-year-old, told me "I don't want to sit in a circle and catch balls", and that of course is the image of daycare....


But Okaasan doesn't need to know at this stage that the  checking visit to the city office/hospital is in connection with daycare - just tell her it is a "free Sapporo city check on all old people"....then later, after she gets accepted as suitable for the service, I hope that some nice, persuasive city office staff person sells Okaasan the idea of how fun it would be to go to day care....just a few times to try it out...


I hate having to be the one pushing for this.
But it will all be so much harder if HE isn't 100% behind the idea.
I know it'll be a struggle...but it IS for the best. Another winter of Okaasan sitting for days in front of the TV, with a deteriorating toilet situation and no conversation  apart from us isn't good, he is a ski teacher gone for a week at a time, I'm a working person...and hell...my Japanese is terrible.
She must be a suitable candidate for a once a week day care trip.


But, I hate being the person pushing this. I want to be the light-hearted girlfriend/life partner with jokes and laughter and happy things to share in life. Not the complainer about how-to-care-for-mother...


I will wait and see. I shall try not to mention it for a few weeks and see if he does something about it before he starts the summer bike taxi job....

I hope.....