Mom called…

…again.

The first call was this morning. It’s our daily just-checking-in-to-let-you-know-I-woke-up-today call. It usually involves Mom grilling me on my schedule for the day. Sometimes I feel like she’s checking for chinks in it to see if she can insert herself.

So I carried on with my (boring) day. Laundry…always laundry…cleaning, scrubbing, dishes, blah blah blah. Sometimes I feel I could spend every waking moment doing that stuff and still never catch up.

The phone rings. I’m scrubbing the toilet. It’s Mom. I ignore it.

She HATES that. But I do it in the interest of maintaining my sanity.

If she’s having an emergency, she’ll tell me.

“Where ARE you?” she crows cheerfully (thanks, Lexapro!) into my answering machine. “In the basement? Doing laundry? Give me a call back.”

Ummmm…WHY? So you can parrot the Fox News headlines to me? No, thanks.

Fast forward an hour and a half and two loads of laundry later. Phone rings. Mom.

Ugh. I roll my eyes and pick it up. “Hello?”

“You never called me back. What were you doing?”

“Ummm…laundry, dishes, sweeping, cleaning the bathroom…”

“So you just didn’t want to call me back.”

Yeah. Pretty much.

“You have to admit, Mom, we spend a lot of time on the phone with you watching Fox News,” (and me on Twitter, but that’s neither here nor there) I said in my defense.

“Well, I’m not watching it NOW,” she huffs.

Eventually she gets to the point of her phone call. She needs some tax documents sent to her tax guy. Apparently she was hoping I could drive them over.

I plug the address into Google maps. It’s an hour’s drive. Each way.

“Can’t you just mail them?” I plead.

“Well, they would all need to be photocopied first,” she replies.

You mean I’LL need to photocopy them and mail them. Like I don’t have enough to do.

Actually, Mom hasn’t been too bad lately. She’s been staying healthy (-ish) and I really don’t have anything to complain about. I know I’m lucky to have her. I’m just crabby.

*sigh* At least I’m not driving to the opposite side of the city.

UPDATE: Got some interesting responses on Twitter:

Yinz know Pittsburgh’s goin’ to the Super Bowl?

The One-Year Mark: Part 6

Let’s see…where was I? Ah, yes. To catch you up, if you haven’t read the rest of the series, you’ve missed a lot…

…GO READ IT!

I’ll wait.

Part 1 • Part 2 • Part 3 • Part 4 • Part 5

So the weeks pass, and we wait for Mom’s moving truck to arrive from Chicago. The new apartment building leaves the moving blankets up on the sides of the elevator almost the entire time. There’s a welcome sign on her door weeks before she ever gets to see it. I stop over to stock the place with some groceries and supplies, and people stop me in the hallway, asking if I’m Chiquita’s daughter.

And then they ask if the moving truck got lost.

That was funny the first time, but by the time 37 silver-haired jokesters quit asking two months later, I was TOTALLY over it.

Finally, in mid-December, we get the call.

It’ll pull in tomorrow.

So bright and early the next morning, I drag my butt over to Mom’s new place. The moving truck arrives. I go over to greet the driver, and he tells me that the movers (sent over from the local moving company) are on their way. So we sit in our vehicles a while longer.

Eventually they turn up, and I go inside to let the front office know that we’re about to get started. The truck drives around to the loading dock, and I meet them there. It seems that the building’s bus is parked right in the way of the 18-wheeler trying to back into the loading dock.

I’m dispatched to the front office to find someone to move the bus. Of course, it’s a Saturday, so the receptionist is the weekend one, and no one is scheduled to drive it that day. But after being assured that they’re working on it, I head back to the dock…..

…To find the 18-wheeler about to try to back in the loading dock WITHOUT hitting the bus. I have time to wonder if Mom would be charged for the repairs to the nearly-totalled bus.

It’s tight, and that driver did some FANCY drivin’, but he got in there. Whew…it was CLOSE!

The guys start offloading Mom’s stuff. From the loading dock, to get to Mom’s apartment (almost directly overhead), there’s a looooong hallway, an elevator up one floor, and back down the same looooong hallway. And there’s only one hand truck in the building, though the movers have a couple other small ones (after they leave to go get them, of course).

Mom had paid for unpacking at the new place, so I mention it to the guys.

“Oh, you don’t want us to do that,” one of them tells me.

“I don’t?” I asked, sure that someone was trying to rip someone off.

“Nah. It just means that we take everything out of the boxes, unwrap it, and leave it sitting on the floor.”

After doing some visualizing, I agree with him. So I grab a knife and start slicing boxes open to unpack them. They haul it up, I unpack it. I’m going as fast as I can, because they’ll take all the empty boxes & packing material with them…which means that I won’t have to.

Eventually, everything is in, and I’ve unpacked all I can for now. But the truck has one more stop to make: my house.

You see, since the truck was coming to Pittsburgh anyway, my sister put her unwanted elliptical machine and a leather sectional sofa on to be dropped off at my place. So I lead the procession (my car, two cars full of movers, and the 18-wheeler) across town to my house. The drive was uneventful, if you don’t count the part where the 18-wheeler couldn’t QUITE make it around that tight corner and dug up some poor guy’s side yard. (Oops. I felt bad about that…maybe because we had to look at it until spring!)

The guys unload the sofa and the elliptical, thanking me for not wanting them up a flight of stairs (our basement is next to the garage at ground level). I distribute tips.

Next comes the hard part: Kicking Chiquita out.

The One-Year Mark: Part 5

Let’s recap, shall we? My sister arranges to move out of town, leaving my 68-year-old aging mom stranded in Chicago area.

Dutiful daughter that I am, my family and I decide to move Mom closer to us. We go to Chicago for a visit for Thanksgiving 2007, and on the drive home to Pittsburgh, we prop my diabetic, obese, cardiac-patient Mom (aka Chiquita or Grandma Chiquita) in the front seat of the minivan. Here goes nothin’.

Cue the chest pains. There’s a stop in the ER in Sandusky, Ohio; some vomiting by my 6-year-old; and then we arrive home. Where we wait nearly three weeks for her moving truck to arrive. My walker-and-wheelchair-using mom now has to climb 2 flights of stairs each day to her bedroom.

Here’s what a typical day looked like over those few weeks:

7:00 am: Kids and I wake up, get dressed and ready for school. Look in on Mom (or just check to make sure I can hear her snore)

7:30 am: Breakfast for kids & Chiquita. Kids eat at kitchen table, Mom gets a tray in her room. She’s so weak and diabetic, I don’t want her attempting the stairs before breakfast.

8:15 am: Leave for bus stop; stop in to let Mom know we’re going. Chances are, she’s still asleep.

8:30 am: Breakfast for me; make coffee for Mom and me. Park Little Sis in front of the TV so I can…

8:45 am to ?: Head upstairs to give Mom a shower and “treatment.” Of course, she’s still asleep. Once she wakes, I’ll help her with breakfast (not that she really needs the help so much as she’s so co-dependent she’ll take any help anyone’s dumb enough to give her…that’d be me). She takes her pills (13 at the time). Then a shower, and her “treatment.” I’ll spare you the details except to say that it involves washing & powdering her delicate skin condition.

Late morning: Help Chiquita down the stairs and get her settled in front of Fox News (*gag*), where she’ll repeat the day’s headlines to me almost incessantly.

Sometime before lunch (hopefully): Cleanup duty begins; head back up to her room, strip the bed and wash the sheets (wet from incontinence), her towels (one from shower plus 2-3 more for her treatment), her pajamas and the previous day’s clothes (she only packed enough for a few days). Bring down her breakfast tray and do kitchen cleanup. Start lunch; must be healthy because I’m feeding a diabetic cardiac patient.

After lunch: take care of my 3 year old (hey, remember her?), alternating with fielding “What are you DOING?” from Mom and losing my mind because I SO did not sign up for this howamIsupposedtocookandcleananddolaundryand groceryshopand handlemykidsandmyhusbandandnowmymomtoo!

3:45 pm: Pick up Big Sis from school bus. Great, now I have three people to take care of!

4:30 pm Start dinner; must be healthy because I’m feeding a diabetic cardiac patient. Must also be something that picky Big Sis will eat unless we want a battle at the dinner table. Allow extra time for incessant interruptions. As 6 pm nears and am interrupted for the 34th time, shout “DO YOU PEOPLE WANT TO EAT DINNER TONIGHT OR NOT?!?”

6:15 pm Mr. Hoagie gets home from work. Inwardly rejoice because the cavalry has arrived.

6:16 pm Heart sinks as he trudges upstairs for a “quick nap” before dinner. Inwardly seethe, slamming pots and pans, until I…

6:20 pm …remember that he’s epileptic so his neurologist has given him carte blanche on sleep. Say a quick prayer of thanks that he didn’t have a seizure driving home from work and kill himself and six other people and commence to feeling guilty that I inwardly seethed at all.

6:45 pm Start dinner for five. Repeatedly get up to get stuff for people. Listen to regurgitated Fox News headlines. Mediate kids’ arguments. Count bites for whiny, perpetually hunger-striking Big Sis. Eat cold food and start clearing table.

7:30 pm Encourage everyone to head up to bed, knowing that that’s the only way I’ll get any peace. Chiquita needs to go up before she’s too tired; we had several instances of wobbliness and near-falls over those weeks.

7:31 pm Chiquita turns Fox News back on.

8:15 pm Kids head upstairs; Mr. Hoagie puts them to bed.

8:20 pm Chiquita (reluctantly) heads upstairs, supported by me.

8:26 pm Arrive at top of stairs. Assist Chiquita in getting ready for bed, including (whoo hoo) another treatment.

9:15 pm Chiquita is tucked in and watching prime time TV in the dark. She invites me to stay and watch with her, but I weasel out of it (feeling guilty) because I. AM. BEYOND.DONE.

9:20 pm Curl up on the couch with Mr. Hoagie to watch The Daily Show.

9:30 pm Fall asleep on the couch.

10:15 pm Mr. Hoagie wakes me up so I can drag my sorry butt to bed. I get to do it all over again tomorrow.

Part 1 • Part 2 • Part 3 • Part 4 • Part 5 • Part 6

The One-Year Mark: Part 3

Part One is here; Part Two is here.

It’s now day two of our cross-country road trip bringing my mom (aka Chiquita or Grandma Chiquita) from her home in Chicago to Pittsburgh to live near us. We packed up our rooms at the Holiday Inn Express and headed over to the lobby to grab some breakfast before we left (ever tried the cinnamon rolls there? FABULOUS!).

While we were sitting at the table, my cell phone rings. It’s my sister. The night before, I had called her, riddled with anxiety about Chiquita’s chest pains.

“We should really get those checked out,” she told me. The ROYAL we.

“Oh, but Mom’s feeling better now,” I said. The sun was out, we were well-rested, it was a new day. Maybe those chest pains were all a bad dream.

“I’ve talked with three different nurses,” she said. (She works with a company that staffs nurses-on-call-by-phone.) “They all said that considering her history and the circumstances, she could be in serious trouble.”

“She hasn’t had anything since last night,” I explained. “I’m sure if it were bad, something else would’ve happened by now.”

“Not necessarily,” my sister replied. “They said she might still be having the heart attack RIGHT NOW. Every minute that goes by, more of her heart could be damaged.”

“Oh, crap.” The anxiety, fear, terror, and dread came rushing back. I looked over my shoulder at Chiquita in the dining room having breakfast with her two granddaughters. They were laughing together.

I didn’t feel much like laughing.

So the next step was to decide: ambulance, or a ride. We decided to try to get to the next major city with a decent hospital, which was Sandusky. We exited the expressway and asked the nice toll booth collector which way the hospital was. I half expected her to call 911 or radio the state police or something. Maybe I’d get busted for elder abuse.

No such luck.

We found the hospital and the emergency room entrance. I took Chiquita in and explained her symptoms. A mess of hospital staff descended upon her: stethoscopes, syringes, blood pressure cuff.

In the meantime, Mr. Hoagie brought the kids in and asked the staff at the desk if there might be a fast food place nearby with a playplace where he could wait with the girls. Being Sandusky, there were four. He picked one and they left, making sure to turn on his cell.

I did my best to update the hospital staff on Chiquita’s myriad health conditions. Where to begin? Coronary artery disease, multiple stents, diabetes, pyodermal gangrenosum (a skin condition), incontinence, obesity….

With each condition I rattled off, their eyes got wider. Apparently it was a wonder she was still kicking!

They took lots of blood and hooked her up to several monitors. Once they’d done that, it was a matter of waiting for the test results.

And waiting.

Nearly two hours after we’d arrived, a doctor appeared to share the test results with us. According to her labs, she HADN’T had a heart attack. This time. But considering her medical profile, he’d typically want to admit her. We explained that we were halfway between her old home and her new one, and unless she was having a medical emergency, we’d rather just get back on the road and promise to see her new doctor when we arrived.

Of course, she didn’t HAVE a new doctor yet, but he didn’t need to know that.

So he sent us off, bending the rules a bit in order to print off her ER medical records for her new doctor. I texted Mr. Hoagie to let him know that we were almost done.

He texted back. Apparently he’d had a bit of an adventure himself. They’d gone to the playplace, and before they were even inside the restaurant (in the vestibule between the two entrance doors), Big Sis had vomited.

Outstanding.

So a few minutes later, the minivan pulled up to the ER entrance, and we loaded Chiquita in. Big Sis sat in the back seat, looking pale and tired. We navigated our way back to the expressway. By the time we picked up our toll ticket, Big Sis was asleep.

Part 1 • Part 2 • Part 3 • Part 4 • Part 5 • Part 6

Obama rally photos

Big Sis takes in the scene at Mellon Arena

The view from our seats

Big Sis and me

Barack on the big screen at Mellon Arena

Big Sis and her popcorn

Big Sis in the big city

Barack Obama Rally Today

Well, I think it’s all worked out. I’m taking Big Sis to see the Barack Obama rally at Mellon Arena in Pittsburgh today. I’m taking her out of school early today. Little Sis will hang with Chiquita until Mr. Hoagie picks her up after work.

I’m so excited for Big Sis to see history in the making. I hope it’s something she’ll tell her kids and grandkids about!

I’m a little nervous, though. Checked into public transportation, but can’t find anything that’ll work. The earliest I’d get there is 2:30 pm, and doors open at 3:00 pm. Parking is supposed to be a nightmare. I’d rather not have to walk all over the city with my 7-year-old in tow. Maybe I’ll pick her up a little earlier…?

Okay…I’m off to pack up my tee shirts, buttons and signs. I’ll post about it later!