Here we go again, folks! And a Happy Monday to ya. I called my mother early this morning to alert her that a nurse was coming to see her for a six month review by her managed long term care. The phone rang, and rang. And rang. And then I heard my mother’s unsteady voice.

“Speak up, I can’t hear you.”

“Hello! Hello! Hello!!!”

“It’s Me, MOMMMMM.”

“Speak up! Is that you?” (sound of buttons being pushed). Beeps. She responds to me.

“I had a terrible night,” the tale begins. “I didn’t sleep! A pipe broke and there was a flood in the closet. ALL the clothes got wet!
My BED was wet! The sheets were wet! My hair got wet!” I tried to call someone from the desk to come up, my phone wasn’t working! Then I told them and someone was supposed to come up, nobody came up!!!”

“Where is the aide, Ma?” (Notice, I am speaking up.)

“I sent her to do the laundry.”

So I text the aide. Eventually we talk. And then I learn: there was NO FLOOD. Nope. The air conditioner was on and the room was cold. My mother insisted that everything in the closet was WET. Every piece of bedding was WET. Everything in her drawers which are nowhere near the closet or a water source, (but are adjacent to the air conditioner), was wet. And the aide was sent down to purgatory to spend a good FIVE hours in the laundry room, BUT, it wasn’t bad enough that she had to schlep stuff to the one down the hall, my mother insisted that she use the machines two floors down. And, the aide, fearful that she would be checked-up on, complied. Until she was exhausted. After each load of laundry, my mother had to do her touch-test-heat-inspection. No fooling this little woman.

Might I add that this aide, leaves her father who suffers from Alzheimer’s, with an aide, so that she can come to work and deal with my mother and her ideations.

It has been exceptionally rainy and humid; if you don’t sweat buckets from the humidity, you can freeze from the air conditioning, and the system in my mother’s room is not easy to manage, the buttons can send one spinning into the terrain of moon or sun, temperature-wise. My mother’s blindness doesn’t help; it is even difficult for me to negotiate the digital tangle.

I hope that tomorrow brings a better day for all: a day of calm and no laundry.

This series starts here:
Part 1: And The Band Played On … a mother’s life, a daughter’s journey

The previous post is here

The next post is here