Mom & Me Five Archive

...over at The Dailies. The immediately previous link will take you to the latest entry, although that one hasn't much information.
    I've been fooling around with a different Label Index layout over there, especially since the labeling is so straighforward because almost everything over there is fact. Labeling journaled prose is only a little easier than labeling poetry...which may as well be labeled word by word. Anyway, I came up with a fairly good layout. Some of the entries may change, a little, but only in order to approximate a hard copy book index. Because there is so much hard information in that journal, the labeling is actually useful, and helpful. I gotta tell ya, I still can't believe I did that, and during a pretty intense care time. Although, well, not that this isn't intense, it's just intense in different ways and I'm marginally used to it.
    So, anyway, yesterday was much more extended than it appeared at the stat journal. It was just very slow. I'm trying to fit in a couple of rented movies that I know Mom would like to see, but she's up and down and up and down. At the last "up", which occurred at 0045 this morning, I even encouraged her to come out and we'd watch a "short" movie, because she seemed alert. I had in mind Water, which I've been salivating to see and I think it would entrance my mother, as many foreign films do, especially those featuring Asiatic cultures. So, I'm not anxious to see it without my mother.
    The other film is a sort of docu-tainment thing, featuring Howard Zinn talking about current political developments, augmented with interviews with others. I'm expecting that she'll enjoy this, too, especially since she read A People's History of the United States [so did I], although I'm sure she wouldn't recall it, now. I think with clipped, sometimes obtuse political banter, such as in The West Wing or such docu-tainments as we have here, today, awaiting us, it isn't that she catches a lot or retains a lot. I think it is the exercise of listening closely and knowing that the person to whom you're listening is being shrewd and you can understand that person. She may not remember these episodes, may not retain anything from them, but I think they provide a kind of exercise that does a subconscious lot to keep her sense of herself firm and reliable.

    I'm not sure when I'll wake her up, today. I'm cruising. We've got a low, only clouds and pressure dropping and increased humidity, going through followed by another somewhat more ferocious (I hope) low that is supposed to bring snow tonight through Friday. I'm expecting to arouse Mom no later than 1400, but she was up until 0200 this morning, and days like this are not uncommon, especially after a protracted period of sleep jag days, like she's had.
    I became worried, again, and attempted to discuss with her, by way of confession, really, whether she'd like me to look into more active, stimulating experiences and circumstances for her. In the back of my mind I was thinking "Dementia Living Facility". In the forefront I was thinking "Adult Day Care Center". As I asked her whether she'd be interested in any of these things I also confused the issue(s) with questions I gave her no time to answer like, "Are you bored, Mom," and "Do you want me to push you more?" and "Do you want to be up more?" and "Do you feel as though you need a reason to be up more?"
    Finally, my mother threw up her mental hands and said, "Goodness, girl, what are you thinking?!? We can hardly manage all the activity that besets us now!"
    Of course, a lot of it depends on how she's feeling, slow or quickened, but, either way, I don't tend to consider myself a failure and feel guilty about days, weeks, even, when she is spontaneously active. Only, of course, when she is spontaneously lethargic...and she thinks her life is almost too busy to handle! What a woman.
    Later.