A New Day Begins at Noon

(this post was delayed one day due to HNT; these events happened on Wednesday)

Well, it finally happened guys. Yours truly finally had a fucked up day. Well, not really, but ...

Things were going OK til I got to my Mom's nursing center. It's called a nursing center, not home. I walked in her room at 9:15am and she let me know she had a hair salon appointment at 9:30. (the shop is in the building) How dare she schedule this when I am going to be there? Just who does she think I'm coming to visit? Her Certified Nurse's Assistant? Settle down, David.

She also wants me to call her doctor and make sure he visits her today. No way I can tell him when to visit because we don't know how long the hair appointment will take. That's out for today Mom, unless you have an emergency. She is, of course, upset about this.

She also wants me to call her CPA TODAY! to discuss a tax situation. Mom, I can't talk to him this week because he's in LA at the Rose Bowl. I told you this last week. OK, she forgot about that. (All these things she "tells" me takes several minutes for her to write down and for me to figure out what she is writing.)

OK. At 9:45am I take her downstairs in her wheelchair to the salon. This room is big enough to accommodate about 6 wheelchairs and then it's packed. Her past appointments have taken 2-3 hours due to all the elderly wheelchair-bound women getting their hair done every day and only one hairdresser. I've accepted that we won't have much conversation today. Mom wrote to me to write a check to the lady for $70. Damnit, I didn't bring the checkbook because she usually gets her hair done every other Friday. Not on Wednesday. So I empty my wallet of everything. I've got $59 plus $10 in the car. Told the lady I'll pay her the other dollar the next time.

Mom says my sister is coming to visit today too. What? She came yesterday and would never come 2 days in a row. I call my sister and wake her up. It's 10:45am. No way she's coming today. She said she's coming next on Saturday so we can meet up and talk about stuff. My sister hears a little frustration in my voice and tells me I need to take more days for myself and not visit Mom so much. That I'm stressing myself out. After about 14 seconds of sisterly advice, I tell her to stop. Just stop right now. I don't need her or anyone else telling me what to do today.

She gets all defensive about me getting all defensive. So I PAUSE WHEN AGITATED. Take a breath David. I apologized for being short with her. I didn't mention what I didn't tell her a couple of days ago.

At one point, I stopped by the Nursing Center's business office to pick up some secondary insurance paperwork I gave them to fill out last week. They lost it. Can't find it anywhere. I must now re-start that process. It took 3 weeks to get this far with it and this new delay could be very expensive. Settle down, Dave.

Mom is now in the middle of her hair thing and writes to me that she has to pee. We mop up her hair and put a towel around it and I wheel her back up 4 floors to her bathroom with the special commode attachment. Then back to the hair salon. Now I have about 40 minutes to get to Lambda (a 20+ minute drive) where I'm chairing the 12:15pm meeting. I gotta stop at the post office first and then get to an ATM because I have no cash on me now. After the meeting, I'm picking up Norris to take him to a 2pm doctor appointment on the other side of town. Can't go with no cash.

12:00 noon. Arrive @ Lambda.
Open my tool box. Remove "Start the day over" tool. Thank you AA.