Ayn's Multiple World

Today's turning up time to get ready

Good morning … or more likely good afternoon. This is me just waiting for a shower. It is Monday morning and we’re still in Chicago … and a good thing too.

Rich had to argue with me like the Bejeebers, but he won out and I canceled the first hotel night and because of it Joe got an extra day to ask his bosses proper AND he then got bereavement days off. He gets 3 days like me and then the 4th day needs to be a personal day. Fair enough

It is soooo outstanding that Joe gets to come with I’m just doing handstands. Well, no not really, but mentally I am. It makes such a difference. It also makes a difference having this free day to plan things out. That was part of Rich’s scheme to get me to stay home the extra day. He drew out a list of all the things I had to do yet, until I could even realize not that I couldn’t do it, but that I had no heart for getting it all done, PLUS getting a good night’s sleep. Part of that was because Maury had given me a video “Ears, Open. Eyeballs, Click.” And, you know for certain I was going to want to watch that, especially because it gave me an excuse to be coupled up into my Sweeties arms for a bit of time. I really needed that.

Another thing sneaky Rich through in at the very end just as I was almost willing to stay home anyway was he said, he would give me $100 to buy a dress today if I stayed home. Holy Moley … He was spot on! That will about tip anyone’s womanly scales!

He caught me fair and square. That’s probably what I will do next after getting out of the shower and dried. I’m not sure if they will have dresses big enough – I had been ordering dresses on line, because the store I go to has more skirts, but maybe now I’m better able to handle the skirts as long as they don’t crawl up. It seems the more business-like are skirts. I’ll have to see … I do like baggy, but we’ll have to go with what’s there. I should be dressed to try on skirts though … that will probably mean … ok, that’s enough of that! Move on!

Being a woman is tough! We also read a couple of months ago that women over a certain age shouldn’t where scrunchy things … those are the crumpled up cloth things people wear in their hair. Well, Damn … I’ve been wearing those damn things since they existed. So now I have to rethink the logic. I don’t KNOW what women are supposed to wear. I should wear at least the top of my hair up – it looks terrible bout anyway, but better that way. But, If I don’t have a scrunchy thing I’ll have to figure it out. They might have something at the dress store under accessories, or I might have to get something at Walgreens when I stop for medicine. I might have to get something for my face too. Lordy this would have to be the time my face rebels. I don’t usually wear makeup and not sure, but need some kind of concealor.

I’ll have to figure that out. Yeesh. Might have to talk to the woman at the beauty counter, but I’ve never in my life done that – plus, have to worry about limited standing. I don’t know … maybe not for the Walgreens, but for the shopping, I might want to consider the wheel chair … give me more time for browsing. I don’t know how packed the aisles will be. *Sigh* It’s worrisome not even having a dress good enough to go shopping in. L

Maybe I should get in the shower before I get too far. I should leave by 2-2:30 pm. That’s like in an hour. I haven’t the faintest when stores close. Maybe 7-10 pm sometime. This is terrible. I just don’t shop well. Pretty sure $100 is going to be limiting, but we went over to the on-line bank. There’s $1300 there at this moment, but all that money is spoken for and is in the process of going out to pay one bill or another. Rich gave me an extra $100 to keep account above 0. I got $400 back from Joe since he’s not going to San Diego, so that helped and Rich put in several hundred. The room will be about $420, gas $150, food about $150 too. I will be paying for Joe as well, but we won’t be eating real expensive and I would suppose we’d be treated out once or twice. We don’t have much to take anyone else out. So, all in all that’s a bottom line of $720, plus $100 for dress, plus we have to pick up medicine. The first $200 is covered in bank money, but it will like cost an additional $100 bringing total PLUS the $100 to stay in account up to $1000, but I think we’ve got $1,100. Not sure where the extra came from. But, right now we’ll take what we got and give Rich back anything that’s not used when we return. Joe might pay for a meal of two and that would help as well. We’ll see. We told him he doesn’t have to worry about it and we were serious about that … it’s such a relief to have him there.

OK you! Your avoiding shower GO!

Hmm, ok, we’re back! It’s 1:45 now … so let’s say we’ve got half an hour until 2:15 pm, and then we will get dressed. We need to wear something, but still have enough clothes left to take with us to MN. Shoot FOUR good outfits? We can do this, right? Just need a back-up slip, some knee-things, another dress or skirt, and something for our hair. We can do it … Just got to budget. I think we may need to find that other black tennis shoe too that fits a little large, but is darker, unless we can find something that will match our tan shoes which might be a preference. People could see our size and cane and not expect us to be wearing heals. My mother it is heard will be using her wheel chair, so it will be our goal not to be using ours. Two gimps in the family is just too showy. I will want to appear more mobile, unless the chairs are really not available. I did ask this morning and they seem to be, but I think they don’t really know … they are just guessing why wouldn’t they be. But, in both Sandy’s and Dad’s wake, they were terribly missing. We’ll see, and the chair will be there if necessary.

We did want to while we had a minute to say one thing about the other day well a couple things. One was that we DID have the meeting of Maury, Joe, and Rich, and I AND followed by that … Rich DID finally include me in a trip into Bass PRO World – they have electric motor scooters! WooHOO!

The meeting with “the family” was WONDERFUL! It was everything that could be hoped for and more. Rich was a little quiet and he seemed a little restless towards the end, but he was fine. His speech was overly polite and I could tell he was trying to get the words all correct. He was the only one I’m afraid that was having trouble speaking. I should say that’s actually better than not. I would wish it had been easier for him, but he offered no complaint … He just projected as if it were any normal day and he was giving no extra thought. Dang! Joe and Maury were like business as normal. It felt with them it was like any other conversation we’d ever had. I put myself out a little embarrassing to get Joe to take the podium, because we all realize Maury will go on, but the two boys managed to balance it out well. Maury really impressed me toward the end in realizing Joe’s move might be tough and volunteered to help, before Joe could pose the thought in his mind of asking for help. It made me very proud the boys think like this of each other.

Joe’s major subject was toward moving and Maury’s major topic was toward the new job. Both were as interesting as the other. When the boys talk I find myself drawn into all the small nuances – nooks and crannies of what they are saying. I worry probably more of the 2 months of a potential roommates dirty clothes than Joe does, but it seems he’s figuring that out too and he doesn’t need an intervening mother to say – hey Joe is that really what you want. But, in between times of him mentioning it … it was giving my nerves a tweak. I’d worried about him being alone, but he said it well when he mentioned that it was unfair for the roommate to be his roommate because Joe spent so little time at home. The concerns I had for Maury were concerns he had expressed on his own … basically in a more bravado manner of him working around south-siders. I thought he was doing very well, and I was proud of him for how well he’d managed the situation – very similar to Joe when he had had that salesman position with the insurance company. I’m extremely happy with how fast Maury is learning and how motivated he is to climb a few more rungs on the ladder both literally and figuratively. Go Maury!

I don’t know what the boys thought of Rich … Rich didn’t say too much for them to figure him out. He listened attentively and added periodically, but mostly when the boys are talking the discussion is enhanced quickly by the rest of us with questions or concerns that we are more familiar with. Rich will become more familiar with that the longer he is there. I thought he was an enhancement to the dinner. I felt a little sheepish though on the normal expectation we all took on at first meeting that he should pick up the bill. I had warned him of it and he had already known it would. I said that Maury will offer, but of course he’ll turn him down because of the new job and lack of money … that part went well. The only other way to have done it was for me to pay, but then I would have had to borrow the money from Rich to do it. I’m not sure how we’ll manage this in the future. I’m guessing that my ex pays when they go out? I don’t know. I can’t imagine him really taking the boys out. Maybe one day I’ll ask. I do know that when the larger Garvey family goes out. My ex always relied on his mother or father to pay. It will be similar to that up North – where John will offer to take us out. We will avoid going out as much as possible, because we will be affronted with the quality of their venue choice. I didn’t like eating at card board tables and serving myself faucet water from plastic cups. The dinner might have been fine, but I felt out of place, especially since John is known not to be a veteran. I hate to be held up on that one dinner, but I don’t remember another with them. That was with my Grandma too.

We did go out to eat as a family after Aunt Alice’s funeral and at that time, my Grandmother picked up the bill. I was so proud of her. There were many families and she covered us all with grace –even with men folk present.

I’m grateful of the nice picture I have framed of my grandmother. It’s a nice thick brown leather frame – white stitched. I am going to take it with me and leave in the hotel to keep me focused on why we are there. I want it to remind me of her life and not her death. My mother told me something I wish she wouldn’t, but will have to go on the list of things that are Rasmussen-like about her. She said that a nurse had pulled her to the side while she was picking up her mother’s things. It had been one of the favored nurses. She said that she thought she’d heard my grandmother’s last words. I apologize for what I’m about to say. My mother was giggling and laughing as she said them. I’d like to say she was just over the edge in shock over the whole couple of days events, but realistically it is the kind of thing my grandfather and her brothers live for. I told her Uncle Wes would surely also take delight in the story, and she agreed that he thought it hysterical. I still find little little little humor. My grandmother told the nurse her seat hurt. Then she told her her butt hurt. Somehow there must have been a communication lag, because my grandmother told her her ass hurt and then lastly she told her her asshole hurt. My way of interpreting this was that my grandmother was in pain – from the sounds of it she died of dehydration. She refused water and food the last week. She could have been burning with fever. I think in my way of looking at it … she was saying that all of them were assholes and they all hurt her. Hmpf! Ok, maybe that’s very mean, but I just don’t get the humor.

I’ll wonder as time goes on what kind of relationship my mother will hold with her brother. In my mind, I would like to aim for a relationship so that I could talk to her fairly often on the cell phone or that she could even learn text message so she could know that I was there for her. I talked to Thom about it in a letter this morning. I have no illusion that she has real caring capacity. I think when she cries in regard to my grandmother, she cries because she’s feeling sorry for herself. I talked to Dr. Marvin about it when he called not too long ago. I said … when this kinda thing happened I should just forget about it. I was talking about her in relationship to my having asked about my siblings being at the funeral. She stated that Scott would be a pallbearer and that Connie Sue wasn’t coming. She then said Connie Sue was too sickly. And then she dropped it and went on to something else. It was cold. It’s still bothering me that there was no compassion, but this is exactly what we were talking about. We’d squeaked out of her before information that my sister is on some kind of morphine drip. We asked Rich after ward … Morphine drip? That’s kind of serious isn’t it? But, as to my mother it was like, well she wasn’t going to be there in any useful capacity … she wasn’t worth thinking about. Certainly no poor Connie Sue. It was just like the way she used to describe her sister. Joyce is sickly. Then Joyce died and then in death she continued to become the jealous competitor for her mother’s attention.

The bottom line goes is that there has to be someway of relating to her without expectation that she is going to have capacity for “love.” And, that what appears to be caring is only needs for attention. Dr. Marvin confirmed the Narcissistic Personality disorder. I think we’re going to have to read more about it. But, what we were trying to say was that there should be a way of caring about her without getting sucker-punched to believe she could care back. Because the bottom line is that even if she can’t really care for others other than herself, I do care about others, and I obvious have some kind of regard for her. Not enough to get dragged under the train, but enough to say … she’s my mother, and I don’t want to see her hurt by others either. I started to say before that I don’t think she has many close relationships because most people feel her lack of real regard and step back from her. But, maybe I can get to know her from the perspective I know my mother has this disorder, now how can we work around it. Not as a “savior”, but as a reasonable family concern. I certainly don’t like the way I see my siblings handling it. Although, I can respect the distance as I too have placed trying to straighten out my own life and I will continue to watchguard it, but I think it’s the proper time to put some functionality in this other relationship too. She’s 67 years old and is going to also need some help down the line. It will be good for me to try and it will be good for my boys to see the effort. As long as I can maintain proper boundaries, keep mindful of things about me, pay my respects, and continue not to have breakdowns. I have to be able to stay healthy. That’s all Dr. Marvin’s bottom line. He said he thought everything would be ok. I just have to be very careful. Rich added that I have to be responsible, because I am responsible for Joe. He’s right there too.

Ok, Pshwoo. That’s probably enough for now. We’re using up all our daylight. It’s 2:45 pm, I’ve just gotten dressed and we expect Rich home in about 4-5 hours.

Should get to it. Just have to post, grab, my phone, card, purse, and keys and then I think we’ll be ready. We’ll make the pharmacy the last trip? Probably. We’ll want to pack up our medicine before tomorrow morning. I’ll be back before we leave though. Ok, now we can do this, right? Just gotta breath!

posted by Ann Marie @ 4/21/2008 02:49:00 PM Comments: 0