fabrisse

MOM:
Mom had a stroke. Among other things, that means she has balance issues. Most of the time she won't use a cane because "it makes me look old." Mom's 88.

On the plus side, I managed to get her to walk outdoors for about 15 minutes twice last week. For that she'll use the walker that she has, but she doesn't want the neighbors to see her.

Much of the time, my soignee mother is, these days, walking around the house in a t-shirt and a diaper. Why yes, we do have a glass front door.

I'm cooking, which I don't mind. But I'm also doing the laundry, taking care of the dishes, and picking up after the dogs if they have an accident. We have a maid service that comes in once a week for the heavy duty housework, thank heavens, but it still feels like a burden. Especially when I have to clean some of Mom's undergarments.

I know that a stroke means she has certain memory issues, but I don't feel safe leaving Mom to have her fortnightly nurse's check or weekly PT on her own. It's not that I don't trust them. It's that I can't trust Mom to remember things they need to know -- like whether she's fallen -- if I'm not there to be the family's external storage drive.

Mom also complains that I'm a tattletale or correct her too much. If she's forgetting to tell the doctor something, I will interject. It's worse if, as she's implying, she might be deliberately hiding some of her problems from them.

DOGS:
The dogs are cute and fluffy, but even though we have a backyard so they don't need to be walked daily, they are work.

I'm the only one who remembers to feed them. Nicky has decided that I'm his human, so he'll cry if I'm not petting him when he's next to me. No matter that I'm using the remote to change the channel or playing a game on my phone, my hands are to be used for petting.

Both dogs sleep with me. I'm the one who gets up in the night if they need to go downstairs and out of doors. They also snore. My sleep is shot at the moment for a great many reasons, but snoring dogs are among them.

It wasn't so bad when Nora slept with Sis, but it's exhausting.

LASTLY:
I'm not a suburban person. I have no goals to walk toward. The closest Farmer's Market -- which I still haven't been to -- is 15 miles away in Savannah proper. The closest grocery store is 4 miles away. I'm driving so much. I don't like driving, though on the plus side I get to listen to the jazz station on Sirius rather than Mom's favorite, Joel Osteen.

None of this is really that much. I know not having found work I can do from home is at least part of the problem.

But right now, I feel pretty ground down

One of our Westies, Oliver, has been known to bite. He doesn't do it when he's on a leash on a walk; he has done it when someone comes into our yard without permission. In total, he has bitten three people, other than family, in his 8 years. He is a great watchdog. He has prevented one break-in for certain -- I was living with the parental units when he did. He also got a compliment from a police officer who was on a stake out. Said cop had to move his car because Oliver kept barking at him thus giving away his stake out position. The guy mentioned that a dog like Oliver did more to keep a house safe than a gun.

A couple of months ago, while I was on the phone with my sister, Oliver went crazy with barking. Sis looked out the window, looked out the peephole, and opened the door to show Oliver there was no one out there. There was. He bit the woman multiple times (this is the third person from the paragraph above).

Today, the insurance company called and essentially told my parents that Oliver was too great a liability. It doesn't matter that in not one of the three cases was the family or Oliver in the wrong. We won the cases as they were on our property without our permission (which is explicitly stated on the "No Soliciting" sign on the fence).

The family will be asking our dog walker if she knows anyone who can take Oliver. If not, he will probably be put down. I'm trying to figure out if I can take him. The extra $25 per month (if it's still only $25) and the $300 deposit wouldn't break me, but it would put me in a rough position financially. I worry about his barking in an apartment that's less than a third the size of his current living situation and his no longer having a companion through the day.

I just needed to vent a bit. I'm so angry about this because as Dad once said, "If Oliver didn't protect the house, we wouldn't have a reason to feed him."