On The Road Again.....

Oh windy. I am glad you are taking a break part way there. I hope the hostilities aren't too great when you see your mum. I went through the "I have no clothing" thing too. She had lots. You have much to do when you get there. I know it is a huge job. BTDT twice re furniture. Mother moved from a large 2 bedroom apartment to one room unit in an ALF, we disposed of the extra furniture, and stuff, then 6 months later she moved to a 2 bedroom unit again and refurnished. We had to do it all over again 3 years later. ((((((hugs)))))

Ugh Buddy! Thinking good thoughts for you on your journey, I know it all seems overwhelming, but remember, one bite at a time! You can't get it all done in one trip, unless you hire a team once there, and that's not a bad idea! Take Care! Stace

Thanks guys. I’ll be fine. I think. Might be a bit difficult dealing with mom. Really no way to comfort her at this point. But now it’s all just details and hanging tough. Nothing compared with the trauma of the last visit which was wrangling the both of them in the AL.

Bad news....My realtor tells me the market is bad there now. Kinda over saturated suburbia. Probably gonna take a huge hit financially. Oh well......Had they moved and sold 5 years ago we’d have caught the tale end of the boom in that area. But , OH NO...WE’RE JUST FINE HERE....YOUR DAD CAN BRING MY PILLS TO MY ROOM....

So here we are. Could be much worse. They saved a good bit of money but now we’re playing the WILL I OUTLIVE MY MONEY GAME......

Dearest Windy, drive safely, drink water and breathe.

Dearest Windy, drive safely, drink martinis and breathe. ;)

Probably go with the water today. Five hours to go yet. Even in Ohio and West Virginia I don’t think they allow you drive with a fresh martini going on.........

Martini drivers are a source of county and state revenue in WV:)

Having a wee bit a vodker & tonic after a long day. Drove in rain all day yesterday then this am pea soup fog thru Columbus....
Total white knuckle crap....

Got to the old home place about noon, turned water on, hot water heater, and turned up heat. All systems (such as they are) go....then went to AL to see folks.

They were in their room, mom very lethargic and not making much sense. Dad making no sense at all but not agitated. Mom gave me the total cold shoulder at first but at least she wasn’t weepy and talking about me dumping her in prison/when can I go home and so forth. She slowly started coming round but it’s clear her dementia is increasing rapidly.

A neighbor lady had visited them Friday. She had called and told me mom said she had no clothes, Dad had lost his watch, wallet, and glasses. So the first hour or so I’m trying to determine what’s fact and what is delusional. At the house I found 4 pairs of dads old glasses and a working watch and had brought thevwatch and a pair of glasses with me. Sure enough, no glasses, watch or wallet. He put the glasses and the watch on and was quite happy.

A search of drawers and closet....Hardly any of mom’s clothes left!? Found caregiver...Moms stuff is in the laundry and will be back tonight. Ok.....

Remaining mystery: who brought the new Capri pants (Really?) two pair, and 6 pack of new undies? No staff had any idea, nor did mom and Dad. Hmmmmmmm....

Mom continued to perk up, telling me stories about life in the joint, p theraphy, it’s really hard, their dinner table mate E, she’s very hard of hearing, had four sons etc. ok...Im liking this version of mom.

At dinner mom and E carried on like they were at Girl Scout camp. Moms a little better off mentally than E and I could tell she liked helping E out by loudly explaining to her what was going on, the menu and so on. E seemed delighted. She is a sweetie. 90 years old and deaf as a stone, but she and mom seem to be big buddies.

Then mom tells me how she liked these college boys who come by and play guitars and sing. She really enjoyed it.

My god....I so wish I could have gotten her in here 5 years ago.

Dad is very confused. Couldn’t figure out where I was staying. BUT I THOUGHT YOU LIVED IN MICHIGAN? Yes Dad, but I’m staying at your house. WHAT HOUSE? The one 5 miles from here. OH I TORE THAT OLD HOUSE DOWN YEARS AGO......So I left it there.

OMG it is so friggin hot in that place. I can do an hour and I have to go outside for some air. It’s beyond me how people do 12 hour shifts in these places.....

So I’m pleased that the folks seem to be getting with the program. Of course that could change tomorrow but I think we’ll get there. Now it’s going to be a crazy week of house-bank-realtor-car-DMV-
and dealing with a dying sump pump. If that baby goes....I don’t even want to think about it.

Thank all you guys for the nice words.

Windy; Your parents are safe and happy and mom has Capri pants!

It's all good. You have a good local plumber, yes?

Breathe. You've sure as heck got this!

Thanks Barb. Yeah..Capri pants..WTH?

And Becky, I don’t want to cast my fellow hillbillies in a bad light but ain’t much martini drinking going on down here......The state revenue comes from the George Dickel/ Jack Daniels guys....And other crap I don’t even want to get into.

I just told my husband that your mom has Capri pants. His look was pricesless!

Sometimes capri pants are best with short folks. Im 5'3" if I stand up really straight. I'll need capris and not petites in a couple of years!

Dear Windyridge,

Thank you for the update.

I have to agree with Barb, Capri pants work great for the short ladies.:-)

I laughed when you talked about how hot it is. I'd be sweating within about 3 minutes of visiting my mom - winter or summer. It was ALWAYS hot in her place. And she liked it that way. I'd leave and be dripping.

It sounds like things are going as well as can be expected. You've done a great job (and continue to do) for your folks. Good luck with selling their house. I don't envy you that process.

Windy ridge, you're from WV? Haven't lived there since college graduation in 1971. Not up on the current drinking trends. Come from a family of teetotalers.

windy - you are doing a terrific job. I am glad mum is not as frosty and has made a friend. I think it is going well and as expected. Sorting out their stuff is a huge chore. I hope it goes relatively smoothly. Give yourself some breaks...

Started on mom’s room today. 12 forty gallon trash bags later you can see the floor and the dressers are empty. All legal stuff is just a disaster. Spent an hour at dmv, such a lovely place, then they announced the computers had crashed. Won’t even go into bank/poa crap.

But the good news....Folks seem to be in the AL groove pretty much. Had dinner again with the other ladies, mom eating like a horse, complaining about all the food.....It is pretty gruesome. She and dad joke and carry on with the other ladies. Mom is just downright prissy! She loves making E laugh, but I don’t think the bar is very high for E to laugh.

On the other hand, mom is really going downhill cognitively, and can’t transfer to wheelchair without major assist, much less walk. But she seems happy enough. Maybe happy is too strong a word, but there’s no talk from either of them about WHEN ARE WE GOING HOME.....

Dad is very confused but not agitated and didn’t do any great escapes today.

Tomorrow: Actually cleaning mom’s room. The window sills...OMG
And before anyone suggests cleaning service, trust me, this is not deep cleaning. My goal is to declutter and febreeze enough so the real estate lady won’t faint dead away.

Still alive and well.  Been a crazy week with all the house stuff, realtor, lawyers, getting new title for the car (just four trips to DMV!) and visiting folks every day.

The every day visits were probably a mistake. They had been adjusting pretty well but my presence re kindled all the confusion and WANNA GO HOME stuff.  So had to run through the whole chain of events, Fib, dodge and weave all week.  Kinda put us back to check in time two months ago. But the dementia for both of them is such that I think they will get back in the groove pretty quickly. Mom has really gone down hill. She will be pretty with it, then look at me and go WHERES WINDY? Oh boy.....

Long story but am starting guardianship process.  No originals of POA can be found.  No prob with banks or dmv but prob with selling land.  I’ve got a great realtor who hooked me up with a good attorney. And already have an interested buyer for the property

Trapped here thru weekend due to weather from here to thar. So will head north Monday. Not like I’ve got nothing to do. Forty trash bags and counting......

I have a vacation home in WV,, and I have never seen any martinis either! Our neighbors make moonshine in the kitchen however.. And have many late night bango and guitar playing gigs,, with some wacky tabay! we sit on our deck and laugh!

No, it ain’t martini country down in these here parts....


Wacky tabay?

Windy, you are the best child anyone EVER birthed!!!

windy -you are continuing to do an awesome job! I know that visiting them is tough. ((((((hugs)))) for your fortitude. You learn as you go about what works. You already have someone interested in the property??? That's wonderful and could get you so far ahead in the job you are in the middle of.

wacky tabay??? - heard of wacky backy!

Windy, reading about you emptying the house brings back memories when I had to empty out my parent's home. At first glace I thought this shouldn't be too bad, I will do this and that, until I found this and that had a mind of their own !!

What did you do with all of Dad's workshop stuff? I called in a handy man who did some minor fix up in exchange for anything he wanted in my Dad's workshop. He would say when he saw something quite old "Good Lord, this should be in a museum".

I had a Goodwill close by so easy to carry stuff in good shape went there. I wanted them to pick up the furniture but one had to book them 2 months out. Well that wouldn't work, so I scheduled Salvation Army. Well, there was a glitch there, if the stairway was U shape, they couldn't move the furniture. They took just what was on the first floor. Then I had to call one of those hauling companies which took the rest. This all took a month of Sundays.  A plumber who was at the house fell in love with an antique curve glass china cabinet so I just gave it too him, as I could tell from what he said he knew his antiques. 

Then I had to play detective to find what was causing the water leak in the basement as water was pooling in one area with no trail. Sure, I have nothing else to do :P

Good Lord! The whole getting the house ready to sell nightmare!

My parents had been in their home over 50 years - and in the last 10 to 20 did very little in maintenance, let alone keeping it current!

But the house had “good bones” as the realtor said and it was cornered in a trifecta of very good neighborhoods. Well, two were very good and the third was experiencing a Renaissance,
popular with trendy hippies who had money.

But all the stuff! We - my brothers and their families, along with my hubby cleaned it out in one weekend. The trick? Rent a construction site size dumpster and don’t get emotional over it all.

I felt awful about tossing so much but we were under a time crunch - and my brothers made it clear they weren’t making Goodwill runs. I felt both better and worse when three different guys showed up with trucks and asked if they could go through the dumpster. It was kinda creepy but at least the stuff - everything a “valuable antique” according to my mother, (NOT) didn’t end up in a landfill. I swear I could have saved myself six years of caregiving had I told my folks the demise of their stuff. Both would have keeled over on the spot.

But desperate measures in desperate times, I guess.

The highlight of the house clean out was when I peeked under a corner of the 25 year old wall-to-wall carpet. Gleaming, pristine hard wood floors - in every room and hall on the main floor of the house. Gorgeous! We pulled up all that carpet and suddenly I had hope for selling the house. I will never understand why wall-to-wall carpet became the raging trend that it was!

Anyhoo - summarizing after my babbling trip down memory lane - Do get a dumpster. Don’t get mared down in sentiment. And, I’m wishing you a bunch of finding hard wood floors!  Figuratively. 

Thanks guys...

This is a small 2 bedroom house but it’s amaxing how much stuff has been compressed into it since 1957. One large dresser drawer would fill up 3 trash bags. Small closet.....6 to 8 bags.

My goal on this trip was simply to get out personal stuff, pictures (Huge boxes full.  And this really derails you.  Hours of going through pics back to 1920s ) declutter, and very basic cleaning which consisted of basically lots of febreeze and carpet fresh. So now the house is not disgusting and the garage has aprox 50 full garbage bags. Real estate lady called it “Very cute little house”. She was a great find.  Been moving units around here for 40 years and knows every developer, contractor, county commissioner ....Truly remarkable lady......

I’m leaving all the furniture here as it’s all junk. The sofa appears in pictures from the early 70s. The house does have good bones, pristine oak floors under nasty carpet (Why did our folks all do this!?) and everything is in working order. Not pretty but functioning. For those not terribly discriminating,  people could live here

It remains to be seen if a developer will shove it down for a subdivision or someone might want to remodel with additions. So I’m keeping the place on basic life support.

It will be sold as is, removal of furniture , possibly a negotiated issue in price. If it becomes a shove down the end loader can eat couches along with the walls.  At this point I plan to do as little as possible with the place.

I’ve already gotten the good stuff, tools etc, out of the garage. I’ve been sneaking stuff out, especially power tools for about 3 years now. And just this am, bartered the trade of 2 dead tractors and 2 dead chain saws with some good ol boys who will fix the sump pump in the basement and build a small block wall around it. This was a job I was dreading and I’m am beyond happy with this deal!  

Just waiting for all the weather to the north to clear and hope to get outta here Monday. Meanwhile...Got a dead car in the garage to screw with and several other fish to fry.

You probably already know this...

“Just in case”, be sure to give yourself some wiggle room on the house price. Even selling it “as is”.

Against my instructions my parents signed the contract with the real estate agent without me being there. The agent talked them into listing it at the bottom price they would accept - and quite a bit lower than I believe they could have gotten.

Sooo- even though it was an “as is” when the inspection found a crack in the sewer line my folks had to knock an additional $8,000 off the price to keep the sale from falling through - and then having to fix the sewer line - which would have fallen to me to arrange - and then starting over and relisting.

These older houses, lived in by even older folks can be land mines. 

Appreciate the advice Rainmom. I missed the boom in this area by about 5 years. It’s a totally saturated, overbuilt mess here. For years there was no zoning. Now? You’re not allowed to do anything as a developer. The powers that be let them totally screw the place up for 30 years then cracked down on em after the area was destroyed.   Any place they could scrape a  200 ft flat spot off a hillside there’s a mini mall or a double wide. Like much of Appalachia I guess.

But this area is a little more affluent than most. Ill get some action but not at the price I could have a few years ago. My folks should have been in AL five years ago but hung on till the absolute end. Same old story we all know well.....

Windy, all those old photos. When you get a chance, take the photo of people you have no idea who they are and let your parents write on the back in pencil who is this person. I can just imagine the conversation between your Mom and Dad. "That's Uncle Joe when he was a kid", "No, that is Cousin George", etc.

The reason for this, my parents left me with a bin full of photos. Many of the photos might as well be people in the witness protection agency. Since I have been climbing the family tree, which keeps getting taller, I would love to match these photos to the names. Oh how I wished I did that back when my folks were still around :(

That was meant to be wacky tabacky.. LOL And no I was not partaking of that nor a martini when I wrote it.. :)  Funny this came up this week. Hubs and I drove to the place to day to make sure it's doing OK,, and to take said neighbor some scrapple and deer bologna ( he keeps an eye on the place for us)  Ice on the river!  but the place looks good, just some mouse evidence in the kitchen where hubs and FIL left some saltine packs and sunflower seeds out.  Swept up,, will wash up when we turn the water back on in the spring.  Better than last year when the mice ate the soap ( no lie) and tore up the TP.. I stored it all in plastic containers  this year. 

Pam — Scrapple and deer bologna. YUM.

With all the talk about old photos, it brought a question to my mind. What do you do with boxes full of old photos and you have no idea who they are. My LO has severe late stage dementia is of no help. She's the last one in her family. Other cousins on other side have not contacted her in years. There are no other family members left who would know. Any reason for me to take the time to scan them? None of these people, assuming they are alive had visited her for 10 years prior to the dementia, so, I don't think they want them.  There are no other children, grandchildren, nieces, nephews, etc.  in her line.  (Except for my line of family.  I have those photos for safe keeping.)