“This is supposed to be the time of my life – the nest is empty; but now Mom needs me.”

The first week having Mom live with us in California has certainly been an adventure! And my husband and I can’t believe the improvement we see in her from the day we arrived in Florida to moving her out here.

The other day I came out of our place and Mom was actually sitting in the courtyard. I can’t remember Mom ever wanting to be outside (being allergic to light and all), but there she was sitting there with her dark sunglasses and heavy sweater. Did I mention it was 86 degrees out! I’m not sure how long she was sitting there because she gets confused with time, but I had mentioned earlier that we’d be going out when we were finished what we were doing. I guess she only processed the “going out” part. But hey, she was getting some sun and seemed to enjoy it; I guess we’ll just have to start wording things differently.

And what’s with her having to be on a schedule anyway? Yesterday I told her I was going to have a shower and then we’d go out; well I got to doing other things first and obviously (for her) took longer than expected. She called out her back door to my husband (who was working in the garage) questioning where I was. He knew I had just jumped in the shower so told Mom that, but she had to argue with him – “She can’t be taking a shower because she already had one. She must be doing something else.” Yea, I was doing something else alright – trying to de-stress in the shower! 🙂

But things are going pretty well considering how new this is to all of us. We’ve been trying to keep Mom busy so her mind is not focused on Florida. My husband gave her the task of folding  the paper that came in her boxes from the move (you never know if she’ll need it again!) – you should have seen the perfectly placed piles around her chair in the living room – too funny! I’m pretty sure she loved having something important to do.

What I Learned: Everyone has their own way of going about things – try to understand.