Can't sleep when you're worried about sugar keeping you awake.
Well, just more of the same, right? Yeah, I suppose. Except normally I can at least try to defuse MW's nonsensical worries by offering practical arguments against whatever boogie is keeping her awake. I couldn't do anything with the extra sauce conundrum. A gentle suggestion that she was mistaken about there being more sauce than usual almost created a bigger problem ("I'm not LYING about this - there was more sauce!") and the proposition that condensation from the lid dropped back into the sauce thinning it out so it appeared to be more didn't gain as much traction as I'd hoped ("But you cook it the same way, in the same pan every night. So that doesn't make sense.")
Another long night, but I'm used to that.
To catch everything up: Christmas at my bro's went well. We stayed a couple hours, talked, watched some TV, and when it was all over MW had nothing to complain/worry about. Love you, bro, and your family!
Maybe I am hypersensitive - maybe they didn't notice anything at all - but there were a few times during our Christmas visit where MW got confused during the conversations or didn't understand something on the television and I had to explain it and, well, I'm sure they all noticed. But they didn't say anything. Love.
Something that really scared me: the day after Christmas I'm at work and my mom calls the house and, holy shit, MW answers the phone! Last time those two talked it was an all out fight. This time, apparently, things went well. MW told me about the conversation and nothing bad was said. Hunh. Still, I'm seriously thinking about sending my mom an email telling her not to call the house anymore - it is too risky. Mom can't be trusted not to say something that might send MW into a tailspin. In fact, even though MW told me the conversation went well, she didn't sleep at all that night. She didn't blame it on the phone call, but there you are.
Finally, the night before Christmas Eve (Christmas Eve Eve) I experienced the return of the glorious fucked up vodka nightmares! I won't even try to describe them, but holy shit it was a rough night. See, a vendor gave me a bottle and I drank half of it at work before getting on the bus and I guess it stuck with me until bedtime. Nasty business.
2014.12.18
MW runs the household finances. She's insistent that I am not capable of paying bills on time so this has become her responsibility. Alas, possibly due to the encroaching dementia, her concern over paying these bills has become quite pronounced to the point of being irrational. So yesterday we spent the majority of the evening planning ways to remind her when and how to pay bills.
I already had a calendar entry on my cell scheduled to go off every month on the 15th, but that never really worked. In actuality, I start reminding MW to make payments on the 10th and continued to remind her up to the 30th. Yes, pretty much every day of the entire month I remind MW to pay bills.
And last night she argued with me that I wasn't doing enough help her, see, because I even though I was telling her about these chores at least once a day, I wasn't telling her ALL THE TIME, ALL DAY LONG. Also, instead of just telling her to pay bills, I should instruct her to go sit at her desk because that's the only way she'll remember which bills need to be paid.
It took awhile, but eventually we got that settled. She had me add another reminder on my cell to tell her to go sit at her desk every night at around 9:00. I asked for an earlier time, because paying bills can be upsetting and having her upset that late at night is just begging for trouble, but that request was shot down.
You may wonder why I don't just ask to take over the finances. Well, I have. In the past. And that caused a pretty substantial breakdown - the upshot of it being that I wasn't trustworthy enough; after all, if I can't even remind her to pay the bills correctly, how can I be trusted to actually pay them myself?
HD logic at its finest.
***
I'm aware that sometimes these entries just seem trivial. I'm sure there are many people out there dealing with much worse behavior from their spouses or family members. The problem is, even though this starts off as petty bullshit, I know it will only get worse. The only thing I have to look forward to is someday, someway, somehow MW will have to start taking some-sort of medication. To help her sleep, to chill her out. The meds made her mother manageable - just lay in bed all day watching TV, sleep the sleep of the drugged out all night. For years. Maybe even decades.Pretty fucking bleak, but that's the best case scenario I've got. And so I'm documenting the small things, waiting for them to become big things.
There is no hope here, and, yes, it is life and death. Wasted life, ugly death.
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