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November 25, 2005

IT'S FRIDAY, MY FAVORITE DAY!!

Why is it that I can't remember something that happened earlier this week that I wanted to put in the journal? I know I had a couple of real good stories to pass along. At least I remember thinking, "That will make a good story for the journal". I remember thinking that...but darned if I can remember what the story was! I guess I will have to start writing things down as I think of them or else it will be lost forever. I think my memory bank must be full and I need an upgrade!

Phew! We FINALLY got my mother all moved and settled in on Saturday. Thanks to the help of everyone, as we wouldn't have been able to do it without them. My sons-in-law Jason & Greg, Dave, my nephew Mark and his nephew Cody did all of the heavy lifting while my sister Jeanne and I filled boxes with the miscellaneous stuff. The new place did not have a service entrance, so the guys had to move in the front door and go through the lobby, weaving in and out of curious residents lined up at the door with their walkers. There really isn't a lot to do in one of those places, and when the word got out that someone new was moving in, they were all there at the front door to check her (and her stuff) out. One sweet little old lady stood by the door and opened it whenever the guys would bring something in. I'm sure it was the highlight of her day to be able to help! My sister Judy took care of our mom until everything was moved and set up.

Lara and Leslie stayed in West Linn watched the girls and made a turkey dinner for our early Thanksgiving. We were all pretty tired by the end of the day and the turkey dinner was great. We did get a kick out of three-year-old Paige coming up to the table during dinner and announcing that she didn't want to eat her " 'tuffing". She wouldn't say why, but the girls figured it had something to do with her watching Aunt Lara stuff the bird earlier in the day...watching where the stuffing was going and how it was getting in there!

Anyway, dinner was great and we had a lot to be thankful for that day. This whole process of moving my mom has taken about two months and I am soooo relieved to get this behind us. It was pretty tough on mom too, but she's been a trooper and is pretty happy with her new place. She misses her friends at Royal Marc, but at the same time, she's making new ones at Princeton Village. My mom's life has been downsized to a smaller room. Over time, she has gone from a house to an independent living apartment and now to assisted living. With each move, more stuff has had to be eliminated. We have repeatedly strip-searched her room for what mattered most to take along. I brought home six boxes of family photos that I will go through and put into albums for her. But at some point we all have to decide how to triage our memories. Things that we had neither space nor taste for went to the Hospice Thrift Shop. It's only stuff, we said to each other, but the stuff is our past memories too.

Sunday, we checked in on Mom one more time before we headed back to the coast. Lara had donated a Thomas Kinkade painting for her grandmother's room, and we had to deliver it so it could be hung with the other stuff going up on the wall this week.

Here at the coast, the weather has been incredible, in the 60's during the day and dipping down into the 30's at night. At night, it really does feel like November, but 60 and dry during the day at Thanksgiving? That's weird! We had something like 10 straight days with no rain until it started in again yesterday. We will be home for a couple of weeks as the Blazers are playing their games on the road. This will be the longest period of time we will be home until April.

Monday I spent most of the morning returning phone calls left on our voice mail while we were gone. See my "Give Me a Break" below for my rant on that. I wish life were simpler where we didn't have to deal with "prompt" messages.

We hope everybody had their fill of turkey on Thanksgiving. Since we had our feast last weekend with our family, Dave and I spent a quiet day on Thursday. In fact, I baked a pumpkin pie and we had turkey soup from the leftovers. We did manage to come home with the turkey carcass, so that was our beautiful thanksgiving turkey! It made real good soup though!

We got the Christmas lights out and sorted through that mess. They had all been crammed into a great big box and they were pretty hopelessly knotted together. Dave thought we should just start a new Christmas tradition - a lighted Christmas ball! Because that's what we had when they came out of the box - one big ball! By mid-day yesterday, we finally had all the snarls out and had them ready to hang. Hopefully, we will get them strung up this year before Christmas!

GIVE ME A BREAK!

Why is it when you make a call to a company to either leave information or get an answer to your questions, you have to respond to a zillion prompt messages? For instance, I was trying to get a hold of someone at the telephone company to find out why my Mom's phone hadn't been turned on. I got this voice prompt to punch one for repairs, etc, two for payment statements, etc. I went thorough about five layers of questions and responses and somewhere I must have hit the wrong button. Of course, I was on hold for 5 minutes before I discovered this and they threw me back into the system again where I had to maneuver through some more voice prompts and another long wait. This is a telephone company, mind you, and all I wanted to find out was why my mother's phone was still not working!! I'm told this system is more efficient, but for whom? Certainly not the person making the call!
Another call I made was to sign up to be a volunteer for the SMART program (Start Making a Reader Today) at the local school district. I was calling the number listed in the newspaper ad and it turned out that the ad had an incorrect extension for the contact person. Now sometimes these vocal puzzles give you the option of just waiting for a real human being to come on the line, but not this phone system. If you didn't have the correct extension you were prompted to "spell out their name" and then leave a voice mail. Of course, this person had to have the longest name in the book, and besides, how do you do that? I know how to do it when I'm putting entries into the cell phone, but is it the same for the school district phone system? Who knows? Because they certainly don't tell you! I finally got a voicemail of someone completely different than I was supposed to get. That was all at the district level in Tillamook. I ended up calling the local school (where I want to volunteer anyway) and a real human answered the phone on the first ring! She was kind enough to give me the cell phone of the actual person who I was trying to call in the first place. I called her on that number and I left her a voicemail to call me back. I haven't heard a word from her either. They sure make it hard for you to volunteer!