I had to put together Jim's breakfast and lunch, take a shower, dry and style my hair, get together all of mom's paperwork for Brown Bag, and get out of the house in just under an hour. Miraculously, I actually got everything done. I drove Jim to work, and then off to mom's house I go.
The chauffeuring bit for me has been going on since January of this year. My mom lives a good 45 minutes away from me, and whenever I have to take her and my sister somewhere, it usually takes all day. I can't leave her house any later than 3:15pm or I will be late to pick up Jim at work. The days I run late, he has to sit at the bar across the street until I get there. I know, geez what a burden that must be for Jim to undertake right?! Well it is really. When Jim has to wait at the bar, not only does it usually cost around 10+ dollars, but then either we eat dinner really late because I haven't been home to prepare something, or we end up eating out. Neither eating out or eating late is good for either of us, or our pocket book!!
However, I have promised to take care of my mom and now my sister when they need it. They live way out in the country, and with no car, they are stuck. Little things like going to the store, or just getting out of the house are a huge ordeal now because mom doesn't want to burden me. But I digress.
So I'm on my way to mom's house early in the morning with the radio blasting to try and drown out the thoughts running through my head. I normally don't mind, too much, about having to take them somewhere, but I am getting awful tired of trying to manage two households at a time. Not to mention, try and keep my weight loss journey heading in the right path. Sadly, the weight loss has been the first to be subsided.
As I walk in the door at mom's house, I am greeted by my sister, Kelly. Kelly is really amped up this morning. She is getting anxious about going to Brown Bag and then to see the doctor. When she is like this, mom has a hard time focusing on things that need to get done, and overall just thinking. To understand what it's like, try to imagine someone with A.D.D. that talks a thousand miles a minute, and none of the sentences make sense. On top of that you never know if she is going to burst into tears or have a fit of rage.
They finally finish getting ready, and we can now leave the house. About three quarters of the way to the church for Brown Bag, mom asks me to stop at the bank to check her balance. I checked and it was dangerously low. She was planning on eating out somewhere between Brown Bag and Kelly's doctor appointment. Mom started to panic a little bit. She doesn't want to borrow any more money from us, but she has no cash. I told her not to worry, I will take care of it and we will work it out later. Still in a state of frustration, mom is tearing her purse apart looking for some form of cash. We get half way through the parking lot and she finds some money. The atmosphere is calm again, or is it.
We pull into the parking lot of the church, and there are already people there for Brown Bag. Now we have arrived at the church at about 7:15am and the Brown Bag program doesn't start until 9am!! I told mom to just get in the church then lock the door so we could do the necessary paperwork for the days program. Okay that part done. Mom opens the door but can't remember the alarm code. She starts to panic again. Thankfully I remember the code and we were able to get inside before the alarm was set off. We finish up our paperwork, and now we can open the doors.
The Brown Bag program is a program for senior citizens to get food. They must be at least 60 years old, low income, and not more in a household of 2-3. They get some government food like canned tomatoes, rice, beans, and even sometimes meat like chicken or pork. Then they get some food from other places that have donated food to the FOODLINK program. It's really a nice program for those who need it. However, there are those that try and cheat the system. Anyway, the people that come to this are all different ethnicity's. My mom calls it her own little United Nations. LOL. But all in all everyone gets along. They all help put the food in the bags, set up the tables and chairs, and anything else that needs to be done. These are the elderly!!! I haven't seen many people my age do any of that!!
There were some church volunteers that couldn't make it for this month, so mom asked if I could help out. She had me doing the sign it portion. This is where they hand me their card and I have them sign a roster for both the FoodLink part and for the government part. I can normally do them on my own with no problem, but another church member showed up and was helping me. I was unfortunately a little faster than her so the lines got sort of long. But it all worked out for the time being. Then since the sign in's were slowing down, mom asked me to fill out the applications for the new people joining. Okay, so now I'm jumping back and forth between the sign in's and the applications. Whatever. If that wasn't bad enough, mom then asked me to update and make new applications for some people that hadn't been at the program for 6 months. I'm glad I'm good at multi-tasking.
The food truck was late bringing the food, so the whole bagging process was delayed. Brown Bag is supposed to end by 11am. That means that the food is all bagged, given out, and the church is cleaned up and locked up. The food truck didn't get there until 10:15am. We ran out of food to give away and had to make up some bags from stored surplus from other months. By the time we were all done it was 12:30pm.
This is a photo of mom handing out the bags to the people at Brown Bag.
We finished with lunch, and were off to the doctor. We got there a good fifty minutes early, so I took mom and Kelly to the Dollar Tree store. The Dollar Tree store is one of Kelly's favorite places to go. She can get almost anything there for just a little bit of money. I found her some soft instrumental music CD's and a large bottle of caffeine free root beer and she was happy as a clam. It was approaching time to go, and all of a sudden mom had to use the restroom. The Dollar Tree doesn't have a public restroom. Great! Mom hoofed it about five stores down to a La Bou to use the restroom. Well since Kelly didn't know where mom was she was starting to get anxious. I told her that there is no problem we'll find where she went. I called mom's cell phone and we found her. We finally get to the doctor's and we were actually a few minutes early. Kelly signed in and then we wait.
And we wait. And wait. And wait. Two hours later, the doctor finally sees Kelly. In the meantime, Kelly is getting more argumentative, angry, emotional, and anxious. When I say angry, it's not that she is angry at the doctor for being late. She's angry at the world! Everything bad that has ever happened in her life comes to the surface and she starts getting loud and vocal about it. The waiting room was full of patients too. Which makes Kelly that much more anxious. She thinks that everyone is looking at her and talking about her. Well the sad thing is that sometimes they are. To try and calm her down is pointless too, it just makes her worse. When you try and calm her down she thinks that you are picking on her and it makes her more argumentative and angry. So all we can do is to sit and try and bear it.
Since the doctor was so late, that puts me late for getting Jim. The doctor didn't even see Kelly until after 4:05pm. What is the point of having or making appointments when you don't get anywhere near the appointment time!!! When the doctor did see her it was only about a 7 minute appointment. So then I had to take mom and Kelly home which is about a half an hour away from the doctor. I get them home, unpacked from the shopping, and speed off to go pick Jim up at the bar. Now remember what I said about the bar? Well I had a soda with Jim and with tip the tab was almost twenty dollars.
By this time I am really tired and don't want to think about cooking anything. We head over to Logan's Roadhouse. Every time we have gone there, I always get something other than a steak. Yesterday, I got a steak!! I had eaten good and healthy all day long with a protein shake for breakfast, and a salad for lunch. It was time to eat some comfort food. I know this is not good for me, but if I watch it and eat sensibly I'll be ok. I was good and ordered water to drink, and no appetizer. I did however eat a yeast roll with a little bit of margarine, and it didn't get stuck!!! Not that I will gauge this as okay to do. I ordered a 10 oz steak with sauteed mushrooms and onion petals. Okay the onion petals were not good for me either. But I only ate like three of them. I also only ate about 4 oz of steak but I did eat the quarter of a cup of mushrooms. Yumm!! As Jim and I sat and winded down the day was taking a toll on me. I was thinking about the appointment I had for the next day to see what we could do with our finances, and it started to make me cry. Jim was trying his best to make me smile. He even licked the bowl that had his mac and cheese in. Before we left, Jim was going to have a balloon guy make me a flower from balloons to pick up my spirits. But the guy was busy so we went home.
I was feeling a little better, now that I was home but I still had to go out to deposit Kelly's check into the bank. She didn't get her check until after I brought them home, so I told mom I would put it in the bank for her. Jim and I left for the bank around 8pm I think. On the way home we saw a fantastic lightning storm. It was beautiful!! When we got home, I put on my CPAP machine, crawled under the covers and died. The day was over, finally.
