On the eve of my delivery of 30 pieces of my mother's art (all sizes) to the spa where they will be exhibited for a month, I am grappling with pricing.

I had worked out some preliminary pricing and emailed them to the art consultant for feedback, and she said they looked fine, but then the other day I finally discovered my mother's price list, and I saw that many of my prices were much lower than what she had them priced at.

I'm trying to balance honoring what my mother believed was their value against wanting to sell something at this show. It will be a little dispiriting if I wind up having to take back 30 pieces of art which I have no room for. Each one must be individually packaged in bubblewrap so it doesn't get damaged. It's been so time-consuming to prepare for.

However, I am emotionally attached to many of these as well.

This show will represent maybe 4 or 5 distinct style/mediums. My favorite is probably the Cosmos series, and so I decided on a 25% discount for them (the largest, Universe Unfolding, is priced at $2,525, while her Women Modeling series is not something I care for, so I lowered her prices by 50%. Most of these are much smaller and in the $125 to $145 range.

Please understand, my mother was constantly fiddling with her prices and reductions were not at all unusual. It's just that she had a lifetime to try to sell these things, and I don't.

So I tweaked prices here or there, depending on overall dimensions, complexity and how attached I am to a given piece. But anyway, a woman could drive herself crazy trying to get every price exactly as she wants it, and still there's no guarantee anything will sell.

My mother was discharged from the hospital today and arrived via ambulance at the rehab place at about 3 p.m. I had arrived earlier, around 2 p.m., to unpack her clothes and put her things away. This was after I drove to Maplewood to grab more of her things to make her feel at home at Masonicare. I ran into the activities director there who told me to tell my mother they would save any art museum outings til when she returns.

I was kind of upset because they didn't have her room ready; it needed to be cleaned, and it took an hour or so before they found a housekeeper to do that. I had talked to the admissions director who knew I'd be coming before my mother to get her things in the room; apparently, she didn't tell anyone else about it.

No one really made me feel that welcome when I arrived and I was pretty much ignored as I sat glumly in a TV room waiting for the room to be cleaned and mom to arrive. Wow. What a far cry from Maplewood, where they have tasteful refreshments always available in the lobby and a team of caring, supportive staff to greet you.

Luckily, the room was cleaned right before my mother arrived.

I was expecting another stressful settling in period because that's how she was when she arrived at Maplewood last May. This time she was pretty calm and happy to see me; i think because the combination of her dementia and recovering from the hip surgery has taken a toll on her and mentally she was really out of it.

The people at Maplewood told me to give it time and that many people come back out of it.

I spent all afternoon there, reluctant to leave mom, which I did around 6 p.m. I have to say Masonicare is kind of a depressing place after you've become accustomed to Maplewood. Night and day. But again, I noticed it more than my mother did.