This year it's spend $10 or more at a small business and get $10 back. I enrolled my Amex Blue Cash Everyday card. My local grocer is considered a small business so that's where I'll go as they have the best produce.

I also enrolled in Amex's offer of "Spend $60 or more at Amazon by 12/31/15 and you'll get $15 back." Easy peasy. I buy stuff at Amazon every month so I can use my $30 gift cards earned from my credit card forums and to avoid paying for shipping, I usually go over that a little. So the Amex offer will make it even more worthwhile.

Tomorrow's my work at home day. I have to get Waldo to the vet to get his teeth pulled. I was supposed to have done that last week, but he was avoiding me after I squirted meds in his mouth twice and brought him to vet once already. But he MUST go.

I have to say my employer, a large bank, is very flexible as to employees' work schedules. Most people work at home to one degree or another, and you don't need any special reason to do so. In my case, my boss was resistant to the idea a while back but relented when I made an impassioned case more recently that I needed time to manage my mother's affairs from home.

Today, I won another concession from my new boss, in that I wanted to be able to take a longer mid-day break on my 2 work at home days so I could see my mother at the nursing home and help ensure she gets some kind of walking exercise, so critical to build strength and avoid further falls. I can't go after 5 due to sundowning syndrom. So I asked to have from 1:30 to 3 pm off those days and then I would work til 6 pm to make up for the extra hour. My new boss agreed, and I haven't even met her yet. She's in one of our Mass. offices and I will likely be driving up there next Monday to meet my new group. If not Monday, then right after Thanksgiving.

I feel a little uncomfortable asking for a "favor" like that when I'm brand new to them, but I have established a record at this bank after 2 years there, and my old boss "raved" about me to the new one, according to the new one.

What I would REALLY like to ask for next is a reprieve from having to travel up there for various quarterly meetings. Its 6 hours of driving and a nearly full work day in a single day, driving home in the dark on unfamiliar roads...it makes for an exhausting day and it usually takes me a day to recover. I'm getting too old for all that. I could use as my excuse that I don't feel comfortable being so inaccessible should something happen with my mother. I don't know if I should do that or not. People have been very sympathetic as many there know what I'm going through. I do still feel like we're in crisis mode from one day to the next; it seems like it's just one fire after another.

I told my "old" boss today (who I still do work for, it's just that she's no longer who I report to) how appreciative I was for the company's flexibility in this regard and I think she in turn appreciated hearing that. I stopped short of saying that if it were any other company, I probably would have quit or scaled back my workweek at this point because I seriously question whether I could have done everything I have done without those 2 work at home days.

I've come to the conclusion that the American healthcare system for caring for the elderly is just plain inadequate and is failing miserably. Nursing homes don't have the money or staffing to be able to provide one on one assistance, and so my mother keeps falling. I'm almost afraid to call tonight to see if anyone got around to assembling the expensive chair I purchased that was delivered last Thursday but was still sitting in 2 boxes in a hallway as of Saturday. I mean, it feels like i must get on everyone's case to get anything done. People just don't feel a particular sense of urgency about my mother's situation. Everything happens on Masonicare time. It would be no different at any other nursing home, I'm sure of it.

The concept of "rehab" is a total joke, and while you might manage to recover from a surgery/injury DESPITE their rehab, if you were in your 30s, 40s or 50s, someone in their 80s has no hope of recovering their former physical or mental abilities with an hour a day of exercise, sitting in a wheelchair or lying in bed the other 23 hours. What a joke.

The food is terrible, and despite written orders from me of no sugary desserts after lunch, after dinner, or sugary fruit drinks, they put a plate of 2 yodels in front on my mother at lunch the other day. Who knows how much more she's getting when I'm not around?

I purchased a book on special diets for Alzheimers patients, written by a doctor who specializes it hat field. The number one thing he recommends? No SUGAR.
The dietitian I plan to give it to for Christmas will no doubt be pissed at me; she seemed a little defensive when she attended a group care meeting for my mother a few months ago.

Thanksgiving will be a quiet affair. They have a turkey lunch there, don't know how special it will be, but I will join my mother for lunch and bring a special 3-nut pie I know she likes for our own private dessert. Well, maybe I'll share the rest with whatever staff is stuck there that day. I'm already planning on giving out small boxes of chocolate truffles to the staff there with notes thanking them for looking after mom at Xmas. If it results in a little more kindness or attention for my mom, it will have served its purpose.

I don't know if my friend Dave would want to go to a restaurant somewhere with me later in the day. He joined me, my sister and mother at a restaurant last year. He has 2 brothers but they both have their own families and I guess he preferred not to see them. So I'll leave that possibility open. I do have the Friday after Thanksgiving off.

As for the rest of the year, I used up nearly all of my 22 or so PTO (Paid Time Off) days on my mother this year, except for 2 days I used to go to Rockport Mass on my own private mini vacation on the sea. I have a half day off after Christmas, but since my boss will be out for 2 entire weeks, I plan to work at home most of the time and since so many people take time off, it will nearly feel like a non-workday except that I can't leave the house.