Unless I get a call from Masonicare about something bad going on, I'm not going over there tomorrow.

I plan to put on my favorite old sweatshirt and run my mower over all the fallen leaves and mulch them. I may try to make one of my favorite recipes, sweet potato chunks with black beans and a cilantro/olive oil dressing.

I surrender to whatever happens with mom. I can't arm wrestle God and expect to have my way. I'm just spent. I've done what I can do, and now it's up to her. This may be the way it has to be. Acceptance comes hard to someone who's used to strong-arming her way through life through force of will and determination.

There's no use putting the proceeds from her condo sale into an Ally online money market account. What's the point in complicating my life now or at tax time? $100,000 will earn $1,000 in interest at 1%, so I have a little more than that in the account. But when you're talking such big monthly expenses, for the aide and the assisted living place, $1,000 is a meaningless number.

What I really need to do is find time for the next dreaded task....prepaying for funeral costs. I plan to go with cremation because I believe it is a greener alternative than burial with toxic embalming fluids in the ground. I know I don't want to keep the ashes; it will be too upsetting and a constant reminder. I guess I will have to do what other people do, spread her ashes somewhere that would be beautiful or meaningful to her. She always loved the ocean.

I need to do some comforting things for myself. I can browse Amazon and decide how to spend some $30+ in gift cards. Soon my $500 worth of other gift cards will arrive in the mail.

I will continue to talk to friends who all offer what support they can, in their own way. I find myself talking to complete and total strangers about what I'm going through because I feel I feed on the support I receive. It's the only thing that keeps me going, honestly, aside from my love and compassion for my mom.

This wasn't supposed to be another blog about mom, but as you can see, it is....

And I'll continue my walks in the woods. I'm not a very religious kind of person, but for me, the woods are my church, the tall trees, my steeples.

2015 will be a year that goes down as the Great Depression for me, not in terms of the economy or the state of my finances, but in terms of what's happened with my mother. I'm losing her by degrees, so while I'm spared the shock of a sudden illness or death, I watch her decline, both mentally and physically, each week or month.

My dad took me out to dinner and movie a week ago, calling it our "date." He doesn't often really know what to say when I tell him stuff, but I think he was trying to give me a break from everything going on. My dad, an only child like my mom, must have gone through similar challenges when he had my 89-year-old grandmother move in with him when she had lung cancer. She didn't want chemo treatments, and so she slowly died, hyped up on morphine and painkillers, to the end.

I wonder if we should all plan an Email Nate and Jeff Day so that if we flood them with requests on that one day to fix the photo capabilities on this site, maybe they will finally do something.

So after interviewing 2 live-in aides for my mom earlier this week, she started yesterday. I showed her around the 3rd floor and where the little kitchen was that she could use to cook her meals and store her food in the fridge.

She was quite insistent that the fridge wouldn't do because it didn't have a lock on it and she was concerned that dementia patients would help themselves to her food. She asked for a fridge in the room in a rather demanding way. Luckily, Masonicare had one and put in the room for her.

I also paid her $60 cash for the first week's food stipend.

I picked this woman because it seemed she knew what to expect. She had lived with an advanced dementia patient for 3 years until she died.

So yesterday I went to Maplewood around 9 a.m. to empty out the closet there, met my friend Dave there at 10 and he and a maintenance guy moved my mother's dresser, bed, a table and chair out into
Dave's van. We donated my mother's 2nd dresser to Maplewood so we wouldn't have to move it.

We brought it all to Masonicare and set everything up. We hung a bunch of art pieces on the walls. The aide arrived at 2 pm and we went over stuff and i introduced her to my mom. I sat with the money person at Masonicare for over an hour to review and sign all the paperwork, and write the check.

Finally, I went home around 5 p.m.

This morning I was back at Masonicare at 9 a.m. because there was a social worker who wanted to meet with me and my mother. As I was walking into the lobby, I saw the aide walking toward me. She said my mother had been up all night and I could see she was upset. I said, tell me more about what happened, but just let me drop this stuff off in my mother's room. (I was carrying extra clothes and Depends.) She kept going in the opposite direction without saying anything and I assumed she was coming back shortly. She never did. And she didn't return the $60 I gave her for food, either.

I only learned she quit by talking to the other aides there. They said she said she didn't feel well, had diabetes and was going to the hospital.

I talked to the agency on the phone, who were profusely apologetic and already looking for a replacement. If there's one cardinal rule, they said, you never walk out on a patient. They said they would make sure I got m y $60 back and told me she was terminated.

One of the agency staff people arrived with the replacement aide at 2 pm, who can only fill in for a few days until a permanent replacement is hopefully found. The fill-in aide seems very nice and there were 2 of us filling her in on the situation, so I hope she knows what to expect. She is an RN.

Apparently the first aide called the agency at 8:30 pm last night and said my mother was agitated and not sleeping. Well, geez, it's 8:30 pm and when i left there around 3 pm the day before, she had put my mother in bed becus my mother did say she wanted to lie down for a while. I don't know if she let my mother sleep for hours or what. But that and the early bedtime could account for part of the problem.

After I learned I would be meeting the new replacement at 2pm today, i saw i had a few hours to kill and decided to stop sitting in my car and crying and made myself do my errands: a dump run and a trip to an organic apple orchard my dad told me about. I got into an extended conversation with the orchardist there who was very nice and sold all his many varieties for just $2 a pound. I bought 7 pounds of apples to take my mind off my troubles.

After leaving Masonicare today round 3, i went for a walk where i usually go and enjoyed the autumn foliage, wishing i had my camera with me.

I kind of feel like giving up. The next step will be, if they can't find an aide who can find ways to deal with my mother's sleepless nights, is to hire 2 12-hour shift aides at an even higher price than I'm paying now, which is around $195 a day, $205 on weekends and close to $300 a day on major holidays. So the money would then run out even faster and put my mother in a nursing home pretty quickly, which I've been trying to forestall for as long as possible. The other option is to put her in the nursing home now and private pay for it til Title 19 picks it up, although that doesn't really get me anything for mom tho it would give me fewer responsibilities.

This is all just too exhausting. While waiting for the replacement aide to show up, I tried spending time with my mother, but i think becus my general stress level was way up and my patience down, my mother was getting agitated, and so i wasn't able to take her outside to enjoy the "fall festival" that was going on. She was talking and making no sense, seeing people who weren't there, and at one point during her in-room breakfast she was trying to eat a latex glove on the table. This all would have shocked me 4 months ago but now it just depresses the heck out of me.

They say that dementia robs you of your loved one by degrees, and that is very true. Each day, each week, each month, you lose a little bit more of them, and somehow you know you'll never get them back.

Everyone at Masonicare seems super nice and supportive, from the Haitian aide on the floor to the nurse, admissions director, the money person and even the maintenance crew. It hit me as I was signing all the paperwork that I should have come here first, but I was seduced by Maplewood. It being a non-profit, I trust them not to gouge me, and she said their board of directors is happy if they break even, but don't require they even turn a profit. Their mission really is to take care of the families of Masons. My German grandfather was a Mason, so I kind of feel a connection there.

Monday was a day off and I spent most of it making phone calls to try to find an agency that could place a live-in aide with my mother on very short notice.

It got complicated because some agencies say their aides are independent contractors while others said they treat them as employees. Although the one agency said i wouldn't have to worry about paying FICA and other taxes, everything i read online said that senior caregivers are usually considered employees, just like nannies or live-in help are. If I can control how they do their job and they can't work elsewhere, they're employees.

Of course the rates for aides who are treated as employees and paid by the agency are higher.

I was on the phone with multiple people at Masonicare too, and got my friend Dave to agree to move the furniture on Friday morning. My mother will be moved in that day at 4 p.m.

Tuesday I went in to work but was still making phone calls at my desk. I wanted to go in to work because this was the one day they were offering free flu shots and biometric screenings and anyone who got those 2 things done gets $20 subtracted from their monthly health insurance premiums.

I worked yesterday and today from home, and between work, I met 2 aides at Masonicare and interviewed them there. Both are Jamaican and from NYC. The one I met yesterday drove up and the car broke down, so instead of meeting me at 2:30 pm she finally made it there at 5. The one I met today missed the train but managed to get here on time.

Last night after work I ran to Maplewood and stuffed my car with stuff, then brought it home. When I met the 2nd aide at Masonicare today, after a morning dentist appointment (I told the dental hygienist this was most definitely going to be the most relaxing part of my day), I also dropped off what I'd picked up at Maplewood last night. Then I raced back home because I didn't tell my boss I was doing this.

Tonight after 5 was a repeat performance: raced to Maplewood, stuffed the car with more stuff, then dropped some of it off at my house and then brought the rest to Masonicare. It's a real pain coming and going from either place because the doors on dementia units are locked, so you either have to use a fob or punch in a special code and it just takes longer.

I've been talking a lot with the two women at the aide agency. I picked the older aide who's a year older than me. Her husband is going back to Grenada but she is staying here. She lived with a dementia woman in her home for 3 years til she died.

The other woman was around 40, but I learned she had 10- and 12-year kids at home with her husband in the Bronx, and while she said it was okay, it seemed to me she would really miss her family and would probably end up making trips back and forth a lot, possibly affecting my mother's continuity of care....although she doesn't have a car. She said she could take a taxi to the grocery store, but it seemed like it would be difficult to live like that.

The other one drives and Masonicare said she could keep her food in the fridge down the hall and cook in the small kitchen there. She can also use their washer/dryer but they won't do her laundry, just my mother's.

The room is going to be a little cramped with the 2 twin beds. I'm moving just 1 of my mother's 2 smaller dressers over from Maplewood, plus her table and 2 chairs. The aide will have her own closet with a shelf above and they'll share the bath. My mother's new wheelchair will take up space, but I'm not bringing all the artsy hobby stuff (sketch pad and colored markers, yarns, the small table loom) because my mother never touched these things and I've come to the conclusion that the Alzheimer's, cruelly, has truly robbed her of ever being able to create art again.

I have concerns about my mother's general nighttime agitation keeping the aide up as the aide is entitled to 8 hours of sleep, along with 3 free hours daily. I'm also to pay the aide a $60 a week food stipend.

This is all going to happen on a wing and a prayer. I have to say that Masonicare did everything on their end in a speedy and efficient manner, although I still haven't' signed the contract and paid because they weren't ready with the paperwork. I'll do that tomorrow. I'll be giving them about $10K to get my mother in the door (that includes 1 month security deposit.

Because they have metal walls over there, I have to get a maintenance guy to help me hang my mother's art. There's not quite as much as she had at Maplewood, but she still has a lot. I feel it's important to have a lot of her art there.

I saw my mother briefly tonight around 7 as i made one attempt to locate her Maplewood key. She could have had it on her wrist when they brought her to the hospital, but it wasn't with her returned items and I searched her old room at Maplewood everywhere. If you don't return a key (I have one myself) they charge you $250.)

I can try to find where in the hospital my mother stayed...this is going back 5 weeks ago now....but i would assume that if they had the key they would have contacted me by now.

The only other possibility is that the staff at maplewood removed the key from her wrist before the ambulance took her away. I would just make a copy of my key, but it says on it Do Not Duplicate and I assume most hardware stores would honor that.

I'm pretty tired, and tomorrow's going to be the longest day of all, and it will mirror the day in May that I brought my mother to Maplewood. Will go to Maplewood around 9 a.m. to empty out her closet and put in my car; Dave will meet me there with his van at 10 a.m. and then we'll bring the furniture out. We'll drop the 1 dresser at my house and then bring the rest of the stuff to her new place at Masonicare.

I'll have to sign the paperwork and write the check around noon. My friend Dave will probably then take off. The new aide arrives at 2 p.m. and my mother will be moved in at 4 p.m. To help mom acclimate, I'll probably stay for dinner with the aide.

Saturday they're having some sort of fall festival around mid-day and was planning on taking my mother to that anyway, so maybe do it with or without the aide, I haven't decided.

Sunday will be my own time and back to my regular work week next week.

My new boss has been asking me to let them know when a good time for me to visit for the day up in Boston area is and I'll have to do it at some point, although it's exhausting and I hate having to do it...a very long day.

She knows what's going on with my mother so I get a reprieve for now but can't put them off forever.

I redeemed my $500 in gift cards from Citi Thank You Premier and got cards for all the stores I usually shop at: Lowe's, Macy's, Walmart, Home Goods.

So to recap, I learned Friday night that Maplewood, where my mother resided before her fall and hip surgery, estimated my costs to keep mom there would jump from about $69,000 a year to $144,000 a year because they felt she needed a live-in aide AT Maplewood due to her high fall risk.

Talked to Masonicare this morning. I tried to get them to delay her discharge from rehab this week to give my mother more time and me more time to figure things out, but the very latest they can release her is this Saturday.

The rehab guy said he could not justify keeping her in rehab any longer (even though she would continue to get rehab in assisted living, wherever she goes, afterwards).

I am going to view available rooms at Masonicare in an hour and then meeting with the nurse who evaluated my mother and to go over costs of having her there instead of Masonicare.

As mentioned previously, a huge benefit of moving her to Masonicare, which admittedly is not nearly as new and beautiful as Maplewood, would be that I would guaranteed a room in their nursing facility when my mother gets to the point of needing that.

The Masonicare social worker I talked to on the phone said she had a quick conversation with the nurse, who it sounds like may recommend Level 4 care (the highest they offer) but not a 24/7 aide. I will find out exactly what level 4 care includes, but even at level 4, which is $3406 a month, and the base rent of the smallest space available, a studio, at $4318 a month, for a total of $7724/mth, this would be substantially cheaper than the roughly $12,000 a year Maplewood said I would be looking at.

When I moved my mother to Maplewood last May, I calculated her total assets would keep her going there for 3 years. Now with her need with bathing, dressing and lots of other stuff, Maplewood could only keep her at the hiked up price for 1 year. And so they urged me to "give her one good year" there.

But at this point I don't think the plushness of my mother's surroundings is something my mother would be as aware of now so it seems less important.

Their social worker said with an aide at Maplewood, or with 2-hour bed checks every night at Masonicare, they can't guarantee another fall won't happen. I have to resign myself that another fall is largely impossible to avoid.

We can do what we can....i'll make sure they get those bumps on the wheelchair so my mother doesn't tip the chair over again, and social worker said medicare will pay for a hospital bed with low bars so that while it won't prevent her from getting out if she really wants to, it could help somewhat. And they've already gotten her wearing a velcro belt attached to an alarm so if she takes it off, the alarm sounds. The law prohibits anything else in the way of seatbelts or restraints.

Head spinning. As usual, decisions have to be made very quickly. No time to consult with other social workers.

Left a message for friend D. to see if he'd be available this week to move mom's stuff out of maplewood. I'd have to take another vacation day to get it done with him although social worker said they could have the hospital bed in place. I'd like to have all her art and stuff already in place, though, before Saturday.

Of course, Maplewood's really going to zing me with fees. They require 30 days notice when you vacate. Since I'll be moving her immediately, i'll have to pay the last month's rent for nothing. I did pay a security deposit, so i guess that could be applied to that last month's rent. I also paid a non refundable $5,000 "community fee," which was largely a waste of money. And of course, they made me pay the $5300 rent for the room these past 5 weeks while my mother was in rehab, to hold the room.

Maplewood sucks. But i can't give notice til I"m sure I'll go with Masonicare, which I'll decide thi9s afternoon.

So the people at rehab have been anticipating discharging my mother mid-next week. The assumption was that she would return to the resort-like Maplewood. Earlier my viewpoint had been, the sooner the better, in my hope that a familiar (?) setting and routine could help her gain higher functioning.

I was not prepared for the bombshell told to me by Maplewood tonight.

They had sent their nurses to rehab to reevaluate my mother's level of functioning. She's in noticeably worse shape mentally than she was pre-surgery, but she did make progress with physical rehab. She can walk, but she must have a person with her, guiding and cuing her.

The problem they described, which I was already aware of, is this: Now that the initial pain from the surgery is gone and my mother is feeling better, she is becoming more eager to stand up out of her wheelchair and start trying to walk around on her own. She doesn't understand how frail she has become after 5 weeks of largely sitting in a chair or lying in bed (the 1st week in the hospital, post-surgery). She has no doubt lost muscle mass.

So she is lacking in muscle strength and has balance issues. No doubt this contributed to her fall last week at rehab.

So combine this imupulsivity to rise out of the chair with worsened dementia and you have another fall waiting to happen. Fall prevention has become top priority, front and center.

I spoke with Maplewood tonight after work, 3 of them on the call, and they are recommending to me that I hire a round the clock aide to be with her, indeed, to live with her in her little room, at Maplewood. The room's not that big to begin with. Assuming my mother would accept this, I'd have to get a cot or a couch. The alternative would be to hire 2 aides doing 12-hour shifts who would not sleep overnight, although Maplewood said it's actually cheaper to pay for someone who would sleep there.

They are not permitted (not sure if it's state laws or just their regulations) to restrain someone with a seat belt to their chair, and they won't use bars on the bed to keep them from getting up in the middle of the night. Although Maplewood is dedicated to "memory care," they don't have the capacity to have someone at her side 24/7; hence the need for the aide.

Not to say the aide would be required for as long as my mother lives there, but no one really knows what will happen.

With the sale of the condo, combined with what remains of my mother's brokerage accounts, I have a total of $238,000 in assets. That's it, except for another $12,000 a year in Social Security.

The estimated cost of the aide, plus Maplewood's rent, is (get ready) $12,000 a month, or $144,000 a year. With the assets I just described above, that means that instead of my mother's money lasting her about 3, 3.5 years (based on paying the current $5800/mth), her money would now last about 1.5 years at most but more realistically, 1 year (there will surely be out of pocket costs I'm not aware of now).

Of course they want me to bring her back and they made their case for bringing my mother back to hopefully familiar surroundings in their lovely facility with the great food where they would aim to get my mother walking again with a walker. But I would have to have the aide there.

The other option, they pointed out, is to put my mother in Masonicare's nursing home, with an aide, and that would actually be more expensive ($14K to $15,000/mth), plus it's a nursing home setting.

Why not give her one more good year in the Maplewood environment, they said. Then she'd go to a nursing home like at Masonicare.

All very compelling, after I gained my speaking voice back.

(There is a 3rd option, which they also touched on, that of keeping her in Masonicare assisted living, which is a bit cheaper than Maplewood, but presumably (I haven't had a chance to talk to the social worker there yet) it would also require an aide with her. When I wheeled my mother around once to that end of the building (It's a large wing) i wasn't crazy about what i saw because there was no one around; presumably all the residents were locked inside their rooms alone. Don't really know that, but the place was very, very quiet.

After I hung up from them, I talked to 4 key people in my life: 1. my 2nd cousin. Unfortunately, she was all shook up because she had to put her dog to sleep. We talked a lot about that but also my mother's situation.

Maplewood had urged me to push Masonicare to give her at least 1 more week in rehab becus they felt it could make a big difference in helping her regain her strength and balance and I believe there is some leeway there.

Medicare will continue paying for rehab only if continuous improvement is being made; once the patient "plateaus," they don't want to pay. So on the one hand Masonicare had told me they felt she'd gone about as far as she could, while also telling Maplewood she was regaining her strength a little every day. So which is it?

And my cousin agreed that this is the first thing I should try to get them to agree to, to extend her stay there for at least another week. I'll have to wait til Monday to talk to the social worker.

Next I talked to my dad. He couldn't really offer much good advice as he has no real knowledge of how the healthcare system works, but i still wanted to update him on what was happening.

Then I talked to my friend R. who surprised me by saying he thought I should put my mother in the Masonicare nursing home, because the money would be spent down anyway and my mother's only going to get worse. He only said that after asking if there was any way I could move my mother in my home with me and have the 24/7 aide live here at my house. It would be a lot cheaper than getting the aide at Maplewood. I agreed it would be cheaper, but I don't want to do it. I have done a lot for my mother but I don't think I can give up my life and my own sense of privacy in my home. Even with an aide here, my caretaker responsibilities would be round the clock.

I sometimes have felt close to a nervous breakdown, quite honestly (long, rambling posts here are one way i have of coping with the stress) and it would again put me in the position i was in before I moved my mother into assisted living, meaning that whenever there was a crisis that the aide couldn't handle, I would get a phone call. Having MS, stress...of the extreme, chronic kind....could also trigger an MS relapse, and then what use am i to anyone? So no, I can't do that.

Lastly, I talked to my friend D., who pretty much said the same thing as R, move her into the nursing home or assisted living there if they'd take her that way, but he was much more convincing and patient about talking me through all the reasons why.

He reminded me that I shouldn't feel I have to make every decision based on what's best for my mother. That I have to factor in my own well-being too. And the well-being for me, in keeping mom at Masonicare assisted living, would be that by doing so now, I would be guaranteed a bed in the nursing home when she needed it. If I had her at Maplewood, I'd be on the wait list for Masonicare and there would be no guarantees a bed would be available when I needed it.

If they wouldn't take her at Masonicare assisted living, then the other option is their nursing home. Again, if she was already at Masonicare, in whatever capacity, I would have the peace of mind of not having to worry about moving mom yet again. (I would have to move her now, but probably one more move now rather than later would be easier.)

My friend D. reminded me that there is no wrong decision, that whatever choice I make, no one's going to accuse me of not being a good daughter or of not taking care of my mother.

As usual, I have to make a decision in a hurry. While I was able to talk to Maplewood tonight after they did their assessment, I was not able to receive Masonicare's assessment and will have to wait til Monday. Luckily, I have the day off from work. And the plan was to move her Wednesday!

So I have a really important decision to make. I had earlier been dreading having to move her from Maplewood now, one reason being that i have leaned on my handyman/carpenter a lot in moving stuff out of mom's condo and i happen to know that he is extraordinarily busy so i really didn't want to have to lean on him one more time to help with a move of her stuff at Maplewood.

My friend D., although he has a pronounced limp from a hunting accident as a teen, offered to help me move her stuff if it came to that. He has a van and they have elevators there. It's basically 2 small wood dressers, a twin bed and a nice wood table. The rest is small stuff. I was so relieved when he offered to help. I had been afraid to ask him on account of his leg.

Any comments? What would you do? It comes down to should I make a decision based on yes, return her to Maplewood for one super expensive, good year, then finding a nursing home for her when the money runs out, OR keeping her in the facility she's in to ensure there's a space for her in the nursing home and I don't have to move her anymore after this time.

Even with a 24/7 aide, I don't think there's any guarantee she won't fall again. I could see an aide getting bored spending so much with an old lady and she could get distracted by something or leave for a moment, and then bam. Mom's down on the floor. And at Masonicare, they have bare hard tiles; Maplewood is all carpeted.

But on another note, I don't think my mother is as aware of her surroundings as she used to be. I haven't heard her say at rehab oh, this place is depressing, it's so institutional. She hasn't said that becus of the dementia because any normal person would feel that way. So bringing her back to Maplewood might not make any difference, even though it looks so much better to me.

10:30 pm UPDATE: Unbelievably, shortly after I posted this, i got a call from Masonicare. My mother fell again. She was sitting in her wheelchair and she somehow tipped it backwards and fell backwards. She told the nurse she hit her head so she is on her way back to the hospital. I can't take this. I was on the cliff and the nurse gradually calmed me down. She said they will put "bumpers" on the wheelchair so she can't tip it. WHY DIDN'T THIS THEY DO THAT BEFORE? She also asked for permission to use a velcro belt around her which my mother could undo, but it would then set off an alarm. AGAIN, WHY DID YOU NOT ALREADY DO THIS?????????????????

I met with my lawyer the day before the scheduled closing last Thursday. I signed a bunch of papers. He went through the HUD settlement with me but it was very confusing because the buyer's numbers did not jive with ours and we were looking at 3 different sets of numbers.

I was a little thrown when he told me I wouldn't be able to collect the check immediately after the closing, which I didn't plan to attend for several reasons. He said no, he would deposit it in a specially designated trustee account and would have to wait 2 days for it to clear before he could write me a check. We agreed he would either hand deliver it to my house or overnight it yesterday.

Despite that verbal understanding, over the weekend I began feeling a little uneasy about everything, mainly because I've never done business with this attorney before and really don't know all that much about him. This is the first time I've sold any real estate. Plus this is a very large sum of money we're talking about, and I began thinking how I left his office without really anything in hand to show for it because none of the numbers would be considered final until the closing took place.

It occurred to me that he could be trying to abscond with my money! Or, he could probably make a tidy profit in interest simply by holding onto all his real estate clients' closing checks in his trustee account for just 3 or 4 days before writing the client the check. Interest earned after just a couple of days isn't a lot until you think about checks amounting to half a million or more.

My anxieties began to get a hold of me and one thought led to another. So yesterday morning at 8:30 a.. I called and left a message wanting to know how exactly I'd get the check as we hadn't nailed that down. I made the call when I arrived at work as I sat in my car in the parking garage. When I hadn't heard back from him an hour later, I called and left a 2nd message. In the past, he had always promptly answered the phone himself. Now, he wasn't. By late morning, I decided to call his paralegal, who promised to contact him on my behalf. A short while later, I got his call at work and we agreed that he'd leave the check in my back door.

I got the check last night when I got home from work and everything appears in order.

I felt embarrassed that for a while, I actually contemplated that my attorney might possibly be pulling some kind of fast one on me, although one would think if he was going to do this, he would choose a property with a much higher value than my mother's. (It was a sinking feeling that reminded me of how I felt after naively believing in 2013 I could go into a car dealership and negotiate a new car purchase without being totally taken advantage of. Fortunately at that time I was able to undo a car purchase I had committed to on paper but really didn't want.)

Still, I thought there were a few things my attorney did that just heightened my anxiety, like spending an undue amount of time going over the numbers on 3 separate versions of paperwork: his, the buyer's attorney and his own personal accounting sheet, which listed out the credits and expenses differently. It just made it all very confusing and hard to follow.

He should have made the time to reconcile these numbers before I, the client, arrived in the office. He was on the phone with his paralegal while I was there, trying to figure out the discrepancy with the other attorney's numbers, and this didn't exactly inspire confidence in me.

Probably the worst thing was that I signed a bunch of important documents and left his office without copies of anything. Perhaps all this could have been avoided if I'd chosen to attend the closing.

Anyway, after getting the check last night, I decided to send my attorney an email just sharing some of this feedback with him. I also apologized for not realizing he DID return my first phone call yesterday morning, almost immediately. That's actually why I didn't get the call, because after I called him from the parking garage, I was walking up to my office on the 6th floor and that's when he called me back on the office number I'd given him. Unfortunately, I have missed messages on my phone before because the machine does not always indicate I have a call unless I think to log in to Messages and/or check the log status of incoming and outgoing calls. In my job, I don't use the phone much, believe it or not.

He emailed me back with a detailed, articulate and interesting response explaining the movement of money after a closing, what the typical practices of other lawyers are as well as his own and he did point out a few things that happened in my closing that he didn't like. Nothing major, but it did require some adjustments.

So anyway, I am greatly relieved and I do really like my attorney after seeing how he responded. I could tell when I did finally talk to him this morning that his paralegal must have relayed to him my concerned tone of voice because he sounded a tiny bit puzzled, or hurt. Not defensive, but maybe surprised that I might be less than completely confident in him.

He pointed out in his email last night, and I had been thinking the same thing, that if you don't have complete trust in your attorney, then it's game over. It's that kind of profession where you have to trust that they're going to do the right thing by you. And it's the same way in my profession, banking...if customers for whatever reason lose trust in the bank as a safe institution to entrust their savings to, well, you've just lost a customer.

Today (it's early Thursday morning as I write this) I have another important meeting at Masonicare with mom's caregivers. I don't know if her recent fall will change the hoped for schedule of returning her to Maplewood next week.

As far as falls go, I'm not sure you can reasonably expect someone to be by their side 24 hours a day to prevent another fall. And according to my cousin, legally they cannot restrain a patient in a wheelchair due to fire safety regulations. I am certainly going to raise the issue at the meeting though, to ask how we can prevent falls in the future. And to be honest, I have NOT ruled out investigating the possibility of a lawsuit aimed at the doctor who sent my mother back to assisted living and did not not detect the hip fracture when she was sent to the hospital following her 1st 2 falls.

I don't want to get into some sort of protracted, time-consuming and expensive legal battle that's iffy. I would only pursue it if an attorney, possibly the one I just used, felt I had a very strong case.

So after this morning's meeting at Masonicare, I will run to the bank to deposit my mega check into my mother's no interest checking account. As soon as it clears there and I will ask how long that takes, I will make a transfer of all of it to a new Ally online money market account, which gets 1% interest. That's the best rate I can find.

If, later this year, the Fed finally raises interest rates, I might like to take a large chunk of that money and put it in a higher earning, short-term CD for maybe 6 months or a year max. Like, maybe I could get 2 or 3% or something to beat inflation. But otherwise, I don't think I want to put this money at risk and it will just sit in the 1% Ally account..especially since another roughly $100K is already exposed to market risks in her brokerage account.

I was really looking forward to delivering mom's art to my cousin this weekend with my father, but sadly, it looks like her husband may pass soon. They've told her it's time for Hospice and that she should get funeral plans in place. She is battling her in-laws about where to bury him. We'll have to reschedule at some later time. I called her yesterday to see how she was doing and we had a good talk, even laughing as we shared some childhood memories of my grandparents.

Oh, and at the very last minute, when I'd realized I'd forgotten to include the keys to the new slider doors at my mother's condo to my lawyer when I signed all the paperwork, I left the keys for my lawyer to pick up on his way in to his office. (My house is on his way.) Inside the envelope with the keys I also wrote a brief letter addressed to the buyer, wishing her well and telling her about my mother's many happy and artistically productive years in that condo. I also told her she has great neighbors and encouraged her to get to know them. I actually felt a desire to get to know her better, but I guess in this kind of transaction it's best not to do that, mainly in case she has issues with the condo down the road or something.

After all my walk-throughs, my realtor informed me she'd found one remaining piece of my mother's art still in the condo after I handed over the keys, so she was able to drop that off for me today as well.

So we really have wrapped everything up. Now all that remains to be done is to account for the sale at tax time. I will use the same accountant my mother used for years. I'll have to do a very rough accounting of her cost basis as I have some knowledge of just a few improvements she made to the condo over the years which may or may not be permitted as deductions from her purchase price. Like windows, the slider doors, new stove and dishwasher. That's about it. I did the carpeting, but I know that won't fly.

Next I need to brace myself for the onslaught of medical bills and paperwork related to mom's surgery.

My mother fell again, at the rehab place. They have taken her to the hospital to get x-rays because she fell on the hip she previously fractured and was complaining of pain.

Here we go again. I can't even imagine what condition she'd be in if she has another fracture and has to undergo a second surgery 6 weeks after the first one.

UPDATE: Hospital is sending her back to rehab. They did x-rays and found no hip fractures. Can I tell you how relieved I feel?

I had scheduled Make a Home Foundation to come here this morning to pick up my old couch and a small wood trunk of my mother's.

I decided to "donate" my couch (it requires a $25 donation) because 1) i never really liked its crazy colors 2) i bought it used 20 years ago 3) it is time for a change and 4) getting rid of it and not immediately getting a new couch would give me more room to store my mother's art until I could sell some of it.

Two guys showed up on time with a huge truck. One of them was the same guy who moved a bunch of my mother's old furniture from her condo back in late May.

Before they got here, I used a lint brush to remove some cat hair. The couch is in very good shape considering its age. No rips, tears, stains and structurally sound. Waldo did like to sleep on it though.

So the guys began by removing the cushions and carrying them out. Then the one guy came back in and said I'm sorry, i noticed some cat hair on one of the cushions and we can't take it becus some people have allergies and it could be a liability issue for us, etc.

What??? No one mentioned cat hairs being a problem. He said it would come under the category of "stains."

What was worse was I still had to pay the $25 fee for having them come out. At least they took the small wood trunk (for which I couldn't get any buyers for on facebook).

I'm super annoyed....I thought I brushed it pretty well but apparently just a few hairs is enough to stop the sale.

It's 2:57 a.m. EST. Can't sleep, so might as well post to Savings Advice...

Saturday I had high hopes of getting the "medallion signature" on the T. Rowe Price forms at my mother's bank so I could finally mail T. Rowe the paperwork needed to gain complete control over my mother's brokerage accounts, 1 full year after they mailed me the forms. (At the time I received them, the paperwork seemed overwhelming with everything else going on and I just couldn't deal with it.)

Unfortunately, the bank couldn't do anything for me because they said I needed to have brought the most recent T. Rowe statement with me, which I hadn't done. And I didn't have my ID/Password with me for the account.

So I'll likely have to wait til next Saturday to do this AGAIN as I can't get over there during the work week. Also, only the branch manager can perform this task and she told me she's on vacation next week. I'll have to go to another branch, where they don't know me, and call ahead to make sure the branch manager will be there when I go.

I had a good visit with my mother. She's still not making any sense, but at least she's calm and was happy to see me.

Yesterday, Sunday, was a pretty heavenly day. Meaning, I stayed home and had the day to myself with no real agenda or to do list as I usually do.

In the morning I wound up tidying up in the house. "Tidying up" these days is a relative term, but I've been doing what I can.

I spent several hours sorting through my mother' art. To be honest, she had a fair number of framed or unframed photographs which I don't believe would ever sell. I don't have the same attachment to her photos as I do to her art. So I made the decision to reuse the frames they were in, and then I was able to carry them up to my attic for long-term storage. The unframed photos I'll dispose of. I have to make room around here, especially knowing I'll be getting back the 31 pieces soon from the current exhibit.

I was also able to frame 2 matted pieces of art that I thought could sell and if not I would keep them myself. I kept shaking my head because my mother appears to have a lot of matted art that is not in the standard sizes. I have A LOT of matted art in VERY large sizes as well, meaning that framing any of them will be fairly expensive because it will all be custom. I do have a few in mind that I like and plan to frame, because i know that over time just being mounted on foam core, they can get damaged. Now's the time to preserve what I can.

Also to make room, I hung more art on the walls. And there is now room for when Make a Home Foundation comes on Tuesday to take away my couch. Once the couch is gone, I'll plan on storing there most of the other art that is coming back to me and also the art now sitting on the floor of my living room. The family room is unheated over the winter but I don't think the cold will affect the art.

Although it was a PERFECT weather day today, bright, sunny and in the low 60s, I didn't really get outside til about 3 pm. After drinking my tea outside on the lawn chair, I decided to get to work getting rid of the pile of plastic pots at the head of my driveway. They'd been sitting there all summer and this is how I stored all the hundreds of flower bulbs I dug up to save them before the masons came to rebuild my front entry in June. I wanted to get the bulbs back in the ground before winter, plus there were overgrown weeds in all the pots, looking like a real eyesore.

I planted everything rather hurriedly; who knows what will come up or if I planted at the proper depth. The plastic pots are in the recycle bin. I swept up most of the leaves in that corner. I still have a humongous mulch pile in the driveway which you have to walk around to get to another set of stone stairs leading to my backyard. I'd wanted the Make a Home guys to carry my couch out through the sun room, into the backyard, and down these stairs becus the sun room door is wider than my front door, plus art is in the way all over the place. But the mulch pile is a bit of an obstacle. I shoveled some of it into a trash bin in my garage but there's still quite a bit more.

Anyway, in addition to all that, I also spent some time deadheading my coral bell bed. I loaded up my car with a bunch of cardboard boxes and paper for recycling when I stop at the landfill on my way to work on Wednesday.

I also enjoyed perusing the pumpkins at the local garden center. I had an orange one, but wanted some more for my beautiful new bluestone step entryway. The steps are plenty wide for pots or pumpkins. So I bought another orange one but with lots of warts (I love warts on a pumpkin) and a cool pinkish colored one.

My reading materials these days is a book about the Okinawa diet. Okinawa, an island off the coast of Japan, is home to some of the longest lived people on the planet, and not surprisingly, they eat a largely plant-based diet.

Which leads me to a phone call I need to make. I don't at all like the food they are feeding my mother at rehab. Granted, she is eating it all, but that's because she has dementia. Pre-dementia, she would NEVER eat this stuff. Sugary desserts at both lunch and dinner. Lots of white bread, sugary drinks, stingy on the fruits and vegetables. The typical American diet. I bring her one of her favorites, nuts, whenever I visit, but that's not enough. Fresh fruit for dessert would be much better, for a start.

It galls me that a facility that should be dedicated to promoting a healthy diet is not doing so. When I was last there, some old ladies from some group were there for their monthly visit, distributing snacks to the rehab residents. Needless to say, it was more sugary treats...little cupcakes with a Halloween theme and matching napkins. I know they were trying to do something nice, but most people have no idea how harmful their diet is. Sugar accelerates aging at the cellular level, leads to obesity and diabetes, feeds candida, rots your teeth, raises your blood sugar and much worse. It just amazes me that so many people are so ignorant about something as basic and important as the food they eat.

It's 3:35 a.m. I suppose I should get back to bed. Good night....er, I mean, good morning!

Yesterday and today have been very trying. Actually, Wednesday was giving me ogida, too. I learned then that after my boss's boss left the company, they decided to do some "restructuring" and I will no longer be reporting to my boss in customer communications. I'll become part of the creative services team and report to someone new while doing more marketing copywriting. Yet, my priority will continue to be what I'm doing now, customer communications.

This is the part that doesn't make sense to me. So I'll be doing my performance reviews and getting evaluated by one person yet still doing the bulk of my work (85% or so) for someone else. So my workload will no doubt significantly increase. I do have a fair amount of free time and I must admit taking advantage of that to deal with my mother's affairs/healthcare matters, but I worry that I'll be flooded with more work than I can handle. I've certainly experienced that before, and it's not fun.

It's nice that I will be doing a combination of customer communications and marketing moving forward, broadening my horizons at the bank, so to speak, but the bottom line is they'll be heaping more work on me and not taking anything away that I'm doing now. So things may be about to change for the worse.

The person I'll be reporting to and the rest of my team of about 5 people are all up in our Massachusetts office. And they quickly invited me to spend one day next week up there to meet the team.

Except that this particular day is the date of another family meeting at Masonicare as it relates to my mother's progress. An occupational therapist, physical therapist, social worker, Maplewood rep, nurse, etc. I don't want to try to reschedule with all of them, it's too important a meeting; I need to come to a determination soon whether to keep paying $5200/mth for an empty room at Maplewood, where mom had been living before her fractured hip, or maybe keep her at Masonicare, possibly in THEIR assisted living community, which would have the advantage of guaranteeing her a spot in their nursing home should she later need it, or put her directly in their nursing home facility if she's not well enough to live in assisted living.

So I sent a brief note to my new boss and her boss, who had sent me the invite, explaining the situation simply but directly. Probably not the best way to start off a new relationship by saying you can't make their meeting (and unfortunately my new boss's boss sent out the invite to all the others on the team before I had a chance to respond that no, I can't make that day) but they're going to find out sooner or later so they may as well find out now; it may stifle some impulses they may have to get me up there on a frequent basis. Not happening. Reality check.

I really hate any meetings that I have up there. I usually have quarterly meetings up there and it's such a taxing day. I need to allow 3 hours to get up there and 3 hours to get back, and they usually expect you to get there around 9 a.m. I hate the drive. It's exhausting.

At least before I would drive up with others who rented a van, etc. Now I'll have to drive myself. To save themselves money, the company made a new rule that if you have a business trip that's over x number of miles, they won't reimburse you for gas unless you rent a car. Because I live alone, I have no one to drive me to or pick me up from the car rental place, which is about 15 minutes from here. The car rental place will do that, but sometimes you have to wait, so it just is one big pain in the butt. Especially on the ride home, when you are tired and just want to get home, you don't want to have to wait around for the car rental people to drive you home.

I don't think i would bother with the car rental and I would just spend my own money on the gas.

Yesterday I went to my lawyer's and signed all the paperwork. He made it very confusing because he showed me 2 different versions of the HUD statement as well as his own summary sheet. The numbers didn't match up. There was still a $1,000 discrepancy between what his numbers showed as my net and what the buyer's attorney's numbers showed. I have to trust that he's going to straighten that out. He was on the phone with his paralegal, etc. I felt stressed.

Saw my mother last night after that. She was doing okay but i could see that she was still sort of hyper and she wasn't really coherent. I think the meds were kicking in, but not completely. She was very happy to see me.

The closing is supposed to take place right now, around 2 p.m. But my lawyer is running late. I had asked him this morning if he could swing by my house today on his way in to the closing because I'd forgotten to give him some keys to the slider doors in lower level of mom's condo yesterday. He didn't come by to get them til 1:55 p.m. and his office is 20 minutes away. Sigh.

So I can't collect the money right after the closing as I thought I could. He will get a trustee's check and that will take several days to clear; then he can either overnight or hand deliver me a check mid next week, he said.

I decided i will open up an Ally online money market account, not a Sallie Mae account, since the Ally earns 1%, not .90%. Otherwise, they're identical. Limited to 6 withdrawals a month, so I'm not sure at this point if I'll close my mother's old checking account since keeping that open may be helpful if I'm inundated with medical bills that threaten to exceed the 6 withdrawals a month.

I did get on the phone with T. Rowe Price and they walked me through how to fill out the forms they sent me a full year ago to gain complete access to my mother's brokerage account. (I easily obtained access already simply by opening up an online account with my mother's information, but i also wanted to ensure I got all the tax forms at year end, which they would have snail mailed to her old address.)

As to the POA form, they will accept it if i get a medallion stamp on it, which i can get from my mother's bank this Saturday. But i have to send T. Rowe the original POA form, and my lawyer already has one "original" that must be sent to the city clerk to record the condo sale.

Luckily, I have a 2nd "original" POA form that I can send to T. Rowe so as not to waste time waiting for the return of the other original by the city clerk.

Do you see how all this stuff consumes so much of my time?

I am feeling anxious. Maybe I'll feel better if my attorney thinks to call me after the closing to confirm things went off without a hitch and to clear up that discrepancy in the numbers. Either way, I'll be netting about $129,000 when all is said and done.

It's a long three-day weekend coming up. I just am really looking forward to gaining some time back in my life to take a few walks and do things like clear up my veggie garden, continue trying to put things in order in my house, etc. And relax. Deep breaths and relax.

Right after work I drove straight to Lowes to pick up 2 carbon monoxide detectors and a smoke detector for my mother's condo. There's a new law in CT that my realtor once again failed to mention, requiring the seller to make sure there are both of these detectors on every floor; if you don't provide them, you have to pay the buyer $250.

Because I only learned of this through the paralegal that is handling the closing (not the lawyer I thought I hired), i had 2 days to take care of this before the closing, which has beenset for this Friday.

So last night I was going to order these items cheaply at Walmart, but both walmart and Home Depot didn't have them in stock ready for pick-up tonight, which was essential, becus I'll have to sign an affidavit tomorrow saying these items have been installed. So i had to buy them for more $$ at Lowes.

I picked them up tonight and then went to condo where I plugged everything in, then came home and have been on the phone with Masonicare this evening.

My mother's not doing well at all, mentally. As the doctor described, her delirium is a function of a combination of events: the surgery, the anesthesia and her pre-existing dementia. He said they see it all the time.

The problem is that she's in a state of hyper-alertness, not sleeping at night, is very agitated and getting up and trying to walk around. Without consulting me, the doctor there prescribed an anti-convulsive drug which is also used to control the mania phase of manic depressive states. It's a very powerful drug with scary side effects and they say it can increase drowsiness, tremors, unsteadiness, all of which can lead to falls! Which we don't need any more of.

After the aide told me all this, i called her back and said do NOT give any more of this drug to my mother til the doctor calls me back.

Another doctor, a geriatric psychiatrist that I've spoken to before, called me back, and patiently spent about 30 minutes on the phone with me explaining the importance of using this drug, that the only other choice would be an anti-psychotic, which they don't like to use, that my mother's current state will not go away by itself, etc. He assured me he's treated hundreds of elderly people with this drug and that they used the very lowest dose with my mom, who weights all of 100 lbs or so.

So I caved, but feel so nervous. And I really have to steel myself to visit her again tomorrow; i haven't seen her since Sunday. I admit I skipped a visit because during the work week i can only see her at night, which is when the dementia is usually worse. It's also very unpredictable what state I'll find her in; sometimes she's her sweet and gentle self, albeit with dementia, and other times she's anxious and agitated and is very hard to appease.

The doctor said her dementia has reached a "new level" and her memory is at about 40% now. It kills me to have to see my mother like this and yet I have to try to offer some comfort to her. I can't abandon her to the rehab place and feel I have to watch everything they're doing. I like a number of the aides and I do like the Indian doctor I just mentioned above, but the speed at which everything is happening is dizzying. To think that just a month ago my mother was in pretty good shape, albeit with mild dementia. And 5 months prior to that, she was still living on her own. Now I can't imagine that possibility at all. So sad. Will the tears ever stop falling?

I ran into my mother's neighbors tonight when i was at her condo, and I told them i probably wouldn't be seeing them again for a while, and that the closing was Friday. I hugged her and thanked them both again. She said they were going to see her on Sunday. I think maybe I should warn her about my mother's current condition as it might be upsetting to them.

Tomorrow I sign all the paperwork related to the condo sale at my lawyer's office. Friday is the closing which I won't go to, but I do want to go pick up the check in person right afterwards and then deposit it, temporarily, in my mother's checking account. It's too big a check to entrust to the US mail.

I decided I would open a Sallie Mae online money market which is getting 0.90% with no minimum deposit requirements and no fees, and then wait for the fed to raise interest rates before probably putting a portion of the condo sale proceeds into a 6 month or at most 1-year CD. She already has about $100K still invested in various mutual funds, so I think that's enough stock market exposure for what are really very short term funds, since the money will be all spent in less than 3 years.

I started thinking of her brokerage account, with T Rowe Price, and am worrying that I may have to call them and see what hoops I have to jump through to manage my mother's money. Now I've been managing her T. Rowe money for some time now because I have all my mother's personal info and I simply set up an online account, which she hadn't had before, and so I've been transferring monies from those funds to pay the rent at Maplewood each month.

But the problem is, I think they use snail mail to mail tax forms at the end of the year, and I think the US Post Office will probably stop forwarding mail by that time. They only forward mail for 6 mths.

I had gotten some forms from T. Rowe a long time ago when I inquired about what i had to do, but there was no direction about how to complete them and it wasn't at all clear to me. They don't recognize Power of Attorney. At the time, I simply lacked time to spend on that particular project. I may have to tackle it now because once they get mailed returned to them as undeliverable, they might put some kind of hold on her brokerage funds if they suspect fraud. Oh, the complications.

Sorry I can't come up with a more imaginative title, but this post is all over the place....

Today's accomplishments:

Early this morning I brought in the plants from my unheated sunroom and put them in the sunniest room in my house, the southwest facing upstairs bathroom. Not a whole lot of room there, but we'll figure it out. Also took out from the sunroom other things for the winter.

I also cleared away art and other stuff in the family room so that when Make a Home Foundation comes next week for the couch, they can move it straight through the sunroom and outside. Yes, I'm actually giving my furniture away so I can make more room in here! Truth be told, I'd been wanting to get rid of that old couch anyway, but I don't plan to replace it right away becus the cats will just scratch it. And I DO need room for all this art til I have a chance to sell it....

What will I do at the end of October when I most likely will have to take back 31 unsold pieces of art from the spa show? I shudder to think about it. Because I'll essentially be losing all the room in my family room, which I leave unheated all winter as I can close it off and have it on separate heat system. Not sure that would be the best place to store art. Or maybe the heat and humidity is far worse? Don't really know.

So while I'm still tripping over things (art) in the living room and family room, and it will get worse soon, I did tidy up my dining room, where all the yarns are. The dining room is looking MUCH better because I've been slowly selling it and now I can actually see that it's a dining room again. Also, when my handyman and I unloaded the final things of my mother's at my house yesterday, I decided to put the sewing machine cabinet in the dining room and quickly filled its drawers with stuff.

Around 10:30 am, visited with mom for an hour-and-a-half. I pushed her around in her wheelchair up and down the halls, looking at the art, and the big goldfish aquarium. We found one spot in all the hallways that had sunlight beaming through the door, so I pushed my mother right up to the door and lingered there for a while so she could get some Vit. D on her face and hands. So important. Her diet at the rehab place includes white bread, sugary drinks, and other things my mother would NEVER have eaten when she was sane. Now, with dementia, she loves it all. I bring in nuts for her to eat, always a favorite of hers, as they are mine. Another brain food.

I brought her into the dining room for lunch and we sat at a table with an elderly man who clearly did not have dementia. My mother was talking, but she was making no sense, but he was hard of hearing, so between the 2 of them, maybe they enjoyed the rest of their lunch. Sadly, he said he had no family left, and "this is my home, now," he added.

It must be very lonely to live among people who really don't know you, the kind of person you once were or the life you once led.

I finally got around to bringing in a photo of my mother when she was 30 years younger. I left it so the aides who work with her see her as a real person with a real past, not just a troublesome old lady.

After leaving Masonicare, I headed west and stopped in at Maplewood, the assisted living place. I figured I would drop off some warm turtlenecks in anticipation of the day my mother returns there. I took away the summer tops. I spent some time tidying up her room, and I decided to take home the ailing jade plant that my cousin brought her. It was ailing because it was planted in a strange large open shell mounted on a slab of granite, and had at most an inch of soil to cling to.

I'm resigned to the fact that even if my mother stays at rehab longer than anticipated, there's absolutely nothing I can or will do about continuing to pay for her vacant room at Maplewood. I mean, there's nowhere else to bring her, except another assisted living place which will be just as expensive, or a nursing home, which I won't put her in for as long as I'm able to pay for something better.

So if I have to throw away $10,600 to $15,900 for, say 2 or 3 months while she's at rehab (Maplewood is "only" charging $5300/mth which doesn't include the med mgmt of $400/mth since she's not there), nothing I can do about that. We're pretty much stuck. I don't think it will be quite that long, but she was admitted Sept. 12 so it has been 3 weeks already. I'm guessing as long as 2 months but hopefully not beyond that.

Had a talk with my closing attorney. Still hoping it will happen next week. I'll be able to stop the outflow of monies for condo overhead costs, just in time for all of the medical bills to start coming in from my mother's surgery. Well, probably not but one can never be too sure. Medicare should pick up all of it, I'm told, and the rehab too, for at least the 1st 3 weeks.

After finishing up at Maplewood, I headed to the condo, for what will likely be the very last time. When I was there Saturday with handyman moving the final pieces of furniture out, I'd forgotten a small step ladder which I could use in my garage (i now have 3) and I also hadn't had a chance to spackle all the little holes in the wall from shelving and other items pulled out, so I did that.

I looked around at this now completely empty condo where my mother enjoyed 15 of the most productive years of her artistic career. I thought of all the Christmas gatherings we had there, the Thanksgiving dinners, Easter and all our birthdays. It was hard to close the door on all that, and I cried on the drive home. I cried because I know the lifestyle my mother had here is something she'll never have again. Crying is something I do a lot of these days. I know it's part of the process of grieving, and so I don't try to hold back. I just let it happen and no one, except you, now, knows that I do.

From the condo I went on to BJs and spent over $100, enough to finally meet my $3,000 charging goal on my Citi Thank You Premier Card. As soon as i get the points, I'll order $500 in gift cards.

I could use them for Christmas, but I'm really not sure what Christmas will be like this year. I haven't spoken to my sister and I am still so very angry with her. I'm not sure I ever want to talk to her again. I feel what she's done, or more specifically, what she's not done, has caused too big a rift between us. I don't know that I can forgive her. She's never even tried to talk to me about anything. No explanations, no nothing. Could someone care any less???

I could buy some small things for my mother, but nothing too expensive as the price won't really matter. My dad has never exchanged gifts with us because we didn't often see each other on the holiday, though this year is different since he's living up here now in Connecticut.

Anyway, back to my Sunday. Brought all the groceries home and decided while there was still sunlight I should go outside and try to do something about the large mulch pile in my driveway. Don't really want it sitting there all winter as it will be in the way, but I don't have time to weed, which i need to do before mulching.

I shoveled some in a small trash can, anyway. Then I began trying to plant the HUNDRED or so small bulbs I'd dug up before the masons rebuilt my front walkway back in June. I planted many in pots and don't know if they'll survive since some were small and some were larger, like tulip bulbs, and i just mixed them all in together, but at different depths. So I have like 6 large pots of bulbs now in the back of the garage.

Replenished the hummer water but saw that the old sugar water was seemingly untouched. No doubt they have already left for southern destinations and I really do hope they didn't run into all the hurricane weather in the Carolinas. I refilled the feeder one last time anyway, as I always do, just to be sure any stragglers have something to feed on. They'll need all the energy they can get for the long flight.

I also switched out some summer clothes with winter clothes, basically taking some and moving to another closet. I do this every year.

I also changed the bedsheets.

Tonight I was finally going to teach myself how to use the Jumbl slide scanner I bought on Amazon for $99 over a month ago (?) after someone here told me there was such a thing (to convert old slides or film negatives to digital images) but I realized I have to wait til I get the memory card for it (which I just ordered tonight). Once I get the hang of it, this will be a somewhat mindless task that will take quite some time as my mother had thousands of slides of all her art, each with its own name which I will want to chronicle before feeling able to throw away the slides. But I WANT dispose of those slides becus like everything else, they're taking up space in my house and I NEED to make some order in here. Right now there are boxes sitting in the basement, simply becus THERE'S NOWHERE ELSE TO PUT THEM.

I've been living with mom's stuff EVERYWHERE since May..hard to believe as I do NOT like clutter at all.

Oh, when I was carrying a fairly heavy headboard down my mother's double flight of stairs with the handyman yesterday, I managed to wrench my knee pretty bad. It was my bad knee. Amazingly, it felt fine today.

The move with handyman didn't take too long, as we just had that headboard, the bed and the sewing machine cabinet, plus he trashed the particleboard cabinet so we could just put it in the dumpster. But it was a cold and wet day and it was drizzling out. He was coming down with a cold. We unloaded at my house and then unloaded the mattress/boxspring for recycling at the landfill. Yes, they recycle them now.

I paid him $60, which I knew was more than I needed to pay him (his rate is $25/hour) but i figured he'd earned it. And I noticed he never cashed a $35 check I wrote him months ago. I'm guessing he misplaced the check, or maybe he chose not to cash it because he tried to refuse payment from me more than once when helping me with my mother's stuff.

He's a nice guy, about 5 years younger than me, but I'm fairly certain most people get the wrong impression about him based on his appearance. His favorite color is black, and that's all I've seen him wear. His hair is longer than mine and he wears it in a ponytail. He used to ride a motorcycle until years ago he was in a very bad accident with his young daughter (divorced) sitting behind him. He broke a lot of bones in his body. He gave up the motorcycle and used the $$ from the settlement as a down payment on the very small, 400-sq-foot cottage he'd been renting. But for many years he struggled each winter when work slowed down; at one point he thought he was going to lose his house becus he couldn't pay the property taxes on it. Now he's overloaded with work, and he's trying to finish redoing his bathroom. I'm happy for him because I think the reason why he's always struggling financially is lack of self-esteem.

Meaning, he doesn't charge enough money for his work because I don't think he thinks he's good enough. $25/hr is very cheap, and he does just about everything, electrical, plumbing, carpentry tilework, etc. But he's not licensed.

His brother, on the other hand, does gutter work, and he didn't hesitate to charge me $125 when I noticed weeds growing out of my gutter, due to blocked gutter. He was here less than an hour.

Anyway, after moving just a few items, handyman dropped me off home and I just felt pooped the rest of the day. Don't know why, but I did.

Is anyone doing their own "no heat" challenge? I'm not. I figure heating oil is so cheap this year and I don't feel like living in a freezing cold house. So my heat is on.

Although the stock market is really messing up my retirement savings plan, I did notice with some satisfaction that I've already accumulated $28,000 in my 401k since becoming eligible for it in July 2014. It's a Roth 401k, so I will never pay taxes on this money again. I'm trying to even out the imbalance between my traditional IRA monies, which I saved for a much long period of time, and my Roth IRAs and 401k, which represents a much smaller nugget.

How long will Americans tolerate the carnage and devastation left in the wake of mass shootings? Kudos to President Obama for making an appeal-- once again -- for commonsense gun control.

Having seen first hand the horrific aftermath of the Newtown shootings, it's abundantly clear a different approach is needed to prevent the next senseless loss of life. And the answer is not "more guns."

Somewhere in an Oregon hospital, daughters and sons are struggling to survive. Are your 2nd amendment rights more important than their lives?

Inevitably, if you sell stuff long enough online, you run into one or two troublesome buyers.

I sold a slipper chair for a great price, $25, to a local realtor online in a Facebook group 2 weeks ago. I think I paid about $150 for it at Home Decorators a good many years ago. I took an immediate dislike to the color and fabric when it arrived on my doorstep, but it was too much of a hassle to return it at the time, so I kept it all these years; it's never really been sat on by anyone.

When I asked the realtor if she wanted to know the dimensions or anything else, she said no, it was "perfect" and that she "absolutely wanted" the chair. I told her if she paid me, via Paypal, that I would hold it for her til she picked up. So she paid me. I told her she could pick up on my 2 weekday work-at-home days, or on the weekend, anytime. She has yet to get it together to do so and it's been 2 weeks.

First, she was sick, then she was still sick on the next day we scheduled, yada yada yada. We went back and forth each week but she was either busy or still sick. When she couldn't make it, she suggested I refund her the money and try to sell it to someone else unless i could wait a bit longer. I said I would wait a bit longer. Today I asked her again to please pick up the chair and now she's putting me off til Saturday. I tried to pin her down to a time on Saturday as I have things to do too, but she never responded.

I have no confidence she'll actually pick it up then, and I was annoyed when she conveniently disappeared when I tried to get her to agree to a specific time on Saturday. So after initially telling her Saturday was fine, I decided to just refund her the money via Paypal.

I mean, you would think that if you really wanted an item, you would make the time to get it at some point over 2 weeks. I tried to be patient, but when I sell something online, I expect that the buyer will come get the item in a reasonable amount of time, and I think 2 weeks is plenty of time to do so.

Totally annoyed to do this, and I actually don't think I was obligated to refund her money simply because she couldn't get her act together to pick up the chair. I marked the post as "Sold" when I received her payment.

HOWEVER, after she said she wanted it, I had pulled the chair out from the corner where it sat. I noticed a small mark right on the seat in a visible location. I wondered if it might be cat spit-up. It was clear, but it was a mark. So I took a paper towel dampened only by water, and rubbed it. When it dried, there was an equally noticeable mark on the fabric. I couldn't believe it and I was very upset. Not a stain, but I think the chenille-type fabric was so cheap/thin that when I rubbed it, it rubbed off some of the surface bumps on the fabric, if you know what chenille looks like.

I was feeling very apprehensive about how the woman who bought the chair might react when she saw it. She had said she "absolutely wanted" the chair and paid for it in advance, but upon seeing this mark, she might get upset and I don't have the stomach to deal with that. You can't see any kind of mark in the photo I posted on Facebook, so for that reason I felt it would be wrong of me to insist she take it.

So after refunding the payment of the realtor woman, I reached out to 2 others who had expressed interest in the chair 2 weeks ago. I guess I feel more comfortable having someone else come over to look at it and then buy the chair only after they've seen it and are presumably ok with the mark. Not sure how others might react. If neither of the 2 says they're still interested, I'm inclined to just donate this when the Make a Home people come to pick up my couch in 2 weeks. It was only $25.

In the meantime, my house is absolutely jam-packed with stuff here, due to having my mother's stuff here, and in fact that was the reason I decided to sell both this chair, which I never liked, and my old couch. It would make more room to store my mother's art and yarns until I have time to sell it.

UPDATE: Another woman who had said she was interested 2 weeks ago came by today, paid cash and took it away. Hooray.

In the meantime, the original buyer no doubt saw I had refunded her payment and then sent me a note saying her contractor cancelled some work today and could she come by in an hour to pick it up. NOT. I'm done with you.

We introverts tend to be very analytical, and I'm no exception.

If I look back on the 4.5 months since mid-May, when things started going haywire with my mom, I clearly remember very many decisions that needed to be made: some were big, some were small. But I can look back and see more easily which decisions I got right, which I got wrong, and which didn't matter at all.

What I got right:

1. Negotiating the realtor's commission down to 5%. This took very little effort, maybe 1 minute of my time, and saved me $1400. No brainer.

2. Ignoring my sister. My sister's offhand comment, very early on, that she thought I was "jumping the gun" by putting my mother in assisted living really upset me (still does), but I'm glad it didn't deter me from doing what I did.

For many years I looked up to my "big sister," even though we never had a great relationship, but she has shown herself time and again she makes ill-informed decisions based on very little factual information.

I recall her also saying she would not go on the MS medication I've been on for 15 years, because my sister is generally anti-medical establishment. At the time she made this pronouncement, she knew very little about the nature of MS or ANYTHING about this drug, so for her to dismiss it was really quite ignorant, IMO.

3. Choosing Maplewood. OK, Maplewood is not perfect. My biggest complaint about them is that they forget things, seem disorganized and mess up many small things, like forgetting to keep my mother at the facility the day my cousin traveled up from New Jersey to pay her a visit.

There are things with the billing that I don't like, like the way they bill me for little outings to Friendly's for instance, with no proof that she ever ate there except their word. And it kills me to let her eat at a fast food restaurant that she would never have eaten at before the dementia, because my mother was an extremely healthy eater, not to mention the fact I'm paying exorbitant fees that already include 3 meals a day. So why pay twice?

They did provide a receipt the last time, but it was a receipt for a whole bunch of people, so again, it's not at all proof that my mother was with this group. Basically, I have no choice but to take their word for it unless I want to say my mother is not to go on outings anymore, but I'm not willing to do that for $15 or $25 a month. I've freaked out about expenses all along, but this is something I've decided to let go.

And so despite things like this, the people there are mostly pretty good and the facility is gorgeous, filled with natural light and airy. And my mother has a private room and bath with a great view and they have lots of fun activities. So for all these reasons, I feel I definitely chose the best place in the area.

4. Devoting all my free time to getting the condo ready for market without delay...for obvious reasons. I would have paid thousands more in carrying costs if I'd taken my time and not put it on the market til next spring, not to mention the psychological weight of having this hang over my heads for an additional 6 months in an uncertain stock market and housing market.

5. Screwing up the courage to ask my boss to work at home. This was huge. After enduring 4 long years of underemployment that ended in 2013, I was very careful to never do anything that jeopardized this job, becus i needed it too much. That included asking for work at home time, but because nearly everyone else in the company does work at home to one degree or another, I finally worked up the nerve to ask for it in a very compelling way. I was extremely candid with her about what was going on with my mother and she immediately agreed when I asked for 2 work at home days.

Here's another important thing: I'd been prepared for her to say no, I'll give you just 1 day, but I misjudged my boss. I was SO glad I asked for more than I expected to get rather than the absolute minimum I needed.

Asking for only the bare minimum in life is usually what I've done over the years, to try to make it easy on the other person and create minimal inconvenience to others. I'll try not to do that so much, whether I'm asking for a raise or anything else! I think this is a self-esteem issue. I should ask for everything I think I deserve, period.

This same flawed way of thinking would come out whenever I had a tag sale. I dislike negotiating prices, so I always hoped that if i priced something low enough, people wouldn't feel the need to negotiate. Wrong! They still do, becus people like to feel they're getting a "deal," regardless of how low the sticker price is to begin with. So you may as well price it higher.

Having the 2 work at home days has been indispensable in allowing me to get so many things done related to my mother. It would have been impossible if I worked at the office 5 days a week.

What I got wrong:

1. Listening to the doctor, Round 1. One of the biggest things that gnaws at me still is that I followed the advice of two different CT weavers about how to go about selling my mother's yarns. The first one, a retired anesthesiologist, was no doubt pretty comfortable financially and so perhaps didn't realize how important raising funds was to me, even though I told her. I also told her I wanted to sell everything fairly quickly because it was all over my home, so perhaps she only heard one part of it. Both she and the other weaver said well, if you want to get rid of the yarn quickly, price everything at $2 or $3 a yarn cone, etc. etc. Many of these yarn cones go for $30 new, and I've found that on Facebook and in private sales here in my home, people are quite happy to pay $15 a cone. The silks go for even more money.

2. Listening to the doctor, Round 2. Along the same vein, I followed the advice of the retired doctor/weaver (she ran the website of the handweavers guild) to price the larger of my mother's 2 looms very cheaply, at $200, and to also throw in, as an inducement, a couple bags of free yarn. I had the paperwork from my mother's purchase in the 1980s when she spent $3,000 odd dollars on the big loom, but according to the doctor, no one wants a large loom like that anymore because it's not portable.

So I priced it at $200 on their website and I soon had a buyer willing to drive all the way from PA to come get it. By that time, I realized I'd under-priced it. She told me she'd been looking for this particular model, which was discontinued, for a long time. I regretted saying in the ad the buyer could also take 2 large bags full of yarns free. She picked them out herself and no doubt took the most valuable yarns before I realized what I had. I cringe at the thought. At least I limited how much she stuffed in the bags to 20 cones per bag. And to her credit, she did buy an additional $125 or so of more yarns, which she paid for.

What I got wrong, but didn't really matter:

1. Choosing my realtor. I didn't have much of a basis for choosing this particular realtor except that she had a very bubbly, sweet, upbeat personality and obviously wanted the listing. However, if I had to do it again, I wouldn't have chosen her, because she seemed quite content, after listing the place and holding some open houses, to sit back and wait for the buyers to come. I really felt I had to push her to even consider doing a little marketing flyer and developing a list of renters the flyer might appeal to. (She never completed this.) It was obvious she hadn't done this before, which surprised me, because it seemed pretty basic to me and it even said they did this sort of thing in the Caldwell Banker brochure she gave me.

She also was unavailable many weekends when I could have used her help in doing stuff and worst of all, I felt, she never volunteered to do things that, according to my friend, the former owner of a real estate brokerage, a good realtor should do, so you don't have to. They are, after all, earning a fairly hefty commission.

Like, my friend said my realtor should have volunteered to sit at the condo for 3 hours waiting for the chimney sweep to come and do the inspection. Just one example.

Another example: When another realtor and his customer came to look at the condo, they accidentally dropped the key in a crevice and were unable to retrieve it. So my realtor called me and said can you get another key made and drop it off at the condo. Now I live in a neighboring town about 20 minutes away while my realtor lives in the town where my mother's condo is located. A day went by and i got the duplicate key made but hadn't had time, due to work, to drive down and drop it off. At this point i was getting annoyed that i was doing a lot of running around while my realtor directed me, so I emailed her and said i was unable to drop it off, could she pick it up and she said no, she was outside the area, yada yada yada. This kind of thing happened a few times where she was at a party, at a rave, there was always something she was doing.

Honestly, all she did was list the condo and hold open houses.

The other thing I didn't like is that she saw nothing wrong with dual agency when the buyer wanted to use her as her own realtor. It's legal in CT but considered controversial and every objective news source i found online advised against it.

When I said no to my realtor, she let her sales manager represent the buyer, but to me that wasn't enough degrees of separation,

Plus, if you can believe it, she sent me an email weeks later mentioning that she was at the condo with the buyer because the buyer wanted her painter to give her an estimate. She wasn't supposed to be representing the buyer and signed papers to that effect! I think this was a slip-up on her part by telling me this. I didn't say anything but I was pissed and for all I know, she could have had regular dealings with her all along despite my request there be no dual agency.

HOWEVER, she did manage to get the place sold in 3 months time and it was that sweet, bubbly personality I mentioned that likely sold it, because the young woman who came to her last open house asked her to show her a few other condos. When my realtor relayed this info via email, before i started thinking about the obvious conflicts of interest, i wrote back and said, I hope you showed her some really lousy condos! She replied and said yes, i certainly did, or something to that effect. So that buyer was naive to think she could trust my realtor even with something seemingly harmless like showing her other condos that truly represented what was available, because obviously, my realtor wanted to get her listing sold, not someone else's listing, so she showed her other listings that made my mother's place glow.

If she wasn't as personable, it might not have worked out the way it did.

So that's why I said I think I got it wrong when I picked this realtor, but it all worked out in the end.

If there's one big lesson I've learned from all of this, it's follow my own instincts. It's great to gather feedback from others, but above I described some mistakes I made along the way because I followed others' advice. There were many times when I felt overwhelmed with all that had to be done and decided upon, and so I felt a little insecure about my ability to make the right decisions. Also I had very little time to waste pondering my options.

I spent about $1900 more than I earned this month. This rarely happens. It's mainly due to my paying both my car and homeowners insurance ($1400) and my trip to Rockport ($584), plus I managed to blow $453 on food this month!! That's what happens when you shop at warehouse clubs.

On the plus side, my "mom expenses" were less than my "mom income." Expenses came to $769. I paid another installment of her property tax, her HOA fee, her pharmacy bill and the fee for the condo resale certificate. However, I made $1278 from selling her yarns, art and couch and so I reimbursed myself from those sales rather than writing myself a check from our joint checking account.

I know I don't have to do this and have been advised not to, but I want her money to last longer at Maplewood. If a year or so from now I see she's failing, mentally (and thus not really capable of enjoying the quality of life at the very expensive Maplewood), I will begin to reimburse myself from the check book, not the sale of her possessions, because it would then not matter as much if she ended up in a Title 19 nursing home a little sooner.

Preserving her nest egg as much as possible has not cost me anything to date because I've been able to sell a lot of her possessions. It's taken A LOT of time to do this and many, many sales of yarns, for instance, $20, $30 or $50 at a time, but progress has been steady and I'm proud to have held the line on these expenses whittling away at her life savings.

Today, I had another meeting with the people at the rehab place (all agreed she's doing MUCH better but needs more time to show further improvement, so we're meeting again in 2 weeks), I made a gingerbread quick bread, sold the little table lamp for $8 to a local person who picked up today, rescheduled a dentist visit for myself, talked to Medicare to inquire about the status of a denied ambulance trip claim I appealed (answer: call back when a full 60 days has passed) and posted some glittery yarns online and promptly sold them (i mean, in like 40 seconds I had a buyer) for $80 for the whole lot. (She has to wait til payday, Friday, to send payment.) I had intentionally been holding off on posting them for sale because I wanted to wait til people began thinking about the holiday season. I guess September is not too soon.

I got a reply back from my cousin that not only could I bring my dad down with me when I deliver the art she bought from me, but she volunteered to come with us as we continued on to my dad's house on the Jersey shore to help us clean up, clear out or do whatever needs to be done, "because that's what family does." She's not even related to my dad, she's from my mother's side of the family, but I love her attitude, because, after living with a very fragmented family due to my parents' divorce and my sister's lifelong disinterest, family is so very, very important to me, too.

I hope i can talk my dad into letting her help us. My dad can be very stubborn. If he's smart, he'll say yes!

Great news! The realtor told me the bank's appraisal came in fine. Curious, I asked her what their number was, but she said they don't usually give a specific number, only if they feel it's overpriced.

So we're looking at a potential closing on Oct 7, 8 or 9. I can't believe this is really going to happen. The exact date doesn't really matter to me since I don't plan on being present. (I remember when I bought my house, I was so surprised when the sellers at that time also didn't show up.)

Soon, I'll be able to exhale on that score. A Really Big Exhale.

I will also have a large sum of cash deposited into my mother's checking account that I will be looking to invest. Somewhere around $128,000. The money will be totally spent in 2 years or less, so I want some fairly stable investment choices, not stock funds. I haven't given it much thought, had just assumed I'd put it in some kind of Vanguard funds, but maybe laddered CDs would be better/safer. With interest rates due to rise before the end of the year, maybe this would be a good idea. They'd have to be short-term CDs, like 6 mths or a year max. I could first exhaust the $100,000 in mom's Vanguard account. Any ideas/suggestions out there for the best thing to do with the proceeds from the house sale?

Here are some things I want to do once the closing is behind me:

1. Drive to NJ to deliver 2 pieces of art I've sold to my 2nd cousin. Collect $900.

2. Invite a weaver down from northern CT who was interested in my mother's art. (I'm not sure if maybe she's just got time on her hands and is looking for a friend, whether she wanted to merely view another weaver's work, or possibly buy something.) We had already planned a visit earlier, but I had to reschedule after my mother broke her hip.

3. Prepaid funeral. This one's a downer but everyone is telling me I should do this before I file for Title 19 Medicaid/nursing home as this is a permitted cost. I have thought about this a lot. It's going to be difficult to do, but better to do it now while i have a relatively clear head.

4. Hire an electrician. I have an outlet in the garage that's not working, and my attic lights also are not working. Did mice chew on the wires or something?

5. Drive up to a gallery about 30 minutes north of here and collect some of my mother's work that has been there way too long. I mean, I certainly don't have much room here, but at the same time I feel a little nervous having the gallery keep my mother's art for so long, especially as I don't know which or how many pieces she has. My mother is no longer capable of managing this and I want to make sure her art is safe and all accounted for. If the gallery hasn't sold it in over a year, I think it's time to take some of it back.

At the same time, I have a great deal of unframed, matted art of my mother's. I might get some prices from the gallery owner for framing a select few, either for my own enjoyment or to sell. Because without framing it, there's no way to hang it and thus it's kind of hard to sell. And over time it would much more easily damaged without a frame. I should know, as I keep stumbling into art all over the place here.

6. Help my dad with his house in NJ. My dad plans to sell his house in NJ now that he is living up here, at my sister's. I can't imagine how much work it is for him, at 82 and macular degeneration, to be trying to do this on his own, especially given that he's now living 3 hours away from the house. I have offered several times to help him and each time he (rightly) said, don't worry about it, you've got enough on your plate.

I hope he'll accept my offer to help after the closing. I can be his eyes and his legs and I have plenty of energy for a 50-something-year-old.

I was even thinking (I'd have to clear this with my cousin), of inviting my dad to join me as I deliver the art to my cousin and we'd be halfway to the Jersey shore. So after my cousin's, we'd continue south to dad's house. We'd get 2 things accomplished and save on gas.

Today I was hoping my friend at work would pay me for the art she bought ($425) but she forgot her checkbook. I know she's good for it, especially as she has already taken the art home and thus will feel more "committed," but I was anxious to get payment in hand nonetheless. Hopefully when I'm back in office again on Wednesday. She did say her husband really loved the piece too.

Tomorrow:
I have someone supposedly stopping by to purchase a lamp (very cheap, but I was going to donate it) and possibly the woman who already paid for my slipper chair.

I have the big follow-up meeting with the people at Masonicare.

I want to call Medicare to learn the status of the claim they denied...the infamous 911 call my mother made becus she was constipated...It's over $600 if they deny again.

I also hope to wash some of my mother's laundry so I can bring it with me when I go to the meeting there as I'll pop in to see my mom, and I would like to post a few more yarns on the Facebook page where I've been selling.

Finally, I want to see if I can order a beautiful photo of my mother that appeared in an Litchfield County newspaper about a year ago when they did a feature story on her. It's a really great shot that captures who she is, and I could use it with PR for any future shows/exhibits the art consultant can drum up.

1. Out before 9 to load up my car with 4 or 5 small boxes of old, leaking artists' paints, turpentine and who knows what other toxic chemicals my mother used to clean her brushes and so on. I dropped them off at the household hazardous waste drop off site, an event they have just once or twice a year, so i was glad to dispose of this and make room in my garage again.

2. Back to the condo. Buyer doesn't want the shelves there so with my little power screwdriver, I made quick work of taking down shelves in two rooms and a picture hanging system my mom had in lower level. The shelving brackets and screws I'll drop off at the landfill for metal recycling but I'll keep the picture hanging system. Someday, when I move into my little condo, I'll put these up on 2 walls of my office, maybe, and hang lots of art there. It saves you from putting lots of holes in the walls.

While there I STILL managed to stuff my car with odds and ends. I really AM getting to almost totally clearing out the condo.

3. The tears came on the way home. Each time I go to the condo there's less and less of my mom there. I have literally stripped away every remnant of her old life, and she can never return to it again. Does that sound like guilt? Yes. It's there, even as I know that letting her continue to live alone with worsening Alzheimers was like waiting for a really scary shoe to drop.

On the way home I stopped at assisted living place and left payment. So I'm paying over $5,000 and my mother's not even there, but what can I do? The goal is to get her back to Maplewood asap. It will be a few weeks. Money down the drain. The alternative would be to pay the same (or more) money to a nursing home, which would offer much less quality of life.

I'll keep my mother living at Maplewood for as long as her money lasts her, while she can still enjoy it. I am guessing that if she is well enough to return to Maplewood in a few weeks, they are going to escalate her to "Level 1" level of care, because she'll need assistance with daily tasks of living and so on. I believe it's a $1200 monthly bump-up in price for each of several levels of care. Luckily, I had negotiated a 1-year reprieve from paying Level 1 once my mother progressed to that stage. Once I do have to start paying it, it will just accelerate the draining of her savings.

I have a feeling my mother's life will never be the same again. She hasn't made much progress yet with physical rehab though she seems to be healing fine. She had a number of medical issues that interfered with her being able to start the rehab sooner, like a UTI and issues with pain from the surgery. So she lay in bed for a week at the hospital, and sat around in a wheelchair mostly for another full week at the rehab place, often delusional and completely out of it.

I had a meeting with the folks there last Thursday and we agreed to delay finalizing any rehab plan until Tuesday, so they'd have more time to assess what they think she's really capable of. I'm afraid all this sitting around has further weakened her so that when she does finally does begin the rehab in earnest, she'll be starting from an even lower level and have a real uphill battle. With the dementia, you can't really even emphasize how important it is that she focus on the rehab exercises and all.

It's just all so sad. I know this is what often happens to elderly people, and eventually, they die, but it's been very painful to watch my mother, who, while she has dementia, was in pretty darn good shape physically just 3 weeks ago. Now she's not supposed to stand up without assistance.

4. Came home and slowly unloaded everything from the car into the basement and garage. Sorted through what I was taking to the landfill and left that in the car.

5. Changed the hummingbird sugar water. Haven't seen a hummer lately; they may have already left for the season.

6. Made a double batch of my granola.

7. Watered all my potted outdoor plants.

8. Packed up the latest shipment of roving for a NY buyer who has bought all my previous roving. USPS will pick up from my doorstep on Monday.

9. I dragged a 36" round glass tabletop sitting in my garage and brought it into dining room on top of a new rattan luggage rack I bought at Bed Bath & Beyond. Cleaned it up. Looks good. I piled it full of my wool yarns. By consolidating my yarns and bringing more into the dining room, I was able to clear a folding table that was filled with yarns in my family room.

I dragged the folding table up to the attic where it can be put to good use tidying up there. (The attic needs attention too.) But now, at least, there is more room to move around in the family room.

Which is important as I am donating my couch in another week or so to Make a Home Foundation and I'll have to clear a path through there. I'm really tired of that couch but don't plan to buy a replacement right away. Cus it would just be another piece of furniture I'd worry the cats would be scratching.

Once it's gone, there'll be more room to stack my mother's art against the walls as I very slowly dispose of it.

I'm also selling for $25 a gold slipper chair I bought years ago. When it was delivered I immediately didn't like the color or fabric but didn't want to have to return it, so I've lived with it all these years. It's a thin chenille type fabric and after I sold it (the woman still hasn't picked it up) I noticed what could have been cat spit-up (clear). So i dabbed the spot with a damp paper towel and then let it dry, and now there's a noticeable mark on it just from my dabbing it! I hope she still takes it. I'll be glad to see that thing go. Another scratching post taking up space.

10. Ran down to the organic farm and bought some fresh tomatoes, potatoes, apples and a dozen eggs, which technically isn't vegan.

11. Posted some red bricks for sale on Facebook. I have about 300 that I dug up from north side of house where I had a little walkway but it's completely overgrown and all I want there is grass. I took pix of the bricks (2 types) and a guy said when could he come over to see them. They're bricks, man! A brick is a brick! .25 each. It occurred to me that he could come here to "see" the bricks and then decide he didn't want them, but come back later when I wasn't home and just take them from the driveway. I would like to sell them, becus .25 a piece doesn't sound like much but x 300 it's $75.

Anyway, I felt it was a pretty productive day. So glad I was able to get all the shelving down at the condo. I was also going to spackle all the holes, but darned if I didn't leave the joint compound in my garage this morning when I left. Will have to do it later.

All that's left to do with the handyman is move the bed/headboard, sewing cabinet, a small particleboard cabinet and 2 large boxes of poster board or something. THAT'S IT. I'm tired.

Tomorrow will visit mom, get gas and get groceries, probably at BJs. Would be great to squeeze in some yard work.

It really is true that as you earn more, you spend more. I try my best to resist that tendency unless there's a really good reason.

After years of being a tightwad with my landline phone and Internet bill (I'm currently paying $57/mth) I decided to double my Internet speed for another $10 a month. Mainly because I'm now working at home twice a week and there are many times my work-issued laptop is very, very slow. The IT guy at work explained why; it taps into my home broadband, which is just 6 mb. Hopefully I'll see some improvement at 12 mg. There are times when all I'm trying to do is access a certain Word document in a subfolder on a shared drive, and I have to wait about 4 minutes just to drill down one level.

The rep also said I should see reduced "buffering" when I'm watching a movie. That would also be greatly appreciated. So we'll try out the faster speed and see if it's worth the extra $10 a month. I wince to think my total monthly bill will be about $69, although I know there are many people who pay $100 or more for cable/phone/Internet or some combination thereof.

Today I sold a 2nd piece of my mom's art to a coworker and friend for $425! I had emailed her a bunch of seashore-inspired pieces, she picked out these two, and i brought them into work in the trunk of my car. On our lunch break, we walked out to look at them and she really liked Bedlam at Sea. (So do I, but I have to part with some of them.) She took it home tonight and will have a check for me next week.

My mother would be happy. I'm actually doing better selling my mom's art than the 2 galleries who now have her work.

I really do appreciate these sales since I think my friends did this yes, becus they liked the art, but also becus they felt they were helping me out. And there are only so many people I know who will do that. I don't anticipate all my art sales to go so easily when they're being marketed to strangers.

Tomorrow morning I'm dropping off several boxes of old paints, turpentine and other toxic chemicals my mother used with her art at the household hazardous waste drop off. I'll be glad to get this out of my garage, making room for my car to fit in again over the coming winter.

After that it's back to her condo once more. I have a lot more work to do now that the buyer has said she doesn't want any of the existing shelving in there. There is shelving in 3 locations:
1. Her studio. The kind with vertical metal brackets and shelf supports. Got most of it down except for what's attached by 2 stuck screws. Will see if I have any WD40 to loosen them up.

2. Her lower level studio. This will be a real pain. This isn't shelving, but is a fairly expensive picture hanging system. It's basically some aluminum brackets installed horizontally going around all 4 walls, high up on the wall and close to the ceiling. From here she hung these vertical bars that slide along the brackets and allowed you to hang paintings and re-position them if you wanted, without putting any holes in the wall. It's meant for use by artists, primarily. It will be a pain unscrewing everything and then by right i should spackle over the holes. I hope I can do this all myself. I might as well keep all this myself and maybe someday when i move to a condo i can put these up in one room and hang lots of art.

3. The storage room off the lower level studio has more shelving. I'd forgotten about these. All will have to come down.

There is still stuff to move out with my handyman (I know you're getting tired of hearing about this) but at least the couch is sold and my dad helped me remove all the over-sized, unframed art last night. Then we had dinner at the diner.

Outside of those must-dos, it is just the usual chores this weekend, like filling the car gas tank, grocery shopping, hopefully doing some yardwork, making granola and of course, visiting mom.

I had a productive conversation with the owner of a contracting firm I'd used to install new slider doors in my mother's condo before I put it on the market. I gave them a "C" and went into great detail about things I wasn't happy about. NOthing to do with the install, but more with their back office operations.

Anyway, this guy had tried calling me several times after reading my Angie's List review, but becus numbskull here (me) didn't know how to retrieve messages from her smart phone (there's no manual!) I didn't actually listen to his message until last week.

I called him back and we had a good talk. He said my review led to some internal conversations there that caused them to make a decision to end their practice of only refunding half the $175 fee for giving estimates. This was just one of my issues with them. I reasoned that if their goal was to reduce the number of people asking for estimates and then not giving them the work (basically wasting their time), they would still achieve that goal if they gave a full refund of the estimate IF they got the job. He agreed. However, when I then asked for a refund of the other half of the $175 I had to pay, he said he would give me a credit in that amount on the next job I gave them. I was a little miffed about that, but felt good that I got them to change their policy. And he was not at all defensive about talking to me, which most people would be. He was very professional so I give him credit. He did seem to sincerely want to making his company better.

Tonight I updated my review to report all this but I'm not sure I would use him again because I don't want to waste $175 if I got an estimate and then went with someone else. I mean, the whole idea of getting an estimate is you get 2 or 3 of them and then decide. If I wanted to ensure I wasn't throwing away $175 by going to this same guy, I'd have to not care what his price came in at. 99.9% of companies today don't charge for estimates so IMO this does not help their company.

Went for a walk around the block after dinner, then reversed direction and headed home again. It takes about 25 minutes. One neighbor has a large new shed. Another neighbor was mowing the lawn and waved to me. I walked by another house and could have sworn I smelled pot. Passed another house and admired their newish solar panels on the roof. Saw another neighbor who had the house on the market a long time had cut down 2 massive trees blocking the view of the house. Now it looks very bare.

Today I did a small load of my mother's laundry. I brought up a small Rubbermaid folding table that had been in the garage and put it in my office to help me better organize all the piles of paper related to my mother (her taxes, her condo, her medical bills, her Social Security stuff and on and on). I had all the piles on the floor, and they were getting really dusty. It was impossible to vacuum around them. Now I've stored all the US Post Office Priority Mail boxes underneath the table, the ones I use for shipping yarns I sell. They take up a lot of space because I need boxes of all sizes and it's very helpful to have one of each assembled (not flat) so I can assess its size more quickly.

I posted a few more batches of roving for sale. Have gotten a lot of "likes" but no takers yet. Sometimes they need to percolate a bit.

I got a very nice note back from the director of the town's parks and recreation commission after I emailed her about how much the walking trails enhance my life, especially now. She said I made her day and promised to look into all of my suggestions which were to 1) cut back the bittersweet choking the apple tree around the bend after the ambulance building, 2) put up some bluebird boxes on the posts surrounding the fenced in Victory Garden (perfect habitat) and 3) she liked my tip about an easy way to get rid of magic marker graffiti on metal trash bins: rub with toothpaste. Works like magic.

I have to admit that I am very good at complaining about things, because I believe bad service or bad products should be called out. At the same time, I also believe in praising people when something's done right.

For instance, I recently stopped in at a nice little lunch place on my work break. I've been there a few times before. They have great food and the staff is very pleasant. After the young lady took my order, I stood there watching as she went to the cash register to ring up another customer. I noticed she was wearing those clear plastic gloves on her hands as she punched up the register and handled dirty money. Somehow, just seeing someone wearing those gloves makes you feel things are more sanitary.

Then she walked toward where a young man was making sandwiches, and she picked up 2 wraps he'd just made from the cutting board and put them on a small electric grill they were using...with the same dirty gloves! Then she went back to the register.

I waited a few more minutes and then decided to gently suggest to her that she might want to change her gloves when she goes from the register to touching customers' food. She smiled sweetly at me and said oh, I went in back to wash my hands. Not! I was watching her the whole time! She didn't go anywhere. Lying just makes it worse.

Called my mother's cardiologist's office for the 2nd day and for the 2nd time no nurse has returned my call. I've called the rehab place 4 times this afternoon and evening and it just rings and rings.

Today was my day off.

This morning I headed out to run some errands. First up, Staples, to use a $2 rewards coupon on some more shipping tape. I'm going through a lot of it selling these yarns on Facebook. (I made another $50 tonight.) I found some tape on sale for $2, so it was free.

Then I went to my mother's bank to do a test balance inquiry on her new checking account and it correctly showed a balance of $50. I'm thinking now that it may be better to keep both checking accounts open and not close the old one. This new one would be solely dedicated to accepting her Social Security checks and nothing else. The original joint checking account I would keep to pay anything else.

I had originally thought it simpler to close the current joint checking account and keep the new one which the Social Security Administration required I open, but now I'm thinking that since they're going to require me to complete an annual form accounting for all spending of her SS money that it would better not to commingle other money with her Social Security checks. I'll be transferring money from her brokerage accounts to checking every month, and paying medical bills and who knows what else. I don't want the federal govt to question any of my expense paying, which they shouldn't, since they're all legitimate expenses, but with the dedicated SS account I can clearly and simply say that 100% of the money is used for one thing only: her rent at Maplewood. It will mean I have to write 2 checks since her $958 monthly SS checks don't cover the roughly $5800 monthly rent at Maplewood, but I don't think that's a big deal.

After the bank, I went to Costco. I just refuse to go on a weekend anymore because it's so darn crowded. Even on a Monday, they're pretty busy. Somehow I spent $156.

Unfortunately, my mother is not doing well at all. She was doing very well when i saw her Saturday, but the geriatric psychiatrist there called me today to tell me she hadn't been eating or drinking today and was really out of it.

So, a few hours after I got home from food shopping, I went over there, thinking maybe I could get her to eat, but she was nearly totally unresponsive, sitting in a wheelchair with her eyes closed the whole time. I know she was somewhat aware, because, as I kept talking to her to try to elicit a reaction, I said, do you still love me? And she said Of course, without opening her eyes. And she was gripping my hand pretty tightly.

It's all very hard to see. They found she has a urinary tract infection. If you know anything about UTIs in the elderly, you know they can really disorient someone. I had been warned about this by a friend whose mother in law had Alzheimers.

So it may take a few days to see improvement in my mom until the antibiotics take effect, but what about her not drinking/eating? She may have to get fluids intravenously.

It's been so up and down this past week. I can have a really good visit with her like I did on Saturday, and then something like this today.

After I saw my mother, I went for another walk at my favorite walking trail. It was such a beautiful day. Those woods are my church, and the trees there are the steeples. It was so wonderful to breathe deeply, watch the dragonflies flit over the goldenrod in the sunshine and open meadows and find solace in those fields.

A local woman and her daughter, both beginning weavers, stopped by late this afternoon and spent $151 on yarns. Progress.

Went to the arts festival this morning. I enjoyed walking around, but didn't buy a single thing. Stopped in at the pottery booth, where I'd been last year, and was disappointed to see much the same stuff as they had last year!

After that, I went for a walk.

Did some weeding in the back patio but more needs to be done. Maybe tomorrow, as I'm off from work.

The weather was GORGEOUS today.

Oh, I also made a split pea soup with parsnips, celery and carrots. As soon as it gets a tiny bit cool, I start having a craving for it.

Tomorrow's my day off. The main thing I want to do i hit Costco. Finding interesting and tasty vegan food is always a challenge, especially if you have no time for cooking, so I'd like to see if they have anything interesting to eat.

I also lately have been feeling like i have nothing to wear but I was just at Macy's about 3 weeks ago.

I wrote that title intending to talk about my mother's neighbors, but really, I have met so many kind and caring people since my mother's challenges began last spring.

This morning I ran out to get to my mother's bank before it closed, and spent quite a lot of time there as the woman retitled mom's checking account the way Social Security Administration wants.

Then I ran to her condo where they were handing out the parking permits at the clubhouse so i could explain why I hadn't picked up the permit....the car has been sold and the place is under contract. The women there knew my mother and were very nice about it.

Then on to her condo to take down some wall shelving that the buyer doesn't want. I also dismantled some shades that my mother had made herself, including the bracket systems.

On the way home I stopped at Maplewood to pay the October bill, and I had to leave a note for the accounting manager because once again, the bill was wrong. They were billing me for the phone, which I had confirmed with the director would be removed since my mother had trouble with it anyway, and they also failed to provide a receipt for an outing to Friendly's, which we agreed a month ago they would do; otherwise, I have no way of documenting whether she did go on various outings or not.

When I came home I was so tired and I lay down for a while, then made myself get up so I could get over to see her before it got too late. I arrived just in time to see my mother's condo neighbors there visiting with her.

They are such good people and visited her regularly at Maplewood and now at Masonicare. Both college professors in their 60s (he retired, her not) they treat her as if she were their own mother.

I don't feel I've adequately conveyed my appreciation but I happen to think they're wonderful. Maybe partly because they help fill in the void created by the absence of my sister. They lived 2 doors down from my mother and I've seen them often this summer as I'm at the condo nearly every weekend doing something.

Even the woman at the bank who was helping me get the account straight was very understanding, and as often happens, she told her own story of what happened with her mother. When I left, she took my hand in both of hers, and wished me well.

It's been so warm here I thought my mother would enjoy a trip down to the pond on the property of Masonicare. I wheeled her down there in her wheelchair. She can stand with assistance, but certainly not walking yet.

As soon as we got down there, she said she had to go to the bathroom, so we made a very quick loop around the small pond and came back up. I had hoped we could sit and relax down there as she does love looking at nature.

I sat with her while she ate her dinner; apparently it was the first time in the community dining room. She's been there a week now and I didn't like the idea of her having to eat alone, which they had done at least a few times because, when the pain started bothering her she would start tearing off her clothes. Pain + dementia = not good.

But tonight she was doing well and definitely enjoyed talking with other residents there; I'm not sure any of them are dementia patients, and that's why I chose this room over another room, because these are all rehab people, not dementia people. Some, sadly, are there for the long term.

We met a woman, probably in her 60s, who was definitely all there mentally but in a wheelchair. She told me she'd had a stroke and could not walk, and she lifted her arm to show me her hand, all curled up. She said she was there "long term." I felt very sad for her. She looked like someone you might see at the garden club. I guess she was widowed or divorced, and her family was unable to care for her, so this is where she ended up. But she wasn't depressed, and I appreciated her conversing with my mother, as did another rather outspoken woman who also seemed to be a long-timer.

I am just so grateful for the many kind, caring, understanding and compassionate people out there. It's possible I've never really experienced thta before because I've never really faced this kind of crisis. I will talk about it to anyone around. It was definitely a crisis when I've had issues with the MS in the past, but the MS was something I mostly tried to hide from others, partly because I didn't want it to jeopardize my job, and so I lost out on a lot of support I could have gotten from others had I shared it more than I did. It's so much easier to bear when others are there for you.

Right after work I drove over to the condo to meet the painter who wanted to buy the couch. He arrived with a buddy and after paying me $250 cash, they moved it out, not without some trouble. But they got a pretty good bargain.

I priced it very low as I wanted to make sure it would sell quickly. It put some cash in my pocket but it made me feel a little sad to see yet another piece of my mother's life go away forever.

Due to my hard work selling her stuff, I've managed to only be out of pocket $263 to date since moving my mother to assisted living 3.5 months ago. Some of these expenses were related to keeping her condo going and some related to her healthcare and all sorts of other things. I keep whittling away at expenses by continuing to sell yarns on Facebook and locally, so they never build up so much. And in August I started picking up all her expenses (still reimbursing myself from yarn sales) except her rent at Maplewood, so as not to deplete her savings faster than I'd projected.

While I was there at the condo I took what I think was the last of my mother's paintings on the main level. I'll go back tomorrow morning as I am a little curious to check out the complex-wide tag sale and I can pick up the parking sticker for my mother's car, which I sold months ago. Dumb, huh? I got a notice in the mail that if I don't pick it up i'll get fined cus they don't want anyone parking there without a sticker. It's no use calling and telling them I'm in the process of selling the place. It'll just be easier to pick it up while I'm there so they shut up about it.

I have to take down some shelving which will probably leave holes in the walls, so I'll bring some spackling with me to fill the holes. I might as well take the drawers out of the sewing machine so when i move it with the handyman, possibly next weekend, it'll be a little lighter for the 2 of us to handle.

So what's left to move with the handyman?
1. The bed and frame - will have to pay a small fee to drop it at the landfill
2. Headboard - it goes with my mother's bedroom set and is probably 50 years old but i always liked it so will move to my house. She can't use it as i bought her a new twin bed at Maplewood when she moved in.
3. sewing machine cabinet - to my house, god knows where it will go
4. medium sized cedar chest - also very old - i think i will keep
5. particleboard cabinet to Goodwill or trash
6. 2 small chairs
That's it for the main level!

Downstairs, there are still a few heavy boxes of stuff i'm not sure whether to toss or donate or recycle or keep.. and 2 heavy large tables to goodwill or trash.

It seems like the moving of stuff and the trips back and forth to her condo has just been going on FOREVER. I'm in my 50s and this is getting old. Even though I moved most of the stuff out before I put it on the market in mid-June. I'm still traveling back and forth (a 15 or 20-minute ride), and have nearly every weekend since May.

But soon, I think it will really happen. The place will sell. Buyer's already got her painter lined up, so she's committed. I'm a teensy bit worried about the bank's appraisal. In 3 weeks' time, I can put this part of the saga behind me forever and focus on other things. It's taken up so much of my time.

I'm pretty tired tonight. didn't have dinner, just some orange juice and red grapes. I have off on MOnday (yeah) and want to go to Costco as I NEVER go there otherwise due to the insane weekend crowds. My mother had a membership which will expire at some point so I'd like to use it at least a few times before it does as i won't renew becus i'm already with the far less crowded BJs.

Tried to close a brand new credit card (EMV) Amazon mailed my mother (and it was forwarded to me) but they required the POA document in the mail and it's jut too much hassle right now. No time. I'll just let it lapse due to inactivity. It's not my preference, cus it still leaves the card open to fraud, but they make it too damn difficult.

On Sunday I hope to go to the arts festival in town and have invited a friend to join me. One of the weavers I met thru yarn sales will be doing some kind of workshop there and she very kindly invited me to come.

Wow, my work at home day flew by. Amazed how much I got done, and so appreciative to have work at home days because I could NEVER get all this done if I had to be at the office.

1. Talked to staff at my mother's rehab place at least 3 times today about her upcoming doc appointments, scheduling the Plan of Care meeting, talked about how she's doing and a few other things.

2. Learned from my realtor that the person who will paint my mother's condo for the buyer is interested in buying the couch from me, we connected over the phone and have agreed to meet at the condo tomorrow night after work so he can pay me to hold it. He can then move it out of there in the next few weeks. I need and want him to pay asap as I'll need to cancel all the alerts I put out on local FB pages telling people about the sale of the couch on Saturday at a complex-wide tag sale. That tag sale would be my best shot at selling it quickly so I want to make sure I have the cash in hand before doing all that.

3. Briefly talked to my attorney and printed, signed, scanned and returned to him documentation that I'm giving the buyer a $600 credit for the plumbing issue in the shower.

4. Sold yarns to 2 different Facebook buyers for a net profit of about $60; another sale may be pending.

5 Also received payment from someone who wants to buy a slipper chair I no longer want, had tried to sell before but was unable to. When you price something at $25, it moves.

6. On my lunch break I ran over to the spa in town where my mother's artwork has been hung and took a bunch of photos to show my mom. It looks great!

7. I got confirmation from Social Security in the mail today that I've been named payee of my mother's SS checks so now I have to go to the bank on Saturday where she has a checking acct (my name's already on it as joint owner but SSA requires making me payee if I want my mom's Medicare statements/bills coming to me) and when i go to bank they have to make it a specially designated account; then I have to give account info to SSA local office. A lot of running around for such a simple thing but I can see why they do this.

8. Did a load of my mother's dirty laundry that I'd picked up 2 days ago and hung it out to dry, then ironed and packed it so I can bring it over tonight when I see her after work.

9. Made a bunch of phone calls to area animal shelters looking for a shelter from which my dad could adopt 2 cats. He would like to let them out during the day and keep them in at night, but most shelters around here adopt to only indoor-only families due to coyotes, etc, so my dad said he will wait til he learns thru the grapevine that someone has kittens.

10. Talked to condo property mgmt company to finalize paperwork needed to get a resale certificate and pay their enormous fee for doing so ($131 for processing).

11. Tried to cancel a new EMV credit card i got in the mail from Amazon, but they required the POA paperwork in snail mail since I couldn't put m y mother on the phone and I just don't have the time to do it, so i told them i was cutting up the card and the account would be inactive. Trying to do the right thing and close the card but credit card companies make this very inefficient and hard to do. I probably should have just pretended to be my mother and it would have been much easier.

We seem to have taken care of the electrical outlet, the water shut-off valve and the chimney issue, as far as the condo buyer is concerned.

They are moving ahead with the mortgage underwriting and will schedule the bank appraisal shortly. Let's cross our fingers appraisal doesn't come in under the sell price.

So I've begun moving out a few things I still had in the condo for staging purposes. I took some art and kitchen towels and so on last weekend and will do one more trip by myself of the smaller stuff I can manage before getting my handyman to help with the few big items. Mainly, the couch, sewing machine, bed with headboard, and 2 tables down below.

I was counting on the buyer taking the leather couch, excellent condition, off my hands for $250 so I wouldn't have to move it out of there, but the buyer already has furniture.

So I've posted it on Facebook and as it turns out, the condo complex is having its annual tag sale this Saturday. I've registered for the event and have created a sign I'll stick in front of unit. I'm willing to stick around (I think) from 9 a.m. to noon that day to show anyone who wants to see it. The organizer said the tag sale runs til 3 but most people are out looking in the morning. She said someone last year was moving and sold the entire contents of their condo in this sale so it's worth my sticking around. I've priced it to sell becus i need it moved out quickly.

My realtor also said she will tell her 2 sons about it and see if they'd be interested.

If I can sell that couch, that would mean I wouldn't have to pay a second person to help move the couch out with my handyman, because I think it's too heavy for me to lift and carry.

So if I can't sell it, I will just have my handyman and helper move it to my house. I have an old couch I bought used for $500 20 years ago and I don't like the colors. (I'm not crazy about dark brown leather either, although I have a chair and ottoman in the same brown leather it would match well.)

So to ensure I have the room to move the leather couch here, I've already scheduled to have my old couch picked up by Make a Home Foundation and I have to donate $25 for that. It's too bad that the old couch isn't leaving til end of September. I suppose I could delay the move of the leather couch til the weekend following the day Make a Home picks up my old couch, although being a nervous Nellie I'd like to do it next weekend, as the closing is supposed to be mid-October. Maybe I will FORCE myself to wait on the leather couch move, giving me more time to sell it as well, and if we do have to move it, they will have the room in my family room to move it into.

As it is, I'll have to clear out all my mother's art and yarns to make room for the old couch to go and the new one to come in. So much work. But anyway, we ARE making progress.

As for the other things:

Sewing machine cabinet: I had posted this for sale and lowered the price to $80, but got annoyed when someone offered even less. My grandfather made it and it's too nice a cabinet so i decided I would keep it and have my handyman/carpenter cut a piece of wood that would fit where the hole for the sewing machine is, and use it as a desk. I could then put a large desktop calendar over the spot so you don't see the different kind of wood.

Bed: Mattress and frame will have to go to the dump, I'm afraid, and they will probably charge me something to drop it there.

Headboard: It's very old but i always liked it, so i will grab it. It's sort of like a wood cabinet with 2 sliding wood doors where you can store books or whatever. Always liked it tho it is beat up somewhat.

Two large tables: the legs come off it so just means lugging maybe to goodwill if they'll take it. I think that's about it.

I can't always say I got everything done that I wanted to in a day. I did today...except relax, that is.

A local weaver returned for a second time and spent another $40 on yarns...

After that, I typed up a price list for the art show and kept exchanging emails with the art consultant, who was peppering me with questions like, did you ever find this particular piece of art? Or, we need something tall and narrow....and so on...

I finished packing up some extra large sized pieces in bubble wrap. All the bubble wrapping is very time-consuming.

I did some grocery shopping and tried to clean up around here. So much stuff I can't walk around. I spent some time doing what I should have done months ago but didn't have time to do, hang a bunch of my mother's work, the stuff I'm keeping, on the walls of my spare bedroom and upstairs hallway. Everything was getting very dusty leaning against the walls on the floor, and with the cat hair and all, it was hard to vacuum.

I have some larger, heavier pieces I don't want to hang, though because I'm not sure how to use one of those sink screw things or whatever you call them.

AT 3:30 pm, together with art consultant'shusband and 2 teenagers of unknown origins, we schlepped all 34 pieces in their SUV and my car. Then we brought into the spa and I unwrapped most of them and made sure every piece was labeled on the back while she dealt with the artist who was departing with his work. (He didn't sell anything.)

Then the two of us sat down and reviewed the prices. We changed a number of them, but she is very easy to work with.

After that, I stopped to see my mother at the rehab place. At least she was sitting up in a wheelchair in a TV room by herself, looking at ad circulars. She is still quite out of it but at least she seems calm, not upset. I met another nurse (or nursing assistant, I never know what they are) who I really liked because she seemed very commonsense and agreed with me my mother shouldn't be laying around in bed so much. She mentioned my mother is in a great deal of pain when they move her and she is trying to get Percoset, which she had been on at the hospital but which they didn't have authority to give her at rehab.

I stayed an hour and will see her again on Tuesday, my next work at home day, right after work ends at 5 p.m.

My realtor gave me the ridiculous estimate from the plumber to replace out the 3 pieces of hardware in the shower: the showerhead, tub faucet and handle to control temperature. Because the handle to control temperature is loose inside the wall, it would mean going inside the wall to secure it, according to what the realtor was told. His estimate? $600, which she said includes taping the wall back up and the cost of the hardware though I don't think he mentioned the hardware as part of the estimate. So $700 more likely, as I priced out perfectly good hardware sets at $100.

After seeing my mother I was able to squeeze in a walk but shortly after I started, it began to rain, so I had to end it earlier. Still worth it.

Had time to make my lunch for tomorrow.

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.

I finally buckled and began a one-year subscription to Luminosity, the brain games. I'd been having fun playing a limited number of games for free every week but I do have my favorites and couldn't necessarily choose them. My favorite game is Word Bubbles. I think it was $60 for the year.

My mom's being moved from the hospital to the rehab place tomorrow afternoon. I'll get her room set up beforehand. I learned that the rehab place doesn't do their laundry, for some reason, so I will have to put another week's worth of clothes together for her so I'll have a clean batch to leave when I take the dirty laundry from the previous week away. Now I really feel like I'm the mother and she's the daughter. It just never seems to end. Hopefully, she won't be there for long and I was upset with the hospital because when i was there last night, they had her using the bedpan despite the fact her doctor told me they'd have her up and walking, assisted, to the bathroom almost immediately. It's not at all good to have an elderly person lying in bed nonstop,and she's been there now since Monday.

So Saturday I go to Maplewood to get more of my mother's stuff, then I set up her new room at rehab and hopefully get her settled in. I also want to go to her condo to take a few smaller things out, like some art, now that it is looking more certain the place will be sold. I will hire my handyman with his truck to take out the rest of the big stuff, maybe next weekend.

Tomorrow we should have a plumber's quote about cost of replacing the shower faucet and I'll price out a BASIC faucet at Lowes online, then offer the buyers a credit. If they want something higher end, they can pay for that themselves. My only obligation is to have something in working order.

On Monday the condo assn electrician is coming out to deal with the mystery outlet, mainly to calm buyers' concerns. It's mounted on exterior wall and is not up to code.

I've offered my mother's leather couch, in excellent condition, for just $250, just so I don't have to struggle with the handyman to get it out of there. I'm not even sure the 2 of us can do it. Realtor isn't sure she would want it as she has furniture in storage, but her mother, a quilter, has an interest in 2 large work tables my mother used and i was just going to get rid of them, so perhaps we could cobble together a barter or something. I REALLY don't want to have to move that couch. If I did, I would move it here because I could use a new couch but i would not have chosen brown.

I do already have a brown leather armchair with ottoman though, and all 3 pieces these could be enhanced with the right throw pillows/throws. I'm just tired of dark brown.

Sunday I'm schhleping 24 or so art pieces to the spa for exhibit. I thought I was all DONE but then art consultant said she really need 4 to 6 more large pieces, and she's already taken nearly all the large framed stuff. I may start looking at the rolled up tapestries and see if I could bring 1 or 2 of them.

How did my life ever get to be so busy?

Things are a little too loosy goosy with this art consultant. We haven't agreed on all the prices yet. I'm fairly flexible on prices, but I want to make sure we agree on them and document them in writing because it occurred to me if we didn't, she could sell something and then tell me she sold it for less than she really did. She seems perfectly nice, but I really don't know her.

Even though she told me that in the unlikely event of loss or theft, I assume the loss and she has no liability (in so many words) I will still itemize every piece I give her, with the prices, and have her sign it to acknowledge receipt.

I hope to squeeze in at least one walk this weekend.

My dad said recently he wants to adopt 2 cats. They would be outside during the day and in at night, but i know from experience that many privately run shelters won't let you take a cat that goes outdoors because there are so many safety issues. My dad was going to wait and try to find someone who had a cat or cats to give away, and because I would worry myself about his cats getting hit by a car, only because his apartment over my sister's barn is VERY close to a busy road where people drive too fast (although my sister has 3 acres of open space on their side of the road), I did notice a friend of mine posted on facebook about 67 cats in need of homes that were rescued from a hoarding situation and will be euthanized if homes aren't found.

So i told my dad about it and he seemed interested, although many of these cats were frightened, and I don't think he has the patience to deal with a quasi-feral cat. So we may need to more seriously consider other cats at the pound not from this particularly hoarding situation and still help them out indirectly by freeing up a bit of space at the shelter. I hope to go with him next weekend if things settle down with my mother.

My mother was so very unhappy to be in the hospital. She got through the surgery last night and the doctor seemed quite pleased with how it went...minimal blood loss, the 3 screws he inserted held together pretty well and he didn't have to use general anesthesia, only a mild anesthesia that he described as being almost like a local anesthesia.

Still, when I spoke to my mother today on my lunch break, she was slurring her words and was still very angry and upset, saying she hated it there and that it was awful. I said several times that I was going to come see her after work and she said she didn't want me to come. I'm not sure if she understood what I was saying.

Later in the day, I noticed I had developed a sore throat, and decided not to stop by there in case I was coming down with something; i don't want to expose her to anything so soon after the surgery.

I called her again tonight and she sounded SOOOO much better, more alert and not angry. It was like night and day.

Maybe tomorrow, if I don't feel any worse, I'll go over there with a mask and gloves.

In the meantime, I stopped at mom's condo last night with a detailed letter I'd already typed up to the HOA board complaining about the whole chimney inspection and lack of response from the property management company. I'd been trying to get the mandatory inspection done since July, wasted 6 hours waiting for no-shows and now i have a buyer whom I'm sure will want this taken care of before they take ownership.

I was able to get the address in the complex of the condo HOA board president from some of my mom's neighbors that I'm friendly with.

The board president wasn't home but I left the note in her door and we talked on the phone today. She was very supportive and said my letter really got her upset because she already had issues with the chimney cleaning company they'd hired and said they don't plan to hire them again. Apparently, there are still about 50 unit owners who haven't had the inspection done.

She also said she'd call the property mgmt company about something else the buyer's inspector uncovered, a mystery electrical outlet mounted on the outside of the condo in back with a huge plug in it that went up inside the wall. It looks like it's not to code and none of the other units have this. No one seems to know what this is for but prez agreed electrician would investigate and possibly remove it.

The other thing the inspection revealed is an apparent lack of a master shut-off valve for the water. HOA prez said there is only one master shut-off switch for each building; not every unit has one. Sounds very odd, but that's the way they were built and it's another thing I have no control over.

So it looks like the only repair the buyers are going to ask me to do is the replacement of the shower hardware/knob in the master bath. It leaks, is not secure to the wall and the water only comes out thru showerhead, not the tub faucet, no doubt because it's old. I don't have time to meet a plumber over there for an estimate, so my realtor is handling this (oh wow, she's actually DOING something to earn her commission) and will let me know. What's the max it could be, $400? Plumbers are so expensive.

After stopping at the condo last night, I also stopped in at the assisted living place and quickly packed a small suitcase of clothes for my mother. I know they have teeny closets and storage at the rehab place so I packed just 4 or so changes of clothes. I can always get more later but I wanted her to have them at the rehab place. I need to run them all through the laundry tomorrow (my work at home day) so they're all ready to go by the time she's released from the hospital Friday or Saturday. I couldn't really tell if they were clean or not.

I do feel really run down as I keep having to switch from matters related to my mother to the condo sale to the art sale to who knows what next. I wouldn't be surprised if I was coming down with a cold. Haven't slept that well either. My boss at work is out this week because she has shingles.

I just got a call from my 2nd cousin. I think I am going to let her buy that large piece that she had seen and wanted when she was here. I remember saying here in an earlier post that I was somewhat reluctant to part with it and felt uncomfortable charging her for it becus she's family but didn't want to give it away either.

Well, tonight she offered $800 for it, based on its size and what she paid for something else she bought from my mother years ago. She also said she could give me her employer's UPS number for a discounted shipping rate. I'm not sure I could pack it up well enough that it wouldn't break in transit and I've had many things break via UPS/FedEx.

She already picked out a few items I gave her when she was here and she seems to want to help out with my mother's expenses through an art sale, so why not? I already have many pieces I am holding onto. I have to let some of it go and quite frankly, I'd be happy to get $800 because normally when sold through a gallery, they'd take at least 30%, so on an $800 piece my mother would normally net only $560.

I may just ask if I can hand deliver it to her in New Jersey to avoid risk of breakage. I don't want to put her out and she also has had a great deal to manage lately as her husband, who is now in a nursing home, has Parkinson's and dementia, and her cats and dog have health problems too. I don't want to burden her with feeling like she has to entertain me, but maybe I can take her out to lunch.

Back to mom: There are still a lot of uphills I see in the near term future. It remains to be seen whether my mother will recover well enough to return to the assisted living place. I have found a short term rehab place for her and she doesn't even know that's where she's headed. Short-term rehab looks just the same as a nursing home (institutional, no privacy), and I anticipate she will be very upset to find herself there.

I need to keep her spirits up through 6 or 8 weeks and continue making steady progress becus Medicare will only pay for a patient who continues to make improvements. Once they "plateau," I will have to private pay if I want to keep her in rehab.

The assisted living place has said they will waive the $400/mth medication management fee while she's in rehab, but I will still have to pay her rent. They said that "most" residents who have to go into rehab in this kind of situation return to them, and I can only hope that's the case with my mom. However, I have to watch this carefully because if for some reason my mother is clearly not doing well, holding onto her room at the assisted living place will cost me $12,000 for just 2 months. I don't want to waste that kind of money, so I'll have to make some sort of preliminary decision to hold her room...or not,...at the assisted living place within maybe 2 weeks time. I should be able to look to the physical therapists for their opinions and guidance on that score.

If worst case scenario she isn't well enough to go back, at LEAST I wouldn't have to move her again becus the rehab place has a nursing home (and an assisted living component). I'm trying to keep the moves as few as possible because you can imagine how disruptive that would for anyone. The preference is still Maplewood, where she's lived since May, but at least now I am more or less positioned to deal with all future scenarios.