Reading Frenzy

I don't know why, but I am suddenly in a reading frenzy.  I just can't read enough.  I have all these wonderful books that I want to read and I am not spending as much time on the computer and turning off the TV in the afternoon so I can read.

I don't know what sparked it.  Maybe reading my mother's trip diary of a trip she took in about 1998 with her husband.  They went to Amsterdam and this is the kind of trip I would love to take, without the trailer part.  They rented a trailer stayed in one trailer park for a long time and used that as a base, while they took their time, driving around looking at one or two places a day, then returning to their base to play cards, read, wander around the area on foot, and just relax.  

I know when you travel thousands of miles and spend thousands of dollars, you feel like you should see as much as possible, but boy does having a vacation that includes guilt-free reading sound good to me.

Right now I'm frantically reading a Vince Flynn book, listening to a Diana Gabaldon (one I read many years ago) and looking at all the really good books (Kindle and real) I have here that I want to read.  I am, for example, about 75% through the latest book on Dementia and want to finish it, though I reached the part where the patients are put in convalescent hospitals, the worst of the worst.  I guess I was too depressed and ready to read something a little lighter...like a nice book about political assassinations.

My mother seemed grumpy today.  The lady who says she "never naps" was napping yesterday when we got there, and napping today when we got there.  But the difference was that yesterday she made a joke of it and today she was grumpy.

Yesterday I brought her laundry, which I had washed.  I slipped in a couple of outfits from that box of her clothes that she had turned into the front desk because she said they weren't hers.

When I unloaded the bag I brought the clothes in, I put them on her bed in 2 piles.  She put away one pile, but the second pile contained things she had never seen before (including 2 pairs of slacks that were in the laundry she gave me to wash).  She insisted she had never seen them.

In truth, one outfit I really don't remember, but if all the OTHER clothes in the box are hers, there is no reason to believe that particular outfit is not hers either.

It's not like she has problems wearing clothes that don't belong to her.  Heck, she has a huge wardrobe and 99% of it was purchased at the Hospice thrift store, where she worked.  She has bragged many times that she doesn't need to buy new clothes because she gets the pick of all these beautiful clothes that are donated to Hospice.

But when I tried to tell her that they were in the bag she gave me to wash and that I had pictures of her wearing those clothes, that seemed to set her off.   She really didn't talk much after that and though we were going to the bank, we had to tell her at least four times where we were going and what we were doing and even when we pulled into the parking lot of the bank, where she was yesterday, she didn't know where she was and asked again why we were there.

[The clothes thing may soon become a moot point because she has put on weight since she's been getting 3 good meals a day, and I'm noticing that she is outgrowing most of her clothes.]

The good news, though, is that FINALLY her money issues seem to be resolved, at least for now.  We have only been working on getting this settled for a month now. I called Ed and told him to treat himself to lunch because all of his work finally paid off.  Literally.

Walt has been wonderful the past couple of days, helping with the money issues and trying to sort out her car issues (it looked like she did not remember to pay her 2012 car registration, but because he discovered that, Ed was able to find a note for a check she had written and the bank found that the DMV cashed it, so she did pay, she just either never got the registration, or lost is, or forgot to put it on the car).

But the interesting thing about having Walt there so often in the past few days is that he told me today that he had no idea that her dementia was so bad and he wondered how she had functioned in the last few years on her own.  FINALLY people are figuring out that I'm not over-reacting!  When you are with her every day you begin to realize how bad it all is, something you can't pick up, generally, in a couple of hours of visiting because she has so many good cover-up tactics.

I was thrilled, however, to discover that she had DONE THE HOMEWORK for the Brain Gymnasium.  I was not only thrilled, I was flabbergasted!   She made one slight mistake, but by God, she did it, though when I left her today and told her I'd be back tomorrow for Brain Gym, she frowned again.  She goes to those classes like she goes to doctor and dentist appointments, I fear, even though she leaves them in better shape.

With all her memory problems, it surprises me how much she is reading.  I don't think she has been to the library, but there is a bookshelf downstairs with books that change weekly and she has "read" several of them.   I'm wondering how much she really follows when she reads a novel.  But she's enjoying it, so I'm glad that she is making the effort.

As for me, I follow plots but my problem is that I should have learned speedreading so I could get through all these books I'm dying to read, but have to finish before I can move on to the next one.

All things considered, a reading fanatacism isn't all that bad, I guess.  Could be worse.  I could be watching NCIS and Criminal Minds marathons all day....