Alice Nan's last day here. We had a quiet morning. AN and Walt went off to Mass and then came home for breakfast, so Polly could have her Sunday sausage.
At 2, Alice Nan and I went to Atria to visit my mother. It's good for people who don't see her for long intervals to come and visit. The distraction is good for her and it helps people to understand how she is now.
All of my life, my mother was the perfect hostess. She threw wonderful parties and always kept the conversation going. She was such a good conversationalist that it is amazing to me how tongue tied I get when I should be chatting.
It used to drive me crazy when we drove to Santa Barbara with my mother and Walt's mother. My mother has always been uncomfortable with silences and she kept the conversation going for 300 miles till I just longed for a bit of silence. What she said was often interesting, but there was just never a chance to sit back and enjoy the scenery without having to be in a conversation.
(Ironic how much I miss conversation these days!)
But even now that she is in the throes of dementia, she has not lost that need to fill the silence with conversation. Only now she makes no sense. She is also losing more and more words so that the thought she's trying to express, which is already unintelligible, often ends in "blah, blah, blah..." with waving hands and a laugh because she can't find the words.
I took a picture of her and Alice Nan.
I texted it off to Jeri and Tom and within 5 minutes the phone rang and it was Jeri. Jeri tries to call her grandmother often and 99% of the time gets no answer. I haven't figured out if it's because she not in her room or if she just doesn't know what that ringing is. But since Jeri could see that I was there, she rang and they had a nice, brief conversation where my mother asked what she always asks "when are you coming to see me?" But it was nice that they touched bases with each other.
We went off to the market to do "a little" shopping. Nugget Market has added a ton of new products and my "little" shopping ended up costing $155. Good thing I wasn't doing a "big" shopping! Fortunately (or not) the total can be somewhat explained by the fact that I bought more meat than I usually do.
We watched the Grammys, which is weird since NONE of us is into today's music. In fact, I think I only knew the name of about 5 people involved but it took more than an hour for us to admit that nobody was watching it and we were looking forward to turning it off.
Walt and Alice Nan went upstairs early and I was going to watch the one episode of Outlander that I watch each night (I'm working my way through Season 1). However I started watching too early and ended up watching three episodes, which was great fun. I'd forgotten how terrific Season 1 was.
It is 3 a.m. as I'm writing this. I have wrapped a birthday present for Alice Nan, whose birthday is today, and I'm going to make her some French toast before she gets on the road and heads home to celebrate her birthday with her husband.
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