Last week was my birthday. I don’t get excited about them anymore. Who wants to be older anyway? (besides my teens that is!) Jon is always sweet and finds a way to do something special for me. This year he gave me a card, inside he listed reasons why he loves me. It is just beautiful and something I will treasure. We went out for dinner too and spoiled ourselves with 3 courses. We don’t do that often, so it was a real treat.

My friend Yvette made my day by having a bouquet of pink roses delivered to me! Wow….somehow flowers just make me feel so loved and appreciated. Maybe because they seem like a decadent gift, something I wouldn’t buy for myself.

My kids, on the other hand, were pretty lame about my birthday this year. I try not to let it bother me, but I wish they could put a bit of effort into it. My son remembered and wished me a happy birthday, and my daughter bought me a generic card. Is it too much to hope for a thoughtful gift? Nothing expensive. Just something that shows they thought about my birthday for more than 15 seconds, you know? They could make me something or clean the house for me, or even bake me a cake— but they just don’t. Some years they do better, but maybe it’s just their ages. They are still so wrapped up in themselves that they don’t think about me much anymore. My daughter spent days on end planning her friend’s birthday party and creating a slideshow video for her…..I got a card (not even a MOM card, just a generic card you could give to someone you work with!) That shows you where I rank on her priority list right now! I’m sure when it’s my son’s girlfriend’s birthday, he’ll be stressing for days about what to get for her. (and asking me to buy it since he has no job!)

I guess that’s why I try to keep myself so busy all the time. I wonder how they would feel if all I did for their birthdays is give them a hug or a card?

Recently, my 82 year old Mom was diagnosed with early Alzheimers Disesase. I have 4 siblings, and we have all noticed that the problems with her memory were getting much worse. We worried about her driving and living alone. My Dad passed away 10 years ago, but she’s been doing very well until about this past year. She had a couple of car accidents, and was required to take a road test to determine her safety to drive. She passed the test– I was quite surprised actually. Then she had eye surgery to replace her cornea and the surgeon told her not to drive for at least 6 weeks. Things got much worse then. Suddenly she seemed to not be able to remember anything. She felt trapped and dependant and was very upset about losing the freedom of having a car. I took her to see a Geriatric specialist to look into the memory issues. She had several tests done including a CT scan of her brain. The results showed a global atrophy (thinning or wasting) of the brain tissue which is consistent with Alzheimers Disease. She did very well on the mental status exams, except for anything regarding short term memory. This doctor told Mom she should not be driving anymore which was a terrible blow for her.

Mom lives in a lovely townhouse complex where she moved with my Dad about 16 years ago. At that time, they were both very healthy and functional. Unfortunately, there are no services within walking distance so Mom needs to get a ride everywhere she wants to go. We came to the decision with her that she needed to move to something smaller and closer to services. So, this past month I’ve been driving back and forth from her place (about 35-45 mins one way), taking her to look at properties and arranging things with the realtor to sell her place and buy an apartment. Luckily, I know a wonderful realtor who is not only great at her job, but also a very kind and caring person too. She has been so good to my Mom. I get teary just thinking what I would have done without all her help.

During all of this, my Mom’s memory problems have gotten much worse. She is naturally a very anxious person and worries a lot. This whole thing has almost put her over the edge. The diagnosis, her poor eyesight, her lack of freedom and transportation issues, moving…she’s having a very difficult time. I’ve been with her as much as I can and trying to reassure her that this is the right decision to make, but every day she changes her mind. Yesterday I went there to meet with the Realtor and the property inspector and she was crying and telling me she couldn’t go through with it because she couldn’t handle it and it was happening too fast. Now that the contracts are signed and she’s paid her deposit for the purchase, she sounds much calmer. I guess she will have good and bad days. It’s just so hard to see my Mom cry. This is a woman who raised 5 children with a not-very-supportive husband. It’s really a true role-reversal between us and it’s very difficult and painful to go through.

Not only that, but her brothers, sister and friends keep questioning her decisions and giving suggestions so she gets so confused that she doesn’t know if she’s coming or going.

Besides all of that going on, my son Devon is struggling with anxiety and school and I’ve been taking him to counselling appointments and trying to get him connected with the proper services to help him. My daughter Alison is still living in Calgary with her friend, but they have recently been given notice that they have to move and their hours have been cut at work so they might have to return sooner than planned. She had been hoping to stay there to work until September and then return to Vancouver to go back to school. She’s learning lots of great life lessons, but our relationship has been so much better with her living out, I’m just so worried about her moving back in here. I don’t think that’s the plan- but without money or employment, I don’t know how they plan to be able to get their own place when they return.

Jon has been so busy with his BCIT courses, but thankfully they have just finished so I hope we can get some more time together soon. We went out to a Tweetup in Vancouver last night and had a really nice time. Great to get out and talk to interesting people. We had a few pints and we both fell asleep on the Skytrain coming home. A young guy shook my shoulder and asked “where did you want to get off?” We missed our stop by one, so we had to catch the return train. We just missed the bus so we had to take a taxi the rest of the way home. Still a good night:-)

Things are looking up I think.

This was in the days before we all had cell phones, so I called the motorhome park to try to find my parents. The person from the desk said she would put up a note for them on the bulletin board because they didn’t seem to be there. My mom still still has that note today. It reads “Daughter in Labour- Help!” Mom says when she saw the note she nearly fainted because she had no idea when it had been posted! Of course, she called me immediately and I told her we were on our way to the hospital soon. They came over and followed behind. The traffic was terrible that afternoon (as always on the California freeways) and my friend decided to drive up the shoulder. We figured that if the police pulled us over, we’d have a good explanation:-)

Turned out that my labour lasted all night. My husband at the time was carrying a ‘daddy pager’ which was loaned from the hospital so that I could let him know if I was in labour. My friend paged it and called his home number over and over all night and he never responded. It was heartbreaking, but I had a job to do and my parents were at my side. I don’t know what I would have done without them. They stayed most of the night, and went out sometime in the morning to get breakfast after I was finally resting with my epidural in place. My mom had never witnessed the natural birth of a child, as all 5 of her children were born via C-section. For most of us she was under general anesthesia too, so she has no memories of our births at all. By the morning,  I wasn’t in any pain because of the epidural and was nearly ready to deliver– my husband finally called. I guess he was probably hoping the baby had already been born so he wouldn’t have to face me or my parents. I made the decision to wait for him to get there before I delivered and the midwife agreed there was no hurry. Looking back on it, I realize I gave him a precious gift of the privilege of being at his son’s birth, but he didn’t deserve it and it’s my one regret about that day. I wish now that I’d shared it only with my mom. It was amazing to have her there beside me when my son came into the world. I will treasure the memory and the look on her face forever. My dad was out in the waiting room. I don’t think he was ready for that kind of experience! He joked afterwards that he’d never seen a baby that was “still hot”   He was goofy but always there for me when I needed him. I miss my dad.

My parents stayed for another 2 weeks and it was so hard when they left. I knew right then that I had to start making plans to move back home to be close to them. My husband wasn’t helping me at all and I needed family around me. 7 months later, my parents came back with the motorhome and a U-Haul trailer. We packed up everything I wanted to take and we headed back to Canada. It was the best move I ever made. No regrets:-)

Happy Birthday Devon!

It sounds like my daughter is settling in Calgary pretty well. She and her friend have moved into their shared townhouse (2 other roomies) and she’s working quite a bit at her hostess job at a restaurant. She’s even looking for a second job! She’s lost her debit card (for about the millionth time) so of course it’s going to be mom to the rescue again going to her bank here to get her a new one and mail it out. Luckily I’m still joint on her account, so they should let me do it.  The best part about her living there is that we don’t argue anymore- AT ALL. I guess it’s difficult to argue with someone when your only contact is text, facebook and phone:-)

I just finished my set of 4 shifts and now I’m off for 5 days. I’ll be doing some local pick-ups of garage sale donations and some more trolling for more. I’m hoping I can get a helium tank donated for balloons and maybe some coffee from Tims or Starbucks. Anyone have a connection? I think my brother can hook me up for some tables. I’m going to need LOTS. I can’t believe all the stuff I’ve collected for the sale. Now to try to figure out how to display it all effectively. I have SO many books. Still trying to work out how to put those out without taking up too much space. I have some great free-standing display grids that I can use to hang clothing on and some hangers my mom gave me. No idea how I’m going to find time to sort through all the stuff and pricing it all?? Yikes…I really hope this sale goes well after all this work.  One thing I thought I might try: I sent a request to the local mall to see if I can set up outside one of the entrances on the Sunday prior to the sale and hand out flyers about it and sell my homemade treats. It’s a short notice request: their website states that non-profit requests need to be made 90 days prior. I guess it was worth a try anyway.

I took my goodies in to work the other day when I had my in-office day. I sold them for $1 a piece as donations to the walk, and I made $60! Everyone raved over the homemade marshmallow Smores. Now, I’m working on getting more marshamallows made to supply trays of goodies in the volunteers’ office at the hockey rink during my son’s Spring Break Tournament next week.  If I have to be there nearly everyday helping out, I might as well troll for donations too, right?

Last night it was pretty quiet on the phones, and I was playing on Twitter a bit and posting some new auctions. I found Ashton Kutcher and Demi Moore, Shaquille O’neil and MCHammer! They all tweet, and it was fun watching everyone try to chat with Ashton and Demi for a while. I just wish I could get any ONE of them to re-tweet about my blog auctions. Can you imagine the clicks I could get? Ashton has something like 250,000 followers! I can dream anyway:-)

My guess is that most meals have been consisting of peanut butter on toast or ramen noodles….oh, I remember those days:-) 

*giggle*

Here’s the situation now:
Since Sunday, they have been ‘winging it’, staying at some random friend’s house and sometimes sleeping in the underground car park under the apartment building. This is where I started getting “nervous”.

Ok, a bit more than nervous maybe:-) My brain was screaming “ARE YOU GUYS CRAZY? YOU COULD BE RAPED OR KILLED!!” but I restrained myself slightly and said something like “I bet that’s cold.”

Then I talked to her today and she was hanging out in her friend’s car all day while her friend was at work. When asked where they were going to go tonight, she had no answer.
My brain screamed again “MY CHILD IS HOMELESS! I MUST SAVE HER!”
but I said something like “do you guys have any idea where you could go?”
Of course, she had no ideas and said they would probably stay in the car park tonight.
Well, my maternal super-hero couldn’t resist. I started looking up hostels in Calgary online and found one not too far from where they were. I ended up faxing my credit card info to the hostel so they could stay there tonight. *sigh* Of course, Aly was all teary and thankful and sorry they hadn’t planned it all better, etc, etc, etc…

So now my brain is screaming (a little less loudly now) “what are they going to do tomorrow?” and then my sweet, wonderful husband sent me an IM saying ‘what about couch-surfing?’

So, off I went on my google search, and found Couchsurfing.com which is an online community of folks all over the world who offer up their couches, extra beds, and sometimes a room to travelers for a night or a few nights….for FREE! What a neat concept. I had read a bit about it on SparklytoSingle’s blog. She had an interesting experience in Europe with couch surfing, (and stirred up quite a controversy on her comments) but I’m not going to think about that right now:-) Besides, I’ve only sent requests to couch-offering females. Now, I’m just waiting to hear back from a (hopefully nice, kind, sweet, friendly) person who will allow my child to crash on her couch for free.

Whew, this teen stuff gets more and more challenging. Moms of 20-somethings keep telling me it gets better…I sure hope so. This has got me sprouting grey hairs everyday.

Update: I got a reply back from a very kind person from couchsurfing.com who is letting Aly and her friend stay with her for a couple of days. Can’t wait to hear how it all went:-)

1) They think you are old, no matter how young you are.

2) They despise helping out around the house. It almost seems like you’re causing them physical pain when you try to ask them to do anything.

3) They like to eat crappy food and they criticize your cooking. They view vegetables as if they were raw sewage (ok, maybe that’s just my son. My daughter likes most veggies)

4) You cannot force them to do ANYTHING. Homework, studying, sleeping, eating well….yes, you can encourage but if they really don’t want to they will find a way around it and thwart all your efforts.

5) They don’t respect anyone else’s property. They figure if it’s in the house, it’s fair game to be taken out and left at friends’ houses– never to return.

6) They think laws that they don’t like are “dumb” They have no concept of the risks of things like driving without seatbelts or having 5 friends in the car with you when you’re a brand new driver.

7) They lie….alot.

They don’t crawl up your lap anymore and give you hugs ‘just because’ (not that you’d want them on your lap, but you know what I mean)

9) They stay in the shower too long and don’t hang up their towels. Let’s also throw in using too much shower gel and shampoo and never re-filling the dispensers. I don’t think they know how to put the toilet roll onto the dispenser, never mind taking the empty one off.

10) Because looking at them reminds you that your sweet, cuddly babies are gone forever:-(

I’ve been wondering what happened to my sales in my Etsy shop for the past 10 days, but then I realized today that I’ve been getting emails from local buyers all week. It’s actually been my best week of sales so far, and that’s all overflow from the craft fairs I did, people who picked up my business cards or saw one of my items that a friend bought. It’s been great! Even got a second order today from someone who received her first items and wanted more (thanks C!)

I’m working on plans to open my second Etsy shop soon. Jon is building me a light box because the first sets of photos he took weren’t up to his standards:-) This next shop will be really fun because it involves doing something I really enjoy. Juicybags is fun, but I got a bit burnt out from all the pouch cleaning and sewing. I will keep it going, but on a smaller scale for a while- listing items on Etsy that I have in stock rather than doing custom orders.

I met someone briefly at the ‘Best of 604′ event last week. She’s a local blogger with a very interesting story and I’m enjoying reading it. I especially enjoyed this post. It’s a list of 20 memorable moments of her life. I thought it was a great idea, so I tried to write one myself this morning. Maybe because I’ve got about 15 years on her– but my list is really LONG already and I’m not done. I keep remembering things and adding them into the middle. One thing I noticed while reading it over…sadly it seems to be the negative things that stick out in my memories the most. I must try to balance it a little before I dare post it. Everyone will think I’ve had a horrible life and that’s definitely not the case!