Wednesday, December 24, 2008
Elder Care
As with most of my visits to Quincy, I've spent a good deal of time over this break attending to my 97-year-old grandmother. On Monday we had our big trip to the hairdresser (Hair Affair, to be exact), which actually required a crew of three to execute. One person had to walk in front, providing balance support, with another behind as a catcher in case there was some sort of fall. The third person served as the driver and, accordingly, as the absorber of all pithy comments about the 1940s. I was relegated to front man status as a result of the incident two years ago when I dropped my grandmother on her front lawn on Christmas Eve. Christmas Eve has been cancelled in my family ever since.
Anyway, we managed to get my grandmother her permanent, which oddly enough lasts only for a week. I discovered that her hairdresser plays Rush Limbaugh at top volume (Caroline Kennedy was the hot topic of the day) and stocks her waiting area with back issues of The Sun and Weekly World News. In light of this, it is frankly pretty surprising that they managed to get me to leave.
Yesterday we were then put to work around her house. I got the task of moving objects from one part of her house to the other, because an item like the box for a chair massager is something you're definitely really going to want to hold on to. Then we worked on filling up her books of the fifty state quarters, which she has now spent more time on than any single actual job during her lifetime. I'm not quite sure why, because she quite frankly admits she detests them. In fact, at the close of our session of pounding coins into a book with a prescription bottle, she tried to force me to take them. And I may well, as I definitely need the parking meter money.
As with most of my visits to Quincy, I've spent a good deal of time over this break attending to my 97-year-old grandmother. On Monday we had our big trip to the hairdresser (Hair Affair, to be exact), which actually required a crew of three to execute. One person had to walk in front, providing balance support, with another behind as a catcher in case there was some sort of fall. The third person served as the driver and, accordingly, as the absorber of all pithy comments about the 1940s. I was relegated to front man status as a result of the incident two years ago when I dropped my grandmother on her front lawn on Christmas Eve. Christmas Eve has been cancelled in my family ever since.
Anyway, we managed to get my grandmother her permanent, which oddly enough lasts only for a week. I discovered that her hairdresser plays Rush Limbaugh at top volume (Caroline Kennedy was the hot topic of the day) and stocks her waiting area with back issues of The Sun and Weekly World News. In light of this, it is frankly pretty surprising that they managed to get me to leave.
Yesterday we were then put to work around her house. I got the task of moving objects from one part of her house to the other, because an item like the box for a chair massager is something you're definitely really going to want to hold on to. Then we worked on filling up her books of the fifty state quarters, which she has now spent more time on than any single actual job during her lifetime. I'm not quite sure why, because she quite frankly admits she detests them. In fact, at the close of our session of pounding coins into a book with a prescription bottle, she tried to force me to take them. And I may well, as I definitely need the parking meter money.
