I can’t remember the last time I worked this hard.  I am getting some muscles going on here.  And its looks good on me.  I weigh the same but I’m looking good.  Want to keep this going after the work stops.

We’ve really had so much stuff to deal with.  Yesterday we got all the furniture into the mostly empty garage. We need the rooms as empty as we can get them for painting and the new rug.  That work starts tomorrow.  Thursday I will go and get the rug part started.  Today, we finish with the smaller furniture, the last of the books, the camera equipment.

It’s all been very hard to do because we are Dad Wrangling.  That poor guy, he’s making our lives hell when we need it the least.  He wants to help, of course he does.  But everything he touches turns to crap, literally. What would have been a free desk now has to go to the dump.  At some point early this morning he went downstairs and started rearranging, which is bad enough, taking stuff out of the trash to keep etc…  But when I saw that he’d removed the panel that was the right support for a desk in order to fix it, well, jagged nails everywhere, hammers, broken wood. *sigh*

He refuses to have his stress test and we refuse to have him go up and down stairs, lift 100 pound boxes of books but then he physically threatens us and does it any way and then his blood pressure falls to 60/47 or rises to 202/140 and we spend hours trying to stabilize him and then a couple more telling him what happened and he forgets that and asks again.  If I could ship him somewhere right now I would.  The angry agressive jerk that was my dad growing up is back and I’m having a hard time loving him right now.  We tell him all that we’re doing and ten minutes later he shows up and says what are you doing.  Mixing Alzheimers with Diabetes, Hypertension, and a history of aggression together and you have someone that is challenging.  Argh.

So.  The last cleaning and boxing up, patching holes and sanding for prep work.  Mom and I have decided that we are hiring them to do ALL the painting and the new carpet and whatevers left is what’s left for the other things.  We just no longer have the energy to do that part.

I’ve been congested in the head and lungs ever since the fire.  I can’t tell if I’ve got a cold or if it’s from the fire, all the extinguisher/smoke/dust dust.  I sound like Mickey Mouse. Seriously I do.  Very squeakey and sometimes none of it comes out. And I have a major interview Wednesday.  I’ve got to knock it out of the park.  So tomorrow I take it easy, putter in my own room, make sure I get enough rest, prepare my clothes.

The best thing out of this besides that I get my own apartment sans kitchen?  Is that my mom and I are working together as though we’ve done this all our lives, amiably, we agree on everything, almost no crankiness, smooth as butter.  What a blessing that is.

M. said the other night that he was certain that the reason I moved home a year ago was to be here for these weeks and the coming months.  I know he’s right.  I never would have guessed this was the purpose.  My poor mother if I was working and not here.  OMG.

The one thing I hear is that caregivers can die before the sick person they’re caring for from all the stress.  My job is make my mother’s life as easy as I can so that she can take care of Dad.  We would never be able to put him in assisted living right now, he thinks he’s fine and would just escape. That time is coming soon and not that far away though.  He looks and sounds normal to folks who don’t know him but he told some folks yesterday he got diabetes at 40 and that he’s now 88.  He got diabetes at 52 and is now 82.  His dates and numbers and facts are all scrambled up in there. He makes the worst decisions ever, he believes we are insane and making his life a living hell when it is really the other way around. If he were amiable and simply complaing that would be one thing but he’s very strong and very aggressive. He wants to manage his diabetes but if we let him he will fark it all up.

2010 is The Ball of Confusion but this is temporary, we will pervail, we will survive.