Emily dances some HipHop

Emily dances

More on Gwen and previous musings

Well, after all was said & done, we decided that having Gwen go into assisted living was just too expensive. Even with all of the help she could get from the .GOV, she was coming up about $2500 short top cover anything that looked like a decent place to stay (and some of them weren't any too pleasant, believe me!). That means that if we liquidate her assets at their current value, we'd have to figure out something that would cost less (and probably be much less pleasant) in about 2.5 years. On top of that, we just couldn't see how it made any sense to sign on for that and essentially give up any hope for her having a decent life.

Anyway, the upshot is that Gwen is now living with us in our little 3-bedroom, 2-bathroom, single story home while we try to sell her 2-story (that she can't live in because she can't go up stairs even though she thinks she can - she almost fell going up the 2 steps into our house). I don't know what we're going to do longer term. We had considered buying a house jointly, but the liabilities associated with that are somewhat off-putting at this point, and Gwen won't go for not having her name on the title deed. She has a phobia about not owning her own house, and won't face up to the fact that the house will be seized to pay for her long-term care if her name is on it, when the time comes that we can no longer provide the level of care she needs (I'm not sure, but I don't think that situation is that far off in the future).

At this point, and considering her health, I won't buy jointly with her and have her name on the title deed, so we're sort-of stuck. I suppose we'll either have to find a bigger place to rent and start charging her some portion of our expenses, or we'll have to buy a home on our own dime that is more than we'll need in a few years (but at least it won't be taken when she is forced to go into a more comprehensive care situation).

I hate this. I have to think in terms that I find repulsive. She's family, and we are doing what we can, but on top of her other health issues she's suffering from dementia and goes between 6 & 15 in her apparent mental age. She really is in no condition to be making decisions about anything that requires adult thinking, but we don't want to take it to court and try to force guardianship. First of all, I'm not sure we'd actually get it. She can hold it all together for the short time needed for various evaluations & such, but then goes off the deep end for a couple days afterwards - that's how she fooled the docs for so long. The docs didn't believe she was demented (or physically deteriorating) until she was in hospital for a long time and couldn't hide it from them any longer. Same thing happened with her COPD, CHF, and severe depression. Now she's trying to take herself off the medications (she's simply refusing to take most of them), and her mental & physical state is getting quite bad. In fact, her condition is worsening quite noticeably from day to day. I'm not sure what will be the next step, but we're going to have to do something soon, I fear.

Musings on Aging & Guilt

It looks like Gwen (aka MIL & Suzi's mom) is going to have to go into assisted living. She isn't making much progress on getting back to full mobility, and is having serious short-term memory issues. She can't, for example, remember that Suzi is going to Swansea, Wales next week for her new job, even 5 minutes after is it mentioned in conversation, and despite that this has been a regular topic of conversation for several weeks' worth of daily visits. We've also been finding out that she's been falling pretty frequently and boiling pots of water dry because she forgot it was on the stove.

Not good that its happening, but good that we caught it before she did something like set the house on fire. We've been watching more closely since she fell last spring and cut her head quite badly, but even with all that, she still has been hiding some issues from us. That's much harder for her to do in the 24-hour care she's been getting, so los of stuff coming to light.

The part I'm having the most trouble with is the guilt I feel over this. I'm feeling it because we didn't do something sooner (I'm niot sure WHAT I was supposed to do, but SOMETHING), and also over the need to liquidate her assets somewhat (like I'm trying to get my hands on her assets). In truth, we've been trying for several years to get her to do something about her increasingly apparent memory issues and her falling. We did manage to convince her to see a neurosurgeon a few years ago to get a shunt installed (she has Normal Pressure Hydrocephalus on top of everything else), but she's been in denial about everything else.

The people at the assisted living facilities are all telling us that this is normal, since she's been independent for so many years, and doesn't want to need to depend on someone else. As far as the assets go, the whole point of what Suzi & I are doing is to be able to provide the best care we can for her. That means taking certain steps to ensure that her finances aren't drained by things that won't provide benefit to her (like selling her old car that needs several thousand dollars in maintenance & repair). The thing is, I know all these feelings are just not accurate (but it sure doesn't help deal with them).

The worst part so far is having to do something with her dog. The dog (JJ is his name) is a sweet dog, but has no real socialization to speak of, and isn't house broken (Gwen apparently didn't have the energy to deal with that, and certainly wouldn't have welcomed any intervention by us). Normally, I'd say we should just take him on with our own dog, but JJ can't seem to stop humping our dog, Lady, and we haven't been successful in getting him housebroken (at 9 years, it's pretty late for that). After a few days around JJ, Lady starts hiding in places with low ceilings, and snapping at anyone/anything that comes near her. It simply isn't fair to her to make her live with that, and I will NOT put up with a dog that does his business in the house. That leaves pretty much one option at this point, and it depresses me because the shelters are swamped with pets abandoned because the economy is so bad that their owners simply couldn't afford them any more (for those that don't know, TX is showing an official unemployment rate of roughly 8%, but masks the real rate by denying between 1/2 and 2/3 of all unemployment claims). At any rate, it will be almost impossible for him to get adopted (he's cute and sweet, though, so maybe...).

Emily at Girl Scout Camp

My baby girl went off to Girl Scout camp this week. I took this snapshot shortly before we left her there. Its funny how much I miss her when she isn't here.

Memorial Day

When we asked, they volunteered. They fulfilled a need that we have that their love of this country or their own needs have brought them to fulfill. At the very least, we owe them remembrance for their service. I believe that we owe them far more than that simple humble gift.

Please, whatever else you do today, remember the troops. remember those who gave everything they had, including life itself, to preserve this country and our ideals. Remember those who died defending our freedoms. Remember those who died for our ideals. Remember htose who died because they believed in the dream.

Most of all, remember those who died for the lies we were told. Those who told the lies must and will be held to account, but our troops didn't tell us the big lies. They did the job that was given to them as best they could.

May their diety of choice look on them with favor.

Contemplating the proposed new Assault Weapons Ban

I've been thinking about gun laws quite a bit lately. The thing is, even if you set aside the illegal use of a firearm (discount that whole pesky murder thing for a second), most of the illegal uses I've read about in the last decade or more involve violation of various Federal gun laws aside from the actual use of the firearm (straw purchase, felon in posession, unregistered automatic weapon, etc.).

The case of someone who legally has a firearm and uses it for illegal purposes seems to be pretty unusual. We just keep layering more laws, as if we can somehow make it MORE illegal or make it illegal ENOUGH that people who ignore the law will suddenly start obeying firearms laws. I'm not trying to be a jerk, but I just don't understand how making possession of something that they are already in violation of the law by having will help stop people from possessing that item. It hasn't worked with alcohol (prohibition), with drugs (witness our current troubles along our southern border), or firearms (criminals still get guns - imagine that! A criminal that commits crimes!). 

We're hearing increasing calls from the current administration for the banning of assault weapons based on the unverified (and unverifiable - they won't let us have SNs for most of these weapons) claim that the violence along the borders is a result of smuggling of weapons out of the USA. There have certainly been some cases of illegal weapons smuggling, but the claims that the automatic weapons are coming from the USA, when they are almost completely unavailable to legitimate purchasers seems like a bit of a fairy tale designed to work some political magic.

I would encourage anyone reading this to contact their Federal Representative and Senators to demand that they consider no legislation to re-enact the assault weapons ban or any other law regarding making firearms illegal.

Until we can get serial numbers that will uphold the claim that drug smugglers are buying guns illegally in this country and taking them across the border, it seems much more likely to me that we will only make our own citrizens more vulnerable to the drug gang violence (as the people of Mexico are) by taking steps to address a problem that can't be substantiated to actually exist. Furthermore, the purchases and smuggling are already acknowledged to be illegal, so why don't we try enforcing our existing laws (and maybe close our border to illegal traffic in both directions at the same time!).