Mom & Me Four Archive

    We will be taking a trip to the Phoenix metroplex sometime next week to get Mom's military ID card renewed. This renewal will be the final one, as it will extend indefinitely. I don't know why it took the VA here so long to finally figure out they couldn't do it here. They are "set up" to only renew the cards of those who are living in the "retirement home" for veterans. Seems that information could have been relayed without all the "checking" they felt they needed to do on my mother's "status", but, finally, Monday of last week, someone called and left a message as to the problem. I'm fine with this. Mom loves trips to the Valley, even though they take a bit of a toll on her. She's already excited about this one. We decided to wait until the weather cleared. This entire upcoming week promises to be clear until the weekend. Essentially, I'll call the place that renewed her before, because it's little used and I'm sure we'll be able to get in and out easily, just as before. They have shortened hours, so I'll check those, find out if ID card renewal still works on a walk-in basis or if they've switched to making appointments and make whatever arrangements are required to get it done. Then, we'll head down to the Valley early, get her renewal processed, go to lunch and head back up the mountain. It'll be a one day trip. At this point I see no reason to rent a hotel room, but we'll wait to see what sort of arrangements I can make.
    Still thinking, in case you're wondering. Haven't figured out how to proceed, yet, on the issues I'm considering. Might be a series of posts. There is so much experiential, researched and heard-said information I'm working with, here. As well, much of all three types are, well, less than forthright, to say the least. There are a few things I want to run by MCF, as well, regarding her experience with taking care of her father in home. As I recall, when he first joined her family, he was not experiencing dementia, but I may be wrong about this. If he was, he had not yet become confused and afraid of being alone. He simply, as was the case with my mother, didn't want to be alone anymore. I don't think he experienced a "failure to thrive" period, as did my mother, since there were three people in the household besides him. But, my mother's didn't last very long...a couple of weeks, as I recall...the amount of time it took me to discover that she was sleeping all the time and make arrangements to leave the full time job in which I was employed. As soon as I made myself available full time to my mother, she was up and at 'em, again, so much so that we spent the first couple years traveling, not only to see relatives in and out of state but on jaunts: One to Salt Lake City so she could do genealogical research; one to Casper, Wyoming, on a whim of mine; one to the Grand Canyon, no, make that two; and, of course, searching the state for a spring-summer-fall home, which Mom purchased in June of 1997. After that, most of our traveling was back and forth between Mesa and Prescott. We took a couple of trips to visit relatives after that but all our traveling, except for going back and forth between homes, stopped in 2000. I'm smiling as I remember our trips. We were excellent traveling buddies. We even had some illicit adventures. Come to think of it, we're still excellent traveling buddies, even though our trips are few, short and purposeful, now.
    Hmmm...well, I'm rambling again. Time to hit the sack.
    Later.