Hadn't realized how bad it had become. Working five days-a-week while visiting Dorian at Elmwood every day for the past 7 months -- plus keeping up a battery of activities in relation to my work has taken its toll. I'm buried under by debris and may have to have the refrigerator hauled away without breaking the seal. I can't imagine what pathogens might be flourishing in there. Maybe I'll just have it delivered to the Bayer Pharmaceutical Lab for research for some new cure for the Ebola virus.
All kidding aside, with my daughter coming home to live (temporarily) with me in my small condo will bring with it a cadre of social workers, in-home help aides, physiotherapists; all with judgmental eyes with which to view her living conditions. Since acquiring her two live-in cats and their cat box as well, things are becoming desperate, indeed.
This move is necessary since the RCEB case management team didn't kick in until last week (after a 7 month stay in nursing homes!), and the long-range planning that should have been handled months ago means that they were not prepared for locating a living arrangement (read that group home or a residential placement in an institution) where her two felines would be accepted. Giving them up is simply not an option; but how could they possibly know that?
So, after she worked so hard to master climbing the 16 steps (with a walker in hand) in preparation for coming home to my upstairs condo, I could not refuse to answer the door, right?
It means that living for all this time in a one-bedroom apartment with two futons decoratively stacked on the living-room floor and meant to accommodate occasional visits from grandchildren, means that grandma will be sleeping on one. I'll have to give up my single bed to one who can't possibly physically rise from floor level, at least not for many months -- if ever.
Everything in me screams that this is an unwise decision. I should have insisted upon finding another solution that wouldn't undermine our lifelong quest for her independence. Unwise, maybe, but as in most instances with me, it's intuition that takes over. Logic aside, there's no resisting that.
Now I'm needing to get out to the supermarket and find myself some super-strength vacuum cleaner bags and locate the nearest Goodwill store so that I can thin out my closets in order to accommodate the " Dorrie stuff" that I've been hauling around in the backseat of my car all these months because there was simply no time to unload ... .
If I don't post for a few days (I've taken two days off to try to get all this figured out), know that I'm alive and well and up to my ears in "logistics"!
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