Ohio, part 3

The first radiation treatment went well, and Granny has been in high spirits. My mother is worried that Granny will offend absolutely everyone she knows and then be lonely bc when Granny is nervous she is grumpy and says mean things. Well, she doesn’t always wait until she’s nervous, but it certainly does bring unkind thoughts out of her mouth as well as anything else. Two nights ago she got tired and started saying unkind things to me – I think she needed an enemy and my mother wasn’t a good one bc she had just washed Granny’s hair and massaged her scalp. Now I’m back in favor bc I cleaned the kitchen floor after a glass of milk got spilled on it.

It’s an interesting lesson. My mother is exactly the same way. When she gets tired, she’s unbelievable rude. There’s nothing one can do about it other than just get away from her. I think I had this characteristic before I gave up coffee, but I haven’t felt the desire to say unkind things to people when I’m tired in many years. Thank Goodness.

This morning Granny couldn’t find her pain medicine, which made her nervous again. Well, it turned out to be next to her chair. So, all’s well that end’s well.

The other good news is that we don’t have to change rooms today. Granny made the reservations for September instead of October which meant that we could only stay in the room with 2 beds (the pink suite) until today and then we had to change to the room with one king sized bed (the green suite).* That’s another nice thing about the center: they have these hotel-style rooms that you can rent for $50/night in the same building when you visit a resident. It includes breakfast and, in this case, Granny is able to pay for it with the meal tickets they give her every time they show her apartment. (Her’s must be one of the prettiest bc they use it as a showcase for prospective residents.) They give her 3 meal tickets (value $5 each) every time they show her apartment and she must have close to $1000 worth at this point. Anyway, the point is that it is very comfortable and it works out to be free for us.

Sharing a room with my mother is another story. She becomes dead tired by 8 PM, is very bossy about use of the TV when we are both watching it. Forturnately there’s another TV in the common room around the corner where I can watch the huge screen all night long if I want – and again, fortunately, there’s nothing to watch despite 100s of cable channels. Last night I watched Veronica Mars and then 2 episodes of Sex and the City before bed. The night before, 8 mm (a movie). I’ve got mother watching CSI with me at 8 (as she drifts off).

Granny likes to watch Wheel a Fortune, Jeopardy and Fox News. It’s painful.

Depending on how much of a sleeping pill my mother took, she gets up between 5:30 and 7, leaving the light on when she leaves the room. So, yeah, I wouldn’t live like this forever, but I guess I can get by for now. It’ll be great to have my own space again.

Anyway, we’d better go visit Granny now before lunch (which they call dinner, dinner is supper), bc my mother and I are having lunch with her old friend Cathy at the Olive Garden. Strangely, none of the other friends or relatives are returning our calls/wanting to see us. I’m not terribly concerned bc I came here to see my grandmother. I only visit less than once a year. But it does seem strange to me since, if they are mad at us they might as well just tell us since they won’t get another opportunity to see us for a while. And if they aren’t then the least they could do is call back. Whatever.

* (sidenote) I’m sure this color naming is based on something arbitrary like the bedspread covers they happened to have anyway. Now, the rooms are neither pink nor green. The other thing that seems wrong about this is the traditional associations with these colors (both western and feng shui, which makes me think they are human-universal). Pink is associated with love and tenderness. Green is associated with youth, money, and nature. So, tell me, why would you make the room where people (presumably couples) share a bed green and the room where people don’t (presumably not couples) the color of love? Unless they are thinking that men (sons?) are more likely to stay with their female partners in the green room and daughters and granddaughters in the pink room (girly)….