All is well...

I don't know what people did before anxiety pills. I haven't looked much into the history of Alzheimer's disease, but, according to an extremely brief google search, it is something that has been described throughout history.

I'm not one to say what is normal in Grammy's case, but since I've been here she has needed 3 anxiety pills a day. As I've said, she gets one in her morning pills when she first wakes up and in her bedtime pills, which she takes before she goes upstairs to sleep. They took her off the third, noon time, pill because it made her too tired during the day. As Elsa said, she would give it to her if she asked for one during the day.

It's interesting how the pill will affect her fatigue. In the morning it doesn't seem to bother her too much, she's up puttering around all morning. The afternoon pill does seem to have a pretty strong affect on how tired she is. Yesterday she took a little nap after she had her pill and after Judy's visit, which wears her out. At night time she takes the pill and seems to sleep soundly throughout the night.

So, to return to my initial thought, I don't know how people dealt with it pre-anxiety medication because it seems like she needs it. Otherwise she'd be living in a (almost) constant state of tension, anxiety and paranoia. Maybe people just didn't live old enough for it to be a constant problem. Anyway, thank god for this bit of medical science.

Grammy on the pill is so pleasant and Grammy without it is sad and stressful. While we did have that bad attack on Monday, yesterday she was totally fine and so far today she's doing great. She's still pleasant and funny. She still complains about food and being cold. She still does the dishes almost constantly and sweeps the floor rather often. She still puts all of the dishes in the wrong cupboards. Everytime I cook she still says, "I need to learn how to cook" or "You should teach me your recipes."

Another Grammy story: Apparently over the weekend Grammy did some yard work. She loves raking and I guess she got some serious raking in. Fast forward to me throwing out some recycling today and discovering that both the trash bin and recycling bin are halfway full of leaves. I asked Sue why there would be leaves in the bins and she said that Grammy had been raking and probably put all the leaves in the bins...even though Sue told her that the leaves had to go into brown bags and NOT the trash bins. We resolved the problem by having Sol take out and repack the leaves. But it's another case where it's interesting to see what she is capable of and what just doesn't connect anymore. She was able to complete multi-step tasks, know to put the leaves in the trash, but just not that there are specific bins for different things.

In many ways living with Grammy is like being a part of the movie, Groundhog's Day. She's like Bill Murray and I'm like someone else in the movie that he comes into contact with everyday. It's as if the elements of the day is the same every time and she can vary how she approaches them. Depending on her mood she can make the day a little happier or a little sadder, but when she goes to bed, she wakes up and starts all over again with just a vague memory of what happened the day before.

In order to keep things fresh, the past couple of days we've been doing a lot of new cooking. The first try in the bread maker was a success-- one 2lb. loaf that we ate up in the past 3 days. Today I put in a new batch called "white country bread" that had a slightly different recipe. It's great. Sol made a pasta burina recipe with penne, tomato sauce, mushrooms, peas and bacon for dinner a couple of nights ago for my birthday dinner that he cooks me every year. Last night I made mashed sweet potatoes with sweet-n-spicy pork chops (chiptole in adobo sauce + orange marmalade). OMG it was sooo good. Both of these recipes came out of the cookbook that Sol's parents got for me for my birthday, The First Real Kitchen Cookbook. I just received another new cookbook from my friend Vicky, The Pioneer Woman Cooks, which I look forward to exploring after I get a little more comfortable with complex recipes.

I've also been getting my fix of tv...but remember that I only get the most basic of basic channels at Grammy's house. It must be the package for old people who can't remember what they've seen before. It's literally just cbs, nbc, fox, abc and tbs. The rest are weird non-brand tv channels that don't really have anything on it. And now I'm willing to admit that I'm that person that sits through the entire hour long weigh in session on Biggest Loser eating cool ranch doritos and drinking a gin and tonic after 9pm. Yeah...it's good to be young.

Grammy quotes (note, Grammy quotes should be imagined with a shy giggle):

"Well they certainly fit him well."--Her reaction as we were watching the Super Bowl and David Beckham's commercial came on. I explained to her that this is a famous soccer player and he has a new underwear line coming out.

"Even if I feel nutty, I should feel happy that everything else is good."--As we were watching The Revolution, a show about the overall health makeover of this woman who had cancer.