Yes you read right; we are making progress in our dusty museum. It is worth jotting down how we cope with my mother-in-law and the effect she’s having on us. There’s a funny side to all of this. Plus the usual comings and goings….
Grandma’s trip to the dentist
Now she’s never one to willingly go out so it was a surprise when completely out of the blue she announced “I need my cheque book!” followed by “I ought to brush my teeth before my trip to the dentist tomorrow”. At 94, she never brushes her teeth. Unless, surprise surprise, it is the day before her routine dental appointment.
So the scene was set to take Grandma to the dentist. This was quite remarkable as she wouldn’t normally consider venturing outside unless absolutely necessary and luckily there is a dentist in the village. Her wheelchair had been dusted off, her coat was on, hat too and we were off! Grandma seems to rely on me for manoeuvring her into the dentist’s chair and interpreting. It is quite a delicate and tricky job which I have down to a fine art.
Recognising how she had survived the dentist, we thought we should all celebrate by each of us having an eccles cake from the village bakery. This went down well and is now part of my sneaky plan to get her out of the house a little more often. Comes to something when you have to bribe your mother-in-law with sticky cakes!
Rachel had a flash of inspiration the other day, motivated by the tedious nature of having to change radio station, turn the volume up or down etc at her Mum’s whim. So Rachel has presented her with an Amazon Dot, a.k.a. Alexa. Now it’s fair to say she was very dubious and not, you could say, a natural at communicating with this neat bit of artificial intelligence.
Grandma took us by surprise when, at bedtime, she said “well I can’t go to bed without that little man”. Naturally we were a little perplexed and wondered whether she had finally lost her marbles for good. Then we realised she was referring to Alexa and that was sorted.
So far Rachel has resisted the idea of controlling it remotely. Having said that I think Rachel is tempted to have Alexa play a lullaby at bedtime to help her drift off to sleep. And perhaps some rock music at full volume when it’s time to wake up in the morning?
Progress with the house
After 5 weeks of being here, we now have a working hob and oven.
This is a tremendous boost for us in terms of our culinary intake, enjoyment of cooking and a sense of life getting back to normal. We had bought the hob and oven a few weeks ago but needed to wait for our gas fitter friend and neighbour to have space to fit it. It was done on Saturday, also involving our other electrician friend Val who did amazing things for the oven’s supply.
I have been making progress with Hannah’s future bedroom. At over 16 square metres there is a lot of work to do. The walls have been papered and painted, woodwork also painted. The interesting bit was the carpet, just 50 years old and, shall we say, past it’s best. As usual, getting Grandma to understand it needs to go is rather tricky but we do it anyway, along with hoovering up the underlay which had turned to a fine powder many years ago.
The emotional side to all of this
We hadn’t planned to move, certainly not like this. We had been enjoying our own home and gardens so much this year having invested so much money and energy into them. Our house represented a lovely oasis in a busy town which was our world.
Suddenly we have been transported to this dusty museum of a place. To make matters worse, it is Rachel’s childhood home with much of that era still exactly the same (this is one of the reasons why we are transforming our part of the house to be unrecognisable). Rachel’s Mum sometimes expresses some thanks for something, such as a cup of tea, but has no grasp of how we have wrenched our lives in this way. It has taken her until now to fully comprehend that life has changed for her and she can no longer live on her own.
So there is an emotional side to all of this; sometimes this shows itself. And yet I have tried to frame this as a bit of an adventure, let’s enjoy being imaginative in creating a new home for ourselves. Besides, it seems the moral thing to do right now.
And finally, the clock
We have moved the old grandfather clock into our sitting room. We were on our best behaviour and did this as gently as we could. Grandma had one of her suspicious looks while we inched it out of her room and across the hallway.
Rachel managed to magically produce some wedges so we could ensure it was completely level, as you see from the above photo. It did seem odd using a modern app as a spirit level on such an old piece.
And it works! We have enjoyed the slow, woody tick-tock sound that brings a sense of reassurance. As for the hourly chimes, these aren’t necessarily in sync with the real time – we get three chimes at one o’clock!