Labor Day weekend updates

Friday around lunchtime Mama and Victoria picked me up at the church so we could leave to go to Chappell Hill to see my Mom and Dad. We left the van at the church so Brittany Wycoff could use it to go back and forth from her work to the farm to tend to the animals. It was a pleasant enough drive to Mom and Dad’s after we got past Ft Worth. It took us almost an hour to cover three or four miles at the junction of the highway from Decatur with I35W. On the way home we took a very different route.

Mom and Dad are not in too bad a shape but they are failing physically in a rapid progression. Dad is having problems with his memory to the point that Mom feels she has to watch over him constantly, providing hour by hour instruction and guidance on even the menial everyday tasks; taking medicines, keeping appointments, signing the checks to pay all the bills. She even has to remind him how to write his name with each check he signs. He told me he has trouble remembering how to make the capital D in his Signature. They are relatively mobile although they do not go far. My siblings near them are getting fatigued in caring for them; in doing the little things that make their failing years more secure; grocery shopping, lawn mowing and small house repairs.

Mama and I will be going down in a few weeks to do some roofing for them. It has been an ongoing project for over a year and Mom is very discouraged about the money she spent on shingles that have sat in their way under the carport for all that time. My brother Danny who was supposed to have done the work has abandoned the project. We did bump into Danny after we took Mom and Dad out to eat right after we got there Friday evening. We talked well into the evening Friday and finally went to bed a little after 10 pm.

I had to borrow the cushion from the small couch they have in one of the front rooms of the house so I could make a pallet beside the double bed in the bedroom where Mama and I were sleeping. After nearly thirty years of sharing a king sized bed it is very difficult to share a normal sized bed. We were all up fairly early the following morning and out the door to go to Rogers, TX to spend the afternoon with Sarah and Fabian, Tim and Janet and all their kids. As an added bonus Chase and Makaila met us over there on their way home from a cruise. We left Sarah and Fabians about 3 pm and got home in time to water the plants, tend to the animals and get set up for Sunday.

Monday we all went to Victoria’s house with Mama’s mower and chewed up some of the tall, very thick grass on her little property. We got half of the property – about an acre – done in the two hours we spent working there. I took the weed eater and tried to clear around obstacles Mama needed to avoid while Victoria worked cleaning out the chicken coop. One more workday like that and we will be able to keep up on a normal basis. Victoria was excited about the effort – even though we did not have time or energy to do it all.

Monday afternoon I took the sink out of the laundry room and prepared it to replace the sink in the kitchen while Mama and Victoria watched Luke, Gracie and Joseph for Erin and Sam. Then on Tuesday morning I took out the very yucky kitchen sink and put the stainless steel one in its place. I ended up calling Lee to replace the supply valves under the sink because I could not connect the pre-plumbed faucet to them.  It took him less than an hour to sweat off the old valves and put on the new ones.

Mama is very happy with the change.