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Some days we walk tall, some days we sit, quietly, or
curl into a ball.

If today is a curling day, just curl.

The walking days will come again.
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BOJ- Being betrayed is soooo hurtful. I am sorry for what you're going through. Believe in Karma. It has its own way of evening things out.
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boj -do what is good for you. The other is cared for. Care for yourself.
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Closing to be October 31, I have been thinking, all week, that the 31st is a Monday! Went to an online calendar and it actually told me that the 31st is a Tuesday! Thinking I have lost my mind, check the calendar on my phone, the 31st IS A MONDAY! Life is confusing and discombobulated itself right now without messed up.website! Then I wondered If I was thinking it is the wrong year! OVERWHELMED! DISORIENTATION!

I will be so relieved to be at the end of this living out of a suitcase phase! It doesn't matter where I am I wake up wondering where I am, what do I have to do today, what freaking day is this? To make matters worse my weekly schedule of being remote is a bit different this week. 👽👽👻👻😏😏😏😏
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Glad,
October 31st, 2022 is a Monday.
It is Halloween.
And escrow will be closing.

No matter what bed you wake up in, no matter where you are, you always have us on AgingCare.

If I change my bed around, now, at my age, I have experienced needing to re-acclimate myself to my surroundings. So I put my bed back.

Write yourself a sticky note before bed. You just have way too much going on, so some confusion is normal. And you were recently home sick? Do you need to replace some vitamins, like B-12, magnesium, vit. D?

Take good care of yourself. When was the last time you had a visit from your adult children?

The full moon effects are ending today, a Monday, the 10th of October. A holiday in the USA-Columbus Day-and Indigenious Peoples Day-banks could be closed?

Everyone, let's have some tea in the afternoon. How about 2 p.m.?
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My son is here this weekend. I will work remote today and go in tomorrow to return on Friday.

My daughter is.coming this next weekend. Then my son, again, I think my last weekend here. He has been a great help this weekend, I am actually feeling somewhat organized for the move. Still a long way to go, but getting a handle on it. I can't wait for the same bed in the same place, my place, every night!

Funny! I closed on this house on October 31 four years ago.
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While many people across the country will have the day off work or school on Columbus Day and Indigenous Peoples' Day, you may be wondering whether your bank will be open, if you’ll get mail, or if Starbucks is open on Monday, Oct. 10. 
Because it's a federal holiday, agencies or institutions operated by the government, such as libraries, federal offices, and DMVs, are all closed. But how can you check if stores in your area will be open on the national holiday? 
Here is what you need to know about what is open and closed on Columbus Day & the new federal holiday, Indigenous Peoples' Day.
Will post offices be open? What about FedEx, UPS?
Post offices will be closed on Monday, and the U.S. Postal Service will not deliver mail or packages.  
FedEx offices, on the other hand, will be fully operational with ground, delivery and express all same as usual. The only modification modified service for FedEx ground economy. UPS store locations will also be all open, offering pickup or delivery services. 
Will banks be open?
Many, but not all banks will be closed on Oct. 10th, and ATMs and bank mobile apps may be available for some services. Federal Reserve Banks will also be closed on Monday. 
Will schools be open?
Many public and private schools are closed but if you’re curious about your child’s school, check their individual school calendars on their websites. 
Will stock market be open?
The New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) and Nasdaq are open.
Will grocery stores and pharmacies be open? What about Target, Starbucks and other chains?
While locally owned businesses are up to the owner, supermarkets and most drug stores are open.
Same goes for Target, Starbucks and other chain restaurants.
National parks are also open. 

It is a holiday in Canada-their Thanksgiving Day.
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((((((glad))))) moving is confusing. My magnum opus is being a very gradual event. Still confusing sometimes. Can't imagine moving as quickly as you are and still working throughout. It's great your kids are helping. You have endured a difficult time very well - from one bed to another, working remotely sometimes... Well done!!! I am so happy for you it is nearly over.
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Is it just me or does being estranged from your family start to feel like hanging on to old grudges?

My sister has already sent out her Christmas invitation and I immediately feel my self tense up. It will be three years this Christmas since I've seen anyone in my family, partly due to covid, but I still don't want to see them.

I consider myself a Christian woman and so I know I should try to meet people half way but I just don't want to even try with my family anymore. I wish them the best and all that but feel I'm better staying away from them. But the way I feel inside because of this is awful. I feel like I'm in the wrong.

How does one shake off these feelings? How can I still consider myself a good person and still have all this resentment inside of me? How can I be around people who I feel have done me wrong and pretend that it's all okay? Especially when if you were to ask them they'd say I was crazy and overly sensitive for feeling this way. How can I be right with God while having these harsh feelings towards others?
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Gershun, at one time I stuggled with something very similar. The conclusion I came to was I forgave my LOs for their transgressions (with forgiveness meaning I can treat them the same as before) but I don't really forget and I definitely do not set myself up for more. My attitude is "I'm here, you can visit or not but I won't be waiting on you." When I began inviting extended family members to holiday dinners and going to local events with friends and distant cousins, the "close" family started coming back around and behaving themselves.

I think you have to mourn the relationships you thought you had or wanted to have; then decide what YOU are willing to do for the relationships being offered. Fill your time with people who are worth the effort.

I really do not miss the family much when I am hosting the people in my community who have been left behind: the elderly couple who kids moved away and just cannot get back for the holidays, the widower who has no close family left, and as many of the kids as can come around the arrangements made necessary be divorces. Being together with the people who want to be there makes a fun day without all the tension.
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My house is full of boys: my foster sons and my grand-nephews. The minivan is packed with our luggage (except for one small personal gym bag each) and we head out in the morning for a fall break vacation in Pidgeon Forge. We start with a trip to Ihop for omelets, pancakes and waffles. Then on down the road for a magic show and some go carts before picking up our grocery order at Walmart and checking in to the indoor water park hotel. We have two connected rooms: one has two queen beds and a twin sized chair bed and a second room with a full sized kitchen and living room (with a hide-a-bed for me). I (or the older boys) will be cooking breakfast most days, lunch will be hamburger helper and/or sandwiches, supper is some restaurant meal with lots of snack food around too. Its been 5 years since I took the older grand-nephews on this trip with a couple of their friends. This time I have the five ages 17, 15, 14, almost 9 and 8. I think we are going to have a blast!
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TN, have a wonderful time! I know you will!
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My family isn't toxic, we've all just drifted apart and seemingly have almost nothing in common any more and I don't know what to do about it. If anything my ancestral family was too much in each other's pocket - almost daily phone calls, weekly get togethers. When we do meet up it's hard to connect because we haven't shared all those little daily parts of life that define who you are - this new kind of dynamic feels lonely.
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cwillie, I've found that if I'm the one who is mourning the loss of connectedness then I'm the one to do something about it (and I do miss it a lot as we all get older and go our separate ways). In this electronic age I'm assuming that your relatives can at least do email. If this is so, maybe ask each of them to submit info and pics of what they've been up to in the past month and then create a simple email "newsletter". You can start by sending everyone the same set of questions to answer. Even if only a few participate, others may eventually join in as they enjoy the connection and gentle encouragement. This can be done monthly or quarterly. I have a cousin in another state who I seldom see but his Christmas "card" is a printed "newsletter" of him and his partner's adventures for the year. I have another old friend who does the same. I really enjoy it, and especially the pictures. But email is still a great tool.

It really does require 1 person to be the instigator or leader on the family togetherness front.
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It's hard to always be the one doing the reaching out. I used to think email was the perfect way to connect but the younger generation doesn't do email it's all texting, and texts are pretty limited in length and depth.
And I'm more than willing to host family events but since I live a little off the beaten track my efforts have been met as if I live in Siberia... I'm just the old auntie after all and when the kids need to travel to visit family they are heading to their parents, not me.
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TN, safe travels and good times for your trip.
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TN Have a good trip to Pigeon Forge! Love to visit there but haven’t for several years. My Mom loved to go there for the quilt shows.
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What has changed for me is that I cannot serve everyone anymore, and do not think I would be a very good guest or hostess.
My attitude and mood has changed, and you will never find me sitting at a table with everyone's face in their cell phones.
I think it's me, not everyone else.
I welcome the loneliness, after working out the alternatives in my head.
I don't need to be exposed to the tension in the room anymore.
And I sure cannot help clean-up after.
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On my mind, my 84 y.o. elderly friend is at a point that she should be in assisted living, but she can't afford it, and most of all, hates the "old folks homes," and she swears she will never go there. A social worker is talking to her son who lives in another state to get her into an senior apartment. That just makes her mad mad mad.

She has fallen many times, and was hospitalized recently for possible heat stroke. But she's made up her mind, she's not budging. She is mentally sharp as a tack so she gets the call the shot till the end.

This whole thing reminds me of a former forum member Elaine and her mom and how the mom met her end. Like my elderly friend, she also refused to leave her hoard packed home and ended up falling and not be discovered for days, then died in the hospital days later. I know my elderly friend knows this risk and she chooses it by staying in her home. As much as I worry for her, I will respect her choice.
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Still no dialysis tech. I don’t like going to a center. Somebody has to take back and forth. That along with dialysis is tiring. I’m interviewing two people tomorrow. Hope I get lucky.
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Send, I don't enjoy the whole sitting around a table making phony talk. Which is what it all is with my family. Inevitably, the embarrassing stories about me start. Really? Was I the only person in a family of eight that had humiliating things happen? No, I wasn't. But, seems like that's the big conversation starter. When I get quiet and look bothered by it, it escalates.

Oh, and the copious amount of alcohol that my family consumes. Probably the only way we tolerate each other. I personally nurse a glass of wine all night. And that brings up another thing with my family. The "let's get (fill in name) drunk." I've never understood the appeal of deliberating trying to get someone drunk. Not to mention letting said person get behind the wheel of a car after you've "gotten them drunk" Another form of ridiculing someone. My family has always enjoyed that.

I try to give them the benefit of the doubt. Maybe they've changed. But I'm still waiting. Hasn't happened yet. Maybe this year?
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Becky, hope you can find another dialysis tech that you like.
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Gershun, your family sounds un-nice. I wouldn't want to be around them.
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Gershun, I used to work with a lady who said her family played games like "Let's pick on A" or "Let's get B drunk!".

She decided one year to book a cheap package holiday. Cheap because while it was a lovely tropical place at other times, December had awful humidity & hardly any tourists or activities - but she enjoyed her alone time (safe from family & ex-family). The next year her adult kid wanted to come & a new tradition was born.

Send, clean-up at our events now come with risk of incontinence care clean-ups.

I am also weighing things up - if the past fond memories + FOG outweigh the known + potential problems.

What scenario would be the least worst.. 🤯
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I apologize for going on about my family. I guess it's this time of year that stirs everything up in me. The inevitable should I be there for Christmas? My sister threw out her invite early this year probably so people can't come up with "last minute" excuses why they can't come. Which leads me to think that none of us really enjoy being around each other. One of my sisters doesn't even make up an excuse. She just doesn't come or answer e-mails etc. I always wondered why in my mom's last letter to us before she died she said she hoped we would keep in touch with one another. She must have known we likely wouldn't.

The older I get the less easy it is for me to handle toxic people. So maybe people aren't getting worse, I'm just less tolerant. So I suppose that's on me.
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Oh I get it.. the first little whisper of THAT holiday brings up shudders here too.

How about my sister's fav tactic *the stall* : That date looks good at the moment - I'll let you know if anything de-rails us.

A 'soft' commitment while you file it under *later* for a week or two. Give yourself time for your boundaries to message you.
🙃
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(((((gershun))))) You can't change them. And expecting them to change is likely unrealistic. It may be marginally possible but it is unlikely.

I think being less tolerant of toxic people is healthy, Setting boundaries with toxic people is healthy. Who on earth wants to go to dinner with people who put them down - again and again and again. Your sister who stays apart may be onto something. Maybe she doesn't enjoy those get togethers either and has established the necessary boundaries.

My mother wanted me and my sister to keep in touch. Well, it not happening. My sister is toxic to me and I have had enough of that for a lifetime.

Something I read recently in a devotional by Lysa Terkeurst.

"Love can be unconditional … but relational access never should be. And boundaries help us protect this. Boundaries help us keep ourselves together so we can be the people God has called us to be."

We need to set our relational access as appropriate to the behaviours of others. You don't have to go anywhere where you are made to feel uncomfortable. You have established that with your husband's family. You can set the same boundaries with your own family. There's nothing wrong with that. God says "Guard your heart".

Further quote by Lysa T

"We aren’t trying to protect ourselves FROM love. If we love, we will risk being hurt. But we are trying to protect ourselves FOR love. We don’t want to get so consumed with the pain and chaos of unhealthy relationship patterns that we become a carrier of human hurt rather than a conduit of God’s love."
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o m g .....
All these many years, I just now realized....
It's Puss In Boots,

Not Puss and Boots!

The last time I invited my sister, she said "I will pencil you in".

Ha ha ha, the very last time, ever!

The best answer could be: "We've made other plans".
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My answer via e-mail was"I haven't even thought about Christmas yet, I'll let you know down the road a bit"
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Golden, and that's just it. How can one be a conduit of God's love when one is feeling personal hurt?

I grapple with these feelings on an almost daily basis. It isn't just with my family either. My in-law's are impossible too. Everything is always on their terms. I learned this very early and avoid them.
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