fractal77

Feels awesome to wake up wrecked, work 5.5 hours at the day job, spend 3 hours doing stuff for and visiting with Mom, then work another 5.5 hours. At least the job appreciates me for it...can't say the same about Mom right now. The start date of the third PM (in March) can't come soon enough, though it'll initially be even more load for training them up. I am just massively oversubscribed right now.

Mom was expectedly pouty and pissy. Wasn't awake for 8:30 breakfast (normal - we're both night owls). Didn't want to put on clothes and go down for lunch, so they brought it to her. Her blood sugar spiked hard from it, which is not encouraging, but I also haven't turned in her preferences sheet yet (too late today, will drop in the morning with some other forms). She ate that lunch late, so wasn't interested in having dinner at 5. She has her own food to eat while she works through her feelings. Staff assured me this is not atypical, and I totally get it. She thinks this was a dirty trick sprung on her, not remembering the countless repeated conversations that this needed to happen, previous visits, etc. I'm just the bossy bad guy. She can't even have her car (that she hasn't been allowed to drive in over 2 years)! I continue to be super impressed with all the staff I've met. Hopefully curiosity and the promise of more carbs and sugar than I've been providing will lure her out later this week.

When grabbing her a few groceries today I wanted to get her some pretty flowers for a housewarming gift. They had a bunch of spring bulbs, favorites for both of us, so I grabbed a nice pot of hyacinths that are just about starting to flower. When I saw the pot said something like "Bloom where you're planted", I knew it'd be perfect.

It's late and I have another very full day tomorrow, so off to bed with me after this little bit of token decompression.

Not the best weekend for a snowstorm. I really wish the warm rainy weather of the last few days could have lasted a bit longer. Started snowing shortly before we left our house, slick all the way to Mom's, we chipped some ice off the driveway while waiting for my uncle to help Mom pack a second suitcase.*sigh* then lunch after that hard work, then we finally got started at 2 instead of 1. Didn't get quite as much as I wanted done, but it'll have to be enough for now. The house isn't going anywhere. Josh snowblowed the driveway in the early evening, as about 3 inches of very wet snow had already fallen. He'll have to do it again in the morning while I pick up the truck, as 4 more inches are predicted overnight. That also means the roads will be just as gross or grosser when I'm trying to drive a 15' U-Haul 15 miles out to her house and another 15 miles back with a load. Joy.

The filth levels were even worse than expected, especially where furniture hadn't moved for decades. I'm sure we'll find more tomorrow when more things move. Didn't really have time to clean, so some dusting of the actual moving things was as far as we got. I tried to wash her bedclothes, but her machines weren't doing a great job, so I brought a couple garbage bags to my house. Washing first batch now, and will stay up long enough to get them in the dryer and start the next. That house gives me claustrophobia (and I like enclosed spaces) as there's just so much crap in it, and everything's covered in animal and human dander and hair and other misc dust.

Fuck the patriarchy of women's pockets, and fuck insufficient phone cases. New phone from April already had a tiny screen chip from a face-down fall onto a pebble juuust taller than the Google case's vertical clearance above the screen, which had caused a single crack across the width of the screen and a later diagonal crack to the top. Today, wearing a new case I'd requested for Christmas that's pretty but sits flush with the screen (stupid me), the phone dropped out of my unfastenable fleece pocket in the bathroom (because the pants pockets are even more small/insecure in a bathroom situation), and hit the tile floor on a front corner, shattering the screen -underneath- the untouched glass screen protector. *headdesk* It shattered at the corner and then must have twisted enough during impact to make a bunch of new cracks from the old chip. Still works, at least, and had I not taken the existing screen protector off before realizing the damage was underneath, it would have been a lot less noticeable. I'm going to clean the screen and try a new glass protector, or a soft one, to hopefully get more time out of it. Last time I replaced a screen the adhesive was shit and never really stuck, and I didn't want to deal with that again, but that'd be next step.

In other phone news, I plan to port Mom's home number to her new apartment, but would then lose the whitelisting. Apparently some newer cordless phones have some good call screening features, so I got her one very similar to what she has, and it can dump anything unrecognized to answering machine (or other options, but that seems safest if we can't have voicemail that I can monitor). AND it'll let me have more than 32 damned numbers *squints menacingly at Spectrum*. Some reviews mention it loses the time when the power's out, so I'm testing now with the bases unplugged to see if it will lose the directory numbers too. Might only be when the handsets also die; here's hoping.

Ah-haha. I was freaking out a bit about trying to get Mom moved 2 weeks from now. Then I had the bright idea that maybe her brother could come up from Atlanta and take her on an overnight trip somewhere while we pack and move, then bring her home to the new place. I asked him, and it turns out he's going to be in town next weekend and available to make this happen. I was trying to avoid that weekend due to a customer launching on Sunday, but I'm not actually critical staffing for that, as much as I do like to be there for the warm fuzzy of customer care. So now I'm trying to figure out if I can make this happen next weekend, probably with a Sunday clear/pack and a Monday morning move. O_O

It's insane given I haven't actually started any logistics and this is invoicing week and I have a lot of customer meetings and I already have to take me to the doctor and her to the dentist this week (can maybe ask aunt to do the latter, now that her surgery got delayed to the day after), but...it might also be good to just get it done, and it'll be a lot easier with her brother here because she behaves well with him and he's good at sweet-talking her, and getting her out of the picture while the work is done will make things much easier. The move is just across town, it'll be much closer to my house, and her house and the rest of her stuff isn't going anywhere (yet). It doesn't have to be perfect and done in one go. And I can make myself go balls-to-the-wall for a week with that light at the end of the tunnel.

In more mundane news, I broke my first snowblower shear pin today when a ~1.25"-thick stick got jammed in the auger (lots of sticks frozen onto Mom's driveway from a recent windstorm, and then buried). At least I was nearly done with the main path of the driveway, and I still know it well enough to be able to back down it instead of using the turnaround (though I was still parked on the road at that point). I was also about out of battery at that point anyway after doing a car width x 175' and 6.5" of fresh snow plus a probably 12" crusty plow pile on the flared end and by the mailbox. Luckily, I have to go back out there tomorrow to change her glucose sensor, and the hardware store on the way has the shear pins in stock, so I can finish the blowing then. May also take Mom to see her new place in person...we'll see how I'm feeling and how feisty she's being.