G-MA IN DA HOUS!

Flashback for February 6, 2006.

Whenever the phone rings in the middle of the night, you know it is not good news. The wind kept waking me up all night - love those Santa Ana winds. I did the usual tossing and turning and going back to sleep before being woken again.

So I was awake when the phone rang at 3:32 A.M.

I don’t have a phone in my room but my parents are just down the hall and I could hear their phone. I got up and stood in the hallway to listen. I got there in time to hear my dad say, “Yes, she’s right here.”

I knew at that point that the call was about my Grandmother Irene. See, my dad’s folks have been gone for a while now, my Grandma Jennie since 1980 (I was three) and my Grandpa Joe since 2001 (this one still hurts). And mom’s dad had died last year on Martin Luther King’s day (This year, my nephew Thomas Robert was born a year to the day, hence the first name). I do have, for lack of a better title, two step-grandmothers, one on both side of the family.

But I digress.

I found out what happened that night after coming home from work. Last night, as far as I can piece together, G-ma woke up with vertigo and when she got up to go to the bathroom, G-ma fell and stayed down (suddenly those, I've fallen and I can't get up commercials are not so funny any more). She woke up the downstairs neighbor by pounding on the floor and Bertha was the one who called emergency services and us.

So my parents got ready and were out the door by 4:00 A.M. to Sherman Oaks Hospital. She wasn't admitted and my parents spent the day in her No Ho apartment trying to figure out what to do. She can't function on her own and there really was no alternative so my parents brought her home.

I now live in a three generational household. G-ma, the ‘rents, and my brother and I.

I came home from work a half an hour late because I was called into a useless meeting – why they couldn’t call me into an earlier meeting since they repeated the meeting all day long is beyond me – and oh yeah, I’m not getting overtime for staying the extra half an hour (1. yes, I know this is illegal, I’ll get to this another time and 2. yes, I am bitter about this) - and moved half the furniture out of my room since I have a bedroom downstairs. I moved into what use to be my sister’s room upstairs. For how long remains to be seen.

Initially, the plan was that my uncle Richard and his wife Carol were going to fly out from North Carolina this coming weekend and take my G-ma home with them since they are both retired and Carol use to be a nurse. Handy huh? Except that my G-ma is turning stubborn and saying she doesn't want to go, that if she goes out there, she is never coming back and she wants to die in her own apartment.

So it is all up in the air. Last night, G-ma was barely there. She kept nodding off to sleep while she was trying to eat dinner and she can barely move herself any more. After talking to my mom, Carol says it is possible she has had a series of mini strokes. Either way, I have the feeling I will be attending a funeral before the summer. Course, she could surprise us all. She's an amazingly stubborn woman.

I was hoping that I could taking mornings off from work to take care of G-ma until my dad gets home from work for a little while but my boss has other plans. Now, to her credit, she is cool with me coming in late so I can take care of things at home but instead of letting me use sick time, I have to stay late to make up the time. She is a part of a state assistance program and if we register with our county, we can get someone to be with her during the mornings.

It's a lot of stress and unknown right now. Although there are some moments of levity. Such as my sleeping arrangements right now.

See, my sister’s room is being use as mostly storage. Computer boxes, my sewing machines (yes, plural) fabric and sewing tool box, my filing cabinet, mom’s spare clothes, old clothes of my sister’s, a friends wedding dress which should have been taken to her place over a year and a half ago… surfboards, you get the picture. And extra beds.

The bed in her room is four mattresses high. It’s the full set of my parents old bed while they use my sister’s mattress from her old apartment and my brother’s mattresses from when he moved home. (I traded my bed for a fancy sewing machine when I moved home and trust me, it was a fair trade monetarily). We joke that it is the princess and the pea bed. You kinda have to take a bit of a jump to get into it. It works and I have slept in it before.

In the middle of the night, (Damn Santa Ana winds), I turned over in bed and almost took a header onto the floor. Fortunately I caught myself. I probably would have been all right even if I had fallen, since there were extra pillows on that side of the bed. Well, as long as I would have managed not to hit the built in cabinets. But believe me, it was pretty funny in the middle of the night, especially since I didn’t fall.

So I think that is enough for now. Believe me, the saga will continue.