Crazy morning. Mom gets up and I am bound and determined to
avoid the morning fussing she usually wakes up with. Most mornings she barely
gets her bedroom door opened and she is wanting to know if they are ever going
to serve breakfast in this place. I hear her door and I immediately get up and
pour her a cup of coffee and put it on her tray that sits in front of her place
she likes on the couch.
She has an old coffee cup on her tray that she hasn’t put in
the sink. I tell her that is an old cup she left on her tray from yesterday and
didn’t put it in the sink and not to drink that.
I turn away to fix her some breakfast (she loves pancake on
a stick…. mostly because of the syrup she eats it with but it does get protein
in her so I always have them on hand.) I hear her pouring coffee on her tray.
She is pouring the new cup into the old cold cup because… she is trying to warm
it up a little. She doesn’t want cold coffee. I go through the story once again
about that cup is yesterday’s cup and not to drink out of that. (I know! At
that time, I should have just gone and picked the old one up and thrown it
away. I didn’t.)
I’m busy making sure she has enough syrup for her breakfast
so we can avoid the morning fussing. (Remember that?) So I sit the breakfast on
her tray (feeling pretty proud of myself that I didn’t get to hear that you
have to wait forever (sometimes 5 minutes) to get breakfast at this place.
Those men (not real ones, just those men who live in her head) are always
complaining about the injustices they have to endure at this place.
I sit down at the computer to reward myself with a game of solitaire.
Then I hear her in the kitchen. I ask her, “What are you doing Mom? Do you need
something? She says, “I’m just trying to warm this coffee, it is cold.”
In my head, I am screaming. I take a deep breath so I won’t
be screaming out loud. I try once again to explain that it was yesterday’s
coffee. I tell her not to drink it. Then she is furious. “This is not yesterday’s.
It was just poured earlier this morning.” (Keep in mind she hasn’t been up for
than about five or six minutes.)
I get up (perhaps a little more abruptly than I should) and
I take the old coffee off of her tray and throw it away and I say, “Yes, this
was yesterday’s. Is the other too hot? Do you want me to put a little cool
water in it?” She says she does so I add a little cool water to it.
By this time, I actually want some breakfast. (Possibly
stress eating) I go to put my breakfast sandwich in the microwave and she is
looking at me with puppy dog eyes. “What’s wrong mama?” She says… (wait for
it!.....) “Are they ever going to serve breakfast in this place? I heard some
men saying they would like some food.”
I tell her that she just had a pancake on a stick. I ask her
if she would like another one. She says yes…all the while busy using the old
stick and her fingers to mop up all the syrup and licking it off of both the
stick and her fingers. At this point, I am just praying she washed her hands
sometime this morning…which I highly doubt.
After her second pancake on a stick, she has finally gone to
a peaceful quiet. (If you can call, searching her pockets every 45 seconds
peaceful. {She is looking for her cigarettes})
I try not to give her a cigarette until she asks for one
because I keep hoping with everything else she has forgotten that someday she
will forgets she smokes.
