My husbands grandma came to live with us on April 8th, 2011. She turned 90 the next day. We’re the only ones in the family with a single story home that she can navigate easily around in. She didn’t use a cane and could get around pretty good.
I was working part time, at that time, so I am home or thereabouts, most of the time. From day one, I inherited a five foot shadow. I hear slippers shuffling about three feet behind me. They eventually go somewhere else, because I do many things that she does not understand or agree with. But they come back every 15 minutes to see if I am still doing that thing that she says I don’t have time to do. When that is the time I am doing it. Like balancing my checkbook on the computer. She thinks if I am sitting at the computer, I am taking away from cleaning the house.
My house is basically clean, sometimes a little disorderly. It’s called Life. If the floors are clean, furniture is dusted, beds made and the dishes done, I am a very happy camper. I usually go with the flow. My husband has always had a different work schedule. A lot of days have been different work hours for him and different days of the week so we don’t eat at regular times, or have set schedules. We wing it. This had worked well for our (almost) 14 years of marriage. I’ve learned that he doesn’t want any breakfast when it is a day that he works. But likes breakfast on the days he has off.
This being said, every morning since Grandma moved in, she asks him if he wants something to eat and some coffee. He kept saying “no”, but after three weeks, started taking some coffee with him in a mug, to stop her asking. The pot was ready every morning. I never heard if she stopped asking him if he wanted breakfast or not, but I doubt that she did.
For me, on the other hand, I would get up about 7:30 depending if I slept good or not the night before. When my foot steps outside the bedroom, I am asked (every morning) if I’m going to sleep all day. Then I make it to the kitchen to cook breakfast and make my own coffee. She has long ago thrown out any leftover coffee. She thinks if it sets more then 10 minutes it goes black and bitter. She has her breakfast over and the dishes washed.
She checks my progress every few minutes to see if there is a dish that I am done with that she can wash right away. Every spoon that gets laid in the sink gets a good squirt of dish soap, lots of hot water, scrubbed like there’s no tomorrow and dried and put right away. No resting for that spoon.