This is my boat. They're part of my crew. No one's getting left. Best you get used to that.

Mal ,'Ariel'


Spike's Bitches 31: We're Motivated Go-getters.  

[NAFDA] Spike-centric discussion. Lusty, lewd (only occasionally crude), risque (and frisque), bawdy (Oh, lawdy!), flirty ('cuz we're purty), raunchy talk inside. Caveat lector.


Fay - Jul 12, 2006 10:41:56 am PDT #3980 of 10001
"Fuck Western ideologically-motivated gender identification!" Sulu gasped, and came.

So my grandmother had a fall a little while ago, and hurt her ankle badly. She's pretty much restricted in her movements anyway, these days - basically she can shuffle from her bed to her armchair ( a few feet away) with the help of a zimmer frame, and she can just about manage to lever herself out of the armchair in order to shuffle over to the commode, which is a few feet from the armchair. She has carers visiting several times a day to help her dress and bring her food and all that jazz, and my mum visits every day. She has one of those 'Help, I've fallen and I can't get up!' buttons on a cord around her neck, which is a godsend.

After having had one fall, and hurt her ankle, she managed to fall again, poor lady, and has now hurt both her ankles. So she's presently in a wheelchair and in Respite Care at a very nice wee residential home a 5 minute drive away.

She's been getting frailer and frailer of late. She's going to be 90 on August 28th. She's been pretty much of the opinion that she'll be dying any minute for the past forty years, though, and has been living accordingly.

If she weren't my grandmother I'd probably feel more affection for her than I actually do - viewed objectively, she's a smashing old lady, and quite a character, and all that. But she had no interest in spending any time with me or with my wee sister when we were children, and she still hasn't any interest in either of us, other than as an audience, or occasionally as a source of one-upmanship. I don't have any affectionate memories of her doing, well, anything grandmotherly at any point, even though she only lives a few streets away. My parents had a string of babysitters when I was wee, because she had no interest in babysitting for her only grandchild (despite being a widow with no social life or hobbies). So we have more the facade of a relationship than any actual relationship. Which is a pity. I'd like to know her as a person, or as a grandmother, but she's never really been either. However, she is my grandmother, so what can you do? I don't hate her, although she can be a very mean-spirited and unkind old woman, she also likes to laugh, and can laugh at herself, so that's all good. I don't wish bad things on her, and I'm sorry that she's so fragile, and that she's hurt herself.

But I'm rambling. (...an inherited quality, heaven help us all...) My reason for posting was this:

Today we went to visit her, and my mother and I were both rather shocked at how much more slurred her speech was. She seemed to have gone rather rapidly downhill from the previous day, even. (The previous day she was telling us that the doctor thought she might have had a stroke, because her speech was more slurred, and we were of the opinion that it was much the same as usual - more slurred than it used to be back in the day, sure, but it's been a gradual decay, rather than an overnight thing, and it's still reasonably clear.)

"Duhah [something something] all righ'?" she said to me, and I, mishearing, reassured her that she looked very nice. She frowned. "Ah SEHD, duhah sowend all righ'? Ah don', duhah?" she said. (I cannot begin to reproduce the slurriness in print, but this'll have to do.)

"Oh," I said, understanding and glancing over at my Mum. "Well, no, you don't sound as good as you did last time. Um."

My grandmother dabbed her mouth, which was a bit dribbly. My mother and I exchanged pained looks. She really did seem to have gone downhill very fast - and my mum and dad are off for a week's holiday in the Baltics next week. I could see my mother thinking that she'd come home to a funeral at this rate.

My mother looked back at her mother and frowned.

"Mum, what's wrong with your teeth?"

"Wha?"

"Have you got your teeth in?"

"Yesh!"

"Well they're not - they're - Mum, you've got your teeth in upside down."

My grandmother quickly spat out her lower set of false teeth, turned them rightsideup and slotted them back in.

"Can you hear me better now?" (continued...)


Fay - Jul 12, 2006 10:42:02 am PDT #3981 of 10001
"Fuck Western ideologically-motivated gender identification!" Sulu gasped, and came.

( continues...) she said, with what passes for extreme clarity in the world of my Grandmother.

My mother and I dissolved into laughter, and the conversation then continued much as it ever does.


SailAweigh - Jul 12, 2006 10:43:39 am PDT #3982 of 10001
Nana korobi, ya oki. (Fall down seven times, stand up eight.) ~Yuzuru Hanyu/Japanese proverb

Yay, vw! You're still the vw that could. How are you going to reward yourself for completing this class? It doesn't have to be anything fancy, but you put a heck of an effort into it and you deserve a treat.


SailAweigh - Jul 12, 2006 10:46:28 am PDT #3983 of 10001
Nana korobi, ya oki. (Fall down seven times, stand up eight.) ~Yuzuru Hanyu/Japanese proverb

Fay, you should introduce your grandmother to Verizon wireless. She and the "can you hear me now?" dude are a match made in heaven.


vw bug - Jul 12, 2006 10:48:26 am PDT #3984 of 10001
Mostly lurking...

How are you going to reward yourself for completing this class?

Hee! Mom asked me basically the same thing.

I'm gonna take a nap. 'Cause I've slept like crap the last couple of nights, due to my asthma. So, I just took some heavy duty cough medicine, and after I eat a late lunch, I'm gonna crash for a while.

I'm not very exciting, am I?


lisah - Jul 12, 2006 10:55:14 am PDT #3985 of 10001
Punishingly Intricate

congrats, vw! hooray for passing and for being okay with not doing as well as you might have wished!

Fay, that is hilarious. No matter how conflicted or disappointed you might feel about the nature of your relationship her that is really a priceless moment. (and I know everybody is different and all but I really don't understand grandparents who don't absolutely dote on their grandchildren. My one grandfather may have called me the anti-Christ once but he loved the hell out of me.)


brenda m - Jul 12, 2006 11:01:58 am PDT #3986 of 10001
If you're going through hell/keep on going/don't slow down/keep your fear from showing/you might be gone/'fore the devil even knows you're there

Oh lord, Fay. That's hysterical.


vw bug - Jul 12, 2006 11:06:24 am PDT #3987 of 10001
Mostly lurking...

Ok. Apparently only pregnant women get sundresses with built-in bras. Hello, people! Some of us are well-endowed and would like a built-in bra in their sundress. Stupid fashion people.


erikaj - Jul 12, 2006 11:06:48 am PDT #3988 of 10001
Always Anti-fascist!

OMG, Fay, bwah! I can also relate to the not-funny bits, too.


Cass - Jul 12, 2006 11:38:22 am PDT #3989 of 10001
Bob's learned to live with tragedy, but he knows that this tragedy is one that won't ever leave him or get better.

I'm doing pretty well about not beating myself up, which could I guess be seen as a bad thing, but with me, I think that's good.
That is very good. I am as proud of you for just passing this class as I have ever been of your aceing others. Sometimes you learn more when you fail at something.

My mother and I dissolved into laughter
This is lovely. I know you wish your relationship with her were different but this is just a charming moment from a difficult time.