It's interesting reading you guys--Kat & msbelle--because I'm so grateful the caregivers this week have been cleaning my folks' apartment. It's always so cluttered & messy, with a constant amount of grime on the surfaces & dirty dishes around. Now if only they could use some of their excess energy to get Mom to move her legs, or take a shower...

I emailed the doctor about the UTI question.

I want a McPhee. Someone to dust everydamnthing.

I want a McPhee. My house and hence my personal paperwork is a mess. I'm otherwise a together person, but really, the home is a mess.

doing stuff just to be doing something is not productive, it is just busy and often wasteful.

HA! This. I realize Grace is not super interesting, but we have a 100 board games. Instead of using a half bottle of dish detergent to clean a suction canister that we've asked you NOT to disassemble and clean, howabout you sit with Grace and play Sorry. Granted Grace beats you every time (??) which is a drag for both of you, but that's how you should spend your time. Or, you know, read to her. Or go for a walk with Grace, the person you are here to care for.

I love that sarameg and I post the exact same friggin' sentence in a cross post.

I want a McPhee. Someone to dust everydamnthing.

But you have to be prepared for someone then putting shit back in places you hate, moving stuff around and knowing your business.

I think it's really hard to have someone in your house almost every day when you don't live with that person (even sometimes when you DO live with them) It's an intimacy that you didn't really ask for (in our case) but nonetheless need to survive.

Also, the nurse, in her cleaning, uses two rolls of paper towels a week. Part of it is she herself is a mess maker -- when I randomly come home while Grace it at school, half filled ice trays will be left on the counter, melting, while Grace food containers and syringes are left, dirty and hardening, next to the sink. She can't do the dishes without flooding the counter tops, which is causing one to buckle. Another reason we've asked her to stop doing the dishes.

And the food left in our fridge? 2 liter bottles of diet pepsi. Random containers of sour cream. So weird.

But you have to be prepared for someone then putting shit back in places you hate, moving stuff around and knowing your business.

Cody shares this frustration with you. Even having someone come once a week to clean the house bugs him. Whereas I am so happy to have someone else in charge of clean up and mopping my floors that I find even really annoying habits--like piling all of Franny's random toys on the floor into her old back packs--completely forgivable.

But, Burrell, even when you had full-time caregivers for your mom, it had to make you nuts to have people who were not your family there?

The other nurses we have had studiously avoided doing housework and we never asked. It's not why they are there. One nurse would clean Grace-related stuff and I asked him to leave it because I knew I cleaned it the way I wanted it done. Current nurse, in cleaning Grace's masks, put them in the microwave and melted them. They have a metal snap that doesn't handle that well.

I think my personal issue is that she reminds me of my students. She doesn't listen when told exactly what to do. She is passive aggressive in the extreme. She lacks all common sense. But she's here almost every day and mostly on time so I shouldn't really complain. And she's hypersensitive. At school, she drives the teacher crazy and does things like run learning centers which is NOT HER JOB in an effort to be "helpful". Just do what you are supposed to do, which is be a nurse for Grace.

She also arranged to have a kid we didn't invite to a birthday party invited! She called in the middle of a school day to say A's mom wanted A to go to Grace and Noah's party. I just.... I don't know. It makes me nuts.

But you have to be prepared for someone then putting shit back in places you hate, moving stuff around and knowing your business.

Which is why I haven't yet found a McPhee.

AUGH, nine minutes from the end of The Walking Dead season finale, the audio on my file is hosed.