My other grandmother has money but refuses to move out of her too-big house, even though (especially since) she's starting down the dementia road.
Tim's dad is developing dementia, and he's stubbornly living alone in a big house that he can't take care of, and letting the mail pile up and (because the mail is piled up and 85% of his mail is those goddamn fucking predatory appeals for money, and yeah, I think that religious organizations who send you appeals for money 3 times a month are predators) forgetting to pay bills (literally, the propane company had to physically come to his house and hang a tag on the door that said Pay Now Or We Turn Off Your Service [not an exact quote]). But he says he doesn't want to move, so he's isolated out there in that house (they have a lot of land, so while he has neighbors, they aren't close) and he pretty much doesn't drive any more, so he's SUPER isolated.
And for 3 years his constant refrain is that he's fatigued, has no motivation, has a fuzzy brain, just "doesn't feel well". His doctor has run every possible test to see if there's a physical problem (anemia, thyroid, other things out of whack), and they all come back fine. I've been telling Tim for a long time now that his dad's constant litany of malaise sounds like textbook depression. And why wouldn't it be? His wife died, he's tremendously isolated out there in that house, he doesn't feel like he has any purpose or goals.
Tim and his brothers are extremely hands-off and non-confrontational (which is why they all married women who will cut you if you so much as side-eye them), so they've been going along with this low-level concern about their dad but not talking to him about their concerns. (And believe me, I have agitated HARD for them to have a serious discussion, but it's gotten nowhere.) If he started treatment for depression, he might end up feeling a good deal better. But no one will actually push him to consider it.
It just makes me really sad for Tim's dad, because he's very gregarious and is a huge extrovert, and he's isolated himself and is pretty depressed. He could sell the house and move to an assisted living community where he would be so much happier, having people around he could do stuff with and talk to and go on excursions with. If he got out in front of his situation, he could sell the house and move *before* something really bad happens, like a bad fall (he's already fallen once recently, in the parking lot at church -- he said he was walking and "his feet stopped working" and he just fell over like a tree, without putting his hands out to catch himself, and scratched the hell out of his face and broke his glasses).
Ack. Very frustrating.
I don't remember if you'd posted this already, but where do you get your coupons, Hil?
There are a bunch of printable coupon sites. coupons.com is the easiest to use, and has the most coupons. You need to download an app that keeps track of how many times you've printed. There's also smartsource.com and redplum.com, and mambosprouts.com and hopster.com for some of the more "health food" type stuff. (There's also commonkindness.com, but that site is ridiculously finicky about when it will print.) I've also usually been buying two papers each Sunday. There are also services where you can order coupons for a few cents each, which can be useful if you want a whole lot of one particular coupon, but I haven't used any of those yet, because they all have a minimum number of coupons per order, and I haven't yet found anything where I wanted that many of them.
As for knowing what to do with them, there are a bunch of websites that put out lists each week of the sales at each store and what coupons are available for those items, plus a whole lot of blogs that either focus on particular stores (usually the national ones like Target or Rite-Aid) or that post about the deals at all (or most) of the supermarkets within some region. I found out about the Swiffer deal at Target from one of those blogs -- there's no way I would have, by myself, realized that the Swiffer things were all part of a "Buy 3, get a $10 gift card" special, and noticed that one of the things was really cheap to begin with, and also remembered that there had been some coupons for it in the paper a few weeks ago, plus found that there were also some printable coupons, because I didn't have enough from just the newspaper.
Headline 'o the Week?
Woman's car attacked by self-identified 'high elf' battling evil
The last thing the woman from Northeast Portland probably expected when she got up Tuesday morning was that she would be attacked by a sword-wielding elf.
But that's what happened around 7 a.m. as she drove her red BMW by the intersection of Southeast 7th and Morrison.
A man dressed in chain-mail with a helmet, shield and carrying a sword and staff ran into traffic and started attacking her car.
She called 911, reporting that "a pirate" was attacking her car.
When police got there, they detained Konrad Bass of Glendale, Oregon.
Bass told officers that he wasn't a pirate but a "high-elf engaged in battle with the evil Morgoth."
Morgoth is a character created by JRR Tolkien in a prequel to the Lord of the Rings stories. In the stories, he is the character from which all evil grew.
Bass, who was cited for criminal mischief and transported to Providence Hospital, also told officers he had taken LSD.
The woman's car had several puncture marks.
I had to see the original link to see if "alcohol was a factor."
Also, I'd never heard the term "high-elf" until now.
Oh Steph, man that's hard.
high elf
heh
coming down from that trip is gonna be a bitch.
Oh Steph, man that's hard.
I totally understand the general idea of letting the people in your life do the dumb stuff they're going to do. No one is my puppet (YET), so even when I think "Well, *I* would do that differently," I have to let them do their thing.
But the problem is when "their thing" seems so directly harmful. I know I can't make Tim's dad do what I think he should, but the way he's continuing is just contributing to the morass he's stuck in, compounded by very real dementia. And I can't force Tim and his brothers to have the hard conversation they need to have before something bad happens. Argh.
The last thing the woman from Northeast Portland probably expected when she got up Tuesday morning was that she would be attacked by a sword-wielding elf.
I'm sending that to my brother. (He and my SiL are very likely moving to Portland within the next year. He needs to know what he's getting himself into.)
In somewhat related news (to my question above, not to people's difficulties with relatives), do other editors ever get actually angry at stuff they're editing? Not because of content, just because it's in such shit shape?
I think my parents, having dealt with the decline of my mother's parents, learned some lessons about aging. At least, I hope so, but I can envision my mother being equally as stubborn as my grandmother was about not moving out of her house.
YES, Dana. Also, insent to your profile address.
Pretty much what I've found from couponing is that you'll save a lot more at the drugstore than at the grocery store, at least percentage-wise. If you're not too particular about what brand you use, then you can get stuff like deodorant, body wash, soap, shampoo, etc., for free. For most OTC meds, if you pay attention to the sales and coupons, and buy them when they're cheap if you know you're going to use them eventually, you can get them at about 50-75% off. For groceries, I usually end up saving somewhere between 30% and 50% -- the coupons and sales aren't for as high a percentage of the cost as the drugstore ones are, and there are almost never coupons for things like produce. (Although, once in a while, there are, and there are some savings apps that will pick one or two produce items each week and give you 50 cents or so if you buy them.)
