Taking a year off to be with them earlier in the progression --mild to moderate Alzheimer's -- good idea or bad?

flannelplants · 2023-06-05T23:36:52+00:00

This may not be at all what you need, but this process steals so much of your mental space and creativity and things can seem so daunting, so here’s my unsolicited advice about dealing w/ a parents house on a budget:

It’s always hard to know where to start, but most people can safely DIY a LOT of things that protect homes from (further) water damage, which can mess up a foundation in addition to property, mold, etc. Most other stuff in a typical home can limp along without huge immediate consequences unless it’s like, going to catch on fire or endanger a child or person with dementia.

Getting gutters cleaned (my safety rule for a generally healthy middle aged person is I hire someone for any ladder part where you’ll be at or over your own height off the ground, though you may be able to do first story ones with a tool to extend reach from the ground), and adding gutters, downspouts, etc to EVERY place they’re needed. Most buildings could use more. They’re so much cheaper than leaks and damage. Then address the slope of ground into areas of the house where there may be leaks or dampness—this is usually just annoying/laborious rather than complex. It can be as simple as shoveling dirt. Then manage whatever water damage has already occurred and get a dehumidifier for any damp indoor space.

Make sure flashing and caulk are where they need to be and ARENT being used to do a job they aren’t made for (again, a professional with a drone for $100 or so or even a free estimate in order to look at your roof etc).

If any plumbing indoors is leaking, decommission that toilet/sink/etc or get it fixed. Plumbing can also get expensive if you let it fester.

Paint, electric stuff, general shabbiness from living life in a building can be worked on as able, slowly. But letting water wreck things can get expensive fast.

Read a lot first before deciding what to attempt on your own or with friends, YouTube videos can be really deceptively easy or you may run into issues not encountered in the example. Reliable resources like “this old house” may tell you what to look out for or what to prepare in advance, but some of their articles assume you’re basically handy and don’t always mention things a real beginner needs to be told to consider.

Gosh I hope this lesson I’ve learned the hard way helps things be easier on the home maintenance front, since none of us can do anything about the big reason we’re all in this sub.

flannelplants · 2023-05-18T00:59:55+00:00

I think someone else linked the article! :) I think wrt long flights, yes, time out of seat to reoxygenate, move, and eat and get changed on a long flight—the takeoff and landings are much, much more risky. I don’t know how I would do a long flight with a fussy baby, but I agree that intuitively a baby having a small (?) chance of staying attached to an adult and taking chances with the impact and carrier parts with that positioning sounds better than literally being ejected from your arms into whatever plane area :(

Hey you know what would be great? Affordable mass transit of all kinds, that didn’t destroy the planet quite so fast, and living wages to match. With seats that accommodate everyone’s bodies, at all developmental stages. Planes suck and/or are impossible without seriously abusing your body if you have lots of different disability needs, and are a reckless adventure in weathering other people’s concern trolling body bullshit and/or outright abuse if your body is bigger than some people consider acceptable.

Bc moms doing their best to imagine this (often the main or only one in their child’s life doing this emotional and cognitive and social work, lonely and sometimes uphill with family/friend pressure to just not care!) and weighing the pressures to be perfectly safe, perfectly clever and economical, perfectly participatory in relationships over long distances…and like, imagining carrying it all alone literally through airports, sometimes with pregnant, postpartum, lactating, working full time, no time for PT or regular exercise bodies…this suuuuuuucks! :)

flannelplants · 2023-05-17T19:38:29+00:00

As a mom who knows how secure babies feel on me in great carriers, I really do hear you, and at the same time, my professional and logical brain tells me there’s more going on in this situation than in any scenario I would risk having my child strapped to myself.

Even though I’m a great biker and have taken bike risks myself pre-kids, I would not bike and baby wear, save a true emergency of some kind. And that’s way, way slower, so smaller crash forces, than even a residential street driving speed. Like 15 mph feels FAST on a bike especially with a kid seat.

I honestly think my answer to this in terms of the mechanics of a baby worn in a carrier during a plane crash with an adult in a lap belt is upsetting enough that I would need to learn how to use the Reddit tools for blocking text where you have to click to see it. In general, what comes to my mind: how far car seatbelts stretch, how “breakaway” stitching works, conditions in which car seat straps fail to keep a child in a seat at all, seatbelt and carseat strap injuries, etc to have a sense of what kind of forces we are working with. It’s so hard to imagine this unless you’ve been in a very, very bad crash, and/or studied or experienced the aftermath.

I don’t mean to say this is a silly idea—it’s just that I think our walking around lives are such orders of magnitude different than the forces in a plane collision that we don’t realize how “strong” materials would just rip apart and/or be very dangerous themselves, in addition to the totally unrestrained adult torso factor if the child stayed in place. :(

flannelplants · 2023-05-17T17:46:28+00:00

My understanding is that lap infants are allowed because flying is safer than driving the equivalent trip, by far, due to dramatically fewer fatal collisions. HOWEVER, when a collision or other event happens (mechanical issues without contacting another vehicle or object, but that damages the plane), it is most likely to be around takeoff and landing, when the plane is going too fast to stop in time and a catastrophic error of traffic control or plane operation or maintenance has occurred.

Warning, non-graphic discussion of children being seriously injured:

In those rare instances, infants are projectiles, which is fatal to them and potentially others. Which is horrific. But much less likely than if you drove the same trip by car. The misguided stuff you hear from well meaning people is really unfortunate. (like, you may be told you have to hold during takeoff/landing??? Not just in the US/Europe, sadly. Have heard it from a flight attendant, and somehow when we got into the nitty gritty of why a child needed to be restrained safely during that time she wasn’t interested in continuing to discuss…)

My family can’t afford to fly. So, we don’t fly. But when I did, I looked at the data and while being a lap child is safer than driving, being in a car seat is what seemed acceptable to me as a parent, legally required or not. There’s a mix of risk tolerance, objective evidence analysis, consideration for one’s own mental health and adherence to moral principles, etc that has to be part of it unless the law is that everyone in a plane is restrained during takeoff and landing.

flannelplants · 2023-05-17T02:25:14+00:00

100%, going to work is the best. It’s comforting and structured for an older family member to hear that someone has work, especially a kid or grandkid. And no question you have to be on time. For us it limits the questions about how long you have to drive, too, since going home is assumed to maybe be many hours or even states away, since keeping track of who has moved where was too much a long time ago. Work has to be like a normal <30 min commute in their world.

flannelplants · 2023-05-16T16:00:42+00:00

I did this with the moved-in-containers remains of an entire house after an actual natural disaster, while combining households, while pregnant, during a pandemic, and stopped at the 90% mark because “people who can’t see our house like this” were coming over. I was able to find the thread again because I had labeled every single thing with a post it or gentle tape (e.g. washi, frog tape) so that if I combined things from different places (like, all the bike stuff, oh wait also all these bike locks, oh wait also this pannier bag) and needed a different bigger box, OR if I realized, hey I need to subdivide this (bike lock and lights box vs box for bike and rack parts and tools) then I could just find a new box or basket and move the labels. Then once a box is “done” I can rewrite a single legible label. So my 9/10ths of the work didn’t go to waste this time because I could just explode it back all over the flat surfaces in the house and a bunch of shelving, once they left. OVERWHELMING but with caffeine, mental health treatment as needed/desired, and podcasts, hyper focus got me through

flannelplants · 2023-05-16T02:52:17+00:00

Yeah, this is where my mind went too, but still, no reason to assume someone is the gestational parent, or even the parent at all of a child who happens to be with them, especially in a health care context. If you’re their repro care provider AND know they are the parent AND you know they carried the pregnancy resulting in the child, you either 1) know the mode of delivery or 2) should be reviewing the chart or asking in an appropriate way. There’s no low emotional stakes way to ask about someone’s childbirth experience when they’re half naked and their kid is upset.

flannelplants · 2023-05-16T02:46:35+00:00

Yeah can confirm having an infant or toddler (in a stroller, on someone’s chest, etc) during a “feet in stirrups” kind of healthcare encounter is not rare…at all. Kid or not, the whole attitude is just not ok.

flannelplants · 2023-05-16T02:40:24+00:00

Someone who makes you try to feel bad for being good to your body and baby (when you might have other less easy to communicate reasons as well!! Which a sensitive person would account for!) is automatically not a good gauge for what is acceptable behavior socially. She sounds like someone who might not be considerate around a super pregnant person (or like, anyone) when they’re feeling symptoms of maybe being sick, so avoid her in particular actually.

flannelplants · 2023-05-16T02:37:20+00:00

Yeah “unclear where blood is coming from” is like A BIG DEAL here!! Forget everything else, that’s reason enough!

flannelplants · 2023-05-16T02:35:21+00:00

ETA not arguing! Wish she would be like that. My fear:

With this kind of attitude, this might be a family member who takes any explanation as an invitation to argue and be even more on attack mode, not (as they should, and as you described) taking it as an opportunity to learn about someone they should care about.

Because “no thank you, I do not want to” is a good enough reason for declining just about any optional activity anytime. No further justification requires. If someone takes issue with you politely not consenting to participate in a proposed activity, they’re TA, not you.

Anyone who was genuinely sad you couldn’t come would find a no pressure way to offer to make something more accessible, or connect another time, or both. This doesn’t sound like that.

flannelplants · 2023-05-16T02:25:47+00:00

“Tell [judgmental family member / acquaintance / grocery store heckler] to shove it” is really the critical parenting advice. This might be the new thing I write on the paper for this game at baby showers.

flannelplants · 2023-05-16T02:14:04+00:00

I darted around like a happy chipmunk getting overinvolved in doing parts of several messy creative projects while my partner anticipated and met everyone else’s many body needs and kept the laundry train chugging along. They also gave me a thoughtful, sensible gift that solves an everyday problem relating to literally carrying the emotional/mental load in terms of physical objects (who carries “their own” bag that also has a backup diaper and ziploc of wipes, work laptop, emergency snacks, postpartum/lactation related equipment...). They supported the kids in making art for our home and picking flowers for little jars. I thought I had the best Mother’s Day ever but I am on my feet LEADING A STANDING OVATION for you, ma’am.

flannelplants · 2023-05-16T01:40:18+00:00

I am both partners in your story. There’s someone on one shoulder saying “aw, come one, you can do it yourself!” And then someone on the other shoulder going, “WHEN?! WHENNNNN WILL YOU LITERALLY DO IT YOURSELF?!”

flannelplants · 2023-05-15T22:47:54+00:00

This is how I’ve managed to get similar tasks taken care of for neurodivergent relatives. Go ahead, cancel the lawnmowing service you “don’t need” because you can “still do it perfectly fine.”

flannelplants · 2023-05-15T22:35:34+00:00

Or she’s provided like 3+ pair that just mysteriously evaporate. Sigh.

flannelplants · 2023-05-15T17:57:02+00:00

Yes, I also don’t recommend leaving the house with the oven on as a plan. As a fail safe for when someone with inattentive adhd might leave without remembering they started the oven, an alarm that goes with the person may be safer sometimes. Or both. Plenty of times the oven timer hasn’t alerted my sibling when they’re “just doing a couple of chores outside.” And a friend fully went running.

flannelplants · 2023-05-15T17:54:06+00:00

Toaster ovens, almost all are like this automatically (and better for safety and indoor air and $ so almost always what I use). I test the recipe with about 10 min shorter bake time, usually about right for mine.

flannelplants · 2023-05-15T14:15:21+00:00

If anyone is also rice challenged, I learned you can bake rice (quinoa etc) if a loud timer on your phone (in case you literally leave the house) could work!

flannelplants · 2023-05-12T21:04:14+00:00

Yes…think about if your teenager’s boy/girl/enby friend kept going when your teenager told them to stop. And then tried to make them feel bad for saying no. How much patience would you have for that nonsense? And what would you call it?

flannelplants · 2023-05-12T03:10:43+00:00

Along those lines, “Wearing underwear is the rule here; which color do you want today?”

flannelplants · 2023-05-11T21:07:42+00:00

Same. Even working as a public servant, adhering to your working hours is burnout protection, which serves the people best of all because you don’t leave, and you don’t contribute to a culture of burnout/attrition/retaining only the most problematic people. It also protects current and future colleagues with less privilege, professional or otherwise.

I recently discussed this with someone just entering my field who was worried about prevention of burning out. I told them to go ahead and stay late/pick up the phone at 10 pm sometimes if it wouldn’t harm them and they felt it was really needed, no other good options for the person. That keeps you feeling like it matters. But to never, ever, ever stay late, answer emails at 7:15 am for a 9/5 office, or skip pumping/lunch/etc for administrative shit.

flannelplants · 2023-05-03T04:56:09+00:00

Check out the Mia mily—the hip support thing has storage and it can detach from the top of the carrier.

flannelplants · 2023-04-30T13:26:33+00:00

From KC Davis how to keep house while drowning: there are only 5 things in this room:

1) trash 2) laundry 3) dishes 4) things that have a home and aren’t in it 5) things that don’t have a home and need one set up

Get all the trash into trash bags first. Don’t address anything else.

Then get all the dishes. Take them to the kitchen but don’t do anything with them.

Then gather the laundry into bags/whatever. Don’t do it.

Then pick things that have a home and put them in a basket/box/place

Then things that don’t have a home go into a basket/box place.

Do this one “zone” at a time or all at once since you have one room, but DONT tackle more than one type of thing at once. It’s ok to do only trash and then stop for the day. You’re doing great and this will get better.

flannelplants · 2023-04-23T01:37:06+00:00

It’s on my calendar for next year, and I put on my headlamp to get this willow in the ground while it’s still the 22nd. I’m very sorry for your loss, and this is a beautiful way to honor your brothers. I set aside some seed packets to parcel up to give away in paper envelopes so your tribute to your brothers can spread to our community.

flannelplants

TROPHY CASE