Up Early

It seems like I haven't been able to sleep for at least a week. Mary's coughing keeps waking me up. She seems to often sleep right through it, although I'm sure it's disturbing the quality of her sleep. It seems like she's been sleeping a lot more during the day. We've got this great cough syrup (tastes so yummy) which I believe has codeine in it, which explains its effectiveness. Half a teaspoon and your cough is gone, but it really knocks you out. It knocks me out. Mary sleeps then for at least a day. So I hesitate to give that to her. I've been giving her Coricidan, which is a pill and is safe for people with high blood pressure. That seemed to have worked at first but now it doesn't seem to be working. I'm also wary about giving her too much. She's got these breathing treatments (with this little machine--she always reminds me of the caterpillar with his hooka from Alice in Wonderland) that she's supposed to get three times a day, but they're hard to get in. It takes about 10-15 minutes and is very loud. Maybe it's just me. I try to set the clock on the stove to remember to give it to her, but often there's something that interferes (she's eating, talking on the phone, sleeping) and then I forget. I never saw that they helped that much, anyway. Anna suggested I give her Grandma's remedy--whiskey with honey and lemon. I thought she meant like a hot toddy but finally understood that it's like a homemade cough syrup. At 5 this morning I resolved to give this a try. Good thing Mary likes bourbon, like a good old Kentucky girl. I've administered it twice now. She wants two tablespoons, not one, and then always comments on how it burns like fire and then promptly falls back asleep. I know this is probably very unhealthy and medicinally completely unsound but it's got to be better than the codeine and the pills.

So now I sit here with a migraine and won't be worth a shot of gunpowder, as the aunts say, tomorrow. Actually, I think I started getting the migraine last night when I tried out a new toy for Mary. I had wanted to get Angie one of those massage chair pads but she already got one for Xmas, so I got one for Mary. It's very loud and Mary didn't seem to like it last night, so I think I'll take it back. I also feel so guilty about spending the money, although it was on sale. I hope I can take it back.

I took Anna and Mary out to visit Angie yesterday. They hadn't seen each other for ages, which is why Anna went. For all of her complaining about Angie (yes, more than my complaining, but, then, she's known her for 87 years and that's enough to make anyone get good and fed up with someone), I know Anna gets concerned. She agrees with me that Angie needs more help than she's getting and wonders, too, why her family doesn't help her more. It's funny--Angie is like some icon, some demi-goddess in my family. I don't think her family views her that way. But I don't see my family falling all over themselves to help her, either, so I guess it's just people's attitudes nowadays. Anna says I'm good with old people. I just try to see them as people. I was listening to a radio show yesterday and they were talking about pets and how people project human feelings onto their pets, that dogs are actually just a great species of manipulators who are surviving off of humans. This made me think about Mary and wonder about her human traits. What makes her human. She doesn't seem to have a very wide range of emotions. Mostly she just says she doesn't care. She lives in the moment like a dog does--because she can't remember the past or what's supposed to come up in the future. She sleeps most of the time. She's a keen manipulator. Is Mary my pet? Is there a point when people become less like people? What about those old people in rest homes? The ones who stare vacantly, repeat themselves constantly and wear diapers. What makes them people? That sounds like a really cruel question, but with people treating animals like people and people like animals, I think it's a valid question. How important is a person's past to who they are at the moment? I ask that because I'm sure Anna and Angie don't think Mary deserves the TLC that I give her, based on the person she has been in her past. What did she do for others? When I broach this subject with her, she says she's too old to care about her past. I know there's tons I don't know or understand about Mary, but I wouldn't want her past. If I'd had that much money, I would have wanted to have helped people. To have at least volunteered, not to have lived like I was a sort of princess. I'm not judging her. Or at least trying not to. But I do often wonder about what went on in Mary's head her whole life. If I ask now what she's thinking, she says nothing. A and A joke that it's probably true, but I can't believe that. I joke with Mary that people spend inordinate amounts of time trying to think nothing and she does it effortlessly.

Well, I've given myself indigestion now with too many gingerbread cookies (oh, my diet!). My headache is still here. I always think it will go away. And it never does. You'd think I'd learn. I really detest taking pills for it. Maybe someday I'll figure out what the universe is trying to tell me with my migraines. (I used to think they were caused by tension but considering the extreme lack thereof in my current life and yet the increasing frequency of their occurrences, I don't think the message is that I need to relax. Get a good night's sleep, maybe...) Maybe I can get cracking on Mary's robe.