Friday and Saturday frustration

I'm extremely frustrated again this morning with my mom's medication dispenser and her erratic schedule of late, of when she is actually in her apartment!

Yesterday ended up a total bust and she got no meds. I had gotten a hold of her about 2 hours past her morning time and for some reason she said the screen kept saying "refill" rather than dispense. Well, from my memory on how it works, you push the big button and on the screen it says "dispense" and below that "refill". You push the button one more time to dispense. If you want to refill you have to push the down arrow to highlight that option. I couldn't get it figured out, so told her to go down to exercise and I'd call her after. Well, after turned out after lunch is when she got back up to her apt and by then it's 1pm and it's apparently past the window of time, so you have to go through the menu to manually dispense, which there would be no way for her to figure that out. Especially when she can't stay on the phone while she's standing at the machine. Her landline won't reach. I'm going to have to move it over next to her phone, so that when we have an issue like this she can stay on the phone and do what I say. By the time she sets the phone down and walks over to the dispenser she's forgotten what I said.

So, then her after dinner pill (one pill for cholesterol) was not taken at 6:10. And for some reason, I got no notifications on my phone yesterday that she did not take either dose. I try to call her at 6:35 and no answer. Ok, well that explains why she hasn't taken it, she's gone again. I get a hold of her about 7:15 and she just got back to her apt. (she was at her guy friends watching tv). She missed the hour window through 7:05 to hear the machine notifying her, so of course she forgot. She says "ok, I'll take it right when we hang up". We hang up and of course she forgot! She never did take it. I didn't call her back. I just gave up. One missed cholesterol pill is not going to matter at this point.

Then this morning I'm watching the time so I can check my phone at 8:30 to see if taken or not and *&%$ the app now says her machine is disconnected from wifi. OMG! What I have come to the conclusion the few times this has happened the past few months is her wifi must be down for a bit. One time I went to their website and saw it was a system outage going on. Other times, though, it says it's connected. The only other thing, of course, that would cause it would be if she actually unplugged it, which she hasn't done for several months now, after I taped it down and put the note on the wall at the plug in. So here it is 8:40 and I can't tell if she took it or not. She could be eating downstairs, so she won't take it until she gets back up, usually just before 9, or they could also just as likely have brought their breakfasts to them at their apartments. Seems to be no set schedule on this anymore (I think it's a staffing issue). 

So, I'll have to call her a little after 9 and go through the whole thing like yesterday where she doesn't have a clue and I probably won't be able to get her figured out. I don't want her to miss 2 days doses in a row. I guess if I can't get it figured out, I'll have to drive in. If the damn app/wifi was connected on her end at least I would then know for sure if she took it or not. I even logged into her internet provider account and did a modem reset from there and they say it's working/connected.

DH has been talking to his friend, the one who's taking care of his deceased brother's belongings, at least once a day. Yesterday friend went to where brother had worked (he was a truck driver) and had parked his pickup, while he was out on the road. Oh dear, since his brother lived out of the semi, the inside of his pickup was also a "storage unit". He sent a pic to dh. It's an extended cab. The front passenger side is stuffed up to about window height. There is just enough space to sit in it to drive. The back seat is stuffed from the floor on up. I told dh well, it could be worse. Friend could have a whole apartment or house to go through and get rid of all the stuff! At least it's all confined to a storage unit and the pickup. And at least he was able to find the title to the truck inside the glove box. I don't know if there will be much friend will end up keeping of the stuff. Maybe the toolbox and tools, but friend already has more than enough of that in his own huge shop, duplicates as a matter of fact. He doesn't really need any of the stuff, but feels like he's supposed to keep some of it, I guess. I told dh....when I die I really don't expect anyone to keep anything of mine, just because it was mine. Of course if there is something someone really wants to have, sure, but no one needs to keep my collection of teapots, just because I collected them. Friends brother had a bunch of model trucks he put together, in boxes in his storage unit. Lots of them. Now, friend feels like he has to keep them. I said if you feel the need, pick out one or two and display on your desk or a shelf and get rid of the rest. What's the point of just keeping them in the boxes they are in, taking up room at his place?

This is also wearing dh out, quite a bit, being the sounding  board for both the wife (who wants to complain (well, she complains about everything anyway) about her dh and his friend, who wants to complain about having to go through all this stuff of his brothers. Dh tries to give them both suggestions/options and then because they each want the other handle it their way, they both twisted what dh said and then each gives dh flap back. He's like whoa! that is NOT what I said to him/her and set them straight, but it's wearing on him. I said Jeez! just load the crap up in his trailer and go back home! Friend is staying there, in a motel, almost 2 weeks! To load up a storage unit and truck cab of stuff. Another friend of his is buying the pickup. 3 days max??!

Speaking of deaths, I just learned of another young death. She was 53. Sorta kinda a step sister. My half sister knew her/met her, I never did. Our dad was with her mom for several years, though after 5 previous marriages and divorces, he never did marry her. She had 2 children. I met her once, about a year or so after dh and I married we drove out for a visit for a couple of days. I honestly just vaguely remember her. We only stayed like a couple of days, as we both had work and I had work and school and dh didn't get paid time off. I don't remember meeting either of her kids. From what I know now her son is about my age, her daughter 5 years younger, so at that time she would have been about 18. Anyhow, the story is, my dad had started drinking again and this girlfriend talked him into selling the ranch he inherited from his parents and moving back to Arkansas with her. He sold the ranch, she moved her and her kids back to AR, but he never did move there with her and they broke up. 

It sounds like my half sister didn't meet them until our dad's (I use the term "dad" loosely - he was never a father to me) funeral. They loved him because most of the years they got to spend with him he wasn't drinking. Half sis has stayed in contact with them and I guess several years ago this "step" sister flew up to Canada and visited with her and her family. I guess she had cancer and didn't tell anyone she was dying, so my half sister had no idea until she found out about her death, from her brother, a couple days ago.

My half sister has this like 10 page "life story" our dad wrote up (she found it in his file cabinet of papers) where he goes through all his marriages and divorces and other relationships during all his years of alcoholism. I found it interesting that all the marriages and divorces he writes about he never writes the woman's name. Just numbers them, LOL. But for this girlfriend (after all the divorces) he says her name. She's the only one in his life story, that he said the name.