The Move, part 1

Whew! what a couple of days it has been. The move has gone mostly well, though it was a pretty long day on Friday and her room wasn't ready as early as they had told me it would be. DD and I got there about 7:50 and dd started marking everything on my list with blue (moving) or white (I'm keeping) tape. Everything not marked was for donation. Mom isn't usually back from breakfast until 9 but her apartment is right next to the elevator and around 8:40 we kept hearing people getting off the elevator and started worrying she was going to be early and walk in on us. We got everything done about 8:50 and went down and she was still eating.

The movers had told me that they would get to her apartment between 9 and 9:30 and their first priority was getting her items that will be moved (marked in blue tape) loaded and taken over to her new place and set up, so done around noon. With what little we were taking I couldn't imagine it would take them past noon. We saw them arriving just as we were leaving with mom. Then after getting her room ready they were supposed to go back and load up the donation stuff. We first went over to her new place and I ran in and dropped off paperwork and the check. Then tried the cable provider store, but they weren't open until 10. We drove over to Kohl's and had to wait 15 min for them to open. It took us a good hour in the store, just because she is sooo slow walking. Those my age...remember Tim Conway's old man skits on The Carol Burnett show? that's how she walks now. But, we had lots of time to kill, so that was fine. Oh boy, she did not want to give up her old tennis shoes. I didn't even realize how dirty and old they had become! We found some similar, but she thought they felt weird. I picked out another pair, too, to just have on hand for her in her closet. She kept saying "but I get to keep mine, right?" I just kept saying ya...but, ewww no. They were so dirty and no support left inside and the insides were dirty too. We also found her a top to try on, mostly because I had one of her new bras I had ordered online and wanted to make sure it fit before opening the other 2 packages. It fit well enough, I guess, so I just left the new one on her. Then we went to Spectrum to return her router but I got the router and modem mixed up and had the modem. The lady said I would need the modem to plug her phone in. We made a couple other stops (just for me to run in and take care of) to kill time. We decided to go over to Cracker Barrel for lunch. One of my mom's continued things to ask/say over and over is about eating, how is she going to feed us? when is she going to feed us? type of stuff. We got to the restaurant at like 11:30 and was taking our time. I had to order for her as she cannot read a menu or make decisions anymore, even if I give her a couple of choices. She'll just say what are you having.

At 12:15, we were pretty much done and I get a text from the movers that they JUST got to her new room to start! OMG. What have they been doing for 3 hours? I then asked for an estimated time so we could figure out what to do now. She said around 1:30 or 2, probably 1:30. Ugh. We stopped at Walgreens so I could get some waters and tylenol (I had a headache by then). From the time we left the restaurant mom kept saying she was ready to go home. And we could just drop her off at her car...where was her car parked? Lots of repeating this. It was a little after 1pm so we just decided to get on the freeway and drive a bit, telling her we were on our way to take her home. We drove about 15 min and then turned around to head back to the city. About halfway back, at 1:30 they texted her room was ready. Thank goodness, she was getting tired and confused.

Now was the moment I've been dreading - what to tell her when we walked into this new place? How would she react?

Part 2 coming up (DD is still here and this is all I have time for this morning, so figured it was a good stopping point)