I have always appreciated the fact that my children will be in the position of deciding when it might be time to send Mom and Dad to the nursing home. I am hoping to put this off as long as possible, but the events of the last few weeks make me wonder if it’s time my daughters start investigating nursing homes for their parents.
Our biggest gap has always been our ability to handle technology and I admit it; we have often relied on them to help us delve into the mystery of how you make one of those computer things work. After this week, however, we may have moved on to bigger problems.
We have relied heavily on online programming to fill the gap left by not being able to go to the movies. The children patiently set up our television to be capable of streaming those shows…and then they went home. It’s been alright, though, we can remember the password–most days, and we know how to set the television to the right settings to make it work.
We have become addicted to the Jack Ryan series out there, so we have been streaming quite a bit on the television…until the night that Roy tried and tried and failed to make that station come on. He checked the connections, he made sure they were properly plugged into the wall. Still, no luck. I turned on the wall switch so that I could use a lamp to look closer and suddenly, the station worked. It was plugged into an outlet that has always been connected to the light switch that I had turned on.
Now, Roy thinks that I figured that out and that’s why I turned on the light switch, so, yeah, we’re going to go with that. And I wish that was the end of the incident. Unfortunately, I had made the discovery shortly before the live streaming debacle that the DVD player had died. It simply would not respond to the remote nor when I pressed the buttons directly on the machine (radical, I know).
I dragged Roy to a store long enough to select and purchase a new DVD player and when we came home, I unpacked it, read all the directions and got ready to install it. Of course, before I did that, I needed to dissect the old player because it had one of my Star Trek Voyager discs in its belly and it was going to give it up. I had the DVD player and a knife in my hand, when it suddenly occurred to me that the DVD player had recently been plugged into the same set of outlets as the television’s streaming system. On a whim, I plugged it back in and flipped on the switch. The old “dead” DVD player immediately switched on and spit out my Voyager disc.
These are only a sample of what goes on around here which might be related to our succumbing to the aging process. Roy threw his back out getting out of his easy chair. In the same week, I fell up the steps and hit my nose and cheek. While he was rushing around getting towels to stem the bleeding, he said, “Oh no, people are going to think I hit you.” I was astounded: that was his first concern? I’m able to take care of myself, but during the next week, while my face healed, I got a lot of concerned questions about whether I was safe at home from people who were younger than me! Apparently, I don’t look as capable of handling myself as I used to!
Cooking has presented some real aging issues. I now have to make a grocery list so that I don’t forget the things I really need at the store and of course, I forget the list at home! I leave things out of recipes that don’t improve the taste. I am constantly putting something on to cook and then forgetting I did. I’m told the lady who invented Tollhouse chocolate chip cookies did so accidentally by adding chocolate bits to a regular cookie. The last thing I discovered accidentally while cooking was that if you put something on to cook and then forget it for the next hour, it chars in the bottom of the pan and sets off the smoke alarm. As a matter of fact, I’ve discovered that accidentally any number of times.
So you can see, it might be time for our children to start investigating the best nursing home options. I hope that doesn’t come around too soon, but those days when I put down my glasses and then can’t find them or I get out of the car without unbuckling the seatbelt, I know that it’s out there on the horizon. On an unrelated note, does anyone want to buy a brand new DVD player? I can’t figure out how to repack it in the box to return it! And I don’t remember where I put the receipt….
dropsinthewell 