... you must be a dementia family caregiver. Like all mothers around the globe, Mom was very fond of scolding us with: "If you can't say something nice don't say anything at all." Lately I feel like I've been saying ALL the not nice things in my posts. Granted, with my caregiver burnout, Mother Nature taking her revenge, dementia trying to kill Mom, and COVID trying to kill us all, uh... yeah, the bad times have been on fire 'round here (literally). But dementia has never been all one thing in our household, we've always had smiles mixed in amongst the shrieks. So, in honor of my former scoldings from my former mother I've gathered up all our latest dementia stuff and nonsense to force a gri

Escaping from. Escaping to. Escaping nothing. I ran away. Last month, before the COVID scare, the deadly wildfires, the smoke-filled week of air quality so hazardous we couldn't even step outside - I ran away. I don't know why. I had been relieved of my hands-on-Mom days when MotherMinder arrived Saturday afternoon. I immediately descended the stairs to our cozy dungeon in anticipation of a relaxing time off. I had a pleasant Sunday; took a long walk with a friend, cuddled up to The Boyfriend in the Basement for our current can't-miss fav show (Lovecraft Country - so much fun!), did all the things that would warrant a continuation of pleasure on my remaining days of freedom. I woke up on Mon

For the love of gawd can we close this show now? As if dementia life weren't entertaining enough, in the last week we decided to add a fresh COVID scare and encroaching wildfires to our repertoire making us the "Must-See!" dementia disaster of the summer. It started when The Other Girl, while here for her Mom-shift, got a call that one of her employees had tested positive for COVID. This news immediately sparked a revival of our pandemic roles from earlier this spring. Masks were donned, the Dance of the Disinfectants leapt to life, and Mom-coverage options shuffled from understudy to understudy. MotherMinder was called off for the week to avoid the virus risk while The Other Girl went back