A photo from the 1920s of my mother (a pre-teen) and her two younger sisters when they came back from living in Poland for several years shows them dressed alike — right down to their scuffed high-top laced-up shoes.
My mother insists on wearing a pair of brown leather “booties,” which she guards with her life, convinced that someone is going to steal them from her. She has always told the story of how, while living in her grandmother’s thatched-roof farmhouse is Poland (along with her four siblings and their own mother), someone somehow got into the house one night and stole all of their clothes, even their shoes. Although I had never been sure that this story was true, it was verified by our 81 year old cousin who visited a few weeks ago.
My mother has become overwhelmingly paranoid that someone is going to steal her clothes, especially her shoes. Every evening she manages to hide her shoes somewhere else. Of course, when she gets up the next day, she doesn’t remember hiding them and believes someone has stolen them. She does this with her eyeglasses and her purses, too. It annoys me that I have to spend so much of my time looking for the things she believes were stolen. The fact that we always find those objects hidden somewhere in her room is irrelevant to her.
I’m annoyed a lot lately. But then I go over and read By Bea’s Bedside, where Alexandra muses about her bedridden mother for whom she is caregiver. They have such a different relationship than we have here. They obviously always have been close and communicative. Not so here. Alexandra’s attitude toward taking care of her mother is so much different from mine; Bea’s daughter never sounds annoyed.
I should be grateful that my mother is not bedridden (although when I have to spend an hour looking for her brown booties while she follows me around complaining about “those people, I often wish she were). And I don’t have to change diapers. Not yet, anyway.
My mother has never been much of a reader or a thinker or a doer (of anything but housework). She was not much of a television watcher either. So now, there is absolutely nothing that she is interested in doing except move things around in her closets and drawers.
Her attention span in front of the television is about 15 minutes, and she prefers programs from the earlier days of television — ones with no shooting and no car crashes and no expletives. So yesterday, I ordered a used set of seven VHS tapes of the Loretta Young Show from the late 50s. She always liked Loretta Young, and maybe those stories from more calm and secure times will hold her attention.
There was an item on the local news station the other day about a computer program that’s supposed to help older people revitalize their brains. The more I read about it, I realized it was much too complicated for my mom. I started searching for some pre-school DVD memory games, and they’re much more suitable for where she’s at these days.
I just wish I could find something that would interest her and get her mind off those damned brown booties.

No, that’s not traveling instructions.
For months I was having trouble falling asleep, staying asleep. I didn’t want to take prescription sleeping pills in case I had to get up in the middle of the night if my mother needed my help.
Listening to novels I downloaded to my MP3 player from my library helped me to fall asleep, although still not fast enough. I tried Melatonin and also Valium. I tried listening to calming music and slowing down my breathing. Sometimes it all worked, but more often it didn’t.
Oh, I know there are all kinds of other tricks to promoting sleepiness, some of which, like warm relaxing baths, I don’t have time for since my mother goes to bed so late, and I have a shower and no bath tub anyway.
One night a couple of weeks ago, after tossing and turning, watching the clock as it moved slowly from hour to hour, in frustration I threw my pillow to the foot of the bed and slept feet-to-the-headboard. I slept great for the rest of the night.
I kept sleeping that way from then on, and my nights have become much more restful.
With my head at the foot of the bed, the top of my head points to the North. HUH? you might think? SO?
When I Googled “sleep with head north” I got a bunch of similar explanations, the following of which is the most clearly spelled out:

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Just what you’ve been waiting for the bits of news no one hears on the news. Check out Harper’s Weekly for off-beat snapshots the whole big war picture. But, meanwhile, here are some snips from other world views:

What do you know! Bob Dylan’s on the radio. He’s got a regular show on AOL Radio. Check it out here. I didn’t know. But Dean Landsman did, and he sent an email out to the “gwazillion” names he has in his email address book, just in case we might be interested.
I’m posting it here in case you might be interested.
Bob Dylan. On AOL Radio. Who woulda thunk it?
Listen to his new album, Modern Times.

Not just pantihose, but regular stockings too — you know, the kind you have to hold up with garters ( the kind attached to girdles; of course, if you’re younger than 40, you probably don’t know).

Every time I open one of her dresser drawers, out pops a baggie full of them. And not the kind of baggie with a zip lock that keeps the items inside from spilling out. Oh no — these baggies are either the cheap kind that you’re supposed to use a twist tie with (but she doesn’t) or they’re bags that something else originally came in. Nude, taupe, tan, beige — an ecru avalanche.
Most of them she never wore, and these days she mostly wears socks. Knee-highs if she decides to force her feet into the more dressy shoes that are the culprits in the irritation of her hammertoe and bunions. No use trying to convince her not to wear those aggravating shoes. THEY ARE HER SHOES! SHE PAID FOR THEM AND SHE WILL WEAR THEM! There’s no point in arguing with her; getting her upset only intensifies her dementia.
In anticipation of the day when I can clean out all of those assorted nylon tubes, I did some Googling to see how I might recyle them.
This site is a hoot to read through. — but I’m looking for some actual practical uses.
The best ones I found are on a site called The Jewish Woman. Among the nylon tips were these, my favorites:

From FactCheck.org:

There was a time when I wanted. And what I wanted, I worked to get. Or played to get. Whatever it was, the wanting of it fired my spirit, made me make the moves toward the pleasure of getting.

But there is no point in wanting these days because wanting without the freedom to go after what I want hurts more than not wanting anything at all.
And so I don’t want anything at all. Nothing.

Turn on your speakers and identify.

This one pointed to by Stu Savory. (Wish I had the lyrics to it).
This on posted by Maudie. (Grab a kleenex first.)
This one posted on Stereophile.

This is about two movies with words and music — two very different movies, yet I have to admit that I was enthralled by both..

The first is actually called “Words and Music,” and I tuned into the Turner Classic Movies channel because I thought my mother would like it. Of course, as usual, her attention span ended in a half-hour, and I was the one who became thoroughly engrossed in the words and music of this 1948 musical.
A fictionalized look at the lives of the famous songwriting team, Rodgers and Hart, it’s a film filled with famous Hollywood names, many of them playing themselves: Judy Garland, Gene Kelly, Mel Torme, Perry Como, Lena Horne, June Allyson….. Gene Kelly dancing “Slaughter on Tenth Avenue!” [ DROOL!] Mickey Rooney plays Lorenzo Hart, giving lots of (I’m sure fictionalized but neverthless fascinating) insights into how the lyrics for some of his most famous songs might have originated.
The other movie, filled with a totally different genre of words and music is “The Lost City,” beautifully (I think) directed by and starring Andy Garcia. This movie is a love song to the city and the country of his heart and soul — Havana, Cuba. The cruelties of Batista, Castro, and Che Guevera rip into the tapestry of 1950s Cuba, a land richly textured by the music, dancing, and culture of its diverse people. One of the comments about this movie is that it offers A Dialog that’s been lacking for 50 years. While the “dialog” to which this comment refers is about the politics of that time and place, the writing itself is also full of compelling dialog.
Words and music. Love those movies.