I love my mother.

She is a source of peace, a source of strength, a source of humor.  She will also be the reason I don’t make it to aged 50, she is shaving days off my life expectancy.

One of the reasons why I needed to stop working outside of the home was that mom’s  needs required me here.

Yes Teff was still living here at the time, but she’d demonstrated that she was not all that responsible.  She was also in a jobs program here, and that meant that she was out during the day. 

I tried to private pay a caretaker but eventually the  math did not add up.  

When I worked outside of the home every few months my mother would have a fall, or catch an infection that required hospitalization.  I would come home from my job which was 10 minutes away, and mom would have wandered out of the house and over to a neighbors.  She once did it in the rain.

It was getting too dangerous for her, and it was killing what peace of mind I thought I had.

Since I left work?  One hospital stay, but that was an issue with her sugar.  Since I left work zero falls and mom is a happy camper.

The thing is I think that mom has a little bit of spring fever.

The nurse convinced her to take a walk the other day, and since mom has been a busy beaver.

I had errands to handle for the house today, the nurse left at 2, I was home @ 230.  I walk in the house and my mother is getting dressed….ummmm okay where are you going I ask?

She explains that she has to take pills to our neighbor.  I look at the pill bottle – and it was an old prescription, from the year  2000 – from when I had walking pneumonia.  It was not even my mother’s script it was mine. 

I promptly confiscated the bottle.  Mom fussed and fussed …. but I PROMISED she said.

I walked over with her to the neighbor and “explained” even if I were willing to let mom hand out medicine, pain meds, the pills she was trying to bring were 11 years old, and they were antibiotics.  Yeah, no lawsuit.

I realized once we were home, that apparently mom had a secret stash of old pills. Mom was a nurse and never was one to throw out pills.  I actually thought that I’d found them all in previous room inspections.

Turns out I did not.

Through a little ‘persuasion’ I was able to convince mom to hand over the stash without having to play C O.  A nicotine craving is a wonderful thing sometimes.

She pulled out three plastic shopping bags worth of old pills and medicines.  No see, you are not hearing me…..OLD:

That is one of the bottles.  It was GLASS. Some of my readers are not old enough to remember when scripts were given to you from the pharmacy in a glass bottle.  Hell I am barely old enough to remember.

Many of the labels were not legible, they’d been there for so long.  One bottle of medication EXPIRED IN 1988.  Some of you were not born in 1988.  *blink*

A picture of the confiscated stash

The stash has been disposed of and the trash men will be taking it to the dump in the morning.

 Bonnie is not talking much to me because I had to wrestle one of the bottles out of her hand.

She’s strong for an old woman with one arm.