Things have been crazy busy around here for January. I retired on January 1st, so you would think I would be a lady of leisure, but not so much!
Retirement entails a lot of paperwork. Know what happens when your boss is out of the office for the last two weeks you work? Nothing gets done! And then the systems don’t show you as an employee anymore, but also don’t show you as a retiree! You just disappear from everyone’s map. My medical insurance got cancelled 4 times, every single time they fixed it, the next payroll run cancelled it again. Didn’t get my pension worked out until yesterday. And so on, and so on. Been quite a mess. But at least I don’t have to do that drive to the office every day. I do NOT miss that!
We had to move Aunt Katherine again, this time from her assisted living apartment to a “memory care” unit (read that as an early stage dementia unit). She has Alzheimer’s, not bad enough to completely forget people, but bad enough to scramble her memory. She can’t remember to take meds, or that she needs to use her walker, or a myriad of other things. So now she is in a lovely place where she has 24 hours care, but still has a private room and bath. Not nursing per se, but nurses in the unit 24/7. We moved her a week ago, and moved her furniture this week (the new place was furnished, but you could bring your own stuff if you liked). So now all I have to do is find a home for everything from her old apartment that wouldn’t fit into her new place. We have another 3 weeks before we have to be out of the apartment, so I’ll be working in there several more days to organize and pack up. Then I will be done with all the constant trips down there, except for once a week laundry duty and visit. It’s been exhausting to deal with her, so I’m really looking forward to letting the nursing staff take over for most of it.
We finally got some real snow here in northern Illinois. Of course, I was all the way in the city when the blizzard started, and had a delightful 3 hour drive home! Much of it has already melted, but the ground is still white, which is what really counts anyway, right?

















