Major UPDATE

It's been a very long time since I have updated this - Real Life^(tm) basically jumped up and kidnapped me. So, I'm trying to get this back going now.

So, what the hell happened one may ask? Last fall we had my 83 year old grandmother move in with us. She had almost burned down her house by trying to light a menthol on an electric stove and left the burner on - for a very, very long time. The stove, much to it's happiness, no longer works. In addition to that, she pretty much let her house go to crap and was barely eating.

Well, after a lot of beer and talking, my wife and I decided to have her come and live with us. We figured she was nursing home bound anyways, so having a few months living with us beforehand might be good for her. The kids loved it, and she seemed to as well. The joy was short lived.

About three weeks into it, she got pneumonia. Probably had nothing to do with having to go outside to chain smoke menthols. Anyhoo..... ended up in the hospital for over a month, where she pretty much decided to just give up on everything. After that she went to a rehab facility/nursing home, because she could no longer walk from not doing any physical therapy in the hospital. She eventually got a little better but plateaued and was moved to the nursing home side of the place. She was in no condition for us to take her back to our house, and there was no one else who could have taken her in.

Now on to the fun part. Medicaid. Because she would not be going back home, we needed to get her on Medicaid. Trying to get together all the paperwork required from a woman who had no organizational skills (but had every Sears/Roebuck catalog ever in print) was nothing short of a miracle in and of itself. All this while trying to move everything from her house into ours. On the plus side, the Medicaid people were wonderful.

So now we have her house emptied and for sale (contract signed), and are almost done with that. She's doing well in the home - as well as she can. She thinks she's at a resort across from her house and that we live in her house. Not a bad way to think of it actually. And we are trying to make order of the chaos that is 50 years of old lady stuff - which isn't too bad once you get past the smell of 50 years of menthols.

Overall, it's really been hard on Darth Punkin. She doesn't understand why Neen (my grandma's nickname) moved in, then left for one hospital, then went to her new hospital, and then we moved her bed out of her room and moved all her stuff into our house. Most of all, trying to still explain why she can't come back.

Dude just takes it all in stride. He likes going to see all the crazy, old ladies.

Now, I'll try to do this blog a little more often, and as a bonus she bought me a new laptop - just don't tell her. ;)