October is the appropriate month for horror stories, right?
I posted several "interesting" incidents with my wife's aunt some years ago:
http://www.customerssuck.com/board/s...ad.php?t=31524
But I really hadn't had much material from Psycho Aunt Sally until my mother-in-law moved in with us this past March. My mother-in-law "Caroline" has dementia and is in the early stages of Alzheimer's.
We planned to have her move up to live with us temporarily until we were able to get her into a place she liked in the city.
We - my wife ("Wife"), our children "Z, S, and T" and I - all lived in a small two-bedroom house with our two cats. Caroline flew up, and my wife rented a truck and brought up Caroline's car, most of her furniture & stuff and her two cats and a dog.
I moved our (wife & my) bed to the children's room after taking apart Z's bed. So the room was packed with a bed for my wife, Z, and I to share, cribs for S and T, and one dresser. It felt like a re-enactment of 1860's New York City tenement housing (http://www.tenement.org/).
Caroline had the other room to herself - and her dog and two cats (because she insisted on keeping them with her each night).
Three adults, three children, a dog, and four cats, all in one small two-bedroom house was sometimes stressfull. Caroline's Alzheimer's made it worse: she'd forget that we asked her not to give the children snacks - she loves her snacks, especially nuts - and my son has a nut allergy. She would also overfeed her pets and they would get sick.
There's the time her dog had diarrhea in the living room - on the only rug in the house, of course - as I was feeding the kids lunch. Caroline accidentally stepped in it, and started tracking it through the house. When I told her that it was on her shoes, she took them off ... and started to rinse them off in the kitchen sink! Over the dishes! And next to the food I was preparing for the kids! I wanted to scream and yell and grab my children and just run away with them. But I was patient. I explained that it wasn't the best place to wash her shoes, and we dealt with it. (Ten minutes later she was back washing them in the kitchen sink again).
Enter Psycho. She takes Caroline for a weekend to give us a break. (I warn her to clean her kitchen sink often). But when I pick up Caroline after that weekend, Psycho calls us and explains that Caroline [edit] doesn't want her finances to be controlled by my wife.
My wife and I were both shocked. We didn't know why Caroline wouldn't trust her with her finances. I had just been up 'til 5 a.m. the previous night sorting through the seven life insurance policies that Caroline had been paying for. (I'd previously assumed it was only two, until I noticed that there were several different account numbers on the statements.) My first impression was "Okay, tell us who'll have Power of Attorney and I'll box-up all these papers and mail it tonight!"
Psycho explained that Caroline wanted her (Psycho's) husband to power of attorney.
Unfortunately, neither my wife nor I questioned whether this was what Caroline actually wanted ...
Next: some Psycho e-mail fun
As before, I'm changing names to protect everyone's privacy. Except for Sally. Because she's Psycho.
I posted several "interesting" incidents with my wife's aunt some years ago:
http://www.customerssuck.com/board/s...ad.php?t=31524
But I really hadn't had much material from Psycho Aunt Sally until my mother-in-law moved in with us this past March. My mother-in-law "Caroline" has dementia and is in the early stages of Alzheimer's.
We planned to have her move up to live with us temporarily until we were able to get her into a place she liked in the city.
We - my wife ("Wife"), our children "Z, S, and T" and I - all lived in a small two-bedroom house with our two cats. Caroline flew up, and my wife rented a truck and brought up Caroline's car, most of her furniture & stuff and her two cats and a dog.
I moved our (wife & my) bed to the children's room after taking apart Z's bed. So the room was packed with a bed for my wife, Z, and I to share, cribs for S and T, and one dresser. It felt like a re-enactment of 1860's New York City tenement housing (http://www.tenement.org/).
Caroline had the other room to herself - and her dog and two cats (because she insisted on keeping them with her each night).
Three adults, three children, a dog, and four cats, all in one small two-bedroom house was sometimes stressfull. Caroline's Alzheimer's made it worse: she'd forget that we asked her not to give the children snacks - she loves her snacks, especially nuts - and my son has a nut allergy. She would also overfeed her pets and they would get sick.
There's the time her dog had diarrhea in the living room - on the only rug in the house, of course - as I was feeding the kids lunch. Caroline accidentally stepped in it, and started tracking it through the house. When I told her that it was on her shoes, she took them off ... and started to rinse them off in the kitchen sink! Over the dishes! And next to the food I was preparing for the kids! I wanted to scream and yell and grab my children and just run away with them. But I was patient. I explained that it wasn't the best place to wash her shoes, and we dealt with it. (Ten minutes later she was back washing them in the kitchen sink again).
Enter Psycho. She takes Caroline for a weekend to give us a break. (I warn her to clean her kitchen sink often). But when I pick up Caroline after that weekend, Psycho calls us and explains that Caroline [edit] doesn't want her finances to be controlled by my wife.
My wife and I were both shocked. We didn't know why Caroline wouldn't trust her with her finances. I had just been up 'til 5 a.m. the previous night sorting through the seven life insurance policies that Caroline had been paying for. (I'd previously assumed it was only two, until I noticed that there were several different account numbers on the statements.) My first impression was "Okay, tell us who'll have Power of Attorney and I'll box-up all these papers and mail it tonight!"
Psycho explained that Caroline wanted her (Psycho's) husband to power of attorney.
Unfortunately, neither my wife nor I questioned whether this was what Caroline actually wanted ...
Next: some Psycho e-mail fun
As before, I'm changing names to protect everyone's privacy. Except for Sally. Because she's Psycho.
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