Post #2963428

Whoof, it's good to be home! Even if we are facing down anywhere from 1-10 inches of snow tonight (we're right at the border between "won't be that bad" and "snowpocalypse!"). The drive out earlier in the week was nasty gray heavy rain, which was unpleasant. The drive home was dark the whole way, and snowy going through the mountains, so, tense. I had to admit, though, my distance glasses were a treat--as long as I kept them pushed up properly I could see really clearly along the dark freeway, which was seriously helpful. It was good to see family and shake up the routine a bit, but when my sister in law asked me on Friday when we had left home earlier in the week, I literally had to stop and count backwards. It felt like we'd been gone a week and we'd only left home on Tuesday! 😅 My dad is really losing it, though. He's 86 now and his personality is changing. He realized he hadn't paid his taxes for 2023 last year and just didn't care--and he always filed for an extension every year and put them in in October, like clockwork every year of my life. Fiscal irresponsibility is new for him. He's been repetitive in his stories for years now, more comfortable with the past than keeping up with the present or having opinions about the future. As we were leaving yesterday, he made sure we knew how to get out of the parking lot at his apartment, we confirmed it multiple times, and as we were walking away from his door, he came out to tell us again how to do it, because he didn't remember we had already had that conversation. 😢He's got a strong social network and lots of mentoring relationships with younger people, which is good for his cognitive health, but dang. It's hard to watch.