Skip to main content

Mayhem and Foolishness

I can't keep up with the mayhem and foolishness.*

When my parents went to the hospital, I changed the locks on my parents' house because a certain family member hangs around sick and dying people like a vulture. Over the weekend, my mother let her in and said relative stole about $3,000 worth of belongings out of their garage. Oh, and this person has a key to Mom's storage unit. I urged Mom to call the sheriff, but she won't. It's out of my control and therefore not something I should get upset about.

I should have taken my nephew up on his offer to act as a watchdog while the known thief was at my mother's house. But like Mom, I didn't think she'd rob her blind. Going forward, she won't be admitted to my house if she dares to show her face there. And a CPA I work with recommended some estate lawyers to draw up a new will so Mom can exclude this person from her will. (The last attorney screwed up the powers of attorney so badly I had to redo them so the credit union would accept them.)

My mother and I are getting along well while she's staying with me. (Estate sale people are preparing for a large sale at her house, and she can't be there while they're working.) But the past few weeks have seen plenty of mayhem and foolishness. I think it's what led to my getting so sick recently and I'm setting some rules for myself about what I will and won't do.

  • I'll try to stop arguing.
  • I'll offer advice, but I won't get caught up in whether it's followed. 
  • I'll keep making accommodations for my mother since she's disabled.
  • I'll do what I can without running myself ragged.
  • I'll ask my mother to do more to protect herself, e.g., don't give her credit card number to solicitors.
  • I'll keep taking care of my mother's finances, as she's asked me to do.
Some of my inspiration for taking care of myself has come from a blog I just started following: Living Stingy. It's worth a read.

*"Mayhem and foolishness" is a phrase from Niecy Nash of Clean House. You might have also seen her on Reno 911.
Labels:

Comments

Lowcarb team member said…
Oh Lori .....I'm doing my best to send positive vibes.

Things have to improve for you and your mom soon.

All the best Jan
September 27, 2014
Galina L. said…
I am so sorry for your troubles, there is nothing to suggest except taking a deep breath.
September 28, 2014
tess said…
i'm sending white light and positive vibes, too! bless you, Lori -- may good things come to your out of anarchy and chaos....
September 29, 2014
Lori Miller said…
Thanks, Galina and Tess.
September 29, 2014
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Not Only Cheaper, But Easier

A while back, I wrote about saving money on break time coffee and snacks. I haven't done very well putting it into practice. But a post by James Clear today got me thinking about it again: Warren Buffett uses a two-list system to prioritize things. Check it out --and follow the instructions. Using Buffett's two-list system, two of the goals I ended up with were taking care of myself and saving $400 more per month than I already am. As I said, I've been wanting to save money, and the system made me really focus on this. I came up with 11 money-saving ideas, six of which had to do with food. Buying hamburger in bulk. Ranch Foods Direct sells one-pound packages of 80% lean pastured ground beef in bundles of 20 for a lot less than Whole Foods. Sprouts only carries super-lean beef that's grass-fed, and it's more expensive, too.  Not driving to Whole Foods. Whole Foods is out of my way, and saving a weekly trip saves gas. Coffee at home, tea at work. Tea is fr...
24 comments
Read more

Blog Lineup Change

Bye-bye, Fathead. I've enjoyed the blog, but can't endorse the high-fat, high-carb Perfect Health Diet that somehow makes so much sense to some otherwise bright people. An astrophysicist makes some rookie mistakes on a LC diet, misdiagnoses them, makes up "glucose deficiency," and creates a diet that's been shown in intervention studies to increase small LDL, which can lead to heart disease. A computer programmer believes in the diet and doesn't seem eager to refute it because, perhaps, scientists are freakin' liars and while he's good at spotting logical inconsistencies, lacks some intermediate knowledge of human biology. To Tom's credit, he says it's not the right diet for everyone, but given the truckload of food that has to be prepared and eaten, impracticality of following it while traveling (or even not traveling), and unsuitability for FODMAPs sufferers, diabetics and anyone prone to heart disease (i.e., much of the population), I'm...
24 comments
Read more

Palpitations Gone with Iron

Thanks to my internet friend Larcana, who alerted me to the connection between iron deficiency and palpitations, I doubled down on my iron supplements and, for good measure, washed them down with Emergen-C. It's a cold medicine with a mega-dose of vitamin C, plus B vitamins and minerals. I don't think vitamin C does anything for a cold (a friend bought the stuff and left it at my house the last time she visited), but vitamin C does help iron absorption. After doubling up on iron in the last three days, I feel back to normal. (I'd already been taking quite a bit of magnesium and potassium, so I probably had sufficient levels of those.) How did I get so low on iron? Maybe it was too many Quest bars instead of red meat when I had odd cravings during my dental infection recently. Maybe because it's too hard to find liver at the grocery store and I haven't eaten much of it lately. Maybe the antibiotics damaged my intestines . And apparently, I'm a heavy bleeder . ...
18 comments
Read more

Getting Over Palpitations

Note to new readers: please note I'm not a health care provider and have no medical training. If you have heart palpitations, I have no idea whether the following will work for you. Over the past several days, I've had a rough time with heart palpitations and feeling physically jittery. I was wondering if I was going to turn into one of those people who can't sit still. Not that there's anything wrong with that, but it would be a major lifestyle change. Kidding aside, something wasn't right and I really needed to get back to normal. I tried popping potassium pills like candy. I ate more. I doubled up on my iron dose. I went to yoga and even got on the treadmill at 6 AM yesterday. I tried the nuclear option of eating more carbs to stop peeing away minerals. Most of these things helped, but the problem kept coming back. A comment from Galina made me look up epinephrine, one of the drugs my surgeon used to anesthetize me Friday. First, the assistant at the surge...
16 comments
Read more

My Long-Term Experience Eating Safe (and Other) Starches

Years ago, before the Perfect Health Diet came out, I followed a program that involved eating quite a bit "safe starch." It was called Body for Life. It involved eating six small servings of carbohydrate along with six small servings of protein, plus two servings of fibrous vegetables per day. (A serving was the size of your fist or the palm of your hand.) There were six workouts a week (three weightlifting, three cardio) and one free day every week where you ate whatever you wanted and didn't exercise. In all fairness, these two programs are different: BFL allows certain grains, legumes and low-fat dairy and discourages fat. It doesn't call for a wheelbarrow full of vegetation. Nevertheless, my experience eating lots of fruit and lots of starch is relevant to the PHD because the amount and type of digestible carbohydrates are similar, and for the first few years, I didn't eat wheat except on free days. At first on BFL, I felt great. Before, I was continually...
17 comments
Read more