Things look better after a good night's sleep.

This week has been confused and frantic, but after stepping back to assess the situation, I think it'll be okay. My mother can go back to her house, and I'll see what sort of senior services, if any, are available in her little corner of the third world that is Florida. (State Motto: "You're On Your Own.") I doubt there are any, but there may be some sort of private thing I can cobble together, just so somebody's looking in on her or is nearby to call in case of emergency. If she had friends to call on this wouldn't be a problem, but she doesn't have any. She's difficult but not an idiot, she's not going to attempt to do anything she doesn't feel capable of doing, and I will just have to resign myself to a weekly trip over there until I can get her moved. I'd have to do it anyway to get the house packed up and ready to sell, so what the hell.

I am resentful because this is all unnecessarily hard and complicated. I had tried for years - a decade, actually - to get both my parents to acknowledge that this situation was coming and that I would not be able to help her without turning my own life upside down, and begged them to relocate while they were still relatively young and in good health. My father died in a state of happy denial, "Oh, she'll be okay," which was patently untrue because she has never been okay, and left me stuck with this. Now I'll be starting a challenging new job with a long commute of its own, and in my ample spare time, I'll have to commute across the state to work on cleaning out her house and getting her relocated. There's only me, Girl will of course do what she can but she works insane hours too, and she can best help by taking care of Murphy while I deal with my mother.

Even as I type, Boy's U-Haul is packed, today they move from Asheville to Charleston. He'll be working crazy hours getting the company's new location ready for opening, and a "vacation" to help me is just not possible. Cousin C is 65 and doesn't drive the interstate, and is about 3.5 hours away from my mother's house at best, so she can't do much either. This is my problem. But after sleeping on it, I think I have a plan. Operation Relocate Crazy Mother will get ONE day a week. Sundays for the foreseeable future will have to be devoted to this project.

I'm just marveling at the impeccable timing of it all - I've been out of work for over 5 months, but this couldn't happen while I was puttering around and would have had time to address it. No, it has to happen WHEN I AM ABOUT TO START A NEW JOB.

Yep, one of us will be taking those damn Xanax.