The Cockroach Cafe Mark 3

[MereDintofPandiculation]

Morning all! regulars or newbies, coping with your oldies is a frustrating, exhausting and difficult business however much we love them. The Cockroach Cafe is open to all, a place to vent, rant, ask questions, get advice, and hopefully laugh too.

If your question is big, it's best to start a new thread, and get all the advice together in one place. But for everything else, the cafe is the right place.

For newbies: why cockroach? Yolo's DM attended a 'small animal event' in a nursing home, and was presented with a "small animal with a hard back" the name of which species she couldn't remember. Her ever helpful DB suggested cockroach, and it has become a toast on here. So cockroach mes amis/amies, and may you all live to fight another day.

I'm on it...going to get paperwork by end of week! :)

Its very "wood chip" but she czn afford a decorator etc

It could be very cosy.

Everything crossed!!! Strike while the iron is hot! Paint colour sheets etc... great news!

Thank you!
I have informed my siblings.
2 one word answers;
"Ok" and "good".
🙄😤

yoikes that sounds really really promising. I'll keep my fingers crossed for you both.

My mum is in a retirement block and some of the properties can get really hot in summer (luckily hers just catches the morning sun). She has a combined hot/cold fan unit that we encourage her put on when it gets hot and we made sure she had a big font digital thermometer so she could see when to put it on.

Suggest putting her furniture in storage for a while if you think she'll struggle to downsize (you probably won't have to swap things around but it might comfort her to know she could).

Thank you.
She isn't too bothered about the furniture - she has already got rid of 2 whole sets of bedroom furniture and still has 2 more!
She will be getting a new sofa and high back chair and I'm going to take her out carpet sample/paint sample/wallpaper shopping :)
Need to find a painter and decorator....don't want to end up doing it ourselves.

Great news! Sorry about the s#£& siblings who feature so often on these boards.
Would the complex admin people have contacts with decorators?
Visited dm today brandishing m and s goodies.” How are you? “
“Awful, can hardly move” ........ and so it begins......
cockroach all.

No private landlords will rent to her as she's retired Is that true? That's going to be the heck of a time bomb as the many active retirees that don't own their own home need somewhere to live.

I will attempt to not think about Christmas dinner until the start of November. Even in pre-Covid times I didn't think about Christmas until we'd finished with Bonfire Night.

I'm trying to work out whether I genuinely don't have time or I just don't want to and am using my family as an excuse.
It's honestly like a switch has been flicked and I've just stopped pushing myself into doing things I don't want to do. With me, that's a first sign of sinking back into depression. Id suggest googling some of the things that help people with depression and see if any of them help. But if you're finding excuses not to do that, talk to your GP.

I never get as much done as when I'm rushed off my feet. If I've only got half an hour to do something, it gets done. If I've got all day, I try mumsnet, facebook and on-line games.

No idea if its the case nationally but she applied to rent 3 houses and was refused for all of them.

Never ever missed a rent or mortgage payment in her life.

Excellent credit score.

Dint I think you're right about depression but I'm already on 40mg citalopram. It's amazing how much of a gap one wee auld man has left in our lives (Dad).

At the end when I was wheeling round this bag of bones wrapped in a million blankets I could see from the outside how weird we looked.

Yoikes that just doesn't make sense not to rent to an Old. Most of them have got plenty of money. Has she got savings and you could show the account to a landlord and try to make them see sense?

She has pension incomes which will only go up.
She will have the money from the house sale (£150k)
It baffles me tbh. They could rent to an employed person with no savings who could be made redundant next week!
It's discriminatory.

Dad dying has left a huge hole in all our lives...sadly for mum my siblings don't really bother with her much now dad is gone.

We also said we would stand as guarantors!!

Yoikes so pleased but gutted for you that your siblings sound like they will only turn up for the reading of a will...

Ha!
Well, hopefully by then she will have spent the bloody lot enjoying herself!
At least that's what I shall encourage ☺

It's been a harsh lesson for mum.
I am by far her least favoured child and yet I'm the only one who bothers.
Must be hard.

Yoikes you are probably the least favoured child BECAUSE you bother. The heart wants what the heart can’t have etc.

That's what dh says!

We are hopefully off shopping tomorrow for samples etc

(Necks gin..)

Just had a phone call - paperwork being completed and appt to sign the tennancy agreement at 10am on Monday!

Finger crossed Yoikes and for Minty on the other threads tonight.
Saw my DM at carehome from a distance with me outside. Think she recognised me but it’s hard to tell.

That's so sad rinse
I'm so sorry x

To be fair, I am one of the lucky ones as I’ve seen her about four times from outside. Took our puppy who sat on her knee fir about a minute and then licked her face. This caused me extreme mixed emotion. I had to weigh up whether this was good or bad for her as the puppy eats poo. On balance I let the dog lick her [grIn]

yoikes crikey what progress! Everything crossed.
rinse I’m glad you got to see your dm. I’m sure the puppy will have given her some pleasure.

Yes it's happening very quickly!
Hope I'm not rushing her...but her options are pretty limited.
She could use the cash from the house sale to make her final years really comfortable/have no money worries but
due to the equity she ony qualifies for sheltered housing.
So its this or stay in where she is really.

Our care home still isn't allowing visits. Haven't seen my father since early March except for once, 10 mins through a 4 inch window opening.

Same here Mere - haven't seen my Mum since early March apart from via video phone. We had an email a few weeks ago saying they were reviewing the situation and waiting for the go-ahead from the local health authority for inside visits, but nothing more since. Even if visits do recommence they are likely to be very restricted, and it is a 9-hour round trip from here

Do they not allow visits outside? (I appreciate this may not be practical for everyone).

DM’s care home allows you to book a visit and she is then brought out into the garden- we stand the other side of the fence (2m away).

Not perfect - not least when it starts raining!