Cockroach cafe Summer 2025

[BestIsWest]

Welcome in to the Cockroach Café Bad Daughters’ Room, the rugs and cushions all fresh and clean for the new season.
Good daughters, find your way to the small room behind the stairs. Sorry it’s not as equipped as here, but it doesn’t get much use.
Come in when you want to share good news, or to rant, or just to hang out with others who understand what you're going through. The way MN works, hopefully this thread won’t appear in any featured lists, and the only people wandering in will be those who understand what it’s all about.
If you have a BIG question, it might be worth giving it its own thread, so as not to swamp this one.
For newbies: why cockroach? Previous long term resident of "Elderly Parents" 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. My recent enquiries suggested more people wanted to keep the well known name than wanted to change it to something more savoury, so for the moment it stays.

oh that’s just infuriating @Newmum738 what a nightmare!

@tobee that’s a lot. I will admit to a small snort when reading that they’d both forgotten his heart attack. I suppose it does make me think gloomily that many of our elders must be feeling so crap most of the time that they simply don’t notice life threatening symptoms.

I’m sat here waiting for enough time to pass for my mum to be out of theatre. Please hod don’t let her bleed to death. Please god let the surgery help her pain and symptoms. Few Hail Marys said last night. She’s a tough told bird as they say but I’m very anxious all the same.

Thinking of you @Dormit . Fingers, toes and eyes crossed for successful surgery.

@tobeeI hope you do manage to get out a bit today. South Devon is such a lovely part of the country and still in UK if you need to get back quickly ( fingers crossed you don’t).
@Dormithope everything goes as well as can be expected for your DM’s op.

@tobee what a lot to deal with. Blab away, that’s the point of the CC. It is a shock when someone has been getting very ill under your nose and you didn’t spot it. But we’re not doctors, and we do our best.

@dormit thinking of you. Try not to wear out the rosary.

Just catching up and wishing strength to @tobee and @Dormit. Waiting is hard, and those bits of calm between storms. You kind of lose the ability to relax. I wish everyone some peace and headspace.

@tobee we only found out MIL had heart failure 2 years after she was diagnosed. She couldn't talk, FIL never mentioned it and the care home assumed we knew as it was pre admission. We only found out when she was dying.
@Dormit hope things have gone ok

@tobee heart failure is a bit odd like that. When the legs swell up it's clear something is up - but when someone who's generally not super well or mobile anyway starts having brain fog without a personality change, it can be baffling until a SAT check is done and their blood oxygen is down in the 80s :(

(My Mum spent a few years with occasional hospital admissions for that, until the last time when their desperate efforts to keep her heart and lungs going took out her kidneys. There are plenty worse ways to go TBH, but it's not predictable, so as a relative or carer it's hard to plan.)

Thank you all and I’m happy to report the surgery was a success and mum is bright as a button and laughing and chatting as normal. I went to see her in the end tho king I’d wait on the ward but she was back when I got there and we’ve had a good chat and a laugh. They’ll assess what care she’ll need once they’ve got her up and about but early signs are very positive.

@Dormit good to hear

That must be such a relief @Dormit; good to hear. Thanks for updating us.

Thanks for the good wishes everyone.

Hi all, I'm new. My Mum is 83 and has been more or less muddling through until recently. I know none of you will be surprised that she has had a sudden descent into needing more input (because she has had to stop driving and lives in a place that she can't walk anywhere) at the most awkward time possible because my DD has moved to London and she's only 17 so needs a bit more parenting than the average, older college goer. I guess that there is never a convenient time for this sort of thing but it does seem to be a widespread trend that you get high demand from parents and offspring at the same time.

In a way it's a good thing, because she has been saying for years that she doesn't need anyone to help her and then phoning me or DB at the last minute to solve whatever problem she's got herself into. Or getting neighbours to help her and forbidding them from contacting me or DB. At least if I'm away for a week at a time every month or so it means she has had to face up to needing to have people other than me available to help her.

I think I'm going to be quite comfortable here in the bad daughters' room, it turns out that I'm a 'bossy bitch'. Which actually I already knew, I think it's a generational thing, to my Mum 'bossy' is one of the worst insults she can give, but my generation generally prefer being forthright to passive-aggressive hinting at things nonsense.

Welcome @BlackAmericanoNoSugar. In my case my DPs needs ramping up happened more or less as we waved DS off to uni and had come back from our first intrepid long haul holiday to Costa Rica and were saying how many more we would like to do, whilst we were still able. Well that’s turned out well for us as I dare not go for longer than a week in Europe any more.

What does sound positive is that you and DB sound like you both are working together about your DM, which so often appears not to be the case. Does she have funds for paid for support if you ground her down to agree to some?

Sending love to everyone on this thread. It’s been several years since I gained my freedom. The cafe was a total life saver.

Hi @rookiemere, she fortunately has plenty of money and my DB is brilliant because he does all her admin and money management for her, so keeps up with insurance and council tax and stuff. He's also great at dropping an idea gently and then persuading her it was her own idea. I am indeed a bossy bitch because I see a problem, give her a few possible solutions and want to get it sorted out straight away so that it's done before other parts of my life go tits up. The biggest problem with Mum getting care is that she doesn't want 'strangers' in her house.

Because she can't drive anymore she's stuck on her own a lot. That at least wasn't the huge battle that I feared it would be as she had an eye operation last month and when the surgeon said that her bad eye wouldn't get any better she decided herself that she wasn't confident to drive. So her car is now living on DB's drive while we decide what to do with it. We moved it pretty quickly because she said several times that she wasn't confident to drive and within 20 mins would be talking about going somewhere and when asked how she would get there was saying 'drive myself, of course'.

Anyway, at the moment she has her cleaner every weekday morning for a couple of hours, her cleaner used to be my uncle's carer before he died so Mum has known her for ages and is fond of her. There isn't all that much cleaning now that the puppy has gone (holy fuck the puppy, that's a long story) and she can take Mum to the supermarket etc. She also has my cleaner one afternoon a week for three hours. My cleaner isn't a 'stranger' because she is the daughter of my previous cleaner, now retired, who was my maternal grandmother's cleaner for decades. Some families pass down heirlooms and dodgy genetic traits, we also pass down cleaners. And then one afternoon a week she has a lovely lady who used to be a carer for my friend's mum and now looks after my aunt (Mum's sister). We don't mention that she looks after my aunt to Mum as the sibling rivalry is intense. I really want her to have someone sleeping in the house, so we are on the lookout for that. She doesn't need any personal care but if she falls she can't get herself back up and so if there was someone there at night that person would be able to phone us/ambulance and she wouldn't spend the whole night on the floor (happened last year, Mum says I'm just making it up to try to overrule her).

Budge up you lot…..I need a seat 😡
Just reading this thread is helping. I’ve dipped in on/off over the last 18 months/few years and it really is a sanity check. I’ll add more as and when but for now I’m processing my frustrations, disappointment and confusion with DF81 and DM 80.

Budge up you lot…..I need a seat 😡
Just reading this thread is helping. I’ve dipped in on/off over the last 18 months/few years and it really is a sanity check. I’ll add more as and when but for now I’m processing my frustrations, disappointment and confusion with DF81 and DM 80.

Clearly that frustrated I’ve double posted 🤣

DB is dropping heavy hints that I should be doing mum's gardening. I'm resolutely ignoring them. I have enough to do in my own garden without taking on another one an hour away. If he ever gets to saying it directly I'll tell him my view is if mum wants to stay at home she needs to buy in that sort of help. Trouble is she either doesn't see what needs doing or insists she'll do it herself tomorrow. Which of course she doesn't so it currently looks like a rewilding project. Mum doesn't seem bothered by it so 🤷

Ah, the heavy hints. I am getting a lot of practice in at ignoring them.
I’m also thinking about developing a bingo game for them, with extra points for when they get more outlandish. eg involving me being in two, or even three, places at once. Or having more than 24 hours in a day or 7 days in a week.

My DB is ok on the whole but also drives me nuts because he just doesn’t get things done. DMs fence blew down last November. I’m still waiting for him to sort it out. He always ‘knows someone’ who does these things but never seems to actually organise them into doing it. I’m sorting out flooring for DM’s bedroom and guess what, he has a mate with a carpet shop but if I wait for him we will still be waiting this time next year.

Talking of which, do I go for carpet or a non slip washable LVT wood type flooring? Given that the carpet currently stinks of wee as DM’s continence issues grow worse. I’ve already shampooed it several times. It’s the kind of decision I hate making but no one else will.

Met up with a friend this morning. Her mum has had several hospital appointments in the last couple of weeks which she has taken her to, sorted equipment she needs, done all her laundry and shopping. Only to be told yesterday how wonderful her brother has been taking her to the appointments and how he has sorted aids she needs etc. Except he comes back from 2 weeks in Spain today.

Oh that’s so infuriating.

Both Mum and Dad spent a lot of time and effort in their garden, they were very proud of it. I managed about a year of cutting the grass only before I gave in and got a gardener for her. They cut the grass and dig out the weeds when they get too big and so it’s tidy(ish).

Last year I caught mum browsing through the catalogues she got every year saying she wanted to get her bedding plants sorted for the year. One of the few times I’ve actually come close to losing my temper with her. I managed to keep calm enough to say - and who is going to order, plant, water, feed, dead-head and dig up these plants at the end of autumn? With a hard stare. I hid the catalogues (in the recycling bin!) and Nothing More Was Said.

I would go with non slip hard flooring of some kind - waterproof too! There’s no carpet in mums care home, I think you’ve just got to be practical. In your mums case, the wee has probably reached the underlay so no amount of shampooing is going to sort out the smell.