Dad's Place May 20 -26

Saturday, May 20

Ray's brother Ryan, came over from the island this weekend to stay for a few days and visit mom at the hopsital. Ray and I did not go Saturday but one of us has been going every day this week for a couple of hours. In between, I've been doing stuff for Dad and Ray's been sorting out junk in the garage in preparation for getting rid of a bunch of stuff. Nothing too exciting. The only good part is that the weather is fabulous so we have been sitting outside in the afternoons enjoying it in Dad's backyard.

Saturday we did take Larny and her husband to the beach in White Rock for a walk, and bought lunch at Moby Dick's Fish and Chips to eat on the beach. They enjoyed seeing the ocean.

Larny and her husband Mark

The rest of this week was taken up making appointments with pest control ... we have mice in the garage and an outbreak of ants again, calling roofer companies for quotes ... getting our shaw cable sorted out finally on Thursday and generally getting plants for Dad's planters. I also took Mark to Service Canada for his social insurance number and drove him to a few businesses to get application forms for work. In between, as I had mentioned earlier, one or the other of us has been visiting Ray's mum in the hospital daily. Very tiring. She is not a very happy camper and is complaining about everything. So not like her. Very hard to visit and stay positive. She is turning down physiotherapy so this does not look like a good situation. Ray cannot keep spending hours at the hospital, his back is excruitiating and I cannot do it every day for him as I have stuff at Dad's to take care of that Ray cannot do so we will start limiting our visits to 2 to 3 times a week to give us a bit of a break. Tough times.

My Dad is moving much slower as well. His breathing is getting quite laboured.

On the up side, I asked one of the roofers on Wednesday that had come to the house to quote, if they needed any workers as Mark, Larny's husband, had his papers to work and now has a social insurance number.  I also mentioned that Mark was used to hot weather as it was currently 40C in the Philipines and that I found him to be a hard worker around the house. Mike, the owner of the roofing company, said he already had several Filipino workers and finds them to be excellent so he probably would put Mark to work. They phoned him yesterday (Thursday) and offered him a job starting Saturday. Yeah ... good money to start $17/hour with a raise to $20/hour if he works out. The construction in the lower mainland is booming so there should be lots of work. So far, Dad is happy with him staying here at the house so fingers crossed that Larny stays as Dad's full-time caregiver.

Garrett and Kat to come to Dad's after visiting Ray's mum on Saturday and wash the coach for us. It will be nice to get rid of all the winter dirt.