The Truth About Fire (Sat, 12 Mar 2011)

For several months mom's neighbors have been coming over periodically to make fires for her in her woodstove, and for several months she has been insisting to me (on the phone) that she doesn't NEED it, that she is capable of making her own fires, but that the reason she doesn't build them herself is that she doesn't want to have a fire "when I am busy all day" because then she has to keep putting logs on it to keep it going. Well now that I am here in person, the truth is plain to see. I seriously doubt that she is capable of making a fire for herself, and I don't even think she is capable of carrying logs over to the woodstove to keep a fire going, partly due to the neuropathy of her hands, which makes it difficult for her to grasp objects, and partly because she is just too frail and weak.

I don't think it's a big deal if she doesn't have the woodstove cranked up, because if she turns up the thermostat, the furnace WILL heat the house just fine. The problem is convincing her to stop worrying about the number on the thermostat and thinking that 72 is the right setting. She insists that the thermostat is broken, but I told her that it's HER thermostat that is broken. If she wants it 85 degrees in here, turn it up to 85 degrees! Getting over that mental hurdle is difficult!

I have also seen for myself that she is actually getting quite a lot of sleep in spite of almost every morning telling me that she had a terrible night and just didn't sleep at all. This morning she got up around 5AM to go to the bathroom and turn up the furnace (her usual routine) but then she went back to bed. She got up again about 8:30AM for another bathroom break, then hobbled back to the bedroom and asked me if I would mind if she went back to bed for a while. She finally emerged for the day at about 11AM. She usually naps after lunch and then she dozes off a lot while watching TV in the evening. I don't know whether she sleeps during the night but I suspect that she does. I think she is attributing her fatigue to a lack of sleep when it is actually just her general physical condition, unrelated to how much sleep she gets.