Routine

The day begins...With cat duties and waking children and making breakfast.  My mother-in-law sleeps upstairs and comes down when she thinks everyone is up.  Sometimes, she is right and sometimes she is wrong; often, my husband and I will be having our morning chat and I will hear her slippers on the stairs and get up immediately to make her breakfast.  She is not that demanding but I do feel that obliging, and so does my husband.  If the children are awake, breakfast is done all at once with a family meal; if no one is awake, sometimes there can be three different serving times and it drives me crazy.  My friend thinks the stairs are too much for my mother-in-law--but, we have no bathroom on the main floor, or in the basement, and it was easy to give her our room and private bath.  My husband and I sleep in the basement in our own bed in a room that will be the family room one day.  After breakfast, the day begins; my mother-in-law pretty much sleeps till lunchtime and the children and I can do what we want.  I have to be home for lunch.  Afternoons are a gamble.  If the children and I are lucky, we spend the time in the yard, with friends, at the library, doing whatever we want.  If not, we can go batty trying to find things to occupy a semi-blind 98 year old.  Several times a week, I take my mother-in-law for a drive.  She loves to go for a drive.  She has always been governed by other people's willingness to take her places; when necessity demanded, she walked; ignorance prevented her reliance on public transit.
Every Wednesday, we do lunch and every Saturday, she does lunch with my husband.  And, every few months, the children, my parents, my mother-in-law, my husband and I go to dinner.  Things could be a tad expensive but she pays.  She figures meals out are the one thing she never, ever, did her whole life; so now, she is making up for lost time.  She goes through phases: months on end at Swiss Chalet, then weeks at the local fish and chip shop, then The Mandarin for Chinese.  Her preference for dinner is The Keg as she loves ribs (I know it is a steakhouse but she loves their ribs).  We don't eat out unless she is with us because we are all sick of it.  I am not even a good cook and the children would prefer to eat at home than go out, order in or "have a treat."
My mother-in-law goes to the spa to have a manicure and pedicure done every two weeks and once a month, she gets her hair styled at a very young, very chic salon.  Most of the staff are amazed she shows up so regularly, but they treat her like a queen.  And, to be fair, they get a lot of cache out of the knowledge their oldest customer is 98.  Since, she lost her sight, my mother-in-law can't crochet or play cards and they were her regular activities when she lived alone.  Having people make a fuss of her is her new form of socialization; don't ask me how many times she has gotten a free dessert simply for being really, really old.
Sundays are the worst days.  My mother-in-law won't go to a Church except for a spaghetti dinner; she hates the fact golf is the only thing on television; and she resents the fact, there is really nothing to do.  It's not like she does a lot during the week, but Sunday really seems to bug her.  It is the only day, she consistently listens to the children practise their music in the family room; every other day, she says she listens from her room.  The routine is limiting; God knows, sometimes it becomes really exasperating.  However, when she first moved in, my mother-in-law had a debate with my husband over Stephen Harper's friendship with Salvador Dali.  We didn't quite know what to make of it.  My husband didn't know what to be more surprised about: his mother's awareness of Stephen Harper or of Salvador Dali.  Anyhow, once she got settled into the routine, she became more lucid and quite clear in her thinking and when she has an opinion, now, she means it.