Taking a deep breath...

Tonite, everything seems to be getting back to normal. I'm a little more confident that my mom will be ok in her apartment. The staff there seem to be confident that they can support her in the ways that she needs. And that's a huge relief. My mom is the only elderly person I know. So while her condition seems rather shocking to me, I guess the assisted living people see it more often than I know. I'm grateful in a weird way.

DD apologized for getting upset when I didn't want her to read Anne Rice. I'm sure there are other people out there who might disagree, but DD's maturity level is only of a 10 or 11 year old. For the most part, I don't have problems with anything she wants to read. I just want to encourage her to read, that's all. But I just don't think she's ready to read about adult situations like that. I know that there's also a chance that she might REALLY want to read Anne Rice, now that I've said "no". It's a tough call, for sure. But DD seems to have accepted it, at least to my face.

DH has been a little off today. I'm not sure if it's good or bad. He called me and sounded like he was mood swinging. I know he was angry that I didn't leave him any money when I went to work. And then we had a snowstorm and I didn't go home. And he was out of cigarettes. I think he wanted me to be more sympathetic or something. Somehow he talked his mom into wiring him $40. But I think he's still mad at me for not offering to run right home (90 miles) to make sure he had smokes. he did tell me, also, that he wants to be useful again, that he wants to work. But his reasons for wanting to work weren't the ones I was hoping for--instead of saying "I'm sick of you working two jobs while I sit around at home." or "I'd like to help you out.", he said, "I'm sick of not having my own money." "I want to go to the City and buy some stuff for my guitar. But I don't have any money or gas, so it'd be a waste." I wanted to say something about that, but I bit my tongue, because it sounded like he was already mood swinging.

But then, when I talked to him a little later, he told me that he cleaned the bathroom, gave Molly her ear drops (for yet another ear infection) and did laundry. He hasn't done that much around the house for a long time. So I'm not sure what to think. I think that Abilify is kind of subtle--I'm seeing changes, but they're not the in-your-face changes that we saw with the Lithium. All in all, I guess things sure could be a lot worse.

So I'm just going to breathe and soak up my little bit of normalness for tonite.