​Do You Like Autographed Books?

This week has been a flurry of activity in my household. For a couple of days I had my grandson visiting and now he’s off at his other grandmother’s. Though, he’ll be back for this weekend’s festivities and then we’ll have him all to ourselves for New Year’s week. We’ll see how good Oma is at keeping up with a two year old – LOL!
 
On the things accomplished: our tree is up and plugged in- for us that’s a huge step. My German translations (the first three) have gone live on all available sites including five new to me in Germany stores. Well, Google is apparently going to be a little late but it is what it is lol. I have autographed paperbacks for sale.
 
Yep, you heard right. A pet project of mine for YEARS has been to be able to autograph books for fans. I’ve looked into it, perused the options, discussed the challenges, and finally this year we have a plan that should work for us. The challenge of course is that it takes a huge amount of time to get all the little tidbits up and running so what we’ve got available for immediately is the paperbacks I have in stock at my home for miscellaneous reasons are available to be purchased and signed by me now. Soon we’ll have the entire catalogue available – very soon.  This is sort of our test for working the kinks out. So, if we have a book you’d like signed we’ll turn it around pretty quickly.
 
For those of you who follow my challenges with my mother who has stage five dementia due to Alzheimers, here’s a bit of an update. We’ve noticed Mom is more confused with basic things. She’s having more trouble following basic instructions like the item you want is in the other aisle. She’ll just stand looking where she is wondering why she can’t see it and we have to direct her to the correct aisle and sometimes that means urging her to walk. Mind you Mom is in great physical shape, our family doctor has her receiving PT as often as allowed by insurance so we can delay the physical decline of the disease as long as possible. So, all of that said, we suspect that this Christmas might be the last where she’s really aware of what’s going on. I hope not, but it’s so hard to tell. Some minutes on the phone she seems perfectly normal, then a few minutes later we’re reminded she’s not.  Where I once said dealing with Mom was like dealing with a five year old, more and more it’s like corralling a two year old. I can see the similarities between her and my grandson. The need for instant gratification with a lack of understanding as to why you can’t always have what you want and almost no understanding of inappropriate. Even though we’ve obviously know for a long time (four years) that Mom has dementia probably due to Alzheimers, even though I got her DNA testing back last year that shows she does have one of the strong likelihood for Alzheimer gene, even though we took over her finances and bill paying a year ago, it was a bit of a shock to get a letter from the neurologist stating that she’s incapable of handling her own personal or financial needs. Funny how things affect you unexpectedly.
 
The bright thing about Mom is her love of Christmas has not diminished. She’s enjoyed shopping for everyone and wrapping gifts. The decorations are up at her house and for this her childlike attitude is a treasure. She’ll be pleasantly surprised to find we have two trees in our home this year – the main big one for the formal gift exchanges, and the small one where we hang out as a family and watch TV or work on puzzles.  Since this year I actually picked up a few things during the year that I thought family would enjoy, I am looking forward to a nice holiday weekend with the people I love most in the world under my roof.
 
In keeping with the season, I am wishing everyone a joyful and merry Christmas.
 
See y’all next week! 

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