I would (in theory) prefer she moved to a facility near me. However, there are very good reasons for her to stay where she it. The primary reason is that she does not want to move here. That alone is reason enough. She has friends in the system there. It is a continuous care situation that the townhouse in which she currently resides is part of. This also has financial implications in two different ways. First, she put down a large down payment to get into the system that feeds into assisted living. She loses a significant percentage if she leave that system. It is also a non-profit with an endowment that allows people to stay once they run out of money (after a minimum amount of time in the system). She will need to make use of this if she lives long enough, which we have no reason to believe she will not. A move to my location means having to rely on medicaid when that time comes and the facilities that deal with medicaid in my area are not pretty. I am in a geographically isolated area so I was able to make contact with all of the facilities that have memory care units within a two hour radius (which is only two). They both have long waitings lists, do not have medicaid beds, and are more expensive than the system she is in. In her system, she gets priority placement and they have not had a waiting list for priority placements over the last few years, giving me confidence that my mom will be able to get in when she needs to and transfer to memory care or skilled nursing when she needs to. Another big issue is that the medical care in my area is awful. Just awful. People here travel 4+ hours if they have anything beyond a broken bone. I have been on the phone with the social workers at her system and they have assured me that they have many residents with no family at all or family that is far away, like me. This is sticky situation because I am not very close with my mother and never have been. I love her and she loves me, but her home town/climate, friends, and church are where she wants to be rather than near me. I want to honor her wishes if I can. However, having not done this before, I am wondering what, aside from visiting, should be on my radar specifically to being far away? I already talk to her doctors and social workers on a regular basis via phone. I am handling her financial affairs and have access to her financial planner and attorney, again via phone and internet. The social workers tell me that they handle internal moves, transportation to medical appointments, outings, and shopping, and have everything from a salon to dentists in-house. I have discussed with my mom (not that she remembers from one time to the next) what it means to be so far away from all family that is currently in the dual-career, child-raising mode of our lives. She knows we will not be able to physically be there very often. But as I said earlier, everything I think I know usually turns out to be wrong and/or more complicated than I thought.....so I could be missing some big issues here.

These are the search words I needed! I am now finding some options in the area. Thank you!

I have been grasping at any help I might be able to get. There is no family. I do have nieces and nephews but they are all under the age of five......so probably not too helpful. I have resorted to soliciting considerations of help from my own personal college friends and my ILs relatives who happen to live in the area. A few have agreed to help if they can but given the potential for an unpredictable timeline, I prefer to use some sort of all-inclusive hired help. I have learned throughout this whole process that everything I think I have a handle on becomes 100 times more complicated once I actually go to do it and I assume moving my mom will be the same. I might think I have 2 extra days to shovel out and clean the house but chances are good, the other affairs I will be managing will eat up far more time than I anticipate. I do not want to put myself in the position of choosing to lose my job or leave the apartment in a condition that will incur fines and/or jeopardize my mom's new living situation. Thus, the advanced research on outsourcing options. There is a social worker (several, actually) and we have been talking. I am following their basic recommendation to get mom and the things she wants moved first, then clean up the rest. My mom is actually on board and I don't think she will care about the remaining belongings once she is settled with the things she chooses to take in her new place. She is overwhelmed by taking care of her stuff and it is stressing her out. I told her to just worry about what she wants to keep, give to specific people, or even sell (with my assistance) and I will take care of the rest. This calms her down. But I have to repeat it in every phone call as she does not remember and gets all worried again about having to deal with all this stuff.

I don't qualify for FMLA until I have worked here for 12 months and this move will definitely be before then. I also don't think it qualifies since I am not "caring for" my mother, just moving her and managing her affairs. My mom will not be around for it. I would move her and the things she wants into her new place then tackle the old place. She does have the furniture necessary for the move. I triple checked that where she is going has memory care and skilled nursing options. That is good advice to anyone else in this situation.

This is what I don't have. She will have to vacate her home within days of moving into assisted living (they are linked together). Driving there takes a full day so each trip involves two days of just driving. In the best case scenario, I will have one week to do it all. If she has to move sooner, we are looking at mere days. I know this situation looks impossible, but it is what it is and I have to find a way to make it work. Thus my research into outsourcing anything I possibly can, even if it does not fit my normal ideals. Desperate times and all that..... She does have a church and I contacted them when I first learned that the situation had gotten dire. The most they could offer would be to ask for volunteers to help me but they seemed a bit doubtful of finding any as my mom is a little.....uh....difficult to be around so her only church friends are a handful of other very elderly people. She has one elderly couple that she is especially close to. They have been an enormous help to me thus far but are too frail to haul anything and are also hoarders so not people I want involved in stuff decisions. They were around when I moved my mom from her even larger house to her current townhouse ten years ago and it was a disaster. They were snorkeling through the dumpster and questioning everything I tossed. At one point, I was throwing the same thing out 2-3 times because they kept taking things out and bringing it back into the house after I left for the day.

I'm with you on this, I just don't think I will have the time to do that. Just sorting out what my mom wants, what we should legally save, and searching for anything of sentimental value is already more time-consuming than I fear I am able to do in the time I will have. That is why I am hoping to find a company that does that for me.

My google skills are failing me. I live ten hours away from my mother and just started a new job, which means I will have very limited vacation time for the next 6+ months. My mother recently was hospitalized which caused a rapid acceleration in her cognitive functioning. We are awaiting consultation with her neurologist but it is very clear that she will not be able to live on her own much longer. I am already taking over her financial affairs and trying to (from afar) help her with making appointments, transportation, and legal matters. She is starting to acknowledge that living independently is getting more and more difficult. I anticipate she will move into assisted living within the next 3-9 months and that could be with little warning. I plan to be there in person as I am the only one available to do so, but I will have little flexibility to be away from my job. If the move happens sooner than later, I may have VERY little time to be onsite. So..... Mom is a hoarder and currently has a 2400 square foot townhouse stuffed to the gills with stuff. It is a mix of theoretically "useful" stuff and pure junk. None of it has any real monetary value. It is not moldy, animal/insect impacted, or otherwise dirty beyond dust. After mom has sorted out what she can take with her, which will only be a fraction, and I have sorted out anything important like papers, photos, and other sentimental items, I would say 80% of the stuff will need to be disposed of. I will have to get her place completely cleaned out in very little time. I will likely be there alone and will need to focus my attention on transitioning my mom so that she is comfortable, not worrying about hauling stuff, cleaning, etc..... I know there are companies that do this kind of thing. 1800GotJunk is the only one I can seem to find or think of. According to their website they "donate" anything useful but the reviewers are saying it really all just goes in the landfill with the exception of anything that can be recycled. What are the words I need to type into Google to find alternatives, if there are any? Anyone ever hear of a company that does it all....hauls, donates, dispose, and CLEANS a house/apartment? And in any case, how does this really work? Do they take food items (mom loves to stockpile non-perishables....most of which is expired)? How much can I expect it to cost? Has anyone used a service like this? Any help or advice would be very much welcome!

I have a 10th grader doing about 6 hours a weekday with about another 6 hours (total) bleeding over into weekends and evenings. I would say we are probably lighter and dd is a bit slower to process than most here. No AP classes this year. She has two outsourced classes but her workload is pretty on par with her schooled friends. We are now homeschooling specifically to cut out the fluff so dd has time to pursue two of her non-academic passions so I am fine with the low hours.

We have tried other programs. Dd has always returned to AoPS. And as a university instructor, I see a great deal of value in the method if a kid likes it. So many of my students seem stumped when a problem does not follow the "formula." Dd is strongly considering a STEM path. Knowing that and knowing that dd takes a bit longer to understand math concepts, I think the discovery method will serve her best in the end....even if it takes more time right now.

Thanks for the replies. Luckily, she is not in the class. That would never work for my dd as she often needs much more time to digest math concepts and would probably have a nervous breakdown trying to adhere to a class schedule. I am very strong in math so do not really need to outsource, which is good because I do a lot more teaching than I think AoPS is designed to require. I am very thorough by nature and probably fall on the side of overkill when it comes to situations like this. If dd were in 3rd or 5th grade, I would for sure stop, go back, and review any concepts I thought dd was struggling with. Now she is 15 and I am trying to guide her through making her own decisions on how to handle roadblocks, even if I would do it differently. I know she is not "behind." I am perfectly happy to take two years if that is what it takes to do it well. And I believe dd also knows she is not behind in the bigger picture. But something about making progress for a one-year finish catches dd's attention. If she is not roughly halfway through the book by January, she gets twitchy, no matter what I say. She thinks taking a break for review will knock her off track. She wants to do a tandem review. That is not my default method so I wanted to see if others had done it and how it worked for them. It sounds like a solid enough plan to try. And probably good for dd anyway as she will have to manage review, when necessary, in tandem with any college classes she takes. I will check out AMC. Thanks for the suggestion!

It sounds like you have it figured out. I'll just add that we have missed our connecting flight on our last THREE international trips. Luckily they were all booked through the same carrier as single tickets so we were rebooked on new flights in two cases. In the third case, we had to rent a car and drive home (through a blizzard) as the first flight we could be rebooked on was four days later. The hotel and food costs well outpaced the cost of the car rental. I get the dreaded "X" in customs (every time) which puts our whole family into the slow line and there is no chance of making a connecting flight unless our layover is more than 3 hours. Due to our home airport flight schedule, there are no same-day flights with more than a three hour layover so we now just take into account an overnight when we will inevitably miss our connection. At least we always get our luggage back at customs so we don't have to carry overnight items in our carry-on. To be honest, this now prevents us from considering shorter trips to Mexico or Caribbean destinations as the guaranteed missed connection is not worth the hassle.

I should collect these threads and make a book..... Dd is in 10th grade and taking AOPS Intermediate Algebra on her own (no class). She has successfully completed Pre-A, Intro to A, and Intro to Geometry, all from the book without a class. For context, dd is not super strong in math. AoPS has been difficult from day one. I question every year whether this is the right curriculum for her. We have dabbled with other programs but dd always comes back to AoPS as she enjoys the discovery approach and I feel ultimately it will serve her the best in future math studies. But it is and always has been painful. Dd can almost never do the challenge problems on her own, for instance, but typically can do most review problems without help. We are in chapter one. I tend to work through some of the problems in parallel with her so I am prepared to help. I have noticed right away that after a year of geometry, some of her intro to algebra skills are rusty. I have also noted that she deals with this by trying to solve around those skills....which often is impossible or at the very least takes a lot more time. For example, she is struggling to deal with quadratic equations. There is apparently a retention issue with some topics....specifically, topics that she did not use often in geometry. I am sure others have had this issue. If you have been there, I have two questions: 1. Dd gets twitchy about "falling behind." I feel she must review these topics. We disagree on whether to devote her full math time to review or to try to work review and current math in tandem. Thoughts? 2. What worked best to review rusty topics? My original plan was to have her work through those AoPS Intro to Alg. chapters again, as though they were new. Khan is another idea. Both will be time-consuming, which upsets dd (see #1). Anyone have other ideas that might be a quicker path to successful review.

We're trying it. It may be a disaster but it was dd's idea and I am supporting her. We are aiming for a chapter per weekday. I do not have her answer all of the workbook questions. Instead I have her read the chapter then jot down the answer to the four questions outlined in TWTM and answer the critical thinking question from the workbook. I will even cut part of that out if time is short. For us, history is about context and not memorizing dates, names, and facts. I mostly want dd to be able to carefully read and reflect on each chapter. We also can carry over into the next year if things take longer so there is not as much pressure.

Oh boy. Lukeion Latin was nearly the death of dd and me over her 4 years. I cannot even guess how many times we had the, "what's the worst that can happen?" talk. Dd really struggled at times and I suspect she probably spent far more time than most students to keep up. She was 100% convinced, based on some of the feedback of her work in class, that she had no chance of passing the AP exam. Like others report, she skipped out of the exam claiming it was far easier than she expected. She got a 4 and was very pleased. Her goal was a 3. She was one of the lowest-performing students in the class, never being on the high-honors list, and her essay feedback was brutal. She still did well on the exam. So take heart. And once you get through it all, your student will be equipped with excellent study skills to tackle just about any subject in the future.

Definitely not. It actually comes from a company that I have huge philosophical issues with and have been "boycotting" for years.

Thanks all. I ran my credit reports and no new cards show. Dh is doing the same. I cancelled the subscription from the company. They report that the card used has my name and billing address on their records but it is for sure not a card we have or ever have had. The items are not something anyone in my family would be a match for so it is not likely to be a gift. Hopefully this is some sort of scam that does not involve me directly. So irritating!

I need some quick advice. I got a package in the mail addressed to me that I did not order. I called the company and they told me that someone had ordered this in my name and used a credit card that does not match any of mine. They could only give me the last 4 digits. Is there a way to quickly find out if someone has indeed taken out something in my name?

It seems that there is no real way to completely rule them out without an ultrasound and/or x-ray.

I do have an appointment for next Monday. My chiro is on vacation this week. Bad luck on that one.....

Thanks. I don't have any of the other symptoms that are usually associated with blood clots. There is no swelling or redness nor is it tender to the touch. But.....this is why I quit with the Google and looked for help pinpointing....too scary.

Thanks! This sounds like what I have...except Google says it is not common on the inner part of the leg. Assuming that is what I have going on, is there anything to do to lessen it so I can sleep? Again, Google tells me it usually does not respond to pain medications which has been my experience with ibuprofen.

For the last two nights, I have been kept awake almost the whole night by an odd pain in one of my legs. It comes and goes and the closest I can describe it is that it feel like a dull ache that in not very centralized in location. It spans the entire length of my leg, on the inseam side, and will sometimes ache more in one place than others. It is not sharp enough to be a cramp and does not seem to be associated with any particular muscle, bone, tendon, or joint. I have had restless leg syndrome at times and this is not the same. I do not feel compelled to move it. It also happens during the day, but when I am busy, I don't seem to notice it as much. It does not hurt to use. I am a runner and ran 5 miles this morning with no issue. I hiked a bit yesterday, again with no issue. And I have not had any sort of injury. It does not respond to ibuprofen. Dh suggested nerve pain. That seems plausible. But what causes it and how to make it stop? My attempts at Google are clearly not specific enough. If anyone has any leads for me to check out, that would be great. I need some SLEEP!

Update. Apparently, I am psychic. I type this sitting in the motel room across the street from the hospital my mom has been admitted to. She had a medical "incident" last night while on vacation and was transported via ambulance to the nearest hospital. I say "incident" because it is unclear what happened exactly except that she was out of it (similar to the dehydration thing) for a day or two then collapsed while attempting to go to the bathroom. However, while she was somewhat dehydrated, it was not enough to cause this. Some of my aunts and cousins are also on this trip with her and they speculate that she might have mixed up and/or missed some of her meds. She also has a pretty serious bacterial infection from a wound on her foot. She is on high powered antibiotics and cannot walk on the foot in question. She is very confused amid some more lucid moments. From a purely medical standpoint, she may be cleared for discharge tomorrow. The location is far from her home. I drove through the night to get here. I spent a great deal of the afternoon with a wonderful social worker who is helping us get a temporary at-home plan for when mom returns. She must have had a slow day because she let me hash out many of the topics discussed in this thread and has really helped me to get some direction. After that, I did have a talk with mom where she agreed to allow me to call into her next meetings with her lawyer (she remembered a name today and I wrote it down....fingers crossed it is correct), her financial advisor, and the ED of her complex. I was hoping to do these things in person, but I don't think it can wait. I know I will have to follow up on this to make it happen and she may forget. We had a little heart to heart about help and what she wants. She wants help. Or, rather, she knows she needs help. Her stated motive for shutting us out is that she did not want to be a burden and did not want to be forced to live with either of us (she does not like where either of us lives). She thought she had set everything up to be automatic so we would not have to do anything. Which it may very well be. But we need to make sure there is access for the people who need it, be it us or someone else. Things may be more together than we knew. Hopefully we will know soon. I am sure there is more to mom's preference to not discuss with us, but at this point, she knows she needs help and we are here and willing to help. So hopefully it will work out. This has been very stressful and I am beyond exhausted. We are not sure what happens next. We need to figure out the next few days/weeks before anything long term can be discussed. She may return home with the aunts tomorrow. If she is not cleared, I will have to drive her in a few days. Social worker has helped us set up home visits until bandages no longer need changing and her mobility improves. Home care will also be checking on proper med doses and her general ability to live on her own. There are a gradient of care options available in the housing system she has bought into so it seems as though she will not be faced with going from fully independent living to full-on nursing home. Sister and I will aim to understand it all better. I have a very important final job interview tomorrow so I will be checking in on her very early then driving to catch it....then likely driving back again if she was not discharged. I am so tired and overwhelmed that I worry about my interview performance. It cannot be delayed. I tried. And I REALLY need this job. I have also been on the phone with the friends (wife specifically). They are going to help her when she arrives, either with aunts or me, and get her to her initial doctor appointments since she cannot drive with her foot situation. In a very unexpected turn of events, friend fully agreed with my concerns about being in the dark about mom's medical and financial situation. She said she would help me work with mom to get these things settled. She has been worried too. Lots of work and worry ahead but I feel like we may have had a breakthrough. As much as the in-the-moment situation sucks, it could have been so much worse. Had she been at home, alone, this could be a much different post.

It has crossed my mind but I am doubtful that there is an issue there. The couple does not have any children or any other living relatives. And they are very wealthy. The wife inherited a great deal of money from her parents upon their death well before I was born. I know that my mom has borrowed money from them in the past. And I suspect they help her financially now, at the very least with little things like picking up dinner tabs and buying concert tickets. But, really, I don't know. It is not impossible. I have tried not to take their suspicion of sister and me personally. They are just very suspicious people....actually just the wife....husband is almost 100% deaf and almost never talks anymore. They own a total of five houses, four of which are in very poor repair and filled to the ceilings with hoarded "treasures." They loved in each of these houses at one point, but when they get too full to live in, they shutter the current house up and buy a new one. Wife constantly frets that the neighbors are stealing from her or spying in the windows trying to count up how much the items are worth. When is reality, the neighbors probably have no idea there is anything of value in the houses. And in fact, there probably isn't anything of value as anything that may have been of value has likely succumbed to mold, animal damage, and whatever else happens to items inside houses that are no longer heated. Wife has been through many doctors because she is convinced they diagnose her with various illnesses because they want to do unnecessary surgeries to get her money. I only give these examples to explain that their suspicion of us is not abnormal or personal. Mom has actually told me how crazy she thinks friend is with her suspicions. So at least that does not appear to be contagious.

This is going to vary so much by school and individual organization. I was in a sorority and did not have this experience. At all. Being matchy matchy like that would not have been appealing to the members of my sorority. Sometimes t-shirts for specific events were available for order but certainly not required. And there were events where we dressed up (as in, no jeans), but that was about it. There were costs outside of dues, most of which were optional. In my case, dues were pretty low and rent to live in the house was so ridiculously low that even combined with dues, it was far cheaper to live in the house than the dorms. Dues were outlined in detail before joining. Race was never ever discussed during membership discussions. The school had a low minority population but our own membership seemed to mirror the school's percentages on average. But, there are no generalizations here. Everything from costs to culture is going to vary widely, mostly based on school.