08-19-2026 Walk

Slept through the night but didn't get a lot of sleep, since I. Went to bed late and got up early for a walk through the neighborhoods by the lake house. Walked mostly around Lake Shadows but did walk around Mety Cove Dr as well before heading back. When I got back, Ross had unboxed his new HP laptop and was starting to set it up. I ate some cereal and and later helped him get going there. He found out that his phone's WiFi hotspot wasn't working, so we used my phone to get him connected to the web. It took a while to load the software updated, and we weren't fully successful in installing them, but we were able to get to the Windows home screen. Ben arrived around 10:15, and we sat down to have a depressing discussion with Mom about her future wishes. She reiterated her desire to die soon, and I got her to admit that was a prime reason for her wanting to moved into assisted living, where she feels she could do this more easily without upsetting Ross in particular. Key points:

She feels she is holding Ross back from what he wants to do (e.g. camping)

She was a quick and painless death

She wasn't really hearing me when I talked about the suffering she will likely feel when she is actually dying

I told her about the impact of her not being around on the brothers as well as our families (she feels like she has done her part as the Grandma when the grandkids were younger)

Told a story about Dad talking to her about killing him and then herself.

I shared the important support role she plays in Ross's life, again I don't think she heard me

Ben was regularly strident and ornery, in my opinion, although he did pick up on Mom's feeling bad about Ross having to adjust his life to taking care of her

I tried to emphasize the expectations from her son's and their families of her being around for important family celebrations and gatherings 

If she wants to shorten her life, we should explore options that might assist there

 I had some cheese and leftover garlic bread for lunch, talked with Mom and Ross for a while. Then Mom went back to lay down, so Ross and I drove into Crosby to run errands. We stopped at the Boost Mobile store and found out why his WiFi hotspot wasn't worki9, then we drove to the library to use their public WiFi to download Microsoft Office, which I bought for him off of Stack Social. That took a while but was successful. He also installed DuckDuckGo as his default browser, I may want to give it a try as well. Then we drove to Aldi to get some things to make dinner, and it was back to the house after that. I had a little downtime then, talked to Mom and Ross for a bit. While I made dinner (baked chicken drumsticks and potatoes au gratin) I talked mostly to Ross. Finished dinner prep, Mom woke up from snoozing on the couch, and we ate dinner and talked for quite a while, with Ross popping in occasionally and joining in. I cleaned the dinner dishes while talking with Mom and was able to go lay down around 9:00, it had been a fairly long day.