HOME FOR GOOD!...I hope. I arrived home on an earlier flight than originally planned Friday. We had a good week. Each day was filled with feeding my mom her meals, getting her back to her room for her naps (that tend to be longer) and going to Carl's apartment to sort through things or do things for him. Of course, the time ran out on us, but we got quite a bit done. there are some boxes still waiting for us, but they are very few. More "stuff" was picked up and taken to the resale shop to be disposed of. One of my sisters got some clothing for Carl that fit him comfotably and keep him warmer. We set some plans in motion that will hopefully make his situation better.
I've now had this in draft form for awhile and it is now 11/16 and i'm not done with it! Last weekend, we found out that Carl had worked around some of our plans to help him and sabotaged them. I'm glad I've had experience raising children because this is so much like that time. (only much worse! We have no authority over him.) You get to a point where you can't do anything to change the situation. (Technically, he isn't at the stage where he is incompetent. His judgement is just not very good.) We have done what we can do to help but there is a limit to what we can do to protect him from himself! We were fortunate in our child raising that we did not have problems this severe to deal with.
I will close this down for now since it is as complete as it can get. Last weekend, I was pretty distressed. I'm doing better today:) martha

12/1/06 another addendum! I just added the photo with my siblings. We are from left to right: me, my "baby" brother (3 yrs. younger), an american airlines captain who lives with his wife in PA. Next is my truly baby sister who is 20 yrs. younger and lives in amsterdam. She is a first grade teacher in an international school where she works with her husband. Last is my sister born on my first birthday. She is mother of 4, grandmother of 9 (one of her kids has 8 children!). She will work full-time as a nurse again starting in Jan. after teaching nursing in a nearby junior college this past year. Her most recent area of experience (for many years) has been with insurance companies as caseworker doing utilization review. She lives outside of Baltimore, MD.