Mother is 94 and has heart issues. Each week she has a new obsession. Last week it was razors and tissues; this week it is towels and wearing plastic gloves. I ask her why she is wearing plastic gloves and of course what she says makes no sense to me. I told her that if she is comfortable wearing the gloves then it is fine with me. She seemed pleased. She might like it but I really don't like listening to her explanation because it is irrational to me. I play along with her, but to myself I find it very off putting. There are towels and tissues everywhere in her bed. I don't think her behavior can be changed but I want to understand it.
First it was his bank book. I gave him an old bank book and he would add/subtract the numbers all day long.. for weeks. Then make my mother add them up, then he'd add them up again. There were sheets and sheets of paper with all his calculations. He was sure the bank was stealing his money.
Then it was a tree in the neighbors yard. He was obsessed that it was going to fall (it wasn't) This went on for weeks until he found someone to cut the branches that were hanging over the fence into his yard. He would just sit there all day staring at the tree waiting for it to fall. For weeks.
Then it was the furnace. It was last summer... He was obsessed as to why the furnace wasn't going on. This went on for weeks. One morning (4 am) my mother found him in the basement and he managed to remove the front part of the furnace and was playing with the wires!!! I had to call the furnace guy to come check it out to make sure the house wasn't going to blow up!
Then, he got fixated on the electric panel!! All he 'd talk about was the electricity. He'd make my husband go and look at it every time we visited and he wanted to change wires and whatever and try to hook this up and hook that up to wires.
All these fixations were making us all crazy. My poor mother had to deal with it 24/7. I can't answer why you are uncomfortable to be around your mother, but it sure drove us crazy!
so she literally picks up her journal, gets frustrated, puts it away...then does that 10 more times. and I cant get her to stop. so I just sit there and watch :(
she also saves any piece of scrap paper or pieces of cardboard. she cuts out cartoons, pictures from newspaper. pics from magazines. and then puts them in an envelope.
she wants to paste them to something. but ends up just saving them. so she ends up with all these stuffed envelopes of clippings.
but gosh she was a great mom all my life. I hate that shes acts so #%@*&^
she also continuously tries to read. goes down to get books a AL bookcase. takes books. and cant read. I return books, big pile. next visit, big pile books.