Aug 12, 2018 21:04
Mom and grandma were talking last week, and grandma has realized she is not getting any younger and it might behoove her to start checking out any assisted living facilities near us and my uncle up in Algonquin. She did visit a place up north and apparently wasn't impressed, so since mom has tomorrow off, they figured they'd look at one that's just down the street. What ended up happening after grandma arrived was that all four of us hopped in the car and drove around the immediate area. Dad actually drove, and for part of it I navigated from the backseat, while mom and grandma looked around. Grandma also occasionally needed help with her seatbelt as well because she wasn't bothering to look or really pay attention to what she was doing. Yeah. Sigh.
In order...
1. Holmstad. This is maybe four minutes from us, at Fabyan & 31. They have an appointment to visit there tomorrow. We took a tour of the grounds, and it's actually pretty large, with multiple buildings including duplexes (with garages attached) and cottages (just like the duplexes, but garages separate). Grandma *really* liked it, plus you cannot beat the proximity to us, so that quickly shot to the top of the list.
2. Geneva Place. This is in downtown Geneva at 38 & 25, *right* on the corner, and looks like a standard condo building. Grandma was so unimpressed she refused to get out of the car to go inside and get literature. Plus, she's looking to get out of the city, and she's like, I think this is busier than my current place! Fair enough.
3. River Glen, formerly Delnor Glen, on 25 about a mile north of 64 in St. Charles. Dad and I have driven by this place numerous times. It's similar to Holmstad in that there's a big condo-like building, but also townhouses. Four of the townhouses are for sale. We'd dropped mom and grandma off, and dad and I drove around a bit, picking up a flier for the four for-sale townhouses. Then we waited in the car for a bit (in a parking spot overlooking some lady sitting in a chair, who appeared to be staring at us with this frown on her face...kinda creepy, but perhaps we creeped her out as well). Eventually the car got stuffy and dad and I got out to go sit on a bench, just as mom and grandma came out. The staff had been kind enough to give them a quick tour and some literature. I'd say this was number two on grandma's list.
4. From there, we went back into Geneva, through town, all the way out to Greenfields of Geneva in Mill Creek. Mom and grandma did go inside for a little bit but grandma wasn't impressed since it was just a large condo-type building. She lives in one of these now and is looking for something else; I don't think she gets that this is exactly what she'd be moving into with assisted living, though I did explain it as we left there. I'm the one who knows Mill Creek best so I guided dad out, getting him to Fabyan eventually. Grandma was all, wow, this is an amazing senior living community! No, grandma, this is a fancy-pants subdivision; what you saw was where everyone moves to once they can't handle their houses anymore. ...Oh. Never mind that twice mom had pointed out that Mill Creek is so large, it has two elementary schools on site.
5. A few miles down Fabyan is a new place near our Walmart. It's *really* new. In fact, it's *so* new that nobody lives there yet. There's still a port-o-potty in front for the construction workers, there were no cars in the parking lot, none of the windows had curtain or anything (though the sliding glass doors did have blinds), and apparently there was just a folding chair in the lobby, per dad. Oops. And, again, it was just a condo-type building, and I think it's just senior living, 55+, not assisted living, so that got crossed off the list pretty quickly. But your neighbors would be pretty quiet...almost like no one's there...
6. At this point, mom was ready for Steak 'n' Shake, but dad and I had looked online while they were at River Glen and saw there were two more places in Batavia. Grandma said, since we're still in the car, we might as well go check them out. This took us across town to Heritage Woods, on Wilson east of Raddant...and yet again, it was a condo-type building. Grandma opted not to go in, but it took a minute for us to leave as this woman in a motorized wheelchair was rolling a manual wheelchair in front of her and blocking the little driveway. She eventually moved over so we could go around her.
7. Finally, we went to Riverain, which is on the peninsula by the Riverwalk, just north of Batavia's government center. Yep, it's another condo-type building...but the twist here is that it's old. We've been out here 27 years; it's older than that, probably 30-35 years at least...and it looks it. Plus, there's always the occasional flooding issue, so we just did a drive-by and that was it.
This was a good hour and a half excursion, so we worked up an appetite. Mom said she'd thank dad for his chauffeuring skills by treating him (and the rest of us) to lunch. They all got side-by-side milkshakes; I made do with my water. And we all had burgers and fries. So, here's the thing: Dad was going to go home and start cooking dinner. By us eating at 2:30-ish, that meant none of us was hungry for a while. We got home after 3, I'd say, and we hung out on the deck for a couple hours. We showed grandma the new fence, which she hadn't noticed at all (it's hard to see from the direction she comes, to be fair), and she looked at the flowers and things, and considering the table and chairs used to be hers when she had her place in Lake Geneva, she was more than happy to enjoy using them again.
Eventually mom got too hot and went inside, so we decided to finally play Batavia-opoly. Yep, we've had it since about Christmas, but we never did more than look at it. It's actually pretty fun--well, for me, since I got our version of Boardwalk and mom kept landing on it, heh--and it was kind of amusing in a way. My token was Mr. Egghead, which is a sculpture in front of the library; I kept landing in the library, which was the game's version of jail. And grandma kept landing on the park district squares (like chance or community chest), which is funny because she really does go to the park a lot by her. We played for at least two hours, and I'd said, do you want to play until 7 PM and then stop? Mom ended up wanting to play until someone won the kitty in the middle one last time. We'd all gotten it at least once, but I ended up with that last pot, sweet. But they were getting goofy; grandma said, it's like we've been drinking! Too much fresh air and ice cream, apparently. But at one point grandma landed on Fermilab, my card, which was like a utility (power); you had to pay four times the amount shown on the dice. She'd had snake eyes and went, oh, I owe you $6. Or $8, I said. Nice try. They'd also accused me of cheating since I was the banker, especially because they kept pulling park district cards where they owed money, and I'd get the ones where I earned money. Hey, I never even touched those cards to set them up; how could I be cheating? I did eventually get a funny card where I had to pay; mom had gone to the bathroom and missed it. The saying was, you go to the Quarry and forget your swim trunks (oops!); pay $50. Heh. I also got a couple of cards from the other pile (maybe Batavia Main Street?) where, hey, you're going to prom! Advance to *this street* to buy your dress! And that street would be sponsored by the dress shop in town. Here's the thing--I was just a few spaces past that street, but had to go all the way around the board to get there, so I'd make $250 for passing go in the process. Not too shabby. So it's no wonder that I ended up winning, though grandma wasn't that far behind. Mom had just over half of what I'd had, oh well.
In the meantime, dad did start cooking, except partway through he realized our propane grill was out of propane, so thus commenced a whole ordeal where he had to disconnect the canister (and came in the back door for stuff), then did something else (and surprised us by coming in the front door this time), then finally went to Menards to get the gas, and eventually was able to cook. But he'd eaten all of his food at the restaurant and wasn't hungry, after all that. The rest of us did eat some, and now we'll have leftovers for tomorrow.
Grandma is spending the night on the couch, so that she and mom can go to their appointment tomorrow afternoon. (Grandma was like, where's your dad going to sleep? Mom joked, he got a hotel room. Actually, he gets to sleep in the master bedroom for once.) Mom is taking her car in for an estimate for all her hail damage and that's at 11. Me, I get to work, but I think this is enough family togetherness for me anyway, heh. But I haven't talked to grandma in a few weeks, so it was nice to spend time with her.
steak 'n shake,
family,
games,
grandma,
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