Laughter Is The Best Medicine

At the time Jesse James, the nursing home outlaw, came to stay with me, I was also caring for my other grandmother and my elderly cousin.
So here I am with a 4 "kids" ages 92, 89, and 79. PLUS my 8 year old daughter.
Anyone who has never taken care of elderly people will not understand, unless they have raised toddlers. Because that is exactly what I felt like I was taking care of.
Jesse James never learned to drive. So, for the life of me, I don't know why I ever thought she would be able to operate a motorized wheelchair! But my other grandmother & cousin were running all over 12 acres in theirs, so I figured what the heck, let's give her some independence.
Yeah, right!
Out the door we went. Well... sort of. By the time she hit the door facings 15457458 times, she decided that this was too scary. I convinced her to let me get her out the door and that it would be different outside. So out we went. I showed her all of the basics and finally she took off. Going as slow as that chair would let her. The other two were running circles around her and taking off out of the yard at this point to ride across the field.
I asked her if she was going with them and she said yes. I go back into the house to get their lunches ready. When I go out to call them in (told you it was like having kids) all I could do was shake my head. Jesse James was facing a tree and back wheel was lodged on a root. She couldn't go forward because of the tree or back because of the root. I push her out and she lets me know right fast that she wanted out of that thing and back in the house. So I take her and go back outside to get the other two. My cousin comes zooming around the house and in... I go looking for my other nanny. And I find her sunken into the flowerbed she was trying to tend. 8 inches down in the ground. Tires totally embedded. I had to call home help for that one as she can't walk.
Needless to say, Jesse James never got back into the motorized wheelchair always citing "I never learned how to drive."

"What was that?" - Nanny Huck (the 89 yr old)
"Did you hear that?" - Barb (the 79 yr old)
"Oops. Excuse me." - Jesse James
::laughter out of all three::
"Mama always said better out than in!" - Nanny Huck (her mom lived to be 102)
(This was the dialogue I heard each morning from the kitchen as I was making breakfast.)

You have to understand the whole scenario, I got up at 6 to get my daughter off to school at 7, then I'd go back to bed and nap until 10 when those three decided to get up. There were three rooms in a row. Jesse James was in the first one (which was the living room). She'd lay in bed until I went in and helped Nanny Huck up and into her chair.
Barb was still mobile at this point and could get into her chair.

Once she heard me getting Nanny up, she'd wheel into the living room and start chatting with Jesse James. That would always make Nanny Huck speed up and get dressed as fast as possible because she was not one to miss out on anything going on! So after getting her ready.. off she'd go into the living room with the other two. So I'd go into the kitchen.

Just like clockwork, as soon as I would break the eggs into the pan, the dialogue above would happen. That meant Jesse James was getting out of bed. When that happened there was a sequence of noises. The crackling and popping of the bones as she sat up and got up out of the bed. As she shuffled across the floor headed to her potty chair, well, I won't elaborate on this, but let's just say that as funny as it is to kids when someone "lets 'er rip,"
it's just as funny to three little old ladies!

Ahh.. feeding time at my zoo. Jesse James took an army's worth of pills each morning due to her rare blood disorder, while all the while Nanny Huck elaborated how she only took vitamins and which vitamins did what, for what part, etc..
There was always a small spat at the breakfast table over Nanny Huck trying to get Jesse James to 'throw them pills away and take a vitamin C.'
But Jesse James would have no part of it. She did exactly what the doctors told her to do! To which another "mama says" would fall out of Nanny Huck. All the while, Barb's being the good one and sitting there shaking her head and laughing.
I, on the other hand, was always herded off to Nanny Huck's room to search for her missing bottom plate. (denture) That elusive thing was found in a myriad of places, including, but not limited to:
the pocket of her dress,
under her bed,
under her pillow,
in the pocket of her sweater,
wrapped up in a paper towel in the garbage,
in her wheelchair pocket,
in her e-z lift chair,
in the dryer,
in the washer,
and last but certainly not least...
right on top of the cup with a lid that she drinks out of. (a sippy cup for adults)

That was the shout heard 'round the world when Nanny Huck's e-z lift chair would "hang up" and have her in a standing position when she was trying to sit down and lay back for a nap.
She never quite grasped sometimes that she had the remote for it upside down!