I haven't had to get really creative yet with Bompa because he is much happier asleep in his recliner than running all over the place. But Gramma never stayed still. She got very upset when she found a door locked and she would try to figure out how to open it and she would pull and tug on it then get mad and say "bullshit" and then go somewhere else. We set up the house and yard so that every door was keyed the same, even the closets. And we had keys hanging everywhere but she didn't ever look for a key so it worked out well. We even had locks on all the gates around the deck and yard. The deck gates were locked one day so that she couldn't go out into the wet grass. She didn't like that but if you left her alone she would get over it. We tried to just let her be but as I watched her from the playroom window I realized I was gonna have to go outside and talk to her. She was so mad that she started throwing my lawn furniture off the deck. It was pretty funny to see my 83 yr old Gramma tossing wrought iron chairs over the railing.
At night we had baby gates installed in the doorway to the bedroom so she couldn't get into stuff during the night. She rarely slept more than an hour or two at a time. Bompa started sleeping on the couch because if he rolled over or got up to pee she would thnk it was time to get up. Thank God he is deaf as a post! She would stand at that gate and rattle it and pound on it and swear at it and yell hey hey come here...for hours. A few times she broke through the gate and Bompa would try to get her to go back to bed. Now I always locked their apt door at night but one night I must not have shut it the whole way. She got through the gate and headed out into the laundry room that seperates their apt from the rest of the house. Jimmy's room is off the laundry room. I was sound asleep when Jimmy shook me awake and whispered " Mom, MOM, Gramma is in my bed!!!!!" I said what are you talking about. He said he woke up when he felt her sit down and he scooted up and off the bed without her even realizing he was there. I went in and helped her back to her bed and secured the gates and doors again.
She got to a point that she would try to sit down and she wouldn't really know where her butt was in relation to the couch or chair and she would fall. One day after falling 6 times, Bompa and I decided to have her sit in the wheelchair. We "seatbelted" her in with a gait belt that fastened behind the chair, so she couldn't get up but she could scoot around. It gave me time to make dinner etc. Well, she was sooooo busy, that being at that height gave her accesss to cupboards and drawers and she made a mess. Bompa used "the Club", (you remember the Club that you attached to your steering wheel so nobody could steal your car?)
through the back wheels on the wheelchair so she couldn't go very far except in circles. This only slowed her down for a few minutes. She figured out she could slide the wheels instead of turning them and off she went. I laughed so hard but Bompa wasn't able to see the humor in it. He was so upset that she was doing these things that it was hard for him. I had to explain to him a lot that what she was doing was not in her control and if she wasn't hurting herself or others, we had to let her be.
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