Been a while since I posted here.  I am on one of my trips to Florida to check on my Mother.    Everytime I come down here, which is about once a month, I spend a week or so.   Everytime I come she is worse. Not by much, but a little more. she is having more trouble doing simple things.  She is having more trouble with focusing on things and she is getting stuck on some things in her effort to deal with things going on around her.   She takes her sleeping pill and then she stays awake and gets back up and tries to do something she doesn't need to be doing.  She gets unstable and sometimes gets disoriented.  Today she has talked and talked and talked.   I have been patient and listening.  I try to engage in conversation, but at the same time, most of what she is talking about doesn't make much difference to me.  I realize that it is her world and that it is important to her.   I got short with her twice.  Not much, just a little, but she reacted to it.    I know that people say that when aging settles in on a person it changes them.  I sometimes wonder if it just doesn't bring out who they really are and always have been.