I was visiting with my youngest sister, Frankie, of Just My Opinion, about ten days ago. In the quiet of the early morning we were chatting about our on-line connections, and I mourned my lack of blogging in the past few months. “I don’t have anything to say!” She corrected me, gently commenting that I have a lot to say, I just don’t know how to put it down. She’s so right.
I have avoided discussing my mother lately. My mother has had at least one seizure, and a host of small strokes. She is no longer in my care, but has been set up in a condo with a round-the-clock caregiver. She is mobile but requires a lot of assistance and attention. She is no longer able to do any of the things which were the mainstays of her life: writing, quilting, crafts, or cooking. She can read, but she can’t retain what she’s read, so she no longer reads her beloved English mysteries.
We are consumed with the problem of deciding what choice is best for EM. Do we leave her in the condo until she requires nursing, or do we look for an Alzheimer’s unit? Do we need to talk to Hospice? Finding the right caregiver is a nightmare job, especially with the number of people who choose NOT to report their income and pay taxes. We will not hire a person who is unwilling to give us their social security number, so finding the perfect match is a difficult proposition.
Arranging for care for Elegante Mother on the weekend when the caregiver is off is equally difficult. My sisters and I have been sharing the duty, but it’s becoming more difficult as time goes on. There is an entire book to be written about this problem.
We are in agreement that EM should not be moved to a nursing home until she requires nursing, but trying to find the right facility is another enormous undertaking. Our experience with the two nursing homes that she needed in the past has left us wondering if there IS a place that will give her the care we want for her.
One of the minor irritations came yesterday when I opened the phone bill to find that EM has been billed almost $700 for calls to Poland made by her caregiver. We thought we had put a stop to these huge bills by adding the International plan to her phone in June, but it seems her provider slipped up. What’s the chance that they will take responsibility for this error and change the billing????
EM gave me her power of attorney for financial matters. I have spent as much time organizing her expenses as I do my own. I pay the bills that come in the mail, the rent, the caregiver, the hairdresser, and weekly expenses. I also have to sort through all the junk mail, and magazines which come, and deliver what is appropriate to her. We are afloat in mail that I need to put a stop to. I collected addresses from catalogs that need to be stopped, when I can make the time to send out the notices.
You can see how the problems are cumulative. It has become more difficult for me to care for EM because she is a 45 minute drive away from me now. It doesn’t make sense to visit her for a quick visit when it takes an hour and a half out of my day to make the trip, so I try to spend several hours with her when I go. Usually I stop for groceries to restock the condo when I go to visit.
Yesterday, I dropped off the groceries and then went to sit with Elegante Mother while she had lunch. She is able to feed herself, although she requires assistance cutting things up. She tends to eat a cup of cottage cheese, a piece of bread or crackers, and some of the meat on her plate, and always, DESSERT! Anything sweet gets her attention.
I rarely quiz her on who she is or where she is. Instead, I ask her how she feels, or is there anything she wants. Yesterday I asked her what my name is, and she didn’t have a clue. I asked her if she knew what my relationship was to her, teasing her as we do small children. “Am I your sister?” “Your aunt?” “Your mother?” “Your daughter?” None of that made sense to her. When I told her I was her daughter, she asked me to explain how that was possible. I told her that she had married my dad, and she has five children, 17 grandchildren, almost 26 great-grandchildren, and in February she would have a great-great grandchild. The woman sitting with us at the table was very impressed and told EM that was quite an accomplishment. EM looked suitably proud, despite the fact that she can’t remember how it came about.
We never know what we will find when we visit. Mother is as likely to be connected and aware of her circumstances as she is to not recognize us. It’s very difficult to see her fade away like this. Soon, much too soon, we won’t be able to make any connection with her, and I hate to see her slip away like this. This is the woman who did crossword puzzles in ink, and wrote columns for weekly newspapers.
So, to bring this full circle, I have chosen not to blog about some aspects of my life because I feel that my mother deserves some privacy as she declines. But, what’s happening in her life has a huge impact on my life. You may find me ranting about quality of care one day, or discussing how difficult it is to find the right home for an aging parent. These are the subjects that are foremost in my mind.
I know that almost everyone in my age bracket is experiencing something similar. I’m not the Lone Ranger of parental care. Perhaps by blogging about my experiences I’ll find how others are dealing with the same situations, and it won’t seem quite so difficult.
Celebrate!
We’re celebrating Dear Husband’s birthday tonight. His birthday was actually October 26, but it’s difficult to gather the children and grandchildren, so we celebrate on whatever day we can all gather.
As far as we are concerned, birthdays are lovely reasons to get together with family. We made a trip to Indiana last week, and celebrated three of the October birthdays. Frankie, my youngest sister, has been kind enough to host us each October, and we celebrated my birthday, her youngest daughter’s birthday, and DH’s birthday. She asked each of us what would be our favorite celebration dessert. I love carrot cake, my niece loves the dark chocolate cake her family makes, and DH loves cream pies. Frankie arranged to have all three of the desserts, including coconut cream pie for DH! I have never been invited to a place where there was so much dessert offered! lol To make matters worse, DH picked up a red raspberry pie and turnovers at the bakery to take as a bread and butter gift! It was rainy and chilly, but it gave us good reason to stay inside and visit. We watched “Monsters, Inc.” on Friday night, and “The Perfect Storm” on Saturday. I have a brand new (unopened) copy of “The Perfect Storm” for sale if anyone would like it…… Thank you, Frankie, for such a wonderful weekend!
Tonight….we do Italian with the bambinos. I expect to hear tales of trick-or-treating, and candy piled ten feet high! What a lovely end to a lovely day!
I Feel GREAAATTTT!!
Well, actually….I hurt like hell, but I’m delighted to have accomplished so very much today!
I started out early this morning trimming and pulling spent plants from the gardens leading to our front door. There’s a lot of work to do there to put the gardens to bed for the winter, and it was so nice today that I just kept working my way down the walk. Dear Husband came out about an hour later and started blowing the leaves into piles. I took a break and went back to it, and then we both stopped to have a sandwich.
After lunch, my stepson joined me in the gardens. We cut down the peonies and purple coneflower in the driveway gardens, and pulled the metal plant supports. He raked up the spent plants while I finished cutting down daylilies.
One of the big projects for today was to reorganize the garage for better storage, and cleaning the garage floor before we close up for winter. My stepson has recently purchased a motorcycle, and we’ve had to figure out how to squeeze everything in. I have eight pots of plants that I winter over in the unheated garage, set on a stack of styrofoam insullation. We reorganized garden equipment storage, and the recycling bins. Some things were thrown out, while others went down into the basement.
On paper it doesn’t sound like a lot, but it was six hours of constant work, and it clears the way for us to settle in for the winter. I’m just SO pleased that we got so much done. I still have a short list of things to do, but with Frankie’s help on the herb garden, and what we accomplished today, I can go into the holidays knowing that the grounds look tidy.
I need to have Dear Husband pick up a couple of bales of straw for me. I want to cover the ferns and daylilies. I need a couple of bags of compost. We covered peonies with dirt today. I’d like to top that off with compost to give them some organic food next spring.
So, this has been another of those “A day in the life of….” posts, but I can tell you that I FEEL GREAT!!! YEA! What a nice way to start November!
Ramblin
I have my annual Fall cold. I have been blaming my stepson for sharing his with me, but I discovered that my niece has the same cold, and she was with us for an afternoon. On top of that, I’ve been exposed to the swine flu, so I have spent the past two weeks pretty close to home. I chose not to go to exercise because I felt it would be wrong to share the swine flu with the senior citizens in the class. I hope to get back to exercise next week, before all my muscles turn to jello!
It’s supposed to be almost 70 degrees today. It’s sunny, and will be the last of the sunny days this week. We have rain forecast from this evening through Saturday. I should do a little work in the gardens, to move us through preparation for winter. My dear sis, Frankie, has done most of the work in the herb garden. I need to work at the front of the house, and in the long driveway gardens where the peonies grow.
Dear Husband was able to bring the boat home safely last weekend. Other than being swamped by a huge wave as he motored south to the yacht yard, it was a relatively uneventful trip. I suspect that he did better without my help than he does with it. He’s been offloading anything that would freeze, and winterizing the motor and bilges. Poor guy. Seven months and he’ll be back on the water!
Zucchini bread and pumpkin muffins are the only things I’ve baked so far. I’d like to make a carrot cake, and some pumpkin bread, and maybe some zucchini bread to freeze. I love the scent of fall seasonings. Cinnamon must be my all time favorite flavor!
I’ve managed to enter my Mother’s checkbook onto Quicken, but I realized yesterday that the program sees it as my property, rather than a separate account. I need to see if there is any way to sequester that data so that I can run reports, or I’ll have more work to do at tax time. Darn it all!
And that’s about all the news that’s fit to print. I hope you are all having a good Fall!
Dinner
Avery Island Deviled Shrimp
Rice
Thin Fresh Whole Green Beans, Steamed
Fresh Pineapple and Giant Red Raspberries
When I was in college I bought my first cookbook. It was a Betty Crocker picture cookbook, and one of the recipes was Avery Island Deviled Shrimp. I have not cooked every recipe in that cookbook, but I’m really glad I tried this one. The shrimp is lightly breaded and browned (part olive oil/part butter) while you make a sauce of onions and garlic sauteed in butter, consomme, steak sauce, mustard and lemon juice. The shrimp is served over a bed of rice, with the sauce ladled over the shrimp. It turns out this is one of my husband’s favorite meals. It seems it’s the sauce that does it for him, and we now make the sauce to serve on other meals. The fresh fruit was just the perfect ending to the meal.
Today was gorgeous! I spent the entire day at home in my quilt studio. The windows were washed yesterday and the view was of a perfect Fall day. I was working at the sewing machine, piecing blocks for a quilt top, mentally planning putting the gardens to bed in the next few weeks.
Dinner has put a nice cap to that day.
Satisfaction
This is sappy, I know, but I’m not going to delete it. After all, this is a journal of my days. Keep in mind as you read this that I am a very simple person. Small things please me. Accomplishing chores that have been waiting for a long time is the kind of thing that makes me giddy. You might want to stop reading now….
I had one of those very satisfying days that we wish would happen more often. I started the day by feeding the cat and taking a mug of tea to the computer. I love to do the LA Times crossword puzzle at the computer. Since I was there, I thought I’d make the time to blog about last weekend, another couple of satisfying days.
At that point I decided the house wasn’t going to warm up fast enough, so I turned on the heat, and then settled in to clear work off my desk. I have the power of attorney for my mother’s finances, so I waded through her mail, paying bills and organizing those things that would need further attention. Then I did the same for our personal mail and bills. I filed things, and organized the outgoing mail, and created a grocery list for the next four days.
I made a run to the bank, and to the post office, and then I stopped for groceries on the way home. While minestrone soup was on my mind, I got out the recipe and copied it for two friends who had requested it.
I know this sounds dreadfully dull when you read it, but the upshot of it is that I can see the top of the desk. I FEEL more organized, and I’m eager to buzz my way through more of the backlog of chores around the house. I can comfortably leave what is left of the paperwork, knowing that it’s taken care of for the next week or so, and not have to worry that any disasters are waiting to befall us.
Dear Husband needed a ride home tonight. I ended my paperwork session to go and collect him. The truck needs repairs to pass it’s safety testing, so we left it with our favorite repair guys. They’ll work on it first thing tomorrow and try to have it ready for him during the day.
We worked on dinner together, went over our schedules for this month, and now have the chance to sit back and relax. It was a satisfying day, and I hope tomorrow is just as satisfying!
Fairy Godmother
My sister, Frankie, of Just My Opinion, is not happy to be just my sister. She has also applied to be my Fairy Godmother and I think she may beat out all the other contestants!
Last weekend, Frankie and her youngest daughter, our artist-in-training (AIT) came for a visit. It was MUCH too short, but they were able to arrive Friday night, and could stay until Sunday morning. Believe me, if you could see the Day-Timers for these two women, you would know how blessed I was to have even that much of their time.
I THOUGHT that the reason for this visit was to blitz the sewing of a new quilt top for Frankie. This summer she called me while she was standing in the midst of a fabric sale (be still my beating heart!) and asked me how much fabric she needed for a log cabin quilt. I was surprised to be able to give her any kind of sensible answer, but she seemed happy with my response, and brought the fabric to show, the next time she visited.
I’d cleared off the table in the quilt studio in preparation for cutting the strips. I thought we would start early Saturday morning and zip right through this to give her a completed top to take home. She had other ideas.
It was supposed to rain on Saturday. The clouds were out west, and I thought it would be rainy all Saturday. Frankie had mentioned that she wanted to help me clean up my gardens. It’s about a month too early to put them to bed for the winter, but they were looking pretty woolly, and needed attention. She decided that we needed to get out and put a couple of hours in before the rain came.
“But, the quilt…” “We’ll get to it.”
So, we put on our gardening clothes and gloves and trouped out. Frankie decided to start in the herb garden, which of all my gardens needed the most help. The herb garden sits to the north of the house, even with the kitchen. I can look out over it as I work at the sink. She asked me what could go, and what needed to be trimmed, and went off to collect her tools. She brought the entire compliment of loppers and rakes and hoes and shovels from home!
The area immediately to the east of the herb garden (on the north side of the garage) is rather like the poor relation in my yard. It really needs to be cleared, so that I can have a paved patio installed, but at the very least, I should put down landscaping paper and mulch or gravel. It was a mess of weeds and equipment, and it was driving me crazy.
While Frankie cleaned up my herb garden, I used the string trimmer to cut back all the weeds. Then, I moved three different sizes of Weber grills, the sieve I use when cleaning dirt from pots, the saw horses, and some potted plants onto the newly cleared area. (Frankie, I planted chrysanthemums in that little box at the front of the garage!)
The front of the house looks vastly improved, and so does that area north of the garage. But, the herb garden…….WOW! Frankie cleaned the walkways. ALL of the walkways! I tend to get one side or the other when I get to working on the garden, but she got the entire path! Even the little areas that lead to the lawn, where I traditionally heap up weeds waiting to be picked up! It looks astonishing! I know…a picture is worth a thousand words. I promise to take pictures and post them here.
Frankie cut back the rudbekia, and the oregano and the chives, and the lemon balm. She ripped out the spent basil plants, but had the sense to leave the lemon verbena and the columnar basil. We decided to leave the purple coneflower, which looks really untidy right now, but it feeds the finches, so it gets to stay another month. We both like the look of the lamb’s ears that has escaped the formal bed to grow in the walkway, so we agreed to leave those, too. It looks absolutely wonderful.
I should also sing the praises of AIT, who got out of bed to pick up loads of weeds and run them to the back in a wheelbarrow that had a tire going flat! She made things fly for us, and I can’t praise her enough for her part in all this.
We worked for close to four hours! I was really glad to “tweet” and call a halt. We were both at places where we were willing to quit, in other words, DONE! My herb garden is glorious! Thank you dear Sis and Niece for all you did!
Oh…I forgot to mention that they spent about half an hour pulling grapevines from our shrubs. I can’t wait to see the finished project that Frankie is working on. I believe she is creating a grapevine Christmas tree.
As for the quilt top, it was interrupted once more. We all showered and had lunch and the girls went to buy a pair (or more) of shoes for AIT. She is a college student and has discovered the necessity of having good shoes. She found a pair of shoes and a pair of winter boots. Frankie found a pair, too, so shopping was a success.
When they returned, tired, I cracked the whip, and insisted that we work on cutting the strips for the quilt! I ironed fabric and handed it to Frankie, and she cut the strips. We were two thirds of the way through the project when I had to fix dinner, so she kept cutting and got it all done. AIT and I worked on dinner, and we put out a bowl of mixed fruit, tuna melts on English muffins, and a huge bowl of salad with strips of chicken and practically every veggie in the house!
After dinner, Frankie thought she was going to be allowed to rest. There was some mention of aching muscles, and how long a day it was, but I was of a mind to SEW! I told her she could sit, but I wanted to make up at least one block to see what it looked like. Well, with the method she was going to use, I actually ended up with three finished blocks and part of eleven more, but who’s counting?
I know she was exhausted, but there was a satisfaction in being able to put up those blocks to see what her quilt was going to look like. She was surprised, as we frequently are until we can see them on the design wall, but not unhappy with how they looked. I wish she had left them to me. I’d have been happy to complete the blocks for her in return for all the gardening help she gave me. Perhaps, when the project is further along, Frankie will post pictures of the quilt.
We breakfasted together Sunday morning, before seeing our visitors off. AIT needed some time to work on her homework, and they have a long drive home. I always hate to see them go. Dear Husband and I will drive down to their home in Indiana in October, and their entire family will be with us for four days at Christmas, but I’ve been spoiled this summer, seeing my sis several times a month. We may need to live closer together when we are all retired!
It was a GREAT weekend, and it’s been a good week so far. Thank you, Frankie and AIT, for all you did. Don’t you all wish you had family like this!???
19
Yesterday was our nineteenth anniversary! I am embarrassed to admit it, but I almost forgot. Had we not received an absolutely gorgeous card from my sister, Frankie, it might have slipped by unnoticed. I would have remembered in a week or so.
Our business has been on my mind. The economy has really hurt us. There are companies, large and small, falling around us, throwing in the towel because there just is not enough work to sustain them. We have pared down. We are cutting expenses to the bone, and we respond to every request we receive for a bid.
I was invited to lunch TWICE last week. I virtually never go out to lunch, but I had invitations on both Thursday and Friday. Thursday, I met with our CPA. She’s a dear friend, who I don’t see as often as I would like, so these occasional lunches are our time to catch up. She is a great networker, and we talked about networking over our meal. It turned out that she had a lunch date set up with the woman who is our lawyer. She is also heavily into networking.
I thought about them as I started my day on Friday, and at the end of exercise class, I mentioned our company, and asked if they would keep their ears open for anyone needing masonry work. Two women called me later that day with requests for information!
Lunch on Friday was with a group of women from the Empty Nesters at Elegante Mother’s church. We visited the Emerson Creek Pottery and had a fabulous meal. I asked if they would consider letting me post a note about the company through their e-mail.
I have a quilting bee that meets once a month. One of the woman called this week to arrange for DH to look over some work that needed to be done at their house.
I e-mailed the queen of our Red Hat Chapter and she gave me several contacts to pursue. She had been involved in real estate, and recommended several associations which might give me more ways to network.
And, I talked with our lawyer, and mentioned her upcoming luncheon with our CPA. I told her we were looking for work, and that I planned to put together a PR brochure in-house to send to contractors. She suggested that I provide her with several of the packets, so that she could distribute them among her contacts.
Frankly, I was astonished at the support I received from my friends. My goal was to keep our company name on people’s minds, and I think this might work. I didn’t realize that I had so many contacts
So, you can see that I had a lot on my mind this week. I have an entire year to get ready for our twentieth anniversary, so I think I’ll try to plan something special.
Soapbox Time!
I want to know who is responsible for the absolutely stupid idea that making our children feel good about themselves is more important than encouraging them to do the absolute best that they can do in school!?
When last I checked, life in general doesn’t care how you feel about yourself. We’re spending a lot of time worrying how the kids feel, and are ignoring basic education. These kids are going to be so sheltered that when they get out into “real life” they won’t have a clue how to deal with it.
I’ve been very concerned for the last 25 years or so that we do not teach children that it is their responsibility to learn, and that we expect them to learn to the very best of their ability. The last year I taught, the students were told that to attend the party at the end of the year they had to have at least a C- average. Personally, I would have phrased the rule to read: The party will be open to those students who have earned As, Bs and/or Cs on their report card. Sorry…I got sidetracked there.
At the final teacher’s meeting of the year, the principal announced that he wanted to let ALL the students attend the party. He felt the they should all have a good image of themselves, and be allowed to participate. There was dead silence in the room. I knew that I was not going to be returning the following year. I strongly suspected that I would not ever teach again, so I probably wasn’t going to need a reference from this jerk, so I raised my hand.
I said that it was inappropriate to change the rules at the end of the year. Those students who had tried really hard and made straight Cs would see that those who had not made any effort at all were going to be rewarded. What type of incentive is that!? I argued that if they wanted to change the policy, they could change it for the coming year, but it was inappropriate to do it at that point. I can’t recall whether what I said carried the day or not, but I still feel the principal’s plan was short sighted.
Another thing I detest is promoting kids socially. If a student can not prove mastery of 70 percent of the material taught that year, the student should not be allowed to go on to the next grade. I understand the concern some people have that older students might inappropriately affect the development of the younger students. If you are really concerned about that, then you need to find a way to segregate those students who have to repeat a class. Either you put them into a restricted area where they are tutored individually or in groups, or you create one school in a district which would address the needs of those who need to repeat a class.
I know….that might tarnish their self image. Too bad! Several decades ago, a principal in a Chicago school announced to the eighth grade that those who were failing would be held back until they could prove that they had mastered 70 percent of the material that had been taught through eighth grade. The students had the last few months of the eighth grade year plus the summer to learn enough to test out of eighth grade and be allowed to go on to high school. Wonder of wonders, almost all of the students managed to accomplish that task! Those kids needed the appropriate incentive to get the job done.
Perhaps we need to set our expectations higher. Perhaps we need rules rather than guidelines. We should reward children who strive to do their best. Perhaps we need to be rewarding kids who are well behaved, who get to school on time, who do their homework, and turn in their papers. We spend so much time giving attention to kids who misbehave that we are failing those who really try. We need to find the carrot that will encourage those who are failing to WANT to be like the kids who are successful.
I think a lot of that improvement needs to start at home with parents giving their children more attention. We need to teach children that homework comes first, and then, MAYBE you can see TV, or play with whatever electronic thing is currently popular.
Heck….I’m running out of time and I haven’t finished ranting! I’ll have to add more later,but I have a lot to say about our young and how they are turning out. A simpler life might not be such a bad thing.
Remind me….uniforms, and fewer material possessions, and the library, and walking……
Black Heron
I was astonished this year to see a BLACK heron, or possibly egret. It has a favorite hunting perch on the bank of a retention pond near our home. It’s about the size of the smaller white egrets that come up to us from the Gulf Coast.
I went on-line to see what I could find about them, and discovered that they are an AFRICAN species. How the heck did he get here? I wonder if he was blown off course and into hurricane winds that brought him across the Atlantic, and can’t make the trip back against the prevailing winds?
It seems as though I’ve seen more variations in our feathered friends this year. Not only do we have small and large white egrets, but we have the great blue herons with a lot of variation in their markings. It’s been a pleasure to watch the birds in the early morning as I drive through a major refuge on my way to exercise, and I love to see them in flight.
And, this year I have set up a quilt studio, with my sewing machine at an east-facing window. I had the blinds pulled open during the afternoon, and Ed, the cat was sitting on the edge of the table, watching for chipmunks. We were both surprised when a tiny hummingbird flew up and hovered just outside the window from Ed. Usually they don’t stay long enough for us to get a good look. It’s astonishing just how petite they are, and how fast their wings are beating.
I love all the birds that come to visit, but the herons and hummingbirds have been a real pleasure this year.