Category: Blogging

August 6, 2024 Tuesday Teeth

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Tuesday is hiking day for my new bunch of friends, the Birkie Girls. Today’s instructions were to meet in the Walmart parking lot at 9:20 am to car pool to the trailhead some 20 miles away.  I was there early, because Walmart is in my backyard. Of course, I walked – still no car.  When no one showed up I started wondering if I had the wrong day, or the wrong time, but no. The email was clear. Apparently no one needed to car pool, and I hadn’t communicated that I needed a ride this time. So, no hike for me. Not to worry though. It’s evening now and I’ve gotten my 10,000 steps in doing gardening, and walking to the dentist.

This was the long awaited day to get the veneers on my top middle teeth. I have nothing good to say about the temporary set that I’ve had for two weeks. It was like my childhood nightmare of my teeth being loose and falling out come true. They were plastic and not very toothlike, hard to clean, and had to be re-glued once. The second time they fell out was yesterday so I put them back in and didn’t chew anything until my appointment this afternoon. The permanent ones are on now, and what a process. It must be very good glue that they use because it took a good hour to clean the residue out, and now my gums are sore. But they will heal.  My teeth look and feel normal again and I am glad to be done with it. I have spent way too much time in the dentist chair in the last month or so.

Now if I could just refurbish the rest of me…

I feel like teeth are important or I wouldn’t have gone through all this repair and refurbishment. I’ve seen too many unhealthy mouths, especially on the elderly, and I just don’t want those problems as I continue to age. 

I’m struggling with a gardening issue. I want to have a better perennial garden in the corner of the yard, but the deer keep eating the lillies. There’s a lot of Sweet William and Oregano there already but grass and weeds are prominent. A lot of the weeds are invasive species and have to go. Invasive weeds are a metaphor for a lot of what goes on in life…

I am serious about fixing these problems because I want it to be a memorial garden. It’s a garden that Mom started and has always loved and I want to keep it going for her. I also want to put the husband’s ashes somewhere in that space.

The corner garden. This will be my “before” picture.

On the other side of the fence from this corner garden is Walmart. And that will be a story for tomorrow. What on earth are they doing over there?

8/4/24

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Today, if I were writing in my poor, disabled planner, I would write that I met a friend for breakfast before church. Of course, I walked to the restaurant, being still without my car.  This friend used to call me regularly, often coming to my house to talk, often praying together, sharing our hobbies and adventures. Then that pattern stopped in a somewhat sudden manner, and that kind of abrupt change always worries me a little, especially when I know a person is going through some tough experience. We did some catching up over coffee and breakfast food and I reassured myself that she was doing okay. Things change, needs change, circumstances change but I still think it is best to risk annoying someone to find out when I have that nagging feeling that something might be wrong. They might just be waiting for someone to care. It was good to see her. We sat together in church, both alone, together. 

People, check on your friends.

I would also record that I’m worried about Shadow the cat, again. She has been markedly less active the last two days, less like herself in other ways as well, and definitely scratching and licking more. I am hoping that I did not create a set back by trying to wean her off the prednisone she was taking. 

I forgot to take my blood pressure medicine this morning. Having a different morning and breaking routine by going out resulted in forgetting. It’s not like it will kill me to skip one day but I’m aware how little it takes to distract me, and that can be scary.  Last week was unusual too and I missed two days. 

A subtle sadness has been hanging over me like a cloud. I wonder if it’s because I’ve been binge watching “Call the Midwife”.  Almost every episode finds me crying with the characters and aware of the hardships that ordinary people have faced, and still face. It is a good series, although it portrays many difficult and troubling social issues.  The television is my dinner companion most evenings.  I don’t even think about being alone if I have something interesting to watch.

I didn’t make the top three in Duolingo this week, and I don’t care. 

I took a walk in the meadow at sunset. It was very beautiful, with a soft purple and white blanket over the field. The flowers are so pretty and plentiful. It’s a shame that they are invasive species poised to take over the world. They get mowed regularly but it’s hard to keep up with them.

I have a lot of phone calls to make in the morning. I have to borrow my nephew’s car to take Mom to an appointment in a nearby town, and there was something else that didn’t get written down that I’m hoping to remember before it’s too late. I got an email saying the new planner had been sent out, and it can’t come too soon, in my opinion. I need my second brain back again. 

August 1, 2024

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On this first day of August, 2024, I am at home feeling some unrest about a phone conversation last night with daughter Julia.  As careful as I try to be with words, sometimes I make the wrong choice. I know what I mean, but the platform of love from which I speak is not always what is heard. That is why I have been praying. I am asking God to be the communicator that I am not. 

I am also remembering the story she told me, over the phone, on Tuesday.  It was such an example of her unpredictable, eventful, and exciting life.  She was still laughing and smiling as she told it, and it gave us a chance to marvel with her. 

She has sheep, and has been learning to shear them herself.  One of her tasks for the day had been to get the woolly coat off the last young ram and then to castrate him. She is a veterinarian and has years of experience with this procedure, on multiple species of animals. However, sheep are surprisingly sensitive creatures. 

After getting his anesthesia, this poor little fellow stopped breathing altogether.  Julia started doing chest compressions and sent husband Kevin, who was watching while holding the baby, for some epinephrine.  I was trying to picture her doing chest compressions and rescue breathing on a sheep, but am not at all sure that I got it right.  I’m thinking it was somewhat of a miracle that Kevin found the right medicine, and that she was able to administer it several times, even right into the sheep heart. Reviving him was not quick or easy.  And then, somehow, Julia and the sheep were in the back of her truck while Kevin drove them to the vet hospital where she works. Fluids and a reversal drug seemed to put things in a better light.  The sheep survived and was recovering. 

Mom and I, my brother Gary and his partner Lyn, listened to her story while eating our ice cream cones on a bench in front of West’s Dairy.  It was kind of like having a treat while watching a good movie. 

This is a different sort of week for me. My car is at the car hospital having body work done and I am attempting to keep my appointments in town by biking or walking. We are having some of our hottest summer days, so I am arriving hot and sweaty to some places. And today it is raining off and on, which is another complication. I am supposed to mow grass at church, but for now I’m going to go help at the Resource Center for a while, and stay dry. 

When 2024 Got Soaked

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It was an unfortunate accident, unless you believe that there are no real accidents, just things we didn’t know would happen. There’s a difference.

I had filled my watering cans at the kitchen sink and set them on the counter. I intended to mix in some plant fertilizer before watering my brood. But for a couple of hours I turned my mind to something else and when I came again to the counter, I noticed that it was wet. Very wet. One of the cans evidently has a small leak. The counter would have been much wetter had it not been for my day planner, which soaked up all it could on every single page. It was dripping, heavy and sodden.

My day planner is not only my reminder of things to come, it is my memory of everything past. Most every day I record happenings and feelings, questions and observations, knowing that I can look back and say “on that day I did something, there it is.” Seven months of memory now is smeared, faded, crinkled and very sad looking.

I have many years of this same planner. I like its style, the amount of space it allows, and its size that fits easily in my purse – not too big, not too small. It goes with me almost everywhere I go. It is one of the first things I look at in the morning, and one of the last things I check at night. It’s a bit precious to me, and I’ve been known to get despondent when I can’t locate it and think it’s lost.

So, I’ve done what any resourceful writer would probably do, I ordered another one. If I can get the pages apart and they are still readable, I will copy every single word into the new one. I don’t care how long it takes.

Until the new one comes, I will have to write somewhere. I guess it will be here. This spot on the internet started out as a journal, a place to think in print. Writing is therapy, you know. It’s my way of checking in on myself to see how I’m handling the mundane, the trivial, the disappointments, frustrations, and mysteries of my own little life. For a while, it will be pretty mild, unimpressive, probably nothing quotable or wise, just life. However it is, it will get written. I have needed to do it in a more consistent, disciplined way, and now I will.

Maybe this soaked planner is just the result of an accident. But, if I decide to respond to it by writing more, making it a catalyst, using it to change a pattern, make a new habit, well then, it seems to me it’s more than just an accident. It could have been planned, only not by me.

That’s today’s story and I’m sticking to it.

It’s never going to close again.

Going West

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Written because I want to remember it, and because Mom wants to know what I’m doing…

For the first time in many years, my daughter Esther and I are spending birthday week together. Yesterday was her birthday and my travel day. I boarded a plane and flew west to Seattle.

Trepidation. A nice, interesting word with a good compliment of letters in it. I like long words when I am still able to pronounce them easily. I had some trepidation preceding this journey. It’s been a while since I went anywhere by plane and I was expecting that changes might have taken place in the system. Airports are complicated places. And even before that, there was the job of getting to the airport and parking.

It was good to start the trip with something familiar. I love my car and know how to use GPS to get places, so the only thing “trepidating” (trepidicious?) about the drive to Minneapolis was the freezing rain and snow that started in the first 20 miles and only got worse as I went south. I was very relieved to pull into the remote parking garage where my reservation barcode actually worked and opened the gate.

I found a space and was just making sure I was lined up right in it when I saw the shuttle already waiting behind me. The driver had followed me in. I quickly got out, pulled my suitcase and backpack out of the back seat and got in the shuttle. I didn’t remember locking the car, so was searching in my purse for my key while we wound our way out of the garage. That’s probably why I thought about looking for my phone.

My phone was back in the car, still connected to the console.

We were only just out on the street when I freaked out and started apologizing and telling the driver I would run back and get it. But he went around the block and returned, acting kind of like this sort of thing had happened before. The other passengers didn’t seem to mind and maybe even were amused. So started the trip.

MSP airport was as confusing as ever. I’ve flown out of it many times but it has gotten bigger and bigger, and I didn’t recognize most of it. The signage is less than helpful. Mostly, I just followed the biggest crowd I could find and hoped for the best.

Getting through security was not a lot different. All they asked for was my ID, and nothing in my baggage or on my person set off any alarms. That whole process only took about 20 minutes and I was soon sitting at my gate. I had two whole hours to watch the energetic, screeching children who had also arrived early, and their parents who thought they were funny, and the lady with the dog who was also dealing with some trepidation.

Not much to report about the flight itself, except that the entertainment system cut out half way through the movie I tried to watch. They had warned us this might happen. I also missed the garbage bag when the attendant came by to collect our drink cups. I had to scrape all the ice I dropped out of the way and under my chair where it could safely melt. I was beginning to feel like an old lady, forgetful, slightly incompetent. No one seemed to mind.

Three hours later I was racking up steps in the Seattle airport, and texting my people to come pick me up. They were waiting in the cell phone lot so it didn’t take long, and we were on our way to Esther’s birthday dinner at Cedarbrook Lodge.

Esther’s longtime friend, Duncan, was running the bar there and gave us special attention, the whole time we were there. I learned that NA (nonalcoholic) beverages are the latest trend there and enable cocktails with no alcohol to now be as expensive as those with alcohol. I also learned that Sablefish is another word for cod, but it definitely needed a new word since it was being served in an upscale restaurant. As promised, dinner was a quintessential Northwest experience in dining. I especially like my spatzle, foraged mushrooms, butter roasted onions, preserved lemon and evergreen oil side dish. It was good to talk with my kids and relax over an interesting meal. I only spilled one glass of water and it was just what we needed to liven things up a bit.

Back at Esther’s house we finished off the day with a good walk along the beach. Ryan had Nina on leash so it was a walk/drag for him and he turned back early. Conversation in the living room, and then the evening ended around 12 for me, still on central time. I settled into my charming bedroom for sleep, and only awakened a couple of times, hearing that faint noise like a ticking clock or drops of water falling on metal.

I wonder what that was?

At Cedarbrook Lodge. My people, still happy.

Small, Useful Fire: #3

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A series of memories around a fascinating subject – fire

Two days of hiking in the rain, with temps in the 30’s, just above freezing. We had spent the previous night in a small shelter with 20 other hikers and about that many mice, so there hadn’t been much actual sleep. We were tired, and tired of being cold.

We crawled into camp in the last few minutes of daylight. Tents were going up. I could hear people thinking how nice it would be to sit around a nice, blazing campfire for a while. Some kind trail angel had left large pieces of dry wood in the shelter and it had been arranged in the fire pit, There were obvious signs of attempts to get it burning, but there had been no success. Now it was getting damp.

You can’t hold a match to a large piece of wood and set it on fire. It’s too big of a jump. You must start small, with kindling, and add progressively larger pieces of fuel until the heat load is enough to start the burn in the large piece. It’s a simple principle. But there is a major deficit when any available kindling has been rained on for two days.

I admit to being prideful when it comes to starting fires – one of my many faults. That was part of why I decided I would have a fire that night. The other reason was that I knew people could die of hypothermia and I didn’t want to be one of them. I was hoping this potential blaze would feel my affinity for fire and respond.

Looking in sheltered places, I did locate some less damp sticks and leaves and took my stash to the fire pit. My hope was that a small flame would dry out more of the kindling, if I could keep it alive. It takes getting close and intimate, and it takes patience. I knelt and started tending “the baby”. That’s exactly what it is, a baby fire. It must be given another leaf, another twig, another blast of oxygen, and never allowed to die.

No one wanted to help with this and some probably thought I was crazy to waste time trying to burn wet wood. I was too cold to do anything else. My daughter was setting up our tent, leaving me free to be crazy. I put my face close to the flame and blew gently until I had no more breath, then turned and got a gulp of fresh air, over and over. The dampness was creating a lot of smoke, but that gave me hope that things were drying out a little.

The end of this story is, of course, that the fire progressed as I had hoped. As the larger pieces of dry wood caught and turned into a healthy blaze. It was lovely and it was regarded as near miraculous, which added to my pride, but I knew. It was no miracle but rather persistence, motivated by need. We all enjoyed getting warm again before getting in our sleeping bags for the night.

And my personal attraction to a small, useful fire grew. An intriguing, mysterious gift is what it is… just sayin’.

Winter Talks Back

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Rage, winter, all you want. The sun is on its way out.

You don’t have to be a person to have a personality. No, you don’t.

Winter saw me buying seeds at Walmart this week and decided to throw a fit. I was awake numerous times last night, listening to the wind howling outside, coming down the fireplace chimney. Sure enough, this morning there was new snow, and drifts everywhere. Window screens were flocked with wind driven whiteness. Hungry birds and squirrels were trying to find the sunflower seeds they knew were there yesterday. It would be another day of shoveling and plowing in our community.

I got this far before the handle on the shovel broke.

I feel sorry for the geese I’ve seen flying around, looking for nesting places in the marsh. I’m a little sorry I had the car washed this week. I’d like to see green out the windows instead of white. But I am not at all dismayed by this fury. I know that the fight often intensifies because someone or something knows it’s going to lose.

Apparently winter also knows its days are numbered and wants to get in as many punches as possible before wandering off to a different hemisphere. I’m hopeful that nature is giving us a metaphor for the craziness in our world – it could be. The natural world is God’s spokesman and his creation. He came up with the plan for seasons and they’ve been happening ever since, in nature and in the history of man.

“Blessed be the name of God, forever and ever.
He knows all, does all:
He changes the seasons and guides history,
He raises up kings and also brings them down, he provides both intelligence and discernment,
He opens up the depths, tells secrets, sees in the dark – light spills out of him.”

Daniel chapter 2, The Holy Bible

So today, I am walking in snow, but also planting some seeds and putting the pots in a south facing window. I intend to wait winter out, and I think I’ll win.

Every step brings us closer to spring.

April 2023 Theme Reveal

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I’ve missed the deadline for the official April Blogging Challenge theme reveal but the wonderful thing is, this is my blog and I can write what I want, official or not. Hahaha…

I have about a week to decide if I want to add the stress of a blogging challenge to my caregiving life. For years I’ve used this April A to Z Challenge as a way to inspire and stir up my will to write and share my writing. It’s a lot of work to write something worthwhile for 26 posts in one month. Having a theme sometimes makes it easier and I’ve been hunting for a theme.

How hard would it be to work on my ability to introduce interesting characters to readers? My thought is that I would start with 26 of the interesting people I’ve known, change their names of course, and add a few disguising details. I would end up with a fictional character based on reality. I’m not going to write a book so there will be no plot, yet. These would be character sketches.

The more I read, the more obvious it is to me that developing a believable character that readers like and identify with, or at least find intriguing, is vital to a good story. I don’t know if I’m good at that, but I would like to be. My favorite type of reading material is historical fiction. I want to learn while I’m reading but I need a plot to follow, some excitement, some wonder, problems, questions to be answered. All that requires people. I’ve already chosen my people.

And the reason I’m writing about it in advance is, well… you might think you’re one of the people. You might recognize yourself or someone you know, even though the characteristics don’t exactly match. If that should happen, remember it’s not you. It’s a fictional character and the parts you don’t like about him or her, well, those are the parts I made up. You are perfectly wonderful, as am I, wonderful and probably boring.

And even though I am making a plan, April may come and go without the plan being realized. But I do like the idea, just sayin’…

Reflections on the Death of an Unusual Friend

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I was sitting by myself, in a Cracker Barrel restaurant, on Thanksgiving. My favorite family holiday was anything but that in 2011. I was having dinner and writing my first post on this blog. I was in Atlanta, on the job as a private duty nurse for my client who was a quadriplegic. It was the most miserable job I had ever taken, and writing out my misery was comforting.

Scottie was an unforgettable client. She had a diving accident in her early 20’s that ended her career as a flight attendant and changed her life drastically. In fact it changed many lives, because she went through the years having a marked effect upon her family and all her caregivers and friends. Being so vulnerable and helpless was not easy for Mary Scott Stoddard, or Scottie, as we all called her.

I found Scottie’s ad on Craig’s List of all places. I was needing a job to help my daughter Julia through veterinary school and was having trouble finding one. Even though I’d taken a refresher course, the hospital had passed me over and hired new grads instead of older nurses, like me. I was pretty desperate to get something so I went to the interview even though the salary was low, even though she was really wanting an LPN, even though I would have to drive out to Longboat Key to work.

It turned out that she was glad to hire me. She was in the habit of losing nurses, about one a month, and had gone through lots of them. Word was out there about how difficult an employer she was. The nurse who oriented me was an LPN, working on her BSN, and she hardly ever got a day off and even did some nights because there was no one else. It was a pattern I came to expect over the next six years as I became the senior employee who oriented new people.

I could go on at length about what made Scottie a difficult employer, and I did do a lot of venting in my writing. But I have since spent more time being grateful for the unique experience I had in her employ. Where else would my job description have included trapping raccoons, taking carriage driving lessons, and traveling to Nova Scotia? Our many trips to Atlanta and north Georgia were filled with interesting stops and people. We spent time at Bluegrass festivals and the North Georgia fair. We stopped for fresh peaches in the early summer and apples in the fall. She loved music, so we went to concerts. She loved the inter coastal waterway so we went out in her pontoon boat. She shared her Longboat Key cottage with me when I had family come to visit.

Scottie and I had adventures. Getting a quadriplegic with tons of luggage, two wheelchairs and a Hoyer lift on a commercial airline flight was uniquely stressful. Stopping the van on the side of the road to handle a medical emergency with her was uniquely stressful. Spending nights during hurricanes in her home, with water lapping the floorboards beneath my bed was uniquely stressful. The adrenalin rush of unique stress is about the same as the rush during excitement, and the years have blurred the line. I now think of those times as having been exciting.

I think Scottie got used to me praying for her, especially during those times of crisis when we didn’t know what to do. She even began to ask for it, and to do her own praying. And I think she would say that we got a lot of our prayers answered. Scottie died a couple of weeks ago, at her home, on a ventilator, feeding tube and IV’s. I’m sure it wasn’t an easy ending but she was ready to stop suffering.

Today, I know that the difficult years with Scottie provided me with two things. They gave me income to help a daughter through veterinary school, which was the goal at the time. But they also prepared me for the present time with my husband. I would not have had the experience and the confidence to bring him home, had it not been for the things I learned caring for Scottie. His physical care is almost the same as hers was. I could not have foreseen that part, but I believe that God knew and was even then putting things in place to help us through this difficult time.

Thank you God. And thank you Scottie. May you rest in God’s peace.

Two Hours of Normalcy (?)

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I have heard that normal people often go to coffee shops to sit and connect with the world over unsecured internet and drink expensive coffee. I needed to try this during my two hours of freedom today.

My attempt at a normal outing.

For some reason I have a hard time thinking of things to do when my Hospice volunteer comes for her weekly visit with Dennis. I haven’t yet found the friends who are free during work hours to do things with so end up going to Walmart for groceries and prescriptions and whatever excitement Walmart provides. I need to do better. I would like to make Tuesday free time a treat, a time to do some “normal people” stuff and have fun. Spend money someplace other than Walmart.

There is one stand alone coffee shop in our small town, and I admit I was a little worried when I got to the parking lot. It was parked up pretty good. I knew I was taking a chance to do this on Birkie week, when thousands of skiers show up to do this ridiculously long cross country ski event. But it is early enough in the week and town is still in the preparatory stage. The coffee shop had empty tables and I am sitting at one, drinking my medium Chai and having a scone, and writing, of course.

I’m enjoying watching the activity outside as the street is getting marked with “no parking” signs. The temporary bridge has already been erected over the main highway where the skiers will cross over and head up Main Street for the finish line. It is such a fun winter event – one of several claims to fame that our town enjoys. Winter storm Olive is due to make it even more interesting this year. I would love to be volunteering at the food tent as in other years, but I’m also glad to be staying home. Staying home is what I have to do and being content with what I have to do is my main winter goal.

Being content is a worthy pursuit. It takes a little practice but so do most good things. I will not always be in this season of having my husband to care for. Being content leaves me free to look around, enjoy this moment, really notice people and things around me. I enjoy sitting and not wanting to be anywhere else. I’m looking at the people going in and out of the shop and guessing whether they will be skiing the long race or not. I’m aiming prayers at them, hoping their experience will be safe. I’m praying that as they ski through this beautiful northland they will sense God and wonder at his creation.

The scone is gone. The Chai was good. I found four hundred seventy-five words to express how it feels to be normal today.

I appreciate multi-function pine trees that can morph from Christmas to Valentines and on to St. Patrick’s Day. Kudos to Backroads for not being wasteful.