Today is all there is

I've practically forgotten about LiveJournal since starting to follow the antics of my family & friends on Facebook. It's rather a shame because one can actually say more here. However, when the kids move on, I must also to keep up with their doings.

Fall is here despite the calendar. We are expecting sub freezing temperatures tonight. I brought what plants I had at camp down to the Hobbit Hole & set up a little green house made of a metal frame with shelves & a plastic cover that zips. Now all the plants from the patio are protected for the night.

The garden here has been sorely neglected. I had such hopes for both flowers & vegetables, but only the flower garden has anything to show. It is small but a good start. There are still pots of plants to be dug into the ground before snow; a couple of rose bushes, perennials, and another bush I cannot remember what it is. But it's pretty. Rhododendron?

John & I are going out to dinner tonight with Linda & Joe and Diane & Garth. Linda & Joe will be heading back to their winter home in Fulton, near Syracuse, next week, so this will be our final meal together. The three couples have had fun the past two summers, hosting one another for a yummy casual meal about twice or more a month. We all pitch in, but the hostess usually provides the entre. Linda and Diane are both good cooks.

We also have had the fun of having Pat at the dinners & Julie, Duncan and Travis. Plus we ate at Pats a couple of times. We are so much more social in camp than anywhere else.

Must go outside to meet John & the others, who will be picking me up to go out.

bye.

To me it looks like an evil Wiley Coyote.

John and I drove here to at long last visit with Jack and Stephanie and Ceilidh. She is a precious baby-kins; all huge grins, high pitched squeals, and general happiness.

Ceilidh loves the kitties who live with her & her parents, but the kitties are wary, all but one. Gir is the oldest and is a bit protective of Ceilidh; maybe it's her motherly way.

While we are here for four days, we also got to attend one afternoon/evening of my family reunion that's always held at Phyllis's home just out of town. In attendance this year Jeanne & Rennie & Kim & Anna & Aaron Orr; Gary and Daniel Carlson; Christy Carlson; Phyllis (of course); Louie, Maddy and Macie Schwitzer; Anne Bryan; Laurence and Diana Bryan; Melissa Bryan Mohan & her twin 7 yr old daughters Anne & Gemma; Carl & Lois Simpson; Carole, John, Jack, Stephanie & Ceilidh Dalphin; Roy Smith (friend of Anne Bryan). I think that's it - a nice group.

When John & I arrived Sat. afternoon, everyone but Anna was in the pool playing volleyball with a beach ball the size of Montana. Eventually I got in the water, too, but the game was over & everyone was just floating around or sitting on the deck talking, drinking a little beer or soda. I got to float with Jeanne, Fi, & Christy for quite a while, just talking & laughing.

There's always a pitch-in dinner/lunch/breakfast every day of the reunion with tons of cakes, which I took first lest I lose my appetite eating regular food. Afterward, there was a lot of sitting around on the patio visiting & doing dishes, & finally a huge fireworks display, thanks to Laurence, assisted by Daniel & Louie. Apparently, Diana loves fireworks & Laurence entertained her with such a display in their back yard out in the Missouri countryside every year for her birthday. This tradition has moved to the reunion recently & was a huge treat.

Friday was the birthday of the family matriarch, Anne Bryan, who is actually only a few years older than Jeanne and I, so this year the fireworks were in her honor.

Jack & Steph left a little after the fireworks because Ceilidh was frightened by them & wanted the peace & quiet of her home, a nice warm bath, and a comforting bottle of formula; John and I followed around midnight.

The joy I felt being among my family members is difficult to explain. This family is so loving, so inclusive, so caring about one another, that when we haven't seen each other in any number of months or years, getting together again is a huge celebration of love.

This family is my life blood. My children are part too, but haven't, for the most part, had the opportunity to participate for a long time. Wil, Melissa and Katie came to the reunion for an afternoon when Katie was a baby; Jack & family came this year. I hope Julie & her boys and George & Annie will be able to attend some time. And Edie - everyone asks about her, most haven't seen her since high school! But they miss every one that's not there.

Thank you God, Universe, The Committee, whoever is in charge of assigning families. Thank You.

I've got roller-ball-mouse-thumb. ow. Any suggestions re: the best type of mouse to use that won't hurt my hands? With all the rain we've had lately (like ever since April), I thought the pain in the large joint of my right thumb was arthritis or mildew, but it's tendonitis of the thumb.

Is that the sun??? I cannot remember what it looks like, but here it is 7 pm & there's a light in the sky that is being reflected off the water of the lake & the wet leaves & it's just plain scary.

We have learned to breathe under water, walk under water, mow under water, shop under water, drive under water...long days and nights of constant rain have created a culture of damp decorated by grass, trees, weeds, flowers that are growing like they are in the tropics - except it's cold here. low 50s at night, low 60s at daytime.

Now that light is dimming. A fireball in the west seems to be dropping below the horizon slowly - maybe it's some sort of alien craft.

help?

Jeanne needed some rest. She crashed on her bed. I unplugged every phone in the house to keep them quiet from constant automated calls & a couple from friends.

Ringing phone = barking dog = Carole shouting at dog to 'be quiet!' = pandemonium within earshot of Jeanne. It became a circus so I yanked all the phones outta the walls. figuratively speaking.

..er....then I forgot to tell anyone, not that there was anyone to tell because there's just Jeanne and me here, & she was asleep & I wasn't going to waken her to tell her I'd unplugged all the phones so's not to waken her. what's the point in that, eh? But, see, I lay down too, & forgot about the phones.

Later Jeanne was wondering about the quiet. heh

http://www.metacafe.com/watch/2849990/year_one_official_movie_trailer/ Saw this in the previews before Star Trek. This I want see.

Now that John has a kitten sitter lined up so he can join me in Bloomington to meet Ceilidh, I've had to cancel or postpone that part of my trip home. My brother-in-law now has pneumonia and MRSA, which is the 'super bug' of staph infections one can get these days.

Both are related to his long long stay in hospital, all the surgery, and the multitudinous tubing that perforates his body from stem to stern.

Jeanne arrived at hospital this morning, entered his room and was yelled at by a nurse for not having a face mask & gloves on - this staph thing is awful & easy to pick up from someone if you come into contact with them or share something like a face cloth, or (yeccch) toothbrush, if you make skin contact with them and have a cut or wound or open patch on your skin. It's so awful, it can be fatal in people with low resistance. Like babies. The worst of it is that nobody had put up a warning on Duane's door, so anyone going in wouldn't know to be covered - cleaning staff, nurses newly on duty, visitors, therapists, etc. The people in charge should have posted a big sign on his door, WARNING, MRSA! if you must enter, don gloves & mask, available at nursing station. There was none of that & the fact that there was no warning is a sign of the negligence happening at that facility.

I've been taking care of Duane this week, bathing his face, holding his hands, helping vacuum sputum out of his trache tube when he coughs - so I've definitely been in contact with him.

Hand washing is essential and I do it religiously, but still - if I have any of that stuff on my skin or, gods forbid, in my skin, I might possibly transfer it to others. So I can't take any chances with Ceilidh or anyone in the household. So I'm heading home instead.

Had to let John know before he set out, had to let the kitten sitter know. I'm so disappointed!

This must not be my day for communicating with others. So far I've upset two people and it is only noon...actually I managed well before noon.

Some days I'm doing better just to keep my lips shut and smile. :)

The Night Blooming Cereus is a plant that resembles (to me) a gigantic christmas cactus & puts out buds of enormous size that grow and grow until one night, around 9 or 10 p.m. the blossom begins to open. It opens all in one night from a loosly wrapped bud to a full bloom resembling a lotus. The blossom is white & has a wonderful soft aroma I would love to find in perfume.

Jeanne, here in south Texas, has such a plant & it bloomed last night & I was here alone to watch - stayed up past 1 a.m. watching & photographing its stages, sniffing the air around it, & wishing Jeanne were here to see it. This morning the blooms were hanging limply, the stems withered, the blossoms closed. It spent it all in one magnificent event.

This kitty's photo was chosen as Kitten of the Day & posted on Facebook. I fell in love with this little guy, whose name is Nermie after Nermal in the Garfield cartoons. It's he a sweetie?

"oh huh!" learned from a 4 yr old neighbor. "you're a what?" learned from middle school age boys. "humph" learned from older sister. "oh, mom!" learned from kids.

Things are looking up and down here in Corpus. Duane has been in a rehabilitation hospital for about a week. His care is mostly good & things have changed a bit for him:

the vent. tube is gone, he still has a tracheotomy tube going through his esophagus to the trachea, but he breathes on his own mostly with assist, when needed, by a C-Pap machine (oxygen provided through a hose to the mouth of the trache tube but not attached to it)- this part is great. It was a morale booster getting off the vent for one thing, it's also safer for his health as long as he can inhale deeply enough on his own, which he seems to be doing most of the time.

The Foley catheter was removed the other day & he's peeing on his own. That is a big step in the right direction, even if he still has a colostomy. When/if the intestines heal, maybe he'll be reattached through to regular channels, if it can't be, it's not the end of the world. Lots of people learn to live with colostomy bags & still be active.

Taking an interest in something - he has started wearing ear phones to listen to the books-on-disc CDs Jeanne bought for him. Yesterday Jeanne got a frantic call from Duane's teenaged granddaughter, who was visiting him, saying he was trying to tell her something she couldn't understand or figure out & she was so worried, would Jeanne come to the hospital to help him. Turned out his CD player's batteries had worn out & he wanted new batteries to finish the story. THAT was a good scene.

Active is the downer - he has lost so much muscle it is difficult to imagine him standing much less walking - but people do that, too - they make come backs because they just are seeing themselves upright and moving about normally. The vision is the visual aid towards meeting the goal. I don't know what Duane's vision for himself includes. We shall see by what happens.

Talking - with a plug device stopping the trache tube and the proper blowing he can talk - he has, he can, but lately he refuses. Stubborn as a Missouri Mule. Practically snaps his lips shut & refuses to look one in the eye. If he could cross his arms across his chest he would.

Jeanne, with my urging, has gone to Unity Village in Kansas City MO to participate in a 5 day convention of Unity Ministers, something she scheduled before Duane went into the hospital in Feb. She really needs to 'get outta town' for a few days & be among the wonderful souls at Unity Village, recharge her own batteries. I am house/doggie sitting & visiting Duane a couple times a day to keep him in the loop, assure him of loving attention whether he wants it or not (I can be stubborn too). I sing, ready aloud, write stuff on his white board that makes him roll his eyes or raise his eyebrows into his receding hairline, tell him groaner jokes - he'll be so happy to have his Jeanne back; she is quiet and pets him & stuff.

Prayerful fingers crossed for guidance about the next step for Duane and Jeanne, please. Thank you.

I am heading home the 17th of this month, with a stop-over in Bloomington IN for a few days to visit little Ceilidh & her parents & grandparents. Can't wait to see her again, she has quintupled herself since last October. From 1 lb 14 oz to over 15 lb. and that was last week, by the time I get there she may be over 16 lb. What a kid! Super Baby.

Corpus Christi, TX Wednesday, June 3, 2009

When I look at today's date I get a feeling of other worldliness. How did the years change to this future from my childhood? Shouldn't there be: 1. no war, poverty, illness, illiteracy? 2. flying cars, raised roadbeds, concentrated urban areas surrounded by park-like green space for gardens & flowers? 3. regular flights to exotic spots on the moon?

That's pretty much what we were promised by prognosticators of the past. WHERE'S MY FLYING CAR???

Damn.

The onliest thing I see as a big, if misguided, difference between 2009 and 1959 is this:
we send the young & healthy to be killed while we keep the old & sickly on life support.

"oh yeah?"

When someone is slowly dying & family are either assuring him of the need to "fight", while hospital care givers are trying to explain to those above that all the fight in the world isn't going to stop the inevitable & are saying, "give the poor guy a break & let him go", and the person in the center of all this controversy is telling doctors and nurses he wants to die but telling his family he doesn't - what do you do, if you are the one with the power of attorney?

D.A.G. is 81, has muscular dystrophy but could walk & even ride his motorcycle until diverticulitis forced him to request surgery in February. He has never left the hospital since that surgery, in fact has been in the ICU for three months & only gets worse. Things went wrong, as often do when a very elderly person with previous health problems undergoes surgery. And now his wife is visiting him two and three times a day before & after a full work day; she watches him suffering pain & indignities & loss of hope; she mourns for the man who went into the hospital & whom doctors now tell her will never leave alive while, at the same time she tries to be encouraging & up beat for him when he is awake.

D.A.G. is lucid when awake, but has been so ill for so long now that he is weakened beyond being able to move himself except for fingers, raising one arm at the elbow to wave slightly. He cannot talk because he has a tracheotomy, he cannot hear because he isn't allowed to wear his hearing aids, he can read & nod or shake his head every so slightly when one of us writes a question or statement on a small white board, but unless we write the right questions, there are most things he cannot communicate to anyone.

His wife holds his P.O.A. She refuses to give permission to turn off his air supply (without which he will die in minutes) or his feeding tube (starvation is awful) as long as he can still give her a little kiss, reply to questions, look into her eyes with love. But the nurses tell her he has mouthed the words, "I want to die" to them often enough that they cry when they tell her that, knowing she won't do it. It's not like they just turn things off, they would sedate the patient to the point of comfort, then do it.

Can anyone tell me how to be there for someone who is suffering & how to tell when one should make the suffering stop? If he were a pet, he'd have been allowed the grace of a peaceful passing long before this. He's not a pet - he is human, alive, but his quality of life is in the negative side of things.

I have to be very careful when talking to J.O.G., his wife, lest I offend her too much by giving my honest opinion. She has lived with & depended on him for many things for over 35 years. She is anxious about doing the right thing for him yet about losing her companion and one of the world's best handymen. But isn't it not about her, but about him? What can she expect for him? A continuation of this same state, worsening even, until his body just quits. There will never be anything better for him, he has no future, he won't come home, he won't walk or talk or get up. Yet he is in his head often (not always) when she visits. And he suffers.

No.

Going for a massage today!!!

Yesterday I was in northern NY, driving through the Adirondacks (John drove), south towards Albany and the airport. We started with the car heater on, passed by left over snow patches in the High Peaks area around Keene and Lack Placid, commented on the very light green haze around the birch trees that were beginning to get new leaves; headed on southwards noticing the increasingly leafy trees, the deepening greens of undergrowth & deciduous trees until we got midway south in the state to the airport.

I boarded a plane to fly to my sister's home. First leg of the journey took me to Atlanta, where the trees and grass were as green as it gets in mid summer up north. Then to Jackson, Mississippi, then to Fort Worth, Texas, and finally, around 10 pm, landed in Corpus Christi, on the Gulf of Mexico. Exiting the airport there, I was hit in the face with heavy humidity and 85+ degree weather. OMG. Weather shock!!

Today it is sunny and in the mid to high 90s outside this house where I am huddling, hoping the dog won't demand a walk around the block before 10 tonight. I brought along what I ordinarily consider to be summery clothing, but I might as well have left them home. Must head to GoodWill this weekend for Real summery clothes.

Teddi-ther-Poo(dle) really, really wants me to take him for a walk. Last time I was here, I came in Feb. and stayed til the end of April & slowly acclimated. Then I would walk the little doggie to the end of the driveway (about two cars long) & he'd be out of pee already, having left droplets on every blade of grass (he's a very small dog) between the front door and the sidewalk, and I'd be sweating up a storm, ready to go back inside for a nap. Being dropped (not literally, it was a smooth landing) into this atmosphere of heat and humidity out of the blue (literally...well, black actually as it was nighttime), I'm not even ready to open the door lest some of the barely cooled inside a/c air rush out. Jeanne has lived here (and loves it!!!) over 10 years & 60 degrees outside necessitates heavy winter coats & leggings, she likes the indoors to be drier than outside, but not cooler.

If it weren't for the wonderful sister who lives here, I'd never come back ever ever ever May through October. Winter here is better than summer in many places.

John did so much work today: he unloaded my car of the stuff we hauled from Potsdam yesterday, he went grocery shopping, he mowed the back 40, he fixed supper, he washed the dishes, and he planted the garden with peas, green beans, radishes, spinach, lettuce. I helped with the garden & sewed flower seeds.

The yard looks so pretty, all mown, the garden tidy, we are trying to decide where to put in the four apple trees that are coming in the mail. We're going to make a little copse.