6 months.....

ok, so....six months ago.....fresh from my accident.....numerous friends and relatives assured me to 'give it six months'.....ankles take at six months to get back to normal....heavy sigh....six months passes quickly by on this day and i am far from normal....i struggle to get up and down stairs....less so if traversing with both hands clasping rails....most steps are taken down one at a time, even if i am carrying nothing of consequence....i did manage to carry my coffee upstairs to shower and dress, but then i had to leave it there and make more downstairs....one feels so ashamed to ask help in bringing down one's coffee.....maybe if i put it in a camel-back device....i cannot yet balance on one foot if that foot is attached to the ankle broken six months ago.....let alone do single leg lifts on that side anywhere but in waist-high water.....swimming 30 minute laps is essential for my sanity, but i freely admit that swmiiming will not get me ready for travel to anywhere that requires walking of any distance or terrain that deviates from flat.....gentle reader, please do not mistake this update for anything other than that...an update....i have ceased to feel sorry for myself....and have hunkered down into the resolve that i can make all this better over time.....how much time?......not six months it would appear....

checking off the list

ok, so...i spent a fair amount of time over the past two long holiday weekends cleaning out the laundry room, hauling junk to the goodwill,transferring the rest to the furnace room, and washing down reachable surfaces...and so today i opened the mint green paint leftover from the upstairs bathroom to for the walls and leftover white enamel for the shelves, trim and steps.....the steps were the last...and required an exit through the door in stephan's room......i locked one of the two locks...must go back later and secure the deadbolt......all that is left is to purchase floor paint...but actually painting the floor must wait until the youngest goes back to school.....

coulda, shoulda, woulda

ok, so.....i come to the last day of 2012 with the burden of things not done rather than the satisfaction of things that i actually managed to accomplish.....how is it that my cup flip-flops between half-full and half empty so frequently?.....so, here is my 2013 bucket list, in no particular order.....rearrange the basement then repaint the walls, floors and steps.....lay bricks to the greenhouse......repurpose the area under the deck......paint the walls and ceiling of the cabin white.......get serious with drip hose placement in all garden beds.....notice the lack of travel related goals?.....hard to envision travel when one cannot walk 1/4 mile without pain.....ah well...back to filing/sorting/pitching in the newly established office area in the guest bedroom.....maybe i can finish this task in 2012....

blindsided

ok, so.....i swam laps after work....30 minutes back and forth followed by 5 minutes of leg lifts in the sem-shallow end...then home to cook supper.....opted to skip the post-meal television viewing with the remaining fam, as the third child chose a documentary on pit bulls for their viewing pleasure.....played bejeweled instead.....and that turned out to be the beginning of an unfortunate discussion at bedtime.....over concerns on the part of my dearest that i am not doing enough to quick-start my recovery....why was i wasting time on FB games when i could be walking on the treadmill.....when i found myself really disabled would not i regret sitting all those hours at the computer?.....gentle readers, i have been swimming after work faithfully four times a week since the beginning of september....when i could drive there myself....swimming is something i can do without pain.....walking is still something that i do when i have to.....my beloved contends that one must walk through the pain if one is to recover....he has been injured so many times i suppose he would know....but i have never been injured and that logic makes no sense to me.....

hope versus dispair

ok, so....i am five month's post-accident....and while my ankle does a little bit better every day, i find that battling dispair takes up far too much of my mental energy....i am reminded of just how far i have to go the moment i land on my feet in the morning.....i cannot yet manage to get to the bathroom without grasping onto furniture for support, and must still walk down the steps one at a time with one hand on the rail and the other using the wall for support....i feel as though there is a circle of hemp rope inside my sock where my big toe should be...it prickles throughout the day, even when i am not walking on it....my sister-in-law mentioned in August at the reunion that she would really like to have Ernst and I travel to France with her and Nick E. during rose season....there are several world-class rose gardens near Paris.....i cannot imagine, at this point, walking further than a block or two at a time, which greatly limits one's range in sight-seeing unless one falls back to taxi's....and there is the rub....i am not a taxi-sort of traveler......too depressing to contemplate.....if i cannot even conceive of myself in Paris, how can i entertain my grander retirement plans....of the pilgrimage to Santiago de Compestello, or the Grand Traverse in New Zealand?.......heavy sigh....

another day, much like every other

ok, so.....the repetitive nature of my life is getting a bit much....i wake up, try to flex and stretch my right ankle for a bit, then put my feet to the floor, and stagger to find my footing as i wince in pain....and then i take the steps one at a time, grasping the rail on one side and leaning on the wall on the other....and then i limp down the hall, dodging the dog who seems determined to trip me up before i can put his food in his bowl....all the while the cat is darting back and forth under my feet wanting her breakfast as well....and finally i sit down at the computer desk and wish that i did not have to get up and get dressed any time soon....it is saturday, which means that i should get to the pool as soon after opening at 8:00 am as possible to assure myself of getting a lane....and then comes the round of grocery stores...first the kroger and then the aldi and then i come home to laundry, watering the greenhouse, etc.....i suppose the monotony would not seem so monotonous if pain was not involved.....well...pain is not quite the correct descriptive....more like excessive discomfort at this point....add in the continued numbness in my big toe......heavy sigh...i am so very tired of having to think twice before i get up out of my chair, knowing that getting from point a to point b is more of an ordeal that it should be....yes, it could be worse and i have no reason to complain given that reality.....i remain hopeful that this time next year this will all be a faded memory....

more of the same....

ok, so....this week was much like many others.....drag myself out of bed, after flexing my foot this way and that during the npr news update at the bottom of the hour.....then on to work...and then to the pool to swim and then home to get supper on the table and then to bed.....i managed ot get a bit of shopping done yesterday after swimming....two groceries and then stops at local businesses to buy gift cards and stocking stuffers....cannot embrace the notion of a cash-only Christmas for my children just yet.....i also bought cards to send from the collected us that includes my mother....and i started to think about the annual letter...and that is hwere i got sidetracked.....do i sugar-coat the past year into peppy sound bites or do i disclose the darker underbelly of disappointment and unfulfilled hopes/dreams? and that is just me....no clue how my family will vote....

the new normal

ok, so.....i woke up today and for a moment i forgot that my foot/ankle is still in transition between broken and whole.....it only takes the flash of pain when my feet hit the floor to remind me that i have a long ways to go....lets go through the checklist....my big toe is still mostly numb...like it fell asleep and has not quite come back to life.....pins and needles.....quite disturbing....the notion that my doctor says that it may not get any better than this....on days when my foot is a bit swollen my other toes join the big toe in the pins and needles thing, but that happens less and less.....on to the ankle....it remains swollen...not like the goose-egg coming out of each side like it once was....but visibly bigger than my left ankle....as for pain, it has centered on the right side....the discomfort appears to be in direct proportion to how fast i walk....geisha steps do not register, but strides make me wince....gentle readers....walking fast and deliberate is my trademark....and for my doctor to tell me that it may not get any better than this is both discouraging and a challenge.....to prove him wrong...all wrapped up in one...i continue to swim laps at least 4 days a week...at least 30 minutes of laps before i practice standing on the broken foot and doing ankle lifts to strengthen it. I am considering an exercycle to increase the cardio workout without putting too much weight on the ankle.....and to jumpstart a bit of weight loss....i suppose my ankle would hurt less if i weighed less.....but that is a lament for another day....

last hurrah?

ok, so i escorted my mother to the polling place this morning...after swimming laps.....and she seemed very pleased to have a picture ID to show the poll worker.....she took great care to fill out her ballot....i waited at an acceptable distance in case i could be accused of voter supression.....we drove to applebees for lunvh and then to krogers.....she fussed frequently about the television in her room that has not sound and cojoled me to drive her to the walmart to buy a new tv....no...i admonished...your doctor specifically instructed you to watch the television in your backroom because it has a back-supportive chair....you do yourself a disservice to watch television from your bed.....heavy sigh.....i recalled the last time my father voted....my mother insisted that she accompany him into the booth to shop him how to vote.....the voting place folks interceded and insisted that if he could not vote on his own he should not vote at all.....will she be with us to vote in 2016? heavy, heavy....sigh

ok, so i searched my pc files for the picture of our late yellow dog, aptly named....yellow.....and was not surprised to find him in a blog dated november 3, 2008...at the last presedential election.....i have a badge with his picture that i will wear to our regular election night party around the corner......it is one of the few places where my yellow dog leanings are not only welcome, but thoroughly understood....

getting better every day....

ok, so.....i am into week 14 of my recovery.....walking mostly without a crutch, mostly straight, and mostly without significant pain....pain is not the best descriptive for the feeling one gets when one's flesh has swollen out between the straps of one's sandal.....discomfort doesn't quite fit either....had i the stamina to walk into the backroom in search of a thesaurus to find a better word i would do so, but my foot is swollen up around my sandal and i prefer to just sit here and settle for lesser adjectives....my spouse says i must have walked far too much yesterday:....two stores in lexington and across a parking lot to RL after swimming laps, watering the greenhouse, and weeding here and there by the terrace. I also managed to carry numerous bags of groceries into my mother's house and into my house....including the bargain wines i bought at Trader Joe's...I am mighty partial to the fume blanc from chile...or it is SV....not worth climbing the stairs to be certain....these days i calculate the relative importance of each movement requiring me to get up and walk...even on flat surfaces....this truth makes the comments by others so ironic....'you must be doing too much' is how the conversation tends to start....how can a person who consciously decides to move eahc and every time she moves be doing too much?....but yet today my foot is swollen and i accomplished far fewer tasks then intended....the highlight of the week was the putting on of lace-up shoes....i really do walk straighter with arch support....the list of shoes that can accomodate the angry-looking ankle was limited to three pairs of sandals and two pairs of clogs...so the addition of another shoe that can be worn with socks on cold days is certainly progress.....Precious is making progress of her own...she has transitioned from shivering in hercrawl space hidey-hole to wandering through the house while everyone else is asleep to following us outdoors for a bit of fresh air to curling up at my feet...in our bed....for a nice little nap sometime before dawn last night....so very kind of my spouse to see the sweetness in having a rescue cat who knew no home find comfort in sleeping with her new family.....

PTSD

ok, so....i had a bit of a breakdown last evening....i was sitting on the basement floor, trying to lure out the new cat with a toy on a string......she was not buying any of this 'come on out sweet precious kitty' stuff....i got to thinking about how i had planned to paint the basement floor once the freezer was gone...and those thoughts of the months out of my planned-out life that were lost....multiplied by the nagging pain and swelling that remains in my recovering foot...i started in crying....no...outright sobbing....sobbing so loudly that my spouse came downstairs to ask what was going on...and he tried to help me get the cat out of the furnace-area croawl space where she has boon holed up since tuesday evening....it occured to him that maybe she was in stephan's room...where i had sat earlier in the evening watching a movie as a way to lure out the cat...yep...she was under his bed....and when he fished her out she darted past me so quickly i did not have time to put my sandals back on and i tried running after her in bare feet...only to stumble....and start sobbing all over again.....gentle readers....i cannot recall the last time i had a good cry.....seems to me it was well after my miscarriage.....must be a pattern....keep it together during the tragedy but fall apart after everybody assumes that i have gotten over it.....clealry i am not over the wreck, the loss of kitty, the loss of un-watered boxwoods, roses and vegetable plants...and now that my new cat seems to have foresaken me....it became too much.....

folding up the walker

ok, so.....though i am far from back to normal, i have decided that it is time to put away a few of the trappings of disability....like the walker that has stood by the toilet and bathtub in the retirement suite.....when something seems in the way rather than at the ready, it is time to move on.....will probably store it here rather than back in my mother's attic.....i could also strip the guest bed and tidy up the remainder of my belongings in that room.......for that metter, i could put my laundry away rather than continuing to live out of the laundry basket, as i have done for 10 weeks now....the crutches.....not so fast....i do use the one upstairs to get around after a long day and the swollen foot that results from being far too active.....and i do use the downstairs crutch in the same fashion, as well as to get in and out of work....we have taken up the mini-ramps at each doorway that allowed the wheelcahir to go over the hump a bit easier....the wheechair went back to the rental place last monday.....the piles of pillows i use on the sofa and on the front porch still prove useful so i will leave them be for the time being.....i could keep my fold-up cane in the car for times like today....i am driving mother to lexington to eat lunch at red lobster....seems to me a fold-up cane would be easier to maneuver in a restaurant than a crutch.....i teach sunday school tomorrow for the first time in 10 weeks as well.....at some point i need to put my feet up and read the lesson.....at some point....

behind the wheel....

ok, so i drove home from the wellness center this morning....after 30 minutes of lap swim and a few more of my rehab exercises....the drive was awkward....partly because i have not driven in nine weeka, but mostly because i have not driven an automatic in recent memory....i wanted so badly to shift gears...but i digress.....i make progress every day with walking....i am walking with one crutch outside and away from home, but walking unassisted inside the house.....my limp is slowly....ever so slowly easing up....and curiously, i can not feel my right toe...it is asleep and no amount of massage seems to wake it up.....will ask physical therapist about this on monday morning....an appointment that i will keep by myself without a personal driver.....

matching shoes

ok, so....i was given the go-ahead to ditch the boot and to wear shoes on friday during the eight-week followup visit. i was also given permission to drive....when i feel safe driving....i insisted that we stop at the house for the right shoe that went with the left shoe i was wearing at the time...only to realize that i could not fit my still sowllen foot into the matching shoe.....and so i opted to wear a pair of merrills that are adjustable at several fit-point by clever velcro straps....and so i walked slowly into work with a single crutch.....and walked everywhere throughout the building the rest of the day...and walked through the grocery aisles after work...and then collasped into the wheechair at home...exhausted doesn't even cover it because the term neglects a severely swollen foot......the notion of driving is far from my mind....i have to work through the swelling first....my order is for physical therapy three times a week for the short term....hopefully this attention to mechanics will pay off with less swelling and discomfort.....

mail order

ok, so......in the past few days i have received packages....from talbots and llbean...containing significantly marked down separates to refresh my wardrobe.....expand my wardrobe is closer to the truth, given that most of my clothing is upstairs....yes I could shimmy up on my bottom a step at a time, carrying my crutches with me....getting up there is not the issue...it is getting abck down....these stairs lack a railing and i cannot conceive of the scenario that has me safely getting from the upright position down to my bottom to shimmy back down...but i digress from my mail order goodies....a sweater set in serpentine (green) a white sleeveless button-down blouse, a pair of black capri-length pants...and to snip off tags that reflect markdowns from $75 to $12 is especially gratifying....

a recovery in progress

ok, so....successfully worked 5 days, except for the time spent at the medical followup for xray and consultation. Given permission to put limited weight on my broken ankle, while wearing a boot and using crutches. Gave out by Wednesday afternoon and went back to the wheelchair for respite. Being disabled is not nearly as effortless as it looks. By Saturday feeling up for lunch out with grandma with the eldest's girlfriend driving. Stopped at the aldi store on the way home, where i managed to cover the entire store on crutches. Another outing that evening....to see Alison Krauss and Union Station at the Norton Center....crutched in and out of there as well....even up a few steps...marvelous concert.....but so exhausted from the long day and went straight to bed....up early today to get ready for church breakfast in honor of sunday school teachers....was mostly hoping for a potato breakfast casserole woth ham or sausage....close but not quite...maybe next year.....managed to get near to out usual spot in the balcony before i just gave out and had to sit down and stay down......heavy sigh.....

playlists

ok, so...i am in countdown mode....in the final hours before i go back to work...in a wheelchair and/or crutches....after a 5-week confinement at home......i am still working out strategy: backpack rather than purse or tote, clothing that requires no ironing, lunch today that should afford leftovers for my lunch tomorrow...i have run through the audio book downloads on this pc so i am listening to playlists i do not recall making....the current is called kathy's misc indie rock and includes sufjan stevens, animal collective, ben kamen, the chapin sisters, neko case and death cab for cutie....i am down to the boxes of photos having finished up the last album yesterday. I have actually sorted out scannable selections from the first box and the pile is relatively small when separated from random or repetitive scenery...or animals for that matter...there is a series i vaguely recall...taken by our third child when learning to use a camera....of our neighbor's dog on our deck...over and over and over....i have saved them for her rather than putting them back in the box.....i must note for posterity-sake that on a normal sunday i would be getting ready for sunday school.....but on this sixth sunday of my recovery....i am not attempting church.....i have lunch in the oven and coffee at the elbow and i am working through a stack that i pulled from albums years ago for potential inclusion in a celebratory scrapbook...18th birthday? graduation from HS...or college? no clue......i am pleased to see some of these photos as i was surprised to find the empty spaces in the albums where they would have fit sequentually....i am considering the day spent in my pajamas but we will be five for lunch and i would have to admit to being depressed when the rest of my family shows up.....depressed may not be the correct diagnosis....neither is comfortably numb.....i am not the least bit comfortable...but i digress from this my 5941th blog post.....i could download the adele album lost in the wreck because my spouse could not get it out of the cd player....the other five slots contained burned cd's but the sixth was an original adele...and it was his not mine.....i had given it to him for christmas as part of a cd/dvd concert in royal albert hall set.....alas...it is gone and i need to replace it in time to listen to it in the car i do not yet own....i will be driven to and from work for the short-term but eventually i will need a car to replace the paid-for honda accord...i am still fuming about the loss of that car...it was in great shape for its age and i have enjoyed the lack of car payment for quite some time....i resent the loss of this car almost as much as i resent the loss of these past five weeks from my active existence....while i have made the most of these weeks i cannot replace the things that i have lost in my garden because i was not able to water twice a day during the extreme heat in july......five mature boxwoods moved to make way for the greenhouse went from iffy to completely dead followed by numerous perennials in the bed visble from the guest room....and then there is the vegetable garden...i can see the shriveled tomato plants that succumbed....and the cumcumber and squash plants that survive only to have their fruits grow bitter/mealy and unpicked....no clue if anything lives on in my greenhouse as it is not visible from a wheelchair-accessable vantage point....no clue if i have seeds to plant for the fall....my mind is so very cloudy on so many planes....i cannot recall the clothes hanging in a closet i have not seen in five going on six weeks....nor whether i have boxed thank you notes on my desk upstairs....heavy sigh.....my follow-up x-ray is scheduled for wednesday...at which point i may be given the green light to put weight on my ankle and begin to learn to walk again.....and learn to drive again....and move on from this unfortanate interlude....

the beginning of the end...

ok, so i am going back to work a week from monday.....i have been released to light duty so long as i do not put weight on my foot and keep it up.....which means i must essentially go back to work in the wheel chair i borrowed from work. i have called the doctor asking for a prescription for wheelchair rental.....i will use the rented chair at home and use the other while at work....and use crutches to get between the two places....i have not used crutches in weeks so i must nowe work on the finer points of using them without falling on my face....and so i have counted up the albums left to scan.....5 of misc photos, the trip to the southwest after the adoption (known to our daughter as the photoshop trip as she swears she does not remember going and that we must had digitally added her to photos....) and a middle school trip to paris. With such excursions i have taken to scanning only the photos with my child, or with me, or exceptionally well-lighted captures of the city. when the actual albusm are done there are some storage boxes of photos that never made it into albums.....and at some point my project will connect with the digital age where i have photos already stored in files and no actual prints.....i cannot remember when i printed my last photo....how is that for pitiable.....but i digress from the going back to work angle....i will have to venture back upstairs in order to expand my wardrobe options to something approaching professional......which means that i will have to ask someone to iron a few things for me.....and figure out just who will be driving me back and forth.....this dependence on others will not last much longer...i go back to the doctor for a followup xray and to discuss weight bearing on a week from wednesday.....that will be 6 weeks after the accident.....which could mean i can begin weight bearing immediately or continue as i have been to the 8 week mark before transitioning into use of the foot/ankle. either way.....the end is in sight.

adding insult to injury

ok, so.....no clue on the number of days into this ridiculous injury.....four weeks on thursday....but i digress from the newest and cruelest twist....i slept awkwardly...on my left side/left arm....and now my left arm is in so much pain i am having a hard time typing....yeah, yeah, yeah.....i only type with two fingers (one on each hand) on a good day, but on this day the left one is letting me down....i am back to the pain meds for the arm rather than the foot...whicb continues to be a swollen swirl of faded purples and mustards....the tight skin is peeling.....yech!....the right knee is still sore from where my keys gouged into the cap.....neither the knee nor the foot hurt as much at this moment than my left arm....how fair is that?

where there's a will....

ok, so....day 17....oh my but the days are passing quickly since the wreck....so much so that i have to count out on my fingers just how many days have passed...and counting in days is getting as ridiculous as new parents who persist in describing the age of an infant in days rather than weeks...or months...the recap of the wreck has condensed from a 7 minute narrative to a one-liner...so back to the 17 days.....i have been wearing a limited combination of clothing based solely on the fact that the items were in the wash basket in the basement at the time of the accident....and though they have been rewashed several times....by day 16 i had grown a bit tired of the repetition...so yesterday i backed myself up the stairs on my bottom and then backed myself across the bedroom carpet to my dresser.....getting back to the steps with a handful of clothing is not as easy as it sounds.....had i thought to bring a shopping bag of some sort from the computer room closet the task would have been easier...ah well....my stack of clothing options is taller and i know that i can manage to get upstairs should there be something else i need.....which brings me to the second milestone of day 16...the bathtub....i had taken three showers in 16 days, filling in with washcloth/sink bathing in between.....sitting on a stool in a small shower stall with a hand-held shower nozzle is not much better than balancing by a sink with a washcloth....and so last evening i decided that i would figure out how to get in and out of the whirlpool tub.....and so i managed not only a lovely bubble bath with liberal use of a sugar-based body scrub.....i did so with a nice glass of white....ahhhhhhh....the spell was broken well after i had dried off and dressed....by my spouse asking me just what was all the gunk left in the tub......16 days of dead skin sticking to sugar scrub granules i suppose......i slept through the night for the first time in....let's see....17 days.......

Day 15

ok, so....day 15 of my unfortunate series of events finds me low on enthusiam and wallowing in self-pity....and not for the obvious reasons...our cat, Phillida Erskine Brown aka Kitty, our sweet 14+ year old sickly blind cat who had been living out her days mostly on our front porch due to her continence issues....failed to show up for breakfast wednesday morning....even a blind cat knows where to be when breakfast should be served....and to know when she thinks it is time to eat....we were occassionally awakened on those cool spring mornings by her caterwalling cries of hunger drifting up through our open window from the deck.....i must mention here that when i took her food out to the back deck to appease her, i would occassionally find her atop the deck railing....i would caterwall too if i suddenly found myself blind atop the deck railing....no clue how she managed to get herself up there...but i digress.....she was MIA for her breakfast and has not been seen since Tuesday at supper for certain. My spouse has gone out looking for her on several occassions as has our daughter...every able-bodied c-dub has looked....last night when the rains came i was horrified at the realization that the (probably) dead cat was out there in the storm, her body unfound and that i was unable to put her remains at rest from my chair....contact was made with the humane society in case she had been picked up...no such luck...in my heart i know that her time had come...she was often unable to keep down food, and the hair she plucked out as she groomed did not grow back...she looked quite mangey, but given that she was quick to come over for a cuddle and still purred loudly when she was held....we had decided not to put her down...not quite yet...not when she still seemed to enjoy the life she had left....

day 10

ok, so...ten days into my unfortunate series of events......i go back for my thrid orthopedic appointment tomorrow morning....will hopefully trade plaster cast for a removable boot that will allow for a shower....have been washing hair in the sink but this method is far from thorough and i spend my days feeling this side of greasy-granny funk......have had several folks bring food and/or nibbles but only one person has been thoughful enough to stay a bit with me and chat....so nice to enjoy pleasant conversation about more than what one has done with one's day.....as for what i do with my days, it is to sit in this very computer chair, hour after hour, scanning print photos from albums...i have finished three, including our wedding album and two that included babyhoods......ah......trying to crop out the unnecessary and select only the best ones is a trial....as i think every photo of my children is precious.....i am listening to Fallen Angel...the newest by Daniel Silva.....i am on my second listen as i wanted to make sure i caught all of the finer points before i move on to another book.....i have managed to get the wheelchair out to the porch twice....both times in the mornings to enjoy the weather, the hummingbirds, my coffee and the newspapers...getting the chair out is not the hard part.....it is getting back inside without having to lift up onto my good foot and thrust the chair forward over the sill.....that is the problem......but i learn a little more about solving this problem each time....at some point i will venture up the drive to get the mail....at some point i will get out the crutches as well and make my way to my terrace, but not before i figure out how to take coffee with me....backpack and a thermos perhaps....the chair is too wide for my walkway and possibly the walkway leans a bit down hill....the drought and heat pretty much killed off most of what there was to see in the garden anyway......so that brings me to my reward fior a morning spent scanning.....netflix.....movies, documentaries, reruns of cozy british television shops....and eventually somebody comes home and asks me what i have done with my day....

a tale of woe

ok, so....I am in to day 3 of my broken ankle......i have managed to use the walker to get to the kitchen and make coffee, and figured out that the computor desk chair makes for an adequate wheelchair substitute......cannot use walker while carrying a cup of coffee.....i am sitting at the pc for the first time since thursday morning....mostly out of necessity....it is the only one of the available electronic toys that has it all.....neither the iphone nor the ipad have access to this blog.....i paid for access to the new york times for only my phone and the pc and not the ipad....you get the picture.....thankfully the pc has a wireless keyboard.....i am currently sleeping in our downstairs guest room AKA our retirement room.....and after two nights there i have identified numerous issues that will come into play should we ever have to reside in that room fulltime....like the fact that one cannot actually see much through the bay window when laying (lying?) in bed....the drapes cover much of the view.....and the bed cannot be shoved up against the wall...or one of us will have to crawl over the other to get out....on the upside...there may be room for a queen-sized bed...an upgrade for us.....we use an antique bed that fits in the best spot fore a bed in our upstairs room and it is a double....clothing is problematic......i prefer pajama bottoms and a v-neck white tshirt....but as i cannot get them over the cast i am forced into nightgowns that i never wear because they are mighty uncomfortable to sleep in despite their stylish looks.....thankfully, the two nightgown/robe sets that i own hang in back of the bedroom door and have escaped numerous clothing purges over the years....i am already trying to figure out what i can possibly wear to my MRI appointment on Monday...the capris that i wore to the orthopedic appt had to be carefully split open at the inseam for me to get them over the case......who knew that a cast would be so big?......the good news is that on my last goodwill donation frenzy i discarded clothing that i could not fit into.....which will hopefully spare me the indignity of having my spouse present me with an outfit he has chosen, only for me to admit that i was saving it until i lost a few pounds....losing a few pounds i quite likely...another upside to this incident....my appetite is diminished....and the next point i want to make must be done so delicately.....suffice it to say that i have spoiled my family with interesting food for so long that they have no idea how to come up with much beyond pasta and sauce....they make pasta and sauce every thursday while i teach at eku-danville.....every thursday....and i do not mind because i generally grab a junior rb from arby's to tide me over....and i rarely partake of their pasta and sauce....we have had one pasta and sauce meal (on day 1) and i started in early coaching my daughter on the supper menu i had in mind before so that pasta and sauce could be avoided....and so we had grilled marinated chicken, and box mac and cheese, and cucumber salad, which i actually finished from my coach command post because the person who sliced up the cucumbers and onions declined to be responsilbe for the vinegar and salt phase....we also had pickled beets because that jar is so easy to open....at some point i will not be able to recall what is still in the fridge and i may have to make meal charts and grocery lists to go along....that is if i want to eat well during this ordeal...if we do pasta and sauce for six weeks i may be able to fit into all of those clothes i just gave to the goodwill....now is a good time to bring up pain...i have been sitting at the pc for awhile now, and though my leg is propped up on the walker, it is not elevated and it is starting to throb...like it has its own pulse....i have taken my pain pill for this time slot, and it has kicked in, so far as kicking in goes.....there was a point yesterday afternoon...after the cast had been put on and it was starting to 'cure' as the tech told me it would.....my foot felt like red hot pokers were stabbing into it and the pain pill had not helped after an hour, and so i took another one despite the lable directions.....and still the pain did not ease up...and i started in crying....and my daughter who was sitting in the room (we are doing a long-version LOTR marathon) got so upset she called my spouse at work to tell him that i was crying....but he was busy and when he called back i was a bit abrupt with him who decided against filling the entire pain med prescription because surely i was tough enough not to need all of those pills.....yes- i delivered my first baby completely unmedicated...but i was motivated to spare my baby of those drugs.....and i knew that eventually the baby would be born and the pain would stop.....i have no experience with brolen bones and i have no idea when this agonizing pain will settle into nothing more than background twinges.....the wreck itself has already become a blur...i can recall checking out the green light at the intersection and then looking ahead to see if traffic was backed up by a train....one is always cautious at this interection because of the frequent trains that come through town.....traffic is often backed up as far as my office from especially long trains....and the next thing i knew i was braking to avoid a huge cream colored suv and then there was impact....like hitting a brick wall....and i can recall leaning to the right with my face down in case the windshield shattered......and in one fluid motion i turned off my car, took out my keys, grabbed my purse and got out....becuase there was smoke and flames coming out of my ignition and i was certain that my car was going to blow up ( i watch far too much tv)....it was then that i discovered that i my left ankle was bunged up....and i had to ask people who had stopped to help to get me away from the car...the three Samaritans who let me sit in their car had witnessed the suv pull out in front of me to make a left turn....and i was grateful for their help as much as for their confirmation that the wreck was not my fault.....i have never had a wreck....not in 40 years of driving and i did not want my first one to be my fault.....speaking of 40 years.....i was in europe 40 years ago this summer.....on a three week driving trip with my parents and brother.....my dad broke his leg while photographing a falls in switzerlad.....when i graduate from the walker i will be using his crutches....i can still see myself in the pharmacy in Thun where i was trying to help my mother understand that they only had one crutch and that we would have to go elsewhere for another one.....when we got to Paris, my cousin Nancy (who was a translator at the Australian Embassy) offered to let me stay with her for the rest of the summer....I declined because i was signed up to take driver's ed when i got home.....i chose driving over Paris because i was 16 and had not yet fallen in love with Paris.....ah well.....i really need to wrap up this post, and prop up my leg....it has been nice to record this episode for posterity while it is still relatively fresh...and hopefully i can figure out how to blog from the ipad....heaven knows i will have plenty of time on my hands for such things...the doctor said something about 6 to 8 weeks....yikes!

Sister-in-Law of my Sister-in-Law

ok, so....the call came at 8:50 am...as I was getting settled in for the monthly meeting of those who manage public health departments...in Frankfort.....the caller ID announced that Fred was on the line...and when Fred calls my cell phone it is serious stuff.....he called when sister Sylvia died...from a long battle with a series of brain tumors.....this call was taken on a country road in Virginia the first time Ernst and the boys attempted to finish Ernst's cross-country bike ride....we dropped everything and drove to upstate NY for the funeral knowing there was time to finish that ride at some point yet unknown. The next call was when Ernst's sister Marilynn died...after a long bout with recurrent breast and ovarian cancers....I found out later that mine was not the first cell phone number he used to get in touch....my youngest uses my original cell phone number....the one that frequently gets confused with the xray reading room at the local hospital...ah...the price the young pay for a free cell phone....and i use a new number....for Fred's name to pop up means that I had him listed as a contact.....but I digress.....Fred's sister Sally died suddenly and he wanted me to hear the news before I read it on-line....as I would....as Sally is (was) a FB friend....though I met her the first and only time at Marilynn's funeral....I have since had almost daily contact with her through Scrabble, Wordtwist, messages, and likes/comments on photos. Our last exchange was just this week...on a darling photo of her grandchild using the family cat as a pillow....I have an unfinished game of Scrabble going with her, a cousin Anne from Oklahoma and her sister Lucy who lives in New Zealand....I met Lucy on our last visit to Marilynn before she died, and I have never met Anne, though we often babble back and forth in the comment section of the Scrabble board as well as on messaging and on status updates. I am saddened that my world is smaller by one, and anxious to communicate condolences to her family...those I have met and those I have not....I actually met her parents way back when at the first Thanksgiving I spent with the Webers, and I met her husband and sons at Mariylynn's funeral....but through technology I enjoyed years of delightful interchange with her, and I feel her loss more than typed words can convey.....

infinite sadness

ok, so.....i either quarrelled or came close to arguing with most of my blood kin yesterday.....the main theme being a disjoint between my desire to inspire generosity in my offspring by example....by being generous to them in hopes that they would, in turn, be generous to others.......yesterday, i came close to changing my approach to one of itemization and score-keeping.....close.....but i will continue to with the pay-it-forward lifestyle and hope for the best.....

All My Children

........................................ok, so i successfully photographed my children just before we sat down to enjoy a meal of sushi and sashimi to celebrate Stephan's bold move to Bloomington. What lovely children I have!

Mother's Day

Wishing my mother a happy mother's day as well as happy 83rd birthday! Here she is just a week ago at Kim's wedding in Cleveland.

google map fail

ok, so.....i googled my own address on google maps yesterday as i ate my lunch at my desk....and the photo of my address is not where i live.....seems that the google vehicle drove our circle backwards....and thus my house shows up as 272 rather than 155....ohter than the mixup in addresses they did get a decent picture of my house...sadly, the trellis roses were not blooming at the time....

10 dwindling years....

ok, so....the 10th anniversary of this blog came and went on April 9.....the 1st day was a Sunday....and involved flowing dance movement of our middle child down the hall to the chant....mean mamma mean daddy......mean daddy did not get around to blogging.......i am even meaner in my dotage than i was ten years ago.....

yeah, yeah, yeah.....

ok, so.....it has been a long time since i updated this blog....so long i cannot quite remember when i last took the time......surely the fallout of time constraints versus FB games....as well as my preference for surfing web on my iphone rather than our pc or two ipads.....yes, two (hand-me-down) ipads.....my audiobooks are downloaded onto my phone and it seems cumbersome to hold tweo handheld devices when one can suffice.....which brings me to where i have been listening to audiobooks.....in my greenhouse as well as in my flower and vegetable beds whilst weeding......if the phone is turned up load enough i can actually carry it in my front pants pocket and hear well enough to multitask....but i digress from the greenhouse, which turns out to be more work than i ever imagined....i am still on the uphill side of the learning curve about watering inside the greenhouse....and have not yet figured out how to manage the hose....i really need a hose dedicated for this single purpose that is only long enough to efficiently spray the beds and one that does not require recoiling after each use......the heat problem has been sorted out, thankfully....i found the temperature to be over 100 degrees in side on several moderately warm days, and i do not consider coming home at lunch to check on my greenhouse temperature to be 'green' gardening.....our contractor has fully screened both doors, and has customized plexiglass panels that can be fastened on to each door when the temperature is expected to drop......so most days the screen allow for maximum air cirulation, and last night when the frosty temperatures were predicted, i clipped on the plexiglass.....i am stumped by the cultivation of carrots......they just seem to sit there.....carrots that i brought in from the deck last fall are still in the same stage of non-growth that they were months ago.....which is where the watering issue crops back up...couldn't be the soil, as it is premium potting soil....so is it the water?....not enough or too much?......maddening.....we are still eating lettuces brought inside from the deck....lettuces i planted are still growing on time-lapse basis that is barely visible to the naked eye while the pea pod plants are 3 feet tall and are bearing reliably.....hopefully i will have it all figured out by the second season.....speaking of seasons...the rose season will be impossibly early this year.....my trellis rose City of York has an open bloom as does Old Blush......Stanwell Perpetual will certainly bloom today.....the knockout roses are blooming but these scent-less soul-less creations hardly count.....which brings me to new roses.....I have received a replacement New Dawn in the mail....it is beside the cabin.....i am relieved that i never got around to planting Therese Bugnet or Paul Neyron because the workman have trampled the Dr Huey on the other side of the cabin door.....we have decided to spend some money on the cabin....it was either spend some money on necessary repairs or watch it rot/sag/implode.....and so we have replaced the roof, removed rotten logs, rechinked the walls, added braces to the ceiling to hold up the upstairs floor, installed new windows, poured real steps to replace the stone steps....we do not have a real plan on how we will use the space, which has been cleared of most of the junk that has been around since grandpa's time...the youngest of the workman was delighted to back up his truck and haul off numerous rusted metal parts and pieces.....could have been a few treaures, but after living here nearly thirty years, i sincerely doubt that i have overlooked an antiques roadshow valuable....i suspect that my brother-in-law can run electric out there, possibly by running it through conduit buried under the brick walk.....that only leaves sanitary issues.....will start to google composting toilets just to see how big they are and how much they cost.....we have enough stored furniture in the attic of the garage to furnish this new 'playhouse'.....and if we lack anything there is always my mother's attic....could be fun to decorate my own private getaway without having to travel too far....the wi-fi works out there, this i already know.....

well, there is is....what i have been up-to since i last blogged......well...not quite all...i did go to paris for a long weekend and failed to blog as has always been my custom.....FB makes it all too easy to post photos at wi-fi ready cafes...and mobile blogger is not user-friendly.....

sick

ok, so after weeks of regular exercise, including swims before work four days this week, i have come down with a deep, throaty cough that tastes of infection....yuch! and the cough interrupts at such random intervals that i cannot seem to find peace day or night....not the bill of health one wants within 3 weeks of a trip to paris.....i actually had a pneumonia vaccine within the past month.....only at weak moments do i suspect that the two scenarios are related...i iknow better than that about vaccines, but i digress from moaning loudly about just how awful i feel at this very moment.,...

awakenings

ok, so...dr. rick took my mother off most of her medicines on thursday....and today she has been up since 3:30 am...fully dressed and roaming her house for materials to complete long discarded projects.....she spoke this evening at supper of long-forgotten neighbors in cleveland....of her serger machine that does not seem to work...of the boxes upstairs that require sorting ....these being the very same boxes that i had intended to disperse amongst the many charities that use fabric, yarn and notions......that will teach me to procrastinate.....seems she has phoned several old friends, and dispaired at the numbers that have been disconnected since she last felt up to phoning old friends.....we shall enjoy this bolt of enthusiasm for as long as it lasts.....

unprecedented

ok, so....i got up early three days this week to swim before work......this change in schedule was forced by the inconvenience of swimming after work, given that swim lesson season has begun, my time frame coincides with aqua zumba, and the general chaos/noise level in the pool got in the way of my good time.....and so i gave before work a try....i have had to share lanes on occassion, but the peace and quiet that reigns in the early pool hours is just what i was looking for in an exercise routine. today i will try out my new heart rate monitor....to qualify as a workout for my insurance incentive scheme there must be verification....my monitor will upload into the program's website.....just like my pedometer uploads and records steps as wrkouts......you might ask if any or all of this effort has paid off in pounds lost....the answer would be no.....but i am sleeping better and i feel as though the slightly firmer muscles will be able to handle Paris with less fatigue.....in fact, plotting paris is the general theme of each lap swimm session.....the exact routes for each day's circuit amongst the sites.....but swimming is not the only unprecedented event of the week.....i signed up to be a paid subscriber to the NYT......after it became clear that they really were not going to let me read entire articles after the first 20 of each month without chipping in.....at $3.50 a week i shou;d have subscribed ages ago......so...this morning i am going to read my way through the newer articles on the NYT website, then change and go the wellness center to swim laps.....if i can get in the water before 9:30 i can avoid the zumba crowd at 10:15.....

lap swimming....

ok, so i am up 30 minutes early so i can manage all of my morning chores before going to swim laps on the way to work....a sign of the end-times?

the sunday i stayed home from church.....

ok, so....the clock in the corner of this screen says 9:48 am......a time that i am rarely at home on a sunday.....when the weather is especially bad the church will call of services altogether as a way of keeping us all safe from the perils of ice and snow.....on this morning i am isolating my cold from my church family, mostly because i likely caught the cold from someone who went on out into the world feeling wretched rather than keeping their contagion away from society.....frankly, i should have stayed home yesterday, but i thought that a warm swim followed by refreshing errands would make me feel better......yea, right.......i feel worse today, what with the sneezing, the watery eyes, the stuffed up pressure in my sinus cavities that makes my jaws ache....and so i have treated myself to a rather hot whirlpool bath with hot compresses on my face, and several cups of Earl Grey, and I am thinking of going back to bed.....

come thou long-awaited green house

ok, so...the long-awaited greenhouse is nearly done.....i say nearly, because now that i am working in it, i see the need to make improvements originally down-played by the builders....like an exhaust window with a temperature-gauged hinge.....yes, one can open up the doors when the temperature gets too high inside.....but i cannot do this from work.....i can see myself driving home at lunch on unseasonably warm days to open those doors....driving to and from work to check on a greenhouse is hardly sustainable food production....aside from the temperature issue...there is the lack of any opening big enough for an extension cord.....in the event we are sub-zero for a few days i might want to warm things up a tad.......heavy sigh....i am perusing the seed catalogs for varieties that winter-over well in hopes they will do as well in the greenhouse.....i have found an unused packet of rouge d'hiver lettuce that looks to be winterhardy...will plant these the next time i am home during daylight.....

cultural differences

ok, so it has been months since my last blog....but as this space is resrved for the preservation of my (more important) thoughts and circumstances as i age, i feel the need to put down the events of the past few days. For starters, my eldest's girlfriend has flown back to Florida to spend the holidays with her family. He plans to drive there sometime next week to meet her family and to vacation in a warm climate. The drive will take him within the geographical vicinity of the birth mother to the youngest of our children. Naturally, the opportunity to accompany the eldest was put to the youngest, and that is where the chaos began. The birth mother has hounded the youngest for 'details' of the visit. Seems there are numerous complications to a potential visit: the birth mother's spouse works three jobs, they have taken in a border with a baby who must keep her job as a condition of probation, the restraining orders against close neighbors.....you get the picture. The travel dates have been shared, but even the dates has not been enough to quell the constant stream of texts asking for more information. Should Junior take off on the expected date of arrival? Should they find a sitter for the baby? It occured to me last night, when I lay sleepless after another unfortunate interchange with the child in question about the known trip details as i knew them: there is a cultural disconnect at play here. in our family context, we get up 'early' on a travel day and drive....with stops for food and comfort when needed, armed with printed travel directions that include expected mileage and timing. when this couple have (has?) visited us, they left whenever the spouse got off work, even if it was late at night, and drove through the night....even if it meant arriving while we were still asleep.......they have been known to sleep in their car in front of our house and wait until they saw lights come on. when they were told the arrival date, they appear to have figured that this child could arrive any time after midnight on that date, rather than 14 hours after a reasonable morning starting time.....the child in question, despite her increasing agitation over the 'lack of details' has yet to google the particulars on her own...she has both addresses, and could find out for herself just how long of a trip she has in front of her.....and could possibly come to the realization that there are many factors that will confound an estimated time of arrival- sheer distance, wrecks,construction, disorientation......as for me, i will continue to pray that the eldest and the youngest can complete a journey of that length without un-mediated theatrics.....and that the visit itself will be void of drama and danger....amen, amen and amen

the way

ok, so....we went back to lexington this evening to see the way.....i called ahead to make certain that the projector was working and that we would not have to see the other film playing at the kentucky by default....like last sunday when we saw the ides of march because the projector for the way was broken.....ah well.....all this after an afternoon at the wildlife refuge and a substantial hike.....for the record..the way is about the pilgrimage to santiago de compestello....800 km of walking across southern france and northern spain to see the site fo the burial of st. james.....i envision myself on such an extended hike....and said as much to my treasured spouse on the way home.....whereupon he expressed concern that AT MY CURRENT WEIGHT i could not possibly entertain such a journey....he went so far as to express surprise that i managed to hike the refuge trails AT MY CURRENT WEIGHT......he went on to express concern that i lack the fitness required for my upcoming trip to paris......for the record, i weigh almost to the pound what i weighed on my last 2 trips to paris and my last trip to london...and somehow managed to drag myself to the sights AT MY CURRENT WEIGHT.....for the record i walk 4 lunches a week on a church-sponsored indoor walking track....as well as several extra 30 minutes in the evening on the treadmill...seems i need to be doing more..step it up a bit.......like the time slots when i am playing scrabble.....seems seeing me at the computer rather than on the treadmill this morning is what set off this day's diatribe.....heavy sigh.....no clue how i will manage to drag myself up to bed AT MY CURRENT WEIGHT

grey, short-sleeved t-shirt

ok, so in my dreams i was wearing a grey short-sleeved t-shirt....with writing on it.....possibly writing above and below a crest of some sort....i was with my daughter's birth mother....at a county fair style aisle of rides and games and greasy food stalls....the scenario grows less likely as the descriptives pile on....i do not wear grey short-sleeved t-shirts, nor would i go to a county fair midway with or without the birth mother....i can recall announcing that i needed to change into a longsleeve shirt, because the grey shirt was dirty and because the sun was going down....and all the sudden i was riding in a car with my spouse....no sign fo the birth mother or the carnival rides...wearing jeans and a longsleeve t-shirt from DBF......go figure...

rocks and boxwoods.....

ok, so....i have spent the past few weeks systematically digging out and transplanting 20+ year boxwoods ahead of the construction timeline for the greenhouse....without the row of boxwoods there is space for a 7 foot by 10 foot grrenhouse below the deck that will catch maximum winter and early spring sun and be reasonably shaded during the hotter months.....the entrance will be under the back deck....and will require a detour from the brick walk that connects the cabin-side yard with the garage-side yard...the detour necessitated the removal of decades of vine-growth that covered the rocks that i removed from the paths when i laid bricks.....and so i spent this weekend ripping out vines, moving rocks to two separate terracing projects, and laying the rocks into their new locations...for the record, moving rocks, even by wheelbarrow, uphill, is hard work....and just when i thought i was done with moving rocks, i noticed that there are more rocks by the cabin displaced when the workman poured real steps at the cabin door.....i say 'the cabin' though i really mean 'miss lulu's'...because that is what we have always called the cabin once owned by miss lulu bates.....no clue where i will move those rocks.....hopefully a good nights rest will inspire me...

a soggy tale of woe....

ok, so...at the last minute this morning, as i was rushing about trying to select the appropriate outfit for making soup and sandwiches for the shut-ins with my church family, i decided that my shirt really needed to be ironed....and when i stepped onto the basement floor....the rug squished.....squish is never the sound one wants to hear...water was flowing out of the water heater....and i immediately reached for the yellow turn-off valve....we have been-there-done-that with the water heater before.....the plumber has been and gone and we have a brand-new water heater.....my children and their signifcant others are downstairs working the towels/shop vac/fans to dry out the carpet in the only downstairs bedroom.....thankfully the water never touched the numerous books.....i am also thankful that this leak happened while we were home rather than away....as the water damage could have been significant

sadness....

ok, so....i was met at the door when i stopped by the methodist church last evening after work to pick up my mom from her regular phone-answering slot.....they had told her several weeks ago that they were putting her on the 'sub' list and that they had found someone else more reliable to answer the phone in that time slot....my mother had missed the week my brother came, and the next week because we forgot to take her....and the church used this opportunity to ease her out of answering the phone....'you know that your mother is going downhill, don't you....?'......that is not exactly how they said it but that is the gist of it....it was like being told that your child was no longer welcome to come over and play after some minor infraction.....the afternoon at the phones was one of the few outings my mother had, and i am saddened that the church could not figure out a way to make it work despite her memory issues.

no news is good news....

ok, so...the local paper covered the board meeting and printed the summary a week ago. The piece was inaccurate in many ways....including a ridiculous statement that made it sound as if the ehalth department had no obligation to notify the community in emergency situations. The article also incuded a noye about the board vopting to give me a 5% raise. yikes! i have worried for the past week that there would be outrage about both the inaccurate notification statement, as well as about voting a raise in tough economic times. Happily, this week's paper had no letters about either of my issues....and i am very pleased to have dodged this bullet.....

the dream with my dad as a young man...

ok, so....i am still thinking about a dream i had several nights ago...in the dream i am in my grandmother's farmhouse in rural ohio....the house had 2 screened-in porches...the one off the barnyard was the one used both to enter the house as well as for leisurely sitting.....the house was single story on the left -side....where the kitchen and dining room/laundry room/pantry were located....and two-storied on the right side....with a large living area, bedroom, the second screened-in porch downstairs and two bedrooms upstairs. There was an attic off the stairs that was essentially on top of the kitchen and dining room. In my dream, my gtrandmother was dressed like Jackie Kennedy, in a lavender linen sheath with large covered button accents, and her hair was bobbed...sadly...no pillbox hat....for the record, my grandmother never wore a dress like...she was a shirtdress kind of woman....but i digress.....so in the dream i am with my brother in the larger of the two upstairs bedrooms....there were far more beds in the room in my dream than there were in my childhood....and my dad is standing at the top of the stairs....a youthful version of my dad.....and i ask him why my grandparents had never converted the attic into another bedroom....and he answered...'you would have to ask me that!'.....this was a typical reponse to a question to which he did not know the answer....the dream went on....but this scene is one that i have pondered many times since waking up.....

recovery

ok, so....the race for the arts was last sunday evening....this event is an all-hands-on-deck situation for the c-dubs and their extended circle.....i help with the registration table, and then cut the bananas to be offered alongside the grapes that i have previously washed and sectioned. I also share water duties with the altertnative water site at the finish line....this year's race was marred by injury.....not of the racers, but of my spouse.....he cycles the course to make sure that traffic is stopped at intersections.....some where near the corner of st mildred's court and main his left hand managed to compress the brake enough that he was hurled over the handlebars and onto the street.....runners veered off-course to assist....seems he did not get up immediately.....the ems was called to help a 40-year old who wrecked his bike on the course....but by the time they came he had gotten back on his bike to finish the taks at hand...his doctor checked him out after the award ceremony....he advised him to avoid the temptation to go to the ER, as the cost to diagnose bruised/cracked ribs will not be worth the expense given that there is not much that can be done about them... .fast-forward to saturday.....he still cannot get out of bed without help....the torn abdominal muscles still spasm on occassion....his bruised ribs are still tender.....his scrapes are still red and mean-looking..he finally sought 'official' medical attention on thursday....mostly over concern for the spasms....and the shortness of breath....yikes! let us hope that he has turned a corner and is on the road to recovery...

free at last?

ok, so.....i unsubscribed today from the voluminous FB updates posted from our daughter's birth mother.....the threshold that triggered this action was two-fold....first.....she reached the age of 18 (consent) and she is now free to make as much or as little contact with her birth mother as she chooses......secondly, the woman has been updating her status at 30 minute increments of late....while my child was underage I felt responsible for monitoring the birth mother's mental status....the better to cushion the blow for whatever negative interactions she had with our child....but now.....i am allowing myself to detach myself from the ongoing drama....and allowing our child to deal with these tempests on her own terms.....

remorse...

ok, so....in especially lousy day at work followed by a fitful sleep....i disclosed what i failed to see was a confidence....and all-hell has broken loose....between me and the person who told me, but not between me and the person from whom the secret was being held.....go figure...

wasted day

ok, so.....i was up all night and gave in to temptation to call in sick, given that even the smell of brewing coffee added to my nausea...when i cannot sit in the computer chair to play my word games then it really is time to go back to bed. I finally dragged myself downstairs the second time around 10:30 am and decided that it was best to go right back up and strip the bed, gather anything i had worn or touch and run a load of laundry as a public health precaution....since nobody else seemed to be sick, then this illness was more likely to be a virus rather than food poisoning....ah well....i lazed about watching netflix on the ipad while playing word games on my iphone.....progressing from strawberry frozen fruit bars to potato soup to pasta by the end of the day....mostly it was a day wasted.....i could not imagine dragging myself out to the garden, nor sitting up to sort through closets or drawers....i suppose that is the purpose of a true 'sick' day...to be so sick that not only should one not attempt the trip to work, but one cannot do housework while off at home....

lamaze breathing

ok, so.....sometime around 9:00 am, just after the plumber's insurance adjuster left after seeing the damage done in the second internal water disaster last wednesday....i decided that i would take time to move my select belongings from the downstairs makeshift office back into my repainted and refloored upstairs office. Most of my files and delicates (baskets, prints, diplomas) were in boxes in the conference room, but the files I thought I might need in the interim were with me in the near-broom closet i have called home for several weeks....and so i grabbed the dolly (?dollie)dragged it into the elevator...and pressed 1....and the elevator went down, but the door did not open.....and so i pressed 1 again.....and then pressed door open, and then started beating on the door until i noticed a call button....which buzzed loudly....i buzzed for a bit before i noticed the emergency call phone hidden behind the emergency call phone panel.....and i pressed the button clearly labeled in red....press for help......and a human voice answered.....and i told her that i was trapped in the elevator at the MCHD.....and she asked my name.....and after i spelled it out, she responded with....someone will be there shortly jackie.....and so the regrets started welling up....regret that i am not one of those people who carries one's cell phone around 24/7.....regret that i had not told anyone in the building that i was going to be using the elevator.....regret that i had not used the restroom first.....or gotten a drink of water......or thought to bring along a chair rather than a dolly (dollie)....with the recovery/restoration projects since the original water disaster on may 1, the floor of the elevator has become quite soiled.......at no point in my captivity did the notion of actually sitting down sound like a reasonable plan......so....help was on the way.......yet i was still confined and getting a tad warm...i took off my linen 'big' shirt and arranged it on the dolly (dollie)....a hymn came into my brain.......standing on the promises that cannot fail, when the howling storms of doubt and fear assail, by the living word of god I shall prevail,
Standing on the promises of God.......it is not even a hymn from the past sunday....so i can credit only Divine providence for sending this song into my brain.....of course, this was not the verse that i tried to sing...this happens to be the second verse.....and the act of trying to sing the song triggered a cathartic cry...not sobbing, not simple tears trickling down the cheeks.....just an outward sign that i was having an inward crisis at almost 9 weeks after the may 1 disaster...but even that explanation lacks the full amplitude of my angst.....i have as many or more issues at home that await resolution........and none that can be reolved while awaiting rescue.....so i reverted back to the last time i prepared physically for tense and trying times....lamaze class 27 years ago.....and it was lamaze breathing for the remainign minutes of my entrapment that allowed me to step out of the (braced) elevator door into freedom with my head held high and my tears nearly dried and forgotten.......

missing my dad.....

ok, so yesterday at the red lobster, where my mom and i ate after picking up the remainder of our 30-year anniversary replacement china......i attempted to direct the conversation to dad......who liked red lobster almost as much as mom.....we were ordering, and i pointed out that dad would have ordered the clam strips.....she nodded....and then went back to perusing the menu......for no real reason because she always orders the fried shrimp and crab leg combination with a baked potato....she eats the crab legs and takes the shrimp and potato home for supper....this scenario worked out well yesterday, as we were going to our daughter's boyfriend's belated graduation party that involved a bbq supper at the battlefield....on the way back home my spouse asked if the boyfriend's father was involved at all....no, i replied, because he died some time ago after some peiod of estrangement.....i started to say that the boyfriend had that in common with our daughter....but then that is not true......our daughter has had my spouse as her very-involved father most of her life.....her birth-father was estranged, but he is now working on semi-regular contact.....she has no concept of father's day without a father.....ah well......there is a picture of my mom and dad above the computer table...the one taken at their 47th anniversary party....we celebrated the 47th rather than waiting on the 50th when it became clear that my father would be far from lucid if we postponed......he seems happy and content in this photo.....in the moment rather than agonizing over the past or the future....seems this gentle man still has a few things to teach me about how to live one's life.....

ok, so.....

ok, so.....the nurse from Doctor H.'s office called not long after lunch with these opening words....'I am here with your mother, and she seems confused on her medications'.......i immediately bring up the calendar on my pc......no appt with doctor...then grab my phone and search for that calendar....yikes.....doctor at 3....but it is only 1:30 pm and curiously no mention of it is on the calendar synced with my phone.....but i digress.....i reviewed my mother's medicines with the nurse, who expressed concern that my mother said she took no medications.....he asked about problems...and i mentioned her laying about on her bed watching tv while complaining that her back hurt......her doctor called after another 30 minutes, and told me that she felt that my mother had no business driving, and that she had told her so in her examination....she suspected that my mother would not tell me about her recommendation....just as she had not told me of her appt......she suggested that i hide her keys if i felt uncomfortable with confrontation.....yikes.....my spouse is out of town til late tomorrow....so he and I agreed that we can defer the keys discussion until Thursday at supper, when he can support my request for her keys..........my mother did acknowledge that she went to the doctor today....but she left out the part about the car...go figure.....i feel quite conflicted....as I knew that she should not drive but did not confront her at supper tonight....and she plans to drive to church supper tomorrow....I pray that she travels safely until I have ht enerve to take her keys.....

In honor of Rachel and Joe's wedding...the Collins piece read at our wedding 30 years ago....Judy not Billy...when I hear it read/sung I hear Dan Fogelberg....

What I'll give you since you asked
Is all my time together;
Take the rugged sunny days,
The warm and rocky weather,
Take the roads that I have walked along,
Looking for tomorrow's time,
Peace of mind.

As my life spills into yours,
Changing with the hours
Filling up the world with time,
Turning time to flowers,
I can show you all the songs
That I never sang to one man before.

We have seen a million stone lying by the water,
You have climbed the hills with me
To the mountain shelter.
Taken off the days, one by one,
All lyrics www.allthelyrics.com
Setting them to breathe in the sun.

Take the lilies and the lace
From the days of childhood,
All the willow winding paths
Leading up and outward.
This is what I give
This is what I ask you for;
Nothing more

closure, of a kind.....

ok, so....i am torn between feeling as though my task is over...my quest has been fulfilled, and my promise has been kept.....and as if this hesitation along the trail is just that...another milestone in the path that is parenthood.....in the end the folks who were essential were there to cheer us to the finish line.....and for that i am grateful.....i can only hope that they wil be with us for the trials that are to come....

post traumatic stress.....

ok, so...not only have i failed to blog these many weeks, i have failed to blog about momentous occasions....and for that i am sorry....the point of this blog is and always has been a venue for memory-keeping.....and the events of these past few weeks are certainly memorable.....i have failed to blog about the after-effects of 27,000+ gallons of water spritzing out of the broken water heater valve sometime between close of business on April 29 and 3:00 am on May 1 when the fire alarm was triggered and the fire department broke down the door of the health department.....the disaster was nearly a month ago, and despite overtime and actual meritorious bonus payments for dealing with the aftermath....the reconstruction is far from over and the day-to-day reality is a numbing fog of smoothing over hurt feelings and validating the extra work that many have suffered through to bring this expected insurance coverage about......and all with the clear knowledge that congress could cut off all our funding an make the effort a mute point.... ah well.....somehow it will all work out......i did the right thing by passing on my bonus for tuition due this summer....but i did indulge myself in a matching travel ensemble from vera bradley.....all i need now is a trip (to paris?) to show off my suite,......

sorry about your luck....

ok, so i reserved the use of our truck this morning so i could get a load of mulch....and opted do some scant grocery shopping on my way to get said load of mulch....alas, i had far more in my cart than tthe express line could overlook....and was forced to wait on several folks with huge orders.....the lady in back of me was spouting tag lines to random shoppers.....'sorry about your luck'.....'it must be april fool's day'.......'i have picture ID' .......very surreal....

circles of hell

ok, so i spent my afternoon off in the circle of hell reserved for adult children of aging parents....the space in which one cannot gain access despite a filed POA, the one where the key fits the lockbox at the bank, but the documents required are not there, the one where my mother can show me the drawer where these documents 'used to be' but not where she may have 'hidden' them....until this afternoon i was completely unaware that having a certificate of deposit involved an actual certificate that banks are loathe to replace because of the extra work involved.....heavy sigh.....looking for the silver lining in this otherwise dismal day....

what if god was one of us....

ok, so...i encountered God this morning.....after i got out of my car in front of the comp care building and before i walked into the Rotary meeting.....i had stopped long enough to take off my coat and toss it into the passenger seat....and then tested the reality of my locked car doors by clicking again to hear the honk.....and i turned to walk into the church...and there was a woman walking by.....i am not sure whether she was coming from the home at the end of the parking lot, or from the church playground, or from comp care....i smiled at her......this much i can be sure....and she turned to me and said...'my, but you look nice today'......and then she walked on.....that my part i am doubly sure...because i listened extra carefully because she said "my".......my own family never bothers to comment on my appearance in public, and yet this stranger managed to stop me dead in my tracks with an un-foreseen complement.....i am reminded of the soulful tune by Joan Osborne...

"What if God was one of us
Just a slob like one of us
Just a stranger on the bus
Trying to make his way home

The woman who spoke to me was just a slob like one of us who took the time to say something kind to one of use....and this act of random kindmess made a differnece in my path toward righteousness.

exasperated....

ok, so....i have so much going on that blogging appears to have dropped down in the list of priorities.....behind parenting issues, budgetary woes, supervisory snafus, and the small yet irritating annoyances that keep me awake at night....like the floral silk scarf that i last wore with the black linen dress ....lost.....and my mother's taxes that remain at the accountant's office......unfinished......that sort of thing.....and the hydrangeas that are either slow to bud out or are in fact....dead....and last ,but not least....is our blind but not deaf cat that decided at 4:30 am to demand her breakfast......not ready to put her out of our misery....too much going on....

a wink is as good as a nod to a blind cat

ok, so.....long-time with no blogs.....there is plenty to blog about, but most of what is going on in my humble existence is embargoed information, either with regards to work, or family, or some form of denial on my part......that said, i have concluded that the cat's pitiable decline is fair game, so to speak.....the cat's eyes started out looking bloodshot, with dilated pupils and an eerie appearance.....the child most likely to be concerned about pet health insisted that she be taken to the vet and all manner of treatment be afforded her.....alas, the cat is at least 14 years old, scraggly and scrawny.....and while emotions may nudge at lifesaving heroics, reality suggests that making her safe and comfortable in her decline is the kindest thing we can do....and so we pick her up and bring her back in the house when she wanders, and nudge her in the general directon of the door when she runs straight into the wall....this has happened more than once, and it is painful to watch......she sometimes misses the plant shelf in the guest room where she takes her meals, or just barely gets her paws hooked on the edge and has to drag herself the rest of the way up.....our poor precious......

reflections on handedness....

ok, so.....the nytimes had an article on handedness this week...one that i have read more than once in hopes of finding clarity.....here is a curious quote....The percentage of left-handers in the population seems to be relatively constant, at 10 percent. And this goes back to studies of cave paintings, looking at which hands hunters are using to hold their spears, and to archaeological analyses of ancient artifacts. So though there has been prejudice against left-handers, and though there may be some developmental risks, said Dr. Geschwind, “there clearly must be advantages as well. The reason why it maintains that way, nobody knows what it is.”

clear advantages to be in the bottom 10% of the population? hmmmm.....i am at a loss for what those advantages might be.....

for the record, i write (poorly) with my left hand, eat with my left hand, and as i sit typing my coffee is at my left hand......if it were the evening, my wine glass would be at my right....i use regular scissors, bat and hold a racket with my right hand......i type with 2 fingers...mostly...sometimes 4 but only if i make an effort and concentrate on the task....i wear my watch on my right wrist....a sure giveaway of handedness......it is a struggle to actually put on a watch, as my left hand is less agile with small tasks....

in my current work day i must 'sign out' at lunch on a board that can only be reached comfortably by a right-hander.....and so i have made it a point of pride to write 'walking' or 'rotary' or 'lunch' in vaguely recognizable block letters with my right hand......and i am in awe that i hold the marker as awkwardly with that hand as i hold any writing implement in my left hand.....could it be that i have no handedness at all? or is my state of ambidextrousness the product of a scrambled brain?

i mentioned at the start that i often reread passages for clarity.....reread entire books numerous times in hopes of gleaning a few extra insights.....could i simply have a learning disability relating to reading that has been overcome by sheer will and persistence? I have rarely read the printed word in novel form since i discovered how to click an order and download a novel to my iphone.....i find a level of satisfaction with the spoken word that i can never recall achieving with rereading the written word.....does this have anything to do with a brain muddled by handedness?

having had my say on personal handedness issues, where do i go from here?.....nowhere different than before my 'rant'.....i suppose...though it will be interesting to see how senility will express itself in terms of handedness....will i simply forget how to hold a pen with my left hand and start using the right hand? will i forget how to use my left hand for fork-ready foods and stop eating altogether?.....or could the advantange of left-handedness be the ability to roll with the punches of senility in a way unknwon to the righties?....hopefully these revelations are years away....and i wil have plenty of time to muddle through with my muddled brain in the meantime....

fast-forward....

ok, so.....circumstances of late are mostly gloomy....with the potential for major cuts in funding for public health (maternal and child nutrition, contraception, breast and cervical cancer. etc...) funding cuts will almost certainly lead to staffing cuts, and mayhem and morale issues will certainly follow.....i would give my eye teeth to simply fast-forward past it all.....

eat, pray, love

ok, so.....i went ahead and watched the movie despite being not-so enamored of the book.....maybe it is because i could not get my mind around a journey to self-discovery that did not include living for a time in paris....

the week that was.....

ok, so......my week started off with the phone call from my mother asking me for a ride to the ER...seems she tripped over the cord to her electric bed pad and split her lip....the ER visit was complicated by the series of questions put ot my mother by each practitioner about the exact anture of her injury....was it an accident or granny abuse- not in so many words but that was the gist.....the fall came on the very day that her housecleaner picked up all the newspapers, inserts, envelopes and other mail components that my mother tosses aside after reading.....it is a miracle that she has not fallen long before this.....i volunteered at the free clinic on Tuesday after work, then went on to the college pool to watch our daughter's last swim meet.....Wednesday evening I helped serve at a church supper...Thursday after work was my EKU class......and finally on Friday I went straight home from work....amen, amen, and amen.....I am following the OSU-Minnesota game on CNN- given that CBS chose to air Wisconsin-Michigan State instead this afternoon.....will probably watch the football game- for the commercials if nothing else....

A Palin-free February

ok, so.....one of my dear on-line Scrabble partners posted to her Facebook page a piece from the Washington Post in which Dana Milbanks takes the Palin-Free February Pledge....he theorizes that she gets coverage because so many of us are obsessed with reading about her latest foolishness, our 'clicks' on links/stories etc just encourages those who write these stories to cover her antics more often.....he further asserts that if we simply stop reading/watching about her, those who write and broadcast will move on to more substantive fodder.....worth a try on my end.....the woman makes me crazy, and is likely to blame (at least partially) for my recent bouts of high blood pressure....so starting Tuesday I pledge to not click on stories I know to be about her......i do not know if I will be able to avert my eyes from headlines that include her name....I would have to give up all news outlets for the month as well.....but I ceetainly can restrain my urge to click on those stories for 28 full daysa....

tragic shooting in AZ

ok, so....a third term democratic congresswoman was shot and 12 others killed or wounded as a gunman opened fire at a town meeting in Tuscon yesterday....the shooter was captured and his myspace site scoured for clues.....from all i can read about him he appears to be anti-government.....my brother has FB'ed that the shooter was clearly a left-wing radical......clearly?......i would describe that sentiment as right-wing....the congresswoman was still shown as under the cross hairs of SarahPac....and the congresswoman herself has given public comment on the 'cross hairs' issue......so, should we as reasonable Americans hold SP responsible for inciting the unstable to actually put the targeted congresswoman in his cross hairs?

comfort and joy

ok, so.....i figured out sometime midmorning that if my brother was on FB then he was not in the car driving to ky and would certainly not be here in time for the annual dinner at Shakertown......and so i sent a simple text....'coming?'....and went about my errands....the reply came just before i picked up my mother for her hair appointment.....not sure if and when he can come given that his roommate just had back sugery and his son has bronchitis.....gentle readers....the post that existed int his space temproarily was removed....as one should never leave a trail when one fusses about one's blood kin about the second year in a row that circumstances beyond their control has prevented them from visiting either their closest blood kin.....so where is the comfort or the joy in this post?.......it was in the short time i spent in my mother's beauty parlor...chatting with an octogenarian from my church, the estranged grandmother of my ex-partner and an elegantly dressed woman who looked 70 but was likely in her 80's (cream cashmere sweater over a taupe sweater/skirt set with lovely Italian cuffed boots with a heel that was not too tall nor too stumpy) named dolly who looked like she could be russian royalty...she told me that i had 'good hair'.....coming from a woman who has inspired me to grey gloriously, this was a compliment indeed.....at this time of year, and at my age one finds comfort and joy anywhere one can....

look in fridge

ok, so.....i slept in til nearly 7:00 am this morning....and as i was shuffling through the kitchen toward the coffeemaker i saw a note on the counter that read.....'look in fridge'.....so i looked in the fridge.....and saw nothing that was not there last night, nothing out of place, and certainly nothing that looked special enough to warrant a note.......will wait for the person with that distinctive handwriting to return with an explanation....

smoked salmon dreams

ok, so.....the few times i get around to blogging seem to be for the sole purpose of recording my dreams.....i was moved to blog on this particular day because i am still thinking about dream from earlier in the week....the one about the hunk of unsliced smoked salmon wrapped up inside a bread-bag and secured with a twist-tie.....the unsliced part was the problematic theme to the dream.....i wanted to have a few bites of the salmon, but the chunk has never been thinly pre-sliced....as every package of smoked salmon that i have ever opened has been so sliced, i had a problem to solve.....that si the part that i cannot remember these days later....just the salmon in the bread bag.....i could go for some smoked salmon right this very minute....preferably with a poached egg over a toasted enlgish muffin topped with hollandaise......oh my.....that is the stuff dreams are made of.....

hannah coulter

ok, so i came to the part in this novel by wendell berry where caleb comes home from college and his father nathan starts to make plans for him to take over his share of the farm, and caleb has to tell his father that he is home for a visit but that he will not be staying....he has plans beyond the farm......this conversation is part of the vocal heritage of my father's side of the family......of my own grandfather sitting down with my father on a visit home after graduation but before my parents wedding to discuss the future......and my father having to tell my grandfather than had he purchased the adjoining farm when it came up for sale as my father had suggested, there would have been enough acreage to support two families but as things stood, there simply was not an adequate living for two families on the existing farm....and my father had made other working arrangements......i write this with great regret, now that a child of mine has voiced an interest in the livelihood that used to be a given for both sides of my family....my mother's father gave up all hope of passing on his farm when he fathered two daughters.....he sold off the farm for a housing development......i treasure the copper stencil that my great-grandfather used to paint 'stephan' on each of his crates of produce....the stephan family grew fruits and vegetables on a farm above the canal just south of cleveland, ohio since the civil war days......the family place i visited in germany actually includes several fields now worked by a tenant....which means that as far back as the 1500's our ancestors have worked close to the land..... and so i admit freely that there were tears in my eyes as i listened to this part of the novel....because i knew that this conversation is not singular to the coulters, nor to the crowns, but to far too many dwindling farm families.....

latkes

ok, so......i view the making of latkes as a sign of a leisurely Saturday or long-weekend off....the variations depend on the available potatoes: white, red, yellow, sweet.....or a combination of those tubers....this morning we enjoyed sweet potato latkes with a sprinkling of parsley and sour cream........i get out the copper pan often enough that the latkes have become simply a sign that mamma feels like making them.....and i am therefore caught off-guard for a moment or two when i see articles in culinary magazines or the nytimes about the association of these wonderful fried potato confections with religious observances.....like Hanukkah.....i am not remotely Jewish according to my next-of-kin......but I suspect that I have Jewish roots that go deeper than the living memory of loved ones.....the connection between me and fried shredded potatoes is essential.....and too intense to be coincidental...

1/2 bottle of riesling

ok, so.....yesterday at my in-law's home we gathered for a Thanksgiving feast......i arrived with our car-full around 1:00-ish to find the questionably-done turkey already on the counter covered in tinfoil.....and to witness another extended family member empty half a bottle of riesling into a large tumbler, drop in a few ice cubes, and move on......gentle readers......if i had married into such a household i would have drank the other half of her bottle, despite my loathing for sweet wines.....i did go out of my way to avoid the turkey, having suffered a severe case of food poisoning in that very place over a decade ago.....and i when i happened to see second half of the bottle go the way of the first, i smiled and went on about my business.......

In Mass....on our way to supper....have not been in New England since Stephan looked at colleges

In Chicago halfway to Albany and our weekend with Stephan

wine and cheese

ok, so i started my round of errands with a visit to v the market.....i went in looking to buy goat cheese and ended up not only with Mont St. Francis from Indiana, but also Heinrich Red to go with it....and then several others bottles for upcoming occasions...and a jug of a pilsner from the tap....i like the notion of buying a jug and refilling it from a tap.....i will admit that i spent more per bottle than i spend per week on a boxed white.....i was determined to select my bottles based on their attributes rather than price....isn't that why i work that second job?......not only to fund my addiction to travel but also to add to the local economy by supporting home-grown entrepreneurs.....the red wine is delightful.....which i suppose proves that you get what you pay for when it comes to wine.....

ok, so.....the day has come when Peggy Noonan and I have something in common....this piece is excerpted from Ms. Noonan's column in which she rips into the half-term governor for comparing her career to that of Ronald Reagan.

"Excuse me, but this was ignorant even for Mrs. Palin. Reagan people quietly flipped their lids, but I'll voice their consternation to make a larger point. Ronald Reagan was an artist who willed himself into leadership as president of a major American labor union (Screen Actors Guild, seven terms, 1947-59.) He led that union successfully through major upheavals (the Hollywood communist wars, labor-management struggles); discovered and honed his ability to speak persuasively by talking to workers on the line at General Electric for eight years; was elected to and completed two full terms as governor of California; challenged and almost unseated an incumbent president of his own party; and went on to popularize modern conservative political philosophy without the help of a conservative infrastructure. Then he was elected president."

"The point is not 'He was a great man and you are a nincompoop,' though that is true," Noonan continues. "The point is that Reagan's career is a guide, not only for the tea party but for all in politics. He brought his fully mature, fully seasoned self into politics with him. He wasn't in search of a life when he ran for office, and he wasn't in search of fame; he'd already lived a life, he was already well known, he'd accomplished things in the world."

WWGCD?

ok, so i enjoyed the daylights out of watching the rally for sanity livestreamed on comedy central....while i was supposed to be outside helping my spouse build the faux rock wall that will add yet another terrace to our slope and give us a far deeper vegetable planting area.....i was moved to tears watching yusaf (AKA cat stevens) sing peace train.....that song really takes me back....and i so enjoyed the signs....especially the one pictured here.....WWGCD?.....ky's own george clooney would be a voice for sanity in the politcal debate....and i so grateful for patirots like jon stewart, whose poignant closing words summed up the rally quite nicely...really wish i had been there.....