Wow, what a busy week this past one has been…first it was all about trying to find dresses for a dance that the girls were planning on attending. The oldest one is usually pretty easy to find second hand formals for because she is a bit more petite. The middle kid is too short and wears a combination of about three sizes…but after a good search we found a beautiful and very well-made dress that was about 8 inches too long…fortunately she turned off sick because otherwise we would have been up all night trying to get it hemmed. (Good quality formals are well-made, which presents a level of difficulty in something as simple as shortening them…)
The third daughter searched high and low for her special dress. We had almost given up when I remember just one more thrift store….She ended up with a short dress that lacked the modesty required for the event….but we were able to find a blouse to put under it which matched more than perfectly. We were then surprised and rejoiced when the girl at the counter decided that it was a summer dress (even though it was velour) and sold it to us for $1!! So Friday arrived with the dad and mom running off to the farmers market, and two of the girls rushing off to the neighboring state for a dance. (English Country Dancing is gaining in popularity but still they are few and far between.) Poor Mid-Kid with her bad cold got stuck at home and had to clean up the mess in the kitchen that is always part of the Friday market rotation…I was so thankful for her cheerfulness to do the job even though she was not at her best. So Hubby and I had to work both markets this week…just the two of us. I felt horrible yesterday but managed to pretend good cheer when selling our wares to the customers. This morning, I felt better but I really struggled with word block today and felt myself bumbling over my words. This does not make for good salesmanship. But overall we were greatly blessed at both markets… I had enough energy left over to go and weed my fall garden area. I have lots of little beets and lots of green looking stuff. I felt so bad the day I planted the stuff that I didn’t write down what all I planted where…so some of that cabbage looking stuff is collard greens and some of it is kohl rabi’s…and some might even be cabbage! I got bored with hoeing that area and shifted over to cleaning out a bed. It all started because I checked to see if there were any more potatoes ready to dig…Then found to my dismay that the voles have decided the potatoes are to their liking. <BIG FROWN!> Note to self—tell Hubby that we need a vole trap put in that bed. I even know where the hole to their house is…. I pulled up all the grassy stuff and put it in a pile for composting. This bed looks so good that I plan to go in and turn the straw into it and it should be ready for planting next spring. A couple of the beds are going to need more manure and straw but this one looks really good. After I got that job done, I decided it was time to quit but that meant I needed to go around and water all the things in pots…in the process, I discover that Hubby had mowed off my baby oak tree, I was a bit miffed but when I found out it was an accident….Oh well, easy come, easy go… That has kind of been the way the season has been this year. Easy come and going…I am not sure the neighbors appreciate it. I am very embarrassed to have a weedy flower patch out front but I need to move things before I can just mow it off. I have told Mom I am going to mow it off. She goes on and on about how she had such a pretty flower garden and how if she were able she would just go out there and pull that poison ivy out with her hands….etc. etc. etc. I will do what I can to save her Day Lilies, and I will do all I can to save my grandmothers flowering almond but I am hoping that by the end of next week, to have it mowed down. I am ready to put a sign in the middle that says, “WARNING Poison Ivy!” Then maybe people will understand the ugly weedy mess that we keep mowing around. There is a lot going on next week and I might not get it done…but it is certainly on the list. I do have an update on the oldest daughter’s quadruplicate eye problem. It turned out that one stigmatism had gotten worse and she has developed another stigmatism in the other eye. She does have some eye muscle weakness probably from the Lyme so he wrote her prescription with prisms to help correct the problem. It seems like there was another little something that was Lyme related but I can’t seem to remember what it was… She was a bit nervous about seeing this doctor but when he told her that he and his family have Lyme as well, she relaxed and it turned out to be okay. She was very relieved to learn that corrective lenses could be had and immediately went out and got a new pair of glasses. She says they feel a bit strong but she is so happy to be able to see again. We all rejoice with her! This post is written in a spirit of humor. It is common in our home to laugh over the oddities of our lives…the following is one of those stories that would be included in a book written by parent/child caretakers. There are many of us out there and we all can share similar tales.
I stayed home from church today, so I was the person that went to assist Dad with getting up. After accomplishing that I decided to wash up the dishes and clean the kitchen in my parents’ apartment. For the most part, Mom is able to wash her own dishes and wants to continue to do so…the only problem is Mom fell out of the daily dish washing habit about 20 or 30 years ago. She prefers to let them stack up until there is enough to bother with. I realize that many households are comfortable with this way of doing dishes so this is not a judgment about that…it is just that Mom’s kitchen work space is cluttered and piled and it drives me nuts…so I sat myself to the task of cleaning a bit…in the process I chittered chattered killing time trying to make sure that Dad was going to accomplish eating all of his breakfast so that he would be ready for a light lunch at 2:30. Feeling pretty secure that all was on track, I asked him if cheesy rice sounded good for lunch…he agreed that would be good. Since, my family does not eat American cheese, I started to get some out of Mom’s fridge…she then instructed me where to get it… “Not on the top shelf, but the other one.” (Mom literally has at least 20 lbs of cheese in her fridge) Thinking it would be helpful to me in fixing Dad’s lunches, I asked if I could just take one of the packages to the house with me…. “No, just take a couple of slices…” This is Mom…her stuff matters to her. She is 91 years old and she cannot only tell you right where she left something in a closest 5, 10, or 25 years ago but she will be able to describe the print on the fabric and the size. She has a steal trap memory about her stuff. And lest any of us think we can pull a fast one and throw something out…we would be wrong. In the years of being a caretaker, I have never thrown anything out without first getting permission and many times when I have asked it is denied. There are cabinets and boxes of stuff here, there and yonder. The only reason she didn’t know where the green trash can was in my former post was because I had moved it in order to vacuum the floor. I had put it up on the bottom shelf of a plant stand. I will occasionally toss out a plastic butter box or a used zipper baggie but even then I do that kind of thing in moderation! So while the cheese incident left me briefly miffed, in the end I really just had to laugh! By the way, it seems that Dad has gradually improved some more this week. He only had one bad day this past week. It also seems as if his eyes improve some which I am very thankful for. This time last year he was unable to discern who was coming in the door. Now he can read the clock on the mantel across the room. For this we are most thankful. I know several people who have a birthday today. One of them was supposed to get a card but I felt so horrible most of the week that I struggled to just get the basics of my life done. And since, I have not spent any time here lately, I decided to use this medium to wish you a Happy Birthday!!! I started to write about how mischievous we used to be before I married your brother and you married someone else’s brother but I decided against that… And I know that you might not see this for a few days, knowing that this blog is fairly boring and probably not on your priority list of must reads; but please know that I did think of you several times today and I wanted to tell you Happy Birthday.
Some weeks are just more difficult than others. This past week, I have felt fairly out of sorts. I struggled to put one foot in front of another and to keep going. What I did accomplish seemed puny compared to what I needed or wanted to do.
Having felt lousy, I kind of let the duties of trying to oversee my Dad fall pretty much on my wonderful husband. This morning he told me that Dad did not eat his supper last night so he fed him some peanut butter and crackers before bed. Food has to be put under his Gleevic so he will not get sick to his stomach and throw up in the night. I am not really sure what happened but what I pieced together between Mom, Dad and Hubby…. Mom made Dad supper…but Dad was back in the bedroom where he often likes to goes to sit, it is quiet and private in that space…for one reason or another that area is his default space. He will go in there and go to sleep in his wheelchair. So I think that is what happened he was asleep and Mom either told him supper was ready or she nagged at him about supper being ready. Either way, he did not come out and eat. Instead of calling and letting me know that she needed help getting him to eat she left things as they were so he went without a much needed meal and much needed fluid. This is so very difficult for me, because it puts a strain between Mom and I …a strain that I do not feel needs to be there. I know that part of her grump is that I sit and feed him. She thinks if he is too lazy to eat then it is fine for him to do without. And I would agree too, except that he is not lazy, he simply eats so very slow, and now he is missing most of his teeth, so that by the time he gets done eating it is almost meal time again, so he is not hungry….but if I can keep him on a schedule and say we are done at this point whether he is or not…then he will be ready to eat again at the next meal. The concept being smaller nutrient dense portions more frequently so that he does not have to eat so much at one time. We are still dealing with the hallucinations, although they are much better. The worst of them seem to either be late at night or during the night…which can result in early morning hallucinations. They are worse when he does not get enough fluid…and I suspect that was part of the problem last evening about supper… We are still working on the bowels. This has taken some time but we think that he has improved. We are hearing less and less about his gut pains. So overall, I do think that Dad has improved. He has gotten strong enough to get himself out of bed several times. If we can just keep him eating, we will be able keep working on the strength issues. He is much stronger than he was this time last month. By the way, it is my birthday today, which means that since I last posted Hubby and I had our 33rd anniversary. |
Author
Archives
January 2016
Categories
All
|