the world has changed

Mom died at around 5 a.m. this morning.

It has been amazing to see how strong the human body can be. She took no food since May 18th, and no water since May 19th. We honored her health care proxy and did not force anything on her - and, why? We knew she was dying of dementia/Parkinsons. She didn't. And, so she kept going on. At one point her lungs filled up (perversely, this is a reaction to dehydration) but they cleared with some medication that the hospice nurse recommended that we get. (yay Hospice - what a great help they were.) Her last couple days were gentle, she was taking shallow breaths and we think this morning they just stopped. She looked very much the same as she had when Greg checked on her this morning and found that she was no longer breathing. Calm, no pain. Again, yay Hospice.

I'm a whirlstorm of emotion. i did not have what i would consider a good relationship with this woman. she was pretty unhappy, chronically dissatisfied - i remember one week in high school that started with her bitching at me because I was not at home much, so i stayed home and the week ended with her bitching at me for being home too much. This on top of 5+ years of constant criticism and verbal abuse. And she never asked me why I moved 3,000 miles away.

So, to the giver of my life and shredder of my self esteem and giver of emotional pain - farewell. Hope you have a better life next time. Hope you learned what you needed to, this time. Hope you are finally happy and at peace.

There's gotta be a better way!

Hoo boy. I am sitting at Greg & Andrea's right now, on duty as a home health aid. We brought Mom out of the nursing home here on Monday evening. It's been a very long & tiring week. Fortunately, we have gotten some excellent support from a home-care agency. Lucy, the physical therapist who has been here a couple times actually worked with Mom when she was still in dementia care, 5 months ago. Lucy spotted right away that Mom is no longer turning her head. And Lucy is a magician with a sheet and soaker pad - we have learned how best to move, position, transfer and change Mom. The problem is bending over the bed. Well, if you put your knee up on the bed, it saves your back. Doh! But it took Lucy coaching us for us to get it. It is taking me time to get used to that - because I would never have gotten on Mom's bed. And the early childhood training kicks in automatically. I made a note "Knee ON bed!" and posted it as a reminder.

I would much rather be out on a bike, it's a beautiful day. I am sandwiching in doing my things early in the morning or late at night - mowing the lawn 20 minutes at a time, shopping at Wegmans at 9 p.m. (thank everything for a great 24-hour grocery store! Now if they'd only add in a wine & spirits section I'd be all set.) I am working hard to not default to junk food in front of the TV when I get home at night. I worked out instead, yesterday evening, and am quite proud of that. And this weekend is an anomaly - Greg is sailing with one of Andrea's sisters & her husband, if he was here she & I could have time to get out.

* * *

I am now tasked with ripping out the carpet in the downstairs of my little houseen. With the warm weather, the dog smell is rising. Ugh. I can't even eat in my dining room these days. (Hmm, that helps not eating in front of the TV ... no, no, it's gotta get fixed.) I had wanted to wait until I started pulling income to replace the floors but I revised that decision as I found the smell was making me quite unhappy with the house. So last week I sailed into a flooring store, picked out some beautiful laminate by Armstrong, a superiorly environmental company, and scheduled install on May 21. In addition to pulling out the carpet, I thought I was also going to demo the tile in the kitchen and hall myself. Tried it. That is so not happening by my hands & arms. I can get the tile out, no problem. But the 'concrete board' underneath - no way. It seems quite pathetic - I have been working hard at gaining strength - I can see muscles in my arms when I'm not even "pumped". But man, I just don't have the strength for this! So, I'm paying expert strong people to do it. And they'll haul it away too.

The house is maybe 800 sq ft on the ground floor, and it currenty has 5 different flooring surfaces: carpet in the DR/LR, tile in the kitchen, different tile in the hallway and different tile in the powder room. It's all going to get unified, and I am anticipating that making the place look bigger. Plus it will get rid of those stupid trip-you-up wood strips that cover the transition from each different surface to its neighbor.

* * *
I have started using my 'all-you-can-call' telephone service to connect with friends in California. I had a great conversation with Pat. She has taken a job at Esalen, and is living on site. I plan to make a visit there - it's a beautiful spot on the planet, and now dedicated to spiritual explorations and learning. Our conversation rambled, we were talking about me getting settled in my place. I mentioned that I had bought the book 'Move Your Stuff, Change Your Life'; it's a great guide to Feng Shui. Pat says, excitedly, "Oh I love that book! I have it! I've Feng Shui'ed my yurt!" I had to stop and tell her that only she, in California, at Esalen, could have said that sentance - "I have Feng Shiu'ed my yurt" ... absolutely delightful.

* * *
Two weekends ago I went on a long overdue girl's weekend. It actually was less than 24 hours. Beth and I drove east, Maggie drove west and we met in Saratoga Springs about 3 on Friday afternoon. Beth had found us a place that offered a spa package, 3 people, one night stay and a massage each. It was great to get together, we hadn't been all together for fun since college. We all came prepared - we had 3 bottles of wine, limoncello and one bottle of champagnge between us. Oh yes, we brought apples and crackers and cheese and water too. We were planning on a great time. Started the reunion with our massages, planned to hang out afterwards, get dinner then go out. Note to self - have a massage some other day, instead of the day you plan to go out! We were all so tired, we crashed at about 11. We strolled through the town of Saratoga Springs the next morning, shopped a bit, ate lunch then got back on the road at about 2. So short that it hardly seemed like we'd done it. But it was great to get together and catch up.

* * *
I just changed Mom and then fed her breakfast. This is weird, hard, wonderful, horrifying and incredibly moving all at the same time. Words fail I.

Pastiche - Or - The Sticky Sweet Smell of ... Dog????

Well, many thoughts.

I saw Nancy on Monday, in Trumansberg NY. Too wonderful! It had been 2 years since I saw her face in person, great to hang out. She took me into Ithaca, and I will go back. Fun, funky town and I had not been for some years. On the way, we stopped in Taughannock Falls - and I have this pic as proof!



She and I talked about life in California, her business (FullCalendar.com), our elderly parents. She said something that resonated with me - her parents think she's the same age and capability as them. So does my Dad! He'll say to me "Carole, I don't want you to have to walk that long hallway, so I'll meet you at the door." and I'm like, Dude! I walk 5 miles a day!!! (unfortunate lapse into ValleySpeak, but it illustrates the point.)He thinks I have the same (severely deteriorated) capabilities that he does. So Nancy's story tells me that this is an 'old parent' think, not just an old person thing. Note to Self.

...

So I'm going to move up the schedule on replacing the flooring on the ground floor of the house. I want to Greg & Andreas' over the weekend, to help with getting ready to bring Mom there (!!!) and also to borrow the carpet cleaner. I was sure that the last time my carpet was cleaned (by Greg, yay for brothers!) that he didn't rinse and I was smelling carpet shampoo. Well, they had just done a rug in their house, and the smell of the shampoo was not the same. Hmmm. Greg said, "That sticky sweet smell? That's dog pee!" EEEUW!!! I had lived with a dog, long ago, but she didn't pee in the house. So I shampooed and rinsed twice and the smell is still there. That's it, the floors are getting redone. I had wanted to wait until I had earned some income this life but I can't even eat in my dining room as the smell is rising with the warming weather.

...

Another fun thing I did this weekend was fight with Microsoft Works, Word and Excel. Andrea is the secretary for the Grandview Heights neighborhood association, and she is trying to get the newsletter out (while getting ready to move Mom into her house !!!) So I was trying to get old excel files to do a mail merge to print labels out. She's only got MS Works, and it didn't. So I ran back home, got my laptop, ran back to her place and set it up. Converted the names file into excel and finally figured out the mail merge. Had to install her printer drivers, and it brought my laptop to its knees three times. Needed a hard reset to get going again. But finally, we have labels. And I need to get a desktop machine. I want an OSX Mac. Again, was wanting to wait for income before I splashed out for the new computer. Oh well.

...

At least I have been having lots of fun pushing metal around in the gym. That, plus Yoga plus the crazy busy days have led to my new jeans purchase. My Lucky jeans, size 10, were from before I went to Germany. A bit large so I went to replace them a couple weeks ago. Lord & Taylor in Eastview Mall carries that brand and I got a replacement. Here I am, wearing my size FOUR Lucky Jeans!!! Whoo hoo!!

Still winter in Rochester

But we are getting a break - there is a bit of slush in places but we have had no significant accumulation from this big storm. Good - because I am NOT shoveling snow again this year!

I am starting to find more things to do here. I have a lot of energy to get out of the house. I went to Happy Hour on Friday, and the Opera on Saturday - there's a world-class music school here, the Eastman School of Music. They put on Bellini's 'Capuleti e i Montecci', his Romeo & Juliette story. Beautifully staged, wonderfully sung. But I left at intermission. All the repetitive declaiming - She sings: O Romeo! My father will kill you! while Romeo sings: Oh Guiletta! I love you! Come with me! while her father sings: O Tybaldo! marry Guiletta and be my son! while Tybalt sings: Today I will marry Guiletta! Hah! death to Romeo! over and over and over. So when I am bored out of my mind and about to lapse into helpless giggles over the tedious earnestness of it all, it's time to leave.

I had a dinner guest on Sunday – my first non-family member. I met Bo in Munich, he’s Cita’s husband, I met her though the Ladies International Association. She was on the trip to France in the fall.

Well, the company that Bo works for in Munich has an office here in Rochester, and he was here for work, for the first time, this past week and next. We hooked up on the phone Sunday, after I was at a morning Yoga class. I said I’m drive downtown, where he was staying, to meet for dinner or he could come to my place and I’d make dinner here. He said yes, he’d come to my place. Yikes!!! it was about 1:15 p.m. I scrambled into the shower and zoomed to Wegmans to gather ingredients. I didn’t even stop to make a list. I was concentrating so fiercely on what I needed to get that I didn’t really see if there were other people in the store. I hope I wasn’t frowning! I was in & out in 30 minutes, back home by 3 to get dinner together by 5, when Bo was due. Well, as Rachel Ray says, I took a little help from the store. I made a great salad and chicken pot pie. Bought a chocolate cake. Thank goodness I had vacuumed the house the day before, and it was pretty well picked up.

Bo arrived and we had a great evening. It was so good to see him and absolutely wonderful to have a visceral reminder that yes, I did live in Munich. I had lost the sense of that recently. I am finding my center again as it’s been tossed about by all the change in my life. Not to mention proximity and almost daily contact with parents. Into my email box recently dropped this wonderful quote: “If you think you are spiritual and enlightened … go spend a week with your parents!” by Ram Dass. Ah yes. And I am getting much better and more patient with Dad. He’s mentally declining too, in part due to the Vicodin he’s taking for joint pain. Mom, she’s not even coherent anymore so it’s very easy for me to sit with her.

With the parents situation right now, I need to keep my schedule open, so no JOB. I will start looking for clients and smaller projects that I can do from home, so that I can keep driving Dad around as necessary, and helping Andrea with Mom. Oh, yes, here’s the latest plan: We're bringing Mom to Greg & Andrea's house on April 30th. It's just too much money for the care she gets - no meds, just feeding, changing, cleaning. Andrea would rather be getting paid for that than writing a $9K check each month to the nursing home. I will help out, of course. I'll relieve Andrea so she can do her life stuff, and I'll get Gavin out of the house for fun.

And I'll keep building my new life.

Small victories

I had not been working on the house much, but got galvanized last week to tidy up and resume painting. I have painted the upstairs bathroom, ceiling included, and replaced the lights that were there. The previous lights were a non-delightful pitted cheap brass. So went to Home Depot, got lights, a replacement vent fan for the bathroom to replace the one that sounds like a jet engine, an outside door to replace the one that is sticking/rusting and ripping apart, a set of plastic shelving to replace the wooden ones in the garage in the way of the door replacement (so they'll have to come down) and *poof!* another $500 transferred from my care to theirs. Amazing how quickly that happens.

I have been haunting the local Freecycle, but always seem to be too late to get an item that's offered. Oh well, garage sale season will soon be upon us. I have also been scoring some great clothes at the local Goodwill, I needed jeans and they had 'em!

I did have my sister-in-laws clan over after Easter brunch. 15 people in the house - I don't know how we all fit, but we did. It was great to see. It SNOWED that morning, so we were all inside. Greg had brought over some plastic chairs; good thing or we'd have been sitting on the floor. There are a couple little nieces, and they found it great fun to run around and around with Gavin chasing and/or hiding from them. Miraculously, no one got hurt.

I have been busy and getting busier. Not sure how that's happening, but some of it is the great Yoga classes. The gym I joined started offering 5 Yoga classes a week on March 12th, and I have been to most of them. Plus I'm doing weight training. Gotta keep up the body that Mike built. I'm skimping on the cardio a bit, hoping I can get out on a bicycle soon.

Time to get to the gym and push some metal around!

Things looking up

Even though winter has returned - 26 degrees overnight, with a dusting of snow plus short snow squalls today - I am starting to feel better about being here. last night, at RIT (Rochester Institute of Technology) I attended a lecture entitled "Life is a Gnarly Computation". Who wouldn't attend with a title like that? How cool! The speaker was Rudy Rucker, a math professor and cyberpunk author, currently teaching at San Jose State! Doh! never saw him in the Bay area. The talk was great, and I am still puzzling over the concept of deterministic yet unpredictable computations. More at Rudys blog.

I have also met a couple of chums to go out with, have been to some local clubs both with them and by myself. The trick of getting to know the bouncers/doormen is time-tested, still working. It makes me comfortable in a club if I know someone knows me and I can go chat with them if I want. Plus, it turns out that a 'hello' from one, passed on to another can get the passer of the greeting into a club for free!

As winter is back, and I've been motivated by the liklihood of my brother's in-laws coming over to see the place after easter brunch, I have been working on the house again. I'm currently in between coats of ceiling paint in the second floor bathroom.

Here are a few before pics of the house:

Kitchen into Dining Room Before



Dining Room Before


Dining Room Before



Dining room into Kitchen





Don't have a saw? Use a drill!!



The view from my "office". Only the carpet has changed. I'm ignoring the American Football theme for now.

Signing On

Back in the U.S. long enough to be absolutely disgusted with the news and politics. Must turn to other things for amusement and relief. How about working on the new house? In progress. But since the initial blast to paint and get rid of the "country cheap" decor I find I'm not so interested in spending time working on the place. (I learned a lot in Munich, maybe I'm an apartment girl at heart.) So the all electrical sockets are still exposed, and I still have painting to do. The downstairs carpet now smells both of dog and the carpet shampoo, now that it's warming up a bit. I may need to rip that out and put flooring down.

And when I say "I", I mean throw down the plastic and pay strong knowledgable people to do the work. Man, am I undereducated. I was so happy to have put up a single mini-blind yesterday. Took me 45 minutes, and I was just taking out the old brackets and then putting the new ones in over the same holes. First, the wrong screwdriver in the lovely power drill that my brother gave me as a housewarming present. The heavy, hard-to-use power drill. Once I got the right attachment in, it kept flying itself right out of the screws. And thumping against the window glass in the process. So I cranked 'em out by hand. Pissed me off, so I tried again to use the power tool to screw in the new brackets. Worked for 2 out of 4 screws. By now my arms are ready to fall off. (You hold a 3 pound drill overhead for 20 minutes and see what happens!)But it was finally done, yay me.

I need a new door from the garage into the house. The current steel-covered door is rusting and sticking. I got a book from the library to read up on this process. Was exposed to a whole new vocabulary like King Studs and Jack studs and Brickwork. Studs, I know I need. Shit. I don't know how people learn this stuff but I am in awe of the skill needed to build a house. And in despair of trying to do any of this myself. I'm hella good at painting and cleaning, but the rest? Better get back to work so I can pay experts.

I have been running around like crazy, taking Dad to visit Mom and to his doc appts and getting things for his place; going to the mediator to get the legal separation agreement crafted; going to the gym; buying paint batteries power strips hoses washers for hoses roller covers small drill bits sandpaper grass seed extension cords light bulbs - Home Depot is loving me; helping with the folks finances; visiting Mom; dealing with the nursing home she's in, who seems to think we (the family) don't know Mom and that Mom really would prefer to be sat in her chair in front of a blaring TV under bright florescent lights in a huge open room with random people walking by for hours a day.

Again, thank the Universe for Andrea, who has led the charge to fight for some peace & quiet and pain relief for Mom each day. Last meeting we had with the nursing home staff, the pretzel logic they used was amazing. They tell us that they ask Mom if she's in pain and she doesn't say so. They ASK a woman in the end stages of SEVERE DEMENTIA if she's in pain. Mom will eat her napkin if you don't grab it away from her. So we say, her right knee is swollen and hot and before her stroke on New Year's Eve she was complaining of pain every day. And, when that stroke took her to the Emergency Dept, and they took a CAT scan, they were also so alarmed by the arthritis in her neck that they slapped a cervical collar on her immediatly and wouldn't move her without it. Oh, the staff says, we'll look to see if she's exhibiting any pain and will give her more pain meds if we see something. The fact that she's holding herself immobile and stiff in her chair might indicate that she's in pain, but she doesn't say she's in pain... Well after a couple go rounds here we think the staff is being more attentive. I hope that Mom isn't in pain, but we just don't know.

Dad's now on a Vicodin-like substance to combat his pain. This makes him woozy and he's not tracking things well at all any more. Being with him for lots of time is reminding me just how unattached he is to human beings. Get him talking about Gingko trees or fossils and he lights up and talks for hours. But people, not so much. It turns out it was big news to him that Mom was severly critical of me for my entire adolescence. He was shocked - shocked, he said, to hear of it. Enough of it happened at the dinner table, with him present. I think he just tuned it out. So I'm plumbing the depths of that old pain. Whee.

And the whole divorce thing/being single is really sucking too. I know it's just the change and I will be fine but right now I'm having way too many dinners that consist of wine and Fritos with a chocolate chaser. Looking for healthier coping devices. Spending 2 hours a day in the gym as it is. Hoping that the weather turning warmer will be a boost.

Well, that's cathartic. Hope I haven't bummed you out beyond words. I promise pics soon, I got a device that should help me get the pics off the Camera onto the computer.