Caregiver diversions

Poignant

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My cousin called my writing poignant.  It is a word of which I do not have a clear meaning.  He called to wish me a happy birthday a few days ago.  Instead he caused me to think about my list of childhood memories some more. The list is something that I work on occasionally as the mood suits me.

Poignant to me means personal, important and a little bit sad. So, I suppose this little blog of mine is poignant. It does come from my heart.

But more to the point why do I find anger in myself when I am attempting to be phlegmatic and calm and loving? Cheryl is often unable to help herself and unable to ask for help with certain things. It is not her that finds this behavior satisfying. It is simply her disease. I tell my inner self this over and over but it does not always last.

Let’s try earrings, for example. She loses them. She cannot get the little clip on that holds them to her earlobes. She loses the little keeper. I bought a box of assorted earring backs on Amazon. A thousand of them for $6. Often I find myself searching for something that requires the sight of a twenty year old person. Can you detect the creeping anger? (smiley face here)

Cheryl did not have her ears pierced until after we were married. Whoever pierced them was perhaps nervous about causing pain in another human being. Whether or not that is the truth, she flinched when poking the hole in her right ear at least. This has made it hazardous to get that earring inserted properly throughout her life. Her Parkinson’s wiggly motion makes inserting the post worse. Her occasional numbness in her fingers makes it virtually impossible and for some reason this drives me crazy. (smiley – sad face). Part of that might be because I want to find the beautician who did this originally and get her money back.

I know not why I focus on earrings for my anger. I was stuck there for a bit last evening when we went to church.

The opening hymn : Healing River of the Spirit

Healing river of the Spirit, bathe the wounds that living brings. 
Plunge our pain, our sin, our sadness deep beneath your sacred springs.
Weary from the restless searching that has lured us from your side.
We discover in Your presence peace the world cannot provide.

Wellspring of the healing Spirit, stream the the flows to bring release.
As we gain ourselves, our senses may our lives reflect your peace.
Grateful for the flood that heals us, may your church enact your grace.
As we meet both friend and stranger, may we see our Savior's face.

Living stream that heals the nations, make us channels of your power.
All the world is torn by conflict; wars are raging at this hour.
Saving Spirit move among us, guide our winding human course.
Until we find our way together, flowing homeward to our Source.

I take Cheryl to church as long as she is feeling up to it. I have little interest in church and religion but she does. I do however sing hymns that I know and am comfortable singing. (It is one of the things on my list that I referred to above.) Sometimes hymns touch me in an inexplicable way. This is one. My inner anger melted away.

After the service we walked through the parking area which was covered up with booths getting ready for the last day of the festival at our church. We ran into some friends and Cheryl began talking to Kay. I rudely interrupted to ask my wife if she knew to whom she was talking. She told me her name was Kay. I was rude. I suppose I was worried she did not know Kay’s name. I was wrong about that. It was not necessary to be rude. I apologized and explained to Kay.

I suppose church had gotten Cheryl out of her previous couple of days where she did not know who I am and where she lives. I was unaware and over protective.

Every day is a winding road. Reread the last two lines of the hymn. (smiley face)

Carpe Diem.

August – My Birth Month

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Happy birthday to me! On the twenty-first day of August I will note my seventy-second anniversary of my my birth. I have heard this referred to as “trip around the Sun”. I fell down the rabbit hole of how far is that? Naturally Wikipedia provided information and details. This is a trip of 5,062,273 million miles so far and it does not include any travel here on Earth.

Thanks to Mom and Dad for having me. I have gone a long way so far.

And now August is Zane Ryan’s birth month. (7# 3oz. 11:49PM) August 2, 2021 — forever to be known as Zane’s birthday! Babies are a gift.

How many miles will he travel?

Carpe Diem.

A fun trip to CA

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My daughter gave me a gift I may never be able to fully appreciate. In many ways I feel refreshed. I had not realized or believed how important it is for someone caring for another who has a chronic disease to be able to get away from that situation for a bit. It took a couple days for me to relax. My daughter somehow knew this and sort of pushed me into it.

Way back at the beginning of Spring I was two weeks past my second vaccination dose. I called my sister in Portland, Oregon whom I had not seen in person for about five years and asked, “What are you doing the end of April?” I explained the whole vaccination scenario. She was vaccinated also and over the past few months we had discussed traveling the countryside and having a hug tour. She has a very good friend in Florida and they got together about once a year somewhere. She had not been with Phyllis in awhile.

She suggested meeting up in Sacramento CA to visit for a bit, drink a little wine and attend our nephew’s wedding. What a great idea!

Last week I headed West to visit.

Over the course of several telephone conversations Joyce and settled on a little inn located in Freeport, California called Freeport Wine Country Inn. This turned out to be an ideal location for site seeing, wine drinking and visiting. It is a little inn with ten rooms and a bistro which was not officially open when we were there but probably is as I write this. California was not officially open yet, Gavin did not have his big announcement until the following week but the population was pushing in that direction. Next door is the Freeport Bar & Grill. An excellent location for drinks and dinner. Breakfast is available at the golf course on the other side of the Bar & Grill but we found the Cafe Latte about a mile up the road on Friday morning and went there everyday afterward. Overall neither of us had any complaints about our accommodations.

The Freeport Inn is a very low key relaxed inn run by Marnie and John. I recommend it to everyone. Across the street (Freeport blvd.) and up the levee is the Sacramento River and nice walking/biking path (albeit gravel) on an old railroad track. About six miles north on Freeport Boulevard is the California State Capitol building and gardens.

The picture at the top of this post was taken by Jeff Hook. Most pictures of the Sacramento skyline show this lift bridge across the Sacramento river. It is on the other end of Mall Blvd. from the capitol building. Few show the state capitol building.

We traveled to Pittsburg for dim sum with the nephews one day. We traveled to Lodi another day to Stama Winery and Dancing Fox Winery for a little tasting and lunch. South Lake Tahoe made the agenda on the third day with lunch obtained from a sandwich shop and an empty picnic table facing the lake only made more perfect by a younger Hispanic woman cooking on a grill nearby for mom and dad and the rest of her family. It smelled heavenly.

The wedding happened on Sunday in the afternoon between two very happy people who seem very much in love.

Joyce and I parted ways reluctantly at the rental car return. At Sacramento International Airport there are two terminals and as near as I could tell there was no transport between them without leaving the secure area. Bummer. We were early for our flights. I was because Joyce was driving and her plane left about an hour before mine. Joyce was early because that’s the way she rolls. Sitting for a bit at the departure gate with a sandwich and a bottle of water, my phone played its little text message tune. My flight would probably be late into Dallas-Ft. Worth were I had to make a connecting flight. I settled in with my book to wait for what the rest of the day would bring.

Carpe week-em! If someone offers to keep track of your loved one for a bit while you travel and hang out, take it! Do not feel guilty. Two things will happen, that person will understand better what you have been dealing with and you will get some time off from a burden that you accepted gracefully but had no knowledge of how much it would narrow your world when you started.

It is called respite for a reason. My daughter kept a little journal of activities and gave it to me when I got home. We exchanged a lot of text messages in between and I called every day but she was with Mom.

The trip home was amusing but I did not concern myself with things I had no control over. This is something PD has taught me over the years.

Carpe Diem, baby!

Visit with Friends

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We had a nice long visit with friends yesterday.

Life long friends.

High school friends — Paul and I met in high school. We met probably in homeroom of our freshman year. My memory is vague on that account. Nevertheless we spent a great deal of time together in class. His surname was one letter off of mine, so often we were seated side by side in the back of class. Occasionally we were seated so that I was behind him in class and in one instance with a teacher whose last name also began with W, we were side by side in the front row. Teachers like alphabetical.

Paul was always nearby. I could touch him if I needed to do that. Sitting behind him in class was a plus. I was tall and grew taller in high school. He was taller than me throughout our high school years. In that one class I could hide if I wanted. It did not last long.

Purcell High School

We were not competitive in high school just good friends. It is rare that a friendship develops and remains throughout two lives in which being apart is as though it was not when those friends meet. Their meeting may be often or seldom but when they meet once more it is as though no separation happened. Our friendship is like that.

Through life our worlds separated and re-connected in a celestial mystical dance. We went to different universities. We got married. Magically our wives like each other. Raised families. Followed our own life paths. Attended our kids marriages. And as the families grew and spread out, we met up every few years to vacation together.

Cheryl’s reaction to an adjustment in her Parkinson’s medication destroyed our last attempt to vacation together. The disease is adding an element of confusion, hallucination and dementia as it progresses within her.

In the fall of 2019 we successfully made a trip to Florida by car to visit with family. After the pandemonium of COVID, I hope to make the trip north to visit Paul and Cathy. Cheryl occasionally talks about that and before I get too old, I suppose we should try.

With wonderful friends we had a wonderful, peaceful visit yesterday. We had long conversations about totally random topics that included children, grand children, the stock market, parents, food, diets and onward. Thinking about it now after the fact, I do not recall each individual topic. Our conversation merely flowed from one thing to the next. Occasionally it stopped. We were comfortable with listening to the cicadas. It was a pleasant afternoon and Cheryl had a peaceful sleep filled night afterward.

There are no cicadas in Minnesota.

Carpe Diem.

On Cicadas

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There is a low whirring (whoring?) hum in the air. I had forgotten that part. The birds are excited. I remember that part.

Not our Elm but similar

At our old house when we bought it in 1980, there was a huge American elm in the backyard. It was in the center of a square of yard about eighty-five feet on a side. It did not crowd any buildings or other trees so over time it had developed that beautiful umbrella canopy. We moved into the house in February. I remember thinking, wow that is a neat tree. At the time I was unfamiliar with elms and dutch elm disease.

When spring came it leafed out in a fashion similar to the picture below. The tree was dying from the back as viewed from our kitchen window. We got a couple of tree wizards out to look at it and decide what to do. The only solution was removal. It is sad to remove a tree that size. The tree was about sixty years old. The person who planted it was an optimist and we intended to cut down their legacy.

Summer of a dying elm tree

After the tree was removed we had a stump about four feet in diameter and about chair height that for a few years the kids enjoyed by having tee parties and building ramps to jump bicycles off of. The stump was in a level area at the bottom of a long downhill driveway. I watched from the kitchen one day as our son came flying down the driveway on his bicycle, went up the ramp and failed to stick the landing on the other side in the grass. Certainly a learning experience about Newton’s laws.

There are lots of Newton cartoons. I like this one.

We planted a cherry tree hybrid graft at the end of the driveway after we removed the elm tree. Fruit seemed like a good alternative. I had started a vegetable garden on the far side of the yard and left the center for the kids to play in. It was a grand space for play.

About six years later the cherry tree was perhaps twelve feet tall and producing enough cherries in a season that I was protecting the cherries from the birds with netting. The cicadas came out that year, looked around and said to each other, “what happened to our tree?”. They made the long trek to the maple in the back and the cherry tree at the foot of the drive. From the perspective of the kitchen window, it was as though the grass in the back became liquid and was flowing away from the stump. It was an incredible sight.

The birds showed up for the cherries but ignored the tree fruit. There was a plethora of protein walking around in the grass hunting for any vertical object. Robins ate so many bugs they needed a runway to take off. It was amazing to watch.

The female cicadas did a good job of pruning the small branches that come out where the tree blooms and then fruits. The year of the cicadas was the first year we harvested enough fruit to make pies and jelly. The following year was better. The tree produced even more fruit than previous years. I attribute it to the pruning done by the lady cicada society.

We moved from that house to our little condo about five years ago. From our screened in back patio area I can hear the whirring sound. It is raining a bit and will do so for a couple hours according to my weather app. The bugs have not whipped themselves into a feverish sexual frenzy yet. They will later.

Over time the moles have herded them into just a small area near our back porch. Some climb into our screened in area. I pick them off the screen one by one throw them out the door. Most are not instinctive fliers. About one in three flaps its wings and buzzes off to the trees in the back when I throw them out the door. I shout encouragement to them as I throw them out the door. I explain Newton’s laws but they do not listen. My wife does not like bugs. For a couple weeks I can have the porch to myself.

One got most of the way to the trees but, sadly was snatched out of the air by a hungry bird. Newton did not matter. Its genes will not be passed on.

from WRAL in North Carolina

They are not good fliers but that is not their intent. They are lovers.

Carpe Diem bugs.

A Prescription

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Many years ago my family doctor gave me this prescription.  “6 weeks on a sunny beach” — He has since retired from private practice.  Looking back to that year from today, there was a lot going on in my life.  Looking at the date on the prescription, June 28, 2006, it was the first year that Cheryl started noticing symptoms of Parkinson’s. There is still much happening in our life.

None of those things is as peaceful as this rose. Thanks to Edie Kynard’s Art I have this wonderful rose to contemplate.

In a couple weeks I will travel to California to be with my sister and others to celebrate my nephew’s marriage.

In one week Ohio is officially open for mask-less escapades to wherever.

Last evening our stock club met in our favorite bar for the third time this year.  (We talked about death stocks.  See previous post.)  The presenter of SCI did not solidly endorse it as a stock for the club to buy at this time. Perhaps the club is not solidly interested in deathly stocks. Kroger is in our portfolio and it was up for revue (yes it is misspelled on purpose). Part of the discussion settled around how much Joe Biden’s $15 minimum wage proposal would affect Kroger’s bottom line. ( I am not sure why it is Joe’s idea but there are many conservative capitalists in our club.) A quick search of the internet of all knowledge turns up the information that the average folk starts at $11.62 at Kroger. If you can wield a knife in the meat department or can read a pharmacy order you can get more. Last year Kroger had about 465k employees. Assuming 10% of those are new employees which seems high but bear with me, 46.5Kx3.38 = $157170.00 per hour increase in base pay or $314,340,000.00 per year assuming 40 hour week and 50 weeks per year or .24% of sales for that same time. A surprisingly small percentage number when you do the math. If they collected an extra penny on all items they could pay the $15 minimum wage and pocket the extra $1G or so. Nice.

Our society is slowly, steadily climbing out of the darkness of the pandemic shutdown but it still goes on in the world. Donald wanted to make America great again.  It already was great.  Here is the chance to make it greater.

There are many things to fix that would make America greater. Overall though, just merely treating others with kindness, patience and dignity will make America greater.

Why is it important for some folks to control others life experience?  Is it simple jealousy or envy? Maybe changing that attitude in those folks would improve life a bit.

Is there societal value to imposing one’s own personal values on another? Look inside and think about how you would react to unsolicited advice about your particular situation or perhaps unreasonable restrictions on your actions and then answer that question. Of course everyone’s situation is different. Income disparity affects health and healthcare choices. Income disparity affects diet.

Perhaps Andrew Yang has the correct approach. It is at least a different approach.

I did not start this post with the thought of chasing the minimum wage or a universal basic income but Carpe Diem.

Things That Make You Happy

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Lately I have been thinking about this topic. It came to me while helping my son build a new shed in his backyard. We had planned to go visit on a Sunday afternoon. He had bought a kit the previous week. He had assembled the floor on Saturday and we used that to assemble the frames for the walls. It is was very satisfying work. It made me feel useful and happy. Dinner was good that evening.

That feeling of being useful made me feel happy. The physical exercise was probably part of it too.

The Covid-19 pandemonium has kept me from seeing my sister for a long time. It is not as though we need to see each other often but of our original family only she and I are left. Somehow that makes it more important to talk and see each other. I have set up a trip out west to visit her. My nephew, Jeffrey, is getting married soon, so she and I will meet in his part of the universe. We will meet up a couple days ahead of time and wear ourselves out eating and chatting. I have spent the money with the airline. The trip is set that makes me happy.

Acceptance of what is removes doubt and anxiety about what might have been. Those concerns that are no longer concerning can make one happy. Look at this little cartoon I tripped over somewhere. Look at all the negatives that one leaves behind by accepting the fact that it is raining. Yup. It is raining. You will get wet today. Plan accordingly.

One cannot change the weather.

Today I frittered away much of the day reading a novel that I began yesterday evening before going to bed. I very much enjoy discovering an author whom I have not read before and becoming immersed in the story being told. The outside world disappears for a time. It makes me happy.

Once in a while little disappointments creep into our lives. We can dwell on those and build them into the mansion that they are not or they can be let go. If one does not dwell on the disappointments in life and focuses on the joys of life, happiness comes in abundance.

Zarchary

Look at this face and tell me that it does not give your heart joy and make you happy. Young children in all their innocence have to be taught life’s disappointments. How would they turn out if they were never taught these things? What if they were only taught life’s joys?

In this world of Parkinsonism that Cheryl and I find ourselves I look for happiness wherever I am able to find it. Most times it is in the very small things where I find happiness. If Zachary comes to visit and does not get upset when Mom leaves for a couple hours we are happy. If Cheryl is having a good day after she has slept well she is happy which makes me happy. If we have lunch out and she is able to find something that she wants she is happy which makes me happy. In a few days we will celebrate Cheryl’s birthday in a park. It may rain. Inclement weather is predicted for that day. But I will be happy. We have had one more year together.

Stay moving and get as much exercise as you can stand. It releases endorphins and makes you happy.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31888602/ – A relationship exists between physical activity and happiness

https://8fit.com/fitness/exercise-and-happiness/ — How exercise affects our mental health

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/aug/25/does-having-children-make-you-happy-yes-if-you-let-them — Children and happiness

Pie makes anyone happy

Carpe Diem

On Making Pies

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Perhaps if one would choose, a bit more experience would precede making a pie for company.

About Thursday of last week, something she saw on television or read in the paper caused her to decide that she would make a pie for dessert on Sunday.

In her mind’s eye, it was no big deal. In her mind’s eye there is no Parkinson’s disease. In her mind’s eye she has plenty of stamina. On the way home from dinner at Through the Garden Restaurant on Friday evening we stopped at the grocery and bought some apples. On Saturday she cut up and peeled three of the four apples and had to sit down. I peeled and cut up the last one and another for just-in-case.

She took her meds and laid down for a bit. When she felt a little better, I made the crust under her tutelage. We (I) rolled it out and started over about a dozen times. I quit to put on shoes and gather my stuff for a trip to the store for a premade crust. On the way through the kitchen I stopped to try just once more with a twist.

My twist worked and we (I) assembled the pie.

Today we will take it to my son’s house to see how it turned out.

My other son’s wife is an expert pie maker. I probably should have subcontracted the pie to her and they live pretty close by. Maybe next time I will do this or maybe next time I will practice making crust.

Martha Stewart has a website full of ideas.

My pie – ready for transport

Carpe Diem!