Things To Do

* Either have an eye job or go to Hawaii.  To do both would be too greedy? maybe not.  Maybe have the eye job & then go to Hawaii.  Then everyone will think my suddenly youthful appearance is from the vacation

*SELL THIS HOUSE

* Try convincing people to STOP using the chains on the ceiling fans! That's what the remote control &/or wall switch is for.  I'm sick of guessing why the lights don't come on when I press the button on the remote. I swear I'm going to climb up on the table & cut the chains off. That'll teach them.

*Find the cure for Dementia

* Stop letting people upset me, just ignore them.  I have this overwhelming urge though to engage anyone who irritates me.

*Somehow skip the next 4 years without anyone getting any older. (You know why)

*As alternative to last entry: A bolt of lightening strikes DJT & he isn't hurt at all, Instead he will suddenly become smart & compassionate ( and truthful).

* become a computer genius so that everything is not such a challenge.

*Lose 20 lbs overnight

*go zip lining

* overcome my deficits at learning a foreign language & parking a car.

* have dinner with Ina Garten, Martha Stewart, the notorious RBG, Jane Goodall, Elizabeth Warren, Gloria Steinem, Al Franken, Cory Booker, Rachel Maddow , Jaques Pepin, Ana Navaro, Armistead Maupin, David Sedaris, Joy Reid, Charlie Sykes, Charlie Kaufman, Mel Brooks and the entire staff of the New Yorker magazine.

* add names to above list as they occur to me.  I will be so embarrassed about the people I forgot the first time.

*come to terms with the fact that I no longer have my finger on the pulse of pop culture.

*Go see Broadway musical HAMILTON

*ride on one of those sail boats that have hammocks that hang over the water.

*find a time machine & tell myself to major in art history, not Speech Pathology

*Actually, find a time machine & tell myself a lot of things not to do!

*Become as funny as Andy Borowitz and Calvin Trillian

*Open a Kosher Dairy restaurant & serve things like cauliflower soup and pasta putanesca. I wouldn't have to work hard, it could be like a restaurant on TV where the owner just stays front of house & talks to patrons.

*get blocked on Twitter by DJT

*I don't want to own a gun, I just want to go to a shooting range & get a lesson. Strange coming from a pacifist.

*Actually go to a Yoga, Tai Chi, meditation class & stop talking about it.

*not kill an orchid

*be known as that cool old lady with the strangely youthful eyes whose place is fun to hang out at.

Good Behavior

There is a new TV show called Good Behavior on USA Network.  I love the show.  The joke is that the protagonist is on parole from prison because of good behavior, but she practices lots of bad behavior on the outside including hooking up with a paid hitman & blowing off her required visits with her parole officer Christian.  Christian is also paying for some previous bad behavior as at one time he was a University Professor, but is now a parole officer due to some "hanky panky" with one of his students.

I don't know what this has to do with me, but I enjoy the concept that perhaps we are always paying for previous bad behavior by trying to do good.

I by no means believe that I have earned the load I am carrying around with me now.  It's just the way it is.  I've been in the right place at the right/wrong time. Did I show enough good behavior in the past to prove I'm up to these challenges?  Are these stressors really here to help me learn a lesson? I want to yell " OK already, I get it, let me live in peace."

I don't have the discipline to write every day, even tho I want to.  I have made promise after promise to no avail.  Thus my first blog post since March, I think. Yesterday I was talking to a case manager from Pima Council on Aging (my 3rd or 4th in less than 2 years)  I don't fire or drive them away, there is just a huge turnover.  I keep holding on by my finger nails until I have to tell the whole story to a new person.  If they are supportive & tell me what a lot I have faced & how well I have handled it, I have a stress induced pity party.  Ironically, these phases are sometimes when I get the most done.  ( I really want to climb into bed & pull the covers over my head which I'll admit I do at times).

The case manager was here yesterday to review services my mom is eligible for.  Currently, we get 8 hours of respite care a week & financial assistance with her bathroom needs.  In the last 2 years and 3 mos, we have spent approximately $98,000 on caregiving services & other necessities such home owners insurance, property taxes, household repairs,prescription co pays, food, electricity, car insurance, etc, etc......
We are not wasting money.  We have a 15 year old car, have taken no vacations or purchased much clothing & certainly no lottery tickets.  The landscaper keeps the yard looking nice. I couldn't do that.  The pest control guy helps keep scorpions out of our house, I figured out the other day that this house costs approx. $12,000/year just to sit here with no people living in it.  We are selling the house & moving to a 2 bedroom apartment.  My mom doesn't like it & I'm afraid it is speeding along the advance of her dementia.  We had a month long garage sale.  I have sold almost everything of any worth at the garage sale, ebay & craig's list.  We have been living on these proceeds for the last 3 months.  I think I have to stay in the house until it sells, but I'm sorely tempted to figure out how we could move now & get it over with.

I've been reading The Minimalists on Face Book.  I love the concept.  My mother & father had so much stuff in this house that it took a full 3 months to get it out of here (either selling or donating).  They were not hoarders by any means, but they were collectors.  I've had to face that things are not the people who passed them on to you.  The people are in your heart forever, the stuff is just that, stuff.  It wasn't just my parents stuff we disposed of.  I sold keepsakes I didn't think I would ever part with.  I recycled my old year books.  Sold all of the games & almost all of the furniture. As all of this stuff left the house, I felt so much lighter.  I felt as though I had been carrying the weight of it around on my back because I knew someday I would have to figure out what to do with it. Don't worry, we still have at least 18 photo albums that need to be digitalized some day. My mom's chief caregiver thinks that what I want to keep will not fit into an apartment.  We shall see.



For those who do not know this is a summary of the last 13 years:  My father is diagnosed with a brain tumor& dies within a year, A month later, my sister is diagnosed with colo-rectal cancer & spends much of the 22 months before she died being cared for by me.  Meanwhile, my mother's health declines, breaks her arm, is in constant back pain, & is hospitalized about 5 times.  In 2013 I am diagnosed with colo rectal cancer, have radiation, chemo, surgery, more chemo, more surgery as well as breaking my arm & my ankle, getting kidney stones, heart arrythmia, & a few other things.  I realize this isn't all about me.  These things happened to my dad, sister, mom.  I was just there to help them. Who mostly took care of me? my friends & family helped a little, but in the end it was me & my mom's caregivers who took care of me.  Sometimes I was paying 2 caregivers at once.  I have never seen money disappear so fast in my life! Don't want to give anyone the  impression I need a bake sale, just your willing readership!

There's no one in the place except you & me

The post title is either the title or a lyric from a Frank Sinatra song that is swirling around in my head. It is 5:30 am and my mom has hardly slept. These nights are happening more often. I'm going to have to call the doctor to ask her if we should increase my mom's meds or hire someone to keep her comfortable at night. Comfortable means getting her drinks or pain medicine and reassuring her that she is safe. She sees things that are threatening such as strange men,groups of people having a party & 5 minutes ago she became very frightened because there is a bear in the room. I try to reassure her that we are alone, that this is her house, the doors are locked, that she must have had a bad dream or that the things she sees are in her brain. I have to be careful with how I talk about the last thing though. She is very aware that things are going wrong with her thinking. She says see is "cracking up" "going nuts" or that she needs a psychiatrist. She is scared of sleep cause she's afraid of not waking up so she talks & talks to herself trying to keep herself awake. When she panics she calls my name until I wake up & go to her room. Thank goodness for the 3 hour nap I had yesterday while a caregiver was here because nether my mom nor I had much sleep tonight.

Both of us need more sleep for the obvious & not so obvious reasons. One of my doctors ( how many do I have now? 10 I think)  said a person needs 4 consecutive hours of sleep out of the goal of 7-8 hours a night. The 4 hours is to restore many brain functions & to burn fat. I haven't had more than 3 or 3 1/2 hours of uninterrupted sleep in a long time. Another doctor said " a sleepy brain is a hungry brain" consequently the 10 extra pounds that I have carried around the last few months.

I wish the support groups I tried were more helpful. I'd rather stay at home and nap. Oh and the talking stick annoyed me as well as the many rules. If I want to be bossed around, again I'd rather be at home being told what to do & how to do it by my mom.

I have proof read this but as sleepy as I am I probably made errors. Please understand.

I couldn't find my humor button for this post. Usually I try to channel my heroine Nora Ephron but not tonight. 

Yawn.....