Stress!

    There is this pandemic. Then there are fires near where some family members live. Then there are these two hurricanes in the Gulf. Then my mother is recovering from a broken hip and surgery for it, and my siblings and I are taking turns being with her so she is not alone. She would like to not need the help, but it cannot be avoided right now. The Virus complicates all decisions regarding having people come in to her home. Nurses and therapy are essential, but if we can avoid bringing in any more outside help, we will. 

    I am balancing decisions to visit Mom with the caregiving I am doing in my own home, trying not  to ask too much of my husband, who has been super supportive, but is working from home full-time too. At least I do not have young children to help with online school. But I have a daughter who may be teaching in person in two weeks and I will be worried for her every day. And we won't be able to see her in person until post-vaccination, whenever that will be. And I have a daughter who requires looking after here at home.

Camp Analog/Digital

    This pandemic-physical-distancing-and-caregiving-at-home experience has been a strange combination of re-discovering old-school activities and learning or using more often new technologies. We're doing a little of everything, to pass time and for mental sanity. 

Usual or re-discovered activities:                    Technology used more often or for first time:

keeping a written journal                                    blogging, social media more often

using a clothesline                                              ordering clothesline online along with groceries

writing a letter                                                     emailing and texting more often

reading the newspaper                                        using apps to get headlines

basic cooking                                                      curbside take-out and drive-through

reading books from library                                  listening to podcasts, audio books

puzzles                                                                 app games

phone calls                                                           Zoom, Facetime, Conference calls

handcrafts                                                            YouTube tutorials

organizing photos into albums                             editing, uploading, posting photos

hand-sewing, mending                                         making and ordering masks, Etsy

buying seeds and plants at a nursery                    getting seeds in the mail, ordering potting soil

studying nature with pocket field guides             using naturalist apps

playing an instrument                                           getting really familiar with Spotify

spending time with immediate family                  electronic communication with extended family

scheduling doctor appointments                           scheduling video appointments                                  

online shopping for some things                           online shopping for everything 

Self-Mentoring - Be the Sunflower you want to see in the World?

Not feeling very sunny this morning.

R had to have blood drawn today from two different doctors' orders. Husband took her. Got a call from him that they only had one of the orders. something went wrong with the faxing. Now she is going to have to go get stuck again sometime soon. Waiting to hear back from the doctor's office.

R complained about the breakfast things I put out for her when she got back, all things she likes, but of course, not what she had in mind. We are out of her cereal. I scolded her for this pattern of often complaining about the foods that I provide. It is extremely annoying and I finally lost it. I have raised a spoiled griper when it comes to food. No wonder the idea of deciding what's for dinner each night can sometimes feel joyless. Ugh. This would be so much more "normal" if she were seven instead of thirty-seven.

In trying to imagine how a mentor would counsel me in this situation, I can only come up with: "Ann, you provide a variety of good nutritious and tasty foods for your family. R is certainly not wanting for nourishment. She has the chance to choose breakfast and lunch items usually, but she had to eat and take meds right away and you put out things she likes. She needs to be adaptable enough to accept that. As for dinner, she can eat it or leave it. You know what she likes and dislikes. You accommodate her as much as is reasonable, and at least once a week she gets to choose what she wants during a drive-through lunch outing. She needs to develop a little more flexibility and appreciation."

"Now, to help you - Morning walks in the summer are refreshing. Take the dog and get out for ten, fifteen or twenty minutes. Get outside before it gets hot. (Forecast is high of 106 today). Stay inside most of the rest of the day, with brief trips outdoors to do things like hang laundry, do a little light gardening, sit a few minutes in the sun, or several minutes in the shade. Have your to-do list but also do something you enjoy. Keep R on a healthy routine. After dinner, take her out for a short walk around the neighborhood, even if you have to 'drag her kicking and screaming', maybe around sunset. Remember she loves pretty sunsets and she cannot see them easily from inside the house."

Who can mentor me about the school situation? L moved into her new apartment and had us over last night. She is having fun settling in and I wanted to be excited for her. I am, but worried, very worried about her being on her school campus next month. It's not clear how this is going to be managed safely, this back-to-school process. She moved out of our house and into this apartment because she knew she might have to be on campus and she did not want to bring back sickness to us. She said that would cause her a great deal of anxiety and she wouldn't want to bear that. Ok, I said, ok.

Whenever I start to think about it too much I go a little mental. How is she going to teach safely? It would only take one exposure and it could be bad, very bad. I am so angry at the way it is being trivialized by some of our top leaders. Thank goodness our governor is tracking towards taking protective measures now. Needless to say I am ignoring everything the President says. It is too confusing trying to sift through the facts and the falsehoods. I waste less time and energy when I go to the experts for information I can trust.

Grocery orders will be arriving today, with lots of fresh fruits I hope. Time to get back on the anti-inflammatory track. Joints are complaining and eyes are dry. RA and Shogran, reacting to stress and diet.

Of Sea Turtles and Patience

I love wildlife, and sea turtles are some of my favorites. We've been to a few of the sunrise baby sea turtle releases on the Texas Gulf Coast, where we join dozens of other early risers to gather round, and watch the little ones scurry along as they are released into the sea as part of conservation efforts. I've seen documentaries about female sea turtles lumbering ashore to patiently dig there sandy nests, lay their eggs, and slowly, persistently, cover them with sand. They are still swift in the water, but not so much on land.

If my daughter R had a spirit animal, it would be a sea turtle. When she was little, she was like the baby turtles, faster and heading for water. As she has grown up, her pace has slowed to an extreme. If I could get her into a pool, I think she would become a swimmer again. She learned to swim at age 4. It always freed her somewhat from the limitations of cerebral palsy. She was a different girl in water.

She is very slow all the time now. She can't help it. In fact she needs a walker full time, and tends toward losing her balance when she has to move briefly away from it. Her neurologist has told us we may continue to see a decline because of the particular neurological issues she has. In fact he thinks she may eventually need a wheelchair. She has no interest in swimming. I've tried. We joined a YMCA for awhile hoping she would get interested again, but she didn't.

Slowness has always been a particular issue in her adult life. At her group home, getting ready to go to the dayhab center has often been something I would get calls about, with the transport van having to wait on her and people getting impatient. I know how it is. I get impatient too. Now that we are at home together again, I am having to re-learn how to cope with my impatience, when she takes forever in the bathroom, especially. We don't have to go anywhere often now thankfully, but there was a tele-visit with the doctor yesterday, and I had to hurry her along to get her through lunch and situated in front of the computer. Luckily we made it on time.

It doesn't help for me to stand around, waiting for her, getting more and more stressed. It never has helped her to go any faster to do that. What does seem to help me is chores and projects. In other words, my whole day cannot be hovering around her waiting for her to get done with whatever I want her to do. I have to be busy doing other things. I'm getting a little better at determining what I can do during the wait times - while she is deciding what she wants for breakfast or lunch, while she is showering, brushing her teeth, while she is getting her laundry, getting things to fix her hair or just getting herself up from a chair. I can't just stand around waiting. So I keep myself occupied, and let her go at her own pace. It's the only way to keep my cool.

Some day I hope to persuade her to swim again.

Up's and Down's

The up's and down's of this time. The down's are overwhelming some days. Isolation for another year maybe. It takes a conscious effort to notice the up's.

Well, I'm cooking more. I'm doing some container gardening. Spending more time with my family here. Appreciating nature and simple things more. Hanging out all those cloth masks and table linens on the clothesline in the summer sun and breeze. Watching a lot of good public television. Getting a lot of scrapbooking done. I've done some small bits of home decor improvements. Ordering groceries online has become enjoyable. Doing my best to tamp down the anxiety. Doing my best to keep from having to be taken care of by health care professionals. They are already overburdened and taking risks enough. I'll just wait this out. It beats the alternative. I've got a few more years' worth of photos to put in albums. My family needs me to stay out of circulation so I can be there for them. I will worry about my daughter the teacher as she moves to her own apartment and navigates the coming school year. I've stopped watching the news. I know what to do and I am going to keep on doing it. I am thankful that I can.

My husband and I formally met at an upstairs lounge in Kemah, Texas. We were co-workers and were out with a group. The lounge was above Jimmie Walker's restaurant in 1982. It was called UP's. In 2018, we ate at the current restaurant, Landry's Seafood House, in the same building. Thinking about Up's and Down's made me think about it.

UP's

2018

Very Basic How-To: Scrapbooking

This is how I used to do Scrapbooking. This kind of Scrapping is artistic and creative, but does take a lot of time and effort. I'm proud of my work, but I have scads of pictures to put into albums still, and I found another way to do it that is equally satisfying, and might mean that I get them into albums during my lifetime.

I get this kind of album from Michael's. It is a mega-album, 50 pages, black paper inserts in plastic sleeves. Michael's does delivery and curbside right now and often has sales or coupons.

These are my basic supplies: a cropping tool, photo sticker squares, self-adhesive photo corners, and a white pen. Amazon has photo corners in packages of up to 360, and probably everything else too.

I write with the white pen, in cursive, on the black paper. For me it is simple and elegant, and I enjoy it.

Here are some more examples:

It's kind of a vintage look, where the photos speak more for themselves, with captions as needed, so that some day, when my memory is even worse than it is now, I'll have given myself clues as to who and what the scenes are all about.

When I have many, many photos of an event, and I still have many after thinning out the duplicates and the duds, I make page blasts or collages like this, especially where captioning is not really needed:

And it is also fun to included brochures, ticket stubbs and other ephemera to add color and interest.

So, if you are thinking that being stuck at home might present a good opportunity to organize all those boxes of old photos you have stashed away, but you are not inclined to the more elaborate forms of scrapbooking that involve buying lots of extra supplies and tools, this might be a way to go for you too.

A Little Escape from Confinement

    Sometimes each one of us in the family who drives, gets in their car and goes for a drive. I did this Saturday. R and I went out together for a drive-through lunch. She likes to do that. We even got ice cream. Later that afternoon I needed to get out by myself, so I drove east to a spot that I knew might have fields of sunflowers. East of I35, the land is more prairie-like as opposed to our area which is rockier and hillier, west of I35. Round Rock straddles the Balcones Escarpment. If you go from one extreme side of the area to the other, the difference is apparent.
    I found a pull-off, parked and even got out for awhile. No one was around. I had a mask in case I needed it. I took some pictures, and just took in the sun, the breeze, the sounds of birds and the bright happy sunflowers.
    It was what I needed. I went back home refreshed. The next day, Father's Day, we picked up barbecue, and went back to the sunflower fields pull-off, parked and ate dinner. It was nice for all of us.