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 |  Just play: don't look at your hands! |
What a dumb title for a person who never got a single star  on her piano lessons!Daily practice is the thing though: the practice of noticing as well as of writing.  However, I'd much rather play duets than solos, so hop right in! You can do the melody or the base part, I don't care.  Just play along--we'll make up the tune as we go. I'll try to write regularly and deliberately. Sometimes I will do it poorly, tritely, stiltedly, obscurely. I will try to persevere regardless. It seems to be where my heart wants to go, and that means to me that God wants me there too. See you tomorrow. ![Merit Badge in Journaling
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| I ate too much of the zucchini bread, and not because it was so good, but because I kept trying it, hoping it was better than I'd thought with the previous bite. Have any of you ever done that? It seems heroically stupid, but I'm sure that was the reason. Lola has a new trick. She paddles furiously from the side of the koi pond until she can get the water hyacinths to float over to her. Then she flips them out of the water with both paws and carries them off to nibble. I've never had a dog eat so many veggie things! Yesterday I left the door open so she could come in and out if it got colder or rainy. That was a mistake. No, there were no muddy footprints or chewn up bits of unidentifiable things, but her behaviour was off the wall all the rest of the night. She wouldn't even sit on command to get her leash on, and she chased the cat all over the house. Today she was confined to the dog run, not even given free run of the yard, and she is an angel. Almost. She still ran across the street when Bill took her out for an evening piddle. He wants her to stay with him without the leash, and she has been doing that until this week. Suddenly the lure of the golden lab across the street who will play with her is more important than anything else, so I guess it's back to the leash for her, at least when she's with me. I saw one dog get hit by a car, and I dread the possibility of seeing that happen to her. Nothing new from my daughter about the tumor. She still hasn't heard a word from the pathology lab. Maybe tomorrow when she has an appointment with the neurosurgeon. We're hoping for the best. |
| Finally, I got three loaves of zucchini bread made. I've been planning this for what, three years now? Two years ago I realized I couldn't find my loaf pans and bought some, but never used them. Last year I decided I should have foil pans so I could give them away, my intention in the first place, so I bought some. Didn't use them. In the meantime I had as a patient an irascible lady who could be described as a "tough old bird." She had been a bartender for many years, had remodeled her turn-of-the- century farmhouse to make it very comfortable and usable, and didn't want to ever lose her independence. She had caregivers for part of each day, and they shopped for her and helped her get out the ingredients to cook up the meals she considered herself famous for. She was losing her eyesight, as well as her mobility, and had taken the precaution of having caregivers write the recipes with large felt tip pens so she would still be able to read them. I remember blogging about her before, because intermixed with the recipes she wanted to organize were xeroxes of visual humor she hung behind the bar, usually pretty funny but always a bit raunchy. When we came to her zucchini bread recipe she not only raved about it but insisted I make a copy for myself. So, in Marian's memory, I baked zucchini bread. The nurse who took care of her was pregnant, and Marian was a stickler about locking her doors, with more than one lock at that. Her caregivers had keys and they locked her in as they left each day, but she did not give a key to hospice. (It would have been too difficult to make sure one was available for each team member an on call staff who visited her.) Instead we ordered a key box for her to leave a key in. Before it came, however, we had instructions of how to raise one almost painted shut window in the guest bedroom and crawl through it, then proceed into her bedroom and the rest of the house. This was only for emergencies. We all wondered how the pregnant nurse would make it through, or me either for that matter, being big and not agile. The nurse found out several months before the baby was due that it had multiple defects, including a two chambered heart, and probably would not live. I may not have blogged about this before, but it was tragic. It was her first baby, and she and her husband are both in their late thirties. The infant, Bethany, lived a couple of weeks, and the nurse has not returned to her job. She has also not said that she wouldn't, as far as I know. Anyway, I'm taking her a loaf of Marian's zucchini bread, because she got such a kick out of Marian. |
| Yesterday was a very busy day, starting with our Monday morning meeting at 9, followed by more training on our new computer program for charting. Then I had three visits to make, followed by a quick drive home (22 miles) to make sure Lola hadn't eaten anything bad or fallen in the koi pond. She has taken to chewing things-- not shoes or underwear, standard puppy tastes I hear-- but pencils, pens and empty bags and boxes. She wants to sample the fish food floating on top of the water, evidently, because she leans out precariously on the stacked flagstones to get her face in the water. Now and then a fish will come up to investigate, and she'll levitate back to safe ground. Yesterday was our first sort of cold day, so I worried about her being left outside. So far she has shown no interest in bedding down on the dog bed in the protected corner of the screen porch Seamus used to inhabit. When it gets colder, I'll put the heated pad out there, and perhaps that will entice her. Anyway, after seeing she had not been in any big trouble, and playing a few rounds of fetch the ball/squeaky toy/tug rope, I had to go back to the office to talk to a new group of volunteers about my role in hospice. Just as I was leaving, my daughter called, sounding disgruntled. She was on her way home from the hospital (or clinic, probably) where she'd gone because she was pretty sure she'd developed a blood clot behind her left knee. Sure enough. And even though she knew what was wrong, of course she had to go here and there to this person and that for one test and another to diagnose it. So, armed with blood thinner injections and a dose of warfarin, she went home and will have to go to coagulation clinic tomorrow. I talked to her again when I got back home from my presentation, and she complained of her own irritability, which seems pretty natural to me. She has to go to an appointment with some doctor every day this week. Monday her husband will go back to work, and I'll drive up Sunday to take her to her Monday appointment with her primary care physician. Anyway, one minor cat skirmish later and lots of barking at unknown trespassers walking blithely down the street, I was going to tell you about my day today. I do have to go into work, but I'm spending the morning at home. I picked tomatoes and peppers a week ago, cooked them down with some seasoning, and they've been waiting in the fridge for me to pay attention to them. So I got out the Foley food mill this morning and strained out all the peels and seeds. I'll freeze it for vegetable soup makings, or just use it as marinara. Now I'm going to make some zucchini bread. I've got the squash all grated. Surely that's the hard part. Oh, one other thing Lola found to chew. Last night while I ironed some shirts, I heard bumping and thumping upstairs. When I came up, in addition to her collection of balls and toys, I saw she'd snagged a cucumber from the garden and was having a good chew. She'd eaten both ends off and hadn't even made a mess. Playing with her food-- what a child-like thing to do! Bill will be gone one night this week, so I'll catch up on my blog reading then I hope. |
| I have just a minute before Bill is finished painting on the living room for the night and time to get dinner on the table. Oops, I didn't have a minute after all, and now it's after 9. Oh well. The pathology report has not yet come back, but, for now, I am not worrying. I have no good, reasonable reason for not worrying, mind you, but I'm not. When her twins were born at 24 weeks, almost certainly not to live, her husband called me crying. "The doctor said he has to take them," he said. To me, the line was like one from an old movie, "Take the baby to save the mother." I was distraught and sure that they would die. On the way to Spokane we passed the paper mill where Lenore's father used to work. The smoke (or maybe it's steam) from it was going straight up, not headed inland or to the east as usual. For no known reason I felt a great relief, sure that the twins would be born alive. And so they were. The Saturday after I received the phone call from my daughter telling me about the brain tumor-- in other words the following day-- Bill and I had promised to sit at a home on the annual Hospice Pond and Garden Tour and greet the guests. Mid afternoon the hostess came with glasses of ice tea with mint. We talked about the mint, and how I'd had it growing once but it froze out. I'd been unsuccessful getting it to grow again. She gave me a piece she had rooted in water, along with a handful of some fresh cut leaves for a mojito that night. I planted the rooted piece on Sunday, and put the leaves in the fridge. Monday, the mint I'd planted, even though I'd watered it generously, was thoroughly wilted, beyond return I thought. I watered it more and left it, sad. Dying things were not welcome. The next morning it had rejuvenated, and I rejoiced. I took it as a sign, a la Elizabeth Barrett Browning and the violets her husband gave her when they first met. They were crushed, but also recuperated with water, and she saw that as a sign of their love. I cautioned Bill to water it liberally when he came back from Spokane the day after the surgery, and he did so; but when I returned several days later, it was clearly dead. Completely, this time. I knew it didn't mean anything about my daughter, but it made me depressed. After another two days, I jerked it out of the dirt and threw it away. The next day I found the leaves still in the refrigerator drawer, and I unwrapped them from their paper towel and put them in a crystal violet jar of water. Two days later they too had died. They were dry and crumbly. But I persevered, and added water. Yesterday the dry and crumbly plants showed the beginnings of new, green leaves at the tips, and today they look even better. I can almost see a root forming on a stem. Silly or not, I'm feeling a little less stressed. |
| Not much energy tonight either, not to write about anything other than the prime thing on my mind, my daughter, and not much new about that. Yesterday, she reports, she blacked out in the shower. She managed to get down safely, feeling it coming on, and her husband was right there in the bathroom with her. Still, a college friend who is living with them presently and helping out, called 911. They came and checked her out, although she was wrapped in a towel and sitting in the living room by the time the paramedics arrived. They didn't find anything. She speculates that she just overdid it, shampooing and shaving her legs, etc., in the hot shower water. A concern was that it might be a seizure, which wouldn't be unusual but she didn't think that's what it was. The kids haven't much comprehension of what all this means. They weren't home during the bathtub incident, thank goodness. When her mother was in the hospital, Sophie was worried that she would get a black eye, which actually didn't happen. They are both worried, of course, because things are different and they know that will continue at least for awhile. Jack told me he'd have his mother help him clean up his room after a couple of months when she was better. lol (We started on it that night, but didn't get very far.) Lenore has taken the semester off from school, which she hopes to enjoy with the kids. Me, I'm exhausted. Every day at home I wonder how I will get through it. I feel like all I want to do is get back into bed and sleep. Monday and Tuesday it hit me around 3 pm. Today I was feeling that way by noon. I'm sleeping okay at night, so I don't know why it is. Wonder if I'm anemic again, or just emotionally drained. I've had a sympathetic headache too, and made an appointment with my doctor for a physical next month, the soonest I could get in. Tumors are supposed to be genetic, and i know I have calcium deposits in my head, so something else for me to worry about, no doubt senselessly. Lenore is enough to worry about. Maybe it's a diversion to think of myself too. I haven't even been reading your blogs, so I hope you'll forgive me and I'll get back to them when I can. |
| 'Fraid I don't have much energy to write tonight either, but things are going pretty well. Lenore is home, made it through the surgery with no deficits and hardly a big enough shaved spot to detect in her thick hair. It's amazing. Especially considering the tumor was 3x3x2 inches, she told me. Inches! She was alarmed when she heard it, and I was too. So, with that much brain gone, wouldn't you think you'd notice some difference? Well thank God, we have not. Even while she was in ICU the next day after her surgery she was supplying answers to a word quiz I was sharing with Bill. The surgeon says he thinks it is what he hoped for, the best possible kind of cancer, the slow growing, low grade kind; but we won't know for sure till the the pathology report comes back. So, since her husband took two more weeks off from work, I came home yesterday. Hated to go to work today, didn't want to focus on anyone else, but I will be better tomorrow. As Bill says, repeating some comedian from Sirius radio no doubt, "I called in and said I had a vision problem. I couldn't see myself going to work today." I'm really tired tonight, even though I've been getting pretty good sleep, but I wanted to thank you all for your prayers and good wishes. You're the greatest!  |
| Just when i was thinking the hardest thing lying immediately ahead of me was getting this mouthy, barking dog taught some manners, and wondering where to make reservations for a family Christmas, life came up and slapped me in the head. My daughter has a brain tumor. The surgery is Wednesday. At the moment I don't have much else to say. |
Here she is, our Lola.    Are you puzzled? What a strange name for a boy dog? I noticed the dog squatted, but not all male dogs lift their legs. I vaguely noticed she wasn't as well endowed as Chico, and was thankful. He was Mr. Testosterone. This little Benji dog is hairy and small, and I didn't give its gender a second thought until a nurse pointed out that something was missing. The animal shelter said he was a 3 yr old male, and I thought they knew at least the gender part, if not the age and variety of terrier. I was wrong. And for the animal experts at the shelter!So, by Monday afternoon, Benji was Lola. You know the song: "Her name is Lola, she is a dancer...." Or maybe it's "Whatever Lola Wants, Lola Gets." We keep forgetting and referring to her as a him. We've always had female cats and male dogs and called them "the boy and the girl." Now it's the girl who's chasing the girl, will you please call the girl away? After we'd settled on Lola, Bill suggested Ben-Her.  She does jump up on us a little too often, and wants to chew on our hands, but otherwise is a perfect lady. Except that she hasn't figured out about the shower, and barks like crazy when Bill comes out that door. Then she wants to lick the water off his legs, and he hates it! I have juggled my schedule all week to check on her after every few hours. She's been in the dog run in our back yard or loose in the yard when the run is too sunny or rainy, and she's been fine. I did buy a crate for her, and she's tried it twice now, but is not thrilled. I will keep trying though, because she could fly with us in the crate. (Maybe the engine noise would even drown out the barking!) We'd certainly try a short flight the first few times, just around the pattern, then maybe to the next airfield ten miles away. If she doesn't get along with the crate, or maybe anyway, I could try a little jacket for her that straps into the seat belts. And we wouldn't take her up on a bumpy day. No doggy airsick bags! Yes, now that I have a dog, I can get on with life, adapted to fit a lot of ball throwing, toy tugging and petting. She is a very active little love. |
| Yesterday I drove to the Animal Shelter in the Tri-Cities and found this adorable dog. He could not be adopted until today, so Bill and I went back over and brought him home tonight. He is very playful and fun, but I am wondering if he's ever going to settle down for the night. He's supposed to be about two years old, but I'm thinking he's puppier than that. They had him listed as a Wheaten Terrier in one place and a Glen of Imaal Terrier in another. Like most of those guesses, he doesn't really fit the specs of either, but he's very cute. He knows to sit when told, and he knows the word 'No.' He whined in the car on the way home, and we stopped at a park where he immediately took care of business. Once he was in the back yard, he happily played ball for an hour, then chewed on a rawhide BIll bought for the boxer. It was bit too big for him, and he held it vertically in between his paws and about gagged himself on it at first. He is interested in the cat, wants her to come play with him, but leaves her alone when she glares at him. He is very interested in drinking out of the fish pond as well as the bowl of water put out for him. The silly koi are intrigued by him too and come up to meet him, jumping out of the water. I think I'll have to put him in the dog run for several days at the least when I'm gone, to keep him for falling in the pond. It isn't all that deep, but the flagstones around it will slip and fall in, and I don't know how quickly he'd figure out how to climb out. Probably okay, but I'd rather be home when it happens. I thought I'd be able to get a crate at the shelter, because I saw a huge pile of them there yesterday. No, those are just used for transporting, and it was too late to stop and buy one somewhere on a Saturday night. We have an enclosed dog run in our back yard which we never use, but we'll have to put him there tomorrow during church and buy a crate on the way home. I'm going to go get a big box to see if he'd like that for sleeping tonight. My guess is he'll choose the bed instead. We'll see. Bill, who has no taste in pet names and probably thinks the same of me, wants to name him 'Benji,' like the movie dog. Since I tend to pick names that are too strange, we have not hit a happy medium. I would have named him Wheaties, because he's wheat colored with a little white and gray. The name he came in with-- I don't know where it came from-- was Dan, with the Glen of Imaal Terrier label. So that's what his microchip says, but the shelter had the name Benny on his cage, and Bill liked Benji. What can I say for a guy who had a cat named Socks? Black with white feet of course. It's more important that he likes the dog than that I like his name, right? Wish me luck tomorrow during church! |
| Today I had three new patients to see, and the first two were not at all interested in having me there. So, because I had over an hour before my last appointment, I went to the Humane Society and played with a puppy. She was billed as a border collie, but looked more like a wirehair terrier/lab cross to me. She hadn't finished her series of puppy shots, so I couldn't take her for a walk outside, but sat in the play room and played with her for half an hour. She had a great time with a tennis ball, and would make a terrific soccer player. Her sharp little teeth reminded me, though, of why I don't want a puppy, but some play time was really fun. I intended to take Chico out for a walk, but he'd been transferred to a PAWS facility in Seattle. That makes me sad, but they assured me he'd get placed that way. I hope his separation anxiety history goes with him, but they're pretty close mouthed about that. Some shelters give a good history of their dogs, but this one doesn't. My second choice for a walk was a 6 yr old beagle named Sophie, but she too had been transferred. Both dogs have been at that shelter for a very short time, so I don't know why they were among the ones to go. The shelters are full. That was the reason I was given for transferring them, and, sure enough, I read tonight on Craig's List that the larger shelter in the Tri-Cities is full too and hunting for foster homes as well as adopters. Save a life, they all say. Makes me want to go out and bring home a car full, but I know that wouldn't be good either. One or two is all I can make time for. If I hadn't had a 4pm appointment I would have driven over. There's a young dog listed as Havanese who is very cute, and a black poodle mix who appeals to me too. Dog names are still a problem. If it's a mature dog who is used to its name, I'd think it would be hard to change it. But an awful lot of dogs, including several I'd be happy to take home, are named Sophie, my granddaughter's name. I told her about it, and she said she thought that was "creepy." I've also found an adorable "Jackson," the same name as Sophie's twin brother, and a Katie and several Lucys. There's a wonderful English sheepdog named Henry, my son's name, and a shepherd/collie mix who stars in the "Save Me!" ad, whose name is William. I think Bill liked him.  Wish I could get over there tomorrow, but I have a funeral to help with sixty miles away at eleven and a team meeting from three to five. Maybe Friday, after the Blind Man comes. Am I obsessing about this dog thing? Yea, a little. Don't know why either, but there it is. Dogs are a part of my life that I don't want to give up. Oh, here's another interesting thing: I've had a new GE wall oven on sale on craigslist. Bill bought it, and it is too large for the space I have. I got an email today from someone who definitely wants to buy it, even offered to pay $70 more for me to hold it for her, but insists on a cashiers check. She wanted my name and address, said she'd send the check and "have a courier pick up the oven" after the check has cleared. Do you smell a scam? I do. When we bought our airplane, the owner said he'd had someone appear with a cashiers' check for over the amount he asked for, wanting him to give them the cash for the extra money. It was a fraud. I don't know how this works, but I looked frauds up on craigslist and they said not to take cashiers checks or sell anything without a contact with the buyer. It makes no sense that someone could buy a cashiers check and couldn't pay cash, unless the checks are counterfeit. Have you ever heard of anything like that? |
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