For the past couple of months, I have been struggling with a blog display problem. I finally posted to the forum about it and a helpful member named kosiew tagged it for staff. Then, supernovia came in and explained what I had done to break things and how to fix the problem. It turned out that I had inadvertently copied some stray HTML along with some One-Liner Wednesday quotes and it broke the page.
So, yay! Everything is back to normal and I know how to avoid messing things up in the future.
Well, at least, messing things up in that particular way. I can certainly stumble into a new problem…
On May 4th, my mom, known here at TJCM as Nana, moved to Mercy House, a residence for people under the care of our local hospice. She had been under the care of hospice since last summer, staying with Paco in their independent living apartment with the help of family and aides, first for overnight and later during the day as well. As her symptoms from congestive heart failure worsened and she became weaker, the care needed to keep her safe and comfortable was outstripping what home aides are legally allowed to provide, so, when space became available at Mercy House, we chose to make the move.
Of course, there has been an adjustment period with new caregivers and routines and food, but things are settling in now. The staff all share a calling and commitment to this work, as do the many, many volunteers who make Mercy House such a peaceful, loving place.
My younger sister was here for the first week, helping Nana to settle in and staying overnight with Paco at the apartment. As it happened, on the one week mark at Mercy House, granddaughter S finished her semester at college and came to visit. She used her dorm room decorating skills to hang pictures for Nana and my sister, her husband, and S had an early Mother’s Day/Nana’s birthday lunch brought in from a favorite restaurant.
part of Nana’s wall decorations
This second week, someone from my house has been staying overnight and we are developing a rhythm to our days. Nana and Paco each do their early morning routine in their places of residence and then, mid-morning, we bring Paco to Mercy House for the day. Like hospice, Mercy House’s mission reaches beyond care of the individual to care of the family, so the volunteers and staff help Paco, too. There is always food available in the common room and Nana and Paco eat supper together at the dining room table, which is special after so many months of eating on a tray table in the apartment living room.
At the moment, Nana is the only resident who is able to be that mobile, so Nana and Paco usually have the dining table to themselves, but it also means that we were able to have two dinners this week that my spouse B, daughter T, and I shared, too. On Monday, we brought Swedish meatballs, made with the recipe that Nana used which had come to her from her Swedish landlady 55 years ago, for a belated Mother’s Day dinner. Last night, we brought in Italian food and an apple-blackberry pie that B had baked to celebrate Nana’s 86th birthday. The volunteers had decorated the table with a centerpiece, special napkins, and a birthday hat for Nana!
Next week, my older sister will arrive for a week. We are all grateful to have so much love and support surrounding us.
Thank you also, dear readers, for the thoughts and prayers that you have been sending and for your patience with my increasingly haphazard postings. I truly appreciate your visits and comments here.
Sleeping has not been much of a thing this week, so this SoCS will be short.
Letter makes me think of how I refer to most family members on my blog with a letter. My spouse B, my daughters E and T, my son-in-law L. My granddaughter is extra-special because she gets three letters – ABC!
One of these days, I should update my About page to reflect all the changes.
My younger sister came to visit Nana and Paco recently. She was excited to give Nana a special gift.
Under the wrapping paper and green ribbon was a box holding Nana’s father’s pocketwatch!
Her father had worked for the railroad and had used the watch to keep to the schedule when he was foreman of the maintenance crew. When I was growing up, I remember that he always carried it attached with a thick gold chain. He would wind it every day and it kept excellent time.
When he passed away in the early ’70s, I had hoped that my grandmother would keep the watch or give it to my mother, but she gave it to my uncle who lived out of state. I never expected to see the watch again.
My uncle passed away a number of years ago and my sister contacted our cousin to see if he still had the watch. He did and immediately sent it to her.
She brought it to an expert in antique watches who cleaned it and got it running again. He said it was in excellent shape for a watch of that vintage.
I’m so grateful to my cousin and my sister that her father’s watch has come home to Nana, its thick gold chain linking the generations together.
Why, you may ask, was the first “Y” word that came to mind for me “Yikes”?
If you are from the US, you probably realize that the answer is itself a question, “Have you seen the news lately?”
(Yes, I know that I am encouraged to not watch news, but it is all around and it is less stressful for me to keep up with it than to have imagined developments intrude unbidden into my thoughts.)
While there is the occasional good “Yikes!”, such as the news that there may actually be a peace treaty officially ending the Korean War/Conflict, more often they are less positive or negative stories about court cases or crimes or investigations or legislative proposals.
Well, the problem had righted itself and I was very happy – but now it has returned. Please use the previous and next buttons at the bottom of posts to navigate. I especially hope that people will visit my recent post 64th!
Hello, Friends! Just wanted to let you know that I am having a bit of a problem with posts showing up correctly. At the moment, when you go to the Posts listing, you may see just the most recent post or two, followed by a post from early March, skipping over several other posts. To access those posts, go to one of the posts listed and use the “previous” and “next” posts at the bottom of the page to be able to read the ones that aren’t listed. I’m in the midst of troubleshooting with WordPress to figure out what is going on, but wanted you to know that I haven’t fallen off the face of the blogging world quite as much as it seems when you click on Posts.
Today is my parents’ (Nana and Paco here at TJCM) sixty-fourth wedding anniversary.
And it is snowing, which is a bit odd for us here in the Northeast US on April 19th.
My parents married on this date for two reasons. It was Easter Monday during a time when Catholic weddings were prohibited during Lent. (While not currently prohibited, they are still discouraged.) It was also Patriots’ Day in Massachusetts where they lived, so it was a day off work for my dad and many other workers. They thought that they would always have their anniversary off work, which they did until the Monday holiday bill was created, moving holidays from their actual dates to a nearby Monday. (Patriots’ Day commemorates the battle of Lexington and Concord which began the Revolutionary War.)
Today’s celebration will be quiet.
[Three days pass.]
I started this post on the 19th. The plan was for me to spend most of the day at home until late afternoon when we would pick up dinner to bring to Nana and Paco. I was hoping to get this post out and do some other catching up and errands, but Paco wasn’t feeling well, so I went up to Nana and Paco’s apartment mid-morning to assess the situation and call the doctor’s office.
Later in the morning, Nana’s hospice volunteer visitor arrived. She brought a pink gerbera daisy with two blossoms as an anniversary gift from her and a gift bag from hospice with a bottle of sparkling apple juice, two glasses, a rose made of cloth, and an angel figurine. It was so sweet of her to visit and lift Nana’s spirits; we were sorry that Paco was napping and not well enough to be with her when she opened their gifts.
When I hadn’t heard back from the doctor by early afternoon, I called again and they decided to fit him into the afternoon schedule. I took him to the office, fortunately nearby to their senior living community, leaving Nana under the care of her aide. The doctor made some medication changes and Nana and Paco both got afternoon naps.
My husband B and daughter T arrived at about five with food from a favorite local Italian restaurant. We set up their tray tables side by side on the couch with lasagna for Paco and bucatini for Nana. Nana and Paco got to enjoy their 64th anniversary dinner, topped off with sharing carrot cake for dessert.
They got to hold hands.
They reminisced about their honeymoon in New York City, seeing Bob Hope and the Rockettes at an 8 AM show.
And we had the privilege of being there.
I am grateful that they had this anniversary together, one more precious moment in their long life together. The precariousness of the day underscored that the much-discussed “quality time” is a gift that appears in our lives, sometimes planned and created, but more often appearing at an unexpected time or in an unforeseen way. A cuddle from a toddler who is usually too busy to stop her activity. An important discussion with a teenager during a routine car ride. A walk in the woods when troubles temporarily recede and clarity and peace return.
I am a veteran of the fight against shale gas development in New York State, and, more broadly, against unconventional fossil fuel development and for a rapid increase in renewable energy in order to cut greenhouse gas emissions and keep global warming as low as possible.
I am fortunate to live in the Binghamton area, not that far from Ithaca, where several prominent scientists and professors work. They often came to speak at events in Binghamton and I sometimes would travel to Ithaca for lectures. I learned a lot from them and would use their research in commenting on news articles and in writing blog posts.
One of my favorite speakers is Dr. Anthony Ingraffea, Dwight C. Baum Professor of Engineering Emeritus at Cornell University. His specialty is rock fracture mechanics and he had done hydraulic fracturing research for many years, putting him in a unique position to anticipate the dangers of combining high-volume slick-water hydrofracking with long laterals in shale. He teamed with Dr. Robert Howarth, an environmental scientist at Cornell, in the first major paper raising an alarm about methane leakage from shale oil/gas development; the paper was controversial, but prescient, with subsequent research affirming levels of methane leakage much higher than industry and government projections.
This newly released twelve minute video with Dr. Ingraffea shows the climate consequences of the decision to develop shale gas. This blog post by Sharon Kelly gives some further background and also has a link to the video, in case the embedded one below isn’t working.
The last few weeks have been hectic. My mom, known here as Nana, has been dealing with an increase in fatigue, weakness, and edema as the congestive heart failure progresses. The hospice team continues to be helpful with trying to re-balance some medications but there is always some amount of compromise among symptoms with relieving all of them an impossibility. A couple of months ago, we had to expand private aide coverage from overnight to daytime as well. There have been a number of issues with scheduling, though, plus a few unexpected events that have kept me in a bit of a whirlwind, not being able to tell how any day may develop.
This unsettled feeling is exacerbated by the constant maelstrom of the news. I have been very concerned about Russian interference in the United States and other nations, something that I posted about during the 2016 campaign and have followed since. The indictments that have been handed down so far as a result of the Mueller investigation are disturbing and more may be coming soon. It appears that the obstruction of justice report may be finished in the coming weeks. Having been brought up during the Watergate hearings, just hearing about the possibility of another president under suspicion of obstruction is chilling.
Then, there is Syria. And the rest of the Middle East. And North Korea. And a trade war with China.
Immigration issues. A Congress that is dysfunctional. Gun violence. Racism. Sex/gender discrimination, harassment, and abuse. Bullying and incivility.
I could go on…
And on….
Everything feels impossibly complicated and tenuous and unbalanced. I don’t know if things were more stable in the broader world if I would feel a bit better equipped to cope with personal family issues, but I do know that it isn’t helping my mindset in the least.
Joanne Corey 