Tag Archives: Life

If At First You Don’t Succeed…

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…try, try again.

So, once again I will make an attempt to take up blogging again. I don’t know why I haven’t been, exactly.

Maybe because it’s been hot and humid, and I/we have to walk Quigley at night during the times I used to write my blogs. By the time we get back, it’s too late, I’m too tired, and it’s time to go to bed.

Or maybe because I’ve been doing the Flylady stuff more assiduously than before. I’ve been working on the morning and bedtime routines and sticking to them fairly well. I’m not sure if it’s because I’ve been doing it on a lesser scale than previously, or the fact that given the state I’m in, having a list of regular tasks to pursue is just what I need. They’re things that need to be done, and I don’t have to think too much.

Plus I tend to get sidetracked in the midst of them by unexpected developments, and they end up taking longer than I expected.

Or maybe it’s because I’ve just been feeling weird lately. Grieving? It doesn’t really feel like grief, though as I understand it, grief can take very strange forms.

Burnout? Possibly. Maybe even probably. I’m not sure I like the term “burnout”. Exhaustion — physical and mental — may be more accurate. Certainly once my mother’s house sold and all the immediate, deadline-type things were completed I spent a week or two doing a lot of sitting around staring out windows.  I even took a few naps.

I didn’t fuss at myself for doing it, either, because I knew that I was exhausted. And I have recovered a bit. I am doing things, after all. And don’t feel like everything is just way too hard to tackle, as I did there at the beginning.

Except for creative things. My novel under contract. My blog. Even card-making has been difficult. I made a birthday card for my sister last week and could only do tiny bits of work on it before everything went blank and it all seemed too hard. When she told me later that she’s felt the same way (she works in a rubber stamp store) I began to think it might be something other than… laziness or failure to be disciplined. Especially since I’m experiencing exactly the same thing relating to The Other Side of the Sky. I can only think about it for a teensy bit of time and then no more.

Regarding Sky, I have determined, in the small amounts of time I’ve been able to make myself get back to it, that the reason the first chapter (which is actually the second chapter, since I’m starting with a Prologue) has been so terribly hard to read, so… boring… is because it is. One of my writing books talks about how the writer often needs to use a bunch of words to tell herself the story and I suppose that is what I was doing. In any case, analysis has shown me the fact that it actually has structural problems. One of the parameters for scene construction is that you must start out with your character having a goal, which is then obstructed by some kind of problem and then conflict as the character attempts to overcome the problem and achieve her goal. Chapter One has lots of conflict and bustle and problems, but not really anything related to the viewpoint character. She has no goal. Stuff just happens and she has to deal with it. Which is why I find it boring. So I have to come up with some kind of goal for her.

And so far, I haven’t.

I have however, done a lot of decluttering around the house. In fact, I’ve been almost obsessive about it. But maybe I should save that subject for tomorrow’s post…  (Yeah, I know, I’ve said that before. Hopefully I WILL be back for tomorrow’s post. In fact… maybe I’ll go write it now…)

Yet More Reassurance

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 I finally got back to working on The Other Side of the Sky today!  For two hours. First time in three months. And even the few days I spent three months ago were themselves the first time in three and a half months, so I think it’s fair to say it’s been six months since I’ve really worked on the book.

But that’s not what I meant by more reassurance. No this was reassurance about my mother’s salvation  I recounted here the story of how I had one last chance to encourage my mother to believe in Christ the night before she died, and how she seemed to respond, seemed to be saying yes but not in any clear and definitive way. I related how after I’d left her and walked down the long, deserted main hall in the hospital a woman came toward me carrying three white lilies which I took to be God’s confirmation that my mother had indeed believed and received eternal life.

There was more of that sort of confirmation afterward. Like me picking up the birthday card my mother had given me in March to put it away (I had it on display) and, in turning it over, discovered that on the back was printed “Lilies of the Valley.” And finding out that her yet-to-be-born great-granddaughter was to be named Lily, a decision my son and his wife had arrived at well before the incident of the white lilies in the hall. But there was another weirder, but even stronger confirmation that I discovered some time after the actual events when I was rereading the entry I’d written in my journal of those last moments on the day she died.  Suddenly the names of all her caregivers who were around her that day seemed to leap off the page at me.  Dr. Bravo, former nurse Alva (the name means, in Hebrew, “brightness, exalted one“, Mother’s actual nurse of the day, Victoria, the technician Mary, all came to say goodbye to me. And when we arrived at Peppi’s House, the Hospice facility, Mother was delivered over to the care of a nurse named… Christy.  Christ.

Gave me chills to see all that. Still does. But there was one name I never looked up, that of Dr. Clements who had really been a blessing to me. He was the pulmonary specialist who drained the fluid from Mother’s lungs so she could breathe better and be a little more comfortable. He was the one I could talk to, and did. He always made me feel better, even when things were dire. He was clear, he made it all understandable, he worked with dying patients all the time. He was the one who told me on Saturday that Mother probably wouldn’t last twenty-four hours, the one who wrote the order for Hospice when the brilliant but flaky gastroenterologist forgot.  He was the one who told me to call my sister and tell her to come ASAP.

Lately I’ve been wondering… what does his name mean?  It seems like a plain, vanilla English name. Probably has no meaning, right? Certainly not anything significant like the others.  The question kept niggling at me so last night I finally looked it up.

It means “merciful.”

That gave me chills, too.

God is Faithful

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Well, one way to increase the odds of posting this next installment in my catching up on what all’s been happening to me as my mother’s “Personal Representative” (they don’t call it Executor any more) , is to start it right after publishing the previous post.

Yes, I did say that I got in a car accident the very morning of the big yard sale. My son and his wife had returned to Tucson to help out with the sale on Saturday and also to celebrate Mother’s Day on Sunday. We’d spent Friday getting stuff boxed up and ready to put out on Saturday. Saturday morning I took my Jeep and went around placing yard sale signs in the medians. I was on my last sign,  pulled out of the empty lot I’d been parked in and headed down the road, focused on where I was going to place my last sign and where I’d have to park to do that. It was about 6:50am, and traffic was very light. I entered the intersection about thirty feet up the road from where I’d left the parking lot, and suddenly this black Ford pickup truck was barreling toward me from the left.

“What is THAT doing there?”  I thought in shock and disbelief. I threw on the brakes but soon realized the truck was going too fast and  I wasn’t going to be able to stop in time and so I hit it.

It pulled my car around in a half circle, and left me there in the intersection as it  ran over a small sign with a safety reflector on it in the median, continued on up the road and finally pulled over to the side. I sat in the Jeep, unhurt, but stunned. How could that have happened? “Lord,” I prayed, “what are You doing? How could You allow this today of all days?”

Well, it did have positive repercussions in areas I’d never have thought of…

But first I have to finish my story and get me out of the street. As I said, I was unhurt — bumped my head against the side window at the moment of impact but that’s all. The place where I’d run my head into a cabinet door the day before hurt worse. Within seconds an ambulance pulled up behind me and a paramedic was at my door, asking if I was okay. Turns out they were only two cars back when the accident occurred, though their view had been hampered by other cars so they’d not really seen what happened. He did ask if I remembered what color the light was… I had no memory of the light at all. Just the parking lot on the other side of the street and that big black truck coming fast where it wasn’t supposed to be…

He and his partner held back the traffic while I drove the Jeep into the nearest parking lot and right about then a police cruiser pulled up. Turns out the City of Tucson police department no longer issues citations for collisions where no one is hurt, nor do they do accident reports. They just hand out insurance information forms to each party to fill out, act as a go-between for the exchange of the filled-out forms. The participants’ insurances will have to duke it out as to who is responsible and if they can’t decide, then we split it. Terrific.

At least I got to use my cell phone. The crazy thing is that my husband’s Jeep was already out of commission that weekend with an overheating problem due to an undetermined leak. So he had to come over by bicycle. Before he arrived, the policeman, learning that my car was still drivable, escorted me the block or so back to my mother’s house where everyone came out to view the damage and commiserate. My poor Jeep. Its whole front had been shifted sideways. It did not look at all good.

We ended up getting two rental cars and as it turned out, the insurance decided to fix my Jeep… it will take 25 days, and they will cover the rental. So I’ve been driving a little silver Dodge Caliber about. It’s kind of fun.

All that went on during the yard sale, which, despite fears and even prognostications of disaster, turned out to be a resounding success. We were quite pleased with the money we made, and the stuff we got rid of, but we still had a LOT of stuff left. The jigsaw puzzles for example. My mother had almost 200 of them squirreled away in various closets, and we sold only about 3 that day. Fortunately Bookman’s Used Books took quite a few of them off our hands, and even paid us for them. But there are still probably a good 75 of them left…

Three days after the yard sale we met with the realtor, who’d been recommended to me by the lawyer. The lawyer I found on the internet while looking up ‘probate’. He’d written several articles on the subject which were quite helpful and his office was not only in Tucson, but not far from my home. It seemed an unconventional way to choose a lawyer, but would the yellow pages be better? Did I really need to interview various lawyers and do a bunch of research? The truth was, I didn’t exactly have the brain room or the time to do a lot either. I just prayed for guidance and gave it over to God. Anyway I am quite happy with the lawyer, and when we got around to discussing when we could put the house on the market, I asked if he could recommend a realtor. He did and when I contacted her, it turned out her mother in law lived in the same neighborhood as my mother had, so she was very familiar with it. I counted that a confirmation that God was indeed orchestrating all this things.

Throughout all this I’m learning more than ever and in a more hands “on” way than ever  that it’s God who does the things in my life, not me. I just have to let Him. So maybe I should have said I’m learning in a hands off way.

In any case, He’s been coming through every time.  And continues to do so.

The realtor was thrilled with my mother’s house and we had it on the market the following Saturday and after a week we’ve seen a lot of interest and as of last Friday already had two offers.

But back to the car wreck. Who’d think that could turn out to be a blessing? But it did.  Gas prices being what they are, the Dodge Caliber is the better car to have when one must drive about town all the time, dropping things off here and there… It’s an even better car to drive to Phoenix and back in… I made it the whole way up on a quarter tank of gas!

But that’s tomorrow’s tale.

Now the Legal Stuff

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Well, hello, everyone. Sorry I’ve been away for SOOO long. The time seems to have flown by. It’s already a little over a month since my mother went to be with the Lord and it seems like yesterday.

I don’t think one really understands what all this caregiving at the end of life stuff is about until one goes through it. I certainly didn’t. There is so MUCH that floods into your mind, that you have to see to and tend to. And the weird thing is that it doesn’t end upon the death of the one you are caring for. At least not if you are the Executor, as I am. Not just the Executor, but a clueless executor. 
 
My mother made a very simple will back in January when we did all the stuff with durable power of attorney and health care POA. I also had her put me on her bank account as a joint holder and that was a wonderful bit of advice I received from the clerk that has saved us tons of trouble. In any case, she doesn’t have very much (but she does have a house, which is the complicating factor) and she left it all to me and my sister to be divided equally. We naively thought that we’d just transfer the title for house and car to me, sell them and split what is left. Ha. I went down to DMV about three weeks ago, expecting to transfer the title to the car (this after having called ahead to ask what I was supposed to do) only to learn that  I had to wait until a month after the person had died. That was so everything could go through probate. “What’s probate?” I asked. The clerk didn’t know, only that I had to wait a month and if my mother owns a house, that means she has more assets than $50,000 and so must go to probate. I drove home wondering how in the world I was supposed to get us through probate when I had no idea what it was. Who would I even call? Wouldn’t someone call me?
 
Apparently not. I went on-line, learned that it’s the legal process of establishing the validity of a will, and in small estates doesn’t usually require court appearances, you just have to file the papers. Since I also had to look up “equity” I decided I would probably be better off having a lawyer do all this filing, since it’s supposedly somewhat non-intuitive. You can get the forms (where??) but then you have to know which ones to fill out and how to fill them out and what the weird terms are … so… About two weeks after my mother’s death I hired a probate lawyer and am very glad I did. I have NO idea how I would have figured out how to fill out the inch-high stack of papers he had for me to sign before filing. Plus he’s there to email if ever I have questions. He got me a tax ID number to open an estate account into which I could transfer my mother’s funds and deposit refund checks addressed only to her…  I have learned an awful lot about all that stuff in the last month. It’s kind of mind-boggling.

In addition to all that, we had to stop the magazines, the newspaper, the credit cards,  notify her friends about her passing, think about a memorial service… We didn’t have a funeral, in part because she was cremated and in part because she was a private person, not given to ceremony. Will we write an obituary? She told my sister that if we did, we were NOT to put a photo of her along with it. 

I spent a week trying to determine the worth of her various works of art — indian arts and paintings.  Also working through the insurance bills — one for the last hospitalization came less than a week after she died, a letter that informed me they’d talked to the insurance company which had confirmed we owed such and such amount. The only thing was, I knew she was fast approaching her out of pocket maximum and wasn’t so sure she’d have to pay the whole thing. I decided to wait until I got an Explanation of Benefits… I’m still waiting.

Then there was the matter of going through her things. Our initial foray into that was just to throw away the obvious junk, and anyone who wanted something could take what they want. Adam and Kim stayed an extra day and a half that first week. Kim went home with my mother’s set of blue enamel cookware… very nice stuff, but both Deb and I have what we want and didn’t need it. We also raided her rubber stamp supplies and that was fun. Actually we had a lot of fun, being together, discovering photos, reminiscing. Adam went through her extensive CD collection and tried to organize them somewhat. We found one she’d kept with a sticky note on it that said “Not Good” and we all laughed at that. The fact that she didn’t like it, yet kept it… 🙂
 
The downside, though, is that when I bring stuff home, it’s there. My house has no holding space for new things. If something new comes in, something old has to go out, but there’s been no time to figure out what the old thing is going to be. Or, if I do know, I’m still trying to arrange how to get the stuff moved out. First it was a lot of art supplies that I’d gathered in preparation for donating to  the watercolor guild. That took about a week to actually make the connection with a guild member to move the stuff out.  

Then came the yard sale — I got in a car accident the very morning of the sale, while I was out placing signs. But that’s a story I’ll save for another day… This post has gotten too long already. Hopefully I’ll be back to continue it tomorrow.

FLYing Again and other stuff

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Well, my sister left for New Mexico last Thursday (the 17th), so I’ve been back to taking care of my mother on my own. “Taking care” is an overstatement. Mostly I’ve been checking in once a day (in person), talking to the two therapists who’ve been coming (on alternate days), paying bills and doing small things that need doing. Mostly she’s been doing well, getting her own meals, taking her meds, even drinking her 8 glasses of water, cleaning up, etc.

Exercising  hasn’t been going so well for us, though. Her physical therapist wanted her to take a walk down the street all last week, but she kept refusing. On Saturday, though, she agreed to go with me to the grocery store when I did her shopping. She walked using the cart for a support and while originally I’d envisioned her walking only one or two aisles, she ended up walking through the whole store and only sat down once we’d reached the checkout. She said she felt fine.

But it was too much and she paid for it the next two days with painful feet and legs. Also, her back has started hurting again as a result of yet another fall she took when my sister was here — no passing out this time, she just decided to reach down and pet my sister’s rabbit and lost her balance. She’s not been using the walker or even the cane. If she needs support, she uses furniture, counters, the walls, etc.

We aren’t sure what to do about the back. It may be a result of misalignment of the spine due to the compression fractures.  I guess if it keeps bothering her, we’ll have to call the primary care again…

I have really had it with the parade of doctors. I think since January she’s been under the care of 17 different doctors or physician’s assistants. All with their own idea of how things ought to be done.  I am not eager to go back to yet another (if we have to see someone who specializes in back issues) for an 18th viewpoint…

Beyond that, though, things are starting to acquire a bit of normalcy. I went back to doing some of the Flylady.net system again about a month ago, figuring, finally, that I needed to come up with a morning routine to complete before I went off to help my mother. That way the basic necessities are done before I leave the house and get sidetracked with other issues, or end up too tired to make myself do any house chores once I get back home.

I think I’m starting to get it, too. I’ve got an existing morning routine that I’ve been doing for awhile, to the point it’s definitely become a habit. I can get up, get dressed, wipe down the bathroom, make the bed, start a load of laundry, dust mop the floor and do tricks with Quigley without hardly thinking about it. (One of the disadvantages I’ve found with that is that I end up thinking I haven’t done anything, even when I have).  However there are a few other things I’d like to incorporate, but so far they’ve always seemed to fall by the wayside after breakfast.

But now I’m seeing the importance of adding only one new habit at a time and giving it a good month to get set. I’m also appreciating the importance of setting things up the night before. If I get to sleep early, then I’m not so inclined to lie in bed past my ideal wake-up time in the morning, nor too tired to keep myself from getting sidetracked. In fact, I’ve even been waking early enough to even do a bit of morning pages.

I’ve been using my timers for fifteen minute intervals on a lot of things, even writing. Yes, I’ve actually, finally been working my way back to Sky. I haven’t yet figured out exactly what my hours on that will be, but I’m also not demanding that I do so, either. I’m still in the learning and observing stage. And today I learned that when I don’t get to bed early enough, I end up too tired to use the late afternoon hours well. 

And I’m thinking too, as I mentioned that not enough sleep might also contribute to my sometimes breath-taking distractibility.  For example, I may start out eating breakfast, then open my journal to write, then decide to go into the bed room to get a pen, but, looking at my rubber stamps on the desk decide to stamp something into the journal, which necessitates looking for the proper stamp, and the proper ink, then in looking for a stamp I find something that needs fixing and start to work on that until I have to go to another room for another tool… and maybe 45 minutes later I return to breakfast, which is now utterly cold. And what happened to the morning?

So I’ve been doing less of that, but getting a clearer picture of why I do it. And since, as I said, one of the reasons is that I don’t get to bed early enough, I’ve been trying to address that. Which is partly why I’ve not done as many blog posts as I’d like lately. My new rule is to turn off the computer by 9:3opm, and since more often that I’d like to admit that’s been my start time for writing a blog post, it’s taken a bit of adjusting to get back to blogging before then.

And since I’ve just noted the time and see I only have 15 minutes to finish up here, guess I’ll end this post now. I still have to stretch before I can go to bed…

An Update

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As many of you are aware, I didn’t post much through the end of last year, my goal of four times a week falling off to once every two weeks or so. I had a lot of things happening, and that intensified through the end of the year with Christmas and then New Year’s.

We put up a real Christmas tree for the first time in something like ten years, had an early Christmas with our son and DIL (Daughter-in-Law) and then exchanged presents on Christmas day itself just with my mother and sister. After that we took off for five days in LA.

Our plans took a shift right off when we encountered a freeway sign not far out of Tucson that advised of major delays west of Phoenix and told all CA traffic to use I-8 through San Diego. It was a bit longer that way, plus we had no maps, and no idea where to stop for food, both of which added time to the trip. We got in around 10:30pm, considerably later than we’d hoped.

We came back the same way, spent some time with Adam and Kim again as we passed through San Diego, and got back around 11:30pm New Year’s Eve — to discover a phone message from my sister, who’d been in town with my mother while we were away. I called her immediately: she’d just left the hospital where Mother had been admitted two days before for confusion, fatigue and fainting, possibly as a result of dehydration. Saturday morning, instead of sleeping in, I was up early and heading for the hospital, where my sister had already arrived. We were there pretty much all day and into the night.

The doctors had done all sorts of tests on my mother’s heart and head and so forth, but could find nothing wrong except dehydration, a low white blood cell count and a really low red blood cell count — anemia brought on by chemotherapy, compounded by lack of eating and drinking. It took two days and multiple bags of fluids and still she wasn’t recovering so late Saturday morning the doctor’s recommended a  transfusion of “packed red blood cells” which is blood with the plasma and platelets removed. At first she was resistant, but upon reflection and discussion decided to go for it. The results were dramatic, as had been promised.

One doctor (the on-call oncologist)  thought she might also have a heart problem or a neurological problem and advised consultation with a cardiologist or neurologist. Another doctor (the emergency room attending physician) thought it all a result of the dehydration and anemia. We still have to follow-up with the primary care and her regular cancer doc (actually his Physician’s Assistant since he’s on vacation).

We saw the primary care today, and he really hammered her with the importance of staying hydrated and eating nutritious food. He said the chemo causes her to not be able to taste anything but what the tongue tastes (sweet, salt, sour, bitter) and thus all the food tastes pretty much the same. But she needs to eat regardless, and especially to drink.

Dehydration not only causes confusion and fainting, but also makes you sick to your stomach and not wanting to eat, contributes to bladder infections, makes you drowsy and foggy, and destabilizes blood pressure.

Anyway, they let her out on Sunday in another orchestration of bureaucratic absurdity where we had to wait around for hours because no one seemed to know that we were supposed to be leaving.

First we waited for the final doctor to see us, only to learn he’d already come in and wouldn’t be seeing us.

Then we waited for a case worker to arrive and tell us there really weren’t any home health care services of value that her insurance would cover, and probably we didn’t need them anyway.  Then we had to wait for another nurse to return from her supposed 30 minute lunch break — which ended up being closer to an hour… I didn’t get home until almost 5 on Sunday.

So. I’ve hardly had time to breathe sine we’ve gotten back…. and yet… I’ve somehow managed to do three blog posts. Amazing.

Okay, time to go eat dinner. V is on tonight! Looking forward to that.

Let’s Try This Again

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Well, what can I say? Even once a week seems to have become an impossible goal for me to meet with regard to blogging lately. It didn’t help that I was sick again.

Last time (before Thanksgiving)  it was some sort of digestive flu thing. This time (after Thanksgiving) it was a Perfect Storm of a cold. I still have the last dregs of its symptoms even now at day 12. 

The timing was perfect though. The first two days, when I was still not sure it was a cold, I had to drive my mother to the doctor for a white blood cell stimulating shot. I did that wearing a mask. Saturday, when I usually take her to the store, it turned out she didn’t need to go, which was a good thing because symptoms had begun by then and I don’t think the mask would’ve been up to containing them. Sunday was unbelievable. I could barely function for the sneezing and nose running. My hubby has it now. I hope and pray I won’t get it again. I don’t think I can unless the virus mutates…

Anyway, between that, and trying to catch up on the catching up I was doing when the cold hit, my time and energy for blogging have been more at a premium than ever. And the last time I worked on Sky was last Tuesday. I am at least continuing to move along with The Artist’s Way. I’m starting Week 10 today.  Though I have yet to complete today’s Morning Pages, nor did I do an artist’s date last week (unless wandering around Bookman’s Used Books for an hour looking at books counts) (I guess I can say it does). I did none of last week’s tasks — we were to read our morning pages for the first time since starting them, highlighting insights and actions. I only got the first week’s worth read and never got back to it.

And believe it or not, I’m still fighting about writing the pages. I don’t think I like having to write 3 pages whether I have anything to say or not (although I do always seem to come up with something). And then later, when I do have things to say, there’s no space in the journal that I’m using (specifically designed for morning pages, with three page increments marked out and quotes from the topics of each week’s reading used to embellish the pages) so I have to add overflow pages…  On the other hand, I’m kind of thinking that just the process of writing three pages of stream of consciousness might well be beneficial, just not in the way one would think.

God seems to do be doing a lot with me  along that theme lately… That the purpose in things done or things that occur is not what people see, or what I see but something else entirely. That God’s way of molding us into the image of His son is not anything like man’s way would be (not that man could even do it, but we seem to think he — we — can). That the sufferings we endure change us in ways we can’t really perceive and maybe can’t even imagine, and certainly are not changes we would be able to work in ourselves no matter how much we might want to.

That’s partly come out of the things I’ve been learning from The Artist’s Way.  I think I’ve mentioned that I’ve been highlighting, underlining and writing in the wide margins of the book’s pages as I’ve read and Week 9: Recovering a Sense of Compassion was heavily marked in.

Dare I save further comment on that for tomorrow? Well, one of the “guidelines” I’ve been following lately is “Try it and see.” So I will.

And hopefully I’ll be back to write some more tomorrow. Here’s a teaser, the first paragraph from that chapter:

“One of the most important tasks in artistic recovery is learning to call things — and ourselves — by the right names. Most of us have spent years using the wrong names for our behaviors. We have wanted to create and we have been unable to create and we have called that inability laziness. This is not merely inaccurate. It is cruel. Accuracy and compassion serve us far better.”

 Those who know me or have read this blog for any length of time will recognize not “laziness” but “indisciplined” as my term of choice for why I have been unable to create.  Which is perhaps just another word for the same thing, and just as wrong…

Under the Weather

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Why do they call it feeling “under the weather” when someone is feeling sick? Well, let’s see. I can google that… hmm. Turns out the phrase originated in the 1870s and is believed to have been a seaman’s reference to the weather deck on a ship, the topmost deck most exposed to the weather. When they were sick they would rest below the weather deck in their quarters. So says idiomSite. I would add that in bad weather they might also rest there, and in really bad weather most of them would not be feeling well at all.

So. Glad I got that straightened out. It’s a good term then for my latest foible. Last Thursday at 2am I awoke suddenly feeling awful. Hurried to the bathroom, stayed there an hour, but nothing happened except I continued to feel sick. The next morning I still felt bad and figured I should take it easy, using the BRAT diet, but even that was difficult to eat more than a few bites of. At first I thought it might be a result of exposure to my son, who, as I mentioned in a previous post, had come down with a viral infection about ten days before.  Later, I recalled that the side effects of the new prescription for megadose Vitamin D I’d just started taking included nausea, sleepiness and headache. So which was it? Why would I care? Because tomorrow (Monday) I needed to be taking my mother to her second chemo treatment. If I’m sick, I can’t be around her. Well, I called the Nurseline today, and the nurse said that we have to assume I’m sick and someone else would have to take her. But not my husband, who might also be contagious,  just not showing any symptoms.

I called the Pharmacist about the side effects, and the weekend shift person was aghast to think I would be taking so many units and surely that would have more intense side effects. On the other hand, the pharmacist who went over it with me knew all about the recently changed Vitamin D levels and the new treatment for deficiency involving megadoses, and said the old 400IUs was obsolete.

So. Confusion reigns again. The only one who knows anything is the Lord. So after trying to figure out what to do with far too little information for more time than I should have, I finally gave it up and turned it all over to the Lord. My mother would have to find another ride and it turns out she has: the neighbor has agreed to take her. Hopefully she will arrange for the neighbor to bring her back as well, as I urged her to.

So that’s been the Distraction of the Week. But yesterday I decided to stop letting circumstances derail me as they have. In some of the Artist’s Way stuff I read about the notion of having a “studio hour”, wherein the person would go into her studio for an hour every day if only to dust and organize. So I decided to have an office hour. I just have to go in and be there. If only to dust and organize. I cannot however, read blogs.

Actually the blog reading has dropped way off thanks to the tool introduced by The Artist’s Way last week (Week 4): Reading/media deprivation. We were to attempt to refrain from reading for the entire week. I failed miserably — it was during the election after all and we had close races locally. But the exercise has shown me not only how much time it takes but how addictive and really waste-of-time it’s been. So for now I’m cutting back.

And, instead of telling myself I have nothing of interest or importance to write about in a blog post, I told myself to just do it and let it be whatever it is rather than trying to judge it’s worth. That’s Rules of the Road number 9:  “Remember that is it my job to DO the work, not judge the work!”

Thus you have a post to read today!

Time Warp

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I feel like I’ve been caught in some sort of time warp. Two weeks seemed to have passed in a flash. I want to thank everyone for their prayers and also  those of you who commented on my last post with your words of encouragement. I greatly appreciate it.

The last ten days or so have been crazy. After the shock of finding out my mother’s cancer was back two weeks ago Monday and her new chemo treatment on Tuesday, we had to come in every day for the rest of the week for her to get shots to build up her white blood cells. Then there were blood pressure issues, which involved much phone tag with the doctor’s office and a new prescription called in to the pharmacy. I also had to set up an appointment for her to get a portacath, and that involved even more phone tag — I’m really starting to see where a cell phone or at least a cordless one would be beneficial. I would step outside to hang out clothes, or just turn off the water and the guy would call and leave a message. Then I’d call him back and leave a message… We did finally get it all settled and she went in Friday to have the portacath placed.

A portacath is a small reservoir and catheter inserted entirely under the skin. The reservoir has a special skin on the top of it that can be pierced by a special needle, which is what they use to draw blood or infuse medications. The catheter runs from the reservoir to a large vein in her neck.

On Friday at 6am we arrived at the hospital for the outpatient procedure. The nurse said I couldn’t come in with her and told me to go home and come back at 10:30am. So I left, went out to the car, parked in the hospital garage and discovered, all out of the blue, that it wouldn’t start. I had to walk almost a mile and a half to her house, to get her car which I then drove to my home. It was God’s provision that I had her purse with me, because that’s where she keeps her extra set of keys. Actually it turned out to be a nice walk, and I enjoyed it. The only downside was that lugging two purses and a bag of books and water did not make my back terribly happy. And when it’s unhappy, it tends to interrupt my sleep…

To further complicate matters, my hubby had left the day before to go hunting and was in the mountains, completely out of contact. He left without knowing when he’d be home… possibly not for several days. Meanwhile, our son and daughter-in-law were due to arrive that same day and wanted to spend time with us/me that night…

But I’m getting ahead of myself. At 10:30 I drove my mother’s car back to the hospital and picked her up. The procedure had gone without a hitch and she was doing well. I took her home, and since she still can’t drive (waiting now, for glasses to arrive) I took the car with me to my home.

I prayed that Stu would get a deer Friday morning and come back. That was unlikely, and even if he did, he’d really have to push it to get back in time to visit with the kids, so I wasn’t surprised when they arrived and he wasn’t there; nor was I when he wasn’t back by bedtime.

My twitching back woke me up Saturday morning about 4:30, a time I’ve come to call the carnal hour for the way things that normally wouldn’t bother me get all blown out of proportion. I thought about the car in the garage, and whether security would come and tow it, or vandals would scrawl graffiti over it. Finally I had to put the whole matter firmly in God’s hands. It’s His car, He would have to take care of it. I drifted back into sleep and about an hour and a half later, Stu came in the door — having gotten his deer late Friday afternoon, then working all night to get it out. (He’d hiked in and had to carry it out, all uphill. It took him five hours, in the dark).

On Saturday, after I had taken my mother to the grocery store (except for two small, sutured incisions she was almost entirely recovered from the portacath insertion) and Stu had slept a bit, he and I returned to my car still parked safely and without graffiti in the hospital parking garage — the battery was dead, he jumped it and we went to Autozone and the guy put in a new one. All better. I love the way God works.

Sunday we went to a party at the grand-inlaws’ house in honor of my DIL’s grandfather turning 80. Adam cooked the steaks — they were very good — and Kim made an amazing German Chocolate Cake from scratch. Yummm! We had a really nice time. The kids left to drive back home on Monday.

Meanwhile my mother and I returned Monday morning to the oncology center to try out the portacath for a blood draw. My mother was still losing weight, and the doctor kept suggesting things she “couldn’t” do — things like snack or eat more protein and fat — until he was banging his forehead with his hand. Finally he prescribed for her a medication that is supposed to increase appetite. She took it for about three days, then decided it was making her itch and quit. We had to go in Tuesday and Wednesday for more white blood cell stimulating shots. Wednesday I had a doctor’s appointment of my own as well, then returned home to find a message from Kim that after she and Adam had returned home on Monday night, Adam had gotten really sick and Tuesday night they took him to Urgent Care with a fever of 105. He was given fluids and Tylenol and was told there was some sort of problem with his liver… Liver?! By then the hits were coming so fast and furiously — and obviously — I was almost at the point of laughing. (But not quite)

Now, almost a week later, it turns out Adam had some sort of unidentified viral infection that must be allowed to run its course and from which he is steadily recovering. The liver problem readings were a result of the fact that he’d been vaccinated years ago for Hepatitis B.

Thankfully this week has been much calmer than the last two. Through it all, though I have gotten no writing done, I have continued with The Artist’s Way, with the Lord’s blessing it seems from the way He keeps working not only the daily Bible classes along with it, but other things as well. I even managed to finish reading a novel on Sunday that related in a very weird way. But this post is already too long, so those subjects will have to wait for another day.

A Busy Weekend

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It started with me getting out of bed before seven on Saturday to shower and then run off to take my mother to the grocery store. When I got home it was water the grass, eat breakfast and hang out a load of sheets, then Stu and I were off across town and out to the Desert Museum for the Saguaro National Park Symposium on Climate Change. We went, not because we have a great interest in climate change, but because a friend of ours was giving a presentation on the research she’s been doing on frogs in local drainages. Despite the climate change billing, it was fun. We listened to an hours worth of talks — our friend’s and three others — and it brought back memories. Both my husband and I have degrees in Wildlife Biology (I think they call it Wildlife Ecology now. Or maybe Wildlife studies?) and at one time in our lives were looking at maybe doing the same sort of work as was presented in the talks.

Of course that was not God’s will for our lives, but our interest was still strong enough we were engaged by what we were hearing. Afterward, as we headed home through the desert, we were surprised to find thunderheads building to the south and east — surprised since supposedly the monsoon has ended.  They were so cool, I told Stu to stop the car so I could take pictures.

Once home, we ate lunch and then did Skype with our son in San Diego — for two hours! And after that it was time to walk Quigley, eat dinner and then my hubby went off to meet with a high school friend in town from Pennsylvania. I was invited but I had already turned into a pumpkin from all that interaction, travel and stimulation and was in sore need of down time. So I stayed home, went over my notes from Bible Class and finished a birthday card.

Today was our local assembly’s monthly communion and pot luck. We usually gather on Sunday’s for a recording of classes taught in Massachusetts earlier that morning (Their 10am is our 7am) in the home of one of the deacons (I learned only recently that meeting in separate, public church buildings didn’t start until the third century BC  A.D.  — see how pathetic my brain is when drained? — Until then, most church groups met in homes.) On the first Sunday of each month we do communion along with the Somerset, MA congregation, and have a pot luck afterward with lots of talk and fellowship.

I don’t usually get home till mid afternoon or later. At which point my introvert self is completely drained of energy and my brain is full of stuff in need of processing. I love that analogy to the bank where all the deposits are being accepted, but nothing is actually being catalogued or recorded. If that’s not done soon, chaos will ensue.

Fortunately I don’t have to go anywhere that I know of tomorrow. I have delusional hopes of maybe getting in some work on Sky, but if the usual pattern for post-communion Mondays’ follows I’ll probably just moodle. But I’ve put all that in the Lord’s hands, having arrived at the conclusion that I have no idea what’s wrong with me, if anything, what I’m doing wrong, if anything, if I really have no self-discipline, or just a multifaceted calling that demands flexibility. Today in class one of the speakers reminded us of 2 Peter 1:7  Cast all your anxiety on Him because He cares for you.”  Not just anxiety, but your whole life, and your gift, he said. Weird that he’d say that, but it was just what I needed. Cast it all on Him and leave it there.

It’s the leaving it there that’s the tricky part. When I first wrote that down in my journal, I followed it with my next thought: “That can’t be right.” But when you set that down in writing, you see how absurd it is. Do you believe what the Book says or don’t you? Is there something unclear about “all”?

So, that’s what I’m going to do.