It's either a lemon or a chicken

Walt knows I'm crazy, but occasionally I have to prove it to him.

Now  don't know if I can explain this properly, but often I get images floating through my head that don't really mean anything but are somehow associated with something I'm doing.  It happens often when I'm reading a book that in some part of my brain, I am picturing something that has nothing whatsoever to do with whatever it is I'm reading.  I might be reading a book about elephants and in some part of my brain there is a locomotive. This has happened my whole life and I just accept is as part of how my brain works.

But occasionally I stop and think about it .... what was that?

I was thinking about my pain the other day and remembering that it was on the right lower quadrant of my abdomen and when I thought of it, I thought of a picture frame around that area.  so far nothing that weird.

But then I realized that in thinking about the pain--every time, especially when describing it to a medical person, my brain pictured a rectangle with a yellow spot in the middle of it looking like a lemon...or maybe a baby chick.  I don't have a clue why it did that but I'm glad that the yellow spot is gone, finally.

So yesterday was returning to normal day.  I was scheduled for lunch with Char at the Red Lobster.  We planned this lunch during Red Lobster's crab fest but it had to be postponed because of my mother's broken bone.  Now crab fest is gone, but it's a time of endless shrimp and we both love shrimp, so we decided to go anyway.

My shrimp plate was huge (and I forgot to photograph it) and waaay more than someone in my abdominal condition should have ordered (so I brought home enough for Walt to have for dinner last night!).  But it was delicious, even if it did cause some minor abdominal distress.

Of course, we discussed the current political climate.  Discussions like this these days are so discouraging, so pointless, and so depressing.  You feel so totally helpless.  And we've come to accept lying as normal.  Owell, another lie, we say.

Ned pointed me to comedian Marc Maron, whom you can find on Netflix.  If you are feeling like I am, I STRONGLY urge you to check out his video, which is both hilarious and says it all.  The first set, about 10 minutes, perhaps, about Trump (in which he doesn't mention his name at all) is so spot on and says everything I'm been thinking and why I'm so depressed.

But other than that, it was a pleasant lunch.  It always is.  One of the things Maron talks about is that, at 53, he doesn't know how much time he has left and he thinks he doesn't have time to learn something new.  Like if Phish is a great band, if he listens t them, he doesn't have time to go back and get up to speed on their music because he might not have that much time left and he needs to concentrate on what he has NOW.

That's kind of what it's like in your 70s.  Do you have enough time left to start a brand new friendship? with all that entails?  

It's worked well for Char, who has a bunch of new friends in the senior living where she's moved, but here in Davis, where I'd have to go out looking for a new friendship, it's just not worth the bother.  So the friends of all my life become more and more precious to me.  They are the friends with whom you have verbal shorthand, where a word or two evokes a whole part of your life that you shared.  Char can say "I thought of Michele" and we both immediately are in the same place.

Those friends are becoming fewer and farther apart and I cherish the ones I have, Char at the top of the list.  Even if we both are so depressed about the world.  I decided that what we must do is not concentrate on what we have no power to change, but to find something where we can feel we are doing good in the world and that will have to sustain us.

When we parted, I drove to See's Candy in Vacaville and picked up a box of chocolates for my mother's birthday.  She's been 98 for four days and I hadn't seen her yet.  I stopped off at home to get Walt, who wanted to come with me, and we went to Atria.

She was thrilled to see me and wondered how long I'd been in town -- I really don't know who she thought I was.  We visited about an hour, I guess.

The most depressing thing, I guess, is that I imagined at at this age, we would sit back and reminisce about the old days.  But my mother can't remember old minutes, much less old days.  You can't remember the time Aunt Barb stripped at the family reunion or picking blackberries on grandma's farm, or talk about anybody in the family because she has no memory.

Then you realize that YOU are the only one with those memories and that is very lonely.

 

---

My sister died 45 years ago today.  I know my mother doesn't remember that.

Change of Scenery

Today I took (most of) the day "off" from Atria and went with Walt to have lunch with Char at the new place where she lives.  Of course it's also a senior living place, so we were once again surrounded by grey hair, canes, and walkers, though people here seem to be "fitter" and younger than at Atria, so it was a different vibe.

On the way, we stopped at Atria to deliver my mother's pain medication for the day.  She was very bad, saying she hurt so much she couldn't walk.  It was hard to leave her, but I knew from my day with her on Sunday that there was nothing I could do and I really wanted to see Char's new place.  I gave her the pill and hoped it would help.

It's about an hour and a half to Pleasanton, which gave us a chance to finally finish the book we've been listening to for months, "Transfer of Power" by Vince Flynn.  We only listen to it in the car and we hadn't gone anywhere in a long time (I had hoped to finish it on the way to the wedding reception).  Such a good, gripping book.  If you are into that kid of story, I recommend it highly.  Such a shame Flynn died so young (mid-40s).

We started listening to Dustin Hoffman reading "Being There," which I am enjoying.

Char met us at the clubhouse and when I walked in, I felt like I was walking into one of the fancier 5-star hotels where we have stayed on Viking Cruises.  How impressive!

We went straight to the dining room, which was huge, with a skylight over most of it to make it very bright and a window wall looking out onto a grassy area with a beautiful gazebo and wandering stream over which were little bridges.

Lunch was good too.  Walt had steak, perfectly cooked.  I had a fancy tuna sandwich, perhaps better than I've ever had (in Parmesan bread with tomatoes and avocado--the tuna was almost superfluous).  The blueberry crumble dessert was probably better than anything I've ever had at Atria.

After lunch we went through the garden area, over the bridge (looking at the koi who immediately swam over and started begging for food) and through some of the outbuildings like the one for the huge swimming pool.

(Char tells me that the sign is required on all swimming pools these days...I'd never seen it)

Her apartment is on the 3rd floor with a  beautiful view of Mount Diablo, which will probably disappear when the new building, currently under construction, is finished.

We had a nice visit, but had to leave early to get back to Atria for a meeting with Melissa, the patient services coordinator, to discuss the next day's visit by the long term care nurse, to assess my mother's approval for a claim against the policy for which she has been paying >$3000 a year for decades.

First we went to give her the evening pain pill.  She was still in pain but her mood was significantly better.  I remembered when my friend Phil Dethlefsen, who was on all sorts of pain meds, told me that they didn't take the pain away, but they just made him care less.  When the woman who has been checking on her for meals came, she was delightful toward her, and happily went off to the dining room without even worrying about leaving Walt and me behind.

After we left the apartment, we went to Melissa's office and discussed her "action plan."  As of today they will take over giving her the meds, which takes a huge load off my mind.  We also decided to put her on "escort" services to take her to meals.  She seems to enjoy the camaraderie of the caregivers and has no problem going with them to meals.  This may eventually increase her involvement with Atria, but I won't hold my breath.

I had to sign forms for my mother as her power of attorney and I have to admit it felt like putting her in the home.  Nothing really changes except Atria will have more involvement with her (and it will cost ~$800 more a month), but still it felt disloyal doing this without her knowledge, though she always seems OK with whatever I suggest.  Still, it was harder on me than I expected and I cried to Walt when we got home that it was "tearing me apart"

In fact, I couldn't eat, and fell asleep watching TV, and slept all night after James Corden woke me up and I staggered to the couch to finish the night.

All things considered, though, in the cold rainy light of day I am relieved to know that they will be keeping an eye on her, that she will get her meds regularly, and that she may not eat more than cookies at lunch and dinner. I won't feel quite so guilty on days I don't go to Atria.

Family

I don't know which is worse, being an only child, or becoming an only child in adulthood.  If you lose your only sibling after you are an adult, you lose a whole piece of your history.  If you never had a sibling to begin with, that history doesn't really exist, except with your parents.

Peach is my oldest, longest lasting friendship.  We became friends when I was very little.  There are pictures of us together at our grandparents' farm.  I remember visiting her when she spent a year in boarding school in San Francisco. 

There was a period when we were both young wives raising children when we had no contact whatsoever, but that ended one night when she and Bob came to pick up a statue that our uncle had made.  The two of them stayed for dinner and it was, to quote William S. Gilbert, "like six hours at the seaside."  We spoke in cousin-speak, remembering things long before either of us had met Bob or Walt, remembering idiosyncracies of other members of the family. It was the best night I had spent in a long time.

We stayed in touch after that and, of course, those Cousins Days really solidified that relationship.  You realize that "family" is more than just your parents and siblings.  Peach and I are family more than most of the rest of my blood relatives are "family."

What is "family"?  It's more than DNA, more than blood lines, more than knowing you are all descdended from that bloody buddy of Robert the Bruce who wanted to make sure the guy they attempted to kill was really dead and went back to double check (from which comes the family motto on the family crest, "I make sure.")

With family you share your life.  You aren't afraid to be vulnerable.  You can talk about anything.  You have a long, long history.   You have "family speak" where you can say things like "Lucky Boy Pass" and know that it needs no explanation.  You both were there.  You both remember.

You laugh together, cry together, raise kids together, share secrets together, travel together, do stupid things together (mostly do stupid things together).

As Char and I sat at Fentons for lunch today the thing that we have known in like forever was blatantly clear. We were family. You aren't uncomfortable showing tears, asking awkward questions, remembering. You aren't embarrassed to order a gooey dessert.

 The last time we saw each other was at lunch at Fentons a lifetime ago and we parted, promising to meet in Paris in two weeks.  That never happened and now we are talking about services and ashes and memorials and eulogies and we are both letting the tears well up without embarrassment because that is your level of comfort with family.

Char has been my family for much longer than my sister was. We don't need DNA to prove that.

---

After we parted company, I went to the outlet mall to try to find shoes ... my least favorite thing to do, but Peach says I should bring boots.  I didn't find boots but, miracle of miracles, I did find not one but TWO pairs of shoes that fit, so at least I have something other than Birkenstocks for the 20 degree weather.

Then I went to the Davis Art Center.   Sculptor Heidi Beckebrede was replacing the "C" in the ceramic sign for "David's Place" outside, where kids wait to be picked up after their classes.   The area was built with funds that were donated after David died.

She thought I might like to paint the "C" myself, so I joined her clay class and started painting the C.

Being the unartistic, unoriginal person that I am, my design was very simple -- but meaningful.

Not sure what "Miss Heidi" thought about it.  She did point out where I'd skipped spots and made me go back and do those spots again.  71 and I still can't get it right!

A little girl sitting next to me -- about Bri's age -- asked me what I was coloring.  I told her it was the letter "C."  She thought about that for a minute and then asked "Are you going to color other letters?"

Ursula

They call it twilight sleep, I think, when it happens in between that awake time when you first go to your sleeping place and the actual sleep that happens after random thoughts flit through your head while trying to get to sleep.   I've had some really weird twilight sleep dreams through the years, where my mind takes over and it goes off on flights of fancy all on its own, sometimes thinking about real things in my life, sometimes true flights of fancy that I had no notion were rolling around in my head. Because I'm busy trying to get to sleep, I have no control over where my thoughts go.

I'm not sure what you call it when this happens in the morning, during that time between deep sleep and fully awake.  

I've started sleeping until about 8:30 in the morning and I'm lovin' it.  Now that doesn't mean 8+ hours of uninterrupted sleep.  That means 2-3 sleeping on the couch, then an hour or more (usually more) awake watching TV and trying to get back to sleep in the recliner, and finally getting to sleep, waking around 5:30-6 and listening to the local news and the Today Show, aware that I'm dozing off and on while "watching."  

It's in those "dozing off" times when I have weird thoughts.

This morning I was thinking about Char's youngest son, Cam (Cameron) and realize that I know his middle name and I knew how he happened to be named Cameron (but not how he happened to get his middle name).  Then I wondered if I remembered all of her kids' middle names.  It's kind of like one of those things that you should know about your best friend, but since the kids are all >50 and pushing 50, it's not something I've had to think about in 50 years.

I started with the oldest.  I knew she was named after Mike's cousin in Belgium and I even remembered her middle name.  But I didn't know how the 2nd daughter got her name and couldn't remember her middle name.  The next daughter was easy because she's my goddaughter, though I didn't remember how they happened to name her either her first name or her middle name.  Tim was easy because one of Char's very best friends at the Newman center was a priest named Tim (in fact, he was the priest who married Walt and me -- we were his first wedding after he was ordained).   I remembered his middle name too, and that brought me back to Cam again.

I told Char about my dream and she filled me in on the name I didn't remember and gave me the story behind how each one happened to be named.   She then shared with me something I hadn't known before, that she herself was apparently named after her mother's favorite childhood doll.  "Not exactly inspiring," she added.

I thought about her being named "Charlotte" and then thought about how the Latin word for "bear" is "ursus" and thought that since she is such a huge fan of the UC Berkeley Bears she should have been named "Ursula" and told her that.  "Sounds good to me. You may call me Ursula from now on," she tells me.

I probably won't, but who knows.  I just may.  That will confuse passengers on our upcoming cruise to France.  Go Bears!

* * *

I falsely maligned our dogs this evening and had a brief moment of panic at the same time.  Walt is off at the opera in San Francisco and the four of us 2- and 4-legged critters are here alone.  I wait to watch the evening shows (mostly Jeopardy) until Walt gets home so we can watch them together, so I decided to watch a movie instead.   I got into the recliner, kicked off my Birkenstocks, and settled in to watch the movie. The dogs paced in and out of the house during the last half hour or so because it was getting to be dinner time and I wasn't getting up to feed them instantly.

When the movie ended, I got out of the chair and there was only one shoe.  I looked under the chair, on either side of the chair and all over the family room.  The dogs are not chewers and I never have problem leaving anything on the floor (other than a plastic waterbottle) because I know that they won't run off with it.  But the shoe wasn't anywhere.  I pushed the chair forward and it wasn't under the chair either.

I went outside in the fading light trying to find it before it got completely dark.  But no shoe.  I checked the living room, the couch (where the bottles they carry out of the family room end up) and everywhere they might have taken the shoe.  I asked them many times what they had done with my shoe, but nobody talked.

I finally lifted the chair up to see better under it.  Still, the shoe was not under the chair, but it looked a little odd under the folded up footrest and when I examined further, the shoe had gotten folded up when I went to get up and there it was.  Whew.

I wear my Birkenstocks every day and they are wearing out badly, after about 20 years, and I keep meaning to get a new pair, but just have never done it.   No time tomorrow because I'm having lunch with Ursula and her cousin Susan (of Logos) and won't have time to get downtown to shop.  But definitely on Thursday morning I need to get a replacement pair of Birkenstocks, just in case I ever lose one again.  I'll keep these ratty old friends in the closet in case I ever lose a shoe again.

But the dogs are off the hook.  They were good dogs after all.

Day 71:  Brianna is getting more like Uncle Ned every day

The Magic of Ice Cream

There is an old fashioned restaurant in Oakland that we occasionally took the kids to when we were living there.  It's called Fenton's Creamery.  It was the kind of place where you could get a real malted milk shake, sinful ice cream desserts heaped high with real whipping cream and the maraschino cherry on top.  

We didn't go there often, but did  go there on occasion, usually some special occasion.  

Fenton's was founded in Oakland in 1894 and has served generations of happy customers.  It was/is located right across the street from the Kaiser hospital where all of our children were born.

In 2007, it opened a location at the Nut Tree in Fairfield.  The Nut Tree used to be this amazing site that had a great restaurant, playground, train, toy shop, airport, and airplane museum.   It was state-wide famous and rich people could get in their private planes in Los Angeles and fly up to the Nut Tree airport for lunch and be back home again in time for dinner. It had started as a roadside fruit stand in 1921 and just grew like Topsy.

In the years when the kids were little, we used to alternate months and take one child out to dinner in a "sit down restaurant" which they got to choose.  In a year, each child had dinner twice, once with Walt and once with me.   The Nut Tree was a favorite spot because it felt fancy, it had a great aviary with interesting birds flying around you while you ate, and they served us individual hot loaves of bread (also a salad of fresh pineapple with a delicious marshmallow dressing).   It was a great experience.  We always shopped for oddball kitchen stuff, jewelry, t-shirts, and books.

But over the years, the folks who owned the Nut Tree died and nobody ran it like they did and it shut down in 1996.  The famous building was torn down and sat unused for a few years.  Now it is a strip mall, called "Nut Tree Plaza," with hints of the old Nut Tree, like a fun playground with the old Nut Tree merry-go-round.  The airport remains, but there is no restaurant like the old Nut Tree. Instead there are places like Michael's, BestBuy, Chipotle, See's Candy, and a host of other small stores.

But there is Fentons, bigger and brighter than the old Oakland location.

When Jeri was here last month and we had such a good time with the Blackfords, I decided that I have all these women that I regularly have lunch with, but it takes getting Jeri here (or a cruise) to get together with Char, my best friend.  We live an hour or so from each other, and we both have lots of free time, but we never seem to get together.  I decided we could meet somewhere in the middle, and suggested that we get together for lunch this month.

Today was the day we chose and Char decided she would drive farther than half way and suggested we have lunch at Fenton's.

I got there first and stopped at the Jelly Belly store next door.   

I have worn Jelly Belly socks for some time and I really like them so I thought I could get another pair.  They didn't have the kind I like but they had some new fuzzy socks that I like better, so I was happy.  There was a woman shopping in the store who was so tickled to be there and was taking a video to post on Instagram.   She positively beamed to have found the Jelly Belly store!

Char showed up and we went to sit down in Fentons.  I had checked their on-line menu last night and knew that their specialty was crab salad sandwich, and it was indeed delicious.  I had a whole one.  Char had half of one with a bowl of soup.

And then, because it was, you know, Fenton's, we had to have a sundae.

(This is their small hot fudge sundae, so full of ice cream, that the fudge overflows onto the plate.)

Between the crab and the hot fudge, we discussed anything and everything.  Books, politics, our kids, the Pinata group.  While I very much enjoy getting together with the women I see here in Davis, nothing beats conversation with lifelong friends with whom you never have to explain anything--because they know it all.

We just missed the other 3 (surviving) women in the Pinata group and so we have chosen a date for our next lunch in February and invited the others to join us.   I live for stuff like this.