She'll Be the Death of Me

Yesterday, my mother called and asked me to come over, that she had "some things to talk with me about."  I wondered all the way over what she perceived I'd done wrong, or what she could possibly want.

Turns out she's been having anxiety attacks for the last 2 days (I last saw her on Friday).  She can't stop shaking.  Gets up and doesn't know where she is what she's supposed to be doing. She wanted me to fix her, but obviously she needed some kind of mild sedative, and definitely needed to consult a doctor.  We talked a lot and she agreed, which told me how bad she must be feeling because she NEVER willingly goes to the doctor.

 I called Kaiser in front of her and made the appointment (which she doesn't remember my doing, but still agrees to go).  I tried to get her laughing by laughing when she tried to pull the sleeves of her shirt down to cover the couple of old age spots she had and said everyone will think she's old.  I told her she tells everyone her age and everyone KNOWS she's old.

I got the bright idea to fix her a vodka tonic, which I think was a good idea -- a mild sedative.  Then I said I'd stay for dinner but then decided to get her OUT of Atria and take her to dinner at a nearby Chinese restaurant.  I couldn't believe that she had FOUR helpings of chow mein, in addition to two helpings of some mushroom dishes I ordered (because she loves mushrooms).  I haven't seen her eat that much in months.   I think she was OK when we dropped her back Atria but I was curious to hear what the doctor had to say.

I told her I can't imagine how terrifying it must be to be HER and talked openly about the worsening memory loss.  I have never yet used the "D" word with her.   I don't know if she could handle it.

So this morning I went to pick her up for her doctor's appointment and not only did she not remember having an appointment (though I sat in front of her so she could hear me making it, and she wrote it down on a special paper so she would remember...but that doesn't surprise me) but she feels absolutely fine and does not remember ever feeling nervous, so she doesn't know what she would tell a doctor.   Maybe I should make sure she has a vodka tonic every day.

I don't know if canceling her appointment was the right thing to do, but given that she is fine and doesn't ever remember being so frantic about being so nervous, it probably was.

I wrote to ask Ned, Ed and Jeri to check in with her, at least by phone, over the weekend. I'm sure she'll be just fine.

I'm not so sure I will !!!!

 The good news on the Atria front is that after nearly a month, and two letters to service folks at corporate headquarters (which address the beautician gave me), I finally have had an apology from the manager at Atria. In truth, it was a CYA (cover your ass) apology and his sincerity was suspect, but he gave it.   Said there was a "plumbing problem" in the private dining room, with water leaking from the kitchen into there.  NOBODY knew about it, including the wait staff or the staff at the front desk, but he assures me it was well known.

 He offered to host a special family dinner where the chef will prepare a special meal.  I don't want to do that.  The new chef makes crappy food and what I don't need is a special crappy meal that he will make under protest because a relative complained.  So I told the guy that we didn't need that and that the apology would suffice.  He hung up without saying goodbye.  But I won't mention that.  I am underwhelmed with the new management at Atria.  Managers there seem to come and go quickly, and I can only hope that this one, too, will be gone soon and that maybe his replacement will be better.

 Atria recently underwent extensive (and obviously very expensive) renovation and it has now lost the warm feeling that attracted me in the first place.   You can't find anything anywhere. The puzzle table has disappeared (and if they have moved it, my mother will never find it).  The food has gone from pretty good to pretty bad and the service in the dining room, by stint of an obvious cut-back on servers is consistently terrible.

 For this she pays $4,100 a month.

 But she's happy, at least, and for now has the funds to cover it for several more years.  I just don't speak of it in glowing terms any more.

Sunday Stealing

1. Have you had an argument with anyone recently? If so, do you still have issues with that person?
I can't think of the last argument I had with anyone.  I don't argue much.

2. Are you talking to anyone while filling this in? How about texting/chatting on Facebook?
Walt walks in and out, commenting on the Giants-Washington game, and I check Facebook if I hear I have a message, but not chatting.

3. Have you done something recently that helped someone else, in any way?
Did my mother's laundry, brought her her medication, took her to lunch with her friends.

4. Who was the last person to pay you a compliment?
Walt

5. Is there anything that’s happened in the past month, that you wish you could go back in time and change?
Yes.  My mother's birthday party that Atria screwed up so royally.  I'm still waiting for an apology, which was promised to me by the head office.

6. What colour is your purse/wallet?
Purse is black, wallet is brown.  Very boring.

7. What’s the closest item to you that’s black?
The slacks I'm wearing.

8. Think about what you looked like 5 years ago. How did you look different, compared to the way you look now?
I seem to have lost about 20 lbs in the past five years.  My face is thinner, but below the waist there is no change

9. Before Facebook became popular, did you use any other social networking site, like Bebo or Myspace?
I tried MySpace.  Didn't like it.  Of course before that there were the CompuServe discussion forums, where I made so many good friends.

10. Has someone of the opposite sex ever sung to you? If so, how did you respond to it?
On my 70th birthday my kids (which include 2 of the opposite sex) sang a song they wrote for me.  That was very special! (Someone videotaped it, but I never got to see it.) 

11. When did you last hug someone of the opposite sex?
This morning.

12. Have you ever seen the film “Casablanca”? Did you like it?
Of course (answer to both questions)

13. Do you have a relative whose name begins with ‘L’? Tell me about him/her.
You'd think with a family this large I would have, but I can't think of one.
[duhhhh - how could I forget my wonderful daughter-in-law Laurel and my beautiful granddaughter Lacie!]

14. Are you a secretive person?
My life is an open book, with some secret chapters.

15. When did you last eat?
I had a piece of cinnamon roll about an hour ago.

16. If you were going to buy a present for a special person, what would you generally choose?
I usually first check to see if they have an Amazon wish list and if they don't, my usual gift shopping starts in a book store.

17. If I’m going to buy you a box of chocolates, which kind should I definitely NOT get?
Anything with peppermint.  If there is no other chocolate around, I'll eat it, but it's not high on my favorite list.

18. Is there something you generally always ask for help with?
Anything that involves getting on the floor (like checking computer cords) since I have such a difficult time getting down and a more difficult time getting back up again.

19. If you had to give up your phone or your computer, which would it be?
Definitely my phone.  99% of the calls I get are junk calls.  I'd be happy to be rid of it.

20. Has anyone called you gorgeous/beautiful today?
No.

Whew. A New Project

I read an article today about a guy, Matt Kulesza, who decided he wanted to meet each of his facebook friends.  He's in Australia and has 1,088 friends so I'm not sure if he's going to make his goal of meeting everyone in 3 years, but I decided that sounded like a fun project.  I mentioned it and immediately had invitations from four people to get together for coffee.

So I designed a blog called Coffee F2F to report the experience and a photo of me with my FB friend, and already have two coffee dates set up for next week.   (Char and I are going to have our coffee date in Paris!)  I have no goals for completion.  I have 1,070 FB friends, scattered all over the place, so I can't possibly meet all (or even most) of them, but I'm willing to travel, if possible, from time to time.  There are several, for example in So. California that I could meet when we go to visit Santa Barbara. 

Should be easy to get several done quickly, since I have so many family FB friends!!  

I actually did the first F2F today, though it was kind of cheating, since a lunch date had been set up yesterday before I even thought of this idea. Jeri and Phil (the other Jeri and Phil) were in the area and asked about lunch.  I checked with Char and Mike, who were also free and Char checked with Rich and Pat, who weren't.

So the six of us met at Fentons Creamery in the old Nut Tree mall and had a wonderful time.  How can you not like a restaurant that offers more than one kind of crab sandwich?

(Made with Alaska snow crab)

I had Char take a picture of Jeri and me to start the new blog.

Fentons is famous for its ice cream.  In fact, it's in the top 10 ice creameries in the U.S., along with J.P.Licks, that we visited when we were with Jeri and Phil.  (When Char and Mike's son, Cam, got married, they had their reception at Fentons in Oakland.)  But by the time we finished our lunch, none of us had any room for ice cream of any kind.  I even brought half of my sandwich home for dinner.

The last time I was in Fenton's was for lunch with Char several months ago.  It was mid-week then and we were about the only people in the place.   Definitely not so today.  I think there was a waiting line outside and it was impossible to have a quiet conversation over all the noise, but we managed to get caught upon everyone's comings and goings.  And then, of course, before we left, we had to take group pictures.

Char, Phil, Walt, Jeri, Mike

We said our last goodbyes, again told Mike and Char we'd see them in Paris, and then headed off to our respective final destinations.

Walt and I got home in time to take brief naps before going to review Of Mice and Men tonight.

Before we left for Fentons, we discovered that if our house were burning down, none of our neighbors would notice.  I made cinnamon rolls this morning and butter dripped on the floor of the oven.  I recently made something else that had dripped too and was caked on the bottom of the oven. So after I got the rolls out of the oven, I decided to use the auto clean.  Within minutes it started burning off the stuff on the floor of the oven. Smoke was pouring out the top of the oven, and both smoke detectors (upstairs and downstairs) went off.  We opened all the windows and set up a fan to blow the smoke out but it was a good 15 minutes of smoke and detectors (neither detector would respond to the "off" button after setting it a couple of times) before things calmed down.  There wasn't even an inquiry from our neighbors.

I somehow feel less safe in this neighborhood now!

Today at Atria

Today was one of those days I have every so often, where I felt like crying when I left Atria.  I went there for lunch and we "visited" (such as visits are these days) beforehand.

A week or so ago, I had disturbing news about the health of someone we both love very much.  The wife had found a breast lump and was going to see the doctor.  After her appointment, the doctor said he was pretty sure it was cancer.   I hesitated about whether to tell my mother or not, but ultimately decided to tell her, even though the extent of the cancer and the expected treatment had not yet been decided, mostly because I wanted to share my own feelings about the sad news.

It hurt a lot that I was feeling so bad for my friends, the wife and her husband, that they are going through this and that my mother treated it as if it were something trivial. Now it has been decided that a mastectomy will be performed next week and my heart is aching for my friend.

My mother can't seem to process the news in any emotional part of her brain.  She had a momentary expression of sadness, but then went on to ask if the weather was hot outside. I know it's her disease and I know that if she were in her right mind she would be much more concerned, but she treats it with all the interest she has for anything these days.

Maybe it was a bad idea to take her to San Rafael for lunch and experience that one brief moment of normalcy.  It's definitely gone and much as I want to talk about the medical condition with her, she just can't grasp the seriousness of it, the potential danger, or anything else about this cancer.  Or that in a matter of just one week, our friend has gone from being just fine to having her breast removed, but my mother can't process what a trauma this must be for her.

Add to that our lunch.  We sat at a table alone.  I don't know where Margaret, who usually eats at that table, is.  She hasn't been there the last couple of times we have been there.  I watched all the tables of people around me chatting and I realized that I was feeling like a mother whose kid isn't one of the cool kid, the kid who people don't seek out for conversation at school.  People would come by our table, glance down and move on.

But then my mother told me that if I weren't there she would just take her lunch to her apartment.  Then she sat there criticizing everyone in the room.  She commented on how everyone was chewing and made it sound like a negative judgement on people chewing their lunch.  She always comments that there are so many people with grey hair there and sneers about the people using walkers.  This becomes a litany when there is nobody else at the table, repeated over and over again.  She doesn't want to be "one of them," so she'd rather eat by herself.

She is complaining a lot about her back, but of course a walker is out of the question.  I normally don't even mention it any more but she complained about pain so much today that I did, but I think a walker would be the worst thing ever for her.  If she had to use a walker, I think it would literally kill her.  Her pride in not needing one (even though she does) is what is keeping her limping along to "hunnert." And of course seeing a doctor about her pain is out of the question.  She doesn't need a doctor.

So it was just a sad day.  They are usually somewhat sad days (which is why the not-sad days are so special!), but most days I handle them better than I did today. I want her to feel something, dammit not just sit there musing about whether the leaves rustling in the trees mean that there is a cool breeze outside, but unwilling to open her door to find out.

She told me for the umpteenth time about the new pathway they created just steps from her door.  "Have you tried it out?" I asked her.   "What for?" she said.  She could see it just fine from her chair and didn't see any reason why she needed to go and actually walk on it.

She's now hoping that she does live to hunnert because she thinks that would really be a neat thing to do.  If she does, I might be in a home myself by then!

Today at Logos

It was the slowest day I'd ever had at Logos.

I arrived early to relieve Sandy so she could get to an appointment.   We didn't have time to chat, so I didn't know how her part of the day had gone, but when I looked at the log sheet, she had only had three sales all morning.   When someone came to relieve me at the end of the day, I think I had only made six sales, and one of those was to myself.  It's the first week the students are back at UC Davis and I suspect they are busy settling in and getting started in classes and it's not the time to go book shopping.

Nevertheless, I did have a number of customers in the store, though most did not buy anything.

There was a chubby man wearing a green shirt with a symbol on it that I know I've seen Sheldon wear on The Big Bang Theory, but I can't remember what it stands for.  i thought it was a Greek letter, but checking the Greek alphabet, it is not.  He was with a woman wearing a huge floppy hat--the kind Scarlet O'Hara wore at Tara--and carrying a Trader Joe's bag.  

He bought a photo album of Paris which was on the bargain book shelf and I'm sorry I didn't see it first.  We talked while I was ringing up his purchase and he was tellling me about the Seed Valut in St. Petersburg, which he hopes some day to visit.  Wikipedia talks about seed banks

A seed bank (also seedbank or seeds bank) stores seeds as a source for planting in case seed reserves elsewhere are destroyed. It is a type of gene bank. The seeds stored may be food crops, or those of rare species to protect biodiversity. The reasons for storing seeds may be varied. In the case of food crops, many useful plants that were developed over centuries are now no longer used for commercial agricultural production and are becoming rare. Storing seeds also guards against catastrophic events like natural disasters, outbreaks of disease, or war. Unlike seed libraries or seed swaps that encourage frequent reuse and sharing of seeds, seed banks are not typically open to the public.

A group of botanists apparently locked themselves inside the seed vault in St. Petersburg during the siege of Leningrad to prevent the people from breaking into the vault and eating the seeds because they were starving.  My customer told me that the botanists who saved the seed bank did, themselves, starve to death rather than eat the seeds.

A girl bought two Hardy Boys books, the combined price of which was $4.  When I rang the sale up I wondered if the tax rate had gone up last week because the cash register always calculates the tax and a $4 purchase has always been $4.32, but today it was $4.34.

An interesting woman with dark pink hair came in.  She was wearing a dress I first thought was velveteen, but it  was more a t-shirt material, but it was black and the skirt was short in front and long--to her ankles--in the back.   It had some kind of logo on it.  She wore a black backpack with emerald green accents and had black boots and a big wooden cow's head on a cord around her neck.   She had the look of maybe one of the "little people" of Ireland.   That she was looking through the fantasy section completed the image I had of her.

Tom, a friend of Peter's brought in his usual collection of science books for Peter.  He was telling me he's going to Copenhagen next week for a genetics meeting.

Sandy returned to retrieve the jacket she'd left draped over the chair.  She saw that I was reading my new Judy Garland book and she gasped.   Apparently she was as big a Judy Garland fan as I was and even saw her in concert at Madison Square Garden once.  Something else for us to talk about the next time I relieve her!

A girl came in asking if we had any Shakespeare and spent time looking through what we have, but didn't buy anything.  She was followed by a girl who wanted to know if we sold text books, which we do not.  She was very pretty and was wearing a black jump suit with a diapanous blue thing over it, which resembled the dress of the "little person" earlier.

The quickest sale was a man who strode purposefully from the door to the children's room and came out with a copy of "Holes," which he purchased ($2.17) and then strode back out again.  At the door, though, he turned and looked back and called out "thank you" before taking off on his bicycle, which was one of those with tiny wheels and a large frame that sat him about 3 feet above the wheels.

Two very tall people came in, a young woman and an old man who was either her father or grandfather.  They did a quick walk around the store and left, but I heard him say to her that it was a very nice store.

Next a trio came in, a mom with a tiny baby in a stroller along with what was probably Grandma.  They looked around briefly until the baby started getting fussy and then left.

Another tall guy came in holding a list and pointed to an obscure Sociology book and asked if we had it.  We ddn't.

The antiquarian is back!  I hadn't seen him in weeks, but he bounded into the shop again, his usual ebullient self.  When I mentioned that he hadn't been around, he said it was because it was summer and that things are always boring in summer (I gathered he had some connection with the university).  He was happy to find two books he wanted in our oldbook section.

Two barrel-chested young men arrived, one wearing a Texas chainsaw massacre t-shirt.  They were quite loquacious and talking over the bookcases aboput some woman, while they browsed.  The Chainsaw Massacre guy bought a big book of National Geographic issues and the other guy bought "The Book of Sex."

My friend showed up at 4:48 and bought 3 books, two bargain book and another one I've forgotten.  We talked about our upcoming trip to Santa Barbara and whether I'd see him next week or not.

A rumpled grey bearded unkempt man wearing a very large t-shirt, much too large for him and hanging to his knees was looking at the old books.  When he turned in my direction, he has the look of a street person.  He carried a ratty looking canvas bag, but his shoes were in good condition, though too large for his feet.   He didn't stay long.

A tall distinguished gentleman was disappointed that we had no books about baseball.

Two Asian women, one wearing a baseball cap with the straight brim like Tim Lincecum wears backwards on her head.  She and her friend checked fantasy,   but didn't buy anything.

A man with a Suffolk University shirt wanted a bathroom and I told him we didn't have a public restroom.  He was with a woman who wanted cookbooks, but neither of them bought anything.

And then it was over for the day.  If we made $100 total I will be very surprised, thought my purchase of two books about wine and wine growing that I bought for our Mexican daughter helped bring the total up a bit.

Honesty is Hard

All of my life I have done some things because I didn't want to rock the boat or disappoint someone. I've joined clubs I didn't really want to join, taken leadership positions I never wanted, agreed to do projects I knew I didn't want to do.  But that feeling of disappointing the person who was so eager to have me part of the team always came first and foremost. And I did a good job with whatever I had agreed to do, whether I enjoyed it or not, because I made the commitment.

Today I sat down and was honest with myself and made a difficult decision.  It involved telling someone that I was not going to do something she had been eager for me to do.

I didn't come by the decision easily and in fact, I have known for more than two years that I didn't want to be involved, but continued to be involved because I didn't want to disappoint my friend, who was so happy that I was finally in the group.

But today I wrote to her and let her know I would not be renewing my membership.

I have quit the Shakeseare Book Club.

When I didn't like this month's book selection and was forcing myself to read it before Saturday when there are three other books I would rather read, when I was happy that we would be gone on vacation when the next meeting came around, and when I dreaded my involvement in a presentation later down the line, I stopped and thought -- what the hell am I doing?  I'm 71 years old.  If I'm not enjoying this, why in the world am I still going?

I wasn't interested in the book club to begin with, when my friend invited me to a meeting.  Everyone thinks that because I am a theater person and relatively well read that I must love Shakespeare.  But I don't love Shakespeare.  Not that this is important for this book club.  It's the second oldest book club in California and initially it was formed to study the works of the Bard, but, like with Gilbert & Sullivan operettas, there are a finite number of them and sooner or later you have to branch out into other areas. Now they pick a theme and choose books based on that theme.

The year I went to my first meeting, they announced that the theme for the following year was going to be comedy, I think.  I remember that Tina Fey's book was one of the choices, but that was for a meeting that non-members were not allowed to attend.  I was kind of looking forward to that theme.

But this is a group of 50 people and you have to go on a waiting list until a slot comes open.  You can be invited to two meetings a year, to get a taste of it.  So I missed the whole comedy year.  Last year the theme was the history of California, which was mildly interesting, but I never got into the daunting book of poetry (I like poetry just slightly more than Shakespeare) and I really hated every single page of "Gidget," which I thought was a terrible waste of time, though I was part of the hospitality committee for that presentation and learned how to make the mint marshmallows which are famous in the group.

This year it's books by women who have won awards.   I'm having a hard time getting to the Edgar Award winning "Bootlegger's Daughter"

But it's more than just the book selections.  I was hoping for a relatively small group of women who sit around discussing the books -- and life in general -- but this is 50 women who rarely discuss the book, but sit and watch   a presentation by 3 women who usually have not very good stage presence, reading from prepared material using a very bad mic, so that I miss half of what they are saying.   It's more of a class in the book rather than a discussion of the book.  I go home feeling unsatisfied every time.  So why pay $35 for the privilege of doing it for another year?

The last time I wrote about book clubs several people said I should start my own, but what I really want is a small group of people whom I have known since my 30s and with whom I have grown up and shared all of my feelings for the past 30-40 years, women whose secrets I know and who share my own secrets.  I can't find that and it's too late to establish that kind of relationship now.  

I don't know what I want or where I want to look for it, but really, the Shakespeare Book Club isn't it, and it's time to be honest about that.   Then I can go read the book I want to read this week!

Just Like Old Times

I have had the best afternoon, and I came home from San Rafael on a real high.  I also came home again wishing I knew more about the process of dementia.

After how vague she was yesterday, and how she was at first today, I wasn't sure how this was all going to go.  I called her 30 minutes before I was going to pick her up, to be sure that she was up and dressed.  She was, but didn't remember about lunch at all, and was delighted that we had this lunch date with her old friends.

I picked her up at 10 and when she got in the car, she asked where we were going.  I told her San Rafael.  She asked if it was just going to be the two of us for lunch, I told her that her friends were coming.  She was thrilled and said that she wished she had known and she would have gotten dressed up more.  Sigh.

On the hour and a half ride down to San Rafael, I tried to talk about things I thought would interest her, but she only wanted to talk about three things:  how pretty the trees were; how dead the grass on the hills was and how we needed rain so they could be green again; and how they needed to plant stuff in the harvested fields. 

Occasionally she would ask where we were going and who was going to be there, but mostly I realized that the only thing that really interests her is nature--not animals or birds, but growing things.

We were the first to arrive at the restaurant and sat waiting for the others.  Four of the five expected showed up (Jeff, the last one to arrive, didn't come for about half an hour because he'd been stuck in a meeting).  It was like a lightbulb switched on.  She was excited, happy, bubbly.  The sparkle was back in her eyes.  Not only that but they talked about mutual acquaintances that she remembered.  (I have seen her say "yeah" to questions asked when she has no idea what the person is talking about, but in this instance not only did she remember the people, but also remembered personality characteristics about them.)

Everybody but me ordered a drink (my mother had two) and a toast was made for her 95th birthday.

With Cinni

We ordered lunch and, on Cinni's recommendation, I had their lamb salad, which was fabulous.

My mother didn't order a cup of soup, like she does every day, but actually linguine with clams, which she ate almost all of!

Paula kept everybody laughing by telling jokes.

Jeff finally arrived and everyone had a good time visiting with him.

He and my mother have always had a very special relationship and it is obvious how much the two of them like each other.

The restaurant brought her a bowl of ice cream with a candle in it.

At the end of the lunch, the women told us they were treating us to the meal because it was my mother's birthday and because I had brought her down.  It was very sweet of them to do that, and I had to take a picture of the group (minus Jeff, who had to get back to work).

There were hugs all around and I told them that whenever they wanted to include her in their lunch dates, just e-mail me and I'll be happy to bring her down.   Heck, to watch her be so "normal" for a brief time was worth the 3 hour drive.

When we got in the car, I said something about how nice it was that the women had treated us.  "Who treated us? to what?" she asked and then for the rest of the drive, she discussed the trees, the dead grass on the hills, and the barren fields.

That's why I wish I knew more about dementia...how she can turn it on and then lose it so quickly.  But I am still on a high, remembering how happy she was and how much fun she had visiting with her friends again. It was nice to see my mother again.