Life in 90 Seconds

My videos are getting shorter!

I've started posting to Flickr, which truncates videos to 90 seconds. In fact, it truncates it to something under 90 seconds, I discovered with yesterday's video. So if something seems to end precipitously when you click on the box with the photo in it, click on the YouTube link for the full video.

Walt is currently in Boston collecing his Christmas gift from Jeri (tickets to a Red Sox game, which they attended yesterday)

So I guess this is a good time to confess my latest indiscretion. I flipped for the Flip video camera. So many people on Flickr are using this inexpensive, pocked-sized DV camera that, now that I receive a regular income from Social Security, I decided to be wild and daring and test it out. (I had to buy it before Bush's tax rebate arrived so I don't get accused of trying to stimulate the economy!) It arrived two days ago, and I absolutely love it.

It has lots of limitations. It doesn't zoom, for one thing. But the picture quality is, I think, pretty good. It's so easy to carry around (in fact, it fits in the new camera case I bought for the replacement camera I just got, so I can carry both of them and my digital voice recorder at the same time!)

One of the reasons I got the camera was that I'm doing 365 days of videos, like I did 365 days of photos. This just makes it that much easier. And much more challenging, actually, because of the 90 second limit. My videos in the past have generally run about 3 minutes.

I don't quite have a handle on creating something specifically for a 90 second video, but I hope that as I continue to make them I can get better at it. And if I can't do it well in 90 seconds, I can always post the full video to YouTube, for those masochists who want to see more of this drivel that I upload.

I've flipped for my Flip!

After my day driving all over the hell and gone, my plan for today was to sit in my night clothes all day and not move. But then my mother called. The medication (Vicodin) is not working and she's still in a lot of pain when she tries to move. She called her doctor who called in a new prescription to the pharmacy and who also ordered an spinal x-ray to see if she can determine the problem.

So instead of lounging about all day, I was back in the car retracing most of my steps from yesterday. We went to the hospital, had to wait a long time for her new medication (which required security clearance and triplicate signatures, since it's a narcotic), then got the x-rays and were back home again in time for me to get home to feed the dogs.

It is very depressing to watch what is happening to her. Especially depressing because you hear about it all the time in older people, especially people who have been as healthy and as independent as my mother has been. Something happens to them. A fall, an illness, a surgery they didn't anticipate. It sets off a constellation of problems and it seems to be a slippery slope.

With my mother it started off with the broken ankle. She was only really out of commission for six weeks, but it was nearly a year before the wound was completely healed. That was a year of getting up every morning to do wound care on herself, a year of reminding herself that she wasn't "her old self" any more.

My mother loved to dance, and her dancing days are over, she knows, because of the residual situation with her ankle.

But she was handling it all right until this sciatica popped up. She has a pretty high pain threshhold, but this is eating away at it. She is turning into someone I don't recognize, someone angry with the pain, angry at not being "well," and whining that she can't fix it. I understand completely. I sympathize completely, but it makes me focus on the reality of her being 88 rather than on the amazing person my mother has been at 88.

There's no getting around it. At 88, you don't have all that many years ahead of you and it has been my expectation that she would continue as active and lively and positive as she has always been, and die sitting up in front of the TV somewhere, a vodka and tonic in her hand, and an unfinished jigsaw puzzle in the other room.

The thought of perhaps her needing care, or to be in some sort of facility like Walt's mother is, waiting for the attendants to come and bring her her medications, doesn't exactly terrify me, but makes me feel very sad.

It also makes me feel guilty. If I were a "normal" person, I'd have a "normal" house where my mother could feel comfortable to come, move into her own room, and live out her days comfortably. But I'm not even comfortable to have able-bodied people my own age come in here, with the dogs and the mess and the confusion. It would not be possible for me to take my mother in, should it come to that.

I know I'm worrying about things LONG before I need to, but every time I am faced with frailty in my mother, I can't help but worry about how I can make her final years as positive for her as she has made my life for me all of my life.

Let's just hope they can find a way to help her through this current crisis quickly. Hold the good thought.