Haven’t got much decor up this year—and the pix thing is still bollixed, so it wouldn’t help anyway.
The church across the street is putting on a Trunk or Treat event in their parking lot tonight—we may stroll over and have a look. This is where you decorate your car trunk in a theme and bring your kid and candy to trade around (the candy, not the kid) in a collection of parents where the kids are under supervision. It’s fairly brilliant: parents get to do something with their kids, and kids get to do something with their parents, and everybody has to share candy and ideas.
We tried to see the Northern Lights, and should have been able to if they got to us, but somehow it didn’t work. I’ve seen them once, and if you’ve never seen them, it’s worth a trip to the Arctic Circle. Seriously. Waterfalls of colored light as big as mountain ranges.
Jane’s outside doing some end-of-season gardening, and I’m inside reading my own work, namely the most recent Foreigner book, so that I have it booted up to outline the next one while Jane takes the Alliance book in hand and does her run-through. Then we’ll trade again. With of course a lot of discussion, some of it at our favorite pub, where they keep a noise level that lets you converse and don’t mind long sits in a booth.
I’m headed to phys therapy this week—trying to do a bit to get more of ‘me’ back after the year of chemo. I’m stronger. But between the arthritis in the knee and gut muscles that had to heal—well, I need a tuneup. The ‘chicken shot’ in the knee is not perfect, but it’s still holding. So I don’t have that going on.
And I’m generally feeling good. So is Jane. We got her fish tank cleaned up and she has a desire for discus fish. Which are kind of fascinating. And not the easiest freshwater fish to deal with, but twenty years of saltwater reef experience gives us equipment a lot of discus beginners don’t have, and knowledge of water chemistry. So we’ll hope to do well. Meanwhile I’m nursing an anemone back to life—it resurfaced after 2 years of neglect of that tank, and I’m feeding it coral amino acids —poor thing had absorbed all its tentacles and now looks like a white mushroom with pink edges. It should be fist-sized and all-over pink with finger-long tentacles, about 30 of them. But being fed again, its zooxanthellae (zo-zan-THEL-ee) or color cells (which photosynthesize sugars for it) are beginning to multiply—it had only traces of color when it showed up, and now has color over most of the ring of little bumps that will become tentacles again. Once he starts photosynthesizing his food, he will grow again—and the way he feeds—what I give him goes to feed the zooxanthellae (amino acids are what they need) and some feeds him, too, but his life really depends on the sugars, which he can only get from the zooxanthellae. And once that’s all going again, both cylinders firing, as t’ were, he’ll perk up in a hurry.
sending good wishes for the anemone – though it sounds like they’re pretty tough!
Recovery from chemo is *slow*. (My feet have finally stopped swelling in the aftermoon. More than two years out. Now if my nails would finish recovering….)
Hurray for writing!
Yay for the Anemone. Poor little guy. Maybe you should call him “Lazarus” ?
Yes, recovery from chemo takes time. Nerve regrowth/rehab takes time. Slow and steady wins the race, though. Keeping active is the key.
My mom is living with me now, since the 18th, and it’s an uphill battle. All she wants to do is vegetate in the chair, watch TV and have me wait on her hand and foot. The physical therapist, the occupational therapist and the social worker have all told me that is the worst thing for her. I have to constantly make her get up and fetch and carry and do things for herself, etc. (I’m such an ungrateful child!) She’s not nearly as helpless as she thinks she is, and she’s a bit of a Diva. Life is not very fun right now. I don’t have time to knit, or read, or relax anymore. I’ve had to wack off all my hair because I don’t have time to take care of it. (I hate short hair!). Grumble. . .grumble . . . grumble. . . It’s only been two weeks, but I think I’d commit GBH for just one morning to sleep until I get tired of it. On top of it, my lymphoma is recurring. I’m to have a PET scan in Jan to see how aggressive it is.
Sounds like a very stressful time, WOL! Can you get a home help aid and/or get your Mom into an adult day activities program? Yes, you need breathing and relaxing room… and time to look after yourself room too. Perhaps your oncologist has a social work office you can speak with.
WOL, please take care of yourself at least as well as you are taking care of your mom.
Stress and mental exhaustion are just as bad as physically overloading yourself; you need your immune system in good condition to fight the lymphoma. Sleep is an important part of that, as that is when your body repairs itself.
I think it might be very important for you both to set up some ground rules, so you can have at least two hours to yourself each day in which she will not interrupt you, and at least two half days ‘off duty’ if you can’t get a full day and a half. Every worker has a right to their weekend off. You should get to sleep in at least on Sunday (and/or Saturday) – put it in the weekly schedule: Sunday, brunch at 11, then the rest of the day off at least until supper.
Do you at least have your own room? Then you could set a rule that if you’re in your room with the door closed she can’t interrupt you, unless it’s a dire emergency. Make sure to also set out fixed times that are your own, like from 2 to 4 each afternoon, when you can take a walk or a nap or read a book or do some knitting in your own space away from her. She can take a nap too, or sit and watch TV, and get her own tea if she can’t wait.
Even if the room is small enough that you have to sit on the bed, get some good pillows for a backrest and hang up a nice picture to look at, and maybe a birdfeeder at the window (there are types with suction cups that you can fix on the outside of the glass, no screwing in of hooks necessary), and *take* your time for yourself away from your mother!
She wanted you to move in with her; you did her a very big favor by doing so. Now she needs to respect your boundaries, to avoid you burning out on this caring rôle. If she overloads you, and you end up getting sick or not being able to stand the situation any longer, you will both be in a much worse pickle.
As Raesean said, if you could get her into some sort of day activities program or social group, that could give you some clear time to yourself. Caregiver burnout is a well-known risk, and there should be options for getting her out of your immediate care for part of the day for a few days a week, to give you some respite.
Since you moved to a place for aging in place, or whatever it’s called, I think there probably will also be things like knitting groups, card-playing leagues or bingo, a wheelchair exercise hour, chair yoga, tai chi or things like that. Maybe her therapists could recommend such a mild activity group for her, and gently push for her to join it at least once or twice a week?
If there’s a nice-ish group that gathers for knitting and handwork projects one afternoon a week, you might join them a few times to see what they’re like, and give yourself an excuse to get out of the apartment on your own for a few hours.
After all, it’s important for both of you to mingle a bit to settle in to your new surroundings. 🙂
Even if the group ultimately doesn’t appeal, you’ve set a pattern you could continue, going out on your own for those few hours each week (or something like that).
A weekly trip to the library might also help. After all, once you have them you need to return your books! And take your time doing it, exploring the town and the area… you might find a bakery, bring home some nice cookies to reconcile her to your going out. 😉
I might have to look for those suction-cup birdfeeders for FiL, who is an avid birdwatcher, but is prohibited from putting up a feeder on a pole, and has no eaves to suspend one.
We had no trick-or-treaters on Halloween. I sat waiting outside for about 45 minutes, from just dusk into full dark, then left the lanai light on until 9 p.m.. The only thing I saw were mosquitoes and 4 satellites zipping overhead, a new record!
Happy Halloween to all! We had more Trick-or-Treaters tonight than ever before —69 (but we ran out of loot to hand out at 67) and then we turned the Halloween and porch lights off (signal that we were no longer a house to visit). We live at a dead end street and don’t even get as many kids up our end than the start of our stub of a street. I could see and hear police going slowly up and down the much bigger street we connect into — according to one parent shepherding his kid around, they were basically doing crowd control and keeping the street clear of walkers. It’s a nice, warm night and finally stopped raining (quite the northeaster we got earlier this week and it poured much of yesterday too), and everyone is out! Lots of young parents in semi-costume (witch’s hat or a wig, etc.) taking their toddlers around just as an excuse to get out themselves!
“Mom, I hate feeling helpless and useless, but I’m going to need your help now that I’m ill…”
Our city had trick-or-treat yesterday from 2:00 PM – 4:00 PM. I think I might have had 40 kids come by. A lot of groups were one or two kids and several adults (do you think maybe they didn’t want to pass out candy at their homes?).
I get a big kick out of some of the costumes. Not all of them dressed up in store-bought costumes, either.
I sat out in my driveway, hoping for some sun to keep me warm. I had 4 bags of candy, and only went through 2-1/2 bags.
I see the WordPress template for the page has changed from the Atahuapl to Duvi, I believe. Alas, my own website has gone defunct as the kendo club can no longer afford the fees charged by the site provider.
I think feeding a tentacled creature back to health is the most science fiction thing I’ve heard in a long time 🙂
Lol!
We had an awful wind storm two week ago and lost many shingles from our house. The insurance adjuster has come and gone and we have insurance money to pay for the roof. Unfortunately the palm trees we had in the back yard survived… ReadyGuy and I decided we can’t risk those trees coming down and crashing into a neighbor’s house or the major street. We had a tree service come in and take them out. The ground is now flat as is our bank account. I’ll miss the owls nesting in them but at least nesting season is over so they’ll just have to nest elsewhere next year. I am happy that the woodpeckers are gone though. The quail and ravens are still here so it’s not all bad.
Yike! if you want attractive trees that are not as tall but still semi-tropical, look into plumerias. The blossoms smell good and are gorgeous.
Wednesday (CJ and Jane did this several years back) I’m having the cabinet maker come in and replace the bathroom vanity. It was starting to rot out, being the same vintage as all the other built-ins in the house. I’m finally going to use that slab of travertine for the countertop; it matches the Corian sink I rescued from a neighbor’s rebuild. Eventually I’ll get rid ot the old linoleum tile floor and put in nonskid wood look tiles.
The Chanur series got a plug on the Tor.com website. One of the comments was: “Cherryh also had quite a few human merchant families in the Alliance/Union universe, as particularly evinced in Merchanter’s Luck, Tripoint and Finity’s End. (And why, oh why, aren’t the latter two available as eBooks?)” Good (maybe dumb) question.
Here’s the link to the article: https://www.tor.com/2021/11/05/five-sff-stories-where-interplanetary-trading-is-a-family-affair/
Nice mention, but the section for Chanur’s Venture is awful — (of course it’s a DAW publication, but still.
Off topic but important for non-NZ authors who’s books are in the New Zealand national library, so I’m copying this to all the author blogs I visit.
The NZ government has decided to donate its overseas collection to the Internet Archive and put the onus on authors whose work is still under copyright to opt out. We have until 1 December to opt out. This is the page with the list and with what to do to opt out:
https://natlib.govt.nz/about-us/strategy-and-policy/collections-policy/overseas-published-collection-management#opt-out-process-for-rights-holders
If you go to this page, there’s a spreadsheet with the titles in question that you can download. Suggest sharing this with any authors you know who need to be concerned. The original poster passed this on to their literary agent and you might do the same.
And the bathroom sink and cabinet went in. The cabinet was a 3 hour remove old cabinet install new by the cabinetmaker. The tricky part was the sink, which had a previously undiscovered crack or chip by the drain that refused to seal properly; when I tested the drain a stream ran down the side of the pipe. In frustration, I summoned our neighbor/friend Richard, who is a jack of all trades. He came over, futzed about for a while, discovered the problem, and kludged a fix by coating the entire area with caulk, which seems to have sealed the leak, one hopes. Tomorrow I finish caulking everything else, and install the mosaic edging along the front. At the moment, I ache.
Oh noes! Was that the goldfish sink? I love that sink.
Oh noes! Was that the goldfish sink? I love that sink.
Nope, the goldfish sink I believe was CJ and Jane’s. This is one a neighbor was getting rid of. It needed a good scrub, but is a large improvement over our old one, patched leak notwithstanding, The old sink was porcelain over cast iron, and was starting to chip and rust out.
Watch it! Bathroom vanity replacement is the gateway drug to home renovation, which never ends!!
I already have a list of projects in the works!
As for sleeping in, not happening. She takes meds at 8 a.m. and I have to record her weight, BP, pulse and oxygen saturation and supervise her dressing. She gets more meds at 8:30, raises cain if she doesn’t get her coffee promptly at 8:30, and gets breakfast as soon as I can get it on the table. She has OT and PT therapists that come twice a week, wound care that comes three times a week, and a lady who comes to bathe her Wednesday & Saturday. We get one meal a day provided (lunch). We have to go down to eat promptly at noon (she demands three meals a day on time, orders food and eats part of it (usually less than half), then says she can’t eat any more, she has no appetite — but somehow manages to eat all her dessert . . . ) She has meds she has to take at 5 pm. We must eat promptly at 6 pm (see above). In between all that, I’m emptying trash at least three times a week, washing dishes, and washing a load of clothes practically every other day. I’ve had to wash her sheets twice this week because her adult diaper got so full during the night that it leaked when she sat on the side of the bed for vitals. More meds she takes at 9 pm. I’ve convinced her that one of them makes her drowsy and a fall risk to get her in bed by 9:30. That gives me time to myself from 10 pm to midnight — if I can stay awake that long. I snatch time here and there as I can to keep up with the blogs and YouTube channels I follow. If I have to have chemo after the first of the year, we’ll have to move her to another level of care as I’m barely holding my own now.
WOL, I’m sorry to hear the problems you are having with your mom. Something like this seems to happen to many people who end up caring for an aging parent. My MiL started showing signs of dementia about 8 years before passing, and it was an excuse for any selfish or careless action on her part, which increased as she got older. She wanted to live independently, but went through caretakers on a monthly basis. Getting her into a care facility was a major task, but we were grateful when she finally found a place she liked and the daily routine become someone else’s duty.
My in-laws are selling their house in Florida and are moving out here to Arizona. We found a house for them and should close on the house the second week of December. In the meantime I’m overseeing necessary repairs required by Veteran’s Administration. I haven’t had time for myself in months and once they are here I doubt things will change much, but their house is a half mile away, so they won’t be dropping in on us several times a day. I’m looking forward to having them here so we don’t worry as much and my MiL says if she can’t care for herself she’ll move into an assisted living facility because she doesn’t want to be a burden… It’s nice to have an understanding like this. Have I mentioned I love my in-laws?
That sounds like a good plan, Ready. I hope you get some time to relax after they have moved in.
It’s so nice to have relatives who have a contingency plan for things like this! Ditto the hope for some ‘you time’ after all the moving craziness is done!
Is it just me, or have we lost the ability to edit our postings for a half-hour as was?
No, I guess not, but I didn’t see it when I posted to Hanneke on Spoiler Alerts.
Paul, I’m getting the 30 minute edit countdown. It takes a few seconds to pop up after you submit the comment. I’m usually impatient with my computer browsing, so I’ll move on to something else before the edit window starts.
I do get the edit option on this thread, but not on the spoiler alerts thread. I think it stops appearing when you get to the 5th level of coment-on-comment threading.
(Edited to fix typo)