Problems - Title edited due to spam contents

The New System

Edit note 1/12/12:  I changed the title of this post because of the amount of spam comments it generated. If you ever have a problem of this nature, do NOT name it in the title of the blog post. Idiot spammers.

On to the blog.
If you've been reading the blog, you know that on Christmas Eve, we woke up to the furnace not working. Fortunately, it was a simple problem quickly and easily fixed by our HVAC guy. Thank you, Roy!

Well, in addition to the on-again, off-again HVAC, our plumbing problems reached "You Gotta Fix This" proportions this month. The toilets had been running slow for quite a while; every now and then you had to grab the plunger and race to plunge before the bowl ran over. A couple of weeks before Christmas it began to get really bad, and I procrastinated wanting to ride out the holidays. So, of course, by Christmas it was almost unbearable.

I finally got a reference for a local licensed plumber, and Max gave him a call. He got here this morning and began working on the plumbing. When Joe put the bathroom/laundry room in place of the spare bedroom, of course he didn't hire someone to do it. He saved money and did it himself. Okay, so he saved money for a few years. We're now spending at last count $1500 to fix what Joe messed up.

Joe didn't know diddly about venting and running pipes. The plumber has rerun all the pipes that Joe put in at wrong levels for venting. He's also fixed all the junctions that Joe put in backwards. Yes. Backwards.

Cutting the old cast iron pipe that the original plumbing ran through was more of a task than the plumber looked forward to. I feel for the guy. In addition to it being so heavy that it crashed upon cutting, it was full of sewer water. The plumber and his son had to go change clothes. Enough said.

After the plumbing inside was finally fixed, it created a problem with the pipes running to the city sewer lines. Seems the fixed indoor pipes run too much water for the pipes running to the sewer. So now we're going to have to rotor rooter them out. Oy. It never ends.

As of tonight, however, we now have toilets we can flush as long as we don't flush them 3 times in a row. Tomorrow we'll get the lines to the sewer scoped or routed out, and hopefully there will be enough time to fix the leak under the kitchen sink. Oh, and the fallout from the cast-iron pipe catastrophe was the vent for dryer. It and a stored chair from the dining room set bit the dust in the run from falling cast iron pipes and sewer water.

Great Fake Wine Experiment Update 12/28/11

Very frothy after moving.

Here are a few pics of the wine experiment. In these, you can see the bubbles and that I replaced the glove with a balloon. It's not blown up very much, unless you see it right after the jug has been moved. That shakes things up and releases quite a bit of gas. Initially I was keeping the jug in a closet in a bedroom that stays closed off. However, worrying about the temperature being too cool made me move the jug to a different room. It hasn't seemed to increase off-gassing, though.

Normal size of balloon.

Closing Doors

The newest thing for Lola is to close every door in the house that she passes. If she goes to the bathroom, she closes all three bedroom doors on the hall. It's only a bother in that one of rooms is a pass-through room, and I pass through it often. Have to open the door every time.

Yesterday, I was sitting here in the den at my computer when the door to the den slammed shut. Talk about jumping out of your skin! After I peeled myself off the ceiling and opening the door, I commented to her on closing me out. Her response? "Why, I didn't know you were in there." Sigh. Interior door with glass almost top to bottom. Me not more than 3 feet from it.

Monday:
This morning the TV came blaring on at 8:30 a.m. Since Mom had for once gone to bed about 11:00 p.m., it was a perfectly acceptable time to her. Since I'd stayed up until my normal 2:00 a.m., it was an ungodly hour to be awakened to the blaring TV. She's lost the fact that I sleep on the sofa in the living room, and that it's cruel and inhuman punishment to me startling to me to be awakened by the TV.

It's sad to watch your parent wander around like a mindless child. Mother keeps getting up and going to the presents under the Christmas tree and looking at them. They're new and unknown every time she looks at them.  Max gave us both a box of candy, and we had to take them out of the living room to keep her from eating a whole box in one day. She's started wiping her silverware off and placing it in her basket instead of leaving it on her plate for me to pick up and return to the kitchen. She doesn't want it to get lost.

It's worse than caring for a toddler. At least a toddler grows up and gets smarter. Your well-spoken, intelligent parent just gets, sigh, dumber. I have to admit that I really don't like this death taking years and years to happen stuff. Sometimes it doesn't bother me as much as other times. Right now I'm really very tired of it. Ah well, life is what it is, and there's no getting around it.

Lola's Getting Along

and doing pretty well. Most days lately she's been getting herself up at a decent time, sometimes even very early. Saturday morning I awoke to the TV blasting away at 9:30 a.m. BTW, it will take a pretty amazing movie to make me ever turn the Classic Movie Channel on again. The timing had Max laughing as I had told him there was a new law passed in Arlington against letting Jola Gayle sleep to 10:00 a.m. Now, since I rarely ever go to bed before 2:00 a.m., I don't think sleeping 8 hours until 10:00 a.m. to be beyond the pale. This puts me sooo off-schedule with the rest of the population around here.

The Great Fake Wine Experiment

The Great Fake Wine Experiment has begun. Stay tuned for future updates on the results.

Lemme 'splain here. I call it "Fake" for a few reasons. Foremost is that it uses not real grapes but frozen grape juice concentrate. Almost foremost is that it's incredibly simple and doesn't putz about with things like actually knowing what you're doing and having a goal of a particular type of wine. Another is that it doesn't use wine specific equipment like, say, a glass container and a real airlock.

For some reason, about 30 years ago, my normally teetotaler dad decided he wanted to make wine. The basement is still full of wine he bottled no telling how long ago. Some of his wine actually didn't have a bad taste, and some of it was only good for pouring down the drain. Through the years, he got concerned about his body's sugar levels and started making drier wines. Those are the ones that make me shudder. Then, again, I'm not a big wine aficionado.

Max's Visit 12/18/11

Max was in this weekend, which was wonderful. We watched TV and visited Friday night. Saturday we went shopping, came home, put stuff up and did "chores." Sunday morning he left in the early morning, so it was a short visit.

While he was here, Max ran cable into the kitchen so I can watch the little TV in there. The kitchen is in the far back of the house, very isolated. Usually I listen to books while I'm working in there. Variety is nice,too. I'm not tied to the telly, but there are shows I'd like to follow that aren't on Mom's Classic Movie Channel. I'm also a product of my generation in wanting audio input almost constantly. Since it's just Mom and me here most of the time, and she doesn't move or talk much, it's gotta be electronic input.

Max also hooked up a new telephone set so we actually have more than one working phone in the house now. Yay! The parents' old phone didn't have voice messaging on it, and the new ones do. I don't know whether that will be a blessing or a curse.

We got some new mini blinds for the kitchen and Joe's old bedroom. Hopefully they'll help keep out some of the cold air this winter and lower the electric bill. There has also been a big privacy issue in Joe's bedroom. For someone essentially very private,  in the last decade Joe had lost his concern about dressing in a room with open windows. The curtains Mom put on both the windows are extremely difficult to open and close - there's a desk in front of one and a bed in front of the other. Over the years, the ties she'd used have aged, frazzled and come apart on use.

Since I've been told there's a known Peeping Tom in the neighborhood - Eek! - having the windows covered will make me feel a lot better. I sure don't look forward, though, to climbing the desk and straddling the bed to get these things put up.

I got a couple of loads of washing done. Hohum, mundane, I know. On the front of cleaning the basement, though, I washed the curtains Joe had hung over his wine rack. You can see the very orange curtains in the pic on the left. OMG, I bet they hadn't been washed in 20 years. Max took them down for me as that was the corner where he was working to run the TV cable.

Slowly, slowly, we're working on trying to get the basement cleaned up. Oh, and I bought some face masks to wear down while I'm cleaning up. It's taken me all week to recover from the 4 hours I cleaned down there at the beginning of the week. Don't want a repeat of that.

Celery Salt

Last night while unloading the celery from the dehydrator, it seemed like a good time to do a little experiment making celery salt. When I was refreshing my memory on dehydrating the celery, I had seen several comments on making celery salt from the dried celery. I wanted to see how it would turn out.

To make celery salt this way, you combine ground celery with salt. Doh, eh? My grinder takes 3 tablespoons of "spice" as a maximum to grind well. That ended up being about 1 tray from the dehydrator. I ground that to a fine powder and added 1/2 teaspoon salt.

In the top photo, you can see how much celery was on one dehydrator tray. The little pile of celery on the left is three tablespoons. You can see my grinder with three tablespoonsful in it.

The end result was far different from store-bought celery salt. First, the color was much lighter.  Second, it was a finer grind. Third, I controlled the salt content; thus, it was far less salty. Fourth, it didn't have as much celery flavor.

In the bottom photo, the spoon on the right is a commercial celery salt. The spoon on the left and the bowl contain my ground dried celery

I was unhappy with losing the robust celery flavor and wonder if using some celery seed with it would impart more celery flavor. I actually liked the lighter color. I'm unsure about the more powdery texture and will have to wait until I use it to decide if that matters.

If anyone with experience in doing this would like to jump in with their opinions, please feel free to comment below.  If you're viewing this on the home page, you can comment by clicking on the word "comment" where it shows how many there are. If you click on the title of the blog post, you will go to a page with only this post, and there is a link to click on to "Post a Comment."

The Things You Never Know

Once you get to be about 35 or older you begin to realize that your parents were actually, gasp, young themselves at one time. That's if your parents have turned into rather straight-laced grown-ups who seemed to never want to allow you to do anything when you were a teenager. You begin to realize this, but it's a vague concept. Not one you spend a lot of time contemplating.

Until you find something like this old jacket.

It's likely pretty safe to assume this was something done by Dad or a buddy when he was in the Navy during WWII. Makes me wonder where on earth he wore it, if he actually did.

Lola's Incontinence

On Sunday Lola had a really bad case of incontinence. When I awoke, it was to the TV turned up to full volume on the Classic Movie Channel. I guess she thought I'd slept long enough. Anyway, Mom was dressed, which was mind-boggling. So I said, "Good Morning." She didn't reply. So I said, "My, you're wearing clothes." She didn't reply. So I said, "You look pretty." She said, "Thank you."

I got up and went about the morning - making coffee, breakfast, and eventually getting dressed. The coffee and breakfast went as normal. The getting dressed produced some surprises. I found Lola's pajamas in a heap on a tray she has in her bedroom. They were soaking wet. So was her bed and bedding.

Ah, so. She had actually put on clothes purely because she had peed in her pajamas in the bed and didn't want to be wet anymore. Okay. So Mom had an accident. I'd put her in "Depends," or the generic equivalent of adult diapers, some time ago when drips and a dirty bottom had become a problem. Actual incontinence had not been the problem on an on-going basis. Gulp. "Maybe it's going to be," I thought.

There weren't anymore adult incontinence "panties" in the house, but I wasn't very concerned. It wasn't a huge problem. How wrong we can be. By the end of the afternoon, Lola had wet three pairs of pants, and I was scrambling to get to the store to get "Depends."

It had become a habit to remind her to go to the bathroom a few times during the day because it was apparent she was having trouble controlling things. Normally, keeping up on this kept accidents from happening. About every three hours or so, I'd  remind her to go. That would take care of things. On Sunday, it was a total fail.

I've watched her all day on Monday for this, and it hasn't happened. Unless the Depends are full and she's just not admitting it. You hate to feel your mom up for a full diaper. So at this point, I don't know whether Sunday's incontinence was a harbinger or a fluke. It will take keeping an eye on things to monitor kidney function.

Cleaning Up

<Rant On>
If you have reached your 70's, please start going through your stuff and getting rid of it.

If you have reached your 80's, for crying out loud, get rid of STUFF.

If you truly have some valuable things - coin collections, Ming vases, Van Gogh paintings - by all means, keep them and will them to someone.

If you have anything from the Bradford Exchange, get rid of it; it's a scam. My parents have at least 15 "collector" plates they probably paid $30 for each, which now can't be sold on ebay for over $10.00 each. That's if anyone in the family "wants" to try to sell them, pack, pay shipping and collect on them.

If you collect nails, hoses, flower pots and things you haven't touched in 10 years, throw them the hell away.

Your children DO NOT want to have to weed through a house full of things you might need one day.

</Rant Kind of Off>

Can anyone guess what I've been doing this evening? Um, I've been trying to  clean out the basement of my parents' house. Here, let me show you what an episode of "Hoarders" looks like.

Shelling Pecans

Uncle Charles gave us a wonderful gift a couple of days ago - two sacks of pecans. I hadn't planned on shelling pecans, but, hoo boy, who's going to turn down pecans! He said his son, Kevin, had 6 trees, which turned me neon green with envy. Here I'd been pondering planting a pecan tree out back. Now I'm trying to figure how to beam one of Kevin's trees from his place to this one.

Unk said Daddy had a pecan sheller around here, and I had a dim memory of seeing one. So I went on a hunting trip around the house. I finally found it high on a shelf in the garage. Eek! Could I get that thing down without cracking my skull? It finally was down, and my skull was unscathed. It was covered in a quarter-inch of garage dust and inside were Dad's old Braun razor, sideburn trimmers and a set of clippers. Sigh. Anyone know why all the hair-care tools ended up in the pecan sheller? I sure don't. Max was tickled, though, to learn the Braun razor still worked.

As usual with all things done by Joe, this pecan sheller is mounted in one of the best, over-engineered bases one can imagine. I nearly laughed myself silly telling Max about it. I laughed so much because it brought home the reason for one big trouble Max and I had at the beginning of our marriage. Max is more of the kind to slap it together, not worry if things fit, not give a rat's ass if it look wells, and only make sure it minimally does the job. And I was raised by Joe Lindsey.

It took quite an attitude adjustment and review of my world perspective for me to get over it. It took about 10 years for Max to be willing to try to do anything around the house again. Deep at heart, I'm still more like Joe, but have hopefully come to better cope with things not having to be perfect.

I'd never used a pecan sheller before. Now I don't think could live without one. Using the old fashioned tools had made shelling pecans so much of a pain that I had given up on ever buying them in the shell. After two days I have this big bowl brimming full of pecans. Amazingly, they're mostly whole halves and not teeny little pieces. I'm in heaven.

Thank you, Uncle Charles and Kevin.

mmm, wonder how many trees you'd have to plant to make Pecan Butter?

Dehydrating Celery

Since celery was at such a good price during Thanksgiving, I took the opportunity to stock up on it for my dried foods storage. There are as many different ways to dehydrate celery on the internet as there are to cook chili.

While doing this batch, I saw quite a few websites that talked about grinding the celery and mixing with salt to make celery salt. That's something I'd like to try in the future. I need to get a new grinder for spices before I can, though.


Edited 12/18/11 to add permalink to celery salt post:
http://jolagayle.blogspot.com/2011/12/celery-salt.html

After trying a few different methods, this is the one I've settled on as liking the best. It gives the best color, although it takes a longer amount of time.

1. Wash celery well.
2. Cut off leaves and wide root ends
3. Slice celery into 1/4" slices (crosswise)*
4. Put slices into bowl of cold water if processing a lot.**
5. Just before loading dehydrator, soak celery in 6 cups of water with 1 tablespoon of baking soda for 5 minutes.***
6. Drain and load dehydrator trays.
7. Dry at 110°F  until celery breaks easily, 16-18 hours. 

*This is the size with which I like to cook. I've seen directions for 1" slices and have considered doing that for putting under roasting meats; however, I've not done it so far.

**How much you process depends on the size of the celery, your stamina and dehydrator. It took 3 bunches of medium celery to fill 6 trays for my Nesco dehydrator.

***Do this in batches if you don't have a huge bowl.

Lola Sleeping and Conversing

On Wednesday, about 10:30 p.m., I nudged Lola to go to the bathroom. She can't seem to get it together to go before she's nearly or does go before she gets to the bathroom. She's begun to associate going to the bathroom with the last thing she does before going to bed.

Tonight, I kept an eye on her chair, which she never returned to. Sometimes that means she's having trouble with a bowel movement. Shudder, I really don't like those times. Tonight it meant she'd simply gone to bed. After 15 minutes, I finally went to make sure she was okay, and found her in bed. Sigh. So I went and got her nightly medicines and gave them to her. Normally she takes these about 11 p.m. and goes to bed at 1 a.m.

Saturday

Sometimes one of the hardest things about caring for Mom has been the loss of her ability to have a conversation. When people come to visit, she can converse with them somewhat, especially if they stick to days gone by. Usually when I walk through her room, I try to find something to say, believing that keeping her engaged and keeping isolation at bay are good things. This is indirect conversation, and she simply can't do that anymore.

The problems with it are multiple. First, everything I say I have to repeat. It simply never sinks in the first time around. Unless her ears have quit working in the last two months, she's not deaf. Talk simply doesn't get processed by her brain well. Second, she doesn't know anything anymore. So quick quips and questions are exercises in frustration for both of us.

Examples of this today include not remembering foods or how to do things. This morning I asked her if she liked the cream I put on her oatmeal yesterday. She didn't remember anything about it. She can't remember if she likes Tuna Salad for lunch. This afternoon I jokingly asked her if she wanted to help me shell pecans. She said she didn't know how.

She never instigates conversation anymore. I usually have to prod her to respond to good morning, how are you doing, and things like that. Gets kinda lonely, and I'm thinking about serious talking to myself.

Today she is doing as well as usual for her. She's sitting in her chair watching old movies, bundled up in the soft, warm robe her sister Jeanne gave her. She never asks for anything - a drink or food or anything.

Lola and Her Chair

There's one chair in the living room that Mom has turned into her little nest. You can't get rid of any of the tables or trays with which she's surrounded the chair. She asks for them back. She stacks her photos on them, along with all sorts of stuff she's forgotten about and/or can't use anymore. She keeps a tray on her left side that is her table. She has a foot stool in front of it that seems to be more of a tripping hazard than a place she props her feet. She only does that if I get onto her because her ankles have become swollen.

She's become fairly bad at eating without making a mess. Cereal, which she loves, particularly gives her problems. She's gotten bad at getting things on her fork, and a lot winds up on the floor.

I've gotten a hand towel out for her to put on her lap because so much falls off the fork on the way to her mouth. Lately, though, she's taken to throwing the towel in the trash can on her right side. You never think that you have to begin going through the trash once your parents become feeble to make sure they don't throw away something needed or valuable.

Speaking of valuable, last week Max found one of Dad's good hearing aids, that I thought he must have thrown away, in the garage on the counter top in the midst of the junk. At least Daddy didn't throw it away. He just, for some unknown reason, took it out while in the garage and laid it down. In the middle of 500 hundred nails, bolts, screwdrivers, bird feeders, light bulbs and pounds of dust. Wonder where I'll eventually find the other one.

In the last week, Mom has begun to cough and get a little choked. One of the gals in the nursing home was talking about that being something that happens to the elderly. They begin to have trouble swallowing. Guess that's beginning to happen to Mom now. Otherwise, she's doing well. She got up on her own at 11:00 this morning.

December Trivia

Bed Trivia: My parents' house is a lovely three-bedroom ranch with a full, unfinished basement. Howsomever, a couple of decades ago, my dad converted my bedroom, or the spare bedroom as it were, into a combination laundry room and full bath. I've written about it before here. It's a large space that's wonderful, not the most efficient floor plan, nor blessed with closet space due to the basement stairs ruining that idea, but still large. You can dress in it without tripping over a bed or other furniture. You can actually set the ironing board up in there, and you can shake out and fold sheets without whacking a wall.

The biggest problem with the room, though, is that it effectively deleted a spare bedroom in the house. With all the people that used to come visit them and stay overnight - me and my family, Mom's sister, Mom's niece, and just friends from out of town - Joe got rid of the spare bedroom. God forbid he spent a little money and just added either another bedroom or bathroom. No, let's make sure no one ever comes and visits again, unless they're willing to sleep in the unfinished basement.

Well, since the basement has leaked for years, and Dad didn't consider that important enough to fix, it's damp and full of mold. It's probably why I've been sneezing like crazy since I've been here. The leak caused the carpet they put under the bed down there to become something you wouldn't walk on barefoot for fear of your health. Not to mention that after Dad became crazy he let a cat have kittens down there, and said kittens used that carpet as their personal bathroom. Shudder.

The point of my windy complaint? This picture is of my bed.  Joe's been out of the house long enough I could use his bedroom, but, OMG, the mattress on his bed is, as I said, like a slab of concrete. One of these days I'm going to have to rent a truck and actually go buy a mattress. I hate doing that. I always choose wrong. Sometimes I think I'd rather just buy the bed that slept great from a good hotel.

WalMarts, Christmas Decorations and Changing Clothes

Joshua finally got on google talk, and we had a great chat this evening. It's nice to have him a second away. My husband, Max, was at a company Christmas party, which I missed, pout. Josh's wife was at a fraternity Christmas party, which he missed. So we yammered at each other for a while.

This afternoon I took a WallyWorld trip and went to the WalMart in Fulton, KY/TN. I'm not clear enough to know which state it's actually in. We needed a few things, and I made an executive decision and decided I needed a small TV in the kitchen.

To my friends who don't watch TV :-P sorry. The kitchen is isolated, and I'm sick of my own mind. I've listened to every book I own so many times I'm becoming able to quote them as much as kids Josh's age can quote "Big Trouble in Little China." Word by word instant replay.

WalMarts in little towns (Fulton, pop. 6, 855) are different from WalMarts in Oak Ridge or Memphis I've discovered.

December is Here

It's hard to believe: December is here already. We've even had an early-for-us snowfall. A couple of evenings ago, Max said it was snowing in Memphis and that 1-3" were predicted. Since it was just drizzling here, I quite shook it off. Lo and behold, I woke up the next morning to a winter wonderland, well, almost. Today, 2 days later, there are still patches of the stuff left in shady spaces, but the temp is already up to 42.

Yesterday I had on one of Dad's sweaters, and while putting Mom to bed she noticed it. She asked if it was one of his. Then she asked me where he was. I had to tell her again he was dead. She didn't cry this time, just asked about his funeral. I told her we had a graveside service and that he is in their plot at the Arlington Cemetery. That seemed to satisfy her.

I can't remember what day it was, but a little bit ago, when I walked into the kitchen one morning, nearly every cabinet in there was open. Mom was looking for something I suppose. Later, I asked her what she was looking for, and she had no clue what I was talking about. She had no memory of being in the kitchen. She'd picked things up and placed them on the counter, moved things, and generally made the counter a mess.

Max and I have been discussing what to do now. For so long we believed we'd end up losing the house to Medicaid to care for Joe. With that looming, it seemed best to move Lola to Memphis with us and sell the house while we could. Since Joe didn't have to apply for Medicaid, and it's unlikely Lola will need to (please, please), we've come to the decision to stay here as long as we can.

Now that Joe isn't here to throw a fit, I can clean out the 40 years worth of crap in the basement. We can move some of my "crap" in there allowing Max to downsize in Memphis. He can get a studio or 1-bedroom apartment there and cut some of our expenses. He'll stay there until he can find a job in this area. If he can't, he'll still stay there during the week. That's the general plan for now, anyway.

I've been going through Dad's clothes and cleaning his closet out. He had some nice clothes. All of them are so very old, though. I hate to throw them out, yet they're so old I wonder if anyone would choose them if donated to a charity. Even the majority of needy people around here want to look up-to-date rather than wear something 10 years old - dress shirts and suits. I'm so out of it I have no clue what lapel size is in style now.

Well, Lola's been on a spell this week of getting up early and staying up late, so I haven't been able to sneak the suits out of the closet anyway. If I save them, it'll mean driving to Paducah to find a place to donate them. Aunt Agnes said there was a place in Clinton to donate them, but I don't know where it is. It's not like there'll be a sign pointing to it, and I don't know Clinton. The bad thing about being here is that you have to drive miles to get to most things.

Dad has 13 shelves of paperback espionage and suspense books. I've started going through them and pulling them, too.  I've got a call into a local auction house to see if they sell them. Sheesh, throwing books away is like pulling teeth - it's something you just hate to do.

Happy Thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving to all. It's the normal grey, overcast day here in western Kentucky - just as the majority of Thanksgivings I remember have been. What is Thanksgiving, anyway, without an overcast sky!

We are doing well here. Lola is going through each day as she has for months. If she noticed anything on the day of Joe's funeral, she's not said a word about it. She's not noticed she's eating 5-6 course delicious meals courtesy of the wonderful ladies of the First Baptist Church. She's willing to stay in bed 24 hours if I let her. She seems to be more inclined to want to go to bed at night at an earlier hour than she used to.

Max and I are doing well. We're thoroughly enjoying being able to spend time together. We're watching TV together, arguing politics, solving world problems, trying to remember dishes to cook from Food TV, busting myths and simply being together.

While pouring that first cup of coffee Thursday morning, it dawned on me I had actually wanted to get up and that it was the first day in years I didn't have to worry about herding and guarding Joe or waiting for a phone call from a nursing home.

Joe is released and not unhappy now. He was miserable from the middle of September when his medical crises started until his death. He is not in misery any longer. That is something to be thankful for.

There's a ham in the oven - no turkey for us - the dressing is ready to be mixed; there's heavy cream for Auntie Jeanne's lima beans in cream and butter. The pumpkin pie is cooked. We've yet to decide on whether to add green beans, broccoli or carrots to the menu. The church brought a plate for Lola over already this morning.

Happy Turkey Day every one.

Joe's Funeral

Joe's funeral will be a graveside service Tuesday, November 22, 2011, at 2:00 p.m. CST at the Arlington Cemetery. There will be no visitation. There will be a meal at the church for family and friends after the graveside service.


Lola isn't processing that Joe isn't here anymore. She's forgotten, I think, that he has died. I'm trying to stay at home as usual and keep her schedule as normal as possible to cause her the least distress I can. Max's being here is upsetting her as she absolutely cannot remember or place him as my husband. She thinks there's a stranger in the house every time he walks by her.

She awoke at 3:00 this afternoon furious because he was vacuuming the carpet. The noise, the strange man, the change in procedure set her off, and whew, she can still raise a ruckus.

Julia and Larry brought a ham, green beans, pimento cheese and some rolls over. They were quite welcome. Lola is munching on a plateful as I write.

Josh and Maurya are coming in and will be over on Tuesday.  Jeanne is going to sit with Mama during the service. I'm hoping it's close enough to Thanksgiving we can put the blame on the holiday for the change in Lola's schedule. Dang, you hate to keep having to tell someone their spouse has died over and over again.

Lola's Condition After Joe's Death

In case anyone is wondering how Lola is doing after hearing about Joe's death, she is the same as she was before and really can't comprehend it or remember it. She finally let me get her to bed at 1:15 a.m., and as I was tucking her in she asked me what I told her earlier about Joe. I told her that he had died earlier this evening. She just sighed and said she wouldn't ever get to see him again. I told her that she could go be with him in heaven anytime she's ready. She didn't cry anymore or react in any way. She just said, "Well, goodnight."

Joe Has Left Us

Martin Health Care called me about 8:00 p.m. tonight to let me know that Dad had just died. He simply quit breathing. Arrangements for his burial will be made, and I will post them here. Likely his service will be a graveside service on Tuesday with a meal at the church following. I will post date and time when it's known.

Lola was upset for a bit, but she's not obviously upset anymore. There's no telling if she'll remember this tomorrow or not. She's already told me she can't do a funeral, which is one of the reasons I've opted to have just a graveside service.

If anyone wants to email me, pls use gayleherring at comcast.net.

Semi Apology

This is a semi apology for not posting much of interest to anyone other than immediate family tracking the status of my parents. The journey through the end of their lives has proven more tough than I expected. I find myself swideswiped, gobsmacked, exhausted and overwhelmed by turns.

Up until a few months ago, it seemed I was coping well and maintaining interests in varied things. The last two months I have found myself not coping so well. I go into hibernation it seems whenever things become overwhelming.

Joe's recent health crises seem never ending. There's been no slow decline to end of life with him. It's been crises after crises and battle after battle that simply seem to go on with no end. Nothing with him has been critical, OMG this is awful. It's been dashes to the hospital with barely a definitive diagnosis. It's been battles to find a bed in a nursing home. It's been battles to find a nursing home that could handle him. It's been battles over his personality combined with his dementia and needing a locked, secure setting. It's been notifications of end of Medicare payments intertwined with his ups and downs of needing skilled care one day and not the next day.

Lola's decline has been just as serious though much less dramatic. She now shows almost no will to get up out of bed and has to be forced to do so. She lives in the pictures of the prime of her life and has no working knowledge of the present. She has to be prodded to pick up her fork to eat her meals, to go to the bathroom, to drink enough fluids, and to go to bed. Her life consists of getting up from bed to go to her chair in the living room, turning the TV onto the classic movie channel and going to bed when I force her to. The best that can be said at this point is at least she's not bedridden.

So it seems I've dug in my heels and am existing. Doing the necessary for the moment and not much more seems to be my limit. I look at their house and belongings and think of weeding through things and needing to pack up keepers and shudder. I look at winterizing the house and shudder. I look at the paperwork that needs sorting and shudder. I daydream of my own house surrounded by my own belongings and being with my own husband.

Update on Joe 11/15/11

Martin Health Care called me at 7:35 a.m. this morning to ask permission to send Joe to the hospital. He was unresponsive, and his oxygen levels were low. Of course, I gave permission. I have to admit I was about as smart as a log when they called this morning. Lola had stayed up till 2:00 a.m., and I had insomnia to boot, and listened to a book until about 3:00 a.m.

It was 1:30 p.m. before I could get to the hospital. I had to shower and dress, clean the kitchen so I wouldn't be embarrassed to shreds if someone had to walk in there today, and get Lola up, fed and situated before I left. Then there was travel time. By the time I arrived at the hospital, they had already released Joe back to the nursing home.

He has been having spells like this the last few weeks. One time he will be worrying the staff because he's not responding, and the next he will be "knocking on the walls." Personally, I think it's part and parcel of both the dementia and his personality.

He's not eating much at the facility, and it's worrying them. I've tried to communicate to them that it was a problem. He did it with me, and he's doing it with them. He's only lost 2 pounds since he got there, but that's 2 pounds in 4 weeks. I've told them feed him junk food, and they've replied, "it's not too hard to fry  baloney for a sandwich." Yet, I feel that's not getting passed along.

They said he was somewhat dehyrdrated. When I arrived at the facility today, his mouth was so parched. Yet, there was no tray by his bed with any liquid on it. There were 4 large insulated cups in the room, but they were all empty.

When you're not local, how can you guarantee that your relatives are getting top notch care? You're paying out your ass for care, but they have no water and no tissue to blow their noses. Dad's upper dentures have disappeared. The last nursing home lost his glasses.

You try to keep perspective on things - there's a whole ward of demented people who need care, they wander, they pick things up from one room and move them to another. But you have to ASK, "Is it too much to keep my relative's glasses and dentures?" There's not many 90-year-olds who don't have glasses or dentures. If one or the other goes missing, doesn't that ring a bell in SOME care takers' mind? How hard is it to search a ward for glasses or for god's friggin's sake dentures?

Regardless of circumstances, Joe's health is on a steady decline. His creatinine (spelling?)  levels aren't normal, indicating kidney failure. His oxygen levels are low. He's having frequent spells of unresponsiveness - meaning he won't respond when they try to communicate with him.

When I first arrived, Joe asked if I was his sister. I said, "No. I'm your daughter." It was met with a blank stare. Later a PT gal was in there, and she asked him if he knew who I was. He didn't. She told him I was his daughter and asked him if he knew his daughter's name. He replied, "I don't know." She asked him his wife's name. He replied, "I don't know." She asked him his name. He said, "Joe."

As usual, my visit today was only filled with his desire to be out of there. He wanted me to open the door to the pen, i.e., let him out of there. He wanted me take him home because he wasn't sick and didn't need to be there. When I finally said good bye and said I had to get home to take care of Lola, he pleaded with me to take care of him.

There are other things I'd like to write about - the neighbors trimming/cutting trees and other things good people have done, but that will have to be in another post.

Max's Visit

It's been quite a while since I posted to the blog. The last post I was working on was when Max visited. It went:

It's Max's weekend to visit. Since Joe is in a nursing home, and his hospitalization racked up some bills, much less his nursing home care, I'm not going home to Memphis anytime soon. We can't pay for a sitter for just Lola for a few days for me to go home. So Max is coming up here to Arlington every two weeks to visit me.

When Max was going through the living room to his bedroom, Lola just stared at him. Finally I asked her if she knew who he was. She told me, "No!" Even though he had greeted her when he arrived, she didn't know who he was.

That post was a while ago, and Max has spent 2 weekends here. The second one he arrived on Friday night and left on Sunday morning.  He spent a large part of Saturday whacking on the holly bush on the front of the house. He would have liked to have taken it out, but Joe, in confusion, put the wrong fuel in the chain saw, and it's, alas, dead as a door-nail. It's going to take a bit of doing to figure out what actually works amongst Joe's tools and which ones he's killed from senility or neglect.

Lola was about as confused with Max this 2nd visit as she was on the first. He said everytime he went through the living room while whacking on the holly bush/tree to get a different tool or take a break she looked at him like he was an alien intruder.

To add fuel to the fire for the Republicans in the area, do you really want Rick Perry as the Republican candidate for president next year? This is the guy who wants to do away with the Dept. of Energy - you know - the department who runs the Paducah Plant - Carbide, Gaseous Diffusion Plant, whatever - that so many of you work at or retired from? You can check out his position by clicking here.

Not to mention what it would do to Oak Ridge, where I lived and worked from 1983 to 2007. Besides my parents needing me, I would still be there if both Max and I hadn't lost our jobs due to DOE cut backs. I don't know about you, but the DOE supported my family from the middle 50's until about 10 years ago. Yeah, let's just gut this department that has given us jobs for 60 years. Go Republicans.

Sleeping All Day

Dementia takes such strange tacks. On Monday night, Lola went to bed. On Tuesday, she seemed to want to sleep a lot. So I let her. I kept thinking eventually hunger would drive her to get up. It didn't happen. Since every time I peeked in she seemed asleep, I finally decided if she wanted to stay in bed all day I'd just let it go. Finally in the evening I woke her up to take her medicine. She didn't seem inclined to get up, was somewhat disoriented, and I feared if she arose at that time she'd be up all night. So I let her lay back down. Around 11 p.m. it dawned on me she hadn't been drinking all day and needed hydration.

I made her some sugar milk, a bowl of peaches and some bread with butter and went in to make her eat and drink something. When I forced her to get up, she commented, "The bed's all wet."

My mother had laid in the bed, peed in it, and was contented to simply lie in a soiled bed. It had never even entered my mind that she wouldn't get up to go the bathroom. I know she mostly lives in the past. I know she sometimes doesn't recognize people. I know she gets confused sometimes about things around her. I didn't know the dementia would make her just pee in her bed and lay in it.

I got her up and cleaned up, change of clothes and bedding. Sat her down to eat and drink, which she did with gusto. Then put her back to bed. When you're not experienced with caring for elders, these things just sideswipe you.

Today she got up at 10:30 a.m. acting as if there had been no day between Monday and today, Wednesday. She's gone about her normal routine of watching TV, eating, and toileting just like nothing had happened on Tuesday and everything's as normal as it can be for her.

The only thing that was striking today was when I served her supper of chicken noodle soup and a plate of condiments she loves (pickles, okra and olives), she commented that she didn't rightly know how to eat that. Somehow the bowl of soup confused her. I explained to her to use her spoon or just drink it, and she was back on track and doing what she's done her whole life.

I've been scrambling to get papers in order, needed information and get ready to file the Medicaid claim.