Sleeping with the sugarplums

Is it healthy relaxing and unwinding, or unhealthy retreating with depression? Is it hibernating, or a dangerous sleep disorder? Is it okay to put on our jammies at seven p.m., burrow under two quilts, and pull the pillows over our head? Can we pretend to be a bear in a cave?

We don't sleep enough. Studies keep reporting this finding. We don't sleep at the right times or in the right places. Worse, our kids don't sleep enough, even though we are glad to see them fall asleep any time anywhere. Phew!

Aging and dementia wreak havoc with sleep routines. So do pain pills, cough meds, sleep aids, job stress and mortgage worry, pregnancy, menopause, restless legs, caffeine, alcohol, parenting infants, parenting teens with drivers licenses, and overdue library books.

This is the first I've heard of a PBS Sprout channel, or its annual Christmas Eve "Snooze-a-thon". I applaud the idea of kiddies sleeping through the night, but their reliance on a tv or online program of sleeping puppets is frightening. Why would the tots even have access to media in the middle of the nighty-night?

Just the idea of snooze-inducing tv brings back in HD my five surreal days in Dad's hospital room when he was hallucinating. A lowly night-shift aide was the savior who tuned Dad's tv to the C.A.R.E. channel. The channel's music helped cancel out the beeping, blinking, dripping, chatting, pages, squeaky nurse shoes, elevators, and floor buffing machines. Don't let anybody tell you a hospital is a quiet place! It's a 24-hour arcade.

Dad had been sleeping all day between gurney rides for tests and x-rays. When awake he was seriously paranoid. After dark he'd been hallucinating, but in the very wee hours he was all charm and chatting with anyone who humored his requests for sandwiches and ice cream.

Trying to sleep on the hard cot in Dad's room at night so I could confer with elusive doctors by day, I was getting almost as loony as Dad. Not easy to get shut-eye when the patient is ripping out his IV and believes you are an enemy spy

The C.A.R.E. channel showed outer space images all night, accompanied by relaxation music. Galaxies, Saturn's rings, and nebulae began convincing Dad that night was night and a fine time to sleep. All day the channel showed horses frolicking in a pasture near a mountain range, and other subtle hints that day is the time to stay awake. It was simple, brilliant, and effective. Amen!

Asking your doctor might not lasso relief. Asking Santa might not bring a frolicking pony. Ask your hospital if it has the C.A.R.E. channel for patients. Tell the little sprouts to stay under the covers for another bitty while!

© 2012 Nancy L. Ruder

Long-Term Plan

Long-term thinking mixed with short-term anxiety has gotten me stuck right here. My rut, but not my Jeep.  Lauren drives me home from the car fix-it shop in her husband's old green Jeep. I can barely climb up and into the Jeep, but falling out is easy.

Lauren is very clear on her line in the sand. She would rather live under a bridge than ever teach preschool again. I mention the spiders and bugs under the bridge, Lauren insists preschoolers bite more than bugs. I haven't been bit, but life under the bridge seems likely in my long-term future.

Lauren much prefers being the auto fix-it shop counter gal and sometimes mechanic. She makes me laugh.  Her story reminds me I  need some thinking outside the box to avoid a future under the bridge.


Michael Wollf's excellent heart-rending op-ed about long-term care was syndicated in the Dallas Morning News on June third, but is accessible at this link. Our nation needs, desperately needs, some rethinking on this issue.

© 2012 Nancy L. Ruder

Doctor, doctor, doctor give me the news

DR3 starts my new license plate (aka "tag" in Texas). Time to learn the number using mem nonic devices. Or pneumonic. Pneumatic?  I get confused, and having Wild Bill on the phone while I'm searching for a large Phillips screwdriver doesn't aid my concentration.  I need the screwdriver to put my tags on the new Buick. Wild Bill lives in the condo next door and is nearing 89 years of age. He and his little-dog-not-named-Toto are watching me out the doggy-peek window. A WWII vet whose airplane went down in the Pacific, Wild Bill is a frequent reminder of my dad.  And Dad's veterans life insurance paid for my new/old car.  Dad played complex games with himself to remember names and nouns in the last five years of his life.  So this is the circle of life.

Just returned from meeting my grandbaby in Oregon, so I'm aswirl in  baby fabulousity and grandparent love. Earth's axis has shifted. Most of the things I can't remember just aren't that important at the moment.

Still, it might be good to know my tag number. Doctor Three, Doctor Three, Doctor Three .... paging DR3. Mnemonic device needed STAT. ("Stat" in medical parlance is actually not an acronym; it's short for statim, the Latin word for immediately.)
"Mnemonic" trips me up and makes me seem really clueless because I always say it wrong. The m is silent. ( Everybody is silent if and when the grandbaby goes to sleep!)  


Turns out Henry F. Phillips started the Phillips Screw Company in Portland, Oregon, and I have  three Phillips screwdrivers too small for this job.  My shoulder still hurts from lifting my carry-on into the overhead bin at PDX. It doesn't want to torque: 


Torque is a measure of how much a force acting on an object causes that object to rotate. The object rotates about an axis, which we will call the pivot point, and will label 'O'. We will call the force 'F'. 


We will call the grandbaby "O".  We may call the whole screw project "F" if I can't get Wild Bill off the phone and the license plates onto the car!  DR3 give me the news.  I've got a bad case of Phillips screwdrivers!

Dr. J wrote out prescriptions at my appointment, and I went straight to my WalMart pharmacy to get them filled.  I was down to my last blood pressure pill.  Standing in the line at the Drop-Off window, I was fascinated by the pharmacy tech's nametag.  It was on backwards, and showed a grid of emergency situations and store code words:

•  Lose your child at WalMart?  Code Adam.  
• Fire?  Code Red..  
• Bomb in the store?  Code Blue.
• Chemical spill?  Code Orange.
• Accident?  White.
• Hostage situation?  Code Green.
• Tornado about to blow the roof down?  Code Black.
• Terrorist or shooting?  I forget because I drifted into a scary daydream.  That would be the pits to be waiting for a Zoloft refill when terrorists take over the WalMart!  

As a preschool teacher I suspect Code Yellow would mean somebody peed in their pants while driving around on a motorized shopping cart in the Twinkie aisle.

Way back in my hospital kitchen hairnet days we were always agog about "Dr. Red" and "Code Blue" alerts on the PA.  Code Blue was a cardiac arrest call for the crash cart.

Remembering to say the tags are successfully attached to the vehicle.  The Grancy is totally bonded to the grandbaby.  Holding said infant reduces blood pressure significantly and causes euphoria. Wild Bill and his little dog are good for right now.  Can't lift the toolbox back up on the shelf...

© 2012 Nancy L. Ruder

Resting places

Cutting and sewing like a mad fiend, I let go of Dad's transition issues.  Dad will have to adjust to having a roommate, and I already feel a bit sorry for the roommate. We had to shoot Dad with a tiny tranquilizer dart Saturday. First time I ever saw Dad tear his hair out for real. The move had him very agitated and aggressive, hitting his aide. When he calmed down he was able to ask me a question with himself in the third person,"What does this mean for Howard?"  It means for Howard that he is still in Texas, still has the same caregivers, and will still be visited daily by that annoying woman who claims to be his daughter!

And so, I sew 2.5" strips around 9" squares. Spray with diluted starch and press seams open. Arrange squares on the living room carpet.  The project is a black/white grandbaby play mat. I have such wonderful memories of my tiny sons doing their first push-ups to better see the pattern of a blanket.  Getting things in focus and tracking movement are big incentives for an infant's development of neck strength and head movement. Yes, babies are looking for faces, but they are building more nuanced visual perception almost from birth. They are imprinting their parents' faces, but also the high contrast patterns around them.

My first square fabric blocks have plenty of pattern and contrast. From a composition standpoint, the layout needs more quiet, solid visual resting places, chances to stand still in the snow and listen to the wind in the pines before following the footprints.  And then my sister texts me reminding it is the seventh anniversary of our mom's death.

What does this mean for CollageMama? Well, she should probably clean and oil her sewing machine. Then she should spend some time in her quiet resting place...


© 2011 Nancy L. Ruder

1/2 inch Plexiglass

"I Wonder As I Wander" is one of my favorite Christmas carols.  Its melody is haunting, and the lyrics slowly seeped into my brain this week.  It was a week of wandering and searching on spiritual, professional, and physical levels.  Tonight I am learning that the song comes from Appalachia.  


My wandering wonders are less momentous and will not haunt for long.  I won't remember them any longer than I can hold the memory of last evening's gorgeous misty ochre full moon rising.  Still, for just this moment I am amazed by the Schoolcraft College culinary students in Livonia, Michigan, creating the wonders of the architectural world in gingerbread and icing:


"St. Basil’s Cathedral," created by Matthew Fisher of Dearborn Heights, Morgan Massucci of Westland and Sheri Frader of Plymouth, won first place. Second place honors went to "Sydney Opera House," created by Anna Darwactor of Macomb.
  
So I wonder as I wander how one gets the gingerbread out of the oven and drapes it over curved forms while it is still soft to make the forms for the Sydney Opera Gingerbread House.  Then I have to ponder why the rats on NPR have so much more empathy than either my students or the members of Congress.  Maybe the Nutcracker Rat King that always gave me the willies just needed more chocolate chips.

For reasons I can't fathom, my father has begun eating like a horse AND talking. Two weeks ago we took him off Aricept, a prescription for maximizing mental clarity.  A visit with him is more of a wander than before. 


I didn't get to see Dad until 6:30 last evening, so he'd already had supper.  He was talkative, and asked me to change the t.v. channel.  Yikes! Yes!  It was a telethon about cleft palates.  


Dad said he'd watched a program about taxes... federal taxes...  "Nobody minds paying fair taxes, but everybody minds paying unfair taxes".  Yup!


Dad hadn't slept well the night before.  He was thinking about "the prices. Out in the country."  Oh, he's worrying what the farmers will get for their crops in Pierce County circa 1938. 

Then somehow Dad got sidetracked to the Plexiglas problem.  "Half-inch-thick Plexiglas protecting.... Protecting all the furniture...  45-degree angle out from the wall to the corner of the bed's footboard".  Dad says the Plexiglas moves for me when I walk around the bed.  Can't I see it?  


"Get me some paper", he says.  He folds a little piece of paper down to a 2-inch square.   He holds it in the Hail Mary pass position, but doesn't throw it.  He holds it in different places in front of him, and waves it some.  I tell him he is not in a protective bubble.  He says he knows, but without his usual note of exasperation.  I ask if he wants a ball to throw at the Plexiglas.  This is starting to match up with the times he has thrown his wadded diaper or a carton of milk at the wall.  He often acts like he is going to pass a football according to his aides.  I hunt around, we agree on a ball made from a pair of socks. Dad holds the sock ball, but never actually throws it.  His arm raised shows the skin just hanging from his bones.  Finally he asked me to put it away.  Quite an hour to wonder, ponder, mentally wander:

I wonder as I wander out under the sky
How Jesus the Saviour did come for to die
For poor on'ry people like you and like I;
I wonder as I wander out under the sky

When Mary birthed Jesus 'twas in a cow's stall
With wise men and farmers and shepherds and all
But high from God's heaven, a star's light did fall
And the promise of ages it then did recall.

If Jesus had wanted for any wee thing
A star in the sky or a bird on the wing
Or all of God's Angels in heaven to sing
He surely could have it, 'cause he was the King

I wonder as I wander out under the sky
How Jesus the Saviour did come for to die
For poor on'ry people like you and like I;
I wonder as I wander out under the sky



As I've said before, I'm not a religious person.  This is my favorite prayer:


Let me be receptive.  Restore to me my capacity to wonder.

© 2011 Nancy L. Ruder

The difference is night and day

"He doesn't do that when the staff feeds him," says the hospice nurse. That being coughing, choking, and growling loudly to clear his throat. That is also taking forty minutes to an hour to eat a meal.

I help Dad at supper because it's easier for me to have a task.  When I visit, any time between four and seven p.m., Dad usually doesn't talk, and if he does, he doesn't make sense.  He stares into space, and often won't get his hands out from under the blankets. So I cut his food, put bites on the fork, help hold the coffee cup so he doesn't drench himself, and wipe his chin when he misses his mouth. I raise my arms in the air when he chokes so he will mirror the action.

The dear aide, Big Red, confirms that Dad growls, and she is more than willing to feed him his supper.  Let the pros handle it, all the staff seems to say.  Let the pros handle it, my siblings chime in.

Made a surprise visit to see Dad before work.  He had finished breakfast, and wasn't growling.  He spoke audibly in complete sentences.  His eyes were bright.  He answered my questions clearly and directly.  He said it isn't because of me that he has trouble with supper.  He asked me to please come back after work.

So I did.  He was being spoon-fed by an aide with his hands in the blankets and dull eyes turned toward the Aggies/Sooners game.  The aide was anxious to leave.  Dad coughed, choked, and growled.  He didn't say a word.

Is this the phenomenon known as "sundowners syndrome"?  I don't know. The light level is still bright with Dad's west window. Is it fatigue?  He sleeps much of the day.  Is it noise levels?  I don't think it is just me.

Sunrise, sunset, sundowners?

Sunrise, sunset, 
Sunrise, sunset,
Swiftly fly the years, 
One season following another, 
Laden with happiness, 
And tears

Image borrowed from Root Cause Analysis Blog.

© 2011 Nancy L. Ruder

Pardon me, boy

Dad is in the kitchen with Dinah. His fingers strum invisible air banjoes.

Where?

Dad manages to vocalize his question.  I know he's exasperated at my inability to read lips when he is in silent mode.

You are still here in Plano, Texas.

I can't make head nor tails...

Your confusion makes me cry, too.  

Railroad?

Oh, now I've got it.  You  are on the train again, Dad.  The oxygen machine puffs and huffs rhythmically.  It sounds ever so much like the Zephyr waiting for an all aboard down by the station early in the morning.

Alas and alack, clickety clack, I foresee trouble ahead, trouble behind and you know that notion just crossed my mind.

Where?

I've been working at the library.  I've got to go now, Dad.


Why?

I have things to do at my own house.  My eyes water. Dad must wonder how I'm getting off his train.  His skinny chest breathes so rapidly.  His little pufferbelly is 500 miles from his home.

If you miss the train I'm on, you will know that I am gone 
You can hear the whistle blow a hundred miles, 
A hundred miles, a hundred miles, a hundred miles, a hundred miles, 
You can hear the whistle blow a hundred miles. 

Lord I'm one, Lord I'm two, Lord I'm three, Lord I'm four, 
Lord I'm 500 miles from my home. 
500 miles, 500 miles, 500 miles, 500 miles 
Lord I'm five hundred miles from my home. 

© 2011 Nancy L. Ruder

My daddy don't tolerate

Lyle Lovett in the player tonight.  Found this cd when I was looking for something else, but it is exactly what I need.

My daddy don't tolerate my assistance eating his ground-up barbecue beef supper with cooked cabbage and a sugar cookie.  He's slapping at me to cease and desist, and trying to push his tray onto the floor.  I know when I'm not welcome.  Adios, I'm out of here.

Brought along Dad's comforter to wash out the spilled tomato juice.  It was just a V8 insult added to aesthetic injury.  My sister had to buy this dreadful star quilt in a hurry at Target when she moved Dad from assisted living to skilled care a year and a half ago.  Countless industrial launderings have only made it uglier.  Something snapped and I pulled the Buick over to toss the comforter in a dumpster.  Dad probably doesn't care, but I can't look at that comforter one more day.



On the good side, a black swallowtail laid eggs on the dill plant in our school garden late this afternoon.  We keep hoping..  I'll take Dad a well-worn bedspread that used to belong to the Woolly Mammoth tomorrow.



© 2011 Nancy L. Ruder

Straighten up and fly right

When I get to his room about five Dad registers my presence pretty quickly.  He is trying to say something, so I sit down beside him on the bed to read lips and listen to his whisper.  It's easy to get sucked into a no-win game of twenty questions, so I try to give him plenty of time to get some words out:

"You picked a hell."

"I picked a?  Can you say it a little louder, Dad?"  

"Can't."

"You would be louder if you were mad.  I know because I've heard you."

Dad gives me a flicker of a smile, but suddenly looks like he might sob.

"You picked a helluva time to be gone."

"I'm sorry.  Did something happen?"

"Picked a bad..."

"I had to go to work today.  It was the first day of summer school.  Are you worried?  Do you hurt?"

"Put me up."

I raise the head of his bed.  Dad keeps stroking his whiskers.

"She wanted to..."

"Shave you today?  You didn't have her do it.  Would you like to shave?"

Dad shaves.  I go ask the Lady In Red if something happened today, but she's not Dad's aide.  Still, she comes right in to say hello and get his attention.  She deserves a medal everyday.  She thinks maybe Dad got upset yesterday.  I agree, since I didn't recognize anybody on duty Sunday noon.  She says she has to do a "total reboot every Monday" with all the residents.

"Bad day."

"I'm sorry, Dad."

"Where were you last night?"

"I was at the condominium working on my worm presentation.  Was it a bad night?"

The person Dad thinks I am at this moment should have been with him at some time in the recent past.

"I was here at lunch time yesterday, but you didn't want to eat the kolache I brought."

Dad's supper arrives.  Mac & cheese, asparagus, ground chicken, milk, roll, brownie.  I feed him as much as he will allow.  He chews and chews, but forgets to swallow.

"...not worried about."

"I'm glad you aren't worried.  Then I don't have to worry so much."

"Don't worry.  Not worried."

...

...

"Straight."

I help him sit and adjust his pillow.

"Straighten up and fly right."

"Straighten ... fly... right."

Dad eyes are mostly closed.  I pat his arm. His skinny chest breathes more regularly.

"Down."

I lower his head some, accidentally raising his feet.

"They don't let me drive."

Dad smiles at this, then dozes for awhile.  I move to the other side of his bed so I won't slide off onto the floor, and pat his other arm.  He rears up.

"How long do you have to teach?"  

"This was the first day of summer school.  I leave for work at 7:30, and get off at 5:00 for eight weeks."

Pat Dad's arm until he seems asleep, but he opens his eyes when I stand up.

"I love you, Dad.  I'll see you tomorrow.  Good night and good luck."

Buzzard took a monkey for a ride in the air

Monkey thought that everything on the square
Buzzard tried to throw the monkey off of his back
But the monkey turned around and said, "Hey listen Jack!"

Straighten up and fly right
Straighten up and stay right
Straighten up and fly right
Cool down bubba don't you blow your top

© 2011 Nancy L. Ruder

Grading on the curve

121

122

120

Yes

I drove

blanket

Kleenex

foot pedals

It's immaterial

I think I'm done

It could be better*

You guys are excused**

Do you know who they are?@

On general principle and due to bad timing***

You interrupted something that was already interrupted ****

*        Upset about his unmade bed.

**      To shadowy figures he sees behind me.

@       Pointing at snapshots of his grandchildren.

***    On why he refused a bath this morning.

****  Shaking his finger at me. 

It's a downhill Bell curve slalom ski jump viewed in a cardboard box of white noise.  This is the sum total Dad has spoken to me this week in visits adding up to over three hours.
© 2011 Nancy L. Ruder

Who's bringing the car around?

I hope someone will take pity and give me a hint as to the identity of this small ornamental tree now having these rather exotic looking blooms.  The central part resembles small yucca blooms, while the long red thingies look like mimosa eyelashes gone extreme.  I'll be pretty embarrassed if the answer is something obviously Texan, like a mesquite.  One nurse said she thought it was a mesquite, but she wasn't a native, either.

Dad was very anxious to go outside today, although he insisted on two blankets on his chest and legs.  The temp in his room reminded me of erupting sunspots, but he was chilly.  He self-propelled his wheelchair until he ran aground in the grass.  The sun felt good to him.
"Okay, I'm ready.  Let's go.  Who's bringing the car around?"

"Aaaaauuuuhh, nobody.  We aren't going in the car."

"I'm ready to leave.  NOW."

"I understand, Dad.  I do."

"What's the plan?  Who's bringing the car around."

"Well, Dad, we just are where we're going to be, so let's enjoy the sun."

Ever since Dad decided he was adopted and living in the parsonage, he's been trying to find a way out.  He kept phoning me at work Monday wanting to know when I would come pick him up "at the church".  By the time I arrived at 3:45 he was about to come out of his skin, furious, violent, endangering himself and others.  If I'd had a taser, I might have used it.  Cooler heads gave him some Adivant. 

Over the hour and a half it took Dad to relax and become dopey/groggy, he kept asking me the name of "that retreat on 70th" where I used to meet him.  Mystified, I went through names of golf courses, parks, pizza restaurants, hospitals, churches, assisted living, and high schools in Lincoln to no avail.  My seeming unwillingness to reveal the answer really ticked him off.

Unlike my time with Dad in the hospital after his second hip break in 2007, he was delusional, but not hallucinating.  He's come unhitched in time and space, and he is manic and aggressive.  He wants to sit at the bus stop and wait to be picked up, getting seriously pissed because I'm so inconsiderately late, but he just thinks we are all blocking him from getting to the bus stop.  He's not the charming yet suspicious guy who saw the little girl sneak into the picture show and steal all the candy just before he ripped out his IVs and chatted up the aide for a 2 a.m. sandwich.  These are distinctions I'd gladly have gone forever not perceiving.

© 2011 Nancy L. Ruder

Night and Day Comma You Need Triple A Batteries

Friday Dad didn't want me to leave after his supper.  Parting is such a recurring struggle that I could say good night til it be morrow. 

Today Dad is a colicky baby with his days and nights reversed.  Up since four a.m., he sacked out after breakfast and slept well past lunch.  This isn't a completely bad thing.  Sitting in the sunny corner of his room I completed all the progress reports for the elementary students.  Then I read Timothy Schaffert's Coffins of Little Hope on my Kindle.

Wednesday I left a note for Maintenance regarding the dead batteries in Dad's remote.  Friday I spoke with a higher up about the problem.  Today I went to Walgreens and bought batteries.

What happens to the residents without family popping in often?  Does anyone at the facility ever check their remote controls?  Is that why all the tvs are blaring with bizarre shows?  The residents can"t zap out "Oprah" or "I Dream of Jeannie"?  And just why do I hear the theme from "A Summer Place" every afternoon at five?  Percy Faith and His Orchestra, please give me strength!

© 2011 Nancy L. Ruder

Triple C 3-D darn Dubya

C

construction

cup

cave

cuddle

cluster

C

concentration

careful drawing

finding calm

clasping our hands

behind our backs

observing our constructions
from last week

@


I'm so immature

I still get a thrill

typing the AT in my email address

drawing the treble clef

curling an ampersand

circling the covered wagons

cooking chicken chili in the crockpot of letter sounds and fonts

uncapping the colored markers to write on the white board

C

collage

composition is improv, says the ballet student

in art composition is the play

the arranging

the dance with the elements I did not tell the kids

Sometimes you slide your whole collection of shapes off the paper and begin to create again.  

C

Self-publishing has a

concentric


convenient

lack of constructive criticism.

C

There are crocodiles in the moat.

C

calls today

from the care center

Maybe Dad was always a crabapple cluster bomb

I thought he was the master of self-control

critical he was of couse

but combustible not

kicking the bath aide in the abdomen and

throwing his shaver across the room

I just bought him the darn shaver last November

C

The cradle will rock

Considering various theories

tonight about just when

Dad got so angry.

W

When

Why

I blame it on Dubya.

Dad his old self would approve

Tonight Dad careemed

himself down the hall

in his wheelchair to shake a skinny

blue finger at the nurse and yell,

"You're a damn liar!" 

The supper trays weren't there yet.

He used to save that up to scream at Bush on tv

"You lied!  They died!"


© 2011 Nancy L. Ruder

Milkweed on Mulberry Hill

Danger Baby suggested I take kolaches to my dad, his gramps.  This morning I got two prune.  Dad was sitting up in bed in his hospital gown when I arrived.  "I was adopted," Dad announced as he started in on the kolache.  "You think?"  He said he must have been, and chewed. 

He asked if Danger Baby knew he was "here now".  I assured Dad all my sons knew he was in Plano.  Pointing out the window he told me the next building was the church, and that he was living in the parsonage now.  One of his schoolteachers lives there, too, and a nurse, and the "master's daughter".  The church, Dad said, was "First Christian Montessori", where I work. 

Explaining that I work at a private school, not affiliated with a church, over five miles away did not sway Dad.  Instead he said it cost him "a dollar thirty-two to get us out of town last night."  Where were you headed?  To the shopping mall, but he was a bit vague on this part.  He told me again about the $1.32, saying he knew his "benefactor was good for it."

I headed off to my Saturday job at the library.  Driving along listening to The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake added to my sense of disorientation.  The first time I remember feeling this way was when my sixth grade teacher, Mrs. Peterson, read A Wrinkle in Time aloud with the classroom lights off after lunch.  Tesseracts and the fourth dimension were waving just out of my peripheral vision range. 

Coworkers wanted to know about a plant I had photographed earlier in the week while walking at the Oak Point Nature Preserve. The plant's structure is wonderfully galactic, plus it hosted a monarch caterpillar. In the strange realm where technology, biology, and deep memory dance to Chopin's Polonaise in A Flat Major, Opus 53, this is about a good as it gets.  If I were in charge of the world this plant would be grown on city street medians everywhere!  But what is it?  The answer popped up on a Facebook post by Texas Discovery Garden linking to author Susan Wittig Albert's blog, Lifescapes. It is called an antelope's horn milkweed, Asclepius asperula.

While I sat on the park bench eating my peanut butter sandwich and reading, Dad phoned.  Where was I?  He'd had dinner and wanted to go to bed after spending the day on Mulberry Hill.  Why didn't I come pick him up? 

Instead of trying to convince Dad I was at work and there was a lot of day left, I should have asked what butterflies he saw on Mulberry Hill.  Did the "master's daughter" go along?  Were there caterpillars on the milkweed?

If living in the parsonage with strangers and a benefactor helps Dad feel less misplaced, I'm all for it.  Maybe the schoolteacher will play Chopin on the piano in the minister's parlor.

© 2011 Nancy L. Ruder

Songs of the shrinking blind lady

Help me get up in the air

right away

right away

Dad endured the long visit from the hospice chaplain today.  The minister did not try to play hymns or jazz for Dad.  That was good.  Good, too, that the visit kept Dad up in his wheelchair all afternoon.  When he naps he is crabby... more crabby.

I want something substantial

right now

Help me

I can't get up

Wednesday I was worn out from extreme hot glueing and staff dramas at school.  I had no chitchat in me.  Dad's crabbiness was the last straw in the day.  I was worried, also, to hear from Dad's nurse that his retirement wristwatch had gone missing.

Please get me something to eat

right away

Come and help me

Those of you with wings

Like coffee, a wristwatch is a lifelong habit.  We feel out of kilter without either one.  When I went for a month without a watch, I continued to push up my sleeve and peer at my wrist several times per hour.  Dad's obsession with clocks and time over the past couple years increased as his dementia grew and his ability to make sense of numbers faded. 

I want some bell pepper salad

right now

right away

The nursing home literature suggests the decision-maker family member take away valuables like rings and watches when the resident is admitted.  Dad's watch and wedding ring are most valuable by giving him a sense of normalcy, so I left them with him. 

Bell pepper

right away 

With wrists so skinny, the watch probably slid off when Dad's shirt was changed.  It could be in his bedding, or in the laundry.  Sometimes Dad was angry it was gone.  Other times he forgot it was missing.  We skirted the possibility of theft.  "A watch like that is never lost," Dad proclaimed.  "It is always mislaid."  Hmmm?

all cut into little squares

The hospice bath aide knew what to do when I called her this morning.  She would go down to the laundry and talk to them.  She had assumed I took the watch to my house.  By noon the watch was back on the wrist under the sleeve of Dad's heavy sweater in the eighty-two degree room.

not mushed

I don't have wings and I can't get up

Dad was not crabby this afternoon.  He endured my prattle about peculiar preschoolers as he had endured the chaplain.  Once upon a time he might have called himself "bright-eyed and bushy-tailed," a phrase that originated in 1585 or 1933 depending on your source.  He was alert and not annoyed when I wrote my grocery list.

right now

Help me get up in the air

Melva, the blind lady, arrived at the skilled care facility about the same time as my father.  They were also admitted to hospice care the same week.  Since New Year's I've watched her shrink and withdraw.  She pulls her head down into collar and folds her arms across her torso.  It is sad to find her sitting in her wheelchair in the hall in her nice blue cardigan waiting for her attentive son, pleading or praying incessantly like Salinger's Franny.  She may not know her son on any given day, just as Dad my not know me.

I don't eat mush

right away

The blind lady has two voices.  Most of the time she pleads and demands in a loud, raspy monotone.  On days when the hospice chaplain visits, she sings her own hymn.  As I cannot find the lyrics anywhere, I suspect it is Melva's creation from her deep longing.

I won't eat mush

right away

We try to put our affairs in order, neatly in good kilter, but then we sit out in the hall pleading for square-cut peppers and wings with nothing but time to kill.   Dad doesn't wear a kilt.  He does not wear wings.  Most of the time he wears a hospital gown.  He gets out of that when he is going to leave his room in the wheelchair.

Noun

1.

kilter - in working order; "out of kilter"; "in good kilter" kelter orderliness, order - a condition of regular or proper arrangement; "he put his desk in order"; "the machine is now in working order" This link is to my neglected Mama Collages blog showing textile works as they progressed, including the sphinx moths/honeysuckle piece in Wednesday's post.  I wish I had more time for visual art. On the other hand, being employed is a good thing!

© 2011 Nancy L. Ruder

Hospice care double dare

On a dare from my walking buddy, I have refrained from emailing updates about Dad to my siblings during my Spring Break.  She was correct in her theory that they would not contact me for updates.  Trouble is, if I don't write stuff down, I don't remember it.  Does that mean I'm senile?  Or does that mean the letter-writing habit begun in sixth grade has changed the way I experience events?  Did the note-taking skills grilled into us in the old-timey junior high guidance classes of the late Sixties undermine my ability to hold onto the unrecorded thought?

I know, know, know I read a book review last Saturday from Booklist (2/15/11), or a recent Wall Street Journal or New York Times.  According to the reviewer, the author suggests social media and the internet have changed the way we experience our own lives.  Is part of our consciousness split off watching ourselves for potential blog posts, FaceBook status updates, or tweets? 

I'd love to tell you more about this book, but I didn't write it down, and now I can't remember or find it online.  It's not among my desk litter of scraps listing books with intriguing reviews.

My friend changed her loan of size 9 boots into a gift.  I'm thrilled because I can keep my creek clean-up effort going.  I love the creek, but have to ask if I'm authentically noticing nature, or just searching for the next 365 Project photo op?  Thank you, Ms. Janie!

Was I curious, or just looking for new material?  Norton, the class rabbit, has fretted much over terry cloth towels I put under his cage.  The bunny knows these are not HIS towels.  Also, he doesn't appreciate the padding layer of newspaper I put under the bath towels in one corner to prevent orange rabbit pee stains on my ancient carpet. 


Norton fusses every chance when he's out of the cage.  He pushes the substitute towels around, nibbles at them, shreds the newspapers, and huffs his indignation.  HIS towels are in the dryer and will be back in place under Norton's cages as soon as possible. 

Was I curious, or just looking for new material?  I stopped in to see Dad this noon.  He was obsessing about the names of my four sons and their wives.  He would not accept that I only have three sons.  We reviewed his grandsons, the two wives and their whereabouts, and made more cue cards. "What about the fourth couple?  What about the other Mike?," he demanded.

"I'm very lucky," I told Dad.  "I have three wonderful sons.  They have terrific wives and a girlfriend I adore.  But one Mike was plenty!"

"That's the way I feel, too,"  Dad says, "but what about the other couple?"  As we go around and around, releafing the family tree, I hear the approach of the hospice chaplain.  I hear with the same relief and trepidation every woman experiences when the OB/GYN who has left her wearing that silly gown in the exam room for forty-five minutes (after an hour and a half in the waiting room) finally pulls her chart from the rack outside the door with a big whoosh.  Well, finally, BUT, crap, here comes the pelvic exam.

During long visits with Melva and Elvira on the other side of the hall, the hospice chaplain plays a recording of hymns performed by a country western singer.    Shall we gather at the river?  The elderly ladies sing along.  Nearer Mike Odd Toothy.  Gladly, the Cross-Eyed Bear.

Amazing Grace, how sweet the anticipation.  Would Dad be polite with the chaplain?  Would he decline to sing, but tell tales of the choir loft at First Plymouth just after WWII?  Would Dad tell the minister to go to hell or to drop dead the same as he tells the nurses?  Since Dad has no filters, it could be a full-contact confirmation class.  And then I could write about it.

Alas, the encounter didn't live up to a bloggable moment.  The chaplain explained to me how he can help Dad phone my siblings and other faraway relatives.  That would be good.  Or my siblings could call Dad when they were ready for an update. 

For now, Mike Odd Toothy is on the phone telling me his wife's zucchini pie recipe.  Plus Norton has HIS towels back.

© 2011 Nancy L. Ruder

Improve your day the titmouse way

School photo day.  Half the kids dressed like outrageous paper dolls in impractical, unseasonal outfits by their parents.  The other half just hustled in for their turn before the camera before they wipe the inevitable nose goobies through their hair.  One boy in a dark corduroy sportcoat over his t-shirt had the look that made me fall in love with my ex.  Every girl's crazy 'bout a sharp-dressed man.

Class group photo.  Moving the lunchroom benches.  Lining up tallest to shortest.  What a miracle to get everyone to smile and Ms. Nancy to not blink without crossing the line into laughing chaos.  All day expecting a voice mail with the final news of a friend.  Snap the picture before I cry.

Staff photo.  Six women all rushing to be in the back row.  All pushing their glasses higher up their noses.

Radish photos.  The first planting of the season in the school garden.  Snapping the photos to document kids poking holes in the dirt.  The cup of tiny seeds blown over.  Praying the watering can bearers would sprinkle and not flood the expectations.  Walking away to hear of the tsunami in Japan.  Oh, the radish seeds!

I lied to my father.  Thursday he let me spoon him the soup from the bowl he kept trying to locate with finger tips that no longer feel.  Friday, slapping my efforts away.  The aide would take over.  I had an appointment, I told Dad.

An appointment with sanity.  A date with the creek.  A conference with woodpeckers, robins, Mr. Mallard.  A wren sighting.  A buzz from the PA system.  Another buzz.  Oh, the warning call of a tiny gray titmouse in gray suit and pointed cap telling me to get lost.  Tufted or black-crested?  Definitely sharp-dressed.

Clean shirt, new shoes


and I don't know what I am gonna do.


Silk suit, black tie,


I don't need a reason why.


They come runnin' just as fast as they can


cause every girl is crazy 'bout a sharp dressed man.



© 2011 Nancy L. Ruder

AnchorWoman

In the spring of 2004 I began a blog about my role as an anchor for my parents.  I didn't know I would soon be writing about my mother's illness and death, and my father's process through grief and widowhood.  When I chose the blog title it didn't occur to me that people would only find it when they wanted info about a tv news anchorwoman's hairdo.

I was an anchor before the blog.  I've been an anchor all the time, although I rarely post as AnchorWoman.  I'm still the anchor, and I get worn down.  Dad is still anchored, but he's ready to cut loose. 

Mom's illness and death were during the Woolly Mammoth's senior year of high school.  I was looking forward to a time of relaxing, creativity, leisure travel, and maybe blossoming in my empty nest.

I would not change much about the past seven years.  Well, yes, there's much I would do differently if I'd known... If I'd seen the questions ahead of time, I might have crammed for the test.

Spent five hours at Dad's skilled care facility today, doing paperwork for his admission into hospice care and meeting his hospice RN.  I already love this woman of great good sense, compassion, professionalism, and wisdom in purple scrubs. 

To Dad, she is just another person who wants to trap him into answering incorrectly about his birthdate, education, occupation, and family.  He is still pouting about having lost the memory of his Social Security number.  I hope he will come around soon to sense that she is on his side.

It was lovely walking down by the creek about four p.m.  The sun was low to the west bank, backlighting trees and flowers on the east.  The blossoms smelled lovely.

I'm so grateful to have hospice added to the team for Dad and for me.  Thanks to all the family and friends and readers who send their support and good vibes!


© 2011 Nancy L. Ruder

Stylin' staff

I woke up from a bad dream that we all sewed our own kimonos from gingham or calico using the same Simplicity pattern to wear to School Open House tomorrow night.  Penny's was black and white with a lovely matching obi.  Mine was pale blue with tiny lavender flowers. 

Things are piling up right now and getting shuffled in the dream world.  I must have been sewing in the basement of our old house, the one where my dad is mentally roaming looking for some "paintings".  We are beginning arrangements for hospice care this afternoon...

Thanks to Kathleen for the Stylish Blogger commendation.  Hope to get to it soon!


© 2011 Nancy L. Ruder

Someday my prince will bowl

See the princess with the bow in her hair?  I didn't either.  Small students were working on a collage of things that begin with S.  They were choosing images from a basket well-stocked with pictures of shells, ships, socks, soccer, smiles, sheep, snakes, snowflakes, plus sugar and spice and everything nice.

This is a bad cellphone photo, but you get the idea of their collage collaboration.  They found pictures of a snowman, spaghetti, the space shuttle, and Snow White!  Yes, that brunette with the bow in her hair must be Snow White, or at least Annette Funicello.

On a more serious note, Dad can no longer remember his SSN#, and he is hazy about his date of birth. This is complicating matters as we try to update his mailing address with various financial, insurance, and governmental entities. Banks want to chat with Dad about these security issues. Dad can hardly hold the cellphone to his ear, and he is pulling random numbers out of the air.


My parents did a great job of preparing for cremation, do-not-resuscitate orders, power of attorney, and many financial transitions. They faced their own mortality, stashed away funds for their old age, paid off their mortgage, and tried to arrange their affairs. Still, they couldn't visualize my father outliving his younger wife. They didn't realize their art teacher/power of attorney daughter would be so dense. They avoided the scenario of long-term care in a skilled nursing facility with vastly decreased cognitive abilities. Who can blame them? Who wants to imagine themselves in that picture?

 

Can you say s-s-s-s-SCARY?

© 2011 Nancy L. Ruder