2024 Life Logs, Day 320: Social Saturday
Date: Saturday, November 16, 2024
Weather: Partly Sunny; High Temp 54, Low 37 degrees F
Location: At Home on Lakeview Avenue, Falmouth MA

The Dearman’s were summer neighbors of mine when I lived in the cottage in East Falmouth. They live in Larchmont, near New York city. but have the vacation home here. Since they have three children the same ages as my grandkids, we became good friends. Their oldest daughter, Lily, even lived with Heather and Jed while she was doing an internship in Woods Hole last summer. Now she is a freshman at Tufts in Boston. Andrew, her dad, had to come to check on the house this weekend, so Lily took the bus down to spend the weekend with him. They invited us to have lunch with them on Saturday which was a wonderful surprise. But by the time I got home from lunch, it was time to get ready to go to an Encore Mingle & Mix. I basically spent the whole day socializing. Since I had been so depressed about the political situation in this country yesterday, today was a lovely day spent with friends with no time to be depressed. And that is a good thing.

2024 Life Logs, Day 319: Election Depression
Date: Friday, November 15, 2024
Weather: Partly Sunny; High Temp 54, Low 37 degrees F
Location: At Home on Lakeview Avenue, Falmouth MA

The generally accepted stages of grief are denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and eventually acceptance. Well, I am grieving over the results of the election, but I skipped the denial, the anger, and the bargaining and I will never reach a level of acceptance. I am just feeling depressed as each day the choices Donald Trump is making get more and more absurd. I know the cure is to do something, but right now I am just not sure what I can do. So, today I binged on chocolate and read. The reading won’t kill me, but the chocolate binging has to stop!

Otherwise, I did try leading a normal life. Shadow and I went for a long walkabout downtown, after which I spent a couple of hours answering emails, and then I went food shopping and checked out the new Aldi’s in town. There is a lot there for those of us who buy organic, but there is some organic produce and canned organic beans that are half the price of the ones where I shop. The one thing that really caught my eye was the organic blackberries that are also half the price of the ones I buy at Stop and Shop. Since I buy blackberries about twice a week, I will be returning to Aldi’s.

After lunch, Shadow and I played outside and then I went to pick Ollie up after school. It is when I came home from dropping off Ollie that I read a very long email from my daughter-in-law Jo’s mother who lives in England. She went into detail about how tumultuous our election results have been for the people of England. That’s when I got depressed and started binging on the chocolate and decided to read away the rest of the afternoon. Tomorrow, I have some cooking to do that will keep my mind off the election results. On Sunday, I will be having a Thanksgiving celebration with Heather and family. I will be in Puerto Rico and they will be the Netherlands for Thanksgiving, so this Sunday is our day of thanks and tomorrow will be a day of cooking and preparation.

2024 Life Logs, Day 318: Normal
Date: Thursday, November 14, 2024
Weather: Mostly Sunny and Cold; High Temp 45, Low 31 degrees F
Location: At Home on Lakeview Avenue, Falmouth MA

You get up in the morning, take a shower, brush your teeth, get dressed, and start living a normal day. But sometime during that day, you start to realize that there is a force at work in your ‘world’ trying to change the boundaries of normal. You try to ignore it, but it is everywhere. You start questioning, asking yourself: What is normal anyway?

That is how yesterday and today went for me. While I was in North Carolina, I didn’t see or read any news at all so I could pretend that all was well in my world. But that is not reality. So you plug back in to watch and read the news. Then you realize that the ‘force’ that is trying to change the boundaries of normal is working overtime to do more and more to shape our world in his, and only his vision. Then you realize that this is going to be a rough ride.

Despite all this, I made it through most of today feeling absolutely normal and enjoying life. I walked with Shadow, went to a Newcomers Community Fair of 40 some local non-profits where you could walk from table to table and find a multitude of ways to volunteer in this community. I then went to a semi-annual dental cleaning appointment, and from there back home to walk with Shadow and have lunch. I played ball with Shadow outside and enjoyed the glorious sunshine even though it was cold outside. Then I went to Ollie up after school and life felt great. So far, so good, but then I turned on the TV to watch last night’s Colbert monologue and that jolted me back to reality. And right now reality if just no fun at all. It is much easier to live in lala land. I keep trying to convince myself that life with Trump as President again won’t be so bad, but I know that is absolutely not true. What a world. Where to from here?

2024 Life Logs, Day 317: Back At It
Date: Wednesday, November 13, 2024
Weather: Mostly Cloudy and Cold; High Temp 41, Low 33 degrees F
Location: At Home on Lakeview Avenue, Falmouth MA

I don’t really feel with it, but I was back at it today. I had an all morning Encore board meeting, came home to have lunch, and then sent emails trying to set up future speakers for my Exploring Public Policy group until it was time to go to the November meeting of that group. When I got home from the Public Policy meeting, I took a walk with Shadow in the dark and watched MSNBC while I ate dinner. I discovered I’m not the only one back at it. Donald Trump had quite a day back in Washington. When I heard he had selected Matt Gaetz to be this Attorney General, I almost choked on my dinner. I can’t wait to see what Stephen Colbert has to say about that. Watching what Trump is doing is like watching the Little Shop of Horrors, except the Trump show is not funny. He really is like a carnivorous plant, eating alive any living thing he comes in contact with!

2024 Life Logs, Day 316: So Happy to be Home
Date: Tuesday, November 12, 2024
Weather: Mostly Sunny, Windy; High Temp 55, Low 34 degrees F
Location: At Home on Lakeview Avenue, Falmouth MA

Today, my trip home from North Carolina went as smoothly as possible, but I still really dislike the Charlotte airport. Even when things go smoothly, the walk from the check point to whatever gate is always long, long, long. I just spent five nights sleeping in a recliner, so sleeping in my own bed tonight is going to feel so good. I feel like I am returning from another world. I have seen no news since the day after the election when the Presidential race was called. The Hallmark channel stays on in my sister’s apartment from morning to night and I didn’t have time to read NYT’s morning news on my phone. I don’t even know who won the Senate and House races. So, I have a lot of catching up to do. Tomorrow, however, is a day filled with meetings, as is Thursday morning. Hopefully Thursday afternoon I can start catching up on life.

2024 Life Logs, Day 315: Last Day with My Sister
Date: Monday, November 11, 2024
Weather in Mooresville: Mix of Sun and Clouds; High Temp 68, Low 47 degrees F
Location: At Home with my Sister at Terra Bella, Mooresville, NC

I was supposed to be at my nephew Tommy’s home spending the night, but his wife Marilou is sick and they and I don’t want me to be exposed. So, Tommy came up and we went out to dinner. Then we came back to Terra Bella with key lime pie to share with Patsy and her companion Renee as a little farewell party. I will have to leave here by 6:15 in the morning to fight the traffic heading into Charlotte. I want to get to the airport on time because I want my flight to be on time. Please hope with me that this flight does a little more smoothly than the flight down here.

Trying to get everything done today was stressful, but I still took time to be with my sister. It is so very difficult for me to see her mental decline. I’m anxious to get home tomorrow, but at the same time, I will be leaving a part of myself here with Patsy. I certainly did not get everything done that I needed, but for my own sanity, I really need to get home and regroup before I return.

2024 Life Logs, Day 314: Lunch with Nephew Tommy, Then Shopping
Date: Sunday, November 10, 2024
Weather in Mooresville: Mostly Cloudy and Cooler; High Temp 58, Low 54 degrees F
Location: At Home with my Sister at Terra Bella, Mooresville, NC

Today was not a day of rest for me. It was a workday of shopping for clothes, snacks, personal care items, bottles of water, and other essentials. Patsy’s dementia seems to have progressed significantly since I was here this summer. Although she knows people, she can’t answer questions about how old she is or even tell you her last name. She recognizes it immediately when you say it, but she can’t come up with it. Along with losing memory or what I’ll call vital statistics like age, birthdate, mother or father’s last name, naming her own children, and even her own last name, she now has lost all executive functioning. She can answer the phone, but she certainly can’t call anyone or remember to put the phone back in the charging cradle. When she sits down for a meal, she doesn’t eat unless reminded, and she can’t figure out how to swallow the pills she has to take. She has to be dressed and undressed, and she has to have help going to the bathroom. She can’t turn the TV on or off or use the controls on her recliner. But she can tell me what she needs from the store. I try to buy anything and everything she needs when I am here and then I have her afternoon companion that we hire to shop for her in between.

After taking her out to lunch with our nephew Tommy today, I took her for a little Sunday drive out to a place called The Point, which is literally a point of land extending out into Lake Norman. It is where the wealthy people of Mooresville live. I thought it was a lovely area until I saw a TRUMP National Golf Course sign in front of me. I was shocked at how that suddenly and totally spoiled the beauty for me!

After taking Patsy home, I headed out to do her shopping. I knew Walmart would have most everything, so I went there and loaded the back of my rental car with everything from bottles of water to Depends to snacks to yoga pants. Then I returned to Costco to return one pair of pants I bought yesterday that didn’t fit and to buy more pants that did fit. I need to find flannel pajamas for her, but I might just have to order those. It was getting dark, so I headed home to get everything put away. I will continue shopping tomorrow. Then tomorrow evening I will head to my nephew Tommy’s home to spend tomorrow night. My flight is at 9 am on Tuesday, but it is only 30 minutes from Tommy’s to the airport so it won’t have to be a super early morning. There is always so much to be done when I visit here that I truly look forward to getting back to home sweet home.

BTW—I texted with Ollie yesterday afternoon and Sam and Jonah last night to check on how Shadow is doing. All three reported that he is doing just fine. Jonah sent me some photos of him and Sam cuddling with my little buddy. I miss him so much when I am away.

2024 Life Logs, Day 313: A Visit with Jacob, Patsy’s Grandson
Date: Saturday, November 9, 2024
Weather in Mooresville: Mostly Sunny; High Temp 67, Low 42 degrees F
Location: At Home with my Sister at Terra Bella, Mooresville, NC

It happened again last night. My sister got up at some point, put one shoe on and made her way to the living room to sit in her recliner. This time I woke up at 5:30 am to find her there beside me. I can’t believe I am not waking up when she gets out of bed, but I also can’t believe she keeps doing this no matter how many times everyone tells her not to. I have decided to check to see if I can get an overnight person to sit by her bed for a week or so to see if we can break the habit.

We had a fun day with Patsy’s son-in-law Bill who lives here in Mooresville and his son (Patsy’s grandson Jacob) who drove up from Atlanta just to visit his grandmother. He arrived last night and woke up this morning with pink eye. He had to go to Urgent Care first thing, and he had to be very careful all day to not to transmit it to us. So, no hugs, being careful not to touch anything, and washing hands a lot. We visited here in Patsy’s apartment this morning and then went to the Cracker Barrel for lunch. That was Patsy’s choice as she loves their chicken pot pie. Unfortunately, they now only have chicken pot pie on Sundays, but we still had a great lunch. We came back to her apartment for more visiting and then Jacob and Bill went home for bit so Jacob could put in his eye drops and have a nap as his eye was getting weepy. I went shopping for pants for Patsy and then this evening we gathered again for dinner. This time Bill brought over take-out from the Olive Garden, and we ate and talked away the evening. Jacob left just before 9 pm to drive back to Atlanta, but he really brightened Patsy’s day while he was here.

Tomorrow will be another day like today except we will be spending time with nephew Tommy. Monday will be a shopping day to restock Patsy’s supplies and then Tuesday morning I fly home. I am doing fine sleeping in the recliner, so I will stay here again tomorrow night. But Monday night I will stay with Tommy and Marilou as it is much closer to the airport. I have a 9 am flight, so have to be at the airport by 7 am. I sure hope the flight home goes more smoothly than the trip down.

2024 Life Logs, Day 312: A Full Day of Appointments
Date: Friday, November 8, 2024
Weather in Mooresville: Partly Cloudy: High Temp 76, Low 60 degrees F
Location: At Home with my Sister at Terra Bella, Mooresville, NC

At the end of the day yesterday, I was exhausted from sitting in an airport all day. Tonight, I am exhausted from a full day of appointments. I was on the move all day. It started at 4:30 am when I woke up startled to see my sister sitting in the twin recliner next to the one where I was sleeping. She had gotten out of bed and negotiated her way into the living room from the bedroom … something she has been told repeatedly not to do because of the fall risk. We ‘met’ for a few minutes with me trying to explain why she just cannot get up during the night without calling for help. Then I got her back into bed and then we both slept for another two hours.

The real appointments began at 7:45 am when I met with her PT’s supervisor doing a 30 day review. OT and PT will continue for another 30 days and then there will probably be an additional 30 day extension. The supervisor explained this to me and then helped me take her to breakfast. I got her settled in and left to run to the grocery store to get granola and yogurt to have for my breakfast. Appointment number two was with the Executive Director and Director of Health of this senior residence where many of my questions about her care were answered. But, unfortunately, just as many new questions were generated. I toured the Memory Care unit with the Director of Health as she will be moved there at some point as her dementia progresses. All I can say about the Memory Care Unit is that I sincerely hope she doesn’t have to make that move. In the meeting, I also raised the possibility that she might have a urinary tract infection that is causing some of her erratic behavior. The Executive Director called her doctor’s nursing assistant and asked if I could bring over a urine sample to be tested. Holly, the assistant, said she would love to meet me, so we set an appointment for me to deliver the sample and talk with Holly about Patsy’s care.

By the time the Terra Bella meeting was over, I only had an hour to visit with Patsy and then take her to the dining room for lunch before I headed to meet with Holly. She suggested we hire overnight help to make sure she doesn’t get up during the night and a security system with live cameras be installed in her apartment so I can actually monitor her activities from home. These are ideas I will have to think about. I went from there directly to an appointment at another assisted living facility in Mooresville and on from there to another assisted living facility further south in Huntersville where our nephew Tommy lives. While visiting here I wanted to see if there was a place better suited to Patsy’s situation. The assisted living in Mooresville that I looked at is much smaller than Terra Bella and would be perfect for her, but making another move would be very hard on her. More to think about.

I had hoped to have time to go back to spend some time with Patsy before dinner, but everything took much longer than I expected. So, I went directly to pick up one of Patsy’s companions to take her out to dinner. This companion is with her every Tuesday and Thursday and does most of the shopping for Patsy and takes her to her medical appointments. Since I missed seeing her yesterday because of my flight delay, I invited her to dinner. And after dinner, I marranged to meet my nephew Tommy to have a beer and talk over Patsy’s situation. We met in a bar across the street from the restaurant where I had dinner and spent more time talking about the election than we did Patsy. Still, it was good to have the time together. When we were getting ready to leave, a woman that was sitting on the bar stool next to Tommy introduced herself. She had overheard our discussion about caring for elderly family members and our political discussion and wanted to add to our ideas of how we deal with “the plate we have been handed” in both situations. She is from a long line of Mississippi Irish Catholics and since Tommy once lived in Mississippi, they hit it off right away. She has a Doctorate in Macromolecular Science and Engineering from Case Western Reserve University and has spent her life to this point working in what she called a family business that started as Cryopac, but is now Sealed Air. She heads up the innovative engineering division working to make plastic packaging more sustainable. At 43, she is unmarried and plans to stay that way. And never having had children, she is fully dedicated to helping young people, especially young women, navigate a male dominated world. Quite an interesting conversation with a very interesting woman.

I didn’t get back to Terra Bella until almost 8:30 pm, much later than I had planned. But for the weekend, there are no more appointments. I can spend full time visiting with my sister and trying to figure out how to best deal with her current situation.

2024 Life Logs, Day 311: Boston to Charlotte
Date: Thursday, November 7, 2024
Weather: Partly Sunny: High Temp 69, Low 42 degrees F
Location: At Home with my Sister at Terra Bella, Mooresville, NC

It was a very long day getting from Boston to Charlotte to visit with my sister Patsy. The first leg of the trip went smoothly. I was up at 6 am, walked Shadow, and headed to the Braintree Park and Ride near Boston where I left my car and took the Logan Express to the airport. The airport was quiet and I was at my gate by 9:30 am. An hour later we boarded, but no sooner than I sat down the pilot announced that there was a mechanical issue and that we would deplane and wait until 8 pm for another plane. He explained that because it is the beginning of a long weekend, other flights had little or no room, so they would wait until the end of the day to get another plane. Because I always fly Economy and board last to a seat assigned to me. Luckily, I was in row 8 and was one of the first in line to talk to an agent. She gave me a stand-by boarding pass for the next flight at noon but explained that there was almost a zero chance of getting on that flight. But with nothing to lose, I went to the gate for that flight and waited. I would have been rolling my carry on, but because I was one of the last to board, my carry on became a checked bag. So at least I didn’t have to deal with the carry on. I didn’t get on that flight and was given a boarding pass for the next flight at 5 pm. Success. I got on that flight, arrived in Charlotte just after 7 pm, but it was almost 8:30 pm before I found my checked bag. I was told it was on that flight, but after an hour’s wait and no bag, I started inquiring. It was in a storage room where it had been all day. I think it made it on the noon flight.

Waiting all day in an airport is surprisingly exhausting. And it is now late. By the time I got my bag, went to get the rental car, and drove north from Charlotte to Mooresville, it was 10:30 pm when I arrived here. But my sister was still up waiting for me and now it is almost midnight. Tomorrow is busy day for me, so now it off to the recliner for a night’s sleep.