Archive for the ‘Family Life’ Category
Whew! I’m Tired!
Friday, August 17th, 2012
So, the last month or so has been rather interesting. And by interesting I mean challenging.
A few weeks back, my mom slipped on some wet grass (no goats were involved in this story). She thought maybe she sprained it and decided to keep off it, but the pain never really got better. After a few days, she gave in and went for an x-ray. Yup – broken ankle. Six weeks of a cast before they took another x-ray to see if it was healing enough to put on a walking cast or if she needed the regular cast a bit longer.
So my dad basically had to take over farm duties that she typically did on a daily basis. Seven (well, actually there were eight before he sold one) goats. Two sheep. Ten chickens. Two ducks. Various amounts of barn cats. All of them want to be be fed and watered on a DAILY basis (imagine that!).
My parents live in an old house. We are talking 1790’s, not 1990’s here. It’s been in the family since it was built. And do you know what happens when houses get handed down from generation to generation? They leave their stuff, and new stuff comes in. Then they leave all that stuff, and newer stuff comes in. Starting to get the picture? It’s crowded in the house. So much so that it is difficult to walk in the house without bumping into something.
Which, of course, makes life difficult on crutches.
I am a slow thinker sometimes. It took me three weeks to figure out my mom needed help getting around. As I had a break in book assignments/jobs, I offered to help her widen the pathways from the dining room to her bedroom (which is, thankfully, only a few rooms away on the ground floor). I was determined to get her bathroom back in shape so she could use the handicapped shower we had installed for my grandmother ten years ago. I was determined to get her clothes into her closet (I was also determined to be able to get to the closet). And it hit me that I should actually DO her laundry (and my dad’s) so it would be one less thing they’d have to think about/never get to. So all was going well.
My father called me Wednesday morning. You know, just to fill me in on a small little thing that had happened the night before. My mom had fallen/slipped when she got out of bed to go pee in the middle of the night and now she couldn’t move her shoulder without horrible pain.
Yikes – just what we all needed – she couldn’t put any weight on her bad ankle and now she couldn’t use crutches because of her pain in the shoulder. But we had to get her to the doctors for another x-ray to make sure she hadn’t broken anything there. It took us three hours to get a wheelchair that would (mostly) get down the hallway, create a very steep ramp to get her down the large stone step, and into the car.
Good news was nothing was broken. Bad news was it is probably a rotator cuff tear and would need to rest to maybe get better on its own. It might need surgery if it doesn’t repair itself, but they weren’t going to do an MRI or talk about surgery until her ankle was done healing.
So, I spent Thursday creating a wider path, finishing up the bathroom/closet project, eking out any extra room in the bedroom I could get for her, and generally packing up and stacking boxes of stuff in her office like Tetris.
Overall, I took out 9 large garbage bags; filled a 4′ recycling bin full of cardboard; did about 12 loads of wash;doubled the walking space from the dining room to the bedroom; hauled out 2 CRT monitors, 1 printer, a 6′ table, and miscellaneous junk for recycling on Saturday (plus planning for some last minute items to add – like the old toilet on the sidewalk!); and swept, and swept, and swept some more.
So that’s what on did on my week off of work. So looking forward to next week’s manuscript!
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Nothing to See Here, Move Along
Wednesday, July 25th, 2012
I’ve been pondering what to write here lately – it seems like I’ve been working and working and working (not that I’m complaining – I love what I do!) and nothing interesting has been happening.
I guess the highlight of the month would be The Boy’s birthday. My baby -sniff, sniff- turned 19 this month. I was totally fine on his actual birthday – no tears, no melancholy, no going through his baby book. He had a party a week after his birthday (just, you know, 50 or so of his closest friends) and that was the night I kind of lost it. I went to bed around 11, looked at The Hubby, and burst into tears. Being his wonderful self, The Hubby laughed and asked what was wrong. I said, “Nothing. Our baby is 19 now.” His response: “Yeah, but he’s been 19 for a week now. Get over it.” And I did.
See, not very exciting, huh?
Although, tomorrow may be interesting. The Hubby is going to court to fit a speeding ticket. I’m going with him to see the exciting proceedings. {insert dramatic soap opera music and voice over} Who knows what will happen? Will the court dismiss the charges? Will the cop show up? Will there be arguments and counter-arguments? Will I throw up in the excitement? Stay tuned for our next episode of…At Home With Faith…
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The Beginning of the End, or Starting to Say Goodbye
Sunday, June 24th, 2012
Let’s be clear. I am an easy crier. I have cried over tv commercials (remember that Tele-Flora one with what’s-his-name from Little House on the Prairie {the football guy – and I don’t mean OJ} – it got me EVERY.SINGLE.TIME he sent flowers to his mom). I have cried over too many tv/movie characters lost loves and deaths. The Hubby has been worn into the ground and now pretty much knows to just let me cry and I’ll stop much sooner that way.
But I have been spontaneously bursting into tears since Wednesday, usually when I am doing dishes and my mind wanders. (Maybe I should stop doing dishes.) That is the day my Aunt J. passed away. Today was the wake – the start of really saying goodbye to her. I actually did fairly well – only going through 5 or 6 tissues in 2.5 hours. Tomorrow – well, I guess time will tell if I can hold it together as well.
It’s not particularly recent, but it’s one of my favorite pictures of my aunt. Even though you can’t see her great smile, I know it is there. And I know she is smiling down at us, at peace and keeping us in her heart, just as we will always keep her in ours.
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Updates and Changes
Friday, June 22nd, 2012
Hello all! Just wanted to check in – you know, my typical post for every 3 or 4 (or 6 or 7) months.
I just spent an hour changing the permissions on my posts to turn off comments. I know this will make you all sad (especially the people/spambots that are so excited to share a way to monetize my blog or push their porn or sell their illegal/knockoff products), but I was getting tired of getting comments on the same four or five posts. The clear winner was Out of Gas – I’d get three or four spam comments on that one EACH.DAY. So now, I have turned off commenting and am hoping that will cut down on the email notifications that keep clogging my system.
In reviewing some of my old posts, I found the one where I talked about the sucky end of 2011 and finding out about my aunt’s cancer. She passed away on June 20, 2012. She was lucky enough to be with her husband and her two sisters. Her brother – that would be my father – was able to visit on the Monday before she started on a morphine drip. I was able to be with my parents for that visit, as my father was under doctor’s orders not to drive until the 20th.
And the reason he was under doctor’s orders not to drive was because he was recovering from surgery – prostate cancer surgery. The week he had surgery, my aunt went to the hospital with an infection. Everyone was thinking in the back of their heads that it was possible they would not be able to see each other before something happened to my aunt. But, he was out of the hospital before she left the hospital for a nursing home. I actually drove him from his hospital to her hospital the day he was released.
On a more positive note, The Hubby is working with his friend to expand our back deck. It’s almost done – we’ll have an EXTRA 150 square feet of space. And they are fixing the stairs to be wider and more sturdy. The Boy is home for the summer and has a paying internship. He broke up with the New Girlfriend and has a New/New Girlfriend. (Gee, how long can I call them that? I’m going to have to think of something else to start calling them!)
And I have been very fortunate with my freelance proofreading/copy editing business. I’ve been busy just about each week, working with some great authors on some very cool books.
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2012 – Oh, what do you have in store for us?
Sunday, January 1st, 2012
So, the first eight or so hours of 2012 have gone by fairly uneventfully. I wonder how long that will last?
Happy New Year!
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Holiday Half Time
Thursday, December 29th, 2011