June 30, 2007

I was pleased to see that, after spraying my plants in the back yard with the garlic/peppermint spray that I buy at the local Agway, the groundhog has left them alone. Of course, I have to re-spray every time it rains.

I went outside in the front yard today to see that the little beast had chewed up the flowers and leaves on my begonia, impatiens, and geraniums. I neglected to spray those after the last rain. If I'm here next summer, I will choose plants that rodents of all sizes don't like to eat.

Unlike the groundhog's, my mother's appetite comes and goes. I know that she doesn't drink enough liquids, but I can't force them down her throat. Last night she woke up very hot, even though her room was cool. We were up for hours putting cold wet towels all over her body until her skin cooled down. She was dead-weight out-of-it through the whole ordeal. I know that the hypothalmus in the brain regulates body temperature. I'm wondering if the episode was just another indication that her brain is in the process of malfunctioning and has begun to take her body with it.

She seems OK (that's a relative term when it comes to her) today. So far. Now, while she's sleeping, I'll go out and spray those munched plants. Sort of like closing the barn door after the horse has escaped, but I just hate to let the critter have what's left.

June 29, 2007

First of all, the Alzheimer's med Namenda seems to be stabilizing my mom's mood swings, making her less confrontational, more cooperative, and less paranoid. And she only takes half the usual dosage, which is 20 mg. I've got my fingers crossed that it continues to work.

She's been having irritable bowel symptoms, and I was pretty sure that coffee was one of the biggest irritants. She loves coffee -- would have five or six cups a day if it were up to her. Decaf was not the answer, since it's not only the caffeine that's the problem in coffee; it's the acids as well. The last link is part of a site that sells a coffee substitute, which might have worked for her but it needs to be made like regular coffee. It doesn't come in an instant version, and, being a tea drinker, I don't even own a coffee maker.

Well, at my mom's age (91) taste buds aren't as sharp as they used to be. I tried to find the old time Postum in my local supermakets, but they don't carry it. After a bit of Googling, I found something called Inka, a coffee substitute apparently drunk by Polish people, but I couldn't get their site to accept my order. So I opted for Dandy Blend, Instant Dandelion Beverage, which has pretty much the same ingredients and also includes dandelion root. Not only is dandelion an herbal remedy for various problems that she has, Dandy Blend also is make of up various grains that provide soluble fiber.

I ordered a small can several weeks ago, and she loves it. I went and ordered two more big ones. While she still gets some irritation in her intestines, it's nowhere near the pain she would get before Dandy Blend. Die hard coffee drinkers wouldn't go anywhere Dandy Blend; it doesn't have the strong aroma or taste. But it works for her.

OK. That's two problems of caregiving for his particular elderly woman that I was able to solve.

Now, the clothes thing. Last night I unearthed a snap-front knit robe that we forgot she had, made by Shadowline Lingerie. I linked to their site and found this snap-front knit bed jacket that she can wear as a blouse now, and a bed jacket later if she needs one. It's on sale, so I ordered one for her in blue.

So, Maria, at Small Change, who left a comment on my previous post, might want to take a look at that item.

Now, if I can only figure out a way to stop that groundhog from eating up my echinacea leaves, I would feel cared for. Someone suggested fox urine. Right now I'm spraying my flowers with a natural garlic/peppermint spray that's supposed to repel squirrels. I think it repels my cat too, because she doesn't like going out after I sprayed. Maybe it will work on the groundHOG!

June 27, 2007

My mom has shrunk out of most of her clothes (most of which she's owned for the past forty or so years). On top of that, the fabrics tend not to be wash-and-wear, a quality that we both need her clothes to have for different reasons.

Many really elderly people, including my mom, have thick waistlines. Some also have osteoporosis, which means their upper backs are rounded and so clothes with no "give" are uncomfortable. Some also have arthritis, so it becomes difficult to put clothes on over their heads. And they often have sensitive skin that irritates easily. My mom, for example, has all of those issues.

But just try to find
1. pull-on knit pants with elastic waists that DO NOT constrict and pockets (for all that Kleenex)
2. knit "blouses" with longer sleeves and snaps instead of buttons.
3. any "adaptive" clothes that are NOT in garish prints, primary colors, iron-necessary cotton, decorated with appliqued bunnies, and totally frumpy.

i wind up doctoring up whatever clothing I can find that might fit her and her current lifestyle. For example, I found cotton knit pique button front polo shirts, but they had short sleeves. So I cut the lower part of the sleeves from some of her old blouses and sewed them on to make the short sleeves longer. Of course, I have to help her button the buttons, but at least she doesn't have go through the painful motions of raising her arms to put on an overhead knit shirt.

I have to undo the waistband of every pair of knit pants I get her so that I can add pieces of elastic and make the waist comfortable for her. She has a problem with underpants being too tight on the waist as well. I wind up snipping the elastic, and eventually the whole garment unravels.

With so many of us somewhat vain women quickly ascending into that "very old" category, I think it's time for an entrepreneurial designer of women's clothing to start designing attractive, easy-care, soft knit separates (and also nightgowns) that women in their 80s and 90s can actually manage to put on and take off without going through painful contortions.

How about
-- jersey knit blouses with snaps in the front and sleeves that are loose and at least 3/4
-- pull-on knit pants that don't bag at the knees and with elastic waists that are adjustable
-- soft, knit nightgowns and robes that snap down the front

I've finally gotten my mother to wear pants instead of dresses. which she -- still attached to the styles of the 50s -- prefers. So now, she doesn't have to worry about pantyhose or shoes that look good with dresses (and she does worry about that).

Of, right. Shoes. Don't get me going of finding comfortable soft leather shoes with flexible soles that also provide support!

I have never contributed money to the campaign of a presidential hopeful, but after hearing Ann Coulter and Elizabeth Edwards on Hardball, I sent money into the Edwards campaign.

John as president and Elizabeth as First Lady -- First Woman, really! What a woman! Assertive, thoughtful, caring, and intelligent. And she was smart enough to choose John Edwards as a mate.

Now, Ann Coulter is the opposite of Elizabeth Edwards. Can you imagine HER as a First Lady. OMG! There are those who are not even sure she's got what it takes to be a woman! Good for you, Coulter, you got me to do what I've never done before.

Wouldn't I like to see a female as president? Sure! But there's no woman in the running who I think would be better than John Edwards as a brilliant and charismatic and statesmanlike leader of this ailing country -- a president who would make every effort to put leadership before politics. I thought Bill Clinton was a very good leader and statesman. I don't dislike Hillary. But I think Edwards would do a better job.

Edwards is on Hardball tonight, responding to Coulter's evil idiocy.

ADDENDUM: As heard tonight on Hardball:

Ann Coulter: the Anna Nicole Smith of Politics

June 26, 2007

So, now we've added another varmint to the cast of characters who come for the fallen birdseed and move on to munch to the quick my various plantings.

It looks like a big hamster; I suppose it's a young woodchuck. I watch as it calmly meanders around the overgrown back "yard" (such as it is), nibbling clover and pawing at what's growing in some of my pots. I think it comes at night and scoops out the stones that I use to anchor the post on which the bird feeders hang. I used to think it was the raccoons, but I'll bet it's the brazen ground hog digging for seeds. Every morning, the post is tipped at a precarious angle. I know, the solution is to use cement to hold the post in place. It's on the list of things to do. Heh!

We thought that my mother might enjoy sitting in the screened breezeway watching the parade of chipmunks and squirrels and birds of all feathers. But the present doesn't interest her, no matter how cute and colorful. She is locked in a past full of losses, and she is terrified of what the future promises.

"I'm afraid. I'm afraid," she chants. But when I ask her what she's afraid of, she can't seem to say. And so I stroke her hair and put my arms around her and tell her she's safe and she doesn't have to be afraid. That usually doesn't help. I suppose she's afraid of dying. Yet, this afternoon I heard her muttering, "Jesus, take me. Jesus, take me."

She's begun napping several times during the day. I suppose it's the meds. She's now taking Namenda, a relatively new Alzheimer's medication. I should have had her start on it years ago. But she's always given me a hard time about taking her pills. These days she's even worse. I often have to wait until she lapses into a state where she's lost in her own inner world so that I can slip the pill into her mouth and coax her to drink the water.

When my kids were young, we had a cat named Saffron, because he was a "mellow yellow" color. And I liked that Donovan song. His name is really irrelevant. What's relevant is that, at age 13, he developed painful tumors just under his skin. He spent most of his time in the darkness under the bed. Petting and cuddling him was out of the question. I took him to the vets and sat there and cried while he was put to sleep. I couldn't bear to see him live in pain and isolation. He had a good life. He was loved. There was no point in allowing his suffering to continue. He would never get better or younger.

We can't deal with human beings with the same compassion. It's against the law. Look what happened to Dr. Kevorkian. As I do my best to ease my mother's mental and physical suffering, I wonder what my last years will be like. I'm not afraid of dying at the end of my life; I'm afraid of continuing to exist deprived of the capacity to "live."

I'm sure that groundhogs don't think ahead to their day of dying. They're too busy just being groundhogs.

June 25, 2007

Thou Shalt? Or Not?

Last week, the Vatican issued its Ten Commandments for Drivers, a move which surprised and amused many. Especially since the Pope, so far as we know, doesn't do much driving. (And while the Driving Commandments weren't directly attributed to the Pope, make no mistake: Vatican offices are not free agencies.) Makes one wonder what might be next: Commandments for pedestrians? eating? sleeping? skateboarding? making donations to the Church?

Anyway, inspired by the Papal Driving Edicts, below are some helpful, well-meant suggestions for the Pope in return -- a kind of Ten Commandments for Papal Behavior.

1. Thou shalt not live in a palace nor be surrounded by gold and marble embellishments nor be ministered to by servants.

2. Thou shalt not take money from the poor worldwide to support a rich Vatican lifestyle

3. Thou shalt not remain silent in the face of a holocaust.

4. Thou shalt not terrorize people with tales of fire and brimstone in order to gain control of the nature and practice of their lives.

5. Thou shalt not pontificate about any matter unless thou first livest in a manner exemplary of the behavior sought by such pontification.

6. Thou shalt wear garments befitting a vow of poverty and of unity with most of the world.

7. Thou shalt eschew the use of luxurious vehicles in favor of riding upon an ass on all occasions.

8. Thou shalt decry the naming of former Popes as saints lest doing so become based on the prideful hope that the same might be done for you some day.

9. Thou shalt take harsh steps against any and all ministers in your church who abuse children in any way or abet such abuse through silence, making open and public display of any and all offenders, and not hiding the same inside the Vatican.

10. Thou shalt devote at least half of each year ministering in the field to the poor and sick in different parts of the world on a personal basis.

Active pursuit of the above would surely constitute leadership by example rather than by pontification. Oh, and by the way, the "Vatican hiding" in Commandment 9 refers to Cardinal Bernard Law, formerly head of Boston archdiocese who conspired to hide the hundreds of abuses occurring on his watch in the Boston church. Turns out he's living quite comfortably in an apartment inside the Vatican.

Also, the Driving Commandments are puerile.

[MYRLN is a non-blogger who guest-posts on this blog on Mondays when the spirit moves him.]

June 24, 2007

He's not a kid anymore, but he'll always be MY kid.

The b!X-organized second annual benefit screening of the movie "Serenity" brought the PDX Browncoats (and others) out in force this weekend in Portland, Oregon. The proceeds of the benefit will go to Equality Now and the Women's Film Initiative.

The global benefit screening effort (which b!X was instrumental in organizing last year as a birthday present to writer/director Joss Whedon, whose favorite charity is Equality Now) has raised more than $41,000 thus far this year. The funds from the global screenings go to Equality Now.

Read the story of this year's "Can't Stop the Serenity" global benefit project here.

There are two ways to fight a battle like ours. One is to whisper in the ear of the masses, try subtlely and gradually to change the gender expectations and mythic structures of our culture. That's me. The other is to step up and confront the thousands of atrocities that are taking place around the world on an immediate, one-by-one basis. That's a great deal harder, and that's Equality Now. It's not about politics; it's about basic human decency. - Joss Whedon

Happy Birthday to Joss Whedon, and Congratulations to my son the feminist on another rollicking successful Can't Stop the Serentiy benefit bash.

June 23, 2007

The other day, I got one of those emails that friends pass around -- this one made some disturbing statements that included the following:

Wait a minute, wait a minute, I think as I read this. What about the American fanatics! What about Darth Cheney, the embodiment of all the political evils that honest Americans are supposed to despise? What about our piss-for-brains president, that fanatic who, along with his equally manipulative minions, created the lies that fueled the fanaticism of these wars in the Middle East? Why aren't peace-loving, fanatic-hating Americans speaking up against these dangerous fanatics and their followers who "threaten our way of life???"

I was about to respond to the dozens and dozens of individuals who received the original myopic jabber with the above knee-jerk rant of my own, when I thought: wait a minute, wait a minute. Take a deep breath. What's the reall issue here?

But before I had any rational thoughts, a response arrived from someone else on that email list, and I rejoiced in having a kindred spirit among the lot, someone who could make the point more thoughtfully and intelligently than I. He said:

So, my thanks to the guy who did take the time to send his reasonable response to all of those email readers as a reminder of what the debate should be about.

Of course, in my estimation, the way we deal with the issue is to throw those bums (and their minions) out and elect someone to lead the Executive Branch who actually knows how to think critically and knows how to pronounce "nuclear" and whose leadership is motivated by more human, humane, moral values; who adheres to and protects the purposes of a constitutional democracy. I'm tending towards Edwards, myself.

June 22, 2007

And so I walk while the sun sets. I walk up and down the driveway because it's too dark to walk on this country road.

262 steps. Up and down. Down and up. I lose count of the cycles.

The woods are quiet and cool. Even the flying insects are still -- except for the flireflies that sparkle the darkness.

I walk after sunset because it's the only time I can get out. She is finally calm enough for my brother to sit in front of the television with her.

I have a headache from shouting because she can't hear. She cries so much, and I don't know if it's from pain or despair. "Where's my mother," she sobs. I wonder who I will call for when I am 91 and demented. Not my mother, certainly.

She wants water. I hand her a glass of water and she pushes it away. She does not look at me. She is somewhere else.

"Warm water," she says.

"You want to drink warm water?" I ask.

"Hands," she says, rubbing her hands together. Her hands are cold.

I fill a bowl with warm water and she puts her hands in them. I wonder if she's thinking of a winter time long ago when her mother gave her a bowl of warm water for her chilled hands.

She's so weak that she can barely stand, but she won't sit down, won't lie down. She wants to walk. Wants her shoes on. Wants her feet on the floor. Wants her brother. Her mother. Her sisters.

We're trying new meds.

And I'm trying. I'm trying.

And I walk in the dark.

I sit for a moment on a boulder by the side of the driveway. Mother Earth's old bones, I think. What about my mother's old aching bones, the surges of pain, the despair and longing and inability to rest, finally.

And so I walk at nightfall. And go nowhere.

June 21, 2007

Aaarrgh!

This is one of my planted-early tomato plants, exhibiting shriveled leaves and green tomatoes, which, no doubt, will not be able to ripen.

Can't find any bugs or creepy crawlies. I sure must have done SOMETHING really wrong.

I have three other plants on which I see similar problems beginning. This is the last time I try to grow tomatoes out here!! Last year it was the tomato worm. Bleh!

June 20, 2007

As reported by ABC news,

Sajani Shakya, 10, is the first living goddess to visit the United States from Nepal, where she is worshipped and believed to inhabit the Hindu goddess Kali, who is thought to live in girls until they reach puberty.

Strange, it seems to me, that the people of Nepal associate the Indian goddess Kali with purity, since

Kali is represented as a Black woman with four arms; in one hand she has a sword, in another the head of the demon she has slain, with the other two she is encouraging her worshippers. For earrings she has two dead bodies and wears a necklace of skulls ; her only clothing is a girdle made of dead men's hands, and her tongue protrudes from her mouth. Her eyes are red, and her face and breasts are besmeared with blood. She stands with one foot on the thigh, and another on the breast of her husband.

The "kali" in "kalilily" is for the goddess Kali.

A far cry from a sweet, ten year old who is one of only a rare few who

...meet the so called "32 perfections" of the girl who holds the goddess Kali. They include having the gait of a swan, and teeth and golden, tender skin so perfect the skin has never even had a scratch.

We humans might not create our gods and goddesses in our own image, but we do seem to make up myths to meet our need to have what we already believe, reinforced.

June 19, 2007

As far as I'm concerned, these are the best quotes from the latest Harper's Weekly Review. Click the link to get the citations and other tidbits that YOU might think are more interesting.

"The one fact I've learned--I can't get out of my mind," Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said to an audience at the Center for American Progress, "is that Rudy Giuliani's been married more times than Mitt Romney's been hunting."

Piles of human feces were found in the Senate. "There was," said a staffer, "so much of it."

(thanks to Jim Culleny's daily poetry email.)

June 18, 2007

MYRLN is a non-blogger who guest-blogs here on Mondays.

T.B.? So What? Revisited

Andrew Speaker's the sociopathic tuberculosis carrier who decided what he wanted was more important than the possibility of spreading his disease by traveling. So he went on an international jaunt to get married.

So what's new about that? This: it turns out that lawyer Speaker's lawyer father -- who insists he and his son weren't told travel was inadvisable -- was less than cooperative with or responsive to health officials even after the full extent of his son's condition was known. The Centers for Disease Control called him to learn of the peripatetic Andrew's whereabouts so they could get him back to the U.S. quickly and safely. Father Speaker's response? "I can't do that. I don't know where he is. I appreciate your call." And hung up.

Additionally, it turns out that Andrew's new father-in-law, Robert Cooksey -- who, ironically, works for the CDC -- was asked to help stop the planned wedding in Greece. He not only declined to help, he went off to the wedding himself -- obviously knowing by then the full extent of his new son-in-law-to-be's condition.

And in a gesture that would make his daddy and daddy-in-law proud, Andrew has apologized for the scare and for putting dozens through the need for t.b. testing. How nice of him.

It's a whole familyload of sociopaths who deserve both each other and some jail time. If only and as if.

And next month, Andrew Speaker will have surgery to remove lung tissue infected with the deadly, drug-resistant t.b. he carries. It's a particular surgery in which -- back in 1943 -- a five-year old's mother died on the operating table at Saranac Lake, New York. As despicable as Andrew Speaker is, one must wish him better luck in his surgery. If only for the good of those unfortunate enough to have contact with him afterwards.

June 17, 2007

Every year, On June 17, our family commemorates b!X's arresting crime spree.

It was 1987, and he and some of his friends were celebrating graduating from high school. Only they made the mistake of celebrating by lighting firecrackers late at night in the schoolyard of a local Cathlic School. There recently had been vandalism in some neighboring schoolyards, so the cops were on the lookout. Wrong place, wrong time, wrong kids.

And so we all went to court, and b!X got community service. But that wasn't the bad part. The bad part was getting handcuffed and tossed into the back of a patrol car and having the police wake your mother up at 3 a.m. to tell her to come and pick up her son at the stationhouse.

I wasn't even mad when I saw him walk through the door that led to the back of the police station. I was just relieved that he was OK and that all he did was get caught shooting off illegal firecrackers.

Any trouble that b!X has gotten into since that time has been more the verbal kind, and this little cartoon of him that I attached to the firecrackers was once published in a Portland area newspaper But at the other end of the arm was a computer.

So, sonb!X, in loving remembrance of the gray hairs you gave me that night, 20 years ago:

June 15, 2007

I thought my overweight nine year old cat was too slow to catch anything live. But yesterday, as I sat on the front steps trying to get some Vitamin D, she came trotting over to me with a lax lump of chipmunk in her mouth. I suppose she was (as cat's will) bringing me, the only mother she's ever known, a present.

I felt bad that I had to grab her by the neck and make her put the poor critter down, since she was probably very proud of her catch. But I did, and she did, and the chipmunk, unhurt, took off like a shot toward the sheltering bushes.

We rather like our chipmunks, who spend a great deal of time waiting under the back steps and in the drain pipes for the squirrels to leave so that they can graze on the fallen bird seed. I have noticed two neighboring cats, one white, the other black and white, slinking into our back yard to try and catch one of the little guys. The other afternoon I happened to look out the window to see the black and white cat succeed. I ran to the door and tried to frighten the cat into dropping his acquisition, but the fast feline was already out of sight.

It's a cat-catch-chipmunk world out here on the mountain.

It's also a world terrorized by an old lady who believes she is entitled to every minute of our time.

Again, here it is, after midnight, and I'm still up. Still blogging. Still wishing for a world where cats and chipmunks live peacefully side by side and where old dementia-ridden ladies are sweet and cooperative.

But cats will be cats.

June 13, 2007

News bits from this week's Harper's Review to contemplate:

For the originating links for these and other news bits to contemplate, go here.

June 12, 2007

This is my 20 pound calico cat. She likes to lie in the backyard weeds watching the chipmunks freak out. She's too fat and lazy to even seriously chase them. But she's happy lolling around in the weeds that never get mowed.

This is our wild and weedy "front yard." I put in the hostas and the hanging basket. The other temporary contribution is not my doing.

Meanwhile, mornings seem to be the worse time for her. She's not sure where she is. She's not sure who we are. She wails and cries and won't take her meds. Still in my bathrobe, I sit next to her at the kitchen table, pat her hands, give her hugs, let her rant until she's spent. Eventually, I slip a calming pill into her mouth. Then she has a cup of coffee.(Well, it's not real coffee because she's been having IBS symptoms. But she doesn't notice any difference.) And that's the start of our day.

June 11, 2007

Ah....Paris Au Printemps!

Yes, Paris in the Spring...or the springing of Paris...or Paris reslammered.

Yeah...that Paris, the Hilton one, not the worthwhile one.

A friend of the lesser one points out, "It was so cruel what has happened to her. She wasn't allowed to wax or use a moisturizer. Her skin is so dry right now!" My god, Paris with dry skin! Leg stubble! Returning bikini-line hair! How dreadful! "She's had an awful five days," the friend goes on. "She wants to see her friends and have fun. She's been punished enough already." Five days without a party? My god...cruel and unusual punishment! California's Guantanamo!

And well-heeled, high-powered defense attorneys to a person cry out that she's been singled out only because of her celebrity. Right. And those same attorneys say nothing about how their butter's breaded by the rich and famous.

But you know what? What happens to Paris Heirhead is not the important story. What is of relevance is the national obsession with her and this event. Every t.v. station covers it incessantly, even cutting in for "breaking news" about it, lest they lose advertising revenue if they ignored it as they should. Newspapers are adorned with the story. They've reached tabloid heaven. And why is this obsession important? Because it shows us loud and clear and in no uncertain terms just how shallow America has become. Paris Hilton drives all else out of the news of the day! Paris Hilton!...who's not worth a rat's aspersion of our time or interest, yet here we are, dominated by her.

If we asked that friend of hers what the american military death toll is in Iraq, do you suppose we'd hear from the friend that it's over 3500?

If we asked what help she and her friends have given to the poor, or homeless, or an ailing parent, think we'd hear about any meaningful humane efforts?

If we asked about what's happening in Darfur, think we'd get a knowledgeable answer?

Of course not. Those events detract from party time. Please...all we'd get is more drivel about "poor Paris." More petitions to "save her." More websites crying out on her behalf. Or another fan yelling, "She's America's Princess Di!" (Another pitiful obsession inexplicably rampant.) All of it is hard evidence of precisely where we've arrived in this country: in the shallows of monumental stupidity.

Oui...pauvre Paris au printemps.

Et pauvre l'Amerique.

June 10, 2007

Well, it's not her glaucoma or her macular degeneration. There's no infection, so the blood test say. Maybe it's the new medication or maybe she had a little stroke the other night when we somehow managed to get her to the emergency room. But now she's like a zombie. Sleeps most of the time, eats a little, goes to the bathroom (still by herself, thank god), and goes back to sleep. Doesn't say much except to cry a little that she can't remember. I'll call her geriatric specialist tomorrow and confer about the medication.

In many ways, it's easier on me because while she sleeps, I can do other things, like blog and alter some of my clothes that are now getting baggy, since I dropped about six pounds (on purpose). But I hate to see her like that. Like a walking dead.

We have to find out what it is.

June 09, 2007

I've mentioned before that Jim Culleny of No Utopia emails out a poem a day, sometimes his own, sometimes another's. Sometimes I post them here, and here's one I just had to.

June 08, 2007

It's 5 a.m., and the sky is getting light in the east as we drive back from the emergency room with my mother finally asleep in my arms in the back seat. We got to the hospital around eleven. Delerious and (as far as we could tell) dehydrated, she moaned and cried and cursed at us during the entire drive out. She fought us as we positioned her in the wheel chair and then she managed to kick one of the nurses who was trying to take some blood and put in the hydrating IV.

We felt so helpless. Obvioulsy she was in a lot of pain. When her pain gets bad, that triggers episodes of dementia, and she becomes unable to articulate anythng about where and how badly she hurts. Her hands come at me, clawlike. "I want to kill you," she cries. "Give me a gun." Anger and frustration fueled by pain. Nothing will calm her but a sedative added to her IV.

Some of what she is going through is the result of trying some new meds, one of which made her so nauseous that she wouldn't eat or drink and that's why we took her to the emergency room. The other makes her sleep for hours, after which she (sort of) wakes up, eats a little something, and then goes back to sleep. Meds are trial and error. Not every med works the same on everyone. And she's so tiny that even the lower doses are too strong for her. We have to work with her geriatric doctor to adjust the meds. My sibling is impatient with the lack of medical certainty. So much of medical science is hit or miss. And if you miss, you try again. But meanwhile, she suffers. "I'm afraid. I'm afraid," she mutters. "Please help me," she mumbles.

The emergency room has one bed empty. "You should have called an ambulance," the admitting nurse says to me. I didn't tell her that I wanted to, but my sibling wanted to drive us. That was one battle I didn't have the energy to fight. It would have only upset my mother more.

I've said ths before, but I don't know how ill elderly people advocate for themselves. For example, there's a protocol they're supposed to follow in the emergency room before they can give any treatment: take blood pressure and temperature, draw blood and analyze, get urine sample, do EKG, do an X-ray or CAT scan if indicated..... But there was my mother, completely distraught and delusional, feeling pain with every move she made. She fought against letting them take her blood pressure because she knows how much it hurts her thin arms every time. She ripped off the EKG wires as soon as the nurse put them on. So, we had to be her advocates and insist that they hydrate and and sedate her and worry about the other stuff later. We all had to hold her down to get the IV in her arm and let them draw blood and then put in the hydration. That was when she kicked the nurse and said shewas going to kill us all.

It was a long night for us because my mother slept during the IV drip. Other patients came and went. A young man, maybe about 16 years old, sullen and belligerent, handcuffed, blood-spattered, walks in with two cops. I look into his eyes. Anger. Fear. Defiance. Sadness. Sadness.

Later:
I've had exactly four hours sleep. She's up. She's only talking in Polish. My sibling doesn't understand any of it. I was bilingual as a child and can still remember enough to communicate in basics. I'm surprised to realize that I'm slipping into actually thinking in Polish rather than mentally translating from English before I speak. But I've forgotten too much. Mostly I say, in Polish, "I don't understand. Talk in English."

She has pain on the right side of her face, including her eye. It could be residual shingles pain or maybe her glaucoma has escalated. We put ice on her forehead. We give her meds (not the one that made her nauseaous, though). I call her opthamologist, and he will meet us tomorrow (Saturday) morning at his office even though his office won't really be open. Now there's a dedicated doctor.

She has tea and homemade bread. She thinks we are people she knew when she livedi in Poland, asking us where we were born and where we went to school. She carries on a monologue in Polish. She laughs.

At least today she can laugh.

I am so tired I want to cry.

Finally, she sleeps again and so do I.

June 07, 2007

Now we have a pudgy woodchuck eating my lettuce. I'm tired of fighting the inevitable. He or she can have it all.

Tansy is supposed to keep away bugs. I have planted some near my tomatoes. I wonder if it will keep bugs from noshing on my tomato leaves.

And deer don't like foxglove. I thew a bunch of foxglove seeds in the ground a year ago. Now I've got foxglove all over the place. I wonder if they would keep the deer away if I transplanted them to surround my garden.

Meanwhile, the little (but heavy cement) statue of baby Pan that I've been hauling around through every move for the past decade seems to have found a perfect spot. He's a little worse for wear, having had part of his foot chipped off, but I've grown accustomed to his wild appeal.

I have a few manufactured creatures hanging out among my flowers. I'm rather fond of my garden whimsies as well.

There eventually will be a climbing spinach growing up the stakes behind the gargoyle. The other photo is how I try to put to use the trash (like that pallet under the plants and the tire that I painted green) that my brother has lying around his property. That little arrangement is in the woods near entrance to the garage.

And, for the first time ever out here, I spotted a robin. I don't know why they are rare here on these acres. Actually, fewer and fewer birds are showing up at our feeders, since we take them down at night because of the racoons, and then we don't get them back outside early enough in the morning.

I have never been a morning person. When my last boss was asked what she might say negative about me, she said that my desk was always messy and I didn't like to get up in the morning. Some things never change.

June 06, 2007

On NPR, Harry Shearer has a weekly, hour-long romp through the worlds of media, politics, sports and show business, leavened with an eclectic mix of mysterious music, according to the website where you can listen to podcasts of his program. Listening to Harry romp was what got me through my sloshy drive from Massachusetts -- when I wasn't being entertained by the country music station, of course.

Near the end of Shearer's June 3 program, he got a phone call from someone he apparently had spoken to before. She identified herself "Yvonne de la Femina," a cabaret performer, and she recapped her gender journeys from male, to female and back and forth as such three times. (I was surprised that Shearer didn't make some kind of comment about her being "three times a lady!")

De la Femina claimed to be working these days doing a one-woman show on a cruise ship sponsored by Lunesta, the sleep-aid. (Was she for real or was this a put on??)

Shearer's straightforward responses to the chatty transexual made the whole notion of her life and times sound almost plausible. After all, isn't truth often stranger than fiction?

Then she told of her one date with Phil Spector. That's worth listening to the podcast for.

Being a Google junkie, when I got home -- and after my mother was asleep for the night (such as her night sleeping is, these days) -- I did a search for "Yvonne de la Femina." There was one hit, which rated Shearer's 1994 album, It Must Have Been Something I Said. This is what it said about Yvonne de la Femina:

Another bit set in Iraq circa 1991 is "The Last Kuwaiti Woman Held Hostage", which features Shearer interviewing cabaret performer Yvonne de la Femina (played by TV producer Tom Leopold). She is being held because her captors consider her to be a man, despite the fact that she had a sex change operation to make her a woman. The level of humor is quite impressive when you consider that the whole thing, which lasts 14-and-a-half minutes, was improvised.

I suspect that the bit I heard on Sunday was improvised as well. And done so well that they almost had me believing it all.

You can get a list of where and when Shearer's program airs here.

There's something uniquely wild and wacky about Harry, and he should be more well known than his is.

June 05, 2007

It's Sunday, and I'm driving back from my daughter's through the deepening fog of the Berkshire Mountains, through bouts of torrential rain that I'm trying to outrace. All along the way, groups of soggy motorcyclists huddle under overpasses, braced for the splatter of our speeding cars. I surf the radio waves for something to keep me awake. For a while, its NPR (more about that another time). I finally settle for country/western.

I grew up with country/western music -- Kitty Wells, Patsy Cline, Hank Williams...., an aunt who sang and yodelled, neighborhood guys who had a band. They taught me to play three chords, which was all I needed to play every Everly Brothers' song. And Webb Pierce's There Stands the Glass, which was sort of my college drinking anthem.

It's Sunday, and I'm driving through driving rain listening to a countdown of the current top ten country songs. The lyrics are filled homey stories and homely stories and horny stories -- all too human stories.

It's just a high maintenance woman
Don't want no maintenance man.

Lives and loves lost and found -- you can't have country music without those kinds of stories.

I've had my moments, days in the sun
Moments I was second to none
Moments when I knew I did what I thought I couldn't do
Like that plane ride coming home from the war
That summer my son was born
And memories like a coat so warm
A cold wind can't get through
Lookin' at me now you might not know it
But I've had my moments

and

I told her way up yonder past the caution light
There's a little country store with an old Coke sign
You gotta stop in and ask Miss Bell for some of her sweet tea
Then a left will take you to the interstate
But a right will bring you right back here to me

And, of course, you can't have country without beer and smoke and a hot horny guy:

everytime you take a sip
in this smoky atmosphere
you press that bottle to your lips
and i wish i was your beer
and in the small there of your back
your jeans are playing peek a boo
id like to see the other half
of your butterfly tattoo

I have to say that I was disappointed that I didn't hear any female singers in the top ten.

And so I switched back to NPR. Stay tuned.

June 04, 2007

[On Mondays, if he's so inclined, my non-blogger friend MYRLN will be a guest poster on this weblog.]

TB? So what??

As one who years ago lost both parents to tuberculosis, a mother at age 5 (after being taken protectively from home to live elsewhere with relatives at age 3) and a father at age 14, the current matter of one Andrew Speaker, carrier of a drug-resistant hence particularly deadly form of t.b., strikes a deep chord. And it evokes a powerful reaction: the man is an insensitive, unthinking, uncaring bastard. He is a symbol of that growing class of people in this country -- those with economic ease -- who think the only ones who matter in the world are themselves. Everyone else can go get screwed.

Knowing he is infected and hence infectious, having been advised against such travel, he says "Screw it," and goes on a globetrotting honeymoon. Then afterwards claims he didn't think it was a problem. Of course not, thinking so would have necessitated considering others: like his new wife, and fellow passengers on the planes he used, and the help and other travelers at hotels where he stayed, restaurants where he ate, and so on. Oh no, he was going to enjoy HIMSELF and screw everyone else.

About being flagged in Italy and told to give himself up to authorities, he says he thought to himself, "You're nuts. I wasn't going to do that." Of course not. It would have spoiled his fun.

Speaker is a personal injury lawyer -- one of those kind you see t.v. ads about -- and is now thinking like a lawyer, saying: 1) he wasn't advised not to travel, 2) was told he should wear a mask, 3) thought it was all okay, 4) didn't know it was a problem. Take your choice. (And bet your life on it: his personal doctors have been in conference with their lawyers.) Speaker's only aim is to cover his butt one way or another, truth be damned. His actions displayed and continue to display his lack of concern for anyone else along with his ignorance of the epidemic that ripped the Eastern seaboard of this country in the 1930s and '40s and killed thousands of people, like a 5-year old's mother and a 14-year old's father; of how people coughed and choked and spat blood and had no recourse but to stay home and die, or go to work (to sustain some income, however little) and thus infect others, or go to sanitoria like at Saranac Lake and die in last-ditch surgeries to cut away infected lung tissue. Not that such knowledge would have made any difference to him. He is of the privileged class. The world exists solely to serve him. (And his Daddy, also a lawyer, says it's all the media's fault for blowing the danger all out of proportion. Another ignoramus.)

The failure of government entities to short-circuit his gallivanting is no surprise: think 9/11,think Katrina, think Iraq.

And irony of ironies which would be funny if the situation weren't so serious, his new wife's father works at the CDC as a tuberculosis scientist.

What should be done with Speaker? Once upon a time, we could've taken him out to the nearest tree and strung him up. But even if it were still possible, that would make things easy for him. The best punishment would be to keep him in government quarantine but give him NO treatment whatsoever. Let him experience the suffering and pain and ultimate ugly death he so recklessly risked on others.

Undoubtedly, he would gasp at the end, "It wasn't my fault."

And this, in a recent MYRLN email, which I post here because I agree:

Watching her interviewed today by Wolf Blitzer only increased my admiration of Elizabeth Edwards. She's smart, articulate, forthright, warm, and real. I'd take her as Prez candidate. And she makes Sen. Hypocrita Clinton look like what she truly is: fake, stiff, unreal, and unbelievable. I'd pay to see the two of them debate.