Category Archives: caregiving

my fiber arts passion

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Because color isn’t enough. Because there has to be texture. Because you can combine those two elements into something to wear. Wearable art.

After all, there are just so many blank walls available after you hang up all the photos of your family and friends.

A friend of mine emailed me recently about some books she was reading that approached knitting as meditation. For me, that’s just what knitting, crocheting, and sewing are — a way to calm my mind and surround me with serenity.

I have constructed several items of my own design over the years, and I’m working on more. Since this kind of activity is even a greater part of my life that blogging, I’ve decided to begin putting together a page about my fiber art experiences, which will have a link in my sidebar.

I was inspired to start thinking in that direction by my fascination with Rebecca Clayton’s multi-faceted blog, Pocahontas County Fare, which reflects Clayton’s many passions. Usually I post here about politics, caregiving, and assorted other issues and events that cross my screen along the way. (And if b!X ever has a chance to explain how I can get my “categories” to show on after my posts, I will have a way to organize access to those topics.)

While I’ve posted a few pieces about my knitting and crocheting projects, I really haven’t given the kind of blogspace that reflects just how much a part of my everyday life playing with fiber arts is.

I used to sew most of my kids clothes when they were little (even b!X’s). The last real original sewing project I did resulted in a quilted jacket that was so labor intensive and came out so beautifully that I don’t think I can equal anything like that again. The project was an assignment for the one quilting workshop that I took, wherein we used a sweatshirt as the basis for quilting a jacket. Because it was my first try, I used a yellow sweatshirt that I found in a dollar store. The jacket I created was unlike anyone else’s in the class, since they all followed traditional block-style quilting. And, unlike my classmates, it was a total improvisation as I went along. I had no final concept in my head about what it was going to look like.

The only thing I don’t like about my jacket is the yellow backing. Otherwise it’s the most self-designed item I’ve ever put together. Instead of using the sweatshirt sleeves as the backing for a quilted topside, at the last minute I decided to knit the sleeves and sew on crocheted strips at the collar and hem, picking up a color from the fabric. I also sewed on a crocheted pocket. I used six or seven different fabrics, no piece larger than the black squares with the flowers. I also did free form machine quilting stitches over the whole front and back.

I haven’t tried another quilting project since, mostly because I don’t have a large enough expanse of space and a large enough expanse of time to devote to such a project.

And so these days I’m mostly knitting and crocheting because I can work in a small space and in small segments of time.

What an appropriate metaphor for my life right now — finding small satisfactions wherever and whenever I can fit them in around my mom’s schedule.
I made the quilted jacket five years ago, when I was able to live outside this box. I can’t imagine ever doing anything like this again.

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8 1/2

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That’s eight and a half hours in the ER. We left at 5 p.m. It’s now almost 2 a.m. I haven’t eaten since lunch, and I’m sitting here eating baba ghannouj with a spoon and drinking V-8 Fusion because it hurts when I chew because I had a tooth extracted yesterday.

Mom was severely dehydrated and we couldn’t seem to stop the diarrhea. So they took all kinds of her fluids for testing, stuck a hydrating infusion in her arm, X-rayed her and did a CAT scan of her stomach and intestines. They didn’t find anything that we didn’t already know was there — nothing that would be causing her to spend so much time sitting on the commode. So, just in case, they gave her an antibiotic and we loaded up on gatorade on the way home.

And just to make the day complete, as I was rushing around making sure I had her health insurance info and stuffing extra clothes for her in a bag, along with a water bottle, kleenex etc. etc., my flip-flop caught on something sticking out of her wheelchair and I did some damage to my second toe on my left foot. No time to worry about that, right?

At the hospital, my toe started throbbing; turning purple. I had the option of signing myself into the ER too and have my toe X-rayed, but that would have left my sib to deal with my mother all by himself. My toe hurt and looked gross, but I could bend it and move it, so I figured it’s just a bad bruise. I opted to tend to the reason we were there in the first place.

She is supposed to consume nothing but ginger ale and gatorade for the next two days. If she refuses to drink — as she has been doing midst fits of dementia — it’s back to the hospital and back on the IV.
I’m wondering how they ever manage situations like this in nursing homes. It took two of us to manage the care of one of her.

I’m still hungry. But I’m also tired. I don’t know which need I’ll fill after I post this. Either way, it’s been a hell of a day.

diarrhea, diarhea, diarrea

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It doesn’t matter how you spell it, google will find it.

And my mother has had it for four days now. We called the doctor today and will be bringing a sample to the lab for testing.

Nothing has worked to get it under control. I’m trying to make her drink Pedialite, but she’s not very cooperative. Right now she’s up combing her hair with a toothbrush. I’m making her some chicken broth with cut up baked potato. That’s supposed to OK for her to eat.

We’ll soon see.

a mother’s day reality bite

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The Limerick Savant has put out a call for Mother’s Day limericks. I dare the jester to print this one, an original by this burned out, currently bitter caregiver:

Of mothers there are varied kinds.
Some are honored; some are maligned.
There’s no perfect mater
and sooner or later
you learn to accept what you find
To “mother” with grace is not easy.
You’re expected to always be breezy.
And when you mother your mother
‘cause a choice there’s no other
you likely go out of your mind.

Anyone with a Mother’s Day limerick to share, email your creative endeavor to limericksavant@gmail.com.

Obviously, I had a meltdown today. Told my sib I just don’t care anymore. Either he agrees to let me hire someone to come over here and give her some companionship, or I give him whatever money she gave me and I’m out of here. (The reasons why I only have those two choices are too dysfunctionally private to share here.)

I left home when I was 17 because I couldn’t get along with her (I’ve blogged about that before). When I thought she couldn’t live on her own anymore and she was always calling me long distance about various ailments, I decided to take her on, hoping that we both had changed enough to find a way to coexist — if not actually enjoy each other’s company. What an idiot I was.

I find that I don’t mind at all doing all of the chores, both for her personally and just general cooking and cleaning. I just can’t stand her company. I am a terrible daughter. And I don’t feel bad about that at all.

According this site, she’s nearing the end of stage 5 dementia, moving rapidly into stage 6. There’s one more stage after that, and she could live another decade. F**K!.

the state of things

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Bush is scheduled to give his State of the Union address on Tuesday. I doubt if I’ll watch him. I don’t need any more reminders of how disillusioned I am by life on all levels these days.

I can’t even get the Sunday edition of my local newspaper, the Times Herald-Record, delivered the way it should be. It took me seven phone calls and six weeks to have them get the Sunday paper here the first time. And they still haven’t put up one of those tubes for newspapers delivered to rural customers. They leave the paper on the side of the road in a plastic bag. I’ll make phone call number eight tomorrow and give them one more week to get the tube up. Otherwise I won’t renew my subscription.

There’s a commentary by a local resident in the paper today, however, that deserves mention because he quotes the words of General Dwight D. Eisenhower 45 years ago as he was ending his term as President of the United States.:

‘In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence … by the military industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.

We must never let the weight of this … endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together. …

Today … the free university, historically the fountainhead of free ideas and scientific discovery, has experienced a revolution in the conduct of research. Partly because of the huge costs involved, a government contract becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity.

It is the task of statesmanship to mold, to balance, and to integrate these and other forces, new and old, within the principles of our democratic system – ever aiming toward the supreme goals of our free society. … and I, and our government – must avoid the impulse to live only for today, plundering, for our own ease and convenience, the precious resources of tomorrow. We cannot mortgage the material assets of our grandchildren without risking the loss also of their political and spiritual heritage. We want democracy to survive for all generations to come, not to become the insolvent phantom of tomorrow.

Whatever happened to that kind of moral Republican leader??

And here, on the home front, she washes paper plates, folds up sheets of paper towels and makes neat piles of them in her dresser drawer, keeps wanting to dance, takes out her hats (of which she has boxes) and reorganizes them. She needs something to do, something she can do. I ordered a “pencil by number” kit of flowers and hope that she might occupy herselp with “coloring.” We can hang up what she finishes on the porch.

I’ve been giving her iron and B-12 pills, and she seems to be stronger physically, even though she still sleeps away half the day. What the hell, she has nothing more interesting to do.

This week I will get a massage and a hair cut — not from the same person, of course.

I sit by my window and wait for a sunny day.

some things get better; some things get worse

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The good news is that I have something interesting to which to look forward. In May, the New York State members of the Hugh O’Brien Youth Leadership organization will be meeting for a conferece at the Legislative Office Building in Albany, and I’ve been asked to be on a panel about blogging. I don’t have the details yet, but I expect it will focus on blogging ethics, connections to traditional journalism, whether it all needs legislative regulations to keep it civilized.

So, if any of my readers have any suggestions for online statements/opinions about any of those kinds of things, please leave me a link. I know of a few myself, including Rebecca Blood’s essay, Chris Nolan’s recent description of “stand-alone journalism” that I found via b!X’s Portland Communique, and also b!X’s Communique link-handy page about weblog ethics and elements of journalism.

PLEASE NOTE (ADDED 08/17): Most of the links above have disappeared, but here is a current link tot he history of blogging. https://blogging.com/history
I’d also like to hear from “personal” (in contrast to political) bloggers, like me, regarding how they feel about government-imposed regulations on blogging. Please pass my request for comments around; I would love to be able to cite other “personal” bloggers’ opinions, not just my own.

And then, on the other front….

It’s 3 am and, again, the phone is ringing. This time it’s her pearls. You move the filing cabinet with all of her valuables into her bedroom so they are next to her all night. Then the robbers can’t sneak in when she’s sleeping and keep taking her things. This morning you find her cash-filled wallet in the bottom of the pillowcase of the bottom-most pillow on the made-up extra bed. It’s been missing for several days, but she didn’t put it there, she says.

And now back to an aspect of the panel discussion: is this the kind of thing that one should “ethically” be posting about. Is it an invasion of her privacy?

I would very much like to know what you think. What kind of guidelines have you imposed on yourself when it comes to what you post about and what you don’t?

Leave comments, please!!
VERY IMPORTANT ADDENDUM:
What I should have stressed is that this is a panel at a YOUTH LEADERSHIP CONFERENCE, so these are all high school kids we will be addressing. Some might already be blogging. I should have phrased my post to relate specifically to what adult bloggers would want high school potential bloggers to know. My fault for not being clear enough. Afterward, each panelist will have about an hour with a group of kids who are interested in the panelist’s “area of expertise.” I suspect the panel topic will be closer to “what can you do in your own life to take leadership and prepare yourself for leadership.” Or maybe “searching for and sharing the truth.” Or maybe not. I don’t have the specifics yet. I probably jumped the gun in asking for input. But I think I was wrong in assuming that the whole panel will be about blogging. I am the blogging person — that’s why I was looking for input. Sorry if, in my getting the cart before the horse, I indicated that the whole panel was about blogging.
This is a really good example how one should make sure she has all the facts before she blogs. Bad, bad Kalilily.
I said it better over here at BlogSisters because I took the time to think it through.
Kalilily Time is sometimes time out of whack.

Assassination Christmas

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Bizzare.

It’s Christmas. I just finished watching The Bourne Supremacy and made my mother some chicken soup, since she’s got what looks like a tooth abcess — swollen jaw and pain and on an antibiotic prescribed by her dentist after I called him at home early on Christmas Eve.

Christmas Eve I spent reading Hunter’s Moon, a paperback escapist novel that defies categorizing, but does feature an assassin who is a werewolf and a female who hires him to kill her because her mother is driving her crazy and she can’t bring herself to be mean to her mean mother.

Aha. A pattern here, bizarre though it might be.

A month or so ago, I rented Assassination Tango, a movie that deserves a lot more than the little attention it got. Robert Duvall made my mouth water. Perhaps there’s a little werewolf in me.

Loveable assassins. Wishful thinking?

That mesmerizing flow of light and dark. That dancing with your demons and stepping fast to keep your balance. Life with adventure, sweet danger, passion, power.

No dancing here for me this Christmas, though. Just fantasy assassins with heart.

And chaos reigns supreme.

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chaos2.JPG
This is the view across the top of my roll-top desk, past my room divider, into my kitchen. Like my life. Chaos.

— Still getting over major tooth abcess and root canal work.

— Now mother hearing voices singing Polish Christmas Caroles while the podiatrist (who she insists is Polish but he’s not) is working on her hammer toe.

— While making broccoli soup in my Vita Mix, didn’t realize that the machine was set on high speed and the cover wasn’t on tight enough and — heh — broccoli bits all over everything, including me.

— Made batches of pesto with the harvested basil after I cleaned up the broccoli mess.

— Still not ready for the craft fair that I do once a year; need to print up signs, finish a few more items, and price everything. New items this year, thanks to a brainstorm of my breast-feeding daughter: washable nursing necklaces and shawls.

— Am almost done using putting transfers (that I printed up on my computer) on a special t-shirt to wear to BloggerCon.

— Finished harvesting my tomatoes, basil, and parsley; now have to clean out my garden before frost hits.

— Gotta get to the library to return Dan Brown’s Angels & Demons, which was so enthralling to me that I read it in one day (instead of cleaning up some of the chaos). As an ex-Catholic who went to 13 years of Catholic school and is totally fascinated with the lore of Church and its roots in paganism, I just loved this symbol, taken from the book:
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— Gotta pick up The Secret Life of Bees, which is waiting for me at the library, as well as one of Judith Jance’s’ mysteries-on-tape that I can listen to on my way back and forth to Boston.

— Next stop is at Hannaford to pick up my mother’s prescription for Quinine for her leg cramps and then to Joanne’s for fabric to cover seams that I let out from a jacket I love that I made smaller years ago when I WAS smaller.

When my friend P stopped by after the tap-dancing class that we’re taking but I missed because of my root canal, we commiserated about how being retired isn’t what we wanted it to be. (Her 87-year-old ex-mother-in-law, to whom she’s close, has just been diagnosed with advanced breast cancer.) She thought that she would be spending her time resting, traveling, reading, having fun.

Whoever keeps trying to tell us that life can be just fun and games at any age is really selling us a bill of goods. I don’t know anyone whose life is that way.

Meanwhile, I’ve got to go battle chaos. And entropy. Always entropy.

Yes. America as a whole seems to have succumbed to entropy. And apathy.

Battle on, Xena.