Falls and Jinxes

I seem to have been hit by some great iceberg of inertia. Even as I’m typing this, every fiber of my being is shouting, "No! Don’t want to!" I could try to blame it on the trip to Gina’s, seeing as they are an hour behind us and I feel a definite sort of jet lag. But I think it had started before then. Maybe it was planting those roses. Sometimes I feel like digging those holes really shaved a bit off of my youth. That sounds ridiculous to actually come out and say, although Mom agrees. She thinks it can give you arthritis. Well, I’m wondering if she’s not right because I’ve woken many a time since I started that blasted digging with my hands aching. But, then, maybe I am just getting older and things just start hurting. Lots of times I’ll get up in the morning and my left heel with hurt so badly every time I take a step. Then it disappears at some point. Maybe I just sleep wrong or I tense up. I often wonder if that’s where my migraines come from. (They seem to be getting worse, by the way.) It’s really a bit funny because I’ve been absence into different ways to relax and let go f stress. And as if I’m in a stressful situation!

Ok, enough talking about me–as you an probably tell, I haven’t been writing in my diary (of course not–no desire or energy to do much of anything), so my personal stuff is spilling onto this blog. And I have to reiterate that my attitude towards my laptop has really changed since I had to redo the startup disk thingy. I should just pay to have it looked at, but, then, again, I feel so...unenthused. No, that’s not right. It’s not just a lack of enthusiasm but another layer of loathing to act on top of it. I guess I’ve been reading too much Harry Potter lately, but I feel as if someone has put several jinxes on me.

Now, really, enough talk about me. I should have written earlier. When we were in St Louis, Mary fell and hurt herself. She was getting ready to sit down in the rocking chair in the living room and so I’d let go and then she just suddenly keeled over to the left, away from me. I stood there and just watched her fall, as if in slow motion, with my brain screaming at me to catch her the whole time. Again, I felt like someone had put a spell on me. Then I let out this blood-curdling scream and everyone came running. We got her up and into a chair, but she was hurting badly. Chris came, very luckily, within a few hours and told us to put cold on her groin where it hurt in case there was swelling, to keep it down. He checked her later to see if she was bruised but I can’t remember what that would have told him. I think it would have meant that her hurting came from a more superficial problem, like a muscle tear. An absence of a bruise increased that likelihood that she’d broken something. (I’ve got to make this short as my back is hurting me.) We stayed a day longer to spend more time with Chris since he’s a nurse and when we got home I took her to see her doctor who x-rayed her and sent her to an orthopedic surgeon. He said it was a crack in the pelvis (thus the groin pain), not the hip and that it needed to heal by itself. That was such a relief! I just can’t tell you... Mary, meanwhile, only felt pain when she moved and didn’t even remember that she’d fallen! O je! I got her home and that evening she started complaining about her wrist hurting, which I poo-pooed. In the middle of the night, it was still hurting, so I started taking it seriously–there was a lump on the inside of her wrist. I dragged her to her doctor the next day again. She said it was a cist caused by trauma from her fall–i.e., she’d hit it on something–and I was to wrap it up and apply heat three times a day. And stop giving her pain meds round the clock b/c it was making her sleepy–just administer when she requested it, i.e., almost never.

Things have been going ok. Mary mostly doesn’t remember that she fell. I have only been letting her do transfers (from chair to potty to chair to bed, etc) but yesterday and today she’s done a wee bit of walking. She’ll be back to abnormal before we know it! But, seriously, I’m a bit concerned about taking her down any steps for a while. We’ll see.

Sometimes I a wave of hopelessness crash over me when she doesn’t know things. Sometimes in the evening now before she’s even gone to bed, she doesn’t remember that she’s in her own home. I’d feared that would happen with another trip. Mom says that’s not so bad because if something happens to me, Mary won’t know if she has to leave her home. I doubt that. Who knows? Would Mary be one of those zombies if she’d been sent to a nursing home?

It’s almost been a year since I started taking care of Mary full time. What have I achieved since then? I feel so...useless. A friend of mine said maybe I should be concentrating on who I’m becoming at this point in my life, not what I’m achieving. On NPR they are having this thing about what people believe. I find myself lately thinking more and more about what I’d like to believe. Sometimes I really do feel like a character trapped in a book that someone else is writing. And who am I becoming? A lazy person who doesn’t do the dishes every night, eats junk food, doesn’t give Mary baths regularly or make sure she brushes her teeth every day (much less me brushing my own or bathing regularly). I feel like I’m constantly searching for titillation, for something to awaken some desire or curiosity in me and then when I do find something, I latch onto it, whether for a few minutes or hours at a time or days, and get obsessed with it, with little thought for anything else. I’ve gotten frustrated with reading to Mary because she inevitably starts talking to the cat, who I think comes in at the sound of my voice, and so she doesn’t listen to me. She doesn’t remember what I’ve read anyway, but says she enjoys listening. Is it just because I am in some form giving her attention? And the cat...I feel myself becoming more and more attached to her and don’t want to. I miss her if she doesn’t sleep in my bed. I need to take her to the vet for her yearly check-up but can’t seem to force myself to do this. I need to make my own appointments for check-ups but don’t do it. I don’t even have the energy to make all the lists I usually waste all my time making.

Enough of this. I need to force Mary to sit on the potty. She hasn’t been for hours. She’s had a lot of problems with incontinence lately. And my fingers hurt. Isn’t that stupid?

Weather

I told Mary several times today that it was supposed to get up to 92 degrees. Once she replied, "Is today my birthday?!" Apparently, she thought I was telling her that she was going to be 92 today!

Days of Wine and Roses

Those roses are killing me! Why is it that we seem to have to make mistakes in order to learn something? Boy, did I make a couple of big ones! I knew roses were complicated, but I thought I was so clever... and yet I was being so stupid! I didn’t pay attention to how tall the roses would grow and it never occurred to me that they grew in quite a variety of sizes. Also, I didn’t think that they grew in a variety of widths. I’m also angry that this website didn’t list the widths for the roses. And, also, I didn’t pay attention to the different types of roses nor the order numbers. As a result, I ordered one "amazon" rose bush that’s going to grow anywhere from five to six feet tall and be four feet wide! Also, I ordered a shrub rose! Argh! That one will be four feet tall and three feet wide. I’d already started to dig my second hole along the fence, next to the Fischer’s garage. I knew that I should leave three feet between the holes, but I figured they’d be normal rose bushes and be about two and a half feet in width, so two feet between my two feet holes would be alright. Tight, but alright. Mom also poo-pooed the width recommendations, so I felt justified in not taking them seriously. When I realized how grave my mistakes may be, I checked the internet and then called the company. Oh, to add to my confusion (but luckily so because it prompted me to investigate things better), some of the tags were incorrect. So then I had a major crisis (and ate quite a few potato chips) about where I was going to plant what. To make matters worse, I couldn’t reach Mom! How could she do that to me?! I even called my sister Nikki, but she was at work and didn’t answer her cell phone. In the end, I decided I had to move my hole over, which was no mean feat. I’ll just put three roses next to the fence and put the shrub rose out in the side yard. I hate to do that because Mary won’t be able to see it, but maybe I can cut some of them and bring them in. I hope so, because they’ll be yellow and I know she loves that color. It makes me nervous to put the roses out there where God and everybody can see what I’m doing and if I’m doing it right. Well, maybe next year I can get into putting mulch around some things. O je. And I still have the evergreen bush to put in where the yard man never did it.

Speaking of which, the mower still hasn’t come. That’s alright because it hasn’t rained in so long, the grass isn’t growing much. Also, I’ve had my hands full. I really wanted to get Mary’s car checked before going to St Louis... Maybe I’ll just take mine. It’s harder for her to get in and out, but I feel safer driving it, I believe. I hate that I can’t see my blind spots because of the structure of the Cadillac. I feel safer driving my Taurus.

Oh, I was digging away today and trying to keep an eye on Mary, but I didn’t do a very good job. I looked up and she was gone out of her seat. I approached the back porch door with trepidation, expecting to see her lying on the floor. She wasn’t anywhere around. I went in and headed for the bathroom, expecting to see her lying on the floor at every turn. With a sigh of relief I found her in th bathroom. It was hard not to really chew her out, but I knew it wouldn’t do any good. Actually, I mostly felt guilty for not doing my job properly.

We’re almost done with the fourth HP book! How exciting!

Wassup

Life had just been flying by this summer. More so than the winter–hard to believe! Every day seems like the blink of an eye. We’re in a bad pattern of not getting to bed till eleven o’clock (oh, my) and then not getting up till nine or nine-thirty. I’ll have odd days where I’ll get up anywhere from six-thirty to eight-thirty, but I’m usually just so sleepy, I can’t drag myself out of bed and only get up because Mary’s in there talking to the cat, and I can’t possibly sleep any longer (plus, I know she’s awake, so it’s my duty to get up). I never let her sleep later than nine-thirty. Sometimes she wakes up earlier, but sometimes I think she’d sleep till... who knows? It’s a toss up–I don’t know whether to get her up earlier and then have her sleep on me all day or let her sleep later–and still have her sleep on me all day!

Yes, she’s been sleeping quite a lot lately. It could be that the back porch (where we practically live now since it has huge windows and two lazy boy recliners) is too warm. Occasionally she complains of being too hot, but mostly she doesn’t much notice the heat. I recently took her to the doctor because I was certain she had a UTI. He explained that Mary’‘s heart couldn’t function well enough to pump all the fluid through her body when she was sitting up, so she was retaining fluids during the day. Then when she peed after not going for six hours or so, it would be dark and cloudy. When she lays down, it’s easier for her heart to function since gravity isn’t working against it and so things get pumped through and all that retained fluid is processed into urine–resulting in her having to go every two hours. I’ve been trying to get her to go more often during the day, and as a result she goes maybe three times instead of four. Can you understand now why I can’t wake up in the morning? Oddly enough, I often wake up just before she starts ringing her bells. I don’t know whether she makes some other noise or whether I have developed a sixth sense, but she’s always amazed at how fast I appear in her room.
Mary’s also been super shaky lately. She always says, "Shaky Mary!" and I tell her I’m going to have that put on her tombstone. It sounds like a bank robber from the wild west days. I try to get her to breathe more when she’s walking or before she even gets up, but I get so tired of reminding her. Why can’t she just make it a habit? Sometimes she tells me she doesn’t think it works, so maybe that’s why she fights it. Other times, though, she’ll exclaim about how good that breathing is. She just probably can’t remember. I also get tired of reminding her to try to stand up straighter and look out, not down, when she walks. But I know that it’s so very important, and I try to use that occasion to remind myself. I tell her to walk like Queen Mary of the Scots and starts humming some music that sounds like royal walking music to me. I don’t know if it works, bur it keeps me entertained!

We got some rose bushes yesterday that I ordered from the internet (how I love being able to do that). I thought about it for so long that it’s now almost if not in actuality too late to plant them. I just couldn’t decided which colors, much less whether I should do it, since it’s so expensive. I wanted a red, a white, a yellow, another but prettier pink, and another peach/apricot/salmon. I finally decided to do it, but apparently that company had sold all of theirs in the colors I wanted, so then I had to search for another company. I finally found Heirloom Roses in Oklahoma. It took a whole lot of searching (soul and otherwise) to pick the colors I wanted and decide on, yes, five, not three. It was a bit over $100. If Mary knew, she’s have a major cow and probably disown me! Well, I’m paying the piper now, I’ll tell you. The directions say to dig a 2' by 2' hole–and I guess that means 2' deep, too. Well, it hasn’t really rained her for so long, that the ground was like rock. It took me all day and I felt like I was just going to keel over. Getting dinner last night was a major accomplishment, let me tell you! I’ve tried to water the ground that I’m going to dig today, so I hope and pray it will be better. I don’t even know if I can handle it today. But I need to get those other roses planted pretty soon. Mom was an angel and went and got some manure, peat moss and bone meal for me. However, I used the whole bag of manure, so I’ll have to get four more! I didn’t manage to dig 24", I must admit. The middle was 20" and the sides were more like 16". I planted the white first. It already has a bud on it, so we should get a rose soon. I’m so excited! I think if I’m honest with myself, I have to admit that I’m looking for some mental stimulation, some challenge, and roses are supposed to be so difficult, that I thought they would make a good new hobby for me. Gardening in general, really. Since I’m not in school anymore, I’m thirsting for knowledge. It’s like some nourishment that I’ve always received and now I have to cook for myself. (The nice thing about sneezing in a chair that Mary has sat in, although this may be gross, is that you can always find a tissue or napkin stuck down in the cushions!) Oh, a big problem I have with the roses–what to do about the extra dirt that I’ve dug up and don’t put back?!

I guess I’ve been spending a lot of money lately. No wonder I’ve been feeling so good! I ordered something else from the internet–a cordless electric mower. It’s called a Neuton and is supposed to be very good. I got the three-year warranty, so I feel pretty confident that I won’t have to worry about it. Well, I just hope it works out super well. I haven’t cut grass in ages, and I’m nervous about the responsibility. Also, I ended u spending more on the mower than we would have paid the yardman for the rest of the summer, which kind of defeated the purpose of not hiring him anymore. But I’m going to be confident, unlike Angie (who said not to get a mower because Mary might not even be here next summer), that it was a good investment for the future. If I can find an old mower and trade it in, I’ll get $100 back from the city. If I can’t I’ll get $50 back. The mower has a trimmer/edger attachment, bag, extra battery, and mulching blade and plug and it all cost about $540. That’s a lot isn’t it? But I feel good about it. I feel like I’m investing in the future of the world by not using a gas-powered mower anymore. I feel like Mary and I are on the cutting edge of technology, going with the flow, living for the future... Plus, (this is really stupid, I know) this machine comes from Vermont and I’ve had this secret special feeling about Vermont for so long... it must be a good thing! Oh, you know what, I didn’t actually order the mower over the internet–I ordered it over the phone. Yes, I actually spoke to someone in Vermont.

I’d better be wrapping this up. Two quick cute stories about Mary:
–I got some new kitty treats a few weeks ago and opened the bag and handed it to Mary so she could see them. They were hard (tartar control) instead of he soft ones I’ve been getting. A thought flitted across my mind, but I ignored it an left the room. Sure enough, a half-minute later I heard crunch, crunch, crunch coming from the back porch–Mary was eating the kitty treats! I screamed and ran to her and she spit them out. O je. Poor baby.

–I’ve planted about 15 sunflowers in the garden and they’re all blooming now, so we’re getting used to them, but when the first ones bloomed, I cut one and brought it in and put it in a vase for Mary to look at. She oohed and aahed all day, so when we moved into the living room (which we haven’t been doing till nine PM when it gets dark–hurrah) that evening, I took it in so she could continue to look at it. As I sat it down on the table in front of her she exclaimed, "Oh, honey, that’s beautiful! Where did you get it?" I about died. No recollection of having looked at it all day already.

Oh, another–she’s always looking at these ink cartridges I have, so yesterday I let her write with the ink pen (from Germany) that I have. She got an ink stain on her index finger–I had to tell her several times what it was and where it came from.

We’ve been going out to sit on the swing after dinner and reading Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire till almost nine PM. We’re flying through it. I be Mary has absolutely no idea what I’ve read. But she listens quite attentively. Except when a bird comes to the feeder or the bird bath. So she’s really not listening much! I guess I just like the sound of my own voice. No, it’s also the joy of sharing an experience of a story with someone. Well, that’s all in my head, isn’t it?

Ok, got to go get her up. We really should make a peach pie today, but whether we can do that and dig a hole...oh, I’ll have to get more manure. O je. Everything is so complicated. Bonnie is off for two weeks. I’ve told Gina that we’d like to come visit. I’m nervous about traveling with Mary alone when it’s so hot. I’m nervous about leaving my garden and the cat. It would only be for a few days. I’ll have to see abut taking Mary’s potty chair–it’s so hard for her to get down and then up again. Jim says Gina’s just been sleeping all the time. She started a new treatment and has to be extra cautious about her skin.

Oh, I’ve also gotten a new cell phone. I’ll be switching from Cingular to T-Mobile. I’m going to prepaid. I just don’t use my phone enough to warrant paying $35 a month for it. I hope I made the right choice. I feel good about it.

I’m a real worry-wart, aren’t I?