Saturday, September 4, 2004
I have no explanation for it...
...seeing as how I merely enjoy astrology, consider it fun and akin to a calculus for psychological focus (which is by no means foolproof) but once again yesterday morning my eye was caught by the daily scope for my ascendant on my ISP's home page, which I have triggered as my home page for this partition. You should know, which I may have mentioned previously, that I rarely read it, even though I'm the one who edited my page to include it. It usually disappears from sight when I immediately scroll down to the links that include entrance to the writing/editing facility for Blogger. For some time generic horoscopes have irritated me so I haven't been accessing them anyway. Today, though the following lines stood out:
Curiously, the money part of the forecast didn't forget me. Let me explain that every time we now go to the home in Mesa I subconsciously pull a pall over myself, knowing that we've got to get rid of that place, now more than ever since we need to begin renovation on this home for Mom's convenience and the lot rent we continue to have to pay in Mesa makes initiating any kind of renovation up here impossible. When the previous possibility of selling it for a buck fell through you can imagine that I figured, "Jesus, no one wants it, even for a buck! We're screwed!"
It was with this attitude that I slogged to both our yardman's residence and the rental office yesterday to write yet another check for the drain. Almost as a joke, I placed my "for a buck as is" offer, with a short, up-front, explanation of why we're letting it go so cheap, on every table before which I happened, which I've been doing for the last three months without success.
Yesterday, appeared the gold. Without giving details, in part because the buyer wishes to remain anonymous and in part because the details don't matter, by 1400 a firm offer for decidedly more than a buck sought me out. The sale should be complete by the end of the month, thus, yesterday's check is the last I will be washing down the drain. I'm absolutely confident this sale will go through. So confident that by the end of next week I expect to have procured a climate controlled storage room to house what's left of our stuff in Mesa, solicited the help of a marvelous little local moving company I've previously used with supreme satisfaction twice before, made sure all addresses that were attached to the Mesa address for legal purposes are changed and begun to line up bids for the renovations necessary to making this house safer and more convenient for my mother and me.
God fucking damn! The universe do work in mysterious ways! I guess it was finally time. Yesterday was the beginning of an unexpectedly and outrageous felicitous end to a maddening summer and a desolate year.
My mother can't believe it. She's trying hard to get used to it. I was away from the home, where she was reading the paper and eating popcorn, when the offer walked up to me and said, "Hello, I want you and, furthermore, I want your house." When I returned home I was sobbing and could barely get the words out, "Mom, this house is sold. It'll be gone by the end of September."
"But all you were doing was paying the rent and talking to [our yardman]."
"Yeah, I know..." and then I spilled all the details, mixed with tears of relief, joy and confusion.
"Well," she said, after I'd finished, "I was hoping for some time to get used to the idea, to enjoy haggling (that's my mother, the perpetual haggler, and, the woman who doesn't realize that now I'm the one who'd have to do the haggling and it's one bent I decidedly did not inherit from her) and to decide if we really should let this house go."
"Mom," I reminded her, "the decision to let this house go was made about a year ago when we realized that, since you lost so much in the stock market crash, we simply couldn't keep both homes and needed to decide which to renovate for you. And, yes, I made the decision. On my own. Against your wishes." I went on to yet again reiterate why keeping the Prescott home and letting the Mesa home go was the smart decision. I closed with, "Mom, you know, I've handled your business for several years now. Do you think I've been doing a good job?"
"Oh yes. No question."
"Do you trust me to continue to keep you financially safe and protected and to make sure that your finances work in your favor?"
"Absolutely. That's never been at issue."
"I know you're disappointed, Mom, about this decision. I know it's going to take a lot of getting used to, maybe a year or two of getting used to it. I know we'll both have holes in our hearts both of us will have to tend to for everything this house and this place has meant to you and to me. I know it's not going to be easy and that you will, sometimes, regret what we've done, just because this is where you lived most of your retirement."
"Well, don't worry about that. I never wanted your Dad to buy this place, anyway. This was his choice, not mine." This is true. She has mentioned this several times throughout the years. More often, though she's mentioned how comfortable she feels there, how much she likes the neighbors and the surroundings, how at home she feels there. Memories have such a strong hold on us, especially as we age. But, again, that's my mother, the obstinate, "I can handle this and come out with flying colors, just watch me," person, kicking in, once again, much to my amazement and relief. Immediately she began her, "I can do this," litany:
I could have let it go and counted on the fallibility of her short term memory to delete this but I don't do this with my Ancient One, I work on, as well as with, her short term memory to keep her perception of reality as close to reality as possible. "Mom," I responded, "we've sold the house. We won't be living here again. We'll be visiting it several times within the next month but at the end of September that'll be it."
"Oh, that's right. That's what you said. Well, it's been a good home. On to the next."
"Yes," I said. "And, luckily, we've got the next one, and we love that one, too."
She looked shocked. "We do?!?"
"Yes, Mom. The home in Prescott."
"Oh, that's right. Yes, that's a good home, too."
"It'll be our only home, now."
"It just doesn't seem possible, does it?"
"What doesn't seem possible, Mom?"
"Hmmm...well, it doesn't seem possible that we finally sold this home. I didn't think we ever would."
I laughed. "Neither did I! Now, we can live with our boundaries thrown further out."
She smiled, satisfied, and nodded. "Yes. That'll be different from the last few years."
And that is the absolute truth.
I let Mom sleep in today. Our trip home last night was extended an extra hour by an accident at Sunset Point. We joined the crawling back-up at New River, 24 miles south. We were both so amazed at this experience, the first particularly typical holiday highway back-up in Arizona that we've encountered, that after we arrived home at 2215 we stayed up until just after 0100 this morning talking about it in detail. I was surprised at how much Mom absorbed: Specific cars and drivers; the alarming view from the bottom of "the (actual) mountain" that we traverse going north from just past Black Canyon City to the pass just prior to Sunset Point, of the red lit, bumper to bumper 5 mile snake we still had to negotiate (and wondering how much further beyond the pass the back-up extended); watching the lightning from a far away thunderstorm ahead of us and wondering if it was headed north or south (it was headed north, thankfully)...the experience was so indelible for her that when she awoke this morning and I asked her what was on her mind (when she awakes with a thoughtful look I always probe it) she said, "Miles and miles and miles of cars..."
"Did you dream about last night?"
"No, thank goodness, but I couldn't forget it either."
Although my mother appears laid back today, her energy level is good. We discovered this morning that her urinary tract infection is back. Luckily, we don't have to negotiate the Urgent Care Center. I've got enough of the previous antibiotics, the course of which was interrupted by her recent hospital stay, to get us to Wednesday, when we'll be seeing her PCP in Mesa. Yes, I'm going to keep her Mesa physician. I'm not interested in continuing to try to wring halfway decent care out of the stiff-necked, self-righteous medical community in Prescott.
I'm a little confused on what to do about this recurring UTI. It makes sense that it continues to recur because of her currently flagging lack of awareness about her bowel movements, her inability to wipe herself correctly and thoroughly anymore and the fact that for some time after she has defecated her colon continues to produce gas and leak a little when she farts. I try to keep up with frequent changes of underwear but I'm not always successful. The issue of wiping has its hard-to-negotiate side, too. On the one hand (pun not intended but appropriate), if she wipes exclusively from the back her lack of flexibility is such that it is guaranteed that she is going to graze her colonic area before reaching her urinary area. On the other, wiping from the front also takes a level of flexibility that is a bit beyond her and she can't quite clean the entire length of her folds. This morning I put forth a stern directive, with which she is just as sternly displeased but which I told her is a must until we can figure out a way to lick this thing without my intrusion into her personal habits: I told her that I was going to become even more intrusive than I have been about her bathroom visits (in response she broad-snided me with "Is that possible?!?") and I was going to take over personal hygiene for awhile, not instead of hers but in addition to hers. She's gotten used to me appearing in the bathroom every time she eliminates. My intrusiveness doesn't bind her or cause bladder shyness so I don't expect any problems except her offense. But we can't have her on antibiotics forever, so we'll do whatever it takes. It has occurred to me that maybe there is another cause: Maybe the original UTI was never completely wiped out or, maybe, reinfection has occurred during her frequent hospital and SNF visits since June because staff at both facilities are not nearly as rigorous as I am at detecting and cleaning her fecal accidents. Of course, the staff is not paid to hang out so close to her 24 hours a day seven days a week that they are able to nasally detect an accident as it occurs. As well, she's been catheterized twice since June 9th, most recently in early August for 4 days. It's possible that her urinary tract was stretched and hasn't yet snapped back, being inelastic with age, thus allowing a swinging door to opportunistic bacteria. At any rate, so that we don't have to waste any more days fooling around with the Urgent Care Center up here, I'm going to ask her PCP for two prescriptions: One for a "refill as necessary" dose of the antibiotic, to be taken on the prescribed course and one for an "as necessary" standing urinalysis at the lab when she complains of difficulty urinating or her urine shows blood. This time around she hasn't complained at all of difficulty urinating. As well, her blood pressure hasn't soared, but it has upped itself a little, into the 130's/70's, within the last few days. I guess, too, since her blood pressure is under such good control now, I'll have to revise my scale of when to wonder if she's infected. Sing to the tune of "Always Something There to Remind Me": "Always something new to adjust to..."
We've already done a vigorous set of her therapy exercises and she's glued to Animal Planet for awhile, admitting that she didn't feel like going out today. That's fine with me. Neither do I. It's a pleasant, summer-cool day with a thunderstorm possible later. She's considering taking a nap soon, so I'm having her down some V-8 juice with cinnamon, since she's not "particularly hungry" and it hasn't been that long since breakfast. The antibiotic is probably latching itself onto her final letdown from yesterday, so I'm not going to worry about the possibility of her over sleeping, today. Maybe, later, we'll do another set of therapy exercises, maybe not. This evening, as it gets cooler, I'm going to make banana bread from the bananas she had us buy last week and never ate. She's requested Cobb salad for dinner so she certainly isn't going to starve, neither is her blood sugar going to fall dangerously.
As the day continues I've got Stat Ketchup to make, too, and will be finishing the set up for the exercise therapy journal and publishing my first entry. Since I'm expecting even more intrusive activity requirements than usual over the next couple of weeks I think I'll take the time now while she's napping to catch up and initiate.
Later.
Generally speaking, this should be a fortunate day for you on all sides...love, career, money, and health. Plans for taking a trip might finally materialize...You should be feeling very enthusiastic and optimistic about your future and you might even be daring enough to take a few more chances than you would usually do. Go for the gold - and don't be surprised if it actually comes!My initial reaction was, well, yeah, we're finally "taking [that] trip", but I'm not only not expecting much, I'm certainly not expecting any gold along the way, let alone the opportunity to reach for it and, as for the other stuff, all I have to say is, good thing I'm not "a betting man". I'd not only lose out on the "love, career...and health" segments of this forecast but I'd lose "money", as well. Then I forgot about the forecast.
Curiously, the money part of the forecast didn't forget me. Let me explain that every time we now go to the home in Mesa I subconsciously pull a pall over myself, knowing that we've got to get rid of that place, now more than ever since we need to begin renovation on this home for Mom's convenience and the lot rent we continue to have to pay in Mesa makes initiating any kind of renovation up here impossible. When the previous possibility of selling it for a buck fell through you can imagine that I figured, "Jesus, no one wants it, even for a buck! We're screwed!"
It was with this attitude that I slogged to both our yardman's residence and the rental office yesterday to write yet another check for the drain. Almost as a joke, I placed my "for a buck as is" offer, with a short, up-front, explanation of why we're letting it go so cheap, on every table before which I happened, which I've been doing for the last three months without success.
Yesterday, appeared the gold. Without giving details, in part because the buyer wishes to remain anonymous and in part because the details don't matter, by 1400 a firm offer for decidedly more than a buck sought me out. The sale should be complete by the end of the month, thus, yesterday's check is the last I will be washing down the drain. I'm absolutely confident this sale will go through. So confident that by the end of next week I expect to have procured a climate controlled storage room to house what's left of our stuff in Mesa, solicited the help of a marvelous little local moving company I've previously used with supreme satisfaction twice before, made sure all addresses that were attached to the Mesa address for legal purposes are changed and begun to line up bids for the renovations necessary to making this house safer and more convenient for my mother and me.
God fucking damn! The universe do work in mysterious ways! I guess it was finally time. Yesterday was the beginning of an unexpectedly and outrageous felicitous end to a maddening summer and a desolate year.
My mother can't believe it. She's trying hard to get used to it. I was away from the home, where she was reading the paper and eating popcorn, when the offer walked up to me and said, "Hello, I want you and, furthermore, I want your house." When I returned home I was sobbing and could barely get the words out, "Mom, this house is sold. It'll be gone by the end of September."
"But all you were doing was paying the rent and talking to [our yardman]."
"Yeah, I know..." and then I spilled all the details, mixed with tears of relief, joy and confusion.
"Well," she said, after I'd finished, "I was hoping for some time to get used to the idea, to enjoy haggling (that's my mother, the perpetual haggler, and, the woman who doesn't realize that now I'm the one who'd have to do the haggling and it's one bent I decidedly did not inherit from her) and to decide if we really should let this house go."
"Mom," I reminded her, "the decision to let this house go was made about a year ago when we realized that, since you lost so much in the stock market crash, we simply couldn't keep both homes and needed to decide which to renovate for you. And, yes, I made the decision. On my own. Against your wishes." I went on to yet again reiterate why keeping the Prescott home and letting the Mesa home go was the smart decision. I closed with, "Mom, you know, I've handled your business for several years now. Do you think I've been doing a good job?"
"Oh yes. No question."
"Do you trust me to continue to keep you financially safe and protected and to make sure that your finances work in your favor?"
"Absolutely. That's never been at issue."
"I know you're disappointed, Mom, about this decision. I know it's going to take a lot of getting used to, maybe a year or two of getting used to it. I know we'll both have holes in our hearts both of us will have to tend to for everything this house and this place has meant to you and to me. I know it's not going to be easy and that you will, sometimes, regret what we've done, just because this is where you lived most of your retirement."
"Well, don't worry about that. I never wanted your Dad to buy this place, anyway. This was his choice, not mine." This is true. She has mentioned this several times throughout the years. More often, though she's mentioned how comfortable she feels there, how much she likes the neighbors and the surroundings, how at home she feels there. Memories have such a strong hold on us, especially as we age. But, again, that's my mother, the obstinate, "I can handle this and come out with flying colors, just watch me," person, kicking in, once again, much to my amazement and relief. Immediately she began her, "I can do this," litany:
- "You know, we're the oldest residents here; none of the originals live here, anymore."
Not completely true but what is true is that our immediate neighbors, except for one which she never favored, have all left and she has chosen not to get to know any of the replacements mainly because she was very attached to the old ones. - "It certainly will be nice not to have to go back and forth twice a year and you can keep your promise to The Girls (our cats) that they will never have to take a long trip in the car, again."
Her remembrance of the promise to our cats surprised me. Our trips since 1998, though, have been excrutiating because of The Big Girl's acute motion sickness and The Little Girl's habit of upsetting herself to vomiting distraction by huddling next to The Big Girl and screaming, "The Big Girl's dying! Pull over! The Big Girl's dying!" The other truth, though, is that my mother has always enjoyed the excitement involved in travel. Since she's become averse to travel away from home over the last several years, travel between homes satisfied her continuing urge to "strike out into the world". I'm not sure how I'll negotiate this. Maybe, as and if her energy level returns she'll be more likely to want to take short trips to visit relatives or see the sights of the world. Maybe not. We'll see what happens and I'll just deal with it in the most compassionate and mother-satisfying way I can invent. - "I'll sure miss the oranges and grapefruit. You can't buy what we grow anywhere [which is true]. But, they were such a bother to keep up. And, they're old. They probably won't fruit much longer [which is probably not true]."
- "Well, we certainly got our money's worth out of this place. Time to get our money out of someplace else, I guess."
This is true on both counts. On the first, my dad paid cash for the house so it's never been on lien and it was ridden hard and put away wet. On the second, yes, now we need to get our money out of the house in Prescott, which becomes more delightful every day we live there. - "This'll give us a chance to get to know our neighbors in Prescott. We're never there long enough to socialize."
The truth is, I know our neighbors. She does not. The "long enough" she's talking about (since we've been in Prescott permanently since a year ago September 13, 2003) is a psychic measurement. She hasn't felt "permanent" here because she's refused to be permanent here, preferring, against the evidence of our taxes and our time, to consider our Mesa home the "permanent" home. Now, she'll have no choice.
I could have let it go and counted on the fallibility of her short term memory to delete this but I don't do this with my Ancient One, I work on, as well as with, her short term memory to keep her perception of reality as close to reality as possible. "Mom," I responded, "we've sold the house. We won't be living here again. We'll be visiting it several times within the next month but at the end of September that'll be it."
"Oh, that's right. That's what you said. Well, it's been a good home. On to the next."
"Yes," I said. "And, luckily, we've got the next one, and we love that one, too."
She looked shocked. "We do?!?"
"Yes, Mom. The home in Prescott."
"Oh, that's right. Yes, that's a good home, too."
"It'll be our only home, now."
"It just doesn't seem possible, does it?"
"What doesn't seem possible, Mom?"
"Hmmm...well, it doesn't seem possible that we finally sold this home. I didn't think we ever would."
I laughed. "Neither did I! Now, we can live with our boundaries thrown further out."
She smiled, satisfied, and nodded. "Yes. That'll be different from the last few years."
And that is the absolute truth.
I let Mom sleep in today. Our trip home last night was extended an extra hour by an accident at Sunset Point. We joined the crawling back-up at New River, 24 miles south. We were both so amazed at this experience, the first particularly typical holiday highway back-up in Arizona that we've encountered, that after we arrived home at 2215 we stayed up until just after 0100 this morning talking about it in detail. I was surprised at how much Mom absorbed: Specific cars and drivers; the alarming view from the bottom of "the (actual) mountain" that we traverse going north from just past Black Canyon City to the pass just prior to Sunset Point, of the red lit, bumper to bumper 5 mile snake we still had to negotiate (and wondering how much further beyond the pass the back-up extended); watching the lightning from a far away thunderstorm ahead of us and wondering if it was headed north or south (it was headed north, thankfully)...the experience was so indelible for her that when she awoke this morning and I asked her what was on her mind (when she awakes with a thoughtful look I always probe it) she said, "Miles and miles and miles of cars..."
"Did you dream about last night?"
"No, thank goodness, but I couldn't forget it either."
Although my mother appears laid back today, her energy level is good. We discovered this morning that her urinary tract infection is back. Luckily, we don't have to negotiate the Urgent Care Center. I've got enough of the previous antibiotics, the course of which was interrupted by her recent hospital stay, to get us to Wednesday, when we'll be seeing her PCP in Mesa. Yes, I'm going to keep her Mesa physician. I'm not interested in continuing to try to wring halfway decent care out of the stiff-necked, self-righteous medical community in Prescott.
I'm a little confused on what to do about this recurring UTI. It makes sense that it continues to recur because of her currently flagging lack of awareness about her bowel movements, her inability to wipe herself correctly and thoroughly anymore and the fact that for some time after she has defecated her colon continues to produce gas and leak a little when she farts. I try to keep up with frequent changes of underwear but I'm not always successful. The issue of wiping has its hard-to-negotiate side, too. On the one hand (pun not intended but appropriate), if she wipes exclusively from the back her lack of flexibility is such that it is guaranteed that she is going to graze her colonic area before reaching her urinary area. On the other, wiping from the front also takes a level of flexibility that is a bit beyond her and she can't quite clean the entire length of her folds. This morning I put forth a stern directive, with which she is just as sternly displeased but which I told her is a must until we can figure out a way to lick this thing without my intrusion into her personal habits: I told her that I was going to become even more intrusive than I have been about her bathroom visits (in response she broad-snided me with "Is that possible?!?") and I was going to take over personal hygiene for awhile, not instead of hers but in addition to hers. She's gotten used to me appearing in the bathroom every time she eliminates. My intrusiveness doesn't bind her or cause bladder shyness so I don't expect any problems except her offense. But we can't have her on antibiotics forever, so we'll do whatever it takes. It has occurred to me that maybe there is another cause: Maybe the original UTI was never completely wiped out or, maybe, reinfection has occurred during her frequent hospital and SNF visits since June because staff at both facilities are not nearly as rigorous as I am at detecting and cleaning her fecal accidents. Of course, the staff is not paid to hang out so close to her 24 hours a day seven days a week that they are able to nasally detect an accident as it occurs. As well, she's been catheterized twice since June 9th, most recently in early August for 4 days. It's possible that her urinary tract was stretched and hasn't yet snapped back, being inelastic with age, thus allowing a swinging door to opportunistic bacteria. At any rate, so that we don't have to waste any more days fooling around with the Urgent Care Center up here, I'm going to ask her PCP for two prescriptions: One for a "refill as necessary" dose of the antibiotic, to be taken on the prescribed course and one for an "as necessary" standing urinalysis at the lab when she complains of difficulty urinating or her urine shows blood. This time around she hasn't complained at all of difficulty urinating. As well, her blood pressure hasn't soared, but it has upped itself a little, into the 130's/70's, within the last few days. I guess, too, since her blood pressure is under such good control now, I'll have to revise my scale of when to wonder if she's infected. Sing to the tune of "Always Something There to Remind Me": "Always something new to adjust to..."
We've already done a vigorous set of her therapy exercises and she's glued to Animal Planet for awhile, admitting that she didn't feel like going out today. That's fine with me. Neither do I. It's a pleasant, summer-cool day with a thunderstorm possible later. She's considering taking a nap soon, so I'm having her down some V-8 juice with cinnamon, since she's not "particularly hungry" and it hasn't been that long since breakfast. The antibiotic is probably latching itself onto her final letdown from yesterday, so I'm not going to worry about the possibility of her over sleeping, today. Maybe, later, we'll do another set of therapy exercises, maybe not. This evening, as it gets cooler, I'm going to make banana bread from the bananas she had us buy last week and never ate. She's requested Cobb salad for dinner so she certainly isn't going to starve, neither is her blood sugar going to fall dangerously.
As the day continues I've got Stat Ketchup to make, too, and will be finishing the set up for the exercise therapy journal and publishing my first entry. Since I'm expecting even more intrusive activity requirements than usual over the next couple of weeks I think I'll take the time now while she's napping to catch up and initiate.
Later.
