Tag: Family

I’m Pretty Sore Today

Yesterday was a tough one physically mostly, but also mentally.

I am not going into a lot of detail here, but the back story is this. Last September my parents moved from their house in Tewksbury to an assisted living space in Billerica. Over the course of the next eight months my mother’s dementia grew steadily worse to the point where she was getting up in the middle of the night and falling down. On May 9th she had a fall and was taken to Lowell General Hospital. The assisted living space said they could no longer handle assisting her living so the hospital started working toward finding a new place for her. She was moved into a nursing facility in Andover and she’s living there now. That means that my parents, who are days away from their 55th wedding anniversary, are no longer able to live together. It’s crushing to say the least. My father was still in the same room at the assisted living place, but that room was in the memory care unit, which he does not require. So yesterday we moved him to a new room, one that is not in the locked down memory unit.

We had movers pick up a piece of furniture at the house in Tewksbury and take it to Billerica. They then moved everything from the memory wing in the basement to Dad’s new room on the first floor, then they took some of mom’s things back to Tewksbury. I bounced from place to place with them and helped out a little. Mostly just by punching in the door lock codes getting in and out of the memory wing.

After the movers were done (huge, huge thanks to them) I went back to Dad’s new room and helped unpack. My sister and my two nephews were there too. We had everything wrapped up by about 2:00 with one glaring exception. Dad sleeps on a rented hospital bed. The company that rents the bed handles moving it from place to place. They initially said they would be there to move the bed at 2:09. Then 2:48. Then 3:30. I had to leave before they got there. I’ll tell you why right now.

We had broken for lunch at around noon. Dad went to the cafe, My sister and the kids went to Wendy’s, and I stayed in the room waiting for maintenance to fix something in the bathroom and switch on the Cable TV. I started eating my little four ounce of chicken lunch but kept getting interrupted. In the end it took me about two hours to get through it and I spent a lot of time taking a bite, then unpacking something for a few minutes, then going back for another bite. I don’t know if my bites were too big, or if it was something to do with being active mid-meal, but I found myself getting pretty nauseous. I pushed through it, but I was feeling pretty bad.

Later, during the time we were done with everything but the waiting for the bed I started feeling sicker. I think it was due to lack of protein? Maybe? Lack of food? Something? I only had a protein shake for breakfast so I hadn’t eaten much. I was just feeling sick to my stomach again and weak and I was getting on toward being nervous about driving. I had to leave and go get something to eat. Once I was home with food in me I felt better. I feel bad about bailing, but at least now I have another couple of food experiences to keep an eye on.

So stomach wise, things are good today. Thankfully. Dad wise, he’s in his new place. He’s miserable about being separated from Mom, but otherwise he seemed okay yesterday. It’s possible he was just putting on a brave face for two of his kids and two of his grandkids, but he did seem okay. Here’s hoping he still feels okay today.

The hang up for me, personally, at this point is pain. I more or less was on my feet yesterday from 7:00am to 3:00pm. It was rough for Mr. Out of Shape here. Sure, I have a lot more energy and stuff since losing 100 pounds in the last seven months (WOOHOO!), but I am still really fat and out of shape and that was a lot of work yesterday.

Then to make things work, I still did my 30 minutes of walking. It was after dinner when I was all settled and feeling better. Jen and I were in the living room watching the tube and I got up and started walking. My Activity App credited me for 18 minutes of exercise during the day, but I have a streak of doing 30 minute walks going (I don’t actually remember when the streak started so I can’t tell you how long it’s lasted) and I didn’t want to ruin it. So I started walking. 30 minutes later I was a mess, but happy. Today I got up as usual and did another 30 minutes before work and now my legs are going to fall off. Poof, no legs. Figuratively at least.

Here’s hoping the pain lessens as the day goes on, but we will have to see.

Ouch, babie. Ouch.

Sleep Deprived

I have to be at my childhood house in Tewksbury by 7:30 tomorrow. Movers are coming to get a few things and someone (me) needs to be there to let them in.

I need to wake up at a ridiculous hour. Why oh why then am I still awake? What’s wrong with me?

Go to sleep!

Oh yeah, tomorrow is weigh in day. I’ll need to get up early enough to step on the scale, update the iPhone Health app, then update my spreadsheet. Nerd alert!

Tomorrow

What do I want to do tomorrow? Besides the 0.75% of a band practice. I don’t know.

Visit my mother? I could use a little of that. I saw dad today but it’s been a week since I’ve seen mom.

Work on the 50 songs in 90 days thing? Maybe. Probably not.

Get up at sunrise and mess around with cameras again? That would be fun, but where would I go? I’ve hit my favorite spots in town. Maybe downtown Lowell? Maybe the river walk in Lowell? Maybe the Shawsheen river in Tewksbury? I know a couple of good spots, but if the Shawsheen there is as dry as the Spicket here it might not be worth it. Boston? Too far away.

Stay in bed constantly refreshing eBay all day? I’m still the highest bidder but there are 22.5 hours remaining.

Pet the kitty all day?

Finish Umbrella Academy and start Stranger Things or Orville or Westworld or….

I don’t know. In the immortal words of Traffic, from their second record, Who Knows What Tomorrow May Bring?

Tuesday July 5, 2022

The long weekend is over. It was nice, even though July 4th is now meaningless. Mostly Jen and I just hung out, but I also visited mom a few times and bought some clothes that fit (for now) and took a shit load of pictures on both Dad’s camera and my camera. We also went for a random drive to enjoy the nice weather yesterday. It was a pretty good weekend.

And now it’s over. We have a couple of contractors coming today to give estimates on fixing a potentially huge issue in the new bathroom. We’re pretty much guaranteed to lose the shower in there, which makes me sad. It is a walk in shower and I always wanted a walk in shower. Unfortunately there is a leak somewhere and there is evidence that the wall behind the shower stall is rotting so… buhbye walk in shower. Not sure what we’ll do with the space once it’s cleaned up. A linen closet? Maybe?

As for everything else. I did not get a chance to work on any music last night. I’ve been so hung up on the photography stuff lately that I haven’t been thinking music much at all. Time to find a middle ground where I can obsess over both topics. Music needs to be written, guitars need to be played, thrift stores need to be combed for inexpensive old film SLR cameras. Lizardfish needs to reunite. I sent a chat to the band yesterday saying if we don’t practice soon I am going to die. Here’s hoping they can save my life.

Okay. Get to work.

Does Bertha Need to Move?

Bertha is the house plant we grew from a clipping of Bellana’s plant that she calls Bert. We clipped a stem with two leafs off of it back in January and tried to grow a new plant. It worked like crazy.

Bertha is the plant on top of this stand. She has grown all the way down to the floor and now she is starting to spread out further.

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Is it time to move her to a new location? Or maybe is it time to put her on a taller stand of some sort? Maybe hang her from the ceiling? This window gets a ton of light in the afternoon and Bertha is growing like a weed even though the other two plants on the stand don’t seem to be growing at all.

Maybe we can put her in the bay window in the living room and she can just grow out in every direction. The downside there is that the curtain is always closed so we wouldn’t be able to watch, and I would be nervous about forgetting to water her.

For the time being though… She’s growing another branch.

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Full Day

I feel like I’ve circled the Earth today. I haven’t, but it feels nuts.

We went food shopping early. Then I spent an hour or so with my mother. It was weird today, but not in a way I’ve seen. It’s hard to explain.

Next I went to a store and bought a couple of pairs of jeans. You heard that right. I’m down two sizes, which when you’re this wide two sizes is the equivalent of four sizes for normally sized people. The question now is, how long until the new jeans are falling off of me too? Let’s find out!

It calmed down after that. Jen’s folks came over for a visit. We had a nice conversation about the collapse of the United States. You know, like you do.

Later, Jen made salmon for dinner. See the fish market pic from earlier today. It was fantastic. Really. Jen can make our little air fryer sing and dance. After dinner we went to Cambridge to research some computer components Jen was thinking about grabbing, but she passed on them.

Now we are home and I am behind on everything. I am way below my 60 grams of protein goal. I’m in a good place for the 60 ounces of liquids goal, but the protein is a problem. Also, I haven’t done my exercise yet. It’s 9:00pm and ai haven’t even started. Crud.

Okay, time to start-a-walking.

Stormy

We just got spanked by a thunderstorm. The noise shook the house, the rain was a total downpour, the lights flickered a couple of times, the Lightning lit up the whole neighborhood.

Harry went outside to watch the show and he saw an actual bolt of lightning.

It’s pretty much passed now. We can still hear it off in the distance, but the show is over.

It was pretty cool.

Sort of Back to Normal

It’s amazing how going into the office used to be the norm, and now going in one day just murderlizes my entire routine.

Wednesday night I packed up everything I needed for the day in the office (except my headphones, damn it) and put out my clothes for the next day and all that fun stuff. On Thursday I got up super early and did my 30 minutes of exercise, made my lunch, did the rest of my morning stuff and left (without my headphones).

That doesn’t seem like a lot, but it really is. It’s like throwing a giant monkey wrench into the whole day.

Fortunately I am back in my home office today. I’d like to say I feel like everything is back to normal, for the most part it is, but I slept really late today. Not late enough that I didn’t have time for my morning exercise and all of that, but I did start work before I made breakfast (scrambled eggs, yum). I generally prefer not to do that.

Today is going to be a little weird here at the home* too. I went in to work yesterday, and Jen is going in today. Actually… not to the office? Not sure of the details, but she’s going to see people today. After work we’re planning on doing some grocery shopping. This is going to sound selfish of me, but I really enjoy that Jen and I have been doing that together. It’s silly, but I like it.

Best of all, on the Friday front, Harry will be coming over after work and he’ll be here for the whole next week. Excellent. We are still a few weeks away from Bellana coming home from Europe, but it’s one step closer to having the whole family together.

On unrelated notes, I am listening to the new Porcupine Tree album, which was finally released today, and I’m giving it five stars and two thumbs up and all of the accolades. It’s a great record. CLOSURE/CONTINUATION (yes, the album title is in all caps), check it out. I am planning to visit my mother a couple of times over the weekend. I’m not sure if I will get over to see my father too, but we’ll see. We talked about watching the Obi-Wan Kenobi series in its entirety in one sitting this weekend. I think maybe after Harry comes home from work on Sunday? I came up with a goofy project for the film camera. I’m thinking of trying to take the same picture with Dad’s camera and my camera and comparing the results. I’d like to use exactly the same settings, but my camera can be a little bit of a bitch to setup manually, and Dad’s seems to have a different labeling system for the aperture settings? I’ll have to consult the manual on that.

Okay, ladies and germs. Time to get to work. Those customers aren’t going to support themselves!

*Here at the Home is the title of the first album by one of the great Boston bands from the late 80’s/early 90’s, Tribe. When I went to my parents house the other day it was to pick up all of my old records that I hadn’t brought to the house already. There were a whole bunch of Tribe records in the pile.