The Mandelbear's Musings

Hello love. Happy anniversary? I'm afraid I couldn't find anything to give you this year. I know you would have wanted us all to be healthy, happy, and safe, but, well... We're surviving -- things aren't nearly as bad as they could be. That will have to do.

Put in a word with Bast for our protection, please, and give hugs to Ame and cuddles to Curio and Desti. I'll always love you.

We were married fifty years ago today. This is the fifth time I haven't had her with me to celebrate it. See also, Song for Sunday: Forty Five Years

The week has been mostly okay, or at least not particularly (not okay), but with occasional nostalgia attacks and nostalgic rabbit-holes. Unpacking boxes of books can do that, apparently. Especially when one box contains mostly the contents of my TBR shelf, and another some of the old favorites dating back to my parents' house in Connecticut, and their Heritage Press subscription. No idea what I'm doing with two copies of the NESFA Press edition of The Rediscovery of Man, though. But since I have all of Cordwainer Smith's short fiction in digital form, I don't need to have multiple dead tree editions taking up shelf space.

Do I? Many of those editions have memories associated with them. Maybe I should write some of their stories before I put (some of) them into boxes to go back to storage. I should certainly inventory them. Of course, the same goes for the boxes of assorted memorabilia, which won't all fit in the curio cabinet that we have yet to put together. How am I supposed to decide what to do with the things I'm unlikely ever to use again, but can't bear to part with?

The unpacking was, of course, enabled by N and I having finished putting up the four bookcases in the living room. A 78cm shelf roughly corresponds to the contents of a loaded 16" moving box or banker's box. It's not all going to fit, even after the serious culling before this and the previous moves. I mean, books! I'm a firm believer in the maxim that "there is no such thing as too many books, only not enough bookshelves." As, I would expect, are most of my readers.

Also, my birthday was Thursday, and Colleen's is today. I wrote about Colleen's yesterday, and combined writing about mine with Thankful Thursday. I might be just a bit confuzzled.

In the links, you ought to read How to Use Signal Encrypted Messaging, if you're not using it already. You ought to read Leopards eating faces, if you haven't heard that phrase before, or been puzzled by its meaning.

( Notes & links, as usual )

If things had gone differently in July of 2021, Colleen and I would be celebrating our 49th anniversary today, and embarking on our 50th year of marriage. Things didn't, and we're not.

I never know just how it's going to hit me. This year -- yesterday -- I hit an emotional landmine on the last page of Cordwainer Smith's story "The Game of Rat and Dragon.

... as he buried his face in the pillow, he caught an image of the Lady May.

“She is a cat,” he thought. “That’s all she is⁠—a cat!”

But that was not how his mind saw her⁠—quick beyond all dreams of speed, sharp, clever, unbelievably graceful, beautiful, [...]

Where would he ever find a woman who could compare with her?

Colleen was always some kind of cat to me. Objectively, she didn't share all that many attributes with the Lady May, but there it was, and objectivity has nothing to do with it. I buried my face in my hands and sobbed silently for a few minutes.

When I started -- more than a month ago -- to write a post about my spiritual beliefs and practices, I suddenly noticed that I was actually writing a chronological memoir. I changed course and prepended a fairly crisp summary of what I believe, then posted it separately. This is the remaining memoir. I tried several different verbs in the title, including staggering and stumbling, but, well, Yeats. There was never much uncertainty about the "destination" -- the concept of "awareness" comes from Reformed Druidism (which I'll get to in a few paragraphs). It is more ambiguous and has fewer connotations than "enlightenment" or "revelation". But in any case I don't claim to have arrived at it. I'm still journeying.

It's mostly about stories.

I'm not particularly happy about how this has turned out -- it's long, but leaves a lot out (meaning it may be too short), and it's somewhat disorganized. But I started it last month and haven't worked on it in the past week, so it's what it is.)

( Cut for length. Content warning: death (body count: four), and a little religion. )

So I'm in the last few days before I leave Rainbow's End North, on Whidbey Island -- the last place where I lived with Colleen -- forever. It's already been sold, and the new owners are filkers and likely to keep the name, the maypole, and maybe RainbowCon, so I may be back some time in the future. But I'm not counting on it, and meanwhile all of our Stuff has to be moved out, and the house needs to be thoroughly cleaned.

(Wednesday, 2/20) Actually, almost all of our stuff has been moved out -- the junk haulers were back for a second trip yesterday, leaving only the stuff remaining in the kitchen and the back bathroom, and a few computers and periherals that my back was complaining about loading into (Bolt EV)Molly. (One could easily argue that I don't need that many computers, but whether I sell them, donate them, or give them away, they still need to be taken out of the house and moved to someplace where I can save their files and wipe their disks. Besides, one used to be my Mom's.)

Everything in that house has a memory attached to it, and in most cases a story. Many I have kept, for the memories, regardless of whether it makes sense. This does not help my procrastination -- or rather, helps it way too much.

(Sunday, 2/25) Aaaaaaaand I made a trip up yesterday -- you can read about it in Done Since 2024-02-18. There are actually a few more items left up there, mostly in the kitchen; we'll take care of them a week from today when N and I go up with our wonderful housekeeper E' for the cleaning. Most will either get stored or donated. Fridge contents, spices, etc. will be dumped.

As I write this, Sunday evening, about half of the items are still in Molly, including Mom's iMac. I'll move them tomorrow. And take a box to Office Depot for shredding -- a lot of it is checkbooks for accounts I no longer have. I will be left with too few photos, too much Stuff, and too many memories. Next Sunday, we will go up with our favorite housekeeper for the final cleaning.

(Monday, 2/26) Sometimes I lose track of the fact that I'm grieving. Other times, I lose track of which loss I'm grieving -- there are so many of them by now. It doesn't really matter; they're all tangled up.

As if I didn't have enough to worry about.

I like to let the Thanksgiving gratitude post cover not only the previous week but the year since last Thanksgiving. Which is why I'm starting this on Tuesday. I am grateful for...

• having been diagnosed -- hopefully soon enough -- with one of the most treatable forms of cancer. NO thanks for my prostate gland and its immediate surroundings.
• (mostly) online support groups, particularly The Healing Center. Also other support websites, like Whats your Grief. (I'm not going to list them all, partly because I don't appear to have made a canonical list. Yet.) NO thanks for recently having to broaden this category beyond grief support. I'm glad those sites are there, it's just...
• rabbit holes, which appear to be my main coping mechanism right now. Particular thanks for the axiom of choice, group theory, Evolution, Wikipedia in general, Bandcamp, YouTube, ...
• my family. Or is that families? Kids R and E, sister N and brother-in-law G, niblings m, j, and c; and nearly-niblings(?) foster-niblings k, s", and g". (It's complicated.) (What's the opposite of family of choice, anyway? None of the alternatives I've seen, like "of origin" are anything more than adequate, and some are awful.) Additional thanks to Colleen for introducing me to the concept, and welcoming me into hers.
• Mom's cranberry relish.
• being financially able to afford health care and to help other family members. And pets -- vet bills have been astronomical recently.
• our cats. Cricket, Bronx, and Brooklyn in the house; Ticia in my Lair. Thanks too for Desti, who left us far too soon, earlier this year. Special thanks to Ticia, who has been my sleeping companion since Colleen died.
• the filk community.
• electric washing machines, dishwashers, and vehicles. Particular thanks for Molly.
• lithium-ion storage bateries and USB-C.
• Dreamwidth Studios (dreamwidth.org), my blog host, and dreamhost.com, my web host. (Not related, despite the similarly of names.)
• free-to-use artwork (both public domain and CC-licensed). Particular thanks to Creative Commons, Wikimedia Commons, and pexels.com.
• open-source software, including Linux, Git, Make, Bash, Emacs, Audacity, WordPress, and Xmonad; also the computers I run it on, mainly my laptop, a Lenovo X230 called Sable. Additional thanks for the "spare" laptops, and Git's ability to synchronize them.

Yesterday, in one of my online grief support groups, someone wrote that she felt lost, and the only thing she saw in her future was [don't want to quote -- it should be obvious from my reply]:

Sympathy. I have pretty much the same vision for my future -- sitting home alone and petting my cat. But I'm selling the house -- the last house that Colleen and I lived in together -- and planning on moving with my chosen family, and packing up memories. I'm not in the best of shape right now, and feeling very much adrift.

Which immediately reminded me of N's song "Staying Home Tonight" (based on a Zenna Henderson story). I got to the last line, "An aging world and woman who are staying home tonight", and fell apart. That's a good thing -- I'd been wondering whether, between age, alexithymia, and dysthymia, I'd lost the ability to cry. Apparently not.

It mostly seems to happen with songs, (or other things that I've written), which I guess kind of makes sense. Because I can't usually tell what I'm feeling, but it sometimes comes out in my writing anyway. Not that I've written much besides blog posts lately. Or someone else's song will hit me at just the right spot, at the right time. Like this time.

I think I probably had something else I wanted to say, but that was yesterday, and it's gone.

ETA: Note -- most of this post was written on Monday 6/5, so "yesterday" would have been Sunday.

So yesterday was our 47th wedding anniversary; the second one without Colleen. I'd planned to drink a toast with some Glenlivet -- the last remaining bottle of Glenlivet from the case we got for our 25th (I think) anniversary from her oldest cousin and her uncle. But I'd somehow gotten confused, thinking the day was today. I was never confused about the date - the Third. I forget a lot of dates, but that isn't one of them; something just didn't line up in my mind.

It's happened before: usually with August 4th, so I think it must be some kind of defense mechanism. Anyway, I guess I'll have that shot tonight, if I remember.

Colleen died one year ago today. By an odd but wellcome coincidence, my grief support group meets the second and fourth Tuesdays of every month, so there's that. (It runs from 10:00 to 11:30; I will probably post this sometime in the afternoon. I started writing this post two days ago, so please ignore any temporal confusion or calendrical parallax.)

My life seems to have been torn in half -- in part literally, shuttling back and forth between the houses in Freeland and Seattle. But also metaphorically, because so much of it revolved around Colleen. That includes nearly all of my social life.

I haven't gotten anything done in the last year. I've been reading, as usual, taking refuge in group theory and other rabbit-holes, but I'm just now getting back into singing regularly, and as for sorting and packing,... Actually, I've never sold anything on Craig's List or anywhere else online, and things that I could easily get wrong worry me. My daughter, E, is coming up to the house week after next to help with the sorting.

I've had plenty of support, mostly low-key, which I think is what I needed. Need. I haven't been left alone for more than a day or so, which is probably what I've needed even though it's not what I would have asked for. And I have the cats, who are also taking care of me in their own way. And a grief support group that meets via zoom on the second and fourth Thursday of eacy month, so they/we met this morning. There's also a Facebook group.

I don't actually know much about support, either asking for it, getting it, or giving it. Which makes being in a peer support group kind of problematic? Basicaly I'm faking it.

It's like object-oriented programming -- if a simulation is good enough, you can use it in place of the thing you're simulating. Or as Alan Kay famously said about Smalltalk, "If it quacks like a duck and it waddles like a duck, you can't tell that it isn't a duck." I just have to hope I'm waddling well enough.

Aside: the next post will be a signal boost for the James Webb Space Telescope's first images, released earlier this morning. A day that starts with that much beauty and wonder can't be all bad. And after that a boost for this morning's GoingSideways post.

Today is my 75th birthday "observed" -- I was on the island yesterday, so my party at N's has been put off to today. I don't know what I expected it to feel like, and I'm not really sure what, if anything, it does feel like, because Wednesday would have been Colleen's 70th and we would normally be celebrating our mutual birthdays with a combined party.

Traditionally (when we were living at Grand Central Starport in San Jose) it was called the "It's Green" party, since the day after Colleen's birthday is St. Patrick's Day, and we served Green Rooster beer along with corned beef and cabbage. Green Rooster is no longer available; since it little to recommend it except its color, I don't miss it. But I miss the potluck parties we used to have. And it doesn't feel right to only be celebrating one birthday this week.

Well, today was our forty-sixth wedding anniversary, and the first without Colleen beside me to celebrate. I have hauled out the last remainibng bottle from the case of The Glenlivet that Colleen's uncle and oldest cousin gave us for an anniversary. (I forget which; possibly our 35th or 36th; the first mention of Glenlivet in my log is in 2010, but it could have been earlier. I wish I could ask Colleen -- she'd remember.)

Rather than spending the day writing (as I'd hoped) or moping (as I'd feared) I spent most of it fighting with WordPress. So far it's a draw.

Good night.

As the title says, this was my first Thanksgiving without Colleen. Not the first time we were separated for Thanksgiving -- there have been several when she was in the hospital or otherwise too sick to travel. The first was 2008 -- she was in the hospital after having been diagnosed with Crohn's, and I spent the day driving down to LA from San Jose for Loscon with the kids. But she was part of our family's Thanksgiving even if she wasn't physically present at the table. It didn't feel anything like this year.

I'm not sure how to organize this. Let me start with the chronology. We started making Thanksgiving dinners together before we were married -- we had the two of us plus Colleen's mother, who couldn't cook worth a damn. Once we'd moved to San Jose the feast naturally moved with us, acquiring additional household members along the way. People brought appetizers or side dishes; we roasted the bird and made stuffing and Mom's cranberry relish.

After Colleen's mother died in 1999, we started going to Loscon for Thanksgiving weekend. That meant driving down to LA on Thanksgiving Day, stopping at Pea Soup Anderson's for dinner right around lunchtime. They did -- and probably still do -- a good job of it. When we moved up to Seattle in 2012, we went back to hosting it, in whatever house was biggest: N's rented place the first year, then at Rainbow's End, then in the Whidbey Island house.

So this year, down at Rest Stop with N's family and G doing most of the cooking, was just... I'm not sure how to describe it. Wrong? Different? Hollow? More hollow than the others, I think. Something huge that's missing. Which makes sense, I guess. (I note in passing that something making sense to me is not necessarily an indication that it will make sense in absolute terms, whatever that means, or to anyone else.)

This seemed when I started like it was going to be more interesting than it turned out. I was expecting it to be more about my mental state. But alexithymia.

So, it was a week. Nothing bad happened, and I was somewhat busier than usual, with actual writing projects. (Which I can't really say anything else about until they go live in a month or so. But still.) So I guess I Got Stuff Done, but it still didn't feel like a good week.

I miss Colleen. (This should surprise no-one, but it's not something I've been consciously thinking about recently.) Partly, I grieve for the many things we never got around to doing together. Probably worth a post later this week.

I never got around to watching the current episode of Foundation; now there are two in my queue. Not sure they're worth watching. Dune, on the other hand, has gotten good reviews.

Lots of links. I went down a rabbit hole to find a Git plugin for WordPress. VersionPress looked like the best of the lot, and it was abandoned over a year ago. All of the others were abandoned even earlier. Grumble. (One of the new projects involves WP.)

( Notes & links, as usual )

Some things I miss:

Sharing a bath with Colleen. Back before her arthritis made it difficult to get out of the bathtub (until finally it took her over an hour to get out of the tub -- that's when we decided to get a walk-in), one of our pleasures was sharing a bath. The bathroom in the master suite that we added on around the time our first kid was born had a lovely six-foot Jacuzzi tub. It was long enough to stretch out in, wide enough to be comfortable for Colleen, and had the spout in one corner so that neither of us had to sit with it poking into our back. sigh

Our st/rolls around the San Jose Municipal Rose Garden. It was an easy walk from our house, and when Colleen got her scooter it could go slightly faster than I could walk. Such a pleasure having to catch up with her rather than waiting for her to catch up.

Driving in circles. Big circles. Just for the sake of being together in the car. We hardly ever went anywhere in particular; all Colleen wanted was to be sitting next to me. One of our favorite loops went over to Santa Cruz, up the coast on SR 1 to San Francisco, and back home via I 280. It took about three hours. Or up 101 to something in San Francisco -- often the zoo -- and home via the coast.

Indian buffet dinners. We always had masala chai, and gulab jamun for dessert; the rest varied depending on what they had out, but almost always included tandoori chicken and chicken tikka masala. The Bay Area had -- still has, I guess -- a far better selection of Indian buffets than Seattle does.

Hsi Nan, the little Szechuan restaurant in the Town and Country shopping center on the Embarcadero just across El Camino from the Stanford campus. After we moved in together, it was an easy walk from our apartment. That's where we courted. We could walk in, give Louie, the owner, a price per person, and be sure of getting something wonderful. Glazed bananas. I've never had glazed bananas anywhere else (except at home, the few times we made them). Cook bananas in boiling sugar syrup at the hard-crack stage, then drop them into a bowl of ice water.

The Mandelbear's Memoirs

Today I am grateful for...

• Everyone who came (via Zoom) to the memorial on Tuesday. Thank you all.
• Especially E, for organizing it, hosting it, and recording the part with the music. [1]
• N, for taking care of me.
• The Neptune Society, for making things easy and, by happy coincidence, providing a purple tote bag in which to carry the urn.
• Cats, including the wonderful Cheshire Cat.
• The solace of fantasy; Colleen, Curio, and Amethyst Rose. [2]

[1] If you missed it, the raw video is on the memorial web page, but it needs editing. Saturday, maybe.

[2] See The Rainbow Bridge pages.

On the whole, I had a really bad year last month.

Nothing much happened last week, and not much got done, and I'm okay with that.

Maybe I shouldn't have been so quick to cancel her phone service; anyone who calls her now will get a "disconnected" message. Hopefully anyone who actually knows her -- or, rather, us -- will have enough sense to call me and ask. Some people will no doubt lose touch. I don't think it matters enough for me to worry about it. (But I will anyway, I suppose.)

I intend to sing a few songs at the memorial Tuesday. I should practice; that way I might be able to get through "Eyes Like the Morning" and "The River" without falling apart. I know, nobody will mind if I don't. But still.

( Notes & links, as usual )

I suppose the proper term for the state of the bear at this point is "widowed". It's all completely surreal. Colleen was away -- in hospitals and rehab -- for all but three weeks between the end of March and the middle of July. I sort of got used to the way the house feels without her. If I don't think about it everything seems the same, until it isn't. Until something reminds me.

Usually it's wanting to tell her something, or ask her something. She's the one who kept track of all our social connections. Without her I'm adrift, in uncharted waters. I'm sure there are dozens of people I haven't contacted. Maybe hundreds. Many who I don't even know exist. Colleen knows; I should ask... Oh, right.

Emotionally,... Note that the combination of dysthymia with alexithymia makes that a little complicated, and very uncertain. I tend to figure out emotions by backtracking from the environment and physical effects. I mean, I know that I'm grieving, but it's hard to be more specific. I do know that I made it through this morning by curling up with a stuffy (the rhino, Cyrano; I have Colleen's platypus, Platy, down in Seattle) and whimpering, so I guess that says something. No outright crying, though I expected it. The rest of the time I've just been a little more down than usual.

Right now I'm mostly keeping busy by trying to organize things like drugs that need discarding; medical supplies, Desitin and baby wipes that can be donated; and so on. Need to track down some paperwork, too. I'm currently splitting my time between Whidbey and Seattle, so figuring what will go where is another thing. Keeping busy is good -- I can just do the thing and mostly not think too much about why I need to.

I really appreciate your comments and other messages of support. I don't think I have the energy to respond to most of them right now, but please know that the fact that you're thinking of us makes a huge difference, somehow. I'll see everything posted here, and most direct messages and mentions on LinkedIn, Discord, and that face place.

Colleen's memorial will be on Zoom starting at 3pm PDT, August 3^rd, two weeks from tomorrow. I'll post the meeting parameters closer to the day.

Today I am grateful for...

• Colleen. It's impossible to express how grateful I am that she fell in love with me over half a century ago, and stayed with me through forty-five years of marriage and well over 16,000 good-night kisses.
• The staff at WhidbeyHealth Medical Center. Their care, kindness, and skill got her through many rough weeks over our years on Whidbey, and kept her as comfortable and cheerful as they could all through her final week. The fact that they knew her and her purple hair meant a lot to her.
• Dr. Rosa Rangel, who gave her two more mostly-good years of life, and was there to make sure I was with her in the end.
• The Neptune Society, for swiftly and smoothly taking over the huge stack of paperwork and making all the other arrangements that I knew nothing about.
• Our extended family -- our kids, our sister-of-choice pocketnaomi and her family, and the scores of people she adopted over the years, all of whom knew her as "Mama Colleen". And the hundreds who might not have been "formally" adopted, but called her Mama anyway.
• Naomi in particular, who has been taking care of me and trying to make sure that I take care of myself over the years and especially this last horrible week.
• Our house/grounds-keeper Libby and our housemate S, whose support has kept both the household and me functional during these last trying weeks.
• Colleen's caregiver and dear friend, Vivian. More than anyone else (probably even including me) her friendship, companionship, loving care, tireless energy, and optimism kept Colleen mostly cheerful and as comfortable as possible during her final weeks, and indeed years.

I'm sorry; I can't thank everyone individually. If anyone ever had a hope of remembering you all and thanking each of you personally it would have been Colleen. Thanks you all.

Colleen spent the entire week in the hospital -- WhidbeyHealth Medical Center -- waiting to get a transfer to UW, which has the specialists she is going to need for surgery. As of this morning her condition had worsened to the point where they decided to operate on an emergency basis this morning.

She made it -- she's one tough old lady.

She'll be transferred to UW as soon as she's stable enough for it to be safe to transport her -- tonight or tomorrow, hopefully -- where the specialists can finish fixing her up. Details in State of the FlowerCat Episode 9 probably.

For the sake of continuity, today's part of the log has been moved up. You'll find it under the cut with the rest of this past week. I've also been working on a post about Cordwainer Smith, but it's not finished yet. Life happened.

( Notes & links, as usual. Content warning: possibly-disturbing medical details. )

I don't know where in Hell this last week went. But given last weekend's heat wave it was probably somewhere in there.

The air conditioner I ordered just before the heat wave arrived Wednesday, just after the heat wave. Go figure. But it's installed now, and ready for the next one.

E and (husband)M came up Tuesday to pick up their boxes of things from Mom's apartment; they also selected some artwork to take home. Glad that it's getting a good home. Between and the box that my cousin Mark picked up last week, there is considerably more space in the garage now, but we still have way too much Stuff.

Colleen had a video appointment with a UW dietician (Monday -- useful) and visits from Eden Home Health for OT (Tuesday), PT (Wednesday -- including a well-deserved scolding), and nursing (also Wednesday, for a catheter change). Which did not go well -- they came back Friday(  (medical TMI) )

I spent a lot of yesterday feeling rather miserable. Depressed? Discouraged? Except while visiting with Colleen, when I mostly felt worried. A little music helped, as did a second visit to Colleen after dinner, but still... In other medical misery I appear to be having quite a lot of pain in my right hip. WTF?

I guess that's where the week went.

For links, you may be interested in "My Quest for Sadness" (about alexithymia -- probably a more serious case than mine, but it's hard to tell because alexithymia).

The usual content warning for medical details and bodily fluids under the cut. Would you prefer that I leave those in, or filter them out (which would make these posts considerably shorter)? Inquiring minds... Answer in comments if you have a strong preference either way.

( Notes & links, as usual )

The high-order bit this week is that Colleen is home -- she came home from rehab Wednesday afternoon. They said that she really needed another week, and in retrospect we should have listened -- last night we had to call 911 for help getting her from the wheelchair to the bed. Worried.

In other news, my back is giving me trouble. Not surprisingly, there's a correlation with the previous paragraph. Heat and meloxicam help, but I definitely overdid it last night helping her transfer. Or rather trying to.

I am now searching CraigsList for a patient lift. (Actually I found one, but I'm waiting to hear back from the seller.)

N and her kids are coming up this evening, and will be here most of the week. There might be music.

Friday was Autistic Pride Day. You'll also find some links on estate planning and other EOL documentation, all of which I should have done something about years ago, but... I have a bad habit of ignoring things that make me uncomfortable.

( Notes & links, as usual )

Colleen is back on Whidbey Island, as of late Monday afternoon, in the nursing home/rehab center formerly known as Careage, and now called Regency Coupeville. (Regency Pacific Management runs some 40 facilities in Washington, Oregon, California, and Hawaii.) Their visiting policy is a lot more restricted than we would like -- they have only a single room with a limited number of slots that have to be booked in advance, but they allow multiple people, so V and I were able to visit her on Wednesday. We have additional slots booked for Tuesday and Thursday of next week.

It beats her stay at UW, which didn't allow visitors at all for most of it. Visiting policies change frequently around here, depending on the latest word coming from the CDC, the Governor's office, and the local county health commissioners. Possibly also the phase of the moon.

She appears to be making progress with physical therapy -- she was able to stand up for two minutes (she says; might have been less) while they swapped her mattress for a better one -- and has had some good discussions with the head chef (who, like Colleen, views unusual dietary combinations as a challenge). I'm somewhat worried about her mental state, which I guess can be described as some combination of volatile and fragile. (Bearing in mind that I'm not particularly clear on the meaning of either word.) She's been in one institution or another since the end of March, so this is probably not unexpected, but...

We have a care conference scheduled for Monday; hopefully she'll be strong enough to go home later in the week.

You'll notice the cut tag is back this time; Colleen is back in a hospital (UW, this time). She's being well taken care of (finally) (hopefully), but sheesh!

Episode 6 was written just after Colleen started at Prestige Post-Acute and Rehab Center. She'd liked it the last two times she was there, but they seem to have gone downhill since then. I imagine COVID has been hard on them, but... It's not a good excuse.

( Content warning: serious medical issues, bodily fluids. tl;dr: if she needs rehab again it won't be at Prestige. )

Colleen was not happy about having to spend her Mother's Day in a hospital, that UW is not allowing visitors.

Where did Wednesday and Thursday go? It's been a long week... Oh.

I think I'm supposed to feel accomplished -- I had quite a few tasks to do today, including some unexpected ones, and I think I succeeded at almost all of them. So maybe I'm just out of spoons? Let's see:

• Contact contractors about making a smooth pad for Colleen to step on getting in and out of the car.
• Zoom meeting with (brother)Al and Mom's lawyer about her estate.
• Pick up some Desitin on the way up to see Colleen.
• (Not me, but Colleen had a good PT session. Also she'll be moving to another room now that she's out of the 2-week quarantine period I didn't realize was going on.)
• Colleen got a call from Swedish to schedule a follow-up upper endoscopy, but told them that we were planning to switch to UW.
• Called UW. They're booked out to June or July. Oops.
• Called Swedish back to schedule the endoscopy. It'll be in July (which is correct for a 3-month follow-up). No idea how much later it would have ended up if we'd gone with UW.
• Get callbacks from two of the contractors. One doesn't do that kind of work. Scheduled a meeting with the other... for tomorrow at 2pm. On Whidbey. After that, I need to get back to Seattle in time for dinner. (Which I just found out a minute ago. The day isn't over yet, apparently.)
• Find out that Whidbey Home Health is going out of business. They'll ask Prestige to refer Colleen to one of the other two agencies on the island.
• Stop at Freddie's on the way home to get berries and frozen veggies, and get a key duplicated.
• (As of a few minutes ago) hear from another contractor who I have to schedule. Eeek!

As I said... long week.

You may note that there is no cut tag in this one. Colleen transfered from the to Prestige Post-Acute and Rehabilitation Center in Edmonds on Tuesday. She traveled by "cabulance" -- wheelchair van -- and managed the bed-to wheelchair and wheelchair-to-bed transfers under her own power.

She did a little walking yesterday and more today, and is looking and feeling a lot more like herself. Her recovery has been impressively fast, probably because she has -- or maybe we have -- gotten the hang of getting her back on her feet as quickly as possible. In the hospital, that meant getting a couple of nurses to help several days before PT showed up to evaluate her.

Things went fine until lunchtime, when a pair of miscommunications about bed rails (no, she does not want them to help her maneuver on the bed) and diet ("soft food, small bites" does not include tasteless ground-up meat and mashed potatoes when she ordered steak tips with a sherry sauce over noodles). Colleen is prone to meltdowns when something like that happens. Fortunately I was in the room and able to translate; I think we have it figured out now, but there will probably be more discussions tomorrow.

After that, of course, it was my turn to have a meltdown. Fortunately mine are quieter, and probably look to an outside observer somewhat like clinical depression mixed with a combination of apologies and curses. You see, I was trying to get her phone to call home and sync, so that I can replace it with the new phone I ordered last week. It did not help at all that she hadn't done anything requiring a login for years. (I had apparently managed to log in earlier in the month because I needed to get something out of her email.)

The phone/Google login kerfuffle was on top of an ongoing frustration with Sable, which keeps randomly shutting itself off. There is apparently a screw loose inside -- I can hear it rattle when I tilt the case. It works perfectly sitting flat on a desk. I'm going to have to go in there with a screwdriver. Later. And after a drive up that was somewhat more exhausting than usual because of unfamiliar exits, construction work, and ambiguous lane markings. Ambiguous to me, anyway. After all that I was pretty close to the edge, and the phone was just enough to tip me over.