The Mandelbear's Musings

A couple of days ago I realized that the tree on the hill behind the building where I work is extremely climbable. Yesterday on my walk (cut short due to schedule pressure) I took advantage of that fact, combined with the picnic table somebody had thoughtfully put underneath it. Fun, even though I stopped at the first branch because there were people working in the vicinity.

I've been working in that building for nearly 17 years. The tree has been there all that time. It's been a lot longer than 17 years since I last climbed a tree.

I gave my brother a "happy birthday" call later in the afternoon (i.e. after dinner, East Coast time). He was glad to hear from me -- I need to call him more often.

In the evening I had a longish talk, or rather a series of talks over the course of the evening, ending with a couple of things resolved and some wonderful snuggle before we both somewhat reluctantly went to sleep.

Colleen is lonely a lot of the time, and doesn't get nearly enough quality time with me. Now that she has the scooter, we can go walking together again for the first time in maybe a decade. We're planning to spend Thursday investigating some of our favorite local shopping malls, and take at least one walk together on the weekends.

It's been a pretty good week so far.

Another good day. I realized, during a late-evening IM conversation with N, that I need to start responding to "How are you doing?" questions with "OK" now, rather than the "Surviving" that I've been using for the last week or so.

There was also a point in that conversation when I laughed, and noticed that I was laughing. That felt rather odd.

Another odd thing was realizing that some people may be coming to our parties and our Wednesday open houses to see me rather than Colleen. That was rather disturbing, since it indicated yet another multi-decade blind spot in my self-image.

The insight of the day was realizing that my loathing of sports extends to a strong dislike of competition in general. I seem to have a deep feeling that good people should work together, not compete or fight.

It was a very good day for Colleen: she went out shopping (and came home in between for a bathroom break), and walked out to the car both times, and back to the house once. The first time, the car was on the street and she was able to step down off the curb.

This is huge: it's the first time she's actually walked outside the house since the day of her surgery at the end of February.

Lots of good things about yesterday, though mainly good in the sense of worse things avoided. I guess the one I'm most pleased about that I actually did was calling the person in charge of the caregiver support group at Kaiser, and signing up. That's pretty big, considering my usual problems with phone calls. I also spent several hours at work writing real code. Hopefully I'll get it running today.

Colleen had a PT appointment at Kaiser; it ate up the entire morning and part of the afternoon, so I ended up walking up and down the four flights of stairs three times instead of taking my usual walk. From the way my knees were feeling by the end of it I'd guess I got my exercise.

Colleen appears to be in pretty good shape, considering. I hadn't realized how much progress she'd made in the past couple of weeks. She still needs to walk more, though, and has started taking steps in that direction.

Her digestive system still isn't back to normal, but she's making progress.

I'm not all that happy about having to go to bed at 10pm, but I'm happy about the time spent cuddling.

Yesterday was a very good day for Colleen, right up until she tried to sit on the rolling walker with the brakes off and something in one hand. Oops. After several attempts involving me, figmo, and W. we established once again that getting Colleen to her feet is a two-able-bodied-person job, and called 911 for backup. We got her into the folding chair, and from there by walker to bed.

Plopping herself down a little too heavily on the bed resulted in the drive shaft that runs between the head and foot ends popping out; it took a while for me to figure out how to get it back in place. We both went splat.

One complicating factor was that I hit my foot on the filing cabinet that we're using as a side-table, and said "ouch" while trying to help her back onto the seat. This made Colleen stop letting me help her, as she apparently assumed I was incapacitated. It was about the third time that day I've hit my foot on something -- the other two were chairs. This indicates that there's too much clutter, and that I really need to wear shoes or slippers all the damned time in the house. :(

On the gripping hand, I got some actual work and some actual songwriting done, and finally got a cup-holder installed on the scooter. And a short walk, and some meditation. So... progress? One step forward, one step back, and one step sideways, maybe.

The biggest thing I accomplished yesterday was splitting up my recording of Tres Gique's concert at Baycon. But by far the best thing that happened was Colleen taking a shower. Getting her up the two small steps and into her walk-in tub was a bit of a project, but it was the first time she'd had any kind of real bath since the middle of February, and we were both ecstatic over it.

No walk, though, very little actual work, and no luck finding a caregiver support group. I'm going to simply walk in to Kaiser this morning if I can't connect by phone. Communities, if they have them, mostly don't appear to put listings on their websites. You'd think that a website with the name California Caregiver Resource Centers would have something more useful. So, you might think, would the Family Caregiver Alliance with which they're associated. The latter does appear to have a listserv that may be useful.

Again, a pretty good day. I'm not sure what's making the difference, but I'm not complaining. Colleen and I are starting to think about ways of taking some of the caregiving and errand-running load off of me (see comments on this post in particular). I expect to be posting more about this later.

The short version, though, is that she's going to be shifting a lot of the grocery shopping to Safeway's online store, and holding a Ladies' Sewing Circle and Terrorist Society meeting on Tuesday nights to give me some time off.

Colleen went off to San Francisco in the afternoon with Marty and Ali to a 50%-off sale on Britex's remnant floor. I'm delighted -- she had fun, and came back happy and unharmed, and planning additional fabric-oriented mayhem. (See previous paragraph.)

The "Being Mindful" group finally started up at Kaiser. (For those not into the latest psychobabble, it's about the theraputic version of Buddhist meditation techniques aimed at achieving mindfulness: a "mental state, characterized by calm awareness of one's body functions, feelings, content of consciousness, or consciousness itself.") Mindfulness looks like a useful addition to my mental toolkit, and I'm starting to try to apply it. (Tag: zen.)

Finding a support group for caregivers may take a little more work; there's one at Kaiser, but the description is specific to caregivers of Alzheimer's patients.

And the YD made dinner -- the chicken was OK and a trifle underdone; the roasted zucchini slices drizzled with olive oil and maple syrup were surprising and wonderful!

I don't think I mentioned it at the time, but artbeco's gorgeous Amethyst Rose card that I ordered from her Etsy shop arrived a couple of days ago. Wow.

Good conversations, a little silliness, a happy Cat, and snuggle. Yeah, a pretty good day.