Posted 5-13-19 Thank you for your patience in my 2-day respite to celebrate Mother’s Day and my 250,000 hour anniversary Saturday. Both went great! 🙂 Me and my siblings met with mom for a nice visit Saturday instead of facing the rare visitor rush of a Sunday visit. It was a little selfish, but going…
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Time Flies Like an Eagle…and/or a Buzzard
Posted 5-10-19 Tomorrow morning at 9am my bride and I celebrate 250,000 hours of wedded bliss! In case you can’t work through those numbers in your head, we hit 29 years this November! Many wondered if 2 babies of the families, still babies at 19 and 18, would make it a week…and we are happier…
(Sweet) 17 Sore Prevention Tips
Posted 5-9-19 Another day in paradise. 🙂 After a busy and productive day at work, I got some respite: a visit with mom. 😉 She is still happy, eating well, taking her meds and following her routine. The rest of the Sweet 17 were doing pretty well too although one of my favorite ex-teachers had…
The True Virtuoso
Posted 5-8-19 while tapping my toes… A handful of dust, a worthless piece of clayAnd you breathed the breath of HeavenThen there was a soul, the heart, the hands, the voiceThat could sing of your perfection Life is a symphonyThat only you can playYou know I can hear itThrough the madness everyday (Chorus) Virtuoso, virtuosoThis…
Crossing Life’s Road
Posted 5-7-19 Alzheimer’s and related dementias are a really cruddy set of conditions. (2019 Understatement Sentence of the Year nominee!) The path will vary depending on the type, the parts of the brain affected, the previous health of the patient and other factors, but the end result, as of 5-7-2019 is death…mercifully. The end. (Wow…
Grasses of the Fields
Posted 5-6-19 One of the temporary/seasonal jobs mom did in an earlier life was working in a greenhouse. She loves plants of all kinds, both inside and out. She was a good yard person. Perhaps not a great yard person since she has several passions, but the yard was always nice…nicer than some of her…
Circle Time
Posted 5-5-19 Not much to report on mom or the Sweet 17 from this weekend, as of yet. Unlike when you don’t hear from your younger kids for a couple minutes as they are playing, a few minutes of quiet isn’t a sign of nefariousness or eminent explosions of emotion with memory unit patients, at…
Right Under My Nose
Posted 5-3-19 Don’t remind me of hindsight’s visual acumen. I know… 🙁 BUT, looking back, I should have noticed mom’s dementia getting worse years ago. If I would have had my self-focused head out of my rear enough to take the time to think about it, I would have been more prepared! I would have…
The Eyes Speak Volumes When There are No Words
Posted 5-2-19 One of the interestingly woeful things about mom’s condition is the devolution of her speech. Not so much the words themselves (largely word salad/Brain Bandit Babble), but the gauntlet that she seems to go through to make it happen. It is truly heartbreaking. Three Significant characteristics: She searches everywhere (hard) with her eyes…
Riders on the Storm
Posted May Day, 2019 I won’t say that we were professional storm chasers growing up, but the Applegate household had an semi-unintuitive fascination with tornadoes. We were that family. We were prepared to jump in our house’s crawlspace, accessible through the garage floor, or equally so to zoom east just ahead of the twister to…