As it turns out

When elderly adults get sudden onset dimentia, the first thing the doctors look for is infection. Mom had some severe infections and has developed a seizure disorder. With medication, she is back to normal. She is living on her own again, and out of rehab.

She still doesn’t remember what year, month, day it is, but she is not any further off than she was before. At 90, that’s doing pretty well.

Here a brain, there a brain, everywhere and the brain is gone.

It is 2am and I am going to post this without corrections.  YES, I DO go back through and make corrections, believe it or not.  Which, even I have trouble believing sometimes when I re-read what I have written.

We’ve been at the hospital since Monday, or Tuesday, or last November (it seems) and, when I got home tonight I crashed; slept more soundly than I have in days and now I am up, but the brain may not be up to correcting things much.

The brain is such a marvelous, misunderstood, know-nothing-about organ. My neurologist says they know the least about the brain out of the whole body.  I have had diagnoseees/diagnosis/plural/whatever that have said, that I have either left-temporal lobe epilepsy, or familial hemiplegic migraines (which mysteriously, I do not have a single symptom of, or just those curvy brainwaves.

It has often been said, about my mother and by my mother, that no one will ever know if she gets dementia because it is her normal state.  They were wrong.  BIG TIME!

Mom is 90, so a few months ago, when she started getting  significantly more spacy than normal, it was no surprise.  Last week, she descended quickly. We thought she was having mini strokes. She has been diagnosed with partial seizures. She stares into space, mouth open and then comes back to us, she also mentions she has a headache, starts talking gibberish and then says, “I can’t even understand myself.”

Unfortunately, she also has Alzheimer’s. I imagine that she would also like me to mention that it is highly unfair to expect her to remember what year it is as she has always been bad with numbers.  That’s what she told us when she failed her fourth Alzheimer’s quiz.   Oh, and there are also only two numbers in the year because the first two numbers don’t count, so saying the year is 27, is correct, even though there is no 7 involved in saying 2012.

Poor gal, also has to have surgery, but that’s in a couple of weeks.

Tomorrow, the doctor and husband and I take mom across the ER parking lot to the rehab/nursing center. She wants to go home and keeps forgetting she is going there, even though she said it is fine to go there. She wants her computer, even though she cannot remember how to turn it on and her crocheting even though she has not crocheted in years. And, I will bring her travel Scrabble, and we will play it together.

I might actually have a chance to win now.

Whatever you do, do not hand me a frozen turkey.

Here’s the deal.  Things are tough for a lot of people and we happen to fall in that category.

Disabled husband hasn’t had a raise in social security for the twenty-two years he has been considered permanently disabled.  Raises in Medicare or our personal insurance have always eaten them up.

He smoked for one month, as a teen, but his lungs (and apparently several people in his family have problems) are shot.  He has COPD; with emphysema and chronic bronchitis.  His body also produces way too many histamines, so he has reactions to many things everything.

We had put off going to the food bank as long as we could, but with Thanksgiving this month, it was time.

What I didn’t expect was my reaction to going to the food bank.

I read the article in the paper wrong, first.  So, we went during the two hours they were closed.  The doors were open so I thought I could get the paperwork to fill out at home and come back.

So, instead of thirty-five people going through a line of “take one from shelf A, two from shelf B, etc. the woman had me sign a paper that our
income fit the Federal criteria, which it definitely does, and then she handed us a bag for food.  Then, a box and some more bags as we threaded through the food shelf maze.

I was fine until she handed me a frozen turkey, I just broke out in tears.  A grown woman, crying over a frozen turkey.

I don’t know why?  I guess relief that we would be able to have a normal Thanksgiving for our boys, but, then I also cry at all of CNN’s reports of people who make a difference.

Things I have learned about food banks:

1.    The people who work at them really care.  Sometimes, it is hard to believe that anyone  cares, but they do.

2.    They are making the best of the world that they can.  They run around and gather canned goods and  whatever else local businesses will spare.   They are so grateful for the donation of a freezer, they want our 19 year old to be sure and have a Christmas gift.   They care that we have warm coats and chairs to sit on.

3.    But, if I ever get wealthy, I’m making some specific donations that are along the line of if you teach a man to fish, only this is  if you give him food to cook, he can serve more meals at home.

4.    Things you don’t see at the food bank are staples of cooking:

a.    Flour
b.    Sugar
c.    Butter/margarine
d.   Spices
e.    Cheese: although we did get an industrial sized jalapeno cheese that has our nineteen year old eating nothing but tortilla chips and cheese this week. And, I do know that cheese is not generally considered a staple.
f.    Ground Turkey would be a good alternative for meat.
g.    Eggs
h.   Oats

But, I cannot tell you how thankful I am for these wonderful people who go out of their way for others.

P.S. I am still working on my vegan diet. I have some wheat flour left and picked up some black beans for black bean burgers, and I’m searching for new recipes for all the other beans I have collected.

The Scam of Coinstar and my stupidity!

I usually have pretty good instincts. It’s when I ignore that little voice that I get into trouble.

Andy Rooney said something like,

I wish there was something you could take to stop you from doing stupid things.

Well, I wish I could have taken it on Friday because I did that “stupid thing.” As with a lot of you out there, our money is really tight. We’ve even taken to getting meals and some groceries from a local food bank.

I got out my tin of pennies and decided to turn them in. We have a car to pay Indiana’s ridiculous license plate fees on this month. The bank with the coin counter is about twenty miles up a road we rarely go up. There is the price of gas to consider there. I was not going to buy coin sleeves. I don’t think the bank gives them away but I did not ask. I decided to use the Coinstar machine at Walmart.

When you pour your pennies in, and it goes up to $22.16, the machine says, “My, you have a lot of coins.” It did not add, “And, I’ve got a way to scam you so I get all of them, instead of the $2. 16 fee. We rarely eat out anymore. When we do it is the $4.00 meal at Steak N Shake or the $1.00 menu at McDonald’s. If Jacob is playing at Muddy Boots, sometimes we sit with water and once in a while we split a meal.

So, when the evil change machine offered me double my money by giving me restaurant coupons.  I did debate it. Outside of Walmarts was a Steak N Shake, White Castle, something else and a steak house. Surely with over 600,000 restaurants, there was something I could afford.

With a great deal of trepidation, that I ignored like an idiot, I pushed the Restaurant Certificate button.

DO NOT PUSH THE RESTAURANT CERTIFICATE BUTTON.

Just go ahead and pay the $2.16 fee. When you push the Restaurant certificate button, you go home with a slip that says NOT VALID FOR CASH, and that’s all you go home with.

In my search on their http://coinstar.Restaurant.com site, you can search alphabetically or by mileage. Within 15 miles of my home, was 1 restaurant. Opps! Have to buy a $45 dinner to use the certificate. Now, I think that would mean only paying $20, with a $25 certificate. It was for an East Indian restaurant. Could be doable.

Let’s try 30 miles, since they gave me Indianapolis restaurants, closer to 45 miles away. I guess that’s it. Under A’s one restaurant was listed 4 times and there was a second restaurant. So, two A’s. It went like that through the alphabet, other than letters like Q, X, Y, Z which had none. Many meals are pay $75 before using your coupon. Definitely NOT doable.

I had not heard of one of these but I did see a spot that said,

“What do you do if you have your certificate and the restaurant is closed?”

Enough said.

You are never far from home, no matter where you roam.

It is always nice to have a new subscriber, but it is especially cool to find one from a far away land. I believe it helps to remind us just how similar we are. There are jobs we hate to do and then find out how worthwhile they were. There are times we do not realize how much we miss our relatives until we see them again.

If i cannot travel, at least I can read about other places and people. Sanchari is in Delhi, and blogging at, http://sancharib.wordpress.com/. If you scroll down her posts, you will see some great photos of the Jaisalmer Fort.

But, what really brought me home was her November post on cutting down the Mango tree which was just one year older than she is.

When I was growing up, my side yard had a large weeping willow tree. I could crawl under the branches and have an instant play house/fort/whatever I wanted. Many a day was spent eating lunch and playing under that tree. So, when mom and dad moved to a subdivision, they took a start with them and grew a new weeping willow in the backyard.

When I divorced, I moved back home again with my daughters. Super teacher daughter was in kindergarten and was delighted to live with a weeping willow in her very own backyard. It was she now who spent hours eating cookies or sandwiches and playing dolls under her grandparents tree. That is, until one day years later when lightning split the tree and it was taken down.

We had moved out a couple of years before this, but daughter always ran to visit her tree. We did not think to warn her as we got settled in for our visit, until she came back in the house in tears. Her beloved tree was gone.

She never ate mangoes from it but that tree was a wonderful memory for my daughter, as well as Sanchari’s Mango tree was for her.

Who was that masked man – boy?

We do not get one single trick or treater. I guess no one wants to risk our 400 foot long driveway, when the trees even hide the fact that the house is lit up or not. I really miss Halloween decorating though.

And, I would so do this, if anyone could actually see my house.

Photo courtesy of Sean Fallon, I think.  I actually made a copy because I want to do it some day in the future.

After the boys moved in, I always wanted to have a Halloween party for them and their friends.  They are now 19 and 22, and almost 25.  The 22 year old was just home from Afghanistan and sat in a chair, fully costumed, in a dark room, for a half hour as he waited for his two brothers to get home.

I’m a nut for halloween, and never had a bad experience trick or treating, like http://toddpack.com/2011/10/27/the-worst-halloween-ever-or-the-night-a-girl-and-her-mom-stole-my-candy/#comment-6810.

When I was growing up, we lived in a rural area.  We always had pumpkins on our porch and trick or treaters.  Those kids had some walking to do, I’ll tell you.  Mom and Dad were square dancers and dressed up in awesome costumes every year, but not for the trick or treaters.  When I was young, dad drove me into the nearest town.  I loved it.

I was watched, like a hawk anytime I was outside and it was such a neat feeling to be out after dark and around tons of kids and running and laughing with some new friend.  I even remember the year I fell in love with Zorrow, or was that Zorro?  I don’t know how to spell it and I don’t know who he was but his ?ten/twelve year old self was just as appealing to me as Antonio Banderas is now.

Who knows, maybe it was Antonio????

Shoes are the bain of my existence, but Sears had it all.

When I was growing up, there were no malls on every corner, or any corner.  Mom did not have a driver’s license and never did get one and shopping consisted of a payday (every other Friday) foray into the nearest little town, Griffith, Indiana.  Where I would return my arm-load of books to the library and pick out the next two weeks reading, while mom and dad started their grocery shopping.

Occasionally we would pick something up in the Ben Franklin dime store.  Prices were higher for clothing there, but you could get a tube of lipstick or a hanky to give a relative for Christmas.  Our main shopping was from the Sears, Roebuck Catalog.

photo via http://www.wishbookweb.com/1958_SearsChristmasBook/index.htm

This was the Christmas catalog of 1958, and I remember that santa ornament hanging on our tree.  We poured over those Christmas catalogs for hours.  When the Sears driver delivered our order, my brother and I would have to leave the room while she opened those pages and checked the goods.  I don’t think they could do that now, in this day of GPS tracking and speedy delivery, but back in the 50s, service ruled.

I belive there was a fall catalog also that signalled the arrival of the school year.  Mom would haul out the catalog and mark the pages I could use to chose my school clothes.  There was a price point obviously.  Mom always ordered two pair of shoes for me, in different sizes, just to make sure.

The Sears truck driver was almost a friend to invite to dinner.  He came in with the order and waited while things were tried on.  So, when it was time to order school clothing,  I looked for my favorite pair of shoes.  Sears carried them for years.  They were flats with elastic cords that went from the front to the back and I thought they made my feet look awesomely small.  Mom would order two pair, in different sizes, and the Sears truck driver would wait, while I tried on my shoes, so he could take back the pair that did not fit.

Now, I drive fifty miles, to Shoe Circus in Indy/Greenwood, to get shoes that feel half way comfortable and pay a $100 for the privilege.  Do high heels make your feet look amazing?  Yes!  Do they feel like the inquisition has arrived?  Yes!

I HATE SHOES!