Gracefully Aging - Homeschool Blogger

Vacation!

Tue, 14 Jul 2009 17:30:00 -0500

Its mid afternoon and I'm having a hard time concentrating on work because tomorrow we're leaving on a cross-country vacation. It's been fourteen years since we've driven across country. My husband is so excited about the prospect of a long car trip that he can hardly contain his excitement! I tend to look at three days in the car as a less than perfect situation since I know that it'll result in a back ache that will probably stick around for the whole time we're gone but oh well!!!!!

We're driving to Denver, picking up three of our ten grandchildren and driving to a campground in the Sangre D Cristo mountains in southern Colorado. This is a camp that we attended in the past with our own children and we have good memories of the experiences. It'll probably be a little like going back to the house I grew up in with the memory of it being large and spacious only to find that it was a little dinky house that doesn't match my memories of it at all! I guess I'm proving that I'm a "glass half-empty" type of person! That being said, I am excited about leaving work for two weeks and experiencing a totally different environment. I'm also looking forward to spending a week with grandchildren that I don't get to see nearly often enough.

I'm also looking forward to seeing good friends and catching up on their experiences in life over the last fourteen years or more. Our children are now all grown and have children of their own and all of us have new stories to tell.

I'll let you know how the trip goes.

44 years and still learning!

Wed, 10 Jun 2009 16:00:00 -0500

June 12th will be my 44th wedding anniversary. On our 25th anniversary I told a clerk in the grocery store that I had been married 25 years and she exclaimed, "25 years with the same man!" I wonder what her response would be to 44 years with the same man?

I just recently bought the book, Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus. One would think that after 44 years of marriage that there wouldn't be very much I wouldn't know about relating to my husband. However... I find that there are many ways in which men and women are different about which I need to be reminded! Every chapter I have read so far causes me a "V8 moment!"

I love being married to my husband. Life with him is warm, secure, fun, sometimes irritating and never boring. I look forward to as many more years of marriage as we are given by God with anticipation.

A mother's pride

Wed, 27 May 2009 18:15:00 -0500

I had the special privlege of observing my daughter Jeni, work for and obtain a Masters of Fine Arts degree in non-fiction writing over the past two years. She was very disciplined in doing the work and the end result is wonderful. Friday evening the sixteen people receiving the degree each read a five minute portion of his or her work. The evening culminated in awards given for fiction, poetry and non-fiction theses. Jenifer won first prize for her non-fiction thesis which was a series of essays on motherhood and rock climbing. I am so proud of her! Her advisor spoke with her after the ceremony and encouraged her to send her work for publication right away. I suggested that I would be willing to nag her if it would help but she emphatically declared that nagging would not help her. We'll see!

Return

Tue, 17 Mar 2009 14:59:00 -0500

It has been seven months since I wrote anything on my blog. I feel like I need a completely new beginning because I have been gone for so long!

I'm not the usual blogger on this site. Most are parents in the midst of child raising and home schooling. I'm a grandma with ten beautiful grandchildren, most of whom I only see once or twice a year. My oldest grandson will be 13 this year! I'll have a teenage grandchild. I'm also working full-time and looking forward to the time when I can reduce my work load to part-time at least. I'm also now in the "young-old" group of people. I just turned 65!!!!!!! I can't believe that I'm actually this old. I remember when my mother became 65. She seemed old to me then as I must seem to my children and grandchildren. For the first time in my life I find myself wondering how much longer I will be alive. I find myself gravitating to the obituary page of the paper to see how many who have just died were younger than I am now.

As I look back on my life so far and look forward to my future I have so many things for which to thank God. I have been given many things that bring comfort to my life. I have a home that is secure and comfortable and a place to which I love to return at the end of the day. I have a husband whom I love, and who loves me in return. I have daughters who have grown into beautiful young women and who are married to men who love them and provide them with secure marriages and who are wonderful role models of what fathers should be to all their children. I have a job that gives me ongoing challenges and provides me with opportunities to love other people with the love that God has shown to me. I have friends in the people with whom I work and who make going to work daily interesting and enjoyable. Most of all I am secure in the knowledge that in Jesus Christ I have a savior who has provided completely for my salvation and that whatever my future holds I can rest in the knowledge that I don't need to fear anything that my future may hold.

So-o-o being in the "young-old" group of people is not such a bad thing after all.

Hidden Danger

Sat, 21 Jun 2008 23:30:00 -0500

I attended a PANPHA conference this week with two other members of our administrative staff. Most of my time was spent sitting in seminars but the evenings were free so we enjoyed a wonderful meal out at a gracious hotel in town on Wednesday evening. I ordered salmon. It was delicious and I thoroughly enjoyed eating it. There were five of us and we spent 21/2-3 hours eating and visiting together. When we got up to leave I suddenly began feeling severe abdominal cramps and thought, "I'd better find a restroom quickly!" By the time I reached the restroom and looked in the mirror my face was beat red, my eyes were bloodshot, my neck and chest were blotchy, my head was pounding and my fingers had become numb. I suffered an overwhelming bout of diarrhea and my heart was pounding so hard that I took my pulse and found it to be 120. I went out to find the rest of the group and told them that I thought I was having an allergic reaction to something that I ate. I am allergic to shellfish and thought that maybe my salmon had come into contact with shrimp which was also on the menue. One of them quickly found someone from the hotel who was able to bring me some Benedryl which I took. My two co-workers then drove me over to the hospital E.R. nearby.

When I was taken into the E.R. every room was filled so I was placed on a guerney out in the hallway. One of my friends stayed with me and answered questions for me between my trips to the restroom. One of the resident physicians told me that the supervising E.R. physicians did not think that it was an allergic reaction but something else. She brought me a computer printout entitled, Scomboid Fish Poisoning. It occurs when fresh fish in the Scombroidae family are not iced down quickly enough at sea and bacteria builds up in the flesh which produces high levels of histamine. The toxins are not broken down by cooking, freezing, or subsequent preparation techniques and it may still smell and appear fresh. Clinical symptoms appear in the person who has eaten the fish within 1-4 hours of ingestion.

I was given H1 and H2 histamine blocker medication and observed for awhile and told to take the medication for the next three days. The E.R. supervising physician told me that mine was only the 2nd case she had ever seen and she told the resident physicians not to be suprised if they were to see other cases that same night. I was up to the bathroom every hour for the rest of the night but was feeling better by morning.

What an experience! I don't think I'll be eating salmon again anytime soon.

Musings

Mon, 26 May 2008 09:03:00 -0500

Looking at the date of my last posting I see that I have been very lax in my blogging efforts. I could tell you many stories but if I did I could also be wearing an orange jump suit and be sitting in a 9x12 cell so I will restrain myself. HIPAA, the health care privacy law prevents me from giving out any information about the dear people I care for on a daily basis. Many people never get that. I am asked on a regular basis how particular residents are doing and when I say, "I can't say," many respond, "but they're like family." The key word there is 'like', legally they are not family and so, "I can't say."

Getting older is for the birds. For the second time in two years I have had to have surgery to repair damage that was done during childbirth. It means that I have to take forced time off if I'm going to obey my surgeon's directions but there is nothing tangible to show for all of the time off. My windows are still dirty; the curtains need to be washed; flowers need planting; the bathroom needs a paint job and I'm just sitting and reading. I do enjoy reading but with my personality it is difficult to see work staring me in the face and not be able to do it.

Mother's Day has just come and gone. One of my daughters was upset because neither her husband or young children even said Happy Mother's Day to her. I understand that feeling. When I used to get upset because my children were too young to know that it was necessary to give me a special hug on Mother's Day and my husband didn't even come through with a card, "my husband would say to me, "but you're not my mother." Instructions to husbands-to-be about things that will make your marriage smoother should be part of pre-marital counseling and include instructions on how to train your children-to-be to show special love for their mother on this "terrible commercialized day of the year." Going through the pregnancy and childbirth experience with his wife should make any husband who does that willing to express gratitude to her for the rest of their lives for being willing to bear their children and everything that is a part of that process. If you're interested please let me know and I'll put together a step-by-step training guide for husbands and fathers on the appropriate way to train children and themselves to show gratitude one day a year.

P.S. My dear husband does give me a card every year because he learned the hard way how upset I was when he said to me, "But you're not my mother." I think that this process is part of a husband's "...learning to live with his wife according to knowledge..." I Peter 3:7a.

Interesting visitor; Interesting request

Thu, 10 Apr 2008 14:00:00 -0500

I received an interesting visitor yesterday and an interesting request. Sometimes I rack my brain for something that I can write about that doesn't go against the privacy regulations that I'm required to follow. If I could tell stories about the incidents that happen here at the Home on a daily basis I would have more to write than I have time to write. I'm not breaking any rules to relay the following scenerios so here goes.

On April 1, (April Fool's Day) I received a call from a gentleman that had been calling me for a number of days. Since I receive so many calls from sales people I often don't return calls from people I don't know. On April 1, the receptionist came to my door and said, "this man has called you multiple times and really needs to talk to you, will you talk to him"? I took the call and the man said that he had a friend who lives in London who is writing a novel and the setting is a nursing home in the 1950's and she needed to speak to someone about what a nursing home in the 50's in Pittsburgh would have been like. I said, "Is this an April Fool's joke"? He assured me that it wasn't. I asked him how she got the name of our nursing home and he said that she had gone on line and Googled nursing homes in Pittsburgh, and found that ours was the oldest.

Yesterday the woman arrived from London, and came into visit with me. I answered her questions, showed her pictures of what the Home used to look like, gave her a short written history of the Home and took her on a tour of the part of the Home that was built in the 1950's that is still standing. She was very interesting. She is writing a detective novel and wanted some information about how a "Rest Home" would have operated in that time period. It was a great visit and she promised to send us a copy of her book when it's published.

I also had a desparate call from a young woman saying that she had set up four classes to be held at her church over the next month to be taught by someone from the Pittsburgh chapter of the Alzheimer's Assoc. They had had their first class last week and then had received a call on Tues. evening saying that the educator was no longer available. The request was could I teach the class that was to be held tonight. There was no way that I could be ready for tonight, but I could be prepared by April 24th so I agreed to teach the class if she could arrange to have the other two classes taught first. So-o-o I have the opportunity to teach a class about communication barriers, the changes that take place during each of the three stages of Alzheimer's Disease and the definition of a challenging behavior and effective interventions. This subject is near and dear to my heart so I'm glad to have this opportunity.

Celtic Woman Concert

Fri, 21 Mar 2008 10:03:00 -0500

Last Monday, March 17, St Patrick's Day, B .and I attended a Celtic Woman's concert. B. bought the tickets last October for my birthday after seeing their concert on public television. At the time he was totally entranced with the fiddler who danced and leaped all over the stage with her long blond hair flying all while playing her violin. He was even more delighted to see her in person at the concert. I enjoyed her music very much. I wasn't as enthralled with her dancing around and hair flipping as he was!

That being said, I enjoyed the music very much. The four singers sang with a blend of voices that you usually hear in voices from the same family. All of them were accomplished soloists and the backup voices of four men and four woman made many of the accapella numbers extremely beautiful to hear. I also was amazed at how much depth the percussionists added to the numbers. The variety of instruments and the skill of the two men playing them was amazing.

The audience was also interesting to observe. The average age of the attendees was probably 50. There was more grey hair to be seen then I had ever seen in one place before! I also only saw one black person in the entire audience of hundred's of people.

I am glad that I had this opportunity to see the group in person. Now I will be perfectly content to buy a DVD of their concert and watch it in the comfort of my family room!

Is Marriage Really the End of Happiness and Adventure?

Fri, 22 Feb 2008 18:15:00 -0600

Along with my four daughters, I have been drawn into the pursuit of reading Jane Austin's novels (again) and watching the myriad of film protrayals of them that have come out over the past 2-3 years. I have enjoyed reading the books; all of the films have not fared so well in my estimation. At least twice I have quit watching before the movie was over!

I have been interested in some of the recent comments on the blogs I read,that in these novels and in much of today's thinking today marriage appears to be the end of adventure instead of the beginning of the most complex adventure that two people could ever experience. My husband and I have been married for more than 42 years. We have couples who live here in the long term care facility who have been married for 66 and 70 years. From my vantage point, and as an observer of these people who have been married so much longer than I have, I would like to say that some of the bad press that marriage gets needs to be expelled by those of us who have stayed committed to the promise, "till death do us part". Not in a "poor me I'm stuck for the rest of my life" but in a "see what God has done"!

I fell in love with my husband when I was 17 years old. Just seeing him coming toward me across a campus took my breath away. Seeing him after being apart for a whole day still fills me with warmth and gladness. Being married has not always been easy for each of us but I can't imagine being without him. He makes me laugh almost every day and he surrounds me with security and love. He has truely been my spiritual leader. I have learned more about God from him than from any other single person in my life. He gives me hope because I have seen him struggle with areas of sin in his life and with God's help overcome them. He has been a wonderful father to our four daughters and I think that each of them went into marriage expecting their marriages to be good because of his influence in their lives. He is a good man.

For me, marriage has been a wonderful, exciting, sometimes trying and disallusioning experience but one that has also been God's way of blessing me and teaching me to be the person He planned before the foundation of the world for me to be. Our wedding was not the end of the adventure but just the infantisimal beginning of a life long journey into what it truely means to become one with another person.

Attacked!

Mon, 21 Jan 2008 16:00:00 -0600

The week before Christmas my husband and I were driving from Pittsburgh to B.F. for a Christmas party when we were rear-ended. The damage proved to be significant, $3200.00 worth, so my car is currently in the body shop being repaired and I am driving a rental car for the two week period that it will take to complete the job.

This morning I was driving to work with my sister-in-law in the car when we came on a wild-looking man walking down the middle of the road between the right lane and the left lane where I was driving. He approached the car in the right lane that was 3/4 of a car length ahead of me with a threatening gesture so I slowed way down because I wasn't sure what he was going to do. At that moment he turned toward me, caught my eye and walked over to my car, slammed his fist into the side-view mirror shattering the glass and tearing the mirror apart and kept walking down the middle of the street. I was stunned for a few seconds. I called 9-1-1 and reported the incident and thankfully the police responded quickly. I'm still a bit unnerved. Now I have to take the car back to the rental agency and probably pay the deductible on my insurance for the repair of this mirror. The what ifs are going through my head... What if he had, had a gun; what if his hand had come through the window etc., etc, etc. I am grateful to God that neither my sister-in-law nor I was hurt.