Hi Speed WOOT, Mon!

Wow, it's been a while since the last post. We're blocked at work from several websites and most blogs are among the verboten. We have been told that once the server and entire new system is in place in all areas - the IT guy will go around and restore select sites. We can't even access Facebook and that is in use by some of us in an official capacity. It has been a major bummer, believe me. I feel cut off from humanity and the news and just about every amusing website on the 'net. Guess that is because, like Popeye, 'I yam whats I yam!'

The lack of contact with outside weblogs and even my personal email has brought me to the brink of despair at work. At home, my sloooow dial-up is just maddening and I made a decision to do something about it. I called our satellite company and signed up for their first level of high speed satellite service. The technician is supposed to be here on Friday between 8 and noon to install the dish, modem and cables that will allow me to jump into the fast lane with the rest of the world. Of course, the service guy may be running on a different kind of time than I am. I have taken the entire day off. I will call later in the afternoon to confirm that I do indeed have an appointment. The company has been known to schedule a call and then have it evaporate right off their screen - leaving no trace. If by some miracle we do get set up in the morning hours - I could go back to work... nah, I can't see myself doing that. I can see me surfing as fast as my fingers will take me to those sites that have always been slow to load. Places where I have sat and waited for minutes for a NASA Hubble picture to scroll down the screen. I may even set up a wireless home network and boot up the netbook in the living room. Look, Ma! No cords!

Oh, wow -I need to go work on some strong passwords!

Retold by permission.

Elder Daughter and her 2 sons had to go down and have Matthew fitted for a tux. He was ring-bearer in a wedding; his mother was Matron of Honor. I went along for the ride after I got off work on Friday. Matt had gone with his school to a zoo in another city and had purchased a cute little stuffed animal; a monkey with a red body, arms and legs - a grey tail and a flesh toned wise little monkey face. The thing was posed so that it would balance on Matt's shoulder as easily as it would sit on a table. He took the monkey along in the car. We went to the shop where the tux was fitted and once finished there, we went to McAllister's for dinner. Matt took his monkey inside and it sat on the table during our meal. Afterward we all piled back in the car to make the return trip home. I was feeling mellow from dinner.

The boys sat on the bench seats while their mother and I chatted quietly. We were on the interstate heading north and things outside were getting that lovely sunset glow when it happened. Matt began to whack on the little stuffed monkey, pretending it had done something to displease him. He continued to thwack the thing repeatedly - until his mother, tiring of hearing the noise told him sharply, " Stop spanking your monkey, Matthew!"

That's all it took. I snorted, then giggled, then guffawed and couldn't stop laughing. Realizing what she'd said, my daughter joined me and then the boys started laughing along as people do while Matt kept asking, "Why is everybody laughing" and Nathan finally managed to wheeze out, "I....don't....know!"

We probably covered five miles, laughing crazily, before I was able to control the helpless gales and wipe the tears from my eyes. I did think to ask Elder Daughter if she minded if I blogged the incident.

Spring is lovely in North Central Florida this year. The Dogwoods are full of blossoms and the azaleas are outstanding; witness the exhibition just outside my kitchen window.

The downside to all this beauty is the pollen. It's everywhere. it covers the back patio. It covers the car. It covers the ribbons under the car. It makes one sneeze and the sinus feel full.

I guess we have to put up with such things to enjoy this spectacular Spring.

Maybe there will be a bumper crop of pecans, too. One can hope for such a response in repayment for the allergic snuffling and goose-like nose blowing of the local inhabitants. 'Cause one day all these flowers will wither and drop and the memories of this gorgeous spring weather will reside in the glow of the pecans nestling in bags in the freezer.

Wait for it - wait for it. Was that a plink on the tin roof?

How much information is on this highway, anyway!

At work today, I heard some of my co-workers talking about a website that gave a startling amount of information - for free. If you want more detailed information, you have to choose a plan and pay your money. Whichever way you chose, you go to www.spokeo.com and put in a name, a phone number or an email address. The information that is free includes the person's address and a down toward the bottom of the page, picture of their home. I guess it's from Google Earth but it was amazing to me to hear the folks I work with exclaiming, "That's MY HOUSE!" as they put in their names and hit Enter.

So, I tried it. Sure enough, there was my address. Scanning down the page there was a red flag in the middle of a bunch of trees. I thought, humph - that's not my house! Then I scanned out. And a little further away from the treed property there was an overhead of our house! Ulp. Someone knows a whole bunch about us, guys. Try it. Some of the homes I was able to see were taken from street level. You can apparently run - but you can't hide!

Pets Mart

We have a pet shop here in town where we buy our parrot mix and turtle food, often on a Saturday while we're doing our grocery shopping and other errands in town. The shop also stocks mice and rats for feeding snakes and I have been known to bring one home for Elder Daughter's little pet. When you enter the shop, there is a rather large and obvious Dinosaur looming to the side. It may not be noticible unless you enlarge the picture - but the middle front tooth on the lower jaw is missing. Instead of the white fang, there is a hole in the jaw. I hadn't noticed it really.

Until Elder Daughter mentioned the tooth and told me she was there when it happened.

Turns out, the dino-dentist is a member of our family and holds the dual position of being her youngest son. He was just touching the tooth, happened to pull on it and it went flying right out of the dino-mouth and landed at some remote location. The whereabouts is not known. The area was briefly scanned. The tooth wasn't spotted. She and the boys hustled out of the store. They periodically return to shop and each time, the gap in the jaw tempts youngest son to touch the space and quietly remind his mother that he was the one.....

Further Deponent Sayeth Not.

You have to laugh, or else.....

Things sometimes get interesting around our house. Especially when it comes to T.'s memory problems. I'd like to share some things that have brought me to the edge of patience - until I take a look from a different angle. Then I may laugh about it.

There's something called Perseverating -which is when you keep dwelling on one thing. You talk about it over and over. It could be as innocent at the next NASCAR race scheduled or as complicated as the directions from our house to Wal-Mart. You just keep repeating such things until they are settled in your mind. Or until you pick up on the verbal edge in your listener's responses. Regardless of the event - we eventually wind up on the proper television channel or else in the parking lot at Wally World.

Hoarding.
Apparently we are short of canned cold drinks in the whole world and can't allow them to be out in plain view in the kitchen floor. We tend to shove them in a line against the hutch and cover them over with a layer of plastic bags.
Out of sight, out of mind? Maybe.
Unwilling to share? Maybe.

Whatever the reason, we have wound up with 6 cases of Sam's Club soda hiding in plain sight and 3 packs of frozen pancakes (72 total) shoved into the freezer. I need to cross stuff off T.'s list when I know we absolutely don't require more.

Losing things.

We have missed the following items and searched for them for extended periods of time.

Mobile Phone #1.

Mobile Phone #2 that replaced #1.

AAA Batteries

The hood release location on the Buick

The door to the side yard.

Laundry detergent.

All items were subsequently found; some requiring repairs. (the hood release quit working after being jerked upwards several times. The auto repair fixed it for us)

The latest item that went missing last weekend was a white dustpan. T. couldn't recall where he put it last and searched the kitchen cabinets, the bedroom, the utility room and under the parrot cage. He did mention that he might have taken it across to the barn and left it there. I showed him a red dustpan that clips onto a red-handled broom and stays in the kitchen. The red pan wasn't what he wanted. It was the white one, the one he always uses.

Yesterday, Elder Daughter had come over to use my computer and I got a text message from her. T. had found the white pan. He brought it over from the barn and hung it up in the family room. On a nail. Which he had banged into the mantle of the fireplace. When I came home that evening, the first sight to greet me was a white dustpan hanging beside the entry door - swinging from the mantle. T. took it down - not without my strong urging.

We will dedicate a prong from the over-the-back-door coat rack to hanging the white dustpan. You can hardly see the nail hole in the mantle.

Enexpected

You plan your life and live it and then one day you reach the age where you can see retirement over the hill. You think how nice it would be to rent an RV and travel a bit. Or take a cruise to nowhere. And then something happens to change your plans.

T. has been complaining of his memory getting bad and had mentioned it to his doctor at the VA. Doctor sloughed it off as normal ageing. Every body's memory gets worse and they get older, he said. Still, after complaining and getting nowhere - I went along on one of T.'s doctor visits. I expressed how much the memory problem worried us both and the doctor gave a sort of standard test right in the office. He told T. Draw a clock. Put the numbers where they belong. Draw the hands at 10 to 5. T. couldn't follow the directions. The doctor referred us to a psychologist at the local VA. She was very pleasant and after her battery of tests, she talked to both of us in her office. She had found some areas that concerned her. T. was losing some of the skills in areas of the brain that enable a person to put things together in a limited amount of time. Or figure out how to combine simple irregular shapes to resemble a square or a triangle. She referred us to the VA in Gainesville but cautioned us that it could take some while to get an appointment because there had been personnel turnover and they were backed up.

We went home to wait it out. Time passed and Christmas and New Years came and went. Still no Gainesville notice of appointment. T. had to go to the eye clinic - which he did by himself. He lost the car after the visit ended and had to have the guard drive him around until he spotted the Saturn in the lot. He drove home with his eyes blurred. A couple of days after that he complained that his eye was burning. I looked and the left lid was swollen up. He said he hadn't rubbed it - all the while he stood there rubbing the lid. It hurt and swelled nearly closed. My son in law drove T. to the VA to see his primary doctor for his regularly scheduled visit and I think that's when the doctor realized that something was indeed wrong with his memory. As it was described to me, T. stood in the waiting room, explaining that he was there to see his Dr - Dr Ngo, and all the while he was speaking to the gentleman but didn't recognize him. Because my son-in-law pastors at a local church and the doctor's nurse-receptionist attends that church, she was able to tell the doctor that he could rely on Richard's veracity and that what the family was experiencing wasn't just in their imagination. There really was a problem. Dr. Ngo gave T. some antibiotic salve for his eye and said he wanted to see him back if the swelling continued. The salve worked.

A week later, I received a phone call from the social worker at the Gainesville VA. She said they had been contacted by our VA and had scheduled an appointment. She explained how the visit would go and told me that the neuro-psychologist would speak with T. and me and then after that, she and I would go to another office and T. would go through testing with the doctor. They had scheduled out a block of 3 hours for the whole visit. The appointment was set for 2 days before T.'s birthday.

Came the day of the VA visit, I drove to Gainesville. T. said he didn't know the way; didn't think he could find the VA - it had been so long since he had driven there. We met one of our daughters at the hospital and while T. was testing, she and I sat in the social worker's office and spoke of how things might change and of what steps we needed to start taking to prepare. She gave us a lot of good resources for caregivers and set up a medical power of attorney for T. to sign once she found out that he hadn't signed anything detailing how he might want to be treated in the event of a major illness. She said she believed he could sign it and understand it but if we waited too long, he might not be able to make his wishes known and without a power of attorney, nobody else could act in his stead.

When T. and the doctor finally came down from testing, they sat in the social worker's office and the doctor got right to the diagnosis. She didn't pull any punches telling us that she found T. to have mild to moderate Dementia/Alzheimer's. She was straight-forward and matter-of-fact in her diagnosis and for that, I was strangely grateful. She and the social worker gave us business cards and she recommended another medication that may be of help in holding the memory loss at a stable point - she said to see about getting Dr. Ngo to prescribe it. He hasn't yet. I will be calling him back to see if he has done anything about setting things up so that T. can start on this medication along with the one he is currently taking. The social worker explained things to T. and he initialed then signed off on the power of attorney.

We had lunch after the doctor visit. Sarah paid for Olive Garden and we had a lovely meal there. After we were done in Gainesville, I drove back home marvelling at how pretty the countryside was. I have always liked to drive through scenic landscapes.

I went to work the next day and thought I'd be fine but cried every time I talked with anyone about the diagnosis. I was just an overflowing bucket of tears - talking to Sarah. Talking to Susan. Talking to my boss. Talking to some of the secretaries. I don't know how I made it through that day. Susan called my brother and sister for me. I told her I just couldn't do it right then, that I knew I'd break down. She offered to make the calls and has been a real rock of support.

Sarah and Rich and their two boys helped us celebrate T.'s 74th birthday on the Friday. I took everyone to Applebees and in the course of the meal I may have compared the lunch in Gainesville and T. said he didn't recall going to lunch at Olive Garden. I was a little upset but Sarah took it in stride - she said it had been a long day for him and he was tired in the afternoon, so that may be part of the reason he didn't recall the event.

My brother and sister are major support givers - I know I can call on them for a sympathetic ear and a virtual hug in time of stress.

For right now, things are going pretty well. I'm still working and T. isn't driving by himself. We just celebrated our 36th anniversary and there's a quarter sheetcake on the dining table waiting for grandchildren to take another slice.

We still laugh together at the same things. I showed T. the bruised spots on my left arm where my purse slid down - I asked him did he get marks like that from banging into stuff. He said he did and proceeded to point to brown spot after brown spot - in a kind of "I dare you to disagree" manner.

I told him, "Those aren't bruises - they're age spots." He said, "They're what?" I said, "They're age spots. You know, they're those marks that - when you connect them -they say you're just so dad-blamed old!"

He ducked his head, but I saw the grin before he hid his face.