Once upon a time – not too long ago – we three were an inviolable, hilarious tribe.
A beautiful song
Ming’s musical tastes are varied. Here is his latest favourite. Bring it on, Xavier Rudd!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TmxSxKxBbQE&feature=related
[Note: I am not receiving any notifications from any of the blogs I follow, so will try to catch up as soon as this glitch is fixed]
Parkinson’s disease and unpredictability
One of the worst things about Parkinson’s disease, especially in its final stages, is that no matter how diligent you, and other carers, and the sufferer, are with the timing of the medications (which is vital), what works well one day might not work the next day, or hour, or minute.
When I arranged for Anthony to be taxied to and from a restaurant the other day, in a wheelchair taxi, it was a great success except about an hour too long. He became exhausted.
Today I arranged for Anthony to be taxied to and from the farm but made sure it was less hours than the previous time. So he arrived at 11.30am and he and Ming sat out the front in the sunshine and it was great hearing them chat. Then I served a lunch of scrambled eggs (Anthony’s favourite except for fish mornay!) Then he got too hot in the sun so I got him back into the wheelchair and pushed it into the shade.
By this time (about an hour into the visit) Anthony had become very slumped and silent and our conversation was limited to my chatter with little response; he just wasn’t ‘with it’ and looked awful, you know, really sick. So, I rang the taxi people and asked for the wheelchair taxi to come earlier, then I rang the nursing lodge to tell them and that was fine.
Well, as soon as I had done that, he came good (‘come good’ is an Australianism for rallying I think). He got off the wheelchair and used his walking stick to shuffle around the garden a bit, went to the loo without needing much help and walked outside the front again, sat down and was suddenly in the mood for conversation. By this time it was around 2pm and I was wishing I hadn’t asked the taxi to come early because Ants would have lasted until the original time of 3pm
So when the taxi arrived, Anthony said, “Not already?” and looked so crestfallen that I could hardly bear it and kept saying to him, as I was wheelchairing him to the taxi, “I’m sorry – I’m sorry, you were all slumped – how was I supposed to know you would suddenly come good?”
After Ming I and I waved him off, I cried for my bad timing and Ming said, “When will you learn, Mum? It’s not your fault.”
By now, Ants will be back at the nursing lodge. And, until I get the taxi vouchers next Monday, this ‘genius’ taxi idea has so far cost over $200 and what for? The sadness far exceeded the joy today. Arghh!
Oh yeah, and the stupid geese didn’t do any frolicking while Anthony was here, and I didn’t get the roses pruned and I just tried to ring Ants and his phone is off again. On the other hand, weather-wise, it has been an extraordinarily beautiful sunny day, the phone hasn’t rung (I am not phoney), and Ming just went off to milk the cows happily.
But my main point is that the unpredictability of Parkinson’s disease can do your head in – whether you are the sufferer or the carer – and it is, therefore extremely difficult to ‘go with the flow’. I know I’ve posted the photo below before; this is Anthony nearly two years ago. He doesn’t look like this any more.
Gender games
The only one of our geese whose gender I know for sure is Godfrey, which makes him a gander of course. As for Pearl, Ola, Woodroffe, Seli and Diamond, I have no idea, except that Ola and Pearl seem smaller, friendlier and more polite than the others so I am assuming they are girls. This is Pearl who may or may not be wondering what s/he is too!
Lately there has been a great deal of flirtatious behaviour happening between the gang, which I have prudishly been turning a blind eye too. But today, with Anthony’s help (he is being taxied out for the day, and is much less prudish), I have decided to watch this flirtatious behaviour so I will know which of the gang members are female. That way I will be able to keep an eye on any possible eggs etc.
Watching gender games between geese is not for the faint-hearted.
Flower power
Anthony was/is crazy about flowers and we have dozens of rose trees and camellia trees and all sorts of other flowering things in the garden. The trouble is (a) he isn’t home anymore and he’s the one who tended to all of these gardening shenanigans; and (b) I loathe gardening.
Don’t get me wrong – I love gardens and flowers and trees and all of that, but I just wish they didn’t need so much help. The camellias are my favourites because they just thrive anyway, but the roses – oh the roses!
My beautiful friend, CB, has come over several times in order to teach me/help me to prune the roses and we have made a bit of headway but only because she does most of the work while I drink my coffee or struggle to find the stupid secater/scissor things (see, I can’t even spell the secatooooor word!) Nevertheless, she is very patient with my procrastinating ways.
Since I now really want to grow sunflowers, I realize that I must first prove to CB that I can prune those bloody roses and prove to her that I am a newly-fledged gardener. So tomorrow, or maybe the day after tomorrow, I am going to do it – yes! I have to do this before she comes over and sees that I haven’t done it.
I plan to invite her over on Friday afternoon to see the pruned roses and to get sunflower advice because she knows all about this gardening thing. That is one of the many reasons I adore her.
Here are a few pictures of the camellias that do not need anything except the occasional glance of appreciation!
Moments of pure joy
- When you ring the electricity people to pay the phenomenal bill and the guy says you are in credit by over $700
- When you take one of the pillows that your blogging friend from Turkey has given you, and you put it behind your husband’s back in the nursing lodge, and he sighs with pleasure
- When your oldest niece, who is getting married soon at a castle in Scotland, emails you asking if you would write something for the wedding because she knows you can’t come over
- When you finish all the blasted paperworky, redtapey, billy, taxy crap
- When your friend comes over with a fold-up massage table and says she is going to give you a massage and you say you would rather be dead, and she doesn’t mind and gives your son the massage instead
- When the damaged wing mirror on your car that was going to cost over $1,000 is fixed in 15 minutes by your friend
- When one of the nurses looking after your husband says she read the thank you note you wrote to the staff, and loved it
- When someone you haven’t seen for decades finds you on facebook
- When you finally finish the folding but still can’t find the iron
- When, in a cupboard, you discover the gorgeous Italian boots your husband bought you years ago in a fit of extravagance, and you put them on your feet for the first time
- When your son is angry that you have run out of cereal again and you calmly show him the 10 packets of weetbix in the pantry
- When you realize that you don’t ever want to find the iron anyway
- When one of your dogs snuggles happily into your armpit
- When your son takes over all of the outside jobs but doesn’t tell you off for being behind with the inside jobs
- When you find a new makeup to obliterate the circles under your eyes
- When you laugh more times than you cry
- When you remember something beautiful
- When you think about planting sunflowers
- When you see comments from bloggers who you may never meet but with whom you are now connected
- When you find the gifts you got weeks ago but forgot to give your little, newly christened nephew and niece
- When you look at the sunset
- When you find out that the house isn’t riddled with white ants after all
- When you rediscover prayer in a feather – or two
And all of that joy happened in just 24 hours!
If you have been following this blog ….
If you have been following this blog you will already know that my husband, Anthony, is in a nursing home now due to advanced Parkinson’s disease and prostate cancer. He is 76. He is the best person I have ever met. He is my hero.
If you have been following this blog you will also know that our son, Ming, developed a severe scoliosis and had his spine fused surgically this year. He is 18. He is the best person I have ever met. He is my hero.
Ming doesn’t have his car licence yet due to the surgical interruption so he still needs me to drive him to music school etc.
Anthony takes an incredibly long time to answer that stupid phone.
I have two recurring nightmares: the first is of Anthony reneging on getting married; and the second is that he and Ming are in the ocean and I can only save one of them. Both nightmares never reach a resolution because I always wake up too soon.
If you have been following this blog you will know that I am very happy and very sad.
How are you?
‘How are you?’ has become, in whatever language, an almost universal way of saying ‘hello.’
Nobody ever wants the ‘how are you?’ recipient to say anything beyond, ‘I am fine, thank you and how are you?’
Sometimes I forget about this ‘How are you? I am fine’ etiquette and I either respond to ‘how are you?’ with a novel-length tale of woe, sprinkled with some joy (or vice versa) – or, even worse, I interrogate the howareyouer by probing how they really are. Neither of these two alternatives have proved satisfactory because, inevitably, I either give or receive that thing that is sometimes labelled ‘foot in the mouth’.
‘How are you?’ has become a statement of niceness, a verbal gesture of care; it is not a question requiring an answer because it is sort of rhetorical – it is just a form of greeting and, as such, it is lovely.
Just imagine if we really, honestly answered that lovely question, ‘how are you?’ like this:
- I’m tired and I don’t want to talk to you
- My life sucks
- I don’t know
- I’m envious of your perfect life
- I’m bloody sad
- Anthony is deteriorating
- I am on the brink of poverty and wondering if humans can eat grass and leaves
- How the hell do you think I am?
- I am hating the world today
- I am crap
So, you see, you can’t answer the lovely question in those ways because you would seem rude, ungrateful, self-indulgent etc. and the poor howareyouer would never ask you again!
‘How are you? is a bit like ‘What are you doing today?’ because the latter is a question that expects you to be doing either something or nothing, but it mostly wants you to be doing nothing so that the asker of the question can help you do something. So you either have to say ‘I am … ‘ and try to remember your schedule for the day, or you have to be really honest and say, “I am sitting down and I plan to sit down for much of the day, so I don’t want my sitting down interrupted.”
But you can’t say that to the really busy people who care enough to ask you how you are and what you are doing so you say things like, ‘I am about to embroider the paddock with sunflowers’ or else just say you have lots of appointments (but you don’t divulge that most of your appointments are with the chair you are sitting in because you really love the chair and are a bit frightened to get off the chair today.)
How are you?
What are you doing today?
I am a genius!
Today’s plan was to meet a bunch of great friends at a brewery up the road. Amazingly, I actually organized it, sort of – like a girls’s get-together thing. I wanted to prove to these beautiful friends that I am, indeed, capable of getting out of the house AND that I adore them.
There were a few glitches to the plan including the fact that after yesterday’s guilt episode I had promised Anthony to pick him up and bring him along. Long story short, I realized I couldn’t meet my friends and pick up Ants at the same time (it’s around a 25km trip to nursing home and back), so I did some detective work. First, I rang the taxi service and asked if they had a wheelchair taxi; second, I rang the nursing lodge and asked if this would be okay; and third, I rang Ants (who answered the phone!) to say he was getting taxied.
When the wheelchair taxi came to pick Ants up from the brewery, the driver told me how to get really cheap taxi vouchers, and, since I’d already been told this by someone else this morning, I wanted to whoop with the joy of how much easier this kind of arrangement will be for me – not back-breaking etc. – I am elated!
It’s such a wonderful thing to be a genius!
jmgoyder 