I’ll write more about today tomorrow but, in the meantime, I am savouring today.
Today.
It’s time for an inspection!
Yikes! Dina is coming out to the farm tomorrow to pick me up for lunch at a brewery not far from here. This means she will spot any residues of chaos in the house and Ming’s shed.
Okay, just to refresh your memory, Dina is the wonderful woman who helped us to declutter and reorganise the house and sheds. Her business is https://www.chaostoclear.com.au
So I have around 25 hours to hide do my pile of paperwork, and Ming (who isn’t home yet from gallivanting down south) has even less time to make his shed presentable.
A few weeks ago, Dina, a mutual friend and I went out for lunch, and they picked me up. I wasn’t sure if they’d come into the house or not so, in the hour before they arrived, I went into a neat-and-tidy frenzy. Well they didn’t come in so that was a bit of an anti-climax and, during lunch, I told them and Dina laughed.
But tomorrow is different. Tomorrow, as part of her service, Dina will be conducting a follow-up inspection at my request.
Now don’t get me wrong; Dina is the kindest, most uncritical decluttering expert I know (well I don’t know any others) and I am not a slob (mostly). But she is also very frank and I am a bit disorganised. This makes for a beautiful friendship but OMG I only have 24 hours left!
Yikes!
Nonsense
Whenever Anthony says something during our afternoons together, I either hit ‘mute’ on the television, or ‘pause’ if it’s a dvd.
This is so that I can listen and respond to whatever he is saying, or trying to say. His voice has become very whispery and sometimes croaky lately and, even when he does get the words out, they sometimes
don’t
make
sense….
The following dialogue is an example of how weird and wonderful our conversations can be. I am learning how to be unafraid of nonsense, to enter its world in an Alice-in-Wonderland kind of way, to talk, listen, laugh and pause.
Anthony: How did you know where to find me?
Me: Instinct.
Anthony: You have good instincts.
Me: I know.
PAUSE
Anthony: Can you get this calf to get out of underneath the….
Me: What?
Anthony: This bbbb mmmm toothpaste.
Me: What? Try again.
Anthony: The cat toothpaste.
Me: The toothpaste is free, Ants, and there’s no cat here. Anyway I thought you hated cats.
Anthony: There are five.
Me: You’re hallucinating but I’ll shoo them away, anyway; is that better?
Anthony: Not much.
PAUSE
Me: So, do you think I look different today?
Anthony: No.
Me: Ants, I am wearing a dress for God’s sake. I never wear dresses!
Anthony: Oh.
Me: So what is different about me?
Anthony: Your legs are shorter.
Me: Oh.
Anthony: Is Mum okay?
Me: My mum or your mum?
Anthony: Ours.
Me: She’s fine.
Anthony: Where’s Ming?
Me: He’s at work but he’s coming to visit soon.
Anthony: Does he know I’m at the Rose Hotel?
Me: I’ll tell him.
Anthony: Where is your mother?
Me: Why do you always want to know where my mother is?
Anthony: Well she should be here and I’m worried about her eyes.
Me: Can we just watch the show, Ants?
Anthony: Haven’t we seen this, Jules?
Me: Well it’s a series, so yes and no. We are now up to the third season.
Anthony: Can you bumblebee the cardboard over there?
Me: What?
Anthony: Can you mmmbrrr oh my words don’t. What’s the thing wrong again, Jules?
Me: Ants, you have Parkinson’s, plus you are really quite old. And you have very strange ears.
Anthony: I have perfect ears!
PAUSE
Anthony: You have a sexy stomach.
Me: WHAT? Stop looking at my stomach – I ate too much lunch!
Anthony: Look at mine – I’m thin.
Me: Well there’s no need to rub it in.
PAUSE
Anthony: There’s that baby again.
Me: It’s not a baby; it’s my handbag! See!
Anthony: I think we should go to Golden Valley [his childhood home].
Me: Not today. It’s too cold.
PAUSE
Anthony: Jules?
Me: Yes?
Anthony: Bbbb mmmm – oh I can’t speak.
Me: Do you want the rug on your knees?
Anthony: That’s the elbow, good.
PAUSE
Me: You’re adorable and I love you.
Anthony: Mmm.
Me: You’re supposed to say it back.
Anthony: What?
Me: ‘I love you’.
Anthony: I know you do.
Me: No, I mean you’re supposed to say ‘I love you’ back to me!
Anthony: You already do.
PAUSE
Me: I’ll show you a picture of Ming dressed up as a nurse for Halloween, okay? You are going to be shocked.
Anthony: Nothing shocks me.
Me: Okay, check this out!
Anthony: He is magnificent!
I rest my case: nonsense is a good thing!
Turning corners
Corners on King (https://www.facebook.com/cornersonking/?fref=ts) is the restaurant where Ming has worked for just over a year now. It is run by a couple of guys who have very good taste in terms of decor, food, AND picking staff who are willing to dress up for Halloween.
Yes, that is Ming on the left in the above photo. I was feeling a bit blah yesterday morning but, when I switched on my newly-switched-on computer, and the internet rushed into my laptop, this photo was the first I saw.
Okay so it took me a few seconds to realise that it was Ming! Other photos followed and I was so overtaken by laughter that the whole blah thing disappeared. I got showered and dressed and drove into town for lunch with this beautiful nurse.
Once I figure out how to save the photos I took of Ming in his nurse’s outfit, as he and I lunched together during his break, I will post them. It was the most glorious hour of halloween hilarity.
And then I went to the nursing home to see Anthony. I arrived at 1pm and left at about 4.30pm. For these hours I was unable to wake him up no matter how much I shook his shoulders, squeezed his hands, shouted (as quietly as I could) ‘Wake up, Ants!’ His nephew visited, a friend visited, the nurse-in-charge came in and checked his blood pressure etc. and reassured me that all was well. I visited the dementia wing a couple of times, showed several staff and residents the photos of Ming, laughed and joked, in the hope that when I returned to Anthony’s room he would be awake. He wasn’t.
The possibility that Anthony might die during – or soon after – one of these TIAs (which seem to be occurring more often), is a corner I have been hesitant to turn into. I was calm yesterday afternoon, then terrified, then resigned. When I got home, Ming was here, and listened to my tearful fears in the same way I listen to his; after all, we both love Anthony.
It is entirely possible that Anthony will live for many more years; it is equally possible that he will die soon. I am not ready for the latter, despite many attempts to BE ready, and I cannot imagine my life without Anthony in it. His room in the nursing home, the staff who have become such wonderful friends, my arm around his shoulder, our long afternoons watching television, bantering, just being together, sometimes reminiscing, sometimes eating and drinking, laughing, looking at photos, doing paperwork, engaging with staff, residents, friends, relatives, visitors … his room has become my refuge, my home.
Ah, but I do have another home – a place where I can eat, drink, write, relax. I can be one of those trendy people who drink short blacks whilst writing articles about the meaning of life and death OR the proud mother of the waiter at Corners on King.
Corners on King (https://www.facebook.com/cornersonking/?fref=ts) is the restaurant where Ming has worked for just over a year now. It is run by a couple of guys who have very good taste in terms of decor, food, AND picking staff who are willing to dress up for Halloween.
“Handsome man!”
One of the staff at the nursing home always makes a point of greeting Anthony with “Handsome man!” Her wide, glorious smile almost always elicits his own smile and today that was the case.
The simplicity and constancy of this gesture is extremely comforting for me too, because I know she, and so many other staff, care about him. Genuinely.
A recent conversation:
Anthony: They love you. They always ask for you – they say, ‘Where is Julie? Where is your wife?’
Me: No, it’s you they love, not me, silly!
Anthony: No, it’s you! They always want a Julie in the room.
This afternoon, Anthony was extremely lucid until around 4.30pm when he kept ‘seeing’ me on his right hand side, when I was on the left, and vice versa.
Anthony: Where is Julie?
Me: You mean me?
Anthony: Oh there you are!
And that was when she came back – this beautiful staff member – and said those magic words:
Handsome man!
This, that….
This,
that….
Well I got back from Perth last week and the first thing I did was to rush to my new beaut vegetable garden and also check the chooks. I fed and watered both with a sense of quiet glee.
The second thing I did was to go inside and log on. When nothing happened I didn’t panic since all the green lights were indicating merrily that the internet wasn’t too far away.
Six hours later, having spoken to six different technical support people, all of whom were amazingly patient, kind and positive (with the exception of one woman whose sighs, when I didn’t understand her click34xcableetc instructions, became thunderous on loudspeaker) were confident.
At one point, during this ungleeful, longwinded experience, I rang Ming who said that when he got home he’d sort it out in a jiffy. Well he tried, and even spoke to other technical support people, to no avail.
The Ming then said, with great compassion and a generous hug, “Maybe you’re just not intelligent enough, Mum….?”
I let his observation linger for the ten days during which I had no internet except via my phone. When I began to get the 5s mixed us with the Ss, I gave up.
Anyway, yesterday the replacement modem arrived at the post office and Ming picked it up, brought it home, connected it and voila!
So what am I supposed to do now? I can’t possibly answer all of the zillions of emails and comments and facebooky stuff; I can’t possibly catch up on ten days of my blog friends’ blogs; I can’t even catch up with what I was going to do before I lost the internet because my blog kind of reminded me of what to do.
I survived my ten day blip of no internet, but the person most affected by my off-the-internet-radar status was my beautiful mother. Meg and I have a strong internet relationship via email and Facebook, but she is more attentive to messages than I am, so, when I lost the internet, she was the first to miss me.
And today is her birthday. She is 81, looks 61 and acts like 21. So today Meg came to the farm to see the vegetable garden then we went to a local winery for lunch. The secret surprise was that Ming and A. would join us and that was a fantastic thing!
It’s great to be blogging again. That internet blip taught me something really profound: I need the internet!
One of the hardest things for me now is having fun – the guilt of it. Lunches with friends, learning how to garden with new friends, figuring out the future, altering and/or discarding things in this old house, renewing ….
This,
that,
and the other….
I am so cool!
I feel the heat terribly and, as some of my friends may remember, a couple of summers ago, I developed a condition called “pompholyx“.
(Warning: if you click on the above link you might be grossed out by the pictures, just as I was by the condition).
Anyway, since one of the triggers is excessive perspiration, which I vividly remember my dad having and now it’s obviously my turn, I made a big decision. Air conditioning!
I pretty much live in my writing room, which used to be Gar’s bedroom (Anthony’s mother). Anyway, her 1970s air conditioner died last year, so last week I made the call and the aircon. guys and the electrician installed it this morning. It’s not a particularly hot day (only in the mid-20s C), but as I waved my saviours goodbye, I was already dripping, despite wearing a sweatband.
And now? Ahhh, the bliss of being so cool and the comfort of knowing that when the temperature hits 40 degrees (any time soon as summer approaches), I will have a safe haven! Okay so, in the big scheme of things, pompholyx may not seem like such a serious condition but it drove me quite mad for months a couple of years ago.
I was reminding our doctor the other day and he immediately looked at my hands where, during a funny little heatwave last week, the blisters had begun to appear.
Me: You can’t see them now – I scratched them off and it wasn’t that bad.
Doctor: Mmmmm.
Me: But I can feel them coming back – the blisters. So I think I might need botox to stop me sweating? I read about that possibility.
Doctor: No. I’ll order some blood tests; it could be hormonal.
Me: Yes, of course, but I don’t think it’s just menopausalish because I perspire a hell of a lot more than any of my equally menopausal friends!
Doctor: Mmmmm.
Me: And remember how we discussed cranio-facial hyper-hydrosis, or whatever you call it, last year? That’s me! It’s just my face, head and hands – the rest of me sweats normally.
Doctor: Mmmmm.
Okay so the doctor doesn’t do the mmmmmm thing loudly but it’s definitely a component of our conversations, with a chuckle here and there. I much prefer the mmmmm.
Anyway, as the young aircon. guys were leaving, I apologised for the peacock noise (it’s spring, so they are yaaaaawking constantly). One of the guys said ‘They are so cool!’
I agree and here are a couple of shots of Prince minus his back view!
As this beautiful white peacock does his twirling, fanning, wonderful dance, his feathers muscle their way into the breeze and sing:
I am so cool!
jmgoyder 