productivity

As San Diego county proceeds cautiously with emerging from significant shutdown, I have been experiencing bouts of productivity, especially over this past week. The momentum I have been building up with my writing is starting to spill over into other areas of my life. I have helped Himself with cleaning up our bathroom, worked on cleaning the Queen Mother's bathroom, doing some hand-washing of summer dresses (as it promises to be a hot one this year), and sorting through various bills and receipts. Add this to the usual working on dishes and keeping the recycling corner in decent order, and I'm finally starting to feel a bit more like my old self.

I'm also pleased to say that I managed to make some phone calls today that I've been needing to make for a while. I am going to touch base with my case manager at the Southern Caregiver Resource Center to see if he can think of any transportaion options Himself and I haven't found yet for the Queen Mother. I also got some details on arranging a food donation to Jewish Family Services. They were a huge help to us in the lean days, and now we can start paying them back. I plan to send a couple of bags of food from our "pantry" with Himself sometime this week for him to drop off.

Our eye doctor has recently said they are resuming more normal business hours and appointments. I last saw them in March, just as the pandemic craziness was getting off the ground, and subsequently received my first pair of "Mature Woman's Glasses," aka bifocals, at the start of April. I love the lenses, but the glasses themselves don't fit quite right. Now I can go in and get them adjusted, which I will be doing on
Wednesday.

I have noticed that it's much easier to me to stay reasonably sane by staying away from all Social Media and turning my phone on only when I need to, like when Himself leaves to take care of Club business. (He takes all appropriate precautions when he goies out, so no worries there.) If you've been missing me, it's nothing personal. I just prefer to save the drama for the Dalai Lama's mama. ;)

One random thing before I sign off: the volume of mail has gone way down during the pandemic. There have even been days when there hasn't been any mail in our box at all. I must say, even though it's felt a little weird, I haven't missed the half ton of gratuitious ads clogging the mailbox one bit.

That will do it for the moment. Remember, may the odds be ever in your favor!

a "bag lady" day

After the anxiety of yesterday, I delibrately made it a Chill Day today, doing a lot of reading. I have two on-screen sources these days: the AgingCare.com support forum, where I can sympathize and cheer on my fellow caregivers, and Flipboard, a site + app where one can browze a gazillion articles on practically every topic under the sun. I receive their "10 for Today" emails, scan the articles presented, and tag the email with a star if I want to return to it at a later date. I have a ton of Forum and Flipboard notifications tagged, so I have a LOT of reading material at my fingertips.

There is a bit of irony to this, if you know me at all: I was one of those people who refused to get a Kindle, refused to listen to Any Audiobooks Ever, because Real Books were the best and only "real" source of reading, didn't ya know! Now most of my reading is on a screen, and I'm looking forward to "retraining" myself to read Real Books over this upcoming Mercury Retrograde. Think of it as NaNoReMo, if you will.

When I started to feel a little restless, I picked up where I left off in my Huswifery: creating an alternative organizational system for all of our bags. Despite the "ban" that was enacted in California a few years back, there are still plenty of plastic bags to go around, especially if you take home anything from a restaurant to eat later. First I got all of the bags together in their various "categories," then I played a little Bag Tetris to slot everything in reasonably well in the bottom shelf of one of our below-the-counter cupboards. (For those who don't know, Tetris is a very simple-yet-addictive video game where you take variously shaped 3D puzzle pieces and try to slot them together with as few gaps as possible...and the rate at which you receive said pieces gets faster over time!)

When I was done, we had one bunch of Target bags ready to be returned to the store for reusing, one bunch each of Walmart and Ralph's bags in progress, the aforementioned "Thank You" bags for takeout ready to be reused for trash bags in the master bathroom, various newspaper bags ready to be used for litter box clearings, and an array of paper bags neatly tucked in the corner, to be used for whatever I can come up with. Finally there is our embarrassingly small collection of actual reusable canvas-with-insulation lunch bags. Perhaps this last bunch will grow as the other categories shrink with use.

Afterwards came some more reading, then dinner for the Queen Mother and myself. (Himself had another day of tending to Club business down in San Diego.) Next on my project list will be to reorganize the shelf above the bag shelf, along with the silverware drawer and junk drawer above them. I acknowledged today that organizing and reorganizing things does seem to help quiet my sometimes nervously chattering mind, so I will keep going and see what happens.

Tomorrow Himself and I plan to go to another "retirement planning" seminar to take advantage of the free dinner. I'll let y'all know if I hear anything remotely interesting. ;)

Day 339: on a blessedly easier day

It was with a sense of relief that I was able to engage in my Tea and Morning Pages ritual to start off the day, though I only wrote one page in total before the words just stopped flowing out and refused to start again. Still, that one page helped to shift a lot around, judging by how the rest of the day actually flowed.

I went back to my favorite place of chaos, the kitchen. Between three adults and two cats, it can get messy in quite a hurry. Working by degrees, with zero pressure to get anything done, I managed to do quite a bit, and the kitchen looks light years better than it did at the start of the day. The dishwasher is humming as it washes the dirty dishes. 

Dinner this evening was leftover spanikopita and rice pilaf, to which I added some more rice, and a salad. Everything seemed to taste a little better than it did Saturday night, as the ingredients had a chance to blend flavors while in the fridge. I capped it off with a couple of chocolate chip cookies, also leftovers. 

My "mistake" was eating at the dining room table, because I got an earful from the Queen Mother. With a captive audience, she unloaded everything that was on her mind before she finally returned to her current novel she was reading and settled back in to that. I treated myself to some music from the Calm app while she was watching the news. 

Still playing it by ear, or in our case, how Himself's leg feels. He talked with one of the VA pharmacists on the phone, and is now taking a two week "vacation" from statins. Once that two weeks is up, he will be taking a non-statin medication and will be on it for a week before the next phone consultation. His leg is getting better by degrees, but it's a "painfully" slow process, pun fully intended.

Need to get in some grocery shopping tomorrow; otherwise, the day is wide open.

Day 246: on further romping

Outside of our master bedroom there is what we call the "ventricle." It's not a full patio, but a small place of privacy outside of the bedroom door. It has a couple of hedge bushes and a bouganvillea bush which can provide further privacy. The foliage can also grow quite explosively and rapidly during seasons of significant rainfall, which we had this past spring.

Today I armed myself with clippers and tacked the jungle outside our door. Not counting breaks, I spent about an hour and a half first chopping down all the excessive growth, then using our handy wheeled trash can to haul the clippings out to the closest (and emptiest) dumpster. I took a picture when I was done and sent it to Himself.

Afterwards, I took a nice long shower, then prepared dinner. I found myself napping briefly after dinner, but I woke up to take a lap around the complex to make my activity goals for the day, along with getting the mail. I love the long warm Summer days, even when I have to tackle pruning. The temperatures are finally hitting their seasonal average - it was 81 today, and forecast to be in the high 80's at the start of the workweek - but the secret is the lower levels of humidity in the SoCal air. Comparatively speaking, it's a dry heat; anyone tired of the East Coast humidity is welcome to come and stay for awhile.

Plenty to do tomorrow, so I will stop here and assemble our second cat carrier.

Day 238: on a strong finish to the week

I'm feeling pretty good about how this day went. 

I faxed the fumigation paperwork over to the pest control folks, and finally got the ball rolling on seeing whether I could get a letter from the Queen Mother's doctor's office to say she was disabled before she started receiving her Social Security. Whether or not they can is another matter entirely, as the office manager said she would have to do "a little research." Wait, you mean you might have records about my mother that you didn't send to me when I requested them?? (note to self: look over what I received from the Queen Mother's doctor One More Time!)

In between the administrative items, I tackled the kitchen and significantly improved its state. I also cleared out a lot of trash and recycling, so the chaos has been repelled for now. All of the work got me my thirty minutes of exercise for the day.  :)

This evening Himself and I paid a visit to the synagogue. It's a bit of a challenge, balancing our firm commitments vs. our desired activities, and what can be exchanged for what else. The service was small, but very heartfelt and fulfilling. The schmoozing afterward was a bit more political than I generally like, but Himself was right at home: he has an opinion and is not afraid to share it! We came home a bit latr than expected, but that's okay. Our agenda for tomorrow is pretty open.

I wind down with the intention to Unplug for the weekend, as usual, so there will be a couple of shorter posts...or I might write something in depth on Sunday evening. I will see what I feel like come then. 

Day 172: on a (mostly) salvaged tuesday

I got the phone calls I needed to take care of out of the way this morning. One of them required me to get up at 7am to wrangle, but I did it, and went back to bed after feeding the cats. I'm amazed they let me sleep in till 10am; I guess Inkblot has learned his lesson, and is not so obsessed about making his morning rounds.

Thirty minutes before the alarm goes off, I'm willing to make an early start to it and enjoy Quiet Time. Three hours before our usual wake up time, not so much.

Once I was finished with the calls, I found myself unclenching and coming up for air. The worst is behind me. I still have some "distasteful" calls to make, but I'm spacing them out in order of priority, and they will get easier as I go. Thus do I ease out of "Survival Mode" and re-anchor myself in a more pleasant reality.

Himself's Cognitive Behavioral Therapy appointment was today. I like the doctor Himself was assigned to. Were it possible, I would be asking this doctor to be my therapist, but that's not his gig. He does set a nice standard for me to use in finding one, though.

We went directly home today, in order to avoid the afternoon/evening commute traffic, and were mostly successful. We stopped at Trader Joe's for a hot minute, then came home. Imagine my surprise when I spied a grasshopper staring at me from behind one of the glass panels of our back door! He was hiding from a marauding Huntress, and with some trial and error, I helped him make his getaway. The cats were disappointed. Oh well. ;)

I had a late lunch/early dinner, got the Queen Mother's dinner together, then brought order to a bit of chaos over by our computer desk. Most of it went into the recycling bags. I took a bit of satisfaction in my effort.

While the Queen Mother watched her usual hour of news, I did a bit of informal meditation. The first track that came up when I brought up Pandora happened to last half an hour, so I rested and did some deep breathing along with the music. It focussed my attention quite well, as I observed the usual mental chatter was staying muted in the background. I paid it no mind. (ha ha)

I wound up having some lentil soup and a salad for supper, then loaded up the dishwasher, turned the knob - and nothing. Himself checked the circuit breaker, came and turned the knob - and still nothing. Our dishwasher has given up the ghost. We've made initial plans to do some tag-team dish washing on Thursday, when Himself has a breather between appointments. Good thing I had meditated earlier!

The mountain is getting steeper and more challenging to climb. I'm hoping this means I'm getting closer to the top.

Day 170: on further normalizing

Today I tried to convince myself that I "didn't have enough time" to do everything that I needed to do, which is my signal that it's very necessary to sip my Tea and write in my Morning Pages. When I was done, I realized I was trying to stuff ten pounds of potatoes into a five pound sack - overscheduling my day and viewing everything as "essential." So I let go of one thing, rearranged a few other things, chose not to freak out, and to enjoy the day.

It was really good to make the Sunday Support Group. It was good to share, and check in with our friends, one of whom is having some significant health challenges, but is getting through them with humor and Grace. I received a gift of colored pens, and I know the perfect home for them.

After group, Himself and I went to Walmart, as my money finally arrived today, and we were able to pick up some essentials. Then it was home and dinner. Afterwards, I had a nap and did some coloring in a new mandala, working to keep it Simple and Consistent, a new challenge for me. I find that I don't approach any two mandalas the exact same way. Then I actually brought a bit of order to the chaos in the recycling corner of the house. It's super easy just to toss things in that direction, so I need to remember to take the time to sort out what has been tossed!

After hearing the Wisdom shared by one of my Support sisters today, I am seeing that I need to make some different choices in how I navigate through Life. I am reminded that I can choose to Respond instead of to React. I can easily list the half-dozen or so reasons why I react the way I do these days, but do I need to give these reasons preference every single time? No, I can Breathe Deeply and oxygenate my blood, get some of that oxygen to the frontal lobes of my brain, and jump off the bandwagon of Instinct to access my Reasonal, Pragmatic Self.

These things will be good to remember as I move forward into next week. It is shaping up to be a full one, and I will need to stay somewhat on my toes. Goddess Grant that I can finally get the answers I've been looking for this week!

Day 88: on starting somewhere

It turns out a good night's sleep did wonders for everyone's dispositions. The unpleasantness of the night before was left in the past, by unspoken mutual agreement. Himself and I also decided to tackle some of the "problem areas" the Queen Mother has been grousing about.

Mom can't use the shower in her bathroom, because it's one of those tub/shower combos, and the bathtub ledge is too high for her to step over safely. She comes and uses the shower in our bathroom, because it's a dedicated shower, and has a very low lip she can step over much more easily. It was beginning to show the effects of much use, shall we say, so Himself devoted his efforts to cleaning the shower. None of us use the bath/shower combo in the other bathroom, because 1) that shower head is broken, and 2) neither Himself nor I can fit into the shallow bathtub. Queen Mother could, but she would never be able to get up out of it again without a lot of help.

My task for today was to tackle the mountain of paperwork we had accumulated since 2016, when the Caregiver role began to take over my life, and anything that wasn't a high priority was swept aside. My first step was to sort all of the papers into three piles: mine, his, and mom's. Needless to say, mom's pile is the smallest, and it's a toss up between Himself and myself as to which of us has the longer paper trail! The next step is to sort each of our piles into three smaller piles: stuff to be recycled now, stuff to be held back for shredding, and stuff that's actually important enough to keep. I suspect the third pile will be the smallest, at least for me!

While all of this was going on, I also dove into the linen hamper and grabbed all of the towels and dishcloths for a long overdue washing. Drying is still in progress, as our dryer is no longer the most efficient appliance in the home, and the lint filter seems to fill up every five seconds!

I could have felt sorry for myself today, but I chose to take a step into the chaos and began to wrest some much needed Order out of it. This is one of my goals for 2019, and the first for the home.

Day 21: on what i did "instead"

If our original plans had not been altered, I would have posted this today from a hotel in Phoenix, AZ. Since they were altered, though, I had a few things I did "instead"...

I tackled the kitchen and loaded the dishwasher. The kitchen is one of the places in the home where things can get nasty very quickly if one doesn't stay on top of things: food is prepared, so there is packaging to be thrown away or reecycled; dishes are used and need to be washed, or at the very least, rinsed off. Unfortunately, in the grip of Depression, this is the one area where I can plan on getting everything cleared up "tomorrow" - and many tomorrows become yesterdays, and still no action is taken. Today I made headway and brought a measure of Order to the continuous Chaos the kitchen often is.

I went on a merry goose chase around town to find the one specific type of Citracal that the Queen Mother will happily take. Walmart didn't have it, nor Walgreens, nor CVS. Rite Aid is the one place that had the yogurt-like, berry flavored chewable "pearls," so after 45 minutes, I was finally able to come home triumphant, and very hangry.

Himself and I went to our special meetings tonight, where I was greeted with surprise and a little concern at my meeting. There I was able to share my story and commiserate with one of my tribes, and feel better once the meeting was over. Somehow that led to some good, open sharing between Himself and myself on the way home, so I'm grateful for that. :)

With any luck, tomorrow I will be able to salvage some of the fun and Zen energy I was planning on diving into over the weekend. I'll check in tomorrow and let y'all know how succcessful I was.

Day 12: on the magic of momentum

The ease and grace that began to flow yesterday continued today. :)

Practically, I made some more headway in cleaning up the master bedroom. I had a modest pile of clothes in one corner. They had been tagged originally for Giveaway, but then I got the idea in my head that perhaps I could sell my clothes for some much needed cash. Well, the first time I tried to sell clothes was the last time; I don't think I got more than $5 combined from the two places we visited. Then I got the idea to rent a booth at a swap meet and sell the fruits of my decluttering efforts there. That got swept away shortly after Himself's cancer diagnosis, and the subsequent onset of my Depression saw me not doing anything in the way of decluttering or offloading, and the planned castoffs just kept piling up.

Today I picked those clothes up, shook them clear, and placed them neatly in bags. My lesson has been learned: for me, Giveaway is the Only Way. Neither Himself nor I have the bandwidth to secure a place at the swap meet - and the horror stories I hear about selling stuff online far outweigh the success stories. Giveaway is SO much easier for me/us all the way around!  At any rate, between decluttering and taking out trash + recycling, I feel like I got a fair amount done today, with more to come tomorrow.

Later in the day, I went with Himself to his follow-up appointment with the "civilian" neurologist (one he found outside the VA) to discuss the results of the CT scan he had 10 days ago. You see, he was rear-ended while driving on the I-5 freeway this past July (on the first day of Comi-Con, so traffic was more horrendous than usual!), and got whiplash. Then he began to have nearly nonstop migrane headches. I had an offer from my chiropractor for a free exam; between that and the coverage provided by our car insurance, he started going for treatment. He's now getting all of the bills together (that have been incurred from the accident), and he will be submitting everything to the other driver's insurance company soon for a settlement. For a car accident claim, things have been moving rather fast, and I am hoping for a swift resolution.

Following the neurology appointment, we were advised that the hard copy of the records would be available in a couple of days. Friday is a full appointment day, and as I looked at the calendar, I could feel myself starting to feel a bit anxious. This time, however, I was able to stop, take a deep breath, and bring myself back to the present. "There's no use in borrowing from Tomorrow's problems for Today," I told myself. There's another mantra in that; let me put it in the back of my mind and let it percolate for a bit. Regardless, I have faith we'll be able to navigate Friday's gauntlet of appointments with ease.

If this is the start of a better personal year, I won't have any complaints. :)

Day 3: on decluttering and downsizing

After I finished up yesterday's post, I returned to a project that has been ongoing for a while: decluttering the master bedroom in our home (where Himself and I sleep). One thing about depression is that there are times when I really don't want to Do Anything, so the bedroom got rather bad with clutter and mess. I've been cleaning it up by degrees, and got a lot of work done yesterday. The floor in front of our bed is visible again! and one can get to the side door now!

The Queen Mother and I moved into our current home just before New Year's, 2000. We went from a decent sized, 3 bedroom 2 bath home into a 2 bedroom, 2 bath condo just under 1000 square feet. We did a lot of downsizing then, and still left a lot behind. As time as gone on, more of the upkeep has shifted to my shoulders - and then our shoulders, when Himself joined us in the condo in 2013. Between his cancer adventure, Queen Mother's diminishing capacities, and my depression...well, things got chaotic. It didn't get Hoarder-level bad (though Queen Mother might disagree with that), but we are definitely planning to get some help with keeping up the condo once our financial situation improves. In the meantime, when the prospect of decluttering and reorganizing stuff doesn't seem too overwhelming - and sometimes it does, as I wonder if I'm ever going to get back on top of things when I'm in Stinking Thinking mode - I manage to carve out pockets of Order in the Chaos, one part of one room at a time.

I'm not alone in this.

At the start of the year, the Queen Mother had two brothers. The younger of the two brothers passed away last Sunday, on September 30th. (If you follow along on Facebook, you'll know this.) We went to visit my aunt/his widow today...and she has a monumental task in front of her. Their house was a bit larger than our original one, and they had three kids they raised and watched fly out of the nest. Decades of memories and items are still present there, and she needs to downsize radically in order to move into an Independent Living facility. Her room is slightly more than half the size of the condo we live in! We managed to take home a few things today, and we've called dibs on a few things we need to figure out how to transport home. She's a bit overwhelmed and slightly panicked at the enormity of the task, but she seems to be keeping her composure quite well. We've offered to help schlep stuff as needed.

As I type these words onto the screen, the sense of I'm Not Alone In This arises in my mind, and I can breathe just a little easier. If my aunt can summon up the gumption to whittle a lifetime down to Essentials, perhaps I can be inspired to sort through the things that have informed my life up to this point and get a little sleeker, and clutter-free. Wish me luck.

Day 2: on where I put my attention

Let me start this off by saying, I am a writer. I have not been focusing on writing anything for publication lately, but I have been journaling extensively. One of my practices (which I would like to bring a little more consistency to!) is writing Morning Pages during the early part of my day. I found a little gem today that I wanted to bring here...

In today's Pages, I found myself writing about Where I Am Putting My Attention. I realized that as a caregiver, my attention is all too often on the chaos around me: why is the Queen Mother yelling for me? Why is Himself needing me? Oh yes, it's time to feed the cats. Oh Goddess, what are they talking about on the TV now? (This last one is usually my signal to go into my room and play soothing music on Pandora.) I find myself putting more of my attention on the Chaos that is surrounding me and less of my attention on my needs, my thoughts, my self-care practices. Then I wonder why I get cranky and resentful.

When I do focus my attention on myself, I often run into what I call "Stinking Thinking" - I'm obsessing about our finances, or why is the Queen Mother being so pissy, or what Himself should have done instead of what he did do, or trying to figure out how to squeeze One More Chore on the to-do list, or obsessing about our finances - you get the idea. Is it any wonder that I need to find a distraction in the Chaos around me?! It takes an effort to shift OUT of Stinking Thinking and IN to considering Self-Care...what would best soothe and recenter me: coloring a mandala? Journaling? A good shake in the shower to get all of the Energetic Gunk out of my system? Going for a walk?

So with this wee reminder that I tend to focus on Chaos first, regardless of whether it's outside or inside, I can use the question, "Where Am I Putting My Attention?" as a prompt to redirect myself from the useless noisy Chaos and find something more Orderly, look in my toolbox of Self-Care, and choose something from that to consider instead. I know I have gotten way out of practice with Self-Care, and I need to get back into regular trips to the well of Self-Care if I'm going to make it through this odyssey.

Here's a small confession: I have forgotten So Much of what I used to do for Self-Care. It's like when I started taking this whole caregiving task seriously, all of my previous learning and research and  Wisdom went completely out the window. It's like my Journey of Spirit was erased in one swift stroke, and I went back to being an "ordinary" woman trying to cope with extraordinary demands, because Cancer and Dementia demand ALL of your attention, and then some! Now I am trying to regather the pieces of myself to see what is still here, what is salvageable, and what I need to toss. I am starting from Square One all over again, with this blog, with my Morning Pages, with a bare bones morning routine, and now with a prompt. Where Am I Putting My Attention now? and now? and oh yes, now?