How often do I take the time to sit and rock?

Dulled by too much stimuli sometimes, I forget the pleasures of small/no talk while atop a rounded fulcrum of sorts (not hardly a perpetual motion machine).

Have you ever worked in a pet kennel, zoo, prison, stockyard or institutionalised healthcare facility?

I reckon I haven’t, either. Own an aquarium, though.

You said you have? Sorry, my tinnitus is acting up today, my brain’s nerve endings excited by the musical-like chords of life on this planet.

What’s the difference between caring for our species and caring for other species?

Have you ever written a symphony using solely the sounds of lawn maintenance equipment for percussion and musical notes?

A touch lamp came on in the master bedroom of my mother in-law’s house.

If I don’t believe in apparitions, what do I make of the electrical connection spontaneously heating a wire element in a vacuum tube and getting my attention?

Ghosts, angels, ninjas, thieves or spies?

Faulty wiring or swamp gas?

A dream or optical illusion?

Humourous anecdote.

How many people of Mountain City have never left the political entity (county) or geographical feature in/on which they live? Brenda the patient pill sorter might know.

I observed a person who told me the person’s spouse was an officer of the law. The person has several finger-sized hematomas on one arm. Anecdotally, members of military/law enforcement are more prone than the general population to express their emotions physically on their families.

Conclusion? Not enough information to propose a strong hypothesis.

Watch how a person handles a pen in conversation and you learn a lot nonvebally-speaking.

Cryptic signs for the day: GY8883 and GU4045.

Congrats to Andrew on his new house – welcome to the indebtedness of adulthood!

Thanks to the staff for playing musical patient beds. Thanks to Jimmie for moving clothes and Becka for attention to details of cleanliness; Lucy for processing paperwork and arranging things behind the scenes.

My sister (a school counselor) and my mother in-law (a former teacher) are in awe of the ability of healthcare workers to maintain a positive attitude in their hard jobs.

Watch some workers tiredly walk to their cars after shift change and you’ll see the healthcare superheroes are human like the rest of us humble folk.

I’ve swept the driveway and sidewalks, cleaned out the garage, called the homeowners insurance company about hail damage, eaten lunch, put the newspaper crossword puzzles on the porch for a neighbour (which reminds me to mention my mother in-law misses reading the Wall Street Journal that the family had delivered to the house when she was a child), and arranged housecleaning for the week.

This casually-compensated errand boy is taking a nap – plenty of time to be my harmlessly bold and forward-appearing character later on (exercising my right to arrange my states of energy any way I please, letting others sort out the reality from the fiction on their own time and cultural scale).

Rock a-bye baby, in the treetops…

Correction: Kacie, not Casey.

A nod to Brian Lamb interviewing Andrew Ferguson, author of “Crazy U.”

Have you ever sat and watched house power meter gears turn?

A best college visit wish to Maggie and her mother, Maggie.

A friend, Floyd, living with his mother as a part-time assistant, not cost-free handyman, because his mother’s mobility is much decreased in the second half of her life, said, in relation to dating women, “Mom, I’m going out tonight and will be late. If I’m lucky, I’ll be home really late.”

We adult men parental caretakers are still men, after all.

My mother in-law hit rock-bottom this afternoon while I sat at my parents’ house.

She couldn’t bend over to pick an item up off the floor and had the worried thought that maybe she was permanently weakened, panicked we had put her in a nursing home without letting her know, because she had heard us say she was only there for physical therapy but no therapist had shown up yet.

Minutes later, Justin the therapist arrived, sent by God in answer to prayers/thoughts, my mother in-law surmises.

Her spirits are lifted.

So are mine.

The role of patient, loving mother/father is not one this hermit cherishes.

“You mean I really am only here for physical therapy?”

Yes, I reply for the decadozenth time as gently and kindly as if for the very first time.

“I won’t have to pay $42,000 a month for nursing home care?”

No, I reply once again, explaining in as simple a detail as I can without shouting too loud to her deaf ears that she keeps substituting 42,000 for either 2,400 or 4,200 we mentioned a long time ago after we checked prices when she asked us if we’d be okay IF SHE chose to enter a nursing home and that her finances are fine no matter what because of her Social Security benefits and Medicare insurance with supplemental coverage.

As the therapist told her, she’s being too hard on herself -she’s a great lady with a beautiful smile, sweet disposition and inner desire to heal.

Meanwhile, she troubles herself about her post-therapy future.

I’ve asked her to focus on improving her strength so she will have the ability to make the choice she wants as opposed to what any of us will have to choose for her if she remains weak.

As always, I am humbled by daily experience.

Healthcare workers – floor nurses, home health workers, etc. – you have my biggest respect.

We may write history books about business, military and government leaders but the people in the fiel such as nurses, LPNs, CNAs, nurse practitioners and physician assistants deserve the greatest kudos for keeping us well and helping heal the sick.

Do we exhibit patterns of heightened/weakened activity that has been classified for medical professionals examining/treating newly-admitted patients?

Having sat with my mother in-law through several hospital visits, I’ve watched her go through a few phases:

1. Initial excitement about all the attention she’s receiving, being gracious and kind, polite;

2. Big drop in energy due to too much excitement/stimuli, being courteous and just slightly impatient/grumpy;

3. Slow rise in energy level as she recovers from illness/injury, trying to keep new information straight as her thoughts clear up and she returns to her cheerful self.

Through it all, we assure her the world is not coming to an end.

And I have to ensure myself I have not aligned my thoughts too closely to hers, for I am neither 93.5 nor a woman so, although our socioeconomic backgrounds are nearly identical, we have small but noticeable differences.

Sensitising one’s states of energy to some sort of quantum synchronisation-like shared condition with another is a curious trait to believe one has.

There are days when I read my words and feel like they were spoken by my mother in-law, not me.

Spooky? The chameleon in me thinks not.