Low battery tonite so…
Quck thanks to Debbie Tester, Jill, Pacifica “breathing tratment” machine mfg, SeQual oxygen machine mfg, Rev. Robert White.
Sequence for the evening:
TOPLSC6, 055MCG
To SUV police with partial tag …49688, what’s the hurry?
Need to see “Cave of Forgotten Dreams” by Herr Herzog. Paleolithic art rocks!
A list of thanks to start the day: Sir Randall, Grainger County Keith and Charleston Zach at Express Oil Change; smiling Harvey the dedicated Rehab Tech, Justin, Lucy Barnett, Rachel Ellis, Tasha-Marie Olinger, Courtney Camper and all the other helpful people at Asbury Place; Medicare/Medicaid inspectors; Cherry Murray for her [cough, cough] rational/logical presentation of oil vs. nuclear industrial safety issues to a committee (the Committee will remember you well).
Lottery numbers for the day: 003KLY, 241RTS/Catch22.
How long do I ignore the obvious; that is, that credit rating agencies have stopped serving their purpose as objective rather than politically-motivated organisations beholden to a group of profit-mongering…
I apologise for that outburst. The Committee has reminded me that I can no longer claim to be a man of the people now that they have their clutches on me in the form of the NDA I signed to not be able to tell you more about the unexplainable.
They’ll release information proving I’m just as much a profit mongerer as the best/worst of them if I insist on the preletariat social program re/revolutionary reform movement line of reasoning.
But seriously, who’s watching the people who run the credit agencies and the perks they get in after-hour dinner parties, golfing holidays and casual lunges…err, I mean lunches at fancy restaurants?
Do people buy china in China?
My mother in-law learned to love her daughter in-law even though she almost didn’t bless her son’s engagement to a person without a college degree and/or a hefty dowry to offer (but who ended up being a good intellectual companion).
Now she faces a similar situation with her grandson, not wanting to attend a wedding for a marriage that in good conscience she cannot bless for the same reasons at this time, wondering about college potential, or academic/intellectual curiosity.
I’ve tried to assure her this is a normal social practice of the woman or man seeking to improve his/her social situation through the legal auspices of consensual cohabitation, often assuming a chemical/quantum formula called love.
We sit here – she is napping and I am watching the traffic jam of popular rehab personnel exercising the patients patiently up and down the hall.
Thanks to the City of Kingsport nonpotable water street cleaning crew.
Time to close. Family issues take priority over global economic management concerns. Time for a breathing treatment, lunch and rehab evaluation/summary with Rachel Ellis (goal: return to independent living, reached one occupational step at a time, helped by Jill and others).
I step away from the Committee and look what happens. They’ll just have to wait.
Yes, this country’s governmental legislative leaders are caught in a vise of shrt-trm visions.
On one hedged bet, revive the economy with government bloat.
On another, restore solvency to prevent disaster.
To whom/what are your leaders most loyal?
In a global economy, any entity can legally line your representative’s retirement account with golden threads.
Does a country really matter to a person like me with investments spread around the world that leech like a parasite the profitable skin off workers’ backs?
If you don’t care to follow your representative around 24 hours a day to see what that person is doing to save your country from going bankrupt, who will?
How secure is my stock portfolio if my country isn’t?
Buy your beer with your interest, not your principal.
What are your principal principles?
To think the way I do requires few friends, unfortunately, because my thoughts are fanned out and filled with impossible-to-resolve contradictory sub/cultural belief structures.
My wife is the only person I trust and with whom I trust myself.
All else is illusion to match my literary output to a global social structure we call reality.
Long ago I grew bored with the interplay of ordinary lives in a social structure we call the workplace.
Another Monday of rehashing weekend sporting events with coworkers. Another joke about Wednesday being hump day. Another comment that Friday gets us two days closer to Monday once again.
How many friends and family members have reminded me that life within our species is essentially the art of small talk?
And so, here I am, the primary caregiver for my mother in-law who needs the comfort food of small talk more than anything else to ease her general starvationlike condition of loneliness.
She’s eating up all the attention she gets at the skilled nursing facility right now, supplemented by visits from her hometown church and neighbourhood friends who are like family to her.
She has commented more than once that she must be boring me.
She is a sophisticated smalltown lady with proper manners and a relatively clear mind for a 93.5 year young person.
Basically most everything that I am not.
I am a clever suburbanite with contriteness and a fuzzy set of thoughts at almost 49, old in mind if not in body.
She thinks like an aristocrat while I think like a … well, like whatever strikes me as funny.
To hear her break down family/friend backgrounds by social class and economic job category would add great character studies to a Jane Austen novel of the 21st Century.
She needs a home healthcare person from the equivalent of a smalltown upper middle class family of the 1920s and 1930s, if I read her thoughts correctly, or one used to working for such a family. Preferably one who is licensed, bonded, insured and not on the skids.
Definitely not a guy like me who’s willing to sacrifice friends and acquaintances for the sake of barter exchange efficiency and a good joke, hopefully one that is innovative, inventive and funny.
Maybe my mother in-law is right and the desophisticated, unthrifty habits of modern American living is the country’s undoing.
Some people are born into upper/middle class and some wouldn’t know a good classy lifestyle if it was given for them to live frugally but wealthily. Some become academic snobs.
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.
Sipping/chugging a dark wheat lager brewed with winter spices after picking up tree limbs off my parents’ yard…
Could be watchin’ NASCAR motorised vehicles in a circular bang ’em up ballet.
Could be neighbourly, spreading the message that a Christiane Armed-n-poor led round/oblong table projected, or the message that the Pepsi CEO’s facial expressions/twitches implied.
Blue skies and breezy day call my name.
A rabbit eats dandelion blooms in the backyard while contemplating Richard Adams and Watership Down.
I can speedread text but not video. Dragging the progress bar or fastforwarding is not the same.
Sitting by myself in the church sanctuary, safe from UV rays and whatever else faces me in the great outdoors, I felt alone and helpless this morning, unable to sing hymns with my usual joyous man/boyish booming voice of enthusiasm because I didn’t have my wife there to entertain with octave changes and hold her hand during congregational prayers. I miss her deeply/dearly.
Going solo at my in-laws’ and wife’s hometown church on Palm Sunday, I had no role to fill except messenger, quickly completed.
And then I was invisible again.
The prism.
The funhouse mirror with no persons peering at me to see their distorted image reflected back for comic relief.
If I cannot or do not reflect, what am I?
What is a social being without a social connection?
Best line I heard, emanating from a dementia patient in a bathroom: “Oh my God! What is coming out of my butt?!”
I want to be that person one day, forgetting what a BM is and entertaining random passersby with insightful age/scatological humour.
What if I already am and don’t know it?
If so, would someone please let me know by magically turning on a lamp next to me in this instant?
Oh well, no magic lanterns and no voices in my head telling me what to do after I lose an argument with myself.
Stuck with sanity and reality one more day, it appears.
Thanks to Jeremy at Fatz; Lynda, Tina and Christina at Dollar Tree; the soldier walking into the west Kingsport Walmart; Pam and Casey at Baysmont/Asbury Place, if I haven’t thanked them already.
Would a sitcom based in a skilled nursing facility generate enough episodes for TV syndication? Or would an Internet video series find a profitable ausience…sorry, audience?
Brain is slipping. Best sign off before it falls. Adios.
Time to contemplate the role of a comic preacher-in-residence proselytising to patients in a nursing home with a mixture of dementia and physically frail archetypes aided by witty nurses, therapists and CNAs battling with budget-challenged administrative types.
A nod to the Hart family singers of Wise, Virginia. Your fight for souls is a lifelong battle and worth the eternal cost.
Thanks to healthcare workers everywhere – I envy the moments when your customers/clients/patients look at you and smile with an inner beauty of infinite love and understanding beyond words.
In the near future my wife’s family faces the decision of who lives where and/or with whom.
The recurring thematic element around which decisions revolve: loneliness.
Other issues, too personal for worldwide broadcast, produce gravitational effects.
I can imagine where the likely spot the roundhouse will likely stop but courtesy and the fact I am not the primary decisionmaker on this one prevent my scoring the discord here.
You can’t say that on television.
Real life prevails.
I put myself in other’s shoes.
I see routines involving both familiar and unfamiliar faces.
As energy and activity decrease, larger gaps develop between routines as they decline in number.
The gaps become more and more difficult to ignore.
Hours feel like days.
Houses turn into echo chambers returning one’s solo voice to oneself.
And then?
How much time is left?
One’s remaining days of relatively easy mobility is a primary concern.
If one’s hometown friends and church family cannot fill the gaps occupied by loneliness, questions arise:
What are one’s options and are former dismissed possibilities more palatable and maybe preferred?
Could the biweekly housekeeper/friend be convinced to stay as a daily companion/homecare worker?
If not, who in the out-of-town family could provide the best care to one while one is also not being a burden financially and emotionally?
How does one insist that access to every family member at any time is of utmost importance?
Who has the best mothering instinct without being smothering and overprotective?
Whoever has legal precedence makes the final decision, no matter how the emotions will proceed.
What is loneliness without celebrity like?
When everybody wants you, what person(s) do you want to be with, all things not being equal?
I don’t have kids so how can I say what I would say if I did?
“No patient or staff food to be kept in refrigerator. (please help keep our kitchen clean)” – sign on wall posted next to Coca-Cola dispensing machine.
Where the cost of living is low, one can afford to not worry about whether kitchen visitors can read.
Do we sing the songs that speak our thoughts or our emotions?
Should the labels “thought” and “emotion” represent separate concepts?
What is hidden inside a box labeled as a Douwe Egberts coffee dispensing machine?
What is taedium vitae?
Do you understand the effects of the profit motive on your actions?
You see, I find myself at the usual center of two lines of warriors: the defense budget cutters and the social services budget cutters.
If either side “wins,” I win and lose.
My household budget depends on both.
My investment portfolio will roll with the punches.
Newspapers tell me about a group or groups of people in Libya – “Help us!” they shout over the political maneuverings of the U.S. government of the people, by the people and for the people.
As a simple man, I ask myself who is the maker of the wooden basket full of snacks provided for hospital patient families.
A virtual horn of infinite plenty.
What is the difference between real artificial flavour and the “real taste” of its zero calorie equivalent?
Which is better, “original” or “new and improved,” and which one is better for me?
Just because you can pack more people into an arena doesn’t mean the product is any better, just that the owner(s) and investor(s) are spreading fixed costs across a larger portion of the population.
…where was I?…
…hmm…diverted by Kenny at the Rogersville PO (thanks for the U.S. Civil War and evergreen stamps, btw) for a trip to Eidson to get some Ronald Reagan stamps, purple heart stamps and golden ring stamps, breathing in the view from mountain top twisty roads…
Has Shirley Begley claimed a dog named Bella as a dependent on her 2010 taxes? Rita Richardson won’t say but she did share the story of a Japanese lady who made the origami gift of love hanging in the rural post office.
Was it Brenda who kindly brought the Ingraham clock?
Thanks to Peggy for the delicious boiled custard! I’m spoiled!
Thanks to Joe Price for stopping by.
There is, in conversation, a level of understanding, corresponding to our number of experiences, to which we adjust regularly, willingly or not.
Knowing I’ll probably go to a local racetrack on Friday, I sit here wondering about the choices we make when we shouldn’t be given choices.
Wandering into the territory of parenthood.
Thinking about the difference between TV/video and newspapers/Internet text.
Readin’, writin’ and ‘rithmetic.
As a parent, would I insist my child learn to read/write as much as if not more than develop athletic skills?
Symbology symbolises idolatrous habits.
No natural law states we must distinguish one set of scripts from another.
We can tell a sick plant/animal from a healthy one, identify substances with natural (although weak in comparison to concentrated artificial) healing properties, cook meat/vegetables/seasoning to eliminate/reduce foodborne illness (converted to a whole industry of infinite appeals to one’s palate) and participate in activities that facilitate barter exchange – without reading or writing.
Oral teaching. Oral history.
Memes, black swans, mortgage derivatives, deepwater well valves, cruise missiles, political constitutions and nuclear power plants are symbols of writing and reading.
So are holy texts.
What would I expect my child to accomplish with reading/writing skills?
On the racetrack, one finds green/yellow/red lights, a few dials and switches, a radio headset and the determination to have a faster/smarter trip toward Victory Lane than the other drivers in a race (and/or a good show for one’s sponsors).
In the hospital, lots of medical charts get updated with doctors’ notes, prescriptions, allergy notices, X-rays, CT scans and vital sign readings.
I imagine an infographic poster demonstrating the value of one’s developed skills/talents as a racecar driver/crew/chief/owner vs. a hospital doctor/staff/administrator/owner.
Pyramids, pies and dotted lines.
What would my child enjoy learning, regardless of hieroglyphic interpretation skills?
Heuristics? Vagabond? Farming? Desk jockey? Car racing? Ruling the known universe?
Up to age six, my child would be subject to my rule as reading/writing teacher.
After that age, peers and professional educators would assist in my child’s search for a viable means of self-support (assuming no dependent medical condition).
If my child didn’t learn to read by the end of the third year of primary school, would I start directing my child toward a career path that requires no formal reading/writing skills?
And if my child couldn’t finish, then what?
Questions from a childless one, envious of every parent’s dream for progeny, no matter whether it’s simply to get a child out of the house or rocketing to Mars.
Do you bluff your way through a game of cards or play to the strength of cards you’re dealt?
You see, my grandmother was a Southern Baptist and I learned that her religious sect/dialect/denomination didn’t allow card playing.
My mother in-law is a Presbyterian and she plays bridge but has never touched a drop of alcohol.
I watch players on the national political level bluff and bet, some who drink or use other body enhancement substances before and after negotiating.
“I’ll bet my defense budget cuts against your elderly medical care vouchers, come next elections.”
I hear ancient Greek and Roman politicos, Asian princes, African pharoahs and Central/South American kings making the same bets.
The pure essence of a social species complicating simple barter exchange.
You raise/grow your own food for your family or you don’t.
My thoughts and prayers to those who’ve lost loved ones, including the Manis family.
To see a family that puts gentle loving first reminds me that murderous, maniacal members of our species are not the norm.
Those who negate the nesting habits of suburbanites should take a detailed account of alternatives.
Healthy alternatives that affirm life, regardless of lifestyle.
My time on this planet is limited, approaching zero.
I live in a neighbourhood that resembles a housing estate and is surrounded by them.
From nomads to farmers to soldiers to urban dwellers, we find ways to live for ourselves and families.
After college, my mother in-law settled into a three-story farmhouse, living there 60 years before moving into this single-floor rancher in the suburbs.
At 93.5, she looks at her remaining years and asks where she wants to live…
…in this house a few more years, with neighbours both as friends and family, many who enjoy not only playing bridge but also serving in the name of the Lord for community service?
…with her daughter in-law she loves, a Southern Baptist who doesn’t play bridge, in a multistory house having difficult egress, away from my mother in-law’s lifelong church and friends?
…a nonsuburban setting such as a nursing home or assisted living facility, with full medical attention 24/7 but she having to make new friends, some she’d hope who both play bridge and read the Bible daily, monthly cost being another major concern?
She asked her daughter (my wife) to make the decision.
Tomorrow, we implement the plan my wife wisely chose after talking to her mother, with final input from the doctor.
Family or inter/national politics – negotiating skills are important.
However, we don’t elect people into or out of families, do we?
What are politicians doing with your family’s money, though, huh, wolfly sheepish sheepshearers that they are?
treetrunkdings 