Today Brian and I visited my husband, Harvey, at the nursing home. Today is Harvey’s 82nd birthday.
I took a picture I painted –
and Brian brought a packaged apple pie.
Harvey didn’t realize it was his birthday, even when I showed him the picture and we explained it to him. His nurse jumped in, though, joined us in singing, “Happy Birthday,” and said it was okay that I put the picture on the wall where he can see it. She also arranged for him to have a precious cup of coffee with his pie.
He didn’t say anything that made sense today, but seemed to be comfortable and definitely enjoyed the pie and coffee.
Later the nursing home sent us a video of the staff surrounding his bed holding a ‘cake’ with fruit all around it, plus two lighted candles, singing, “Happy Birthday” again, and passing around another plate with fruit that they all shared while celebrating with Harvey. He dived right into the plate, grabbing a sliced banana 🍌 after trying and finally succeeding on blowing out the candles.
I can’t imagine a nicer gesture. It brings me to tears that they dropped everything today to help make his day as pleasant as possible.
I am in the process of doing a lot of changing since we moved to Thailand.
Some of them are health-related:
I used to drink coffee by the pot full. I would start a pot in the morning. My husband and I would drink a cup and then I would finish the pot. If dinnertime came and the pot was empty, I would make another pot and drink most of it, if not all. Coffee didn’t keep me awake. It was like drinking water to me. – now we drink mushroom teas (various) with bone broth mixed in. This is a very healthful drink. It’s supposed to do all kind of wonderful things for us. The bone broth is supposed to help with hair and fingernails. We drink one cup with breakfast. Now many times I have an iced mocha in the afternoon as a pick-me-up. I never liked iced coffee, but the ones I’ve tried here are all wonderful, and the ‘iced’ helps me ‘weather’ the weather better…
Exercise – I used to do yoga stretches and various exercise videos on my computer at various times when we lived in the states. I THOUGHT about them more than actually DOING them. – Now Brian and I go to the gym every morning at 0-dark-thirty to use the treadmills for half an hour. Brian says he can tell I’m healthier. I also make it a point to do at least half an hour of yoga stretches daily. I also dance with water bottles in each hand at least every other day, trying to work on my arms and back, as well as have fun moving more.
Eating – I used to eat what I liked and too much of that. I belonged to the “clean plate club”, practically licking the plate before I finished stuffing my face. Sometimes I went back for seconds. We always had high carb, salty snacks on hand. Now I eat breakfast and dinner. Brian and I share whatever we get. He eats 2/3 and I eat 1/3. I try to drink LOTS more water than I did before. If I get hungry, I chew some sugarless gum.
Using my day – In the states I was trying to handle more and more of what my husband used to do, but couldn’t do anymore. I was overwhelmed by to-do lists that only grew. I felt guilty when I went up to my art room, even though I sold much of what I made up there. By the time I had handled enough of the list to do a little bit of something fun, I had run out of time or was simply too exhausted to do it. Now I can put myself at the top of the list mentally. I still have ‘to-do’ lists and a list of errands we need to run, calls I need to make, etc., but I make a conscious effort to include something FUN in my day while I still have energy and actually ENJOY the doing. Now that I’m officially ‘retired,’ I am moving from one fun thing to another any time I’m not needed elsewhere. My attitude is one of improving my quality of life. Getting a second chance at life changed me forever. I am worth doing something fun now. 👍
I have been in Thailand about 2-1/2 months now. We have had a whirlwind of activity with my husband’s health, moving to my condo, changing out the furniture, figuring out all the details we needed to do every day in order to get our lives going here.
Now things are finally taming down. There are still a LOT of details to be handled, and we are doing these the best we can, but our day to day lives have begun to settle into a routine now, and I’m embracing that new life.
Our typical day now looks like this –
I get up at 5am to get ready to go to the gym with Brian and walk on the treadmill while he runs. We walk back, shower, and then share breakfast and discuss if there is anything we need to accomplish that day. Three times a week that includes half the day going to visit Harvey at the nursing home, making sure he is okay, comfortable, and as content as possible. Many other days, though, we don’t have anything that we can do from our list.
Brian is trying to do more work, since expenses of taking in both of his parents – particularly the hospital/nursing home surprise – is a bit hard to handle. So, if we don’t have anything scheduled, he goes off to work and we then share dinner.
This means he is free to concentrate on doing well for his clients, and I am free to do whatever I would like to do with my day.
Today I spent quite a bit of time in my art alcove.
I love spending time here. I thought I would grieve at having given up all my carefully collected art stuff, but I’m concentrating on trying to learn how to draw what I see better. I keep these in the big fat sketchbook you see here. I have regular pencils, colored pencils, and watercolors. I am choosing pictures I like from the net, particularly YouTube and Pinterest, and trying to reproduce them the best way I can. I’m having SUCH a good time trying. I don’t feel pressured to produce anything for sale. (Thank goodness!) I can simply enjoy the process of trying to draw and paint something for the sheer joy of it, wiling away the hours with a grin on my face. I’m also making small paintings for my housekeeper each week, thanking her for her work, and for my new ‘grandson’ who loves dinosaurs.
I’m always in the middle of a good book, too. The current one is another Nora Roberts book. I can’t believe I’ve missed any because she is probably my favorite author right now, but I’m delighted to dive into anything she has written.
I am trying to balance my walking on the treadmill in the morning with yoga stretches in the afternoon or evening. I’ve been doing these stretches for a long time, but they are especially useful in times when I develop mysterious old lady problems, like the grabbing pain in my back last week, that need to be carefully stretched out to heal.
I, of course, spend time on the blog. If I’m not actively writing a post, I’m researching things to find to share with you. There are so many talented people in our world, and I’m delighted to be able to share their work with you.
I also take time to stare at my jigsaw puzzle. It’s a really good thing that I’m not feeling any pressure to get it done. I find that I’m much slower than I used to be. This “owls” puzzle is difficult, and I may die of old age before it’s finished. That’s okay, too, because I love taking a few minutes here and there to see if I can make some progress.
Last night Brian downloaded Family Tree Maker software for me. We had it for years in the states. Now I have my data attached to it again, and I can spend lots of time seeing old photos, remembering things about relatives, learning new things about people related to us, but I didn’t actually know. I find it fascinating.
In the middle of the afternoon, if I don’t contact him first, Brian texts me, asking if I’m okay and if I want him to order a coffee for me. Imagine that! Today I got a cold chocolate mocha coffee that was delivered to the condo building table downstairs. Brian texted me the order number, and I went downstairs, retrieved it, came back to my place and slurped it. What a difficut life I have!🤪
We share dinner, talk awhile, and then hit the hay because 5am the next morning comes quickly.
And that’s our new routine. I’m studying some Thai language tapes, trying to learn some very basic phrases. I will be able to learn more quickly, I hope, when we see the last hearing aid people and I get some hearing aids. (Trying to reproduce a sound when you can’t hear it accurately isn’t quite a waste of time, but close to it.)
More plans in the works as we get more details settled.
Brian and I shared a breakfast, then I went for a glorious, healing massage by Khun Wey-o. I changed clothes and we went to visit Harvey at the nursing home. It is our 56th wedding anniversary today, so I was hoping we would have a good visit with him. He was upset, making baseless accusations, unhappy with everything, saying ‘they were out to kill him, and that if we left, he would die.’ Not the best way to celebrate a marriage… We did contact the management to ask if there is anything else we can do that might brighten his mood. He has good days and bad days and no one can predict which will be which.
When we came home, I immediately grabbed a hoodie and my book and we headed for the coffee shop next to our condo building to be ‘scarce’ while my wonderful new housekeeper, Khun Nong, cleaned my place. (I’m trying to say this casually, but I’m simply thrilled to have help at all – first time in my life!) AND with the things I’m having trouble doing these days, such as scrubbing floors, dusting the things I would rather ignore because they are up too high, down too low, or I’m just lazy and would like to ignore them). When I come back, everything is shining brightly. Ahhhhhhhhh!
While at the coffee shop, we tried a new thing – orange coffee. I don’t know what all is in it – I just know it tastes fabulous. I made mine last as long as possible, wanting to prolong the pleasure.
And then Brian ordered us Thai Beef & Noodles for dinner. They kindly put the hot stuff in little bags with rubberbands rather than dumping it into the dish. I was very appreciative as I’m a wuss as far as spicy or hot, and if I manage to get some hot stuff down, I pay for it late at night. This was absolutely wonderful. I enjoyed every bite. Too many carbs, but good for us otherwise and my taste buds danced a happy dance. 💃
I’ve had my mile walk at the gym, shower, and breakfast, and am ready (more or less) to tackle the world. 😄
The main thing on our schedule today is to go see Harvey at the nursing home. I’m really hoping he is glad to see us and talkative, even if he doesn’t make any sense. The last few times he looked up when we come into his room, but he didn’t react, and ignored the fact we were there, content to stare at the TV, silent, unless we proded him with questions. Then the answers were mostly one word.
It makes it even harder than it already is, when you have no clue whether coming to see him is of any benefit at all to him or not. It doesn’t really matter in the long run if he knows who we are or not. If he was happy we came, we could try to make that enough.
Our new routine, for financial and sanity reasons, is to visit him one day and not visit the next two, boiling down to three times a week. We are hoping that he will get with the program there, be more cooperative with the staff, and be comfortable with his new ‘in-the-moment-40-or-more-years-ago’ life.
Brian needs to spend a longer time at work today, so we may or may not stop for a coffee on the way home, and then I’ll entertain myself with all the wonderful things I can do in my condo.
This is the hot mocha “signature coffee” at a place called, “Nine One Coffee” I enjoyed with Brian while we were out running errands this morning. I have discovered I LOVE the art associated with the hot drinks, and, surprisingly also love the cold varieties of a lot of these, given the heat and humidity here. Brian has a seemingly unending series of coffee places he likes, so I spend my days grinning like a nut as an ‘adventure’ uncovers another one! 😋
I like the art SO much that I always smile and tell the server how pretty I think the design is. Brian says that I shouldn’t do this – should just drink, THEN bow and say, “thank you” as we’re leaving. I refuse, though, and the servers seem to like what I am doing.
How could one NOT compliment the server on designs this pretty?
We snarfed down these cookies before I started my stricter low carb diet…
And shared a warm seed-covered bagel with cream cheese inside…
I think this one was when we were in Laos at the coffee bar where the stray white cat slept on a table between shops.
A beautiful ‘swan’ in your coffee cup. Almost too pretty to mess up by drinking it.
I really look forward to our ‘adventures’ that Brian works so hard to provide. One day it’s coffee – another day a lady who hand crochets tote bags – and today was talking about taking my sock with a hole in the big toe to a lady nearby who repairs things. (I told him I thought I only had ONE sock needing this, and that I could fix it with a teeny tiny sewing kit. He said I would be supporting the local economy if I brought the sock to the woman. At least I’ll check to make sure I don’t have other socks in need of repair…
We bought a new coffee pot a couple of days ago, as the first part of solving our problem of ‘stuff’ swirling around in our coffee. At first I thought the ‘stuff’ was grounds, due to my husband’s hands shaking, or our maybe putting too much water in the pot, causing an overflow over the top of the coffee filter and distributing grounds in the coffee maker.
I cleaned the coffee maker really thoroughly, using commercial cleaner, then baking soda, then rinsing really carefully and wiping everything out, plus another running of the carafe and the filter holder through the dishwasher. No dice. STILL stuff in the coffee cups.
We used the new coffee maker. NO ‘stuff’ in the cups at first pour from the pot. We still had problems when we refilled the cups from the big coffee thermos we use. So – we had a problem there, too. There was no way to really clean the thermos any more than I was by putting boiling water and baking soda in there, too -which I did – but that didn’t do the job.
I ordered another thermos from Amazon which was supposed to be delivered Monday. Happily, the guy from Amazon deliveries who has been coming up our driveway (hooray!) lately, came TODAY with the new thermos!
I immediately rinsed out the old thermos and left it to dry, thinking if the world ended and the new one didn’t work, the old one was better than nothing. I started a new pot of coffee in the new pot and got the new thermos ready to receive it.
VOILA! I poured the fresh coffee into the new thermos and there was NOTHING swirling around in my coffee cup! And the coffee tasted good, as well.
Lately our coffee hasn’t been as good. I’ve been mentally blaming it on my husband, who makes the coffee a lot of mornings. His hands shake, and I was assuming that was the reason we’ve had ‘grounds’ in the coffee lately.
I used a commercial pot cleaner, and then followed that up with a suggestion I found on the net to use baking soda. I made sure to run several pots of just water afterwards to clean out the cleaners. I ran the coffee pot carafe, lid, and filter holder through the dishwasher, as well.
The result is the same. This morning, as I was refilling my cup from our large coffee thermos – the thought occurred to me that maybe the THERMOS is the problem. I’ve cleaned it, of course, but we’ve had it for years, and maybe what I’m seeing isn’t ‘grounds,’ but bits of ‘stuff’ from the inside of the thermos.
I have thrown caution to the winds now, ordering another large thermos with pump from Amazon because my husband is really serious about his one cup a day of coffee (rarely two), and I EXIST on coffee all day long and into the evening until all the coffee is gone. (My only ‘limit’ is that I don’t make another pot). It is supposed to be delivered tomorrow.
We’ll start using the new thermos as soon as we have it and then will decide if we need to buy a new pot, as well.
Good morning! I’m hoping my coffee will perk me up. For some reason I’m still feeling groggy. I’ve never been the type of person who comes bounding cheerfully out of the bed dispensing smiles and laughter, but I’m not usually quite so sluggish. Writing to you is a great way to make me embrace the day.
123RF.com
We’ll leave in a bit to run our errands for the day. Since we’re still in the middle of our big heat wave (105 actual temperature today) we’ll be IN for the rest of the day when we get back. We’re supposed to get some rain starting Wednesday the MAY cool things off a bit. If we do, THAT will bring a smile or six from me!
Sawyer
I finished painting my Christmas presents yesterday! I’ll share pics of them with you before I store them for later. I’ve had a truly wonderful time working on them. I’m planning to clean up the art room, then scheme on what to tackle next.
creativeartworksblog 