Archive for the ‘Aging’ category

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Sophie’s Big 2

September 7, 2014

Today we attended the birthday for Sophie, Sophie turned two. She is the grand-daughter of our friends John and Chris Coil who live up in Davis, CA. The party was held at a nice park up in Santa Monica.
For my east coast friends, Santa Monica is a community about 10-20 miles west of downtown LA. We get there by taking the 405 north and then the 10 west. It is about a 45-60 minute drive from San Pedro. No big deal on a Sunday morning. Traffic was light and no delays. More about the party later.
So we had talked about meeting our friend Roberta at the Long Beach Greyhound station. I screwed up in not looking at text message detail from the previous night. Roberta had decided no to come. So no big deal, we would continue on to Santa Monica.
We were up early this morning to get ready. Of all the Sundays that Mary K didn’t go to church, she decided that she had to go to church today. We had told her about the party weeks ago. Of course, she didn’t remember anything about the conversation. She never remembers. So she tells us that she would call a cab. We ask do have money for that? Do you have phone number for cab company? So we decide to take her to church and drop her off. We called one of her friends to ask her to give her a ride home. I made sure that Mary had her cell phone and her house keys. So far, so good. I reminded her how to call me. I have speed dial set up on her phone. All she has to do is push the number 2 for 5 seconds.
Okay back to Santa Monica. Santa Monica has been in the news back in Boston over the last few days. Dunkin Donuts will be opening new restaurants on the West Coast. The first one was opened this past Tuesday in Santa Monica. So we think great, we’ll stop by and get an iced coffee and a donut. I load up the address on my GPS on my iPhone and off we go. We arrive at the address on Wilshire Blvd. Line is out the door and around the block. No DD iced coffee today. I reset the GPS to the park address and we continue on to the party. We’ll eventually get to a DD out here once the hoopla dies down. For the time being however, there’s Starbucks.
Santa Monica is also famous for being the location where Whitey Bulger hung out while on the lamb from the FBI for many years. By the way the unit went on the market recently.
Sasha and Zach (Sophie’s parents) had provided us with bagels and coffee and other treats. I found out that little Sophie likes cream cheese but doesn’t care for the bagel. So she had licked all of the cream cheese off of the bagel and didn’t eat the bagel. Good for a laugh.
There were lots of little kids at the party, the oldest probably about three or so. Lots of infants too.
So at about noon, I get a phone call from Mary. She had arrived home from church. She had gotten inside the perimeter door but couldn’t find the key for the condo door or couldn’t open the door. Now I know for sure that the key is on that key ring. Paula and I try to describe it to her. Eventually one of our neighbors helped her open the door. So we now have a couple of action items. Get some graphite to lubricate the lock and mark the key with some finger nail polish.
We never seem to be able to predict what kind of predicament that Mary can manage to get herself in. All of our best efforts to prepare for any eventuality are fraught with peril.
Here are a few pictures from the party.

Categories: Aging, California, Family
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The New Old Age

August 27, 2014

I found an interesting article on the New York Times blog on aging today. The title is “Her Own Kind of Absence”

It was 8:30 a.m. Only weeks earlier, she would have been in the kitchen by 8:30, asking me what was on the agenda for the day. Now, she wouldn’t move, her thin, knobby fingers resting on the coverlet.

I didn’t know if my 93-year-old mother was depressed or if her dementia had suddenly worsened. She had been living in my upstate New York home for a year and a half, ever since I had convinced her she could no longer live alone.

 

Whenever I see an article about either Dementia and/or Alzheimer’s it tend to click through to read it. The articles on the New York Times are always worth reading.

It is worth reading. Here is the link to the entire article.

I have also added the link to “The New Old Age” on my Blogroll list. See the lower right hand corner of the screen. The “Blog Roll” is my list of Blogs that I find interesting. I will be editing and updating over the next day or so.

 

Categories: Aging, Blogging
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Good Gravy

August 23, 2014

Okay, this is part story about cooking for our family here in San Pedro and part how to make gravy.

Long ago before I met Paula, I learned how to cook a turkey. In 1973, I was working for Raytheon in Houston Texas as a sort of high-tech gypsy installing systems for the FAA. I was away from home for the first time and my room-mate and I thought we ought to have a Thanksgiving dinner with all the trimmings. So I called home and asked Mom how it was done. So from that day forward, I made the Turkey.

So many years later, our family had flown out to San Pedro for Thanksgiving one year. We were there a few days before Turkey day, and we were discussing what to do for Thanksgiving. Mary was all for making reservations. Paula and I told her that wasn’t going to happen. We said we don’t do Thanksgiving in a restaurant. We offered to do the cooking. And so it began.

Our first challenge was to find a liquor store that sold Beaujolais Nouveau. Beaujolais Nouveau hits the market every year in November. But most of the grocery store hadn’t a clue what we were talking about. Eventually we found a few bottles. Now we were ready to get properly medicated for the event.

The next challenge was to clear off the dining room table. Over the previous few months, mail had accumulated to the point of becoming a huge pile. Harold and Mary weren’t accustomed to having a large group for dinner. So we started on the table.

I don’t think that Mary had been doing much cooking in that kitchen. We discovered on Thursday morning that the kitchen sink was clogged. Just imagine for a minute how hard it might be to find a plumber on Thanksgiving or Christmas. Can’t be done. We eventually got the sink unclogged with a plunger and the meal went off without any further hitches.

Paula and I tend to cook together often. Sometimes, I do all the cooking. Usually she has me do the oven roasts (beef, turkey, lamb, etc.) One time, just after we had arrived here two years ago, Mary complemented Paula on a fine meal. Paula says, ahem, Joe cooked that. Oops. She now pays more attention to who is doing the cooking. So last night, she complemented me on the Shepherd’s Pie. She cleaned her plate and had more today reheated for lunch. There is no better complement than to see someone licking the plate after the meal.

Now on to the gravy. Last night I was working on my version of Shepherd’s Pie. I started with three different recipes and kept the parts of each recipe that I liked. One recipe called for brown gravy. Browned the ground beef and time to make gravy.

For Shepherd’s Pie you need about a cup of gravy. Start with two Tablespoons of unsalted butter. Not margarine, BUTTER. The real thing. Never mind the cardiologist who going into fits.

Melt the butter in a small sauce pan over low heat. When the butter is completely melted, slowly stir in 2 tablespoons of flour with a whisk, stirring constantly. At this point you should have a nice smooth concoction. Measure out about 1 cup of beef broth. (If you are making chicken gravy, use chicken broth). Add about 2/3 cup into the mixture, continue stirring. As it thickens you will likely need to add more liquid to get the right consistency thickness. One can always make thick gravy thinner. Making thin gravy thicker is a bit of a problem.

Need more gravy? Just start with proportionally more butter, flour, and liquid. Process is the same. Add whatever flavoring suits you. For the Shepherd’s pie, I added a couple of tbsp’s worcestershire sauce, and a couple of tbsp’s of ketchup. Sometimes, I use gravy master. Adds flavor and makes the gravy a bit browner.

Categories: Aging, California, Cooking, Family
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The Mystery of My Father’s Mind

August 15, 2014

This morning I read an interesting article about Alzheimer’s disease on the New York Times by Rebecca Rotert. Whenever I see an article on the human mind I usually read it to try to make sense the changes that are happening to Paula’s mother’s mind.
 
 Here is an excerpt from the article:
 
 


 He went to the opera with her for years, and even though he dreaded it — the horrible seats, the suit and tie, the story he couldn’t understand — he never let on. Except to us kids. When they announced that they were headed to the opera, he would make a face as if he were about to undergo a spinal tap. But to her, he remained willing, enthusiastic even. It was one of the things I loved most about their love, the emotional concessions they made. I will not only go to the opera with you, but I will be happy about it, so that your joy can flow uninterrupted.
 
 Tonight, Mom’s going to the opera with an old friend, and I stay home with Dad. We don’t leave him alone anymore. Without Mom he’s terrified.
 
 Mom around here somewhere? he asks. I tell him she’s at the opera. He looks at the window, then back at me. Is Mom around?

 
 Here is the pointer to the entire article.
 
 And so it goes, we try not to leave Mary alone for very long. It seems that in some cases our minds fail before our bodies. We are seeing that in Mary.
 
 When we first moved out here in 2012, she was not very happy with us moving in with her. She didn’t feel that she needed any help. Fast forward two years, and she has learned to appreciate our presence. Though she still hasn’t learned how to use the TV remote. She hasn’t told us but I think that she knows that if we weren’t here she would be in a nursing home.
 
 The other point I took from the article was how their love manifested itself. Go read the whole article.
 
 – Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

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Mary

August 14, 2014

Every day is a struggle. We continue to try to keep it together. Mary’s memory continues to fail.

This evening we were having dinner and discussing our plans for a picnic on Saturday. We always try to be inclusive with Mary. We tell her of our plans and ask her would she like to go.

We are planning to meet with our long time friend Roberta who will be taking the train from San Diego up to Anaheim. We told Mary that we would pick Roberta up at the train station at Angel’s Stadium and go to a local park in Orange to meet up with Mike and family.

Mary asks us “Do I know Roberta?”. We tell her we should hope so. She was Paula’s maid of honor at our wedding and friend of Paula since her days at UC Davis. Blank stare. She was at Harold’s funeral in 2009. Nothing.

Were Harold and I at the wedding? Yes, let me show you a picture.

2014-08-13 20.20.05

 

Well she recognized the picture, but had no remembrance of the event. I thought that only her short term memory was failing, but from this event it seems clear that her long term memory is also failing. Picture was taken in October, 1978. Sigh.

She probably won’t come to the picnic. She is worried about the rough surfaces and possibility of falling. Fair enough, we understand.

Categories: Aging, Mary
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Mary

August 1, 2014

So here we are in the month of August already. It has been two months since Mary’s fall that fractured her hip up in Utah. We arrived back in LA on June 29.

Physically, she is making good progress. We are taking her for outpatient PT twice a week. She is seeing Amanda  who is the same therapist who was helping her after her shoulder surgery. We take her to church on Sunday and our Bible study meeting on Wednesday morning. We take her to some various lodge activities (mostly where there is food involved, like pot luck suppers, etc). Everyone is happy to see her. They give her hugs. I think she enjoys seeing everyone.

Getting ready to go somewhere with her takes twice as long. Paula has to make sure that she gets dressed. Someone :(either Paula or I) have to help her with her socks and shoes. And off we go to the elevator. Woe unto us if the elevator is out of service. She really can’t handle stairs anymore. Luckily, there are two elevators in the building, but the other elevator is twice as far to walk to. Then load her into the car and fold up the walker and throw it in the back seat. Off we go.

We just received her HP placard for her from the California DMV. That will help in some places. We submitted the paper work to her doctor as soon as we got back to San Pedro. But sometimes the HP spaces aren’t very close or already taken.

So Paula asks her last night before she went to bed. Did you do your exercises? The answer, NO! I’m tired, I’m not going to do them. She was sounding like a child telling her mother “I will NOT take my medicine!”  We tell her, “If you don’t do your exercises, healing will take longer.” Also this morning, she was complaining about arthritis pain. Did you take your meds last night (which includes pain med for arthritis)? Of course not. Paula needs to make sure she takes her meds. She won’t do it on her own. The older she gets, the more child like she becomes.

It is always a struggle to understand what she likes to eat. She has told us that she doesn’t like pasta or pizza. Okay. But then she sees an article in the Sunday newspaper about homemade pizza with fresh tomatoes and anchovies. She decides that she would like to try that. But you don’t like pizza, I tell her. Never mind just do what I ask.

While we’re on the subject of food. We try real hard to set portion sizes such that she finishes everything on her plate. Otherwise we end up having half a dozen left-over plates in refrigerator. We also end up with half glasses of wine (her wine of choice is white zinfandel) and buttermilk. How someone can drink wine and buttermilk at the same time is beyond me. But whatever, if Mary wants buttermilk and wine, then she gets buttermilk and wine. I just wish she would finish it.

So what does Mary like to drink? In no particular order, she likes Dr Pepper (not diet Dr P). We usually get the two liter bottle for her. Buttermilk, White Zinfandel (she usually has a glass at dinner time. The cheap stuff is fine ($7.50 for 2 liter). I doubt that there is such a thing as expensive White Zin) and finally she likes to drink some kind of juice (usually, Cranberry-Apple or something similar.)

She is scheduled next week for a follow up visit to her neurologist. She has hydro encephalitis or water on the brain. Neurologist sees her about every six months. MRI about once a year. She complained to us about why she had to see him, he can’t do anything for me. Which is true. The only solution is surgery and that is not a particularly good option for someone her age. The most noticeable outward symptom is what is called “Old lady shuffle”. Mary has been trying diligently to walk with a normal stride, heel toe, heel toe, heel toe. Here’s and article about the disease. The doctor tells us what to expect as the condition worsens. Problems are motor skills, incontinence, eventually death.

So Paula and I are doing the best we can. Wednesday night was date night. We went out to see a movie without Mary. The movie we saw was “Boyhood“. It was a long slog of 2 hrs 45 minutes. My ass was real sore after sitting through that opus. It was the story of a boy growing up. It was filmed over a 10 year period from age 8 to 18. Good film but way too long.

Next week we have tickets to see a local production of “Guys and Dolls” at the Warner Grand theater in San Pedro. The Warner Grand is a beautifully restored Art Deco theater. Once again, no Mary. She really has a hard time with theaters and uneven floor surfaces. Besides, we need the down time.

Later.

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