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Saturday

July 30, 2016

Here I sit at our dining room table writing a blog post. We have no appointments, no things that need to get done, no errands, no grocery shopping. Nothing.

Paula is working on cleaning up our bedroom. Organizing and dusting. Me, I’m just writing a post.

So I’m done reading the NY Times and Boston Globe. The conventions are done. I’ve done two crossword puzzles. Saturday puzzles are the hardest.

img_4456Mary finally got up at about 11:45. Fed her breakfast and made sure she took her meds. Now she’s back in bed. She probably won’t be up until 6 pm to watch the evening news.

It’s afternoon and that means time for iced coffee. We started getting a product from Starbuck’s that is cold brew unsweetened coffee. Sold in the supermarket dairy section. Good stuff.

Once again, the conventions are done. Can anyone explain to me why in this day and age that we have to wait until November to vote in the general election. If you haven’t figured out by now who you’re going to vote for you, you’re not paying attention or something. BTW, I’m voting for Hillary. If you follow me on FB, you probably know that already. Though I expect that 100 days will be enough time for Trump to shoot himself in the foot a few times.

So tomorrow is the Chili Cook-off at LA Harbor Lodge in San Pedro. So I will be getting out the crock pot this evening and getting my entry ready. I will be doing a pork tenderloin and black bean chili. Here’s the recipe.

Later this evening I will be watching my Boston Red Sox play the Angels. Since the Angels are a local team, that means that the game will be blacked out on MLBtv. I will have to find it on the feed from our cable provider (Time Warner).

Well the iced coffee is done, that means it must be time for my martini.

TTFN

Joe

 

Categories: Baseball, Family, Politics
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Mary

July 28, 2016

Time for an update. The process of updating her will and other related estate documents is moving forward. I should have a draft for review in the next couple of days. We have been making contact with her investment banks to make sure that a TOD Beneficiary has been signed and filed. (TOD stands for Transfer on Death.) I have only one or two left to do. I need to do it when Mary is up and alert, because the banks generally want to talk with her.

The goal here is to avoid probate. Probate involves time and lawyer fees. Both are to be avoided.  Unless of course, you happen to be a lawyer.

Mary seems to be having trouble getting functional in the morning. She hasn’t been going to either church or Bible study. Church is at 10:30 AM and Bible Study is at 10 AM. Usually she is complaining of dizziness. She goes back to bed. The dizziness  usually passes by noon. So I have started making her appointments for noon or later.

So on Wednesday night, we all went to a 50 year ceremony and dinner at Lodge for Bob Haynes. Bob was a good friend of Harold’s when he was alive. Being a Mason for fifty years is a very big deal in the Masonic fraternity. Hell, doing anything for fifty years is a big deal. We all had an excellent steak dinner. Mary has trouble with the buffet line, so Paula usually gets Mary a plate of food. After dinner, we went into the lodge room for the ceremony. Bob was escorted into the lodge and then to the East. Introductions were made of all the friends, family and Masonic dignitaries.

Then Bob got up to speak. He told us that he written a few words on his computer at home but he had left them at home on his computer. Nevertheless, he was not short of words. He gave a shout-out to Mary. Glad to see you here.

On Sunday, we will be going to the lodge’s chili cook-off. I will be doing a pork and black bean chili. Good eatin. And on Monday, we will be going to our OES meeting. More eating.

TTFN.

Joe

Categories: Family, Mary
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Mary

July 16, 2016

Time for an update on Mary. It has been a challenging week to be sure. She is doing okay. Not much change from the previous report. Physically, she is fine but she is still struggling with memory. No falls. She actually asked to use her walker a couple of nights ago.

Our word for today is “Probate”. Back on Monday, I made an appointment with Mary’s lawyer to update her will and related estate documents. She had done a full will package back in 2010 and I thought it would be prudent to review and update the package. So I made an appointment to meet with him on Thursday at 11 AM.

So when Thursday came along, she was coming up with all the excuses in the book as to why she couldn’t go to see the lawyer.2016-07-15 19.24.17 So she was digging in her heels. So Paula and I went without her. We brought all the documentation from the previous will. It was probably just as well. I pretty much knew what needed to be done. Having Mary with us would have just slowed the process down.

So right now, the only things that will get her out of the house are either her appointment to get her hair done or a doctor’s appointment. So in the future, I think I will schedule bank visits right after her hair appointment. That way I will already have her in the car and going places. Just one more stop. Laws of physics apply here, “A body in motion, tends to stay in motion”. So it is with Mary. Getting her to move in the first place is the hard part.

The previous will had our son Mike listed as the executor. I wanted to change the executors to be Paula and myself. Mike doesn’t have the time to deal with this stuff. The 2010 will was done when we were still on the East Coast and Mike was living in LA. It made sense at that time. Now, not so much.

We also asked our lawyer to look into her “living trust”. Mary’s condo deed is held by her family trust. So we need to be added as trustees to Mary’s family trust. This allows for the transfer of the title of the condo to pass to us after her death with a minimum of fuss. The last thing that we asked for was a “Durable Power of Attorney”. This would allow us to manage Mary’s personal affairs.

We will need to transfer her investments to the trust for the same reason. As it stands right now, her investment accounts don’t have any beneficiary named. That means that were she to die tomorrow, her investment accounts would be tied up in probate for a couple of years while we probated her will. Not a good thing. So we’re dealing with a new will, new durable power of attorney, trust doc’s, HIPPA documents, etc.

So I made a call to her investment account advisers to see whether or not a beneficiary had been named. So she has about six accounts set up with various bank’s investment companies. I suppose that having the multiple accounts spreads the risk, but it makes it a pain in the ass to deal with. Of course, she has no knowledge of any of the accounts. Eventually I will merge some of the accounts so that I am only dealing with a couple of accounts rather than 6-8.

So we should have a set of draft documents in a couple of weeks for our review. Then we will schedule the signing. At that time, I will bring the lawyer to her. Once I have updated trust documents, I should be able to do most of the changes to the investment accounts. The thing that gets this complicated is that most of her signatures will need to be notarized. More trips to the bank.

So the big question is why didn’t I start to do this a long time ago? No easy answers I suppose. It’s just a painful process to get all of the paperwork prepared, signed and notarized. I guess maybe that I had hoped that she had set up all of the accounts the right way in the first place and that we wouldn’t need to redo all of the estate documents. Sigh…

We’re off to the Greek Festival in Redondo Beach.

TTFN

Joe

 

 

 

Categories: Aging, Family, Mary
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Write Me a Letter

July 10, 2016

We spent Saturday doing another deep dive at the storage locker. We took a lot of glassware to the Goodwill. We threw a bunch of stuff into the dumpster. And we brought back a couple of boxes of pictures and memorabilia worth looking into. We continue to struggle with lack of dates and info on the back of pictures. We found a bunch of black and white pics from the 40’s and early 50’s. Paula didn’t recognize anyone and I’m sure that Mary won’t have a clue. Also, the pictures were too small to bother with scanning. So in the trash they go.

We did however find some treasures. We found a couple of pictures that I had taken during a vacation trip in Maine and PEI.

Cadillac Mt. Acadia Nat’l Park
Prince Edward Island

EPSON MFP image

The other interesting tidbit was a letter sent by Pvt. Paul Stanley (Harold’s Father) to his wife (Mimi). The letter was sent in November 1942 from Midland, TX where Paul was in the Army. We’re not quite sure exactly why Paul was in the army. He was a bit old for active duty (he was born in 1898). So here is the scan of the envelope. Two thing to note. No stamp. Postage was free for personal letters home. Addressed to Mrs. Paul Stanley, not Mrs. Mimi Stanley. Married women were always referenced as Mrs. [husband’s name] [husband’s last name.]

Apparently Valley Falls, KS was a small town. No other address info. I suspect that the letter reached the intended recipient without any trouble.

Apparently, Mimi (aka Mabel) joined Paul in Texas soon after the letter was sent because there was an ID card for Mabel at the Army Air Forces Bombardier School in Midland issued in Jan. 1943. So at this point, Harold was 24. Harold was born in August of 1919. Paula tells me by that time he was working at the Douglas Aircraft Co in Long Beach, CA. Interesting how people moved in those days to help with war effort.

EPSON MFP image
EPSON MFP image

So Mabel was 43. Her statue was listed as “Stout”. There’s a euphemism for you. That’s what you called someone who 5’2″ tall and weighed 156 lbs. The letter begins, “Dear Mother”. To which I replied, Huh? Apparently a term of endearment. I guess.

EPSON MFP image

EPSON MFP imageEPSON MFP image

By the way, Paul (or Paw-Paw) as Paula called him, died of a massive heart attack in the summer of 1954 while traveling up to Lassen National Park in Northern California.

Categories: Aging, Family, History
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Father’s Day

June 19, 2016

stan bowkerMy father died about 50 years ago when I was about 19. I don’t exactly remember all the exact dates. My memory has gotten just a bit foggy over the years. So here’s my story.

My mom and dad got married after WW2. They got married on March 3, 1946. My father was not in the military due to his epilepsy. Plus he might have been a bit old for the military. They probably didn’t feel right starting a family while the war was going on. Another reason that they might have delayed getting married was that my mother was a school teacher and at that time school teachers were forbidden to be married. Get married, lose your job.

So marry they did. They had three children, born in 1947, 1948 and 1950. So they were well into their 40’s by the time all of my brothers and I arrived.

Okay, fast forward to the late fifties. My dad suffered a heart attack. I think it was 1958 or 1959. What I remember most about the incident was how little the hospital could do for him at the time. No open heart surgery. No stents. All they could do was have him rest. Eventually they sent home from St. Elizabeth’s. He asked the doctor how he was going to manage the stairs to our home on Etna Street in Brighton.

Doctor’s instruction was take a step and then say one Hail Mary, then repeat. Anyway, life went on. That’s it for post-hospital instructions. I suppose there might have been some medicines, but they didn’t tell this 10 year old.

So in November (or maybe December) 1966, my dad had gall bladder problems. Surgery scheduled. Back in the day, they didn’t have laparoscopic surgery. They did it the old fashioned way, they cut you open. In those days, there was no MRI so when they didn’t quite know what was wrong, they cut you open. The term they used was “exploratory surgery”. Yikes.

At any rate, Dad came out of surgery okay, but was suffering some bleeding (showing up in his urine, I guess). Mind you this was a man that only 8 years prior had had a heart attack. So they scheduled another surgery (exploratory this time). I learned this when I went to visit him at St E’s after school one day. At any rate, he coded during the surgery. The surgeons did managed to get his heart restarted, but the damage was done. He never woke from the surgery. He was in a coma for about 6-8 weeks before he died.

So here are my take-aways.

Medicine has come a long, long way since the 1950’s and 1960’s. Looking back on that time it seems like it was dark ages of medicine. If the heart attack had occurred even 20 years later, he might still be alive.

My Dad never got to see us get married and have children of our own. I can truthfully tell you that grandchildren are such a fantastic blessing. Nothing makes me happier than to have our grand-kids run up to me and say “Hi, Grandpa” along with a hug.

Happy Father’s Day everyone!

Categories: Family
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Mary

June 6, 2016

01a838c7416f7af69fac2c1d92078b7296d5cb9dafSo it’s been a while since I last wrote. I found out that an old friend of Paula (Chuck) is a faithful reader. Paula was talking to him this evening looking for info on judges running for election in Los Angeles.

So here we go. Saturday, we planned on going to the Summer Fiesta at the OES Senior Living Center in Yorba Linda. We asked Mary if she would like to come. She said yes. We described it to her as a bunch of booths with stuff for sale, food trucks, tours or the SLC. Parking was a challenge and Mary had to walk a bit. Weather was beautiful. We got her inside the center where she sat for about an hour in a comfortable chair.

Meanwhile, Paula and I wander around checking out the many booths and greeting friends. We came back and got Mary up and got her outside. She again sat down in a folding chair in the shade. Still no interest in seeing everything. We got her a coke and that was about it. We tried to interest her in food. Nope, not going to happen.

So Paula and I shared a grilled cheese with bacon, then vanilla ice cream with fresh strawberries. Once we finished, we gave in and started taking her to the car to head home. We know when we are licked. We got her into the car and gave her a bottle of water. Well she only finished about three sips of water during the one hour ride home. It’s unbelievable what it takes to get her to drink water. I told her if she liked peace and quiet, the way to get it was to drink water. ie. I was going to nag her all the way home until she drank more water.

So on Sunday, we asked her early whether she would be coming to church. Initially she said yes, but changed her mind after a while. So she spent the rest of the day in bed. So we went to church and did lunch at the Pacific Diner with Theresa and the grand-kids. Little Sarah was none too happy when I gave her some home fries that happened to have some hot sauce on it. Oops, my bad.

Her memory is failing badly. She barely can remember anyone other than Paula and me. When we show her pictures of Harold (even a fairly recent ones), she doesn’t remember him. They were married for over 60 years and she remembers none of it.

Nevertheless, her general health is not too bad. A little bit weak at times. Her walk is pretty slow but she can get around. She tires easily though.

We found some pictures of a trip they took to Alaska. Remember any of it? Not a bit. We continue to dig through old pictures and letters found in her storage locker. I am sure they will help provoke more writings by me.

On occasion, Paula has brought up the subject of funeral planning. Nothing, she doesn’t want to talk about it. I guess we are on our own. Sigh.

By the way, we had a great trip back to Mass. in May. It was so nice to see many of our friends back there. We had caregivers taking care of Mary 24/7 while we were gone. There’s just no way now that we can leave her alone.

TTFN,

Joe

 

 

 

Categories: Dying, Family, Mary, Massachusetts
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More Pictures

May 8, 2016

I have scanned another batch of old pictures that came from the storage locker. These are mostly of Harold and his family. Harold was born in August of 1919. Harold could be described as a blizzard baby or blackout baby. A blizzard baby is a baby born 9 months after a blizzard or other natural event when the parents of said baby were predisposed to have sex.

When Paula was working in the pediatric practice, occasionally the nurses and doctors would see a sharp increase in the number of newborn patients. They would try to figure what happened nine months prior to affect the increase.

In Harold’s case, we think the event was Armistice Day in November 1918, the end of WWI. We don’t know if that actually happened, but it is amusing to consider the possibility.

So we have pictures of Paul Stanley, Harold’s father and namesake of Paula. Most of the pictures have notes on the back but not much in the line of dates. Best we can do is make a good guess. Paul was 20 or 21 when Harold was born. Paul didn’t serve in the military during WWI. He had a job driving a fuel truck for Union Oil.

(Note: Mouse over the pictures to see the captions.)

First are pictures where Harold was born and house built by Paul in Iowa.

House build by Paul Stanley in Iowa
House in Laurence KS where Harold was born in 1919

Next are some baby pics of Paul (Harold’s father).

Paul Stanley
Paul Stanley (perhaps Christening?)

Here are pictures of Paul & Mabel, Paul’s mother & sisters (not clear from the notes on the back as to who’s who.) and Paul’s brother Albert.

Albert Stanley (brother of Paul)
Alza Stanley & sisters (mother of Paul)
Paul & Mabel Stanley

Here is a scan of Paul’s Union card. Paul died in the summer of 1954 of a massive heart attack while visiting Yosemite National Park. Not much could be done in those days and the closest hospital about 50 miles away. Born in 1898. Paula called him Paw-Paw.

EPSON MFP image

That’s enough for now. I will have lots more when I get around to doing the scanning.

Categories: Family
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Mother’s Day

May 8, 2016

In honor of Mother’s Day, I dug through my photo archives and pulled out a few pictures of my mother (Grace), Paula, Mary and others. Grace passed away in 1996.

First is a picture of Grace and nephew James’ christening. Christmas 1990.

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Mary C, Rich, James, Grace

Santa was done by one of Harold’s Lodge friends (Gus Olguin). He arrived in the middle of the boys nap. The boys were in a fog. Christmas was very confusing for them that year. How will Santa know that we are not in Billerica? Santa knows all, we said.

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Harold, Mary and Santa 1989

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Grace, Mike and James – 1990

Grace and Anne Wood (friend of Grace from West Roxbury). This was our new pop-up trailer. This trip was to Prince Edward Island summer of 1987. PEI had some beautiful camp grounds. When we told Grace and Anne that we were going to PEI, they said we’ll come too. We’ll stay in a hotel, thank you very much. It was a fun trip. We went on a hay ride and Mike got to drive the tractor.

scan0106

If I recall, this was taken at my brother Rich’s house in Quincy, c 1987. I think it was Thanksgiving, but it could have been Christmas. Mary looks like she’s already on her third glass of champagne :<).

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(l-r) Mike, Mary S, Neil, Grace, Mary C, Rich, Paula

 

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The Storage Locker

April 30, 2016

Today Paula and I took another trip to the storage locker to work on cleaning it out. We try to get down there once a month or so. Sometimes it seems that we are not making progress. Here is what it looked like when we finished today. The picture on the right shows a mostly empty set of shelves. That’s the progress we’ve made.

We managed to fill up the Jeep with stuff. We filled up two trash bags. We went through a lot of saved documents including bank statements and bill from over 10 years ago. We dropped off some stuff at Good Will. We found a bunch of photos including our wedding pictures. We found Paula’s Job’s Daughters installation pictures for her term as Honored Queen.

We have a ton of slides yet to take home. I haven’t quite figured out how I can look at them. Most of them are stored in Kodak Carousels. Harold had a fondness for taking slide pictures rather than prints. I don’t know if there is a slide projector stashed somewhere. Asking Mary doesn’t return useful answers. My end game is to get as much scanned and stored on line.

Over the next few weeks I will be working on scanning the batch of pictures that we took home. I will post the interesting stuff. We continue to struggle with lack of dates and peoples names on the pictures.

We had asked Mary if she would like to come. I think that we finally persuaded her that it wasn’t a good idea. No place to sit. She would have really slowed us down.

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Mary

April 16, 2016
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Mike, Jonathan and Mary

Time for an update on Mary. Physically, she is doing just fine. No colds, no infections, no falls, no trips to urgent care or the ER. She’s doing as well as one could hope for 90+ years of age. That doesn’t mean things are getting easier.

Paula and I had a chance to sit and talk without Mary listening. We headed out to our local Starbuck’s and sat outside on a beautiful spring day and talked about everything. Mostly these days we are trying as best we can to improve Mary’s quality of life. It can be frustrating at times, but we give it our best shot.

Last Friday,  we told her that we would be going to the Mariner’s Night at the lodge. This event is held on the first and third Friday of the month. It is a casual get together where a light dinner is served along with drinks among friends. We usually just sit and have a drink and talk with our friends.

We try to encourage Mary to go so that she can socialize with other people (some of who she knows). Last couple of times she told us that she doesn’t like going. We suspect that the reason is that she has trouble holding up her side of the conversation. Her conversation skills have fallen such that all she can do is say hello and how are you. It didn’t help things when she found out that dinner was spaghetti, garlic bread and salad. Mary doesn’t like pasta, especially spaghetti. She doesn’t care much for bread either.

For us, it’s a chance to get out of the house and not cook dinner and not have to clean up. (Which of course, Mary no longer does and hasn’t done for years.) So we tell her that perhaps we can bring some food home for you. She says, oh alright I’ll go.

So Mary has told us on occasion that she would like to get out more. But when we do take her someplace, she complains or just sits and does nothing. There are many days where she gets up in the morning at 9 am eats breakfast and goes back to bed and sleeps all day. Sigh.

For instance, on Friday Paula took Mary to get their hair done. While I took the Toyota to the dealer for service. After they were done at the hair salon, they went clothes shopping at Draper & Damon’s (a local women’s clothing store). Mary went into the store and just sat. Paula couldn’t get her to look at any clothing. Sigh. Not that she needs any clothing. She has two closets full of clothing that she never wears.

A couple of weeks ago, Paula took her to the eye doctor. The doctor did a refractometry exam. (That’s the procedure where the optometrist figures out your eye glass prescription.) Mary has been wearing glasses for a while now, mostly for watching television or driving. Of course, she doesn’t drive anymore, so now it’s just for TV.

We wanted to get her another pair of glasses to keep in her purse. We think that she has another pair of glasses stashed somewhere, but damned if we know where she put them. Primary use would be at church where she can’t see the words on the screen. So the one pair of glasses that she haves usually gets left behind at home. Also, I don’t think that Mary likes being seen wearing eye glasses. Again, sigh.

One more thing, Paula and I have been trying to get her to talk about what she would like for her funeral service after she dies. We have asked many probing questions. Do you want an OES service? Cremated? Favorite hymn?  Favorite Bible verse? We’ve got nothing. She doesn’t like talking about it. I guess she figures that she will live forever.  It’s becoming clear that we will be on our own for deciding on funeral services.

Later,

Categories: Family, Mary
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