God Bless Us, Every One

Getting back to the basics this season and it felt great. Warm relaxing Christmas day that went low key on gaudy gifts and long on leisure, panatone French toast, peach belinnis and good coffee during the unwrapping. Three generations had a good visit with Granddad who was in excellent form. He knew who he was; he knew who we were, and knew exactly what was going on. Then there was the tenderloin and scallops dinner later. Christmas with only good surprises. We'll take it!

Be Careful What You Wish For

See, we all go around dreaming of a white Christmas and -- WHUMP! We get one. With a few tons more white stuff to spare.

Ah well. It's a bear to shovel, but it sure looks pretty.

Progress vs. Lunacy

Well, the good news is, the pater's sundowning has improved with a change in meds. So he is not hurting people any more (nor they him), he's sleeping at more normal hours and during the day he's much easier to converse with.

The bad news is he thinks I'm the cleaning lady and that his granddaughter is about to become his new daughter-in-law by marrying his son (her uncle!). Eww. Strangely, he actually knows that can't be right and says so and yet he feels sure that it's true. One explanation: last weekend we had the largest full moon of the year -- Who knows?

What a strange landscape the mind becomes when neural pathways break down.

Sundowner

I learned a new term last week. Sundowner. This is a very meaningful term in the nursing home world. It refers to residents suffering with dementia or psychosis who are pleasant people during daylight hours, but as soon as the sun sets, they ramp up and freak out.

Sadly, my father is a textbook sundowner. He’s happy to spend his day chatting with people about flying, travel or what have you. But when the sun goes down, he sees riots in his room, tries to break them up and is appalled when staff members try to restrain him. He has pinched people, elbowed them in the ribs, twisted arms and generally tried to fight them off.

Dad tells me about how they are out to get him. And he demands that they “go back where they came from!!” Racist remarks he has curtailed for decades bubble up with embarrassing regularity.

My abiding impression from the last 10 days is that the people who work in hospitals and nursing homes are extraordinary and extraordinarily underappreciated. They take both verbal and physical abuse from such patients with amazing dignity, empathy and good grace.

My heart and gratitude go out to these hard-working, caring and dedicated people. We’d be lost without them.

Making a Difference

If a young person were to suddenly relocate to a new city, one of the first things she might want to do after unpacking is figure out how to make new friends.

A tried-and-true way to do that is to join organizations and volunteer to help worthy causes.

This method offers the twofer of not only meeting like-minded, caring people, but also actually making a contribution to something that matters.

So how, one might ask, does one find said worthy organizations? A great resource is Volunteer Match. It's a super website that sorts by interests and location. And it's full of great success stories. Worth a looksee.

Yee-HAH!

So is it weird that I'm so totally happy that my daughter landed a great first job ("with a little help from her friend"), that almost I feel like it happened to me?

No matter. This is great news after a long tough week and I'm very proud of her. She deserves this super new start!

Mia cara, di congratulazioni!

What's With All The Beeping?!

OK, at first I thought it was just me. But now I’m quite sure that the mavens of Madison Ave. have a new arrow in their arsenal of attention grabbing –- le beep.

They are peppering any and all commercials and TV shows with beeps, bops and bings in order to jerk our attention back to them and their sales pitches. The sounds are buried in the music or tucked into actors’ cell phones, instant messages, dashboards and so on. People may not be overtly aware it's happening, but our dog sure is and he tipped me off.

Like a canary in a coal mine, Duncan is the measure of just how much beeping is going on. Because he was well trained to his invisible fence, he pays immediate attention to the sound of a beep. To him it means “Warning, warning! Danger, Run away!!” So he does.

But now he can barely stay in the same room with us when the TV is on. During the shows, equipment and music are beeping. During the commercials even more beeping. The poor guy is a nervous wreck!

Can we be the only people having trouble with this? I’m picturing dogs across America having nervous breakdowns not knowing where to go to flee the warnings. Perhaps it’s yet another reason to turn off the damn TV and go do something constructive.