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 |  Just play: don't look at your hands! |
What a dumb title for a person who never got a single star  on her piano lessons!Daily practice is the thing though: the practice of noticing as well as of writing.  However, I'd much rather play duets than solos, so hop right in! You can do the melody or the base part, I don't care.  Just play along--we'll make up the tune as we go. I'll try to write regularly and deliberately. Sometimes I will do it poorly, tritely, stiltedly, obscurely. I will try to persevere regardless. It seems to be where my heart wants to go, and that means to me that God wants me there too. See you tomorrow. ![Merit Badge in Journaling
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| Today's meeting came as a result of a discussion our staff had several months ago on the topic of grieving. As you might guess, hospice work is not always easy. Some of our nurses are new to this specialty, and they, particularly. are finding it hard to let go and go on. I've heard some comments before, but heard them more clearly today. We have tried several things in the past to help deal with our own grief. We've had memorial services quarterly, remembering the people who died and their families. That was done before I came to hospice last year, but evidently was not felt to be very effective, or even very well attended by staff. One social worker tried presenting a short piece about the patients who had died that week at the end of each weekly interdisciplinary group, but some didn't want to stay any later so that practice was abandoned. One of the staff, who had worked for a hospice in another state, mentioned the regular groups their staff held, facilitated by a professional outside the hospice system. A committee was formed, a date set, a psychologist booked, and we met today for the first time. Right off the bat I could see there was a mixed agenda. Several people wanted help with their own grief, and several wanted our office to change the way we do things, somehow. Several, in other words, had grievances about the way we do bereavement for families and the way we assign new patients without regard to the feelings of the nurse who just lost a patient. Management was not invited to this, but had made the contact with the psychologist, who did a good job given his limited instructions. He volunteered his time, as he has before with our annual camp for children who have lost a family member. He gave more of a presentation than some of us expected, but it was a good one, filled with personal experience and emotion. He did less facilitation of the group that we expected. I think that the "grievance" part of the picture had come as a surprise to him too. People had their only real chance to talk at the end of the meeting, in the third hour. One nurse described her difficulty with new admits the same day a favorite patient died. I suppose it stands to reason that if you lose a patient, you're the next one up for a new one, but it presents problems. As she talked, I had the picture of Lucy and Ethel in the candy factory; except instead of just wrapping paper around the candies, we're talking about real people. That is a bizarre comparison, but it helped them find the word they needed to lodge a complaint about how we do things. Everything is too mechanical. They don't have enough breathing time to honor someone. It becomes dehumanizing, jumping from one nice (or not nice) family to another, trying our best to make their last days meaningful but not allowing those days to be meaningful to staff as well. This is particularly true for nurses, who spend so much more time with patients and families than the other staff. To give you a little break from all this heavy stuff, here's the famous candy factory video. Maybe we should show it at staff meeting.  http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-2151128672389072724 I have two suggestions to present. One is that we use a small room for a memory room, a quiet room where we have a list of the patients who die, with maybe a candle and flowers, (battery operated candle, of course,) and a bulletin board where we can post the obituaries and funeral leaflets. The second is that, where we usually have a prayer before our interdisciplinary meeting, that I make sure to mention at that time any patients who have died and their families. Sometimes we don't hear about the deaths until we notice their name is omitted in the listing of current patients, or people are ripping their pages out of the notebooks of patients, or shredding the pages. As rituals go, the shredding of the cardex page is pretty unfeeling.  |
| Here's an itty bitty picture of my back yard, because it would take me forever to get it to fit as an image. Maybe there's a way to post a big picture from the album, but I don't know it. Anyway, I missed the opportunity for a picture of my good hair day, but at least got one of my good yard day. |
| Bill officially named our Hybrid, which I call "High Bird," Battery Betty. I suppose it must be in honor of my mother, Betty, who was very frugal, leaving us with money to buy a new car. I can't say much for the name, however. In the past, it has taken him a while to come up with the right name. "Whitey Ford" was "Mikey" for a long time before the perfect name came to him. If you ever buy a Prius and want something to protect it from scratching and chipping due to highway rocks and assorted bugs, be sure to have the dealer install it. I'm sure whatever they charge would be worth it. Bill's old breadbox shaped Previa, "Vanna White," wore a bra, brand name "Le Bra." The dealer refers to this as a "mask," but the box says Le Bra. I guess it all depends on whether you see headlights as eyes or boobs. Hmmm. A light-up bosom. I'm sure I've seen dresses on celebrities that all but do that.  |
| I'm feeling ten years younger and twenty pounds lighter this afternoon. That's what a good haircut can do for you, and it's about time. Evidently the style has been more to all one length than layered in recent years, and my hairdresser has talked me out of cutting it short on the sides forever. Today I won. When I colored it last week, the medium reddish brown got very dark on the ends and the front. It's been so long, soooo looooonnnnggg, since I've had a good hair day I was practically not even checking the mirror-- just washing, gelling, combing and frumping. The beautician calls it scrunching, but, especially with the sides long, I called it frumping. Anyway, it's ever so much better today. And that's all I have to say. I may get a backyard photo posted before the night is over though. I took some good ones last week when the poppies were in bloom. Don't you love poppies? They're so blowsy. |
| Friday's local paper featured a story about a 91 yr old man from our town who was one of the original "Borden Boys." Chester Steen, who graduated with a degree in dairy husbandry from Washington State University in 1939, was one of sixty young men who cared for 150 purebred cattle in Borden's "Dairy World of Tomorrow" at the New York World's Fair. He worked an eight hour shift, grooming, cleaning, and working in the glass enclosed revolving platform where the cows were washed, dried and milked mechanically. It was called the Rotolactor. The company icon Elsie had existed since the early 30's as a cartoon character, but during the fair, a cow was chosen to "be" Elsie. Steen said that the first two picks, a Holstein and an Ayrshire, didn't have what it took-- no charisma. The little Jersey who became Elsie was like no other. "She had a way about her, and she looked at people," he said. Chester's main duties became taking care of Elsie and the Rotolactor. I bet you all didn't have headlines like that in your paper Friday, and that wasn't the little local paper with gossip columns that all have puns in the titles. That was the big paper. Kind of fun though, isn't it? We just got home, having headed for the airport directly from church. We had a well stocked coffee hour to honor our church secretary who is leaving after fifteen years. Church secretaries are under-appreciated and underpaid; she will be difficult to replace. Despite the 98 degree weather, we hopped in the plane again today. Bill's boss called early this morning to say he'd bought a motorcycle in Spokane and needed to go get it, and were we by any chance flying there today? Well, we hadn't planned to, but I'm always happy to go see my daughter and her family; and since they were available to pick us up at the airport and let us take them out to lunch-- in their car-- how could we say no? I didn't give up my front right seat in the plane this time though. The back seat is quite roomy, and Bill remembered there is a screen that can be pulled up to block the hot sun coming in the back window. The boss hadn't flown in a small plane before, and he was excited to see the wonderful view. He tried his hand at following our route on the chart, and discovered it wasn't as easy as he'd thought. He did well though, spotting grain elevators and power lines to show him where we were. I'm still bad at sighting landing strips and amazed when Bill sees them right away. |
| It's been a busy but fun day. We flew to a Beechcraft fly-in today, taking a stranger we'd just met with us. He walked up and introduced himself as we were getting the plane out of the hangar. He's just taken a job here, had a share in a Cessna 172 where he last lived and loves planes. His family is still in their old town till school is out and they sell their house there. So Bill just invited him to ride with us. It was quite a fly-in, mostly Bonanza owners but some Musketeers too. We've been there every year with our Musketeer, so knew quite a few people. It was nice for this new guy to get acquainted, and my first time to fly in the back seat. The view from there was actually better than up front, the dash being so high you can't see over it. Today was our first 100 degree day, but it's supposed to cool off quickly during the week. It was a hot day out on the ramp and in the plane too, and we were too tired when we got home to do anything productive. Watched the last of our three movies from BLockbuster, A Night in the Museum. I had no idea of the plot when I ordered it, expected it to be a drama, possibly a heist movie, certainly not a comedy. It was cute but nothing extraordinary. We enjoyed Queen very much. I expected it would cover more of her life than that little timespan around Diana's death, but the politics involved in the Queen's response to that was fascinating. My garden needs weeding badly. That will be much more pleasant in a few days when the weather turns cooler again, if the weeds won't take over by then. They're still pretty small, just numerous. We're now watching an episode of the Vicar of Dibley, and they're playing one of my favorite hymns, "The Day That Thou Gavest Lord Is Ended." And so it is. |
I just read a New Yorker cartoon titled Middle-of-Life Choices. The first panel showed a woman reading from a catalog, "Classic" fit? Or "Relaxed"? The second, a man with a menu, trying to decide between chicken and fish; and the third, a woman staring into a bathroom mirror, pondering "Whiten teeth? Or to hell with it?" Would that the choices were so straight forward! Reading my favorite catalogs, I'm faced with "Blakely" fit pants, or "Vashons," or "Mercers." Another popular catalog features a manikin you can make look like you, and then see the styles you pick modeled. Supposedly that's as good as trying the garment on in person. There's nothing I can do to make that body look like mine, and I have no idea which island-type I am. Maybe I need to use Google map to find out! When it comes to food, it depends on the genre. In the fast food genre, everything tastes like something else. The first time I noticed that was way back in the 80's when I saw my first taco pizza. How about roast chicken flavored potato chips? Not bad, actually, but strange. In the expensive food genre, each menu item takes up a whole paragraph. I had halibut the other night that was baked in banana leaves "grapefruit habenero terragon, orange saffron, cilantro lime." It was delicious, and certainly nothing I'd be whipping up at home. But even in English, they could have fooled me that it was fish. As for tooth whitening, I asked my hygienist about it Wednesday. She said there are several over-the-counter brands with trays you were at night that work almost as well as the specially molded trays the dentist makes. So I looked for them, but found only brands with strips. Do I know what that means exactly? No. Can I imagine sleeping with trays of bleach in my mouth? No. I may have to opt for "To hell with it!" |
I'm back from a short drive in the country just in time to blog. Bill is flying a commissioner to a meeting in Salem tomorrow. Attending the meeting himself too, that is, not just piloting people around. So we had a quick drive to the airport for him to add a quart of oil and clean the front window, two chores we should probably have done after flying home Monday, but didn't. The good spring smells are in the air. Spring onions are being picked. That smells not just like onions, but like onion and sour cream potato chips. Yummy. The alfalfa is in bloom too, and the Russian olive trees. They are fragrant from a long distance; up close, they're just plain stinky. They smell like banana oil. Maybe my association with the smell from years ago contaminates my impression. When I worked a night shift in a small psych hospital, it was near a creek and surrounded by Russian olives. The creek was also a popular place for skunks to hang out, and the two smells are forever related in my memory. Have you ever had a window put into a wall in a place where there was never one before? We removed our no-longer-needed AC, and the guys put a window in today. Wow, it looks so strange to see outside right there! It's now the focal point of the room, and since it's up high and a little out of the way, that isn't good. Which brings to mind the need for window coverings, my least favorite decorating item. We have three new baby koi in our pond, and they're hiding. I know they're in there, because if I put the dip net in the water to remove leaves that blow in, or the horribly messy blossoms from the smoke tree, the fish fly past to stay out of my way. Haven't named them yet. The orange and white one is the one I see most often. Another is white with black spots and one bright red spot on its left cheek. Gosh, I'm skipping around from topic to topic tonight. Oh well. Back to the remodel: the guys say they'll be done in two hours tomorrow morning, 7 to 9 a.m. Then I've got to line up someone to remove the dining room carpet and put in something else. I want wood floor, but will settle for a good laminate (I think that is what they call it.) Even though it will break up the area to put that in the dining room and something else in the kitchen, I don't think I need any more wood in the kitchen. Lots of oak, a golden almost orange-y color already in the cabinets. |
| Today I went to a very unusual Christian funeral. (Not unusual like, say, having a clown do the eulogy or a hot air balloon carrying off the coffin. Hey, what good ideas!) It was unusual in that the "assembly" does not call itself a church, and all the women wear skirts and dresses, and even head coverings in the funeral home. I felt very pagan, having not remembered it was a funeral day; and not only did I not have a head covering, I had on a tee shirt, sweater, and pants. Most of the attendees were members of this same assembly, and had their Bibles with them, to which they were sent often to flip through for one verse after another. The officiants were not clergy; there are no clergy in this group , and only men spoke. Three men spoke eloquently and from the heart for over an hour, without the usual sounding phrases that an evangelical church would use. One man quoted parts of verses of scripture that were not well known to make his point, giving us examples of nurses in the Bible. He cited a translation by the letters, like the KJV (King James Version which most people carried) but the letters didn’t mean anything to me and I can’t remember them. The social worker who went with me commented that she couldn’t make sense of the words to the hymns, none of which we’d ever heard. There was nothing familiar about them, even though the theology they represented did not appear unusual. The person whose funeral it was, and all her family, have no television sets or newspapers in their homes. I don’t know if other members of the group follow that tradition also, or if it was a personal choice. I do know that I wish I could have melted through the floor when my cell phone went off, loudly playing my husband’s special ring, Love is a Many Splendoured Thing. If it had been a grenade, I could have fallen on it. Since it was not, I had to decide between trying to muffle it in my purse-arms-shirt, or trying to get it out of its little sock and fumble for the control to turn it off. I did the latter, because it didn’t sound like the first choice was working. Terrible. In the second row, too. I wish I could have written down the Bible verses and version, but I was busy muffling my other cell phone, just in case. I haven’t any idea what he was translating as “nurse.” The service was very moving in some ways; I guess it was the complete devotion evidenced by the people there. They all sang heartily, by heart, by the way. The woman who died was extraordinary, in that, even though she was barely 60, she seemed so at peace with dying, and so looking forward to being with the Lord. She told me about the many meditations and devotions she had written, particularly on the subject of being "the bride of Christ." That phrase usually refers to the church in general. I've heard nuns use it too, in the sense that when they take their vows, their are wedded to Christ. This woman took it personally for all women, it seems, and had formed quite a theology around it. She had found seven women in scripture who she identified as "types" of brides of Christ. It sounded like she was talking about archetypes, but she ignored my suggestion/question. She said she had tried to link the seven "types" to the letters of Paul to the seven churches, but her husband had not agreed with that idea. I came away from this funeral thinking about the elephant and the blind men. We all only get a little piece of the truth about who or what God is, and whatever piece this group had, it didn't feel exactly familiar. (That's heresy, by the way. In order to make the analogy less heretical, I'd have to make sure that every blind person had full access to the entire beast, rather than just the little part in front of him. I guess I could agree to that. Everyone would still describe the elephant in different ways, with emphasis on the part that stood out most in their memory.) Here's a sample verse of one of the hymns: With mercy and with judgement My web of time He wove, And aye the dews of sorrow Were lusted with His love. I'll bless the hand that guided, I'll bless the heart that planned When throned where glory dwelleth In Immanuel's land. |
| I'm barricaded into my living room today, surrounded by furniture from the rooms that are being painted. I intended to get in to work this afternoon, but after overhearing one worker talking on his cell phone to someone who sounded like a parole officer, I'm not budging out of earshot. Who else would ask questions that required answers like, "Yes, I finished my treatment program, but I haven't done my anger management yet. Yes, I'm still living in Oregon," etc. Nick, the lackadaisical crummy painter has been fired and replaced today by Cory, who has spent most of the day taping. Now taping is good, except for the paint it pulled off the doorframe to the linen closet and the plaster it pulled off the ceiling. That was what Nick's taping did. We have yet to see about Cory's. Cory is the slowest painter I have ever seen. I feel like getting up and grabbing the brush and saying, “Here, let me do it.” I can hear each stroke of the roller, and count to ten between them: one one-thousand, two one-thousand…. (So far, no thunder, but then lightning is fast.) Maybe he’s deliberately trying to outlast me so he can steal the family silver. (As if anybody wants the family silver these days, not even the family! But that’s another story.) I’ve been struggling with an interesting plotting method for the Short Story Pizzazz class, taken from this link: http://www.suite101.com/lesson.cfm/16712/260 I haven’t found a good starting place, so I arbitrarily picked my situation here today. I’m barricaded into my living room while the house is being painted, because the painter might steal the family silver. I am then supposed to ask myself, “Why is that important?” and supply several answers, then pick the best one. Since I can't think of a good answer, I picked one from Mavis Moog  ‘s blog. It’s important because I forget my appointment to take my neighbor to the hospital. Why is this important? Because my neighbor has to take a cab and is hijacked to Northumbria, and she sends me the doctor’s bill for the missed appointment. Why is this important? I have to sell the family silver to pay the bill from the doctor. *** So, I’ve been enjoying my day, venturing in and out the door briefly to pull a few weeds, adding a little to a story and getting it ready for the big time, reading around WDC. Here’s a nugget I picked up on the way that I hope you'll visit. I know you’ll all appreciate it.
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