The Move-in and my Personal Woe-is-me Day

I woke up at 4:30 and couldn’t fall back to sleep so at 5:30 I got up, had some cocoa and here I sit in front of the computer screen. I was not surprised. I went into my bedroom last night around 9:00, selected a Netflix movie and promptly fell into a deep sleep by 9:18 (according to my sleep app) until the ending credits when I woke up long enough to turn off the TV set. My usual pattern is to watch a movie until around 11:00 then take two Melatonin gummies and turn the TV off at midnight. It had been a long, busy couple of days for the mind and body. My two nieces were in town setting up their father’s room in the Memory Care building on campus and I was there for awhile and they were here for awhile. I also played Siamese Mahjong with my instructor, the first time we’d attempted it and we were both on our phones reading directions. How did we ever live without our palm sized libraries of knowledge at our fingertips? Two of our regular players were gone---one at her husband’s death bed in our hospice building and the other on a color tour, thus the need to learn to play Mahjong with just the two of us. I’m sure we both generated a bunch of new brain cells while we played a game that is complicated enough with four of us at the table. We were essentially each playing for two. I love that game. Mahjong is full of crazy rules, and is a combination of skill and luck to win.

At dinner I ate with four others and we made arrangements to make it a standing Wednesday night date. I’m dubbing us the Secret Society of Liberal Ladies. We talked freely about the upcoming midterms and who to vote for or not. We talked about the Proposals on the ballot including women’s reproductive issues. We cannot believe after 50 years of living under Roe vs Wade that we’ve come to this. Here in Michigan we even have a Trump backed state senate candidate who once started a think tank called the “Society for the Critique of Feminism” where he put forth the argument that women shouldn’t be allowed to vote or work outside the home, a real Handmaid’s Tale kind of guy’s utopia. Now he’s claiming it was satire but how can voters trust a guy who licks Trump’s boots down to the stitches and seams? 

I’ve never been inside our Memory Care building---been to several outdoor events---and my brother's room is very nice. It’s been newly remodeled with fresh paint, new fixtures in the bathroom, new carpeting and brand new furniture, all in a what I’d call a winter wheat color. But it’s a thirty year old building with narrow halls and a layout I can’t figure out yet. They are remodeling the whole place, including tearing down a wall between two lake view common rooms and that will be entertaining for my brother to watch. He’ll want to help. I told our maintenance man who was there doing last minute stuff in my brother’s room that he’d better keep an eye on his tools when Jerry is around. He likes to take things apart and can’t put them back together again---his latest was the furnace. 

It's both sad and otherwise, watching my brother get moved from living in a big house to a single room with a bath, bringing in just clothing, some wall decor, a candy dish, a few place mats and throw pillows. I couldn’t help thinking someday I could be moving in across the hall way and my life would boil down to a handful of possessions. What would I want on my walls, on my lounge chair? God, I’ve always been a long-range planner but do I really need to make a list in my head of what I want my nieces to grab from my current apartment when/if I get moved on down the road? Apparently I do/and did.

I’m having a ‘Be Sorry For Myself day’. Taking a shower one-handed was tougher this time compared to the first hand surgery because of the way my shower stall is set up and putting on my socks made me want to cry for all the times my husband struggled doing it one-handed over the twelve and half years after his stroke. When I had my other surgery it was summer time and I didn’t have to put on socks. I helped my husband if we were in a hurry or he got particularly frustrated but most of the time he did it himself and I’m going to break my computer screen if I don’t find a way to kill a pesky little gnat that seems to follow me around. He was hanging around my coffee pot earlier. Every where I go, there he is like he thinks we’re the Bobbsey Twins. When he gets around my face I’m afraid I’m going to snuff him up my nose or give myself a black eye trying to swat the devil gnat. The meme at the top is the second biggest question of the day. 

The first being how did my brother handle it when he was introduced into his new living quarters today and figured out he isn't going home from the Covid rehab where he's been gaining strength after a hospitalization with the virus. I'm on pins and needles waiting for a report. His kids are rallying around him in a show of unity for the decision they've made and I won't walk down there to visit until I know how things are going. I'm hoping maybe by the weekend but it could be longer. Their patient liaison told the kids it generally takes a month before patients settle into the fact that they aren't going home again. It was the right decision at the right time, but that doesn't make it an easy one. 

Now I'm off to the pharmacy to pick up a third prescription for an UTI that has resisted the first couple of antibiotics the doctor gave me the week before my surgery. I'm so sick of peeing sixty thousand times a day that I'm about ready to declare the UTI a winner and lay down and die. I'm allergic to that 'shotgun antibiotic' that kills everything possible growing in your urinary track so they had to grow a culture with my pee to come up with this last (hopefully) medication which should have me feeling better soon. But on the good side of life, I'm typing this is real time. The hand still has some swelling but so far so good on keeping infection out of the stitches. ©