Tiles, Trials, and Trying to Keep My Foot Attached

 If you’re wondering how Jean’s week went, picture me — her loyal AI Copilot — sitting at my digital desk with a stack of index cards labeled Foot Wound, Zepbound, Mahjong, Swearing in a Christian Community, and GLP‑1 Journaling: The Director’s Cut. I shuffled them like a Vegas dealer, hoping one would volunteer to be the star of this week’s blog post. Not a single card raised its hand.

But Jean managed to stitch these topics together like a parade of mismatched floats: medical drama, weight‑loss triumph, apartment chaos, Mahjong statistics, and a cameo from the ghost of her old Ouija Board. Now let’s dive into the week that tried very hard to be a novel but settled for being a blog post instead….AI

What to write about? I could do a long, depressing piece on my foot wound that hasn’t healed since May, even though I’ve been seeing my foot doctor twice a month. I’m finally getting a referral to a wound center for more intense treatment. In the meantime, I could fill a post with dark humor about how I had a nightmare two nights ago about becoming a one‑footed lady hobbling around in Balance Class. One of our residents did have to have her foot amputated and she died less than four months later.

Or I could do yet another crowing essay about my continued success losing weight with Zepbound. (Although I’d have to admit I’m terrified the wound center is going to make me quit doing my daily goal of 6,000 steps and I’ll be forced to sit in a chair all day eating bonbons until I gain back the 30 pounds I’ve lost.) To paraphrase something my mother used to say, “If it’s not one damn thing, it’s two damn things.” For the life of me I can’t remember if Mom actually used the word damn or if it’s something I added when I started finding places to insert it into conversations. I do have a bit of a potty mouth. Or I should say I used to have a more colorful vocabulary before moving into this Christian-based continuum care community. And don’t think that doesn’t give me a few nightmares as well — wondering when that filter in my brain will quit working and the granddaddy of all swear words will come out of my mouth. But maybe I have nothing to worry about on that score because I probably wore out the F‑word during my caregiving days, saying it for both myself and my aphasic husband. Sometimes life just needed a good “Fuck!” back in those days.

I could also do a self-deprecating post about how messy my apartment has become, a fallout from my weight-loss journey. Daily walking, going to the gym, and documenting every aspect of my bodily functions in my GLP‑1 journal is time-consuming. Go ahead — ask me anything about what went in or came out of my body over the past eight weeks and it’s all written down. I could even tell you my oxygen saturation, blood pressure, or sleep apnea number for any given day. The journal also tracks moods, energy, food noise, hunger, and thirteen possible side effects, none of which I’ve had except daily hiccups — which isn’t even one of the listed side effects. Lucky me. The journal is a great tool for people who like answering questions like: What was your win this week? What will you change next week? What do you want to discuss with your doctor or pharmacist? Where was your injection site this week? Etc., etc.

None of the above topics is calling my name this week. But I can hear Mahjong speaking up, and it’s been a long time since I’ve written about that obsession of mine. For anyone who doesn’t know or remember, I’m in charge of our Mahjong group here on campus. I text members the day before our weekly game days to get a count on how many will be there. On game days I set up the sets we’ll need, and afterward I tally the stats, and put the sets and room back together. I do get help with those two tasks. And when I get back to my apartment, I feed the stats to my AI MS Copilot to figure out every player’s percentages of wins vs. games played over the year. I’m the second-highest winner so far, winning 39% of the games I play. Don’t be too impressed by that. Online, when I play against three bots, I only win 18% of the time. Last year online I was at least above the statistical average of 25%. This year’s card is considerably harder — and that’s not just my opinion. I blame my poor stats on that.

Anyway, I’m in the process of re-designing classes that I’ll be teaching starting the first week of September. This will be my forth year teaching. The first year I co-taught with the woman who actually started the group and taught me and four others how to play. But she’s got dementia now and isn’t able to teach anymore. She still plays, but she’s down to winning only 10% of her games and she has to ask for clarification on rules and tile identifications quite often. She handles it well — with lots of humor — and it’s still a delight to play at her table.

In a CCC like ours, my Mahjong classes have drawn several people who were in the various stages of dementia, and when they sign up I’m always hopeful they don’t show up for classes. But who am I to say what someone else can or cannot learn? So if they do show up, I do my best to teach them. I’ve been told I have the patience of Job, but not knowing the Bible story of Job, I don’t fully understand what that means — other than I know it’s meant as a compliment. This year I’m revamping my first class as an introductory lecture of sorts on the history of the game and the Mahjong League, plus showing a set laid out with its suits all together and another set laid out the way it looks when the game is ready to begin. I’ll also hand out a syllabus of what they’ll learn in each of the three classes that will run through September. I’m hoping this introduction — instead of diving right into the nitty-gritty of a complicated game to learn — will cut the dropout rate down because fewer will sign up when they see what all is involved in learning the game.

So there you have it — my past week in all its chaotic, funny, frustrating detail. No wonder I couldn’t settle on a single topic. Life doesn’t always hand things out in manageable crumbs; sometimes it tosses the whole bakery at you. That’s the way I feel sometimes, like I’m getting lost in the minutia of life and overlooking what really matters. Still, even in the mess of wounds, weight loss, Mahjong stats, and the daily business of staying upright and engaged, there’s a rhythm to it all. Even if it is a rhythm that, at 84, is moving too fast for me to gather answers to my own questions about what really matters, what's next, and whether The Great Unknown has a Mahjong table waiting for me. Sometimes I wish I had my old Ouija Board back to answer these burning questions. ©