The Visible Woman...July 15, 2000

Saturday

July 15, 2000

"We are born crying, live complaining and die disappointed."

Thomas Fuller, M.D>, Gnomologia

Dad, resting

resting place

currently dangerous flyover

could he be my son?

Wearing: Hawaiian shirt with Hawaiian guy blowing a conch while an airplane drifts throught the sky. No, really, it's attractive.

Physically: My eXtreme dog walk made both knees sort of stiff.

Emotionally: Glad I'm in the middle of my parents lives, but scared by what I see.

hot, hotter, hottest

I wake up at 6:15 and think I'll sleep until 6:45 and have plenty of time to sip coffee and get ready for a 7:30 dog walk. I wake at 7:15. So I rush around getting ready. Dad gets some gear to go to SuRu's before it's too hot and see if an old refrigerator she has runs and, if so, clean it up. We are going to put it in their house. The house they will finally move into properly next week, moving the stuff out of the garage and various storage warrens into the actual house. Yea!

However, I've enjoyed having them here in a way. And it's been helpful. See below for discussion of geriatric pharmacology.

We do a long walk. We cross Allandale and wind around and over to Burnet and past Aranda's and the Poodle Dog Lounge and the place where we have the climate-controlled storage. People are awash in junk. It has overtaken them. They have thousands of square feet in their homes. But they still don't have room for everything. There are three or four storage facilities within a few blocks there.

Coming back we see a cemetary. Just one city lot or so in size. They started burying people there in 1845 and stopped in 1918. I didn't know it was there.

Our walk ends up being about three miles. It is starting to get mercilessly hot. Sigh.

I shower up and rush off to the Barber Shop. Jane is sitting reading the obituaries in the paper. Wow, she's never without a line on Saturday morning. I get done quickly and I'm thankful. Dad went to her yesterday. She comments on how much I look like my dad.

At home, I busy myself with making a card for our friend's 40th birthday. John says he is my son. When he worked for us, we did feel we'd taken him to raise.

I work on a list of my parents' medications. This is frightening. My mother stumbles over what she's taking although she does know. Sort of. She cuts some pills in half. They didn't have the right dosage of a new one at the pharmacy. She seems a little confused and is complaining of this and that. Finally, I get Dad to take her blood pressure. Too high. He takes his own. Too high. I get her to sit down and relax. Maybe she's adjusting to the new medication.

I get Dad's meds down. A shorter list. However, he admits that he isn't taking his exactly as directed. Yikes! He says maybe he will start doing so. What a good idea.

Forrest and I go to Precision Camera. They have reps there and we see an XL-1 and talk to the rep and get brochures and hear about accessories. The Digital Origin guy is there and we get to hear about EditDV. We aren't prepared to make these decisions yet, but I am yearning for a 3.3 megapixel digital still camera and a digital camera that's a bit smaller than my current one (a Kodak DC120). How fast things become dinosaurs. Anyway, I buy a Canon PowerShot S20 Zoom.

So I spend some of the rest of the afternoon installing the Canon software and the driver for the USB port it uses and trying the camera. I only learn the very basics. In between, I sort through the drug list I'm developing for my parents, read descriptions of the drugs on the WEB and worry increasingly that my mother isn't looking good.

We go to the birthday party. On the way, I notice how stark and frightening unfinished flyovers can be.

Hawaiian parties seem to be the rage. A frightening number of people at the party believe that we are John's mother and father. I hear people saying, "That's his mother." I would have had to be twelve, for Chrissakes. I take toys for the 'grandkids.' The little girl has been banished to some real grandparents, but my ten-year-old grandson likes the gift and starts work on a Lego robot of some sort.

John has constructed a Tiki Hut by his pool. He is serving up Margaritas and cigars to a crowd of mostly dot com marketing turks. Golf seems to be a big topic. (The house is on a golf course.)

We come home fairly early. Our excuse is that I am worried about my mother. And I am. She's going to bed. The blood pressure is still too high. Dad and I check it several times. It seems to be going down. She gets to sleep. In between our checks, Dad and I read about the plethora of drugs on her list and ponder whether we might be headed back to the emergency room.

I might have mentioned that I wanted the parents here so that I could be close in crises. And I do. I just was hoping to have fewer of them. Especially before we even got them moved into their own space.