Breaking With Tradition

It's a (minor) Christmas miracle!

For the first time in living memory all the presents were bought, wrapped and shipped (without needing special overnight postage) in time to be received by Christmas Eve. Technically, there were no guarantees on the "receiving" part but the Post Office's assurance of "should arrive by" is sufficient since most of the intended recipients won't gather at the intended receiving location until the 27^th. And their presents will be waiting for them!

And we've been getting our presents from them over the past couple of days so it seems to be happening in both directions.

This has not occurred in our family in well over a decade, probably closer to two. We have long accepted that Christmas tradition consists of rising early on the morn, gathering around the lit tree, eating a hearty breakfast, watching a parade and a football game or three and then opening presents day by day as they trickle in over the ensuing fortnight. Anything arriving by New Year's Day is considered on-time. It's usually only the pets that ever find anything for themselves under the tree.

This year, we'll do it all in one sitting.

It's going to feel like a very short holiday this time around.

Redneck Studies: Consistent Randomness

In addition to my long-standing observations regarding the native redneck's (i.e., my brother's) inability to pursue any project to completion, I have also noticed a distinct tendency toward increasing randomness in his immediate surroundings.

On occasion, and for no apparent reason, he will go through the pantry and move cans and boxes of supplies from one shelf to another. I can't determine if he was actually looking for a specific item since nothing ever seems to be gone or used. They're all just moved. It happens, to a lesser extent (possibly because he hates leaving the door open), with the refrigerator as well.

Similarly, the lawn mower and various other yard implements can be found at any of three or four possible storage sites, not dependent upon where they were last used.

Late yesterday evening, he suddenly began stomping around the house in a foul mood, opening various drawers and going through the recyclable trash in his room and the kitchen. Being the first Sunday of the month, he had decided to pay a bunch of household bills. and now couldn't find them. We're talking mortgage, utilities, storage unit(s), credit cards--the works. He ransacked the house, and then his truck, and then the house again before giving up for the night. I know he was afraid he might have put them in with the other trash paper and thrown them out last week.

This morning he got up early and started rummaging through his truck again, scraping it out down to the floor mats. When I went out the first thing I noticed was a stack of envelopes sitting on one of the lawn chairs by the fire pit he never quite finished installing so I said, "I see you found all your bills."

"No I didn't."

"What's all that stuff on the chair, then?"

"What chair?"

"The lawn chair. There's what looks like a pile of bills and a bag of pistachios on it."

"That's probably the bills." He left off cleaning the truck* and went inside still pissed off but now at himself. Your welcome.

We've had a run of a few absolutely glorious days, warm, sunny, dry and breezy, perfect for sitting outside. I did so a couple of days ago with a book and iced tea, reading and watching the blue jays and mockingbirds fight over ownership of the bugs in the lawn (blue jays are more obnoxious and tend to win), and saying "Hi" to our black snake as she came home in the early evening from wherever she goes during the day (she stopped about four feet away when she noticed me and we acknowledged each other for a few minutes before she made a wide semi-circle to go around and back to her woodpile).

In short, it's been pretty much perfect outside and my brother had decided to do the bills outdoors and got everything set before he went inside, became distracted and completely forgot what he had intended to do and where. He'd walked right by them on his way to his truck and never noticed because, to my knowledge, he's never sat outside to pay the bills before. It was just another random (though thoroughly supportable) notion.

*And will not continue, now, until he can't find something else in the future.

Planning Ahead

Well, at least I now know what (some) of the lumber is for.

My brother treated himself to a firepit. He intends to build what he calls a patio by the front door, set up the firepit there, sit back and drink beer and use the wood for fuel. He doesn't want to put it out back because of some obnoxious nearby dogs who are happy to bark at anything they see (or think they see) all night long. He's much happier with it being visible from the road which, in all honesty, is a better view, anyway.

No idea when the construction on this "patio" might begin. No idea, either, on his intentions for the plywood. Or the crutches.

The funny thing is, we already have a couple of woodpiles on the property that have been aging for literally years. Of course, by the time he's ready to start burning, the new sticks could also be well-seasoned despite being pine.

In the meantime, city code enforcement stopped by and left a note on our door. Apparently, the carrotwood tree is visible from the road and so was all the new lumber which is a violation of the city's "No Outdoor Storage" rule. My brother moved a small section of fencing to hide the 4x6 stumpy bits and carefully rearranged the pallets to lie flat behind a decorative wall of railroad ties (still around the carrotwood) and: voila! No more code violation. (At least, nothing that can be seen from the street.)

On the plus side, he did just bring home a large bag of blood oranges from somewhere, so there's that.

More Sh*t My Brother Drags Home

Continuing the kleptomaniacal tale. This past week:

• More industrial size wooden pallets. We now have three complete plus pieces for a couple more. They're stacking up beside the carrotwood tree.
• A pair of wooden crutches with one missing rubberized foot. If he's planning on having a debilitating accident it's going to have to involve ending up with one leg shorter than the other.
• A short (maybe 2.5 feet tall) open metal frame on casters with closely spaced metal flanges facing inward on parallel sides suitable for holding food trays. Except for the inconvenient lack of height, something that might be seen on an airline or in a hospital for delivering meals.

On a slightly saner note: He went and got the Christmas decorations out of storage over the weekend. They were all piled up in cardboard boxes at the top of the driveway until it started to rain last night forcing us to run outside and chuck everything into the garage except the Christmas tree which resides in a waterproof plastic coffin that is now sitting just at the edge of the living room attracting the attention of the cats. My brother has moved his dead bicycle from the corner where the tree is supposed to go so we can probably expect assembly this weekend.

Sh*t My Brother Drags Home

Last Week:

• Two random sheets of plywood, a wooden pallet frame and three buckets full of 4 x 6 ends no more than a foot or so long. I have no idea what he intends to use them for and I'm not convinced he has either. The stumps, except for being pine, would be ideal in a fireplace, if we had one, which we don't.
• A sort of scrapbook/portfolio of some random person's experience in the navy right after World War II including newspaper clippings (of various people so we don't know if the owner might have been one of them), photos of warships (aircraft carrier, cruiser and at least one destroyer), airplanes and Guantanamo Bay naval base back when it was just an innocent naval base located in a friendly country.
• An envelope labelled "Paris 1951" and containing hand-tinted postcards including one of the Eiffel Tower taken from almost the same vantage point as the famous picture of Hitler's visit to the City of Light, les Invalides, Napoleon's Tomb, etc.; several aerial photographs obviously taken by the original owner as he flew into the city; and a couple of business cards to cafes apparently owned or run by American expats with notes about meetings.

He was given the portfolio/scrapbook by a customer and thinks one of our nephews (both active-duty Navy) might be interested in it. I have my doubts since neither has ever expressed a great interest in history, especially not the personal histories of complete strangers.

I have no idea where (or why) he acquired the other items. I could probably put together a pretty good spy story with the contents of that envelope, though.

Thank You, One and All

After a long day and night I think this Facebook post from my niece's Mom says it all:

"Caitlin's father spent the night with Caitlin in the ICU. She
looks good and had a good night. Dr. Baird did some pretty
extensive work on her yesterday. He reworked her tricuspid valve
and tightened it with a ring, put in a titanium mitral valve,
replaced a patch covering the hole in the septum, trimmed off some...
scar tissue, adjusted a small group of heart muscles, and performed
an ablation to the right side of her heart. In ICU now and they are
keeping her asleep for a little while longer."

That's a hell of a lot for a fourteen-year-old to go through (and not for the first time) but her Dad reports that the oxygen tubes are out and she's breathing on her own although still drowsy from the sedatives. The use of an artificial valve this time means she should not have to ever do this again.

In a previous century she never would have made it this far, and I am extremely grateful to not just the superb surgeons who have the skill and talent to perform such work, but also to all the people over the years who developed the techniques and trained the doctors, who invented and manufactured the tools and replacement parts and those who built and maintain the organizations that could bring them all together to accomplish something so extraordinary. And to my fellow citizens, who help to pay for it all through your taxes and insurance premiums. This is the definition of civilization and, today, my niece and her/my family are the beneficiaries.

Thank you. May it all be there for you when you need it.

The Neverending Holiday

This is neither surprising nor untypical of our family. A little more communication would probably help, at least in keeping down expectations, but wouldn't really change anything.

We were expecting the family (Other Brother, niece, two nephews) down here for Christmas. My brother bought a nice standing rib roast for Christmas dinner.

Our Other Brother called--on Christmas Eve--to let us know he and the niece would be coming down the day after Christmas and the nephews would be showing up three days after that. We cut one third off the roast and I cooked that up on Christmas Day just for the two of us. We opened presents.

Other Brother and niece arrived Thursday afternoon with enough time to visit for all of two hours before my brother had to go to work. We opened presents and played games. They were going to come back later in the evening to look through my new telescope but the sky clouded over. Last night they came over and we all got to look at the moons of Jupiter, the Pleiades, and the stars Procyon and Betelgeuse. The niece wants a telescope. She also thinks Betelgeuse is a hilarious name for a star (and she's never even seen the movie). Today they've gone kayaking for manatees.

When the nephews arrive on Sunday, they're all going up to Busch Gardens for the day after which Other Brother leaves for home. The niece is staying with the nephews at least until their mom shows up and then will go home with her. Not sure when that will be. The nephews may be here through New Year's but who knows when, or how often, we'll see them. There are still presents to open and the rest of the roast to cook. If I get enough notice, I'll be able to make a New Year's dinner for everyone. If not, my brother and I will finish it off ourselves.

Also, my brother and the niece were the only ones to ask for (and get) anything specific in the way of presents. The rest of us just give and receive random stuff. It's kind of the way we roll. It's actually exciting in its own way never knowing ahead of time whether the recipient's reaction is going to be joy, satisfaction, let down or, "WTF were you thinking?!"

I got two joys and a let down this year. Not bad.

Baby Steps Abroad

My brother is leaving this weekend and I couldn't be happier.

And it's not because I will have the house . . . and the cats . . . to myself.

Seriously. I can not recall any time when he has ever taken a vacation. He had brochures for Alaska a couple of years back, before Mom died, and seemed serious about it once I was there to look after her while he was gone, but he broke up with his then girlfriend and the whole plan, what there was of it, just sort of disappeared.

This weekend is no where near as ambitious. His bowling league is taking a short cruise to the Bahamas. Tomorrow morning, early, they take a chartered bus to Miami. He'll be back Sunday night. I had assumed he would be taking his current girlfriend with him but he didn't start seeing her until after the arrangements had already been made and her schedule won't allow it anyway, this time, so he's sharing a cabin with a fellow team member instead.

He's got his birth certificate and other paperwork together. He's never left the country before, not even when he was in the Air Force, and has never had a passport so, even though the Bahamas aren't exactly exotic*, this is still kind of a big deal for him.

I hope he has a great time. If he does, he might be willing to try another vacation sometime. Who knows? He could develop the habit. And I promise not to get into the liquor cabinet or throw any wild parties while he's gone.

*Apologies to any Bahamians.

Friends and Family

This should be a busy and fun week. Not only did the world not end on this solstice, some of it is coming here to visit.

My brave and beautiful niece (the one who just had her third open heart surgery a couple of months ago) and her mom are in town from Connecticut for a few days. They came down right after Caitlin played her harp in a Christmas concert. They're staying at a house owned by her mom's sister's family. When she told me, back in November, she would be visiting she asked if we could go play miniature golf. We'll do a couple of rounds this weekend despite the cold front that just blew in. She also wanted to go swimming but I'm not so confident that's going to happen.

Following right behind said cold front are a couple of friends, now married, from back in Utah. They're going to be up in the Tampa/St. Pete/Orlando area starting this weekend assuming their flights take the southern route and don't get entangled in the winter storm disrupting the rest of the country. We'll be able to catch up on all the stuff our other friends aren't willing to post on Facebook.

I'm making cookies for everyone. Oatmeal raisin now, chocolate chip later.

And, welcome back, Sol Invictus!

Strolling Through the ICU

A little more than twenty-four hours after open heart surgery, my niece is up and walking around . . . with a little help.

She signed a little to her big brother but had to tell her Dad to go get Mom because Dad just couldn't understand her and Mom could. Then she wrote, "I can't breathe," meaning the tube down her throat was interfering so the doctors removed it and now she's talking again.

It's still going to be a while before she can be discharged, but I am so proud of the little fighter.

All in the Family, Navy Style

My oldest nephew just made Chief Petty Officer today. His kid brother, my other nephew (also in the Navy and the one who went to Iraq), and his dad, my Other Brother and a retired chief himself, were both there in Norfolk, Virginia for the ceremony.

The rule is, if family is in attendance, family get to apply the insignia of promotion so my Other Brother and my nephew's brother got to pin his new anchors on him.

Yes, he does look a little like Tom Cruise when he smiles.

I'm also impressed that Dad can still fit into his old uniform.

The Sporting Life

I fixed my brother's slot machine yesterday.

It's a table top model, about 2 1/2 feet tall, made, I think, for the Japanese market, or at least a casino expecting a large Japanese clientele. Most of the directions are in Japanese and English although the payout button is in Japanese only. The reason I believe it was for more than just Japanese customers is that the maintenance directions on the inside of the machine are also in both English and Japanese .

This is not our machine but is very similar ours being not "Cherry Bar," but "Probationary Elf."

The black toggle on the middle left takes the place of the standard arm of the "one-armed bandit" starting the three loops spinning. The three red buttons to the right of the toggle stop the corresponding loop when pressed one at a time. It takes either coins or tokens and you can bet up to three at once. It came with a pile of tokens.

The tokens also hint at its origins. They're two types, the size of US quarter dollar coins. One type is kind of plain having the word "World" stamped on each side, the "O" in "World" looking like a ringed planet. The other type is more interesting with Japanese characters around the edge and a stamped picture of the King of Hearts (the one with his sword behind his head) on the face and the initials "NDK" on the reverse.

My brother bought it a few years ago for $20 only because it had the necessary keys. It's been in storage until just recently when, during a consolidation binge, he moved it into his room. Unfortunately, he could not get it to work.

Yesterday, I opened it up and discovered two small push switches, one black, the other red, deep in the guts of the thing. I pushed them both et voila!, it works although it does not lose its mind with bells and flashing lights when it pays out the jackpot. I know because I was playing it last night in an attempt to get all the tokens inside when it started spitting them back out at me.

It seems to be limited to paying out a maximum fifteen tokens per play. Since I had hit the big win, it gave me a series of free winning games so that each time I jiggled the toggle I automatically won 15 tokens until the machine was empty at which point the red LED that normally urged me to "Insert Coin" began flashing "Ho . . .Ho . . .Ho" which was not some St. Nick congratulations-on-winning-it-all message but the code to notify the "Ho"use that the machine needed tending. I opened it up and added more tokens to the bin, pressed the red interior reset button again (which caused the machine to spit a stream of coins across the room but there's no way to push the button with the front closed) and continued "playing" until my payout was complete.

Since it also takes quarters, my brother intends to use it as a glorified piggy bank.

Mom, A Life: Part Nine

Mom, A Life: Part Eight

The Final Years

Dad was in a serious car accident just as they were building the new house. That, and the fact their contractor absconded with several thousand dollars necessary for the finishing work, meant the move was delayed, drawn-out and a little traumatic. They stayed with first one son and then the other (both of whom were living in town at the time) and eventually the place was completed.

In late 1997 Dad was diagnosed with prostate cancer and underwent cryogenic surgery. During follow-up another tumor was discovered and he began chemotherapy. As Mom described it from the x-rays, "It looked like a loaf of French bread wrapped around the back of his stomach." At first he responded well and they could see the tumor shrinking almost daily but suddenly something the doctors called a "wildfire" took over. In less than a month, on March 22, 1998, Dad died.

Mom continued to teach ceramics at the Senior Center and occasionally took on jobs either when she wanted extra money or just because she was bored. (She did a short stint as a dispatcher for a rental car company out at the airport one time.) She gave up driving and my brother, who had sold his house and moved in after his girlfriend died, chauffeured her around. In 2000, my brother managed to pull off a surprise 80th birthday party at the country club that included her children, grandchildren, most of her nephews and nieces, surviving sister and brother-in-law and a host of friends.

The remaining dozen years passed quietly. Mom's back had been giving her problems for decades. What with slipped and disintegrating discs and severe scoliosis she became hunched over at the waist and barely four feet tall. (She was 5' 6" most of her adult life.) As her mobility decreased she stopped going anywhere except ceramics class and doctors' appointments. We had always planned for Mom to live to at least 100, both because she thought that was a nice round number and also in hope she'd passed on longevity genes to the rest of us, but in 2008 I received a letter from her hinting at imminent problems. I moved in with Mom and my brother to help him look after her. The letter turned out to be a touch melodramatic.

Mom talked about moving to an assisted living facility but, although we got brochures and made some visits, her heart wasn't really in it and she stayed home. Her mobility became worse and she was plagued by occasional incontinence and so stopped going to ceramics out of what might best be called anticipatory embarrassment. She most definitely did not want her friends to see her deteriorating.

Mom was diagnosed with moderate Alzheimer's in 2010. She never discussed the diagnosis and I often wondered if one of the effects of the disease was that the implications never really sank in with her. She was put on a drug that noticeably slowed its progress, and for the six months immediately after the diagnosis she showed real improvement both physically and mentally. We even made one last visit to the ceramics class at the Senior Center.

Eventually, though she spent her days mostly on the couch reading and watching TV, although she no longer enjoyed watching sports as she found she didn't understand the rules or the point of the games any more and had no patience for anything lasting longer than a half hour or so. She read continuously, both magazines and large print books from the library.


She still dressed herself (with an increasingly eccentric creativity), made her own bed and did her own laundry (or tried to. We took that last chore away from her after she washed some disposables and filled the dryer with cubic feet of fluff). She had a great appetite and ate everything we made for her enjoying the occasional glass of wine with dinner. Although she had more and more trouble finding the right word, she never lost verbal capability and always recognized people. Her biggest problem was insomnia which could keep her bouncing up and down all night long and exhaustedly napping all the following day.

In February 2012, I noticed a decline in Mom's cognitive abilities. Despite the doctor's warnings about the inevitability of Alzheimer's, Mom had been so stable for so long that it came as something of a shock. During an appointment in early March, her GP noted a spike in her blood pressure and asked if she had a living will and DNR order on file. He recommended we post it on the refrigerator. Mom's insomnia was worse and she was a little more agitated than usual over the following weekend and then, sometime over night or, more likely, early Monday morning, her heart just gave out.

Mom died at home, in her room, Monday March 12, 2012, fourteen years after Dad. She was three months shy of 92.


Post Script

This sketch of Mom's life turned out to be a lot longer than I'd originally planned, yet it is still far, far too short to do her any kind of justice. I haven't mentioned her sense of adventure and willingness to try anything at least once. She'd go out in the woods with us kids to explore the "cave" we found. She had us all grilling Japanese food on hibachis and eating with chopsticks back in the '60s. She taught tolerance (no excuses) and encouraged intellectual curiosity. She's why I was listening to Stravinsky and Berlioz at age eleven and owned the complete Yale edition Shakespeare at thirteen (best junior high school graduation present ever!) and why I can cook for myself well enough to entertain in several different styles. ("You're either going to get married or stay single. If single, you're not rich enough to eat out every night so you'll starve if you don't know how to cook. And if you get married I'm not going to have some other woman complain I gave her a helpless son.")

Thanks, Mom. I love you, too.

Sisters: It's Genetic, Except For the Learned Parts

We received a call from one of my cousins yesterday evening. He was letting us know that his mom, Mom's kid sister, our aunt had received the birthday card we'd sent by way of him. We sent the card to his address because his mom, despite being almost three years younger than ours, is in much worse shape mentally and physically. She lives in a residential facility on the other side of the state, is not mobile on her own, and often does not recognize familiar people.

Considering that Alzheimer's is genetic and both sisters have it our main consolation is that it seems to be very late-onset in our family. I am pleased Mom is holding up as well as she is.

As a matter of fact, the reason we remembered to send the card on time was because, when we put up the 2012 calendar in the kitchen, Mom went straight to it, flipped to February and wrote in her sister's name on the appropriate date. It's right there in legible script, in pen.

Considering how bad I've always been at remembering birthdays (with no valid excuse), I find that pretty impressive.

A Christmas Visit

My Other Brother and his kids (two nephews (both adult, both active Navy), one niece (pre-teen)) came down to visit for a couple of days. We had a belated Christmas present opening session, watched "Mr. Popper's Penguins" (a gift from the niece), played a round of mini-golf (Other Brother beat me by one stroke) and ordered in Chinese for dinner.

Mom was thrilled to have the company and the attention, although she did have to ask people to identify themselves every now and then.

They're all gone again now and the energy level in the house is slowly subsiding back to normal.

Sisters

Mom's kid sister telephoned yesterday. Actually, the procedure was closer to that used by heads of state, self-important CEOs and movie moguls ("Get me Matt Damon's people!"). My cousin Elaine called me to let me know that her mom wished to speak to my mom if Mom was available. I said she was and we both went to put the old girls on the line. Mine got there first and kept shouting into the phone, "Hello? Is anybody there?" even after my aunt was on the line.

The conversation sounded something like a multiple translator hot-line dial-up between the US president and the USSR general secretary, too, if they were both deaf and half-senile.

"Don't speak so loudly, I can't hear you."
"You're where? Where are you calling from?"
"Oh, that's nice. What did you do? Where are you?"
"Where am I? Where am I?" ("You're home, Mom.") "I'm home. They've fixed it up nice so people can come in and help." (It's just my brother and me. No one comes in.)
"What did you do? Ice cream? Where?"
and so on. . ..

Mom thinks her sister has lost/is losing her mind and she has had at least one stroke, but, honestly, whenever I've seen my aunt (last spring when my cousin, Gerry, died) she seems to be doing just fine. Mom's the one who is ahead in this race.

They had a nice conversation during which about one third of the potential amount of information was actually exchanged, and then Elaine came back on the line, and I was going to have Mom give me the phone so I could ask her for some genealogical information on that side of the family, but the phone's battery died and being the old piece of junk that it is, it has no memory, or last call redial, or anything of that sort so I'll have to try and find her number somewhere else.