The Lusty Month of May

Los Angeles, California


Yes, I'm back. Recently, throwing up an impressive two posts in one day. A dazzling feat of composition, concentration, and conundrum or whathaveyou. Whatever that all means.


It is May, and I am, as usual, celebrating that fact. I planted sweet peas, as they are my favorite flower. Usually only a couple of them take, but this year they all did, and they have been busy growing about a foot each night. They are cascading over the walls of the planter, an explosion of pretty pastel and bright- colored blooms. I intended to cut them for the house each week, but, I don't know, like most other brilliant plans I have, that one fell by the wayside. Still, I am enjoying the sight of them out the french doors of our kitchen.


So, it's spring. And, the joke amongst my friends about me and this season is this: I suffer from such spring fever that the gardeners are not safe from me. I am a faithful wife, but at this time of year I am ogling firemen and paramedics; young men with surfboards on the roof of their cars; any guy who is shirtless and riding a motorcycle. I don't know what it is. I am like this and always have been. I make no apologies for what goes on in my head at this time of year.


I am lucky that I dance, because it allows me to spend a little bit of time holding hands with a variety of dance partners (yes, firemen, and maybe gardeners, but somehow, I suspect, not surfers). Sometimes they squeeze too tight (ouch!); sometimes they hold too lightly (that's a lead? Where in the blazes is he expecting me to go?). Occasionally you get one of those dances that I have written about before. I call each of them: the dance of my life. Though, luckily, there have been more than a singular amount of them.


Had one recently at the wedding of The Lovely Cathy. My friend, Gwen, started calling Cathy this, and it has stuck in my mind for years. Cathy has been my Pilates trainer (spellcheck says she has been my Pirate trainer, arggh . . .) for well over a decade. But she's more than that. She's a frister; a warm-hearted soul who has helped me in more ways than I can enumerate. I love her, and hope she will be in my life forever. And I would feel that way, even if I hadn't had one of those dances of my life at her wedding recently.


Cathy married Norman in April, and it was a beautiful wedding and reception. It reminded me a lot of Billy's and my wedding -- both at 5:00 pm, both with an abundance of both red roses, and champagne. But the big difference is that Cathy and Norman's wedding had dancing.  And you know where I'm going with this. Cathy's close friend and attendant, The Lovely Carmen (oh what the heck! Let's throw this around when it fits), introduced me to her fiance before the ceremony. He's a really good salsa dancer, she confided, and further, offered to send him my way when they played salsa music. Salsa music? My ears pricked up.


The first salsa came on the heels of a song which had brought Billy and I onto the dance floor. He immediately tried to escape. Oh, come on, you can do this, I said, holding fast onto him, as I wasn't trusting that words alone could keep him on the dance floor. He reluctantly began the salsa steps that he learned a long time ago, but has not practiced in any way recently. But here's the thing: Billy can lead a right turn; he can lead a left turn. And, the piece de resistance -- he can very competently execute a cross-body lead. Voila! Three good moves and you've got combinations. Ok, so he needed some verbal cueing. We did fine, all the while moving closer on the dance floor to Carmen and her fiance, Charles. I wasted no time when the dance ended, pouncing on them and asking Carmen, Can I have him? She graciously turned Charles over to me. What ensued could have been awkward. We'd never danced together. It could have been ugly. It could have been really, really embarrassing (like me embarrassing him, I mean). But it was s-m-o-o-t-h. Charles is honestly one of the best dancers I've encountered, and he knew exactly how to match his skill with my abilities. I sensed that the floor had cleared, and I could hear Cathy and Carmen whooping as we finished. It was so much fun! Later when I went to the bar for water, the bartender complimented me on my dancing. A Visa moment: priceless.


You can carry moments like that along with you, even into the dark of the night, and the bleakness of a family situation. And, as I've said and written before, that is why we dance. It's for those moments; for the friendship with other salseros; for forgetting whatever is not right in your life. And all by just dancing. I do it all year long, but it's particularly not a bad thing to be doing as spring unfolds, the temperature rises, and all these guys on motorcycles, who are young enough to be my Idon'twanttothinkaboutit, take off their shirts. Winter is over. It's that time again. As Alan Jay Lerner wrote: . . . the time for every frivolous whim, proper or im-. And, while I keep it proper on the dance floor; I shouldn't be held accountable for the im- that keeps dropping into my mind this time of year, and neither should you. It's May . . .Thank you for reading my blog when you could be doing something else altogether. Come on people, do I have to tell you again? IT. IS. MAY.

Hiatus

Los Angeles, California


This pink LA, CA above could mean anything. It could mean I've been in the pink. Nope. It could mean I've been drinking . . . a lot, as in pink elephants on parade. Not really. Or, could it mean it's spring, when a young girl's fancy turns to . . . (ok thanks, everyone, for thinking she's not young!)?


My mom was in the hospital. It started when her caregivers reported that her dementia was getting much worse and very fast. My mom does not suffer from Alzheimer's. She knows who we are and can get pretty close to the correct date (come on, even I have problems with the date sometimes). What she has is vascular dementia. Her mental deterioration is quite slow, and mostly about loss of short-term memory. So this sudden increase in the dementia was suspect. After an episode of syncope (I want to say she had an episode of synecdoche -- you know: once an English major; always an English major), she was taken by the paramedics (who were pretty, um, hot) to the hospital, and subsequently diagnosed with a urinary tract infection. Now why am I engaging in all this TMI? Because here is something I didn't know. In the elderly, UTIs present with confusion and agitation. And that, my friends, along with extreme dehydration was the reason for their perception of her increased dementia.


After the hospital she went back to a rehab facility for physical, occupational, and memory therapy. And that was when Billy and I got to work. It became apparent that her living situation with part-time caregivers was not enough. The doctor and the physical therapist recommended full-time care. That meant a nursing home or a board and care facility. One of my fristers recommended a network-colleague who runs a placement service for assisted care and board and care facilities (for info about Concepts for Living click here). And she helped me find a board and care home in our neighborhood.


This is a home with five residents and three or so caregivers (one of the caregivers has a son who also helps out). It is close to our home. The owner lives on premises and engages with the residents on a daily basis. She is a gardener, and the grounds are lovely. My mom's room looks out on the garden and pool. So far it has been a pretty good fit. But not perfect.


We had to ask my sister to take Mom's cat, Ashley Wilkes. Since my sister doesn't help at all with my mom's care (don't get me started), we weren't sure she would assist us in this way. But she's one of those cat people, or as my mom often says, she cares more about her cat than about people. It seems like this is true, though it is hard to tell for sure. My sister refused to give the other unit of blood needed when my mom was having knee replacement surgery and couldn't provide her own blood before the procedure. But then, my sister will never be put to that test with her cat, so, again, who knows where her priorities lie? Anyway (as I fear I'm tainting my blog with this stuff), let's move on.


So, Mom no longer gets to live with her cat, and that is no small thing to separate her from that comfort. But, of the homes that said they would let us bring her cat along with her, none of them provided any security against the cat getting loose or being mistreated by residents and staff. It was too iffy. So we made this tough decision.


Before placing her, we moved her out of her apartment at the retirement village. This required a lot of work, as you might expect. Billy did all the heavy lifting on weeknights and weekends, and we got her moved to her smaller space, while we stacked boxes of her stuff on top of other boxes of her stuff from her last move. A lot went to charity, but I was pleased that some of my friends took bits and pieces of furniture and kitchenware. I gifted a ceramic mug each to my Las Chicas fristers. It feels good to know that people I love will have something of hers. After all, my fristers are family.


Needless to say, her hospitalization and rehab was a long haul; the second of these that we have experienced this year; the third in the past eight months. Things could be worse. She knows us, and is always glad to see us. She lives close. The owner of the home, Hana, is wonderful, and Lana, who cooks all the food, is a wonder. It could all be worse than this. But still . . .


So I took a hiatus. It wasn't planned. I just found that the days blew past and I wasn't writing. Not here; not in my journal. I was walking around with a lot of thoughts in my head, but none of them coalescing into a post that I could put up here. At least not until very recently. I then picked up my pen and got back to my journal. When you concentrate on three things in your life, it is discomforting to let one of them stall, or more accurately, come to a screeching halt. But that is what happened. The mom stuff and the dad stuff is hard. It's hard for most of us. As I said to someone who offered me some solace for what I've been going through: we're either going through this; we've gone through this; or we will go through this. There's mostly no way out. Trust me, if you have a conscience, and from what I've seen with some of my friends, even if your parents weren't good to you, you will do this. Unfortunately, hiatus doesn't mean escape. But those who have been through this assure me that, when all is said and done, Billy and I will feel good about all that we have done for her. They tell me I must trust them about this. And, I guess that most of the time, I do. Thank you for reading my blog. Now go eat some cookies (see last post) . . . if you made it to here, you really deserve a reward!