Busy Work to Keep Calm

Posted on by Sandy Webster

I made small bits of four watercolors the other day. I am going to use these in my journal of a drawing a day for October. The drawings come with a haiku if I can fit it in.

Here is the first one. Still feeling a bit of the sadness this past couple of weeks and having those blues so handy, I wrote a fitting haiku.

Blue has colored the

tears flowing into seas of

uncontrolled sadness.

Tomorrow I will use the greens in a haiku drawing about the herb seasoning salt Lee helped me make today.

You start with loads of peeled garlic….Lee’s job.

And add a goodly amount of coarse salt.

All of this must be chopped by hand….a chopper would pulverize it too much.

When it is hard to find a piece of garlic in the mix you add the herbs. In this case we gathered whatever we still had after a very dry past few months. Rosemary, thyme, oregano, mint, basil, sage….no stems.

Then chop the herbs into the garlic salt mix in small manageable amounts at a time. You have to do this until your hands ache and there are no distinguishable  herb leaves.

Spread out on a sheet and place on the porch away from critters for several days until it is completely dry.

It is worth the achy hands to have the house filled with the smell of garlic and herbs. We are hoping to bottle some up for Christmas gifts. It is the perfect herb collection to cook with. Sometimes I will just use rosemary and other times just sage, but this year was not the best for anything but rosemary that loves the dry conditions.

This kept Lee busy for about an hour or two. That was a good thing. Here are some ideas for those dealing with a partner who has dementia.

  1. Keep a sense of humor and say something funny to break a sad mood even if it makes no sense at all.
  2. Keep to a routine. There are days we go to lunch. We only take walks in the early morning. We go to the grocery store and feed store after the grocery shopping is done and before we head home.
  3. Take advantage of the calming effects of alcohol….in moderation. A half beer with lunch. Some wine before dinner or a very short glass of Southern Comfort for him while I have a good glass of single malt.
  4. This is your life now. This is his life now. Take deep breaths and remember that maybe someday you can go back to doing the things you miss terribly right now.
  5. If you burst into tears don’t worry he will forget you did a few minutes later……and so will  you.
  6. All the jobs he used to do are now your responsibility. If you can’t do them, get help.
  7. Don’t count on friends showing up to do these things. They won’t. Pay someone.
  8. I can lift 50 lb bags of seed and pour them into his feed cans. When I can’t, I will buy seed in smaller bags or take buckets to the back of the car, slash a bag and transfer it all a bucket at a time.
  9. Remember to start his vehicle every few days to avoid having to hook it to a charger.
  10. Don’t ask what you can do for him….just do something because he can’t tell you when words don’t come.
  11. Fix meals that are easy for him to eat. Use a large plate regardless of what goes on it because he is going to want to cut all of it up into small pieces.
  12. Remember to say something funny, make up a story….don’t lose patience anymore than you have to….it only makes you both feel bad.

So that is it…..well a start anyway.

Til later.

Door Knobs

Posted on by Sandy Webster

A friend posted one of those quick-remedy-make-it-all-better statements. Something about there is always a door to open. So my hand is on the knob. That’s what I told her this morning when she called to see how we were doing.

Things really are better. So thank you all for that. My friends are still very ill, but I remember them as being both so physically fit and full of good conversations. Lee still slowly heads downhill. My best friend from graduate school who is just a few years behind Lee with her own dementia still can make me laugh as we both remember the fun times.

I have been given the names of professionals who might be able to help if depression gets out of hand. I honestly think I am a long ways from that and accept the fact that some days are hard and others will be harder. But it is up to me to control that and just keep going as I have been. One thing I leaned this week was that even though I do not want to take on more responsibilities, most of them are just a matter of a few minutes and post-a-notes can be stuck up anywhere to remind me.

I also learned that the best support comes from those the farthest away.

So on to new things..new adventures. I had to look up what a haiku poem consists of. Three lines with the first and third only having five syllables each and the middle one containing seven. I can do this along with my drawing a day for the month of October. It will be a good challenge to relate them to each other. I told my Canadian (graduate school) friend this morning that it shouldn’t be too hard as they used to thank me for my “brevity” when in college. She reminded me that I could not just say one syllable words seventeen times.

Here is one I just made up…..and I will try to find better subject matter…..

 

The cat has thrown up

Again she eats much too fast

Lee can point at it.

 

I will remember to chant this to myself every morning at 4:45 am.

 

Also I am going to learn how to make fixing meals easier. Ways to put things all in one pot and still have it look somewhat appetizing without returning to noodles, can of tuna, and can of cream of mushroom soup. Here is our Cornish game hen meal this week….actually two meals as the breast meat makes lunch sandwiches the next day.

So here is my sketchbook for haiku and drawings. I might even add some color with the new indigo pigments. At least I am ready to give it a go. I bought this book at the art supply shop on Degraves Street in Melbourne last March. And it is Australian friends that I am doing the challenge of drawing and haiku, so seemed fitting.

I am still intrigued with the idea of collecting my own tears so will find a small vial of some sort that I can keep handy. I will keep a tight seal on it until there is enough to work with. Trouble is I should have thought of this last week.

But if the sky turns grey and bad news comes again, I will be ready. It is just not looking likely right now. Things are looking up with Trump under investigation. Everyone I know is smiling.

Thank you, Adele, for sending me this picture of your new toilet bowl scrubber.

That is it for now.

Again, thank you.

Til later.

Thoughts on Faltering

Posted on by Sandy Webster

These poor Japanese anemones can’t even stand up. They just lay there on the walk way. I think they are exhausted from living up to the expectations of being constantly full of life, constantly putting on a good show, never wanting to be less, always more, more, more…..

Honestly I think they are looking forward to winter and dying back to months of waiting in the dark and not being looked at. Not having to perform and maybe not even returning in Spring just to avoid the inevitable collapse.

I get that. Sometimes I am just too tired, too sad, too something. And I falter.

This morning at the gym someone asked how I was doing because I was a few minutes later than usual getting in the door. It felt good that she noticed and that she watched me that much to know. I told her I did not know why I was late but I did know that I suddenly wanted to be fifty years old….not seventy-five. She laughed and told me she never wanted to be younger….she had already done that time and was in the “now”.

I thought, maybe sixty then. If sixty I could live all those good times over again and be more intentional about it…remember to tell myself that when I was seventy-five, life would be different. At seventy-five you start having to practice saying good bye to people and things and you think you should have been better prepared for those good byes.

I am holding onto the sad things from last week. Tears sit on the edge just waiting to race down my face and encourage others to follow. The simplest thing will start the flow. A friend sent a message that simply said, “Thinking of you, us, and sending love.” I looked at her tiny quarter inch photo next to the message and let the tears fall. If I was sixty I would have that experience of meeting her all over again and squeeze even more out of our time together.

It is better if friends do not say nice things and ask kind questions, better if they just use me to talk about themselves. It is easier to listen than to speak. I don’t have to worry about words getting stuck and I can make noises instead that sound like I am paying attention. All they want is someone to listen and all I want is to keep my feelings from becoming words.

Lee is napping so I can get this done. Put feelings on paper so to speak. My handwriting has gotten so bad that writing in a journal seems like too much work. But I should try it. I should also try drawing in a journal. Since a group of friends and I are going to spend next month doing a drawing a day, just for the month, maybe I can write some words to go with the drawings. It will help get those thoughts away from those tears.

I must say that my tears have no where else to go but down my face because my eye doctor put plugs in the tear ducts to help prevent “dry eye.” And suddenly that seems funny. I always fought to keep myself and my feeling private and now they just spill out. I would love to think that I could collect those tears and add a pigment so I could write with them. Wouldn’t that be a wonderful thing to do!

But this will pass. It has to. I need to get on with things.

Yesterday a man came who fixed our pond so it would not leak any more. A person who knows how to fix things is rare here the area. I used to count on Lee to do things like that. Today I showed Lee how to use the vacuum to suck up leaves on the porch. The last time he “cleaned” the porch he brought in his leaf blower and sent everything flying about. It’s funny now but wasn’t then.

Sorry there are not more pictures. Today was a day for words that needed this space.

More later.

 

A Really Up and Down Few Days

Posted on by Sandy Webster

Turkey buzzards were very concentrated at the dam yesterday morning. The wind was perfect for them to ride the thermals across the  walkway. I often think of them as not only a pretty ugly bird but harbingers of not so good news. And so it was.

One bad news came via email from a friend who has a rare form of cancer in the linings of abdominal organs. He must stay abroad until they can find a way for him to manage. We were looking forward to the visit to his Brasstown home in just a couple of months but now that is quite unlikely.

The other sad news came by way of a phone call from a very good friend telling me that her husband that I have also know since the eighties has a cancer of the bladder. When I hear her voice I see her broad smile, twinkly eyes and the most amazing laugh. We hung up before those tears that choke your throat into uncontrollable sobs could surface.

Yesterday was not the best of days.

 

But the day before was really good. I actually had a student in the studio all day. He came bearing gifts of beautiful powdered pigments.

A lovely Cyprus green from Maiwa, an indigo and Maya blue pigment from his wife who is an amazing textile artist and knew how much I would appreciate these non-earth blue pigments. They are beautiful and I will find a good use for them soon.

And the student will be back to learn more about white line printmaking from me. Another day in late October. Maybe by then I will have something worked up using his gifts. The next day his wife emailed me about the blue pigments and how they came to be. She also told me that her husband had stopped at the Craft Shop at John C Campbell on the way home and purchased one of my stitched prints to take home. Lovely.

Here is the latest one I have been experimenting with.

Might have over-stitched a bit on this one but Lee and I were engrossed in a cop show series that kept saying “to be continued”, so we had to stay tuned for a few hours to see everything sorted out.

And I have one more picture from the dam on buzzard day. These pillars marching off toward the woods. They are there to protect against cars driving around past the gate and going across the pedestrian only dam. I think of them as old friends in a row. They are always going to be there and just as solid as ever. We need to remember that.

Friends in Hobart will remember later this month when they go to the wake for someone we all miss, and recall how many good times we shared, and they will smile. Raise a glass of red for me.

Til later when I can come up with something better ….. take care.