This Perfectly Imperfect Life

Having a day. Being a spoonie + being caregiver kind of having a day.  Exhausted. Overwhelmed. Ugly crying. Clueless. Anger returning. Trying to keep my head above water, but after all of these months, starting to slip under.  Thankful it's not as hot here today so I could spend some time in the garden. It is my great comfort.  

Sunset Mon 3/21 A new day Tues 3/22 Same hospital, same floor, practically the same view. Same patient.  Not me. My mother.  Another TIA/mini-stroke, and cardiac event, both minor this time. TG.  First time I've ever had to call for an ambulance. First time I've ever taken a ride in one.  Today's the third day of playing 'hurry up and wait' at the hospital.  I'm so exhausted; I can barely think strait.  Mothers and daughters. Why do we do this to ourselves? To one another? History repeating itself. Exactly 4 years later. 

11/10, the United States Marine Corps Birthday and 11/11, Veterans Day: Thankful for our Country's Veterans, especially my Husband, who has shown me through who he is and being involved with the American Legion & VFW what serving our Country means to our Veterans & what true Patriotism is. Sent from my iPhone

Oma is German for Grandma/Grandmother. My Oma was born in a German village in 1905. I believe she came to America around 1926, when she was 21 years old. (And I believe the photo of her with her hair in a long braid was taken before she made that journey). She passed away 24 years ago this Saturday, the 24th. The photo of her late in life was taken just before Mom and I left Oma and Opa's in Florida to fly back to NJ. I only met her that once, a week or so, when I six years old, but talked with her on the phone every Sunday and on holidays. I suddenly realized earlier this year some of who I see in the mirror is Oma.  The angle of my face in the photo above doesn't show it well but now I see where I get some of my features from.  And this nose! I can't remember the sound of her voice now and it breaks my heart.

As I wrote this last night, the world outside was turning royal blue as the sun set behind gray, snow filled clouds that were ready to burst any moment. The candle lamps brightened the windows with their warm, flickering glow the darker it become. I've been missing my father-in-law a lot recently and this week I decided to make what I call his tomato garbanzo bean stew. He made it for us the first time during his visit in 2006 and left me his recipe. That tiny, handwritten slip of paper hasn't left the bulletin board just outside the kitchen since. I've changed the recipe up some over the years, adding two cups of low sodium/low fat chicken broth and a palm full of parsley. I use whatever pasta I have on hand. I tend to buy pre-shredded extra sharp cheddar cheese because it's difficult & often painful for me to shred my own because of my arthritis. And this week, I added a few healthy dashes of curry powder. It's not for everyone and I must admit I h...

Taken Sat. on our front porch while enjoying the warmth of the sun on a chilly Autumn day! At least I hope it does! Hello dear friends! Apologies for my absence here. I caught Hubby's awful cold & bronchitis and while I've had it since 9/30 when I awoke with the dreaded scratchy throat, it's been especially rough since 10/4. (That night I went to the doctor as I'd gotten progressively worse throughout the day). I've been here at home for the most part, (talk about 'cabin fever' - ugh) trying to get some purging & organizing done when I'm able, resting when I'm not. My writing, what I have from my high school & college days, to the present is now condensed, past writings & journals in my closet, present projects in a bin which now sits on our pc desk. Speaking of my closet! The world must be coming to an end as it too is now neat & organized after purging! The entire shower is also clean enough to lick. Not that anyone w...

Every morning before Hubbs leaves for work, he comes back into our room to give me a kiss. (Every body altogether now, "Awww!")  Usually I go back to sleep after he leaves (since it's around 6am) and get up about 7:45am. But after a fitful & uncomfy nights sleep last night, I was wide awake. Oh, I tried to go back to sleep, but decided to get up instead of laying there frustrated that I couldn't sleep. Then I remembered the pink Morning Glories blooming on the arbor around the tall gate in the yard that I shared with you here .  (We have two yard gates, one tall, the other short).  I dressed quickly (quickly for me that is!) grabbed my camera's and went into our spare room to peak through the blinds at the top of the arbor. Sure enough I spied two small clusters of pink! So out into the beautiful, foggy, albeit it more than sticky, morning I went. Thankfully the rising sun was having a hard time burning through the dense fog, keeping the heat at bay, allow...

(Taken this morning in my garden, 'Queen Elizabeth' grandiflora (pink) & 'Love' grandiflora (red) opened as the fog lifted). Only one day before July is finished once again. I'm amazed at how quickly the year is passing by, but I'm glad Summer is getting on with itself. The heat, humidity & storms have been much to bear this year. Autumn is quickly approaching and that excites me so! Makes me a little sad as well - Summer, for me, seems endless while Autumn passes by in a flash! July 21st was a day I dreaded deeply, but glad we all got through unscathed (or so it seems). In the morning, we spread Dad's ashes where we spread my mother.in.law's 2005 then headed to his old firehouse where the fire company & family honored him. When asked to speak, the only thing I managed through my choking tears was that I love him. It was such a long day. When we walked through our front door, I was so glad to be home.   That night was the first ni...

I wanted to do this as a Monday Musings post, a follow-up to last weeks, (click here for that post) but weather (3 rounds of nasty storms), time and my iv session were against me on Monday and yesterday I wasn't up to anything more than dozing off, reading & watching The Shipping News while camped out on the couch, snuggled under a blanket on a rare Autumn-like day in June. On Friday, during lunch with Mom after her speech therapy appointment, the topic of my father came up and she clarified (corrected) some history for me which I am very glad for because it gave me clarity & closure to some of what I mentioned in last week's Monday Musings post.  Sure, it also peeved me off and left me reeling but at the same time I really wasn't surprised - He was a cruel, sadistic, evil man who abused her in ways you cannot imagine for 17 years, so it's not like I expected anything good from him. They weren't divorced when I was 6 months old and she didn't ...

my beloved father.in.law. Sent on the Sprint® Now Network from my BlackBerry®

For newer friends who don't know: My parents divorced when I was 6 months old in 1976 and my father died before I turned 4 years old in 1979. To say he didn't treat my mother well is an epic understatement. To say he was abusive is an epic understatement. His 'tough' city fire fighter co-workers were afraid of him. He drank heavily, another epic understatement, from a very young age and, for all intensive purposes, drank himself to death. He had his first heart attack at the age of 36. He died shortly after his 3rd heart attack at the age of 44. It was a case of Doctor Jekyl and Mr. Hyde, but Mr. Hyde was in control more often than not, whether he was sober or not. And despite everything he did to her, had she known he was lying in a FL hospital bed dying, she would have gone to see him to say goodbye. But my grandparents didn't want her to know. That's another story for another time. Grandmother eventually told my mother his ashes had been scattered in...

To my beloved Father.in.law, the wonderful man who has blessed these last 8 years by making this day mean something positive to me for the first time in my life! Sent on the Sprint® Now Network from my BlackBerry®

The Southern novel I'm reading in the waiting area while Mom has her endoscopy, The Tender Mercy Of Roses by Anna Michaels, is in a word: Incredible. "When you leave home, even if it's just to go to the Piggly Wiggly for a loaf of bread, it's possible to become somebody else. It's possible for regret to fly out the window like a blackbird and something wonderful to fly back inside and perch on your shoulder. Something with yellow wings that sings a song you heard in childhood but thought you'd forgotten." With writing like that, it's a great distraction while waiting. For the most part anyhow. I'm definitely not liking Not being the patient and now feel awful that this is what Hubbs & Mom have gone through when I am. I'm praying it goes well, that it's easy on her afterwards and will show she won't have to have surgery on her esophagus, at least not right away, that with time and speech therapy, its' function will conti...

A week ago this past Friday, I stopped in Bog Lots with Mom.  I love browsing in that store! I don't always buy something, but I do more often than not. I think my original intention before we got there was to look for books (most are $2 & $3) but I'm easily distracted upon walking through those sliding glass doors!  I love Patriotic decor in our home from May through September 11th (some stays year round as it does in our northern home) and I immediately set out to get a closer look at what they had on display in the center of the store.  (Told ya, easily distracted!) Large glass candles for $8!  Now that caught my attention.  Sniffing candles is dangerous business for me - one bad sniff and I've got a migraine!  But that bright red one... "Apple Cobbler."  Hm...  I chose to live dangerously, pulled the lid off and took a tentative sniff. Instantly I was walking into my husband's family cabin again, in the summer, and greeted by the mu...

Mom's 72nd birthday was this past Friday. She's been having a rough time lately dealing with all she's been going through since her mini-stroke and she's still having speech & swallowing issues so she wasn't much in the mood for celebrating. So I got her a Boston Cream Pie cake (because it's her favorite and because it's soft enough for her to eat without a problem) and a pretty bouquet of flowers and we had cake for lunch on her birthday! She had her speech therapy evaluation 2 days before her birthday and is right now having a MBS, modified barium swallow - in a nutshell: xrays are taken as she eats & drinks so they can see why she's having a problem swallowing. We should hear by the end of this week exactly what the plan of action will be for her therapy and she'll begin next week. I'll tell you one thing, I am not used to Not being the patient! And I'm not used to mom not only being the patient, but acting elderly way ...

"There's Rosemary, that's for remembrance." -William Shakespeare, Hamlet. 13 years. It's amazing one can live so long after such heartbreak. But here I am. You're always in my heart B, Mama loves you...

It's finally Raining! A Nor'easter is upon us and we could get as much as 3 inches of rain through tomorrow morning. It's been raining here (on the coast) since mid-morning, steadily becoming more heavy with each passing hour. Everything has been caked with green pollen for weeks and now that glow is gone from everything. Sounds like handfuls of pebbles being throw at the windows along the back of our home. It will be an interesting night as the storm progresses and moves on. Gale & coastal flood warnings are in affect. While at the supermarket this morning, I decided today was a good day to make a pot of Dad's tomato garbanzo bean stew for dinner and the leftovers would be handy for my lunch tomorrow post iv session. Usually making this, or any of his recipes/ones of mine he enjoyed, brings smiles, but, I couldn't get through making this today without tears & sadness. My brother.in.law has moved in with Dad to help take care of him and hospice be...

To see and read about how I honor my loved ones in my garden, please click here for my latest Adventures In Gardening column on The #gardenchat Blog . For the archive of all of my Adventures In Gardening column posts to date, please click here .

Is dying, everything in your world looks different, feels different and your chest, your heart literally hurts and you sit, open mouthed, tears streaming down your face, utter disbelief washing through your whole being even though you knew you would hear the word "Cancer" when you answered the phone. My husband's dear, sweet, wonderful father, whom I love more than words can begin to tell you, has cancer. Cancer that is spreading already. There's nothing they can do. We don't know when his time will come but the doctor doesn't give him long and I pray he's right only because I cannot imagine the suffering he will endure with the cancer continuing to spread throughout his body if he lives for any great length of time. He doesn't deserve to suffer like that. He has suffered and been through enough as it is. I feel as though my heart has been ripped out, my chest hurts so much. It's awful. So very awful. Sent on the Sprint® Now Network from my Blac...

In all honesty, for me, 2010 is ' the year that wasn't ' - months of blank pages in my planner and journals. (Makes me so sad, I've put them away). But it's time to move on and start anew. For the last couple of years I've focused on " Simplicity " as my overall goal for those years (my word for 2009 which I carried over to this year) and the mantra I created to go with it ("Simplicity brings Clarity brings Harmony") and I was unsure as to what my overall goal for 2011 would be; would I focus on what I had been for the last couple of years? As I've journaled on what my word of 2011 will be (since last week I've been trying to sort this out), I've come to realize that " Simplicity brings Clarity brings Harmony " has become a part of my thinking pattern and overall desire for my life so I'm moving on to " Create " as my word and overall goal for 2011 to help me focus on my writing which I deeply want to ge...