In limbo...

School is done. Sun is on vacation. Time to gather speed toward moving Mom to assisted living... or so I thought. Everything is in place but one key item: the medical forms to be completed and signed by her primary care physician and then placed on file with the Case Manager at the assisted living building. The other information - an interview with the head of client services, financial forms, etc. - were completed in short order, but her doctor - the one who recommended that assisted living would be a better place for her - has decided to drag his heels. In looking over the forms that were delivered to his office six days ago, I can see that there's nothing being requested that he doesn't already know from the many recent visits she's made to his office. He's decided to wait until her 1 month follow-up appointment two days from now to fill in and sign the paperwork.

Fine.

I suspect he's getting back at me for my lack of confidence in his actual caring for his patient. Perhaps I mistook his preachy aloofness as a sign of cold callousness and he's really a warm and deeply concerned physician who's too shy to express that side of himself. However, I think not. I'm a pretty good judge of character, and this character is simply being spiteful, knowing that we need to move my mother as soon as possible to a better living situation. Leaving us in limbo for 8 days makes things difficult for my brother to know when to make arrangements to fly up from Texas, and for Sis2 to take days off from work to take part in The Big Move. It also leaves my mother in more of a state of agitation and confusion than usual, and that's not a good thing. Now, I understand from Sis2, Mom has begun to transfer a collection of her "good clothes" from hanging on the shower curtain rod to being slumped over the back of a recliner and the arm of the sofa in the living room and back again, at least once a day. She can't figure out why we haven't started moving her things to the new place yet no matter how many times we tell her that the paperwork isn't yet complete, so we have to wait, and we'll let her know the moment that it's time to move. Dr. G knows he holds her fate in his hands with this small collection of information on paper, and he's quite content to let us all tread water for another couple of days.

Between now and mid afternoon on Wednesday, my mother will have two doctor's appointments, one with a psychiatric nurse-practitioner at her own request ("I like her because she listens to me"), and the other with Dr. G. Input from each of them can influence the decision of the assisted living place to take my mother, or not. If either of them makes an official diagnosis of Alzheimer's Disease, we'll be looking for another place to take her to live because the current elder community is not set up to care for people who truly have Alzheimer's. From what I can tell - and I'm no medical professional, but many of my friends have parents with similar symptoms - she's somewhat senile, with some signs of dementia, and she's having more and more difficulty coping with life alone rather than with her husband around for moral support and companionship. My hope is that's what the two medical professionals will document so this move can be accomplished as planned.

Two more days to spend in limbo....

A nice, peaceful calm

This is the first weekend in quite a while when I've felt such a light burden that there's no guilt sitting here typing when I "should" be doing something else. The seniors have collected their diplomas and gone, I have only one more final exam to give to a class of 18 students, a duplicate of one I gave on Friday, and this one not until Tuesday, and there's nothing more to be started or maintained, so my responsibilities are minimal today. Fresh sheets on the bed, laundry done and folded, dinner to be leftovers from the packed refrigerator make the load even lighter. Yahoooo!

Thursday was a day I dreaded, somewhat: taking my mother on a guided tour of the Assisted Living quarters within the larger retirement community where she lives, and hoping 1) that she liked the place and we'd find a suite where she'd be comfortable, and 2) that any behaviors that the guide (head of health management services in this building) observed wouldn't bar my mother from becoming a resident there. Fortune seemed to smile on us for all of these. The floor where she'd live is very nicely appointed with lots of public areas and seating arrangements to encourage people to socialize, and they have access to a very nice patio that faces a view of the mountains. There are staff on duty 24/7 whose job is to support them and make life easier for them by helping them make appointments, get to and from places, and resolve any little problems that the residents have. Meals are included, and no heating appliances other than a microwave are allowed in the suites for everyone's safety, but there's a full kitchen in a public nook that's supervised so people can use that safely. We viewed three apartments and my mother felt more comfortable in the one with square rooms rather than the ones on the corner with diagonal walls, so we've put a courtesy hold on that one, pending a short interview with the head of health management and the completion of some paperwork. My mother tends to move, both mentally and physically, very slowly these days, so although she said she'd make the appointment with the manager, I'm sure it'll be up to me to do that and to accompany her. I can't push too hard and we can't expect her to move forward very quickly, but it looks like we've found a better situation for her than where she is now, isolated from people like herself and insecure to paranoia about being alone. These next few weeks will be busy ones, even though school is just about over, but I'm fortunate that the need to move her didn't come during the school year or in the dead of winter when the process would be even more difficult than it will be considering the fact that we'll have to get her to part with more than half of her "stuff" in order to fit into the new suite. Sis2, Bro, hubby and I have been making little plots and plans how to accomplish that, but my mother's willfulness seems to be waning, so the job may be easier than it would have been a few months ago. That's my hope.

Saturday in the Park

...but it's not the Fourth of July, as the song goes. The first half of this day has been lovely: breakfast at a leisurely pace, some raking and tree pruning, sitting in the sun to do a couple of crossword puzzles, conversation with a couple of dear friends, cutting a half dozen spears of asparagus from the garden, hanging a load of laundry to dry in the sun and light breeze. These I look forward to on an almost daily basis once school is done for the year, so while they're delightful to experience today, one other event was even sweeter: the recognition at a special park in town of two educators, one retired and one a current teacher. The current teacher calls the middle school home, so I don't know him well at all, but the retired teacher happens to be a very long-time friend, and his award is the reason my husband and I attended the event.

Al was the coach of the soccer and boys basketball teams when I first started teaching, and he was athletic director and boys P.E. teacher as well. For the first 13 years of my tenure in this school district, I coached varsity cheerleading. *waits for laughter to die down* My cheerleaders and I had many good times, and we cheered for our teams regardless of weather or scores, some of which were quite lopsided. *refrains from saying in which direction* Some of the most memorable times were the long bus rides to away games when, to while away the time, Al, who always sat in the front of the bus, would turn around and start some kind of song or chant. He was famous for "The Cookie Jar" one that went something like this, in call and response format: "Hey kids, guess what?" "What?" "Tom Bailey stole the cookie from the cookie jar!" and the kid had to respond with: "Who me?" and everyone else said: "Uh huh." The kid's response:"Couldn't be!" to which we all replied: "Then who stole the cookie from the cookie jar?" and Tom blamed the theft on someone else, calling out: "Jake Todd stole the cookie from the cookie jar." ...and on and on and on until everyone on the bus - Al would make sure of that - had been "victimized." He was the big kid with the deep voice who would sing folk songs and popular songs, and the rest would join in, so the hour long bus rides weren't painful at all.

You always know where you stand with Al. He's tall, and he has a loud voice that almost scared some people, but he has a heart of gold. He never expected more of others than he was willing to give, but he did expect civility and he wasn't afraid to teach people how they should do that. He made a marvelous lunch duty supervisor, especially in those years of a particularly rowdy and undisciplined class that tended to enjoy making life miserable for everyone around them. Everyone knew what behavior was expected of them in the cafeteria, so unless you wanted Al standing tall over you and asking in his booming voice what you thought you were doing, you behaved. We knew we'd miss him when he announced that it was time for him to retire, so we had a photo of him blown up to life size and mounted with a stand on the back so we'd have him there with us during lunch period. "Flat Al" was this pretender's name, and he made his appearance today at the park after the serious part of the ceremony was over. What a hoot to see one with his arm slung over the other one's shoulder!

Teachers don't tend to get a lot of feedback from students and colleagues who carry on with life after the years together, so today's gathering was very sweet for Al and for the rest of us. The crowd wasn't huge, but it was a meaningful group. The speeches were heartfelt, and there was nothing but joy in the air. I'm thankful to the alumnus and the businesswoman who initiated the park project and who had the vision to make it a beautiful place that recognizes educators.

They're baaaack

For a month now I've seen turkeys in the large field off the state highway near my house. They've been keeping their distance, preferring the side toward the river, but today they made it clear that they're taking over. As I rounded the curve in the road and the field came into view, I saw what looked like a bird that had swallowed a football taking off in ungainly flight, heading toward me. I have no idea if it saw the look of surprise on my face or if it just reacted to the sudden appearance of my car, but the bird veered off to its left, finding a safe landing just behind the stone wall demarking the edge of the field from the road shoulder. After my wide eyes blinked, I looked toward the field where I saw another bird of similar dimensions, and a third with its tail fanning out as if he were waving a greeting to me. I'd say the turkey population not only survived the winter, but it's flourishing, so the next time I stop by that field to take a photo or two of the landscape, I'll be sure to look around for them. I don't find them particularly attractive, but closeup photos of them would be an interesting addition to my collection.

This is the weekend when I grade seniors' final exams. I know most of them did a pretty good job, and I can list the ones who didn't: the boy full of promises who didn't even try to concoct a cover story about why he failed to keep them; the girl who thought she could hand in her final project any time because she was absent on the day it was due, contrary to her mother's phone call promising that she'd be appearing for my class on that day; the bright young man whose sub-par work was always submitted with a litany of excuses; and the student who didn't even attempt to write the two essays on the final exam. It's disappointing to see these things happen, but I haven't taught a year without seeing them occur. I'm happy for the ones who stuck out the effort right 'til the end. They've earned my respect as well as their exam grades.

I just finished a mugful of orange sherbet. There's nothing like orange sherbet to cool and quench one's thirst on a muggy day. Mmmmm!