What happened to the Christmas Letter?

I was looking through some old papers that I have saved for many years.  A lot of what I saved are Christmas letters from friends and relatives.  I also have some handwritten letters from older relatives, like Uncle Al and Aunt Connie.  I re-read them all as I tried to decide what to keep and what to throw away.  And I realized that I haven't gotten a Christmas letter in years - nor have I sent one out.  There were several from Jessica's godparents and, then, just her godfather after Peg Sante died.  Now Pete has also died so.  A friend from nursing school apparently had the smartest kids in the world and didn't mind letting everyone know.  They were valedictorians in high school and then went on the multiple degrees in Ivy League schools while she worked with at-risk populations of pregnant women and girls.  Hard to live up to that.  My sister-in-law used to send out missives updating the family on the exploits of her two daughters and kept us abreast of what our brother was doing.  I was not crazy about the Christmas letters but I sent them anyway as a means of keeping in touch with family and friends.  Now with Facebook and emails, it just doesn't seem as important.  But I miss them.  Be on the lookout for a letter this Christmas - that is if I send out cards.

Mood Swings

It has been a wonderful day so far for me.  I managed to get out of the parking lot and to the gym to try the cardio dance class.  As soon as I saw the skinny young women with no boobs, I started to suspect I was out of my league.  I lasted 50 minutes though, but left early enough that no one would have to call 911.  Then I had to fight the Seafood Festival crowd to get home.  My street has been blocked off due to the festival, but I made a point of telling the guard when I left that I would be back at 11:30 or so.
  After a quick shower, Richard and I went to the festival.

The sun was shining brightly, no clouds and only a little standing water here and there.  There was a nice breeze to keep things comfortable.  I had not eaten yet so I checked out the various food booths and opted for fried clams and fries.  Big mistake because I am never going to find clams as good as the ones I used to get at Nantasket Beach.  After checking out most everything, we settled into a couple of bar stools at Tight Lines Pub and enjoyed some adult beverages.  Then I made one more pass through the festival crowd and back home.  I checked out the Weather Channel briefly and all they had was the gloom and doom stuff that would make anyone not here think we might be in mortal danger.   It was only later that my thighs started to scream at me, protesting all the squats we did in class.  But still, it has been a very good day.  I love the fact that I can wear a tank top, shorts and sandals in October.  I love the water views.  I love the simplicity of renting.
The problem will be tomorrow when my mood swings back the other way and I start questioning my judgement in moving and despairing of what my next step will be.  And tomorrow it will probably rain again or, at the least, be cloudy and gray.  These mood swings have been plaguing me ever since I stopped my hormone replacement therapy last year.  I don't think I should go back on hormones but I sure wish my mood would stabilize somewhere in middle.  I would sacrifice the highs to get rid of the lows.

Saying Goodbye

I have been thinking of my brother, Stephen, a lot lately.  He died this past summer from cancer.  He was diagnosed early in 2013 of esophageal cancer.  He sent me a text message back in February of 2013 saying that he had started chemo andwas hoping for the best.  I went to SC in May of that year when he had his surgery.  He was living in SC alone and I figured I could look out for his best interests while he was in the hospital and help him once he got home.  His surgery was a major one and, with my help, he survived the whole hospital process.  He didn't really need a lot of help from me at home and I left once I saw that he was capable of handling his meds and his feeding tube.  He was able to go to the beach in NC that July.  His surgery was followed by another round of chemo.  I was so sure he would survive the cancer even though the statistics for his kind of cancer were not good.  It was, after all, found early.  A year after his original diagnosis, it was found that his cancer had returned.  He started chemo again but it didn't go well.  At some point, he opted to try a clinical trial for an experimental drug.  By July, he was on a fast downward spiral.  In early July, he was having trouble walking and talking.  A brain tumor ( or more accurately, three brain tumors ) was discovered.  He had surgery to remove the one operable tumor.  After that, it was a series of one sibling or another going to SC to stay a few days or a week.  He didn't want too many people with him at one time.  I contacted hospice for him but he didn't feel ready for that.  He was hoping to try gamma knife radiation for the other 2 tumors.  Three weeks before he died, he was talking about selling his house and getting a house on one level.  But he was talking about having one built.  He refused to make out a will.  He refused to sign a DNR.  In the meantime, one sister flew down from MA, one came from Vancouver, one came from AZ, a brother came from GA.  We tried to take turns.  He had a wonderful friend from work who came to his house every day after work to sit with him and help him in any way she could.  He didn't mind having Sandra there.  His friend Leo came from MA to stay with him for the duration.  A couple of days before my last trip to SC, he went to the hospital again.  I was able to get him home and under hospice care just two days before he died.  The last night he was alive, Sandra and Leo and I and some other friends sat around his bed, drinking bourbon and ginger, talking to him and about him.  Every now and then he would throw in a comment.  He died the next afternoon.  He had no wake, no funeral, per his request.  His family and friends did not get to gather one last time and remember him.  He was cremated and his ashes are now in MA awaiting a final disposal. It has always felt like we never got to say goodbye.  It was better than a sudden death because we almost all got to see  him one last time.  And, as much as I don't like the tradition of a 2 day wake and a funeral, I felt like we missed something.  We tried to have a makeshift memorial service at Thanksgiving but it didn't feel right.

This is the last photo of him taken a couple of months before his death.  He looks happy and not so sick.  Rest in peace, Stephen.  We all miss you.

Over the river and through the woods.....

For many years, Thanksgiving was our holiday to travel.  After my in-laws moved in 1973, we started driving from Maryland and then Virginia to western Pennsylvania to spend Thanksgiving with my husband's family.  After Thanksgiving, he would often stay for deer season and I would go home with the kid(s).  We had many exciting adventures on these trips.  One year, there was a big snowstorm and power was out for days.  We were staying at the old brick house owned by Richard's grandparents.  The house was built in 1810 and has walls three bricks thick.  Grandma had a gas stove and she would turn it on, open the door and hang a heavy blanket in the doorway to keep the heat in the living area.  We would play cards until it got too dark - usually around 4:30 - and then go to bed and huddle under the blankets.  This was in the 70's and up to this point, I had no idea that electricity was needed to get gasoline.  Except at Andy Morgan's on Water Street in Smithfield where you could get gas at his hand operated pump if he liked you well enough.  Fortunately, the power was back on in three days and we had warmth and lights again.  One year, my sister-in-law and I drove to snowy, hilly Preston County, WV to bail two fellows (who shall go unnamed) out of jail.  More than once, the family drove up the east coast to Massachusetts.   The traffic was always horrible and one year, in New York, construction workers were tying up traffic on the busiest travel day of the year.  What were they thinking?
Now we live in western Pennsylvania.  My husband's parents are both dead, we see his siblings every week and that leaves just the two of us for Thanksgiving dinner.  Our two children have legitimate reasons for not traveling to see us at Thanksgiving.  Sometimes we travel to Michigan since two of the grandchildren have a birthday near Thanksgiving.  The tradition has changed or maybe just wiped out completely.  No more over the river and through the woods to grandmother's house.  I miss those trips in the 70's and 80's even though the trip was sometimes quite frightful.

My new JetPack

I have had some questionable ideas this year.  One of them was to get rid of Verizon for my home phone and DSL Internet service.  I couldn't get my husband to stop promising sums of money to unheard of "charitable" organizations.  I got home from a three week trip to the west coast and found a pile of pledges waiting for me to write a check and I decided enough was enough.  Apparently paying extra for having an unpublished and unlisted number is an exercise in futility.  So I went to Verizon Wireless and got two new devices - one to connect my computer, iPad, printer and phone to the internet.  The other device gives me wireless phone service for the new cordless phones I bought. And now I sit in the lobby of the hospital at which I used to work, using their free wifi to write this blog.  Why you ask?  Because even though I have upped my GB allowance twice in less than 3 weeks, I am perilously close to going over my limit and I have a week left in the billing cycle.  I never thought I was on the computer THAT much but I guess I have been wasting more time than I thought.  Maybe I should do more cooking and cleaning and reading.  I am hoping, though, that the first month of the new service was just a fluke.  I love the new phone system.  I think I have gotten maybe 2 phone calls.  I love that I can take my internet with me in the car or on vacation.  What I don't love is that there is no unlimited internet when you go wireless.  Just gigabytes that cost money the more you use.  So look for me at Panera Bread or the lobby of Uniontown Hospital playing Bejeweled Blitz or blogging.

The Scenic Route AKA the shortcut

Almost everyone I know hates driving on interstate highways, particularly I-95.  There is always someone who has a shorter way or a better way to get you where you want to go.  Now, I seem to have inherited the "make sure you have a good map" gene from my father but not the "let's take the scenic route" or  the "I know a good shortcut route" gene that is possessed by so many people to whom I am related.  Sometimes the scenic route is indeed scenic and sometimes it is even shorter, although this does not always translate into faster.  I will admit that not everyone wants to get to their destination in the fastest possible time.  Recently, while contemplating traveling from point A in SC to point B in NC, my brother suggested a route that would be much shorter than the Map Quest suggested route of taking I-26 to I-95.  I would take 17A north to 701 and after that, things were a little murky.  But I would eventually reach my destination.  For all of you folks who scorn interstates, let me just list some of the things you will not see on the interstate.  You will not find yourself behind a school bus that is stopping every hundred yards to let off another kid.  You will not get stuck behind some large piece of farm equipment that is being moved from one field to another, taking up 1 1/2 lanes of the 2 lane road in the process.  You will not see a dog meandering down the center of the road - at least not for long.  You will not be making a sudden right turn into the Dairy Queen you spotted while sitting at the red light.  You will not find yourself forced into turning left when suddenly your lane won't take you straight.  You will not have to slow down to 25 MPH in a podunk little town where the local cop would just as soon give you a ticket for "speeding" through his burgh at 35 as look at you.  The "shortcut" I took shaved 15 miles off my trip but added an hour to the travel time.  Sometimes you just want to get there.

Good-bye, Miss Farr

I recently learned of the death of one of my nursing instructors from Johns Hopkins Hospital School of Nursing.  Her name was Mary Farr,  "Miss Farr" to students.

 Mary Farr was the prime example of what a Hopkins nurse should be.  She herself graduated from Hopkins in 1941 and went to war with the Hopkins nursing contingent.  She taught nursing at Hopkins from 1951-1969. She was proper, professional, intelligent and always perfectly groomed.  She expected the best of her students - no, demanded the best from us.   She left no stoned unturned in the care of patients; her value system embraced excellence, integrity, compassion, thoroughness and dogged determination to "get it right" on behalf of patients and colleagues.  She knew everything there was to know about medical nursing.  She knew all the diseases, all the medications and their side effects.  She would grill her students endlessly about the care of the patients that had been assigned to the students.  She reduced me to tears on more than one occasion.  The first time was after she had subjected me to a great many questions about my patient, his diagnoses, his medications, nursing care indicated.  After she was done with me (and she kept up the questions until you got one wrong) and I had walked off, she followed me and said something to the effect that "I should remember that you are only 18 years old".  At which point I burst into tears.  I don't remember what triggered the other cry, but it came during a one- on -one session with her, maybe an evaluation.   We learned from her, the doctors learned from her.  She made an impact on everyone who knew her.   She could be formidable (something she didn't remember in her later years ), but I certainly learned a great deal from her.