I know this feeling will pass.  And come again.  It’s part of being human. 

But the feeling that I have failed my grandmother is painful.  I want to cry, run out of this apartment, and never come back.

After seeing my brother’s Kindle and not finding it easy to read, grandma and I had both discussed the idea of the iPad.  After taking her to appointment after appointment where her eyesight did not seem to improve, but she could consistently read dark, jet black text on bright paper (the minutes from her living complex were printed like this), I really thought an iPad would solve her reading problems.

And they might, but not right now.

I convinced Tom a few weeks ago that we should buy one.  Just let grandma, um, borrow it.  Indefinitely.  We could afford it, would both enjoy one, but wouldn’t find any real need for it unless traveling.

The iPad came last Friday and Tom was hooked in 5 minutes.  I think it really pained him to leave it at home when he left for work this week, despite having a PDA and a laptop in his carryon luggage.

I knew better than to spring it on grandma first thing when I got here this week.  I’d seen what happened when I had an agenda from the the get-go.  Too much information overloaded her and nothing productive occurred.

So I waited till we had got settled, gone out for lunch, and done the regular back-at-home routine.  She was on the couch when I proferred it, ready with a book (and the book icon being the only one on that desktop, and the screen saver turned off so it wouldn’t change appearance on her, and the screen rotate locked so it didn’t confuse her).

Wow.

I expected she wouldn’t be thrilled.  It would confuse her.  It would be foreign.  But I did hope I could leave it somewhere easy to access for the week and it would grow on her.  Certainly with all the complaining she has done with how hard it is to read she would enjoy the bright, big font.

Instead she had a complete meltdown.  I mean losing train of thought and hyperventilating and needing to go lie down. 

And about things I guess I should have expected, but didn’t. 

She is completely flummoxed by the idea the book is just “in there”.  She wants to understand it and I can’t explain it in words she recognizes.  And quite frankly, if I put aside how devestated I am to make my grandmother so upset, I myself am completely flummoxed as to this need to understand technology like the computer when she cannot explain or fully understand cable tv or wireless phones yet enjoys using them.

This is the biggest step I’ve tried to make in helping her.  I often leave here, week in and week out, feeling like I have accomplished nothing.  She still has the same complaints.  She’s still resistent to letting me take control of any facet of her life regardless of how tired of it she may be.

I know I make a difference by just being here.  I know that.  But this seemed like something so small and innocent – she didn’t have to make a decision to purchase one, or give up her regular print books, or even sell her soul to the devil.

I am used to doing good.  Not well, as in, excelling at something.  I mean doning the cape and walking off into the sunset having made the world a better place.  I do it all the time with animals.  I can’t…

Sigh.  I was about to write that I can’t remember the last time I felt I made such an error in judgement.  But then I remembered.  And it was worse than this.  Damn it.  I guess that means my pity party is over and I need to dust myself off and try again.

…It still sucks though.

Dear Rascal Flatts,

I was never a huge fan, although I didn’t find you noxious enough to earn a Oh-Hell-No-Change-That-Damn-Station-NOW verdict.

And I am so glad for that.  Because your song? satire?  corny pick up lines? “Summer Nights” has the ability to make me bob to the melody and LOL.

I just ask in the future that you try timing the comedy a bit better.  I am not quite done giggling over the line “Everybody’s feeling sexy” in the first chorus when you hit me with sage advice to the ladies: “Ya’ll keep doing ya’lls thing” and I break out in peals of laughter.

You don’t want to know where I’d place my igloo cooler,

Jessica in Progress

ps.  You are also educational on top of it all!  In writing this letter, I learned the proper apostrophe placement in “ya’ll”.  Could a nobel prize be in the works for you guys?  Indeed.

I have to say, this is the longest I’ve ever tried to be healthy with so little to show for it.

Granted, making Pakora over the weekend may not be *entirely* healthy, but it’s veggies, right?

While my diet may take a step or two down the wayward path, one thing that hasn’t faltered is my new commitment to working out.  The scale numbers may not be moving down that quickly, but the blood pressure ones are and I am loving it.  I can go to the doctor without fear of being put on medication now.  Not that I am exactly sure why I fear BP meds so much.  Except that someone who takes BP meds is old.  Very, very old.  And I am young.  YOUNG DAMNIT.  Now where is my anti-inflamitory?  If I don’t take it, I can’t get out of bed in the morning.

About two weeks ago, determined to get out of this one-hundred-mumble-mumble-five pound rut, I started swimming.  We have a pool as part of the condo, it’s warm enough here in FL now, and I have always been a bit of a water child.  Plus, Tom suggested it.  After suggesting several times we go and lay by the pool.  (Which, I am physically incapable of doing.  If you want me to just lay around in the sun, get me very drunk first.)  All of this suggesting made me think Tom might actually come to the pool with me.  Which…not so much.

But since he’s involved in only 2/7 of my life anymore, that hardly matters.  The first time I went, I was stunned by how breathless I got.  It was obviously an exercise challenge to me.  It was also an exercise where if I sweated buckets, it didn’t stick to me.  Score.

I am now completely addicted.  Not so much to the joy of the water, the challenge of more laps, or even the feeling that I have started the day on the right foot.

I am absolutely in love with the complete, utter, exhaustion I feel afterwards.  It is like the all those I-get-it-now cliches coming true at once and I understand the joy of just doing nothing.  Remember how drunk you have to get me to stay still?  Screw that.  Just make me swim a few laps.

I am relieved that my biopsy came back Not Cancer. 

As a pale girl who loves outdoors but won’t buy lotions or soap unless in a pump bottle because unscrewing caps is just too much of a hassle in my hygiene routine, I am pretty gobsmacked at the result.  And of course I have resolved to slather myself diligently.

In more goodish news, there is a wee chance that my weight problems stem from a hormone unbalance.  Yes, the excuse that everyone has used may actually be true in my case.  After upping my exercise by a galgillion, the scale refused to budge.  While I do feel better than I have in a long time, it would be nice to actually fit into more than 3 outfits in my closet.  So, fingers crossed that the medicine works.

(Side Note:  several other symptoms besides weight issues are things I have lived with for so long I just assume they were my “normal” – joint pain and trouble sleeping being two of them.  Dare I hope?)

But not all results were good.  Frisco, my sweet boy, my first pet on my own, had different test results.  He has cancer, which has metastasized.   He hopefully has several months left with us, but we will appreciate each day. 

After two months of medical round-abouts which were hinting in this direction, I admit it is nice to know something for sure.  It means we can stop rushing to the vet with each episode and focus on making him comfy. 

Frisco would like everyone to know that Comfy = Bacon.