I have now gone for over a year without eating at McDonald’s.

I made the decision in late August 2009.  I had just gulped two double cheeseburgers (yes, two.  Doubt I’d had lunch but that hardly validates the decision) in less than five minutes.  I was through the toll plaza going home, and I felt like shit.  My heart beats felt…wavey.  I got the sweats.  I wanted to pull over and take a nap.

Since I rarely ate fast food, and rarely ate beef (if you wish to call McD’s patties such), I chalked the sickness up to both.  But, in the back of mind was the ever present idea that the Dr wanted me on blood pressure medicine and I was avoiding her for just that reason.  High blood pressure is such an…adult…thing.

So, right then and there, I decided no McDonald’s for me again.  Ever.

Let me put an aside here that I have nothing against the golden arches specifically.  I don’t not believe they are any better or worse than other fast food chains.  They just happen to have one right at the end of the road of the sanctuary.  It’s the only food(ish) stop on the way home period.

“But you could have a salad!”

Yeah….no.  I didn’t particularly like fast food to begin with.  But when I gave in, it was because I was exhausted and famished.  I am a big enough person to admit that I do not have will power to order salad when faced with french fries in starvation mode.

Since then, I have struggled with this decision once.  Again, a late night at the sanctuary with little provisions throughout the day.  I remember the automatic response as the lights from the gas station/Micky D’s spilled over onto the the end of the drive.

Instead of stopping there, I believe I went to the Publix across the street from my neighborhood.  I probably picked up unhealthy choices too.  But at least I had kept to my promise to myself.  And other than that one time, I have not even noticed it’s absence in my life.

Aside from the fact my Dr nixed the blood pressure medicine.

My grandmother has become a bit part of my FB.  (Yes, she knows about it.)  Every few weeks, I’ll share a scene or conversation.  She gets tons of “likes” and comments.  But as I’m slowly working myself up to the idea of going back into the workforce full-time, I realized that putting a positive spin on my time with her has made it seem like I just get to eat puppies and shit rainbows with her 24-7.

What goes unsaid is the mind-numbingly repetativeness of our visits (“Did you eat breakfast?”  “Yes, I always eat breakfast”  “Did you eat breakfast?”  “Yes, why?  Did you?”  “Yes but sometimes I think you don’t.”)  Probably if her eyesight were better she could judge the size of my ass and stop this particular merry-go-round. 

Grandma also has gotten to a point in her life where she can still have a good bit of independence, but doesn’t feel well enough to enjoy it.  She goes to fancy parties her community puts on, social visits, etc.  But when I ask how it was, inevitably she was put next to someone who talked too softly, or she couldn’t see the band, or they served a type of food difficult to eat…all the negatives pile up on me and smother any patience and kindness I’ve tried to store up for her.

Usually I will finally explode in a fake-hearty expression of, “Well, sorry it was so awful!”  Which is her cue to start, “Now, it wasn’t that bad…the potatoes were cooked very well…”

I also do not subject my FB friends to the fact that ANY conversation, left lingering more than 5 minutes, comes back to food.  I like food.  LOVE it, actually.  If she weren’t a diabetic with high blood pressure, conversations about food might even be interesting.  But I don’t need to dissect how good a baked potato was baked.

Lastly, what doesn’t come across in a little status blurb on a social network, is how little I feel I actually help her.  How little she actually wants my help.  She likes my coming because it gives her just a little edge, makes every day things just a little easier.  But mostly?  She naps in the afternoon and I watch Glee on my laptop. 

I’m not complaining about the fact that she won’t embrace an eReader, or set up online bill pay, or get a Jitterbug phone (although the last bugs to no end because she pays $50/month for a cell phone SHE CANNOT TURN ON.) But she won’t even let me drive her to the Olive Garden (an old favorite of hers) because it is “too far across town” – i.e. more than 10 minutes away (15!  probably less if I got on I-75, which I drive on 2 hours sucessfully every week to get to her!).

So, yeah.  I’m looking for a new job.  I understand there will be drawbacks to this – not the least of which is the fact that there are good things about spending so much time with grandma and I have truly cherished this time.  But I think it’s better that I extricate myself from this while we both feel that way.

I just hope Facebook understands.

I’ve had a part III to the day my father died in the draft area for a while.  But I am trying very hard to not dwell on the specifics of his death right now because in a handful of days I will speak at his memorial service about his life.

I have not a fucking clue what I want to say.

My parents have not been an integral part of my life since I was…18?  22?  13?  They had strong feelings that the job of parent meant an independent person as the result.  And they succeeded at this goal.  While my brother has stuck around Chicago a lot more than I, both of us cut the chord pretty quick and easy and young.

I am extremely happy that for the past few years, Tom and I have made the cabin in the north woods a vacation destination and always invited my parents to join us.  One year it was pretty cold and rainy, so we stuck around the cabin more than usual and started working on jigsaw puzzles as something to pass the time.  We’d set them up in the “study”, the only non-bedroom room that wasn’t a straight shot through the main throughfare of the house.  People would come and go throughout the day, drifting in to put a piece or two in place between trips to the kitchen or breaks in chapters of a book.  Then ever since, we always bought at least one new puzzle a year.  It would get the most attention right before dinner – with Dad drifting in between culinary projects and a plate of cheese and crackers on the old typewriter stand that kept the rest of us entertained if the puzzle didn’t.

But I don’t think jigsaw puzzles a euology make.

The reality is, to me my dad just was.  He was an incredibly comfortable person for me to be around (after the dreaded teens).  He loved Star Trek.  He loved to cook.  He never was shy about telling my mom that he could use some backrubs (something I appreciate and model in my own marriage).  He was uniquely clumsy – never tripping much or dropping many dishes, but nearly put out his eye with a posthole digger and sliced open his hand separating frozen veggie burgers.  He was an ex-smoker.  He loved to drink, just beer and wine, and never seemed embarrassed when he’d had a few too many nor ever seemed to feel the effects the next day.  He could play piano by ear and found my sheet music confusing.  He read as if it were a daily vital nutrient – something that is either genetic or enivornmentally absorbed because my brother and I are the same way.  Shy and introverted, he always was a little out of step with normal social rules (another inherited trait), he announced his engagement at his grandmother’s wake because he thought everyone could use some cheering up.  He loved to garden and approached it with a scholarly attitude leaving notebooks of where seeds were ordered, what bloomed when, and a million little plastic sticks littering the house that were to mark the next years plants.  He was messy – almost unsanitary – in the kitchen and the garden, sometimes combining the two because a butcher block is a great place to pot seeds.  He hated to throw things away and in cleaning up I found several bottles of oil/vinegar/spice completely empty yet sitting amongst the collection of viable condiments.  He was kind.  Amazingly kind.  He had the softest heart for animals (except bunnies that ate from his garden).

He was the best.

My father died October 27th.  At 9:01am in the morning.  I am afraid there are going to be many posts about this, and probably all recounting those last few days and hours in a hundred different ways.  Because it’s just what I need to do…

I was at my grandmother’s on Thursday morning, October 14th, when my mother called me.  My mother rarely calls outside of our prescribed Sunday conversations – even when we miss each other for a week or two, she doesn’t feel the need to deviate.

She was calling to tell me that Dad was in the hosptial.  Pneumonia, asthma, and a partially collapsed lung.

Two years ago, he had his other lung sponanteously collapse twice over the summer.  He was in and out of the hospital at least three or four times, plus sent home with drain tubes still in his chest because the lung wasn’t adhering to the chest wall and inflating correctly.

I took in what information I could.  He had been stubborn, and been coughing a lot more than usual for a while.  He went to the office where a friend worked (a pulmonologist no less), but the friend was off so he was sent to a clinic.  The clinic diagnosed the pneumonia and sent him away with antibiotics.

Meanwhile, the friend (we shall call him Dr. Brian.  Because his name is Brian and he is a doctor) found out about this visit, saw the x-rays, and showed up at the farm.  He basically demanded Dad go to hosptial and drove him to the ER.

I relayed the information to my grandmother, and we just sat on her coach for a while.  I was fidgety to start my usual drive home.  And fidgety because there was nothing I could do.  I am not someone who ponders What Ifs, let alone ponders them out loud with someone else.  But my grandmother is.  So I sat for a half hour and endured all of her worries.  It is especially a sore spot between us when she worries about family.  I know that it is shallow and immature of me, but I can’t stand to think of all the bad alternatives life can bring and I resent her for making me.  

Finally free, I called my brother on the drive home.  It was not a shock to him to find out about Dad.  That frustruated me and assured me at once.  This was something coming down the pike for a while, although I wasn’t sure then why it warrented the non-Sunday phone call.

I talked with both my mother and grandmother later in the day.  Sugery was planned for Friday, to reinflate the lung.  At the time I remember being worried about surgery while having pneumonia.  It sounds like a reasonable worry, yes?  How the body and medicine and be predictable and a crap shoot all at the same time.

Then, that night I talked with Dad.  We didn’t talk for long, although he didn’t cough once.  He was on oxygen – just a drip line to his nose – and it made him feel great.  I asked if there was anything I could send, any books on his to-read list.  But since he received a Kindle for his birthday he was pretty well set.  He said it was just nice of me to call.

In less than two weeks, I will be telling him I seem to be in the way of the nurses and will step out now.  I grasp his hand in a goodbye, and relent to the nurses suggestion to kiss him saying as I do that we are not a kissy family.  Being that close to him, kissing the top of his head, it is the first time I fully understand his words through the ventalitaor mask:  It was good of me to come.

It is the last words Dad will ever say to me.

My father died October 27th.  At 9:01am in the morning.  I am afraid there are going to be many posts about this, and probably all recounting those last few days and hours in a hundred different ways.  Because it’s just what I need to do…

My father had requested to be intubated and flown to a different hospital for a second opinion.  Because the first opinion wasn’t helpful.  You will die.  Soon.  And there’s nothing to little we can do about it.

He had been on a ventilator with a face mask for days at this point.  And that last Tuesday couldn’t even take the mask off long enough to sip an Ensure.

I had flown in that afternoon.  I sat by his bedside for a few hours, searching for signs that my father was still there.  They came in small, hopeful and heartbreaking ways. 

First, there was his foot tapping.  Not tapping quite – a four corner clockwise motion that meant he was thinking and enjoying his conservation.

Second, after elaborate moves on the part of himself, me, my brother and mother, and two nurses, he was upright in a chair.  He turned to me and flew his hands over his head as if to say, “What a fuss over nothing!”

Lastly, there was the fact that he wished to be in the chair for the doctor’s meeting.  He was going to be an active participant, not the invalid in the bed while we all talked around him.

The hospital was about a half hour from the farm house.  Once he was intubated, there was little for us to do so we went home.  Before I left, I ran my index finger down his wrist and was pleased at how warm and dry his skin felt.  Already the extra oxygen was coursing through his blood.

The next morning I got up, determined to try and keep myself in good shape throughout this ordeal.  After a warm up in the basement, I headed out for a jog.  Not a runner, I didn’t expect to get far.  But as I settled into a slow pace, it became evident I was in better shape than I even knew.  Farther and farther, longer and longer, my lungs would not give out.

I couldn’t even be happy about that.  We’d already been told a lung transplant was not possible.

When my legs started to cramp, I stopped and started walking back home.  I stepped way off the road when a car appears at the top of a small hill.  But the car didn’t drive by and wave.  It stopped, and the driver gestured.  It was our next door neighbor, and he needed to take me to the hospital.  Right.  Now.

Sometime ago, I mentioned getting back to a healthy habits.  Which really meant, I am trying to lose some weight.

I am never going (safely) hit the number listed next to my height on any sort of chart.  The last time I got 10 lbs heavier than said number I was told I looked scary thin.  I carry a lot of muscle,  which sadly also means the scale can climb pretty high on me before I start really looking “fat”.

That being said, I started this year looking fat.  Really fat.

Since the beginning of the year I’ve lost a bit over 20 lbs.  Although I could have written the same thing back in July…I’ve been gaining and losing a few pounds every few weeks since then.

Unfortunately, our long hikes play a small part in the stalled weight loss.  I pretty much have gotten us away from an all-you-can-eat pigfest the night after trekking 10+miles, but we still have to eat A LOT to come close to equalizing calories in versus calories out.

The really big problem is the day after the hikes…when my body remembers the 2,500 calories I gorged on and asks for seconds.  This week was the first time I actively noticed and tried to mitigate that.  I was HUNGRY.  Like, third day of a crash diet and eating brownie mix sounds like heaven.  I got through it, but damn.

I can’t get too depressed over the scale because I handle depression by an intense session with Dr. Oreo.  So instead of focusing on the number (which yes, I know, I’m not supposed to do anyway), I thought I’d regale you with some accomplishments of this health kick:

When I started swimming, I did 1 lap of the crawl, 1 lap of front kicking with a noodle, 1 lap of back stroke.  I did not have lung capacity to do more than 3 or 4 laps of the crawl at a time.  Now, I do 15 laps straight.

About half way through the year, when I really started to stall on the scale, I checked around and found a new weight routine to follow.  It specifically targets building muscle and women who want to use heavier weights.  I am almost done with the 1st stage.  I have increased the weight on almost all exercise by at least 30 lbs. 

When I started the ellpictical, 20 minutes on level 1 made me sweat buckets.  Now I do interval training between levels 3, 5, & 6.

When we started hiking, I could barely move the next day.  My legs screamed.  I hobbled like an old lady.  Sunday we did 14 miles.  Our longest hike to date.  I got up at 5:30 Monday morning, walked the dog, weight trained, and did 20  minutes on the elliptical.  I followed that with deep cleaning the kitchen and living room, and 3 hours of volunteer work. 

So, I’ll just keeping chugging away.  I have a small hope that some of my problem with the scale is muscle building while losing fat, but I’m not holding my breath.  Not too much has changed in the closet department.   But as long as I can see changes in my overall fitness, I know I have to be on the right track.

This is the second title and third post I’ve started.  Damnit, I’m finishing it.

Since mentioning that we were training to hike six months on end, we’ve done less and less.  I don’t know where you’re from but if you’ve reading this you’ve got internet access.  Check out the weekly highs in Tampa, FL.  Go on.  We’ll wait…

85…86…88??!?

Hi.  Welcome to my fall.

The first long hike we did in this heat, we were woefully unprepared.  We didn’t bring near enough water.  Luckily, my body is a bit more in shape than Tom’s (thank you, pool, dumbbells, elliptical, and volunteer manual labor), I was able to shoulder more of the work (literally, we switched packs and saved him over 10 lbs on his back).

The second time, not only did we prepare but we hiked a trail with rest stops and coolers.  But it was a bike trail.  With no shade and asphalt.  I think we felt worse than before, with no flora or fauna to distract us.

By the way, a great way to meet people is carry a 20+ pound pack on a day hiking trail.  It’s not something that goes unnoticed.

Since then, each weekend we’ve suggested to each other smaller and smaller hikes.  One weekend we did a beach drive which allowed for a dip in the bay before going home.  Last weekend we just walked around our neighborhood a lot.

I yearn to get back to putting a heavy pack on my back and decent mileage under my feet.  And I’m glad we’ve done some in the FL heat.  But damn.  I am sick of walking a mile at 6:30am and sweating.

You may remind me of this post after our first December camping adventure.

I could use a blank week in my Day Planner.

First off, we had a marvelous vacation.  Couldn’t have asked for better.  And it rained 75% of the time.  So go figure.

The Wednesday after, Tom’s grandfather died.  It was not unexpected.  And the man Tom misses was already gone; taken with diseases both physical and mental.

If our pet sitter’s car hadn’t been repo’ed with our keys inside, it actually would have been a nice visit with his family.  Instead it was freaking out at 11pm (pet sitter/friend has many health conditions and all of her medicine was at our hosue), driving out earlier than planned, then sitting around stewing that our keys are gone.

Our keys are still gone.  And I’m still stewing.  I have tried to wait for the friend to get them back, because I do not feel like going down to the impound lot and demanded property from a car I have no claim to.  But I’ve called the police to ensure I have the right to ask for them, and I do.  Now I just have to muster the strength to do so.

Now, we are in the weekends of doing.  Last weekend, it was Chihuly and The Columbia with old college friends of mine.  Plus a cat capture (stray living nearby) and subsequent de-masculizing of said cat.  This weekend, it is a bowl-a-thon for the nonprofit we have fostered with.  Next weekend, I am hosting a seminar with the nonprofit.  The following weekend, I am tentatively scheduled to drive up to a close primate sanctuary and do a group work day.  The weekend after that, my brother and SIL arrive.

I hope I survive to enjoy their visit.

Tears are streaming down my face and I need to hold on to furniture as I walk around the house.

Four days ago, we put Frisco to sleep.  The cancer was to the point he had stopped eating.

Besides a few tears when his eyes closed for the last time, I have been dry until now.

I am known for delayed grief.  I did not feel any push or desire to hasten myself from denile.  I even thought I might hold on until this weekend, when our vacation starts and I am in the Wisconsin cabin where I know I can be healed of anything.

But, events and stress and hormones being what they are, I just broke down.  And now I realize why I wanted to put off this particular cry.

Frisco, for 16 years, would come find me when I was crying.  Even when I was sad or sick, he could tell.  His fur soaked up more of my tears than anything, or anyone, else.

Now, I sat on the couch and looked around.  The dog, the other cats, kept their distance.

I feel empty of everything.

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.