extra innings

Three score and ten, the Big Book says.

But we might make it to four score it says in Psalm 90.

Once you pass that magic number, I guess it is extra innings.

Then if there is Alzheimer's in the mix all those numbers mean little.

I did a fair job of keeping up with my garden this summer, then it got ahead of me, during the hot days. I apologized to my neighbor who has a perfect landscape. “Dave that just goes to show that you had more important things to do.”

Each day is special during this time.

Our doctor and I decide to try Miriam on a new anti depressant. There might be fewer side affects. But to Miriam it is a vast conspiracy and no amount of explaining gets the point across permanently. We finally came to an agreement.

That, of course, meant that I stretch the truth a bit. I tell her the med is for blood pressure, and my kids agree saying it is dad’s blood pressure medicine that mom takes.

We discovered a year or so ago that if we could give her a mild anti depressant she was a mile easier to get along with, which does help my blood pressure a lot. The joy of extra innings.

We have been on this Alzheimer's plot for 9 years now and she does pretty well. Love those extra innings.

But today is good, my task is to make it wonderful.

dressing miriam

Miriam has always had good taste in clothes.

She would wear them with grace and dignity, but we are in a different era now.

Before we go to church she asks: What do you want me to wear.

Now women’s clothing has always been an interesting subject for me, but I was not terribly good at it, nor needed to be, but now it is different.

So we get out skirts and jackets and look for tops the right color. She has lost a bit of weight (since I started cooking, which is not a good recommendation), and some of the clothes she wore some years ago fit again.

At this age fashion has no meaning, and some of her outfits have too much shoulder pads perhaps, but do you know what, I don’t mind.

Today I found a very nice wine colored suit, and a frilly blouse to go with it. Black lingerie and shoes, with wine colored hose.

She will look nice and I will be glad (as always) to have her on my arm.

I love you Miriam.

boards

I am a collector.

Not coins or t-bills or barbie dolls, but of boards!

“Dave, I have 5 2 by 4 by 20s that I did not use, could you use them?”

Of course I can, some time, maybe, perhaps.

So I stack lumber. I am ready to build. At least I have the boards!

Tolstoy asked the question: “How much land does a man need?” How much lumber does a retired coot need?

As in Tolstoy’s story, maybe a lot less than you might think.

finite energy

I have a good friend who is building a large home and airplane complex.

He was about 65 when he began. First he built a 40 by 80 airplane hanger. I forgot to say that the house and hanger are along the side of an Air-Park not far from where I live. They are side by side.

Any way he built this huge hanger pretty much by himself. He is big and strong and it went well, but it took him 3 or 4 years. Then he began the house.

He is a great craftsman and a consummate perfectionist, so everything is done very carefully. The property comes complete with geothermal hot water to for heat, but not cold water for drinking. If you want cool water to grout with you fill buckets and let them cool to room temperature.

He has back up systems for everything, and sometimes back up for the backup system.

But there is a downside.

He is about 75 now. His legendary strength is not so strong any more. Fourteen hour days have reduced to 5 or 6 hour days. He and his wife (who is a great helper) plod along getting prodigious amounts of work done.

But this is a big house with a LOT of time eating details.

A while back while visiting with them after church, I found out that he had put down about a thousand feet of ceramic tile in the entry, kitchen and hall areas. Did a decent job of it too. Wife said she was grouting the tile, but it would probably take her all summer to get it done. I asked what she was using for tools and she said she was using a 1” putty knife.

So I offered to come out and “show her” how to grout tile, a LOT faster. So Miriam and I spent a short day and did ⅔ of the grouting. We went back and finished later.

Now she has the summer for other things.

Miriam asked him if sometimes he wished he had never started such a big project. He nodded his head.

So I think about all of this. They still have at least 2 more years to go on the house. The kicker is that when it is finished it will be sold and they will go live closer to a daughter. He does not fly any more and his airplane is for sale.

An old friend once said to me (I was in my early 60’s at the time) to get my “heavy lifting” done by the time I was 70, it is harder after that.

Hmm. We only have so much strength and as we age that strength is finite, sadly reduced by age. I wonder, often, what I should be putting my time and effort onto now?

And as I think about it I go back to my art studio to think it over.

Or I take a nap.

my new ipod

For fathers day, one of my wonderful daughters gave me a gift certificate to an electronics store. Now, my daughters are generous and wonderful, but hardly wealthy, so the gift did not have a lot of zeroes.

So I began thinking about what I might get. My ancient TV will soon be obsolete, but maybe that is alright! And there was not enough to buy a new plasma screen, so I kept thinking.

Then it dawned and I got a green iPod, the little inexpensive one.

Wow what a wonder it has been.

Since it does not have a screen, I load it each day with what I want to listen to, and change if as often as I wish.


But the biggest thing has been that I have been able to download books from the net and spend my time listening to books. There is no shortage of books, but most have a charge, some small and some high on recent releases.

LibriVox.org has been a wonderful source of recorded books that are in the public domain, which means they include a lot of the old masterpieces.

I have listened to half a dozen books so far. Some old favorites, and some that I should have read but did not. Right now I am mostly through with Melville’s Typee and when I am finished I will go for his Moby Dick, a book I have not touched since early college.

And maybe I will listen to Mozart opera for a few days, or Iris Dement!

ahh september

Wow that was a fast and busy summer.

Miriam is going very well. She is fun to be with and we enjoy each others company. She has given up on cooking, which is quite amazing in itself, but she continues to be good at clean up, and I mean real good! I take her with me wherever I go, and she is patient with me.

Mostly we stayed home this summer, only went camping once with one more trip scheduled. One grandson came up for a few days and we took him camping. The price of gas and the budget says we stay home much of the time.

I continue to work on the refurbishing of our church. Last year we remodeled the entire front of the sanctuary, with me doing the majority of the work. Since then we have redone the narthex and and wood base in the hall. I still have bulletin boards to make and one more bathroom to tile.

Today I spray lacquer on the base that will go along the wall in the long halls. The light colored wood base replaces rather ugly rubber base that was put in when the church was new in the '60's.

The church was built at a time when glass was a favorite material. There was a total of six windows, each 5 by 8 feet in the front of the church. In the time I was head deacon I replaced 3 of those due to vandalism. At $500 a pop I balked at the last breakage and eventually replaced all of that plate glass with double glass, but where the original window was huge, now each window has 5 smaller pieces of glass, the total cost ⅔ as much as that huge hunk of plate. It looks good, I am assured.

But all of this winding down. I have a specific list of things to finish, and when it is done I am too. This year I gave up the head deacon post, though I kept my bible study group, which I have lead for most of my adult life.

Anyway, the fresh corn was wonderful, the tomatoes delicious and the string beans were marvelous.

But now fall comes.

Thanks for being patient.

I am taking the summer off, but I will return in early September.

Thanks for being patient.

dave

Miriam and leo

today

Remember Red Foxx the comedian.

The TV show that made him famous was Sanford and Son. Sanford was his original last name, by the way.

Anyway every time Red would get a hang nail he would expect that this was the beginning of “The Big One.”

I am beginning to understand old Red better. Then I realize that he was younger than I am when he died.

It is not too often that I read the obituaries in the paper, but when I do, it seems that most of those who are honored are younger than I, some a LOT younger.

But there is this guy from Arizona who thinks he can lead the world for a while and he is older than I. Ok, not by much, but by a little. I am having trouble keeping track of the cooking gear that my wonderful little Alzheimer's wife “puts away” and no one can find again.

But today is a new day, the first day of summer, officially. And, just to celebrate, today’s temp is to be 95. Hottest day of the year by a hunk.

I am not sure that “all is well”, but it sure could be worse.

Ask Red.

gas saver

OK, so it won't work, but it is a great idea. Both rigs are owned by my friend Randy. The Honda gets 50 to 60 miles per gallon, too bad the trailer with Dodge doesn't so well.

ramblings

I haven’t written for a while, which is a punishable offense.

As an appeasement to the blog gods I’ll throw some salt over my left shoulder the next time I think of it.

We have been busy. Emily graduated from the 8th grade in Portland, and of course it is not possible to graduate without a grandpa and grandma being there. That day was also our 52nd wedding anniversary.

Spring is finally here, not summer mind you, but spring. We have finally had days in the 80’s. The garden is growing, which is good. We are eating out of it, but not like my friend in Georgia. I almost envy her!

I have been working on the entry to our church. Wainscoting, rather complex design. My design of course, so no one to blame. It looks good. We will be working on the church most of this month, then that should be done for a while. I’ll post a few pictures at some point.

On our trip, I decided to drive a constant steady 60 mph, even on the freeway. I knew it would increase gas mileage. Well when it was all figured out, slowing down earned me about $15 to 17 an hour in gas savings. In retirement especially that is workable.

There were a lot of cars doing 60, and lots of big SUV’s and pickups doing 80, a speed that gets the really bad mileage. But at $4 to $4.25 a gallon (that was last week, it is up another 5 of ten this week) gas is a major thing. The shortage of RV’s was partly related to the price of fuel and partially to the late spring.

Emily was the uncrowned star of her graduation. She attends a small Charter school. It was a pretty low key service, but at one point each of the 15 graduates had an opportunity to make a short speech. One girl thought a bit about what to say, a couple more spoke a bit off the cuff, but Emily had a speech all written out. It was funny, well written and she delivered it flawlessly. Then at the end there was a power point program about their recent week long science trip. Emily did the power point and it was very well done.

She told me that the fee for the bus on that trip was 7000. It was a good trip. They were busy every moment traveling around Oregon looking at specific things: fossil beds, volcanos and so on. It was a science trip. The school takes the 7th and 8th graders on such a trip each spring.

We got to Portland Friday a few hours before Emily arrived back from this science trip. I expected her to call me for a ride home, but there was a dull bang on the front door, and when I opened it, there was Emily burdened with bags and books and a sleeping bag. She had banged her head on the door. When I saw her, she broke into tears, she looked so pathetic there for a minute.

She had not had a shower for a week (no one else did either), she was bone tired and hungry for “real” food. After a bit of rest, a shower and some “real” food, she recovered well.

So here we are back in Idaho, I watch the grass grow, and sand boards. Exciting stuff. Miriam is chugging right along, though even my friends see a bit of slippage.

Fathers day, I worked in the garden. Emily had gone from Portland Oregon a day after we left to visit her half brother and sister in Houston, Texas. Portland is a very moderate climate, rarely hot or really cold. But Houston is very hot and humid this time of year. “I hate Texas” was her first comment. It is good for her to visit her sibs though. I got phone calls from all my wonderful daughters as well as Emily and Stefanie. It was a nice warm day besides.

We are finally going camping next weekend. If friends can go along it will be fine, if they don’t it will be fine too. Haven’t decided where to go, that will depend on the weather: cool weather stay at low elevations; warm weather go higher. And with that gas price we may well take tent gear and enjoy that mileage boost!

And, after a friendship that dates back to my mid 20’s my mustache and I parted ways this week. It has been along time since the sun shown on that lip. I don’t recognize myself in the mirror! One daughter said: “Wow, he has lips.” Many comment, some don’t see any difference.

So that is how it has been here in the Gem State. It is a bit boring, but life is more than a bit boring much of the time. I remember a pilot talking about flying. Long periods of boredom interrupted by brief moments of panic.

moss

The green of western oregon comes at a price: rain.
Everything gets a coat of moss, even this white vinyl fence

another graduation

It might seem that we never stay home.

My last post was about going home from Alan’s graduation. Now we are in Portland and tomorrow Emily graduates from middle school. We were home for a couple of weeks.

Portland this time of year is wet and cool and this is no exception. The sun shown yesterday and we worked out in the yard a lot. I stopped mowing the back yard when I noticed that the neighbors were outside sitting in their back yard, and I know how much noise can bug me.

Today it is a bit rainy, but I will finish. There is a mysterious leak in daughter’s studio roof, and I’ll do some caulking and cleaning. Maybe I can solve the problem, maybe not.

Saturday we spent with friends Ron and Rozella along with a friend of Stefanie, who lives here in Portland. It was good.

Tomorrow we have the graduation for Emily then on Wednesday we go south and then on home on Thursday.

Someone said that life is what you do while you are waiting for something to happen. In a lot of ways we are waiting for another shoe to drop.

Ron is doing well with his Alzheimer’s. He and Miriam are about the same place in the disease. They do well but forget easily. Still both are wonderful people.

We left our garden in the care of a neighbor and our house and mail in the care of another neighbor. It will be good to go home again, but if it ever warms up a bit, the camping bug will bite me.

And we will go again.

Though not so far.

leo

Leo is not a part of my legacy, but he makes the trip more interesting!

living

Whether we like it or not we have turned a corner.

Some one once said that the only thing you can really count on is change, and if so we are really in for it now. At the root of the current change is the near doubling of fuel prices.

A sizeable raise in the price of energy probably would have been good for us, whether we liked it or not. Cheap fuel is at the root of a lot of our societal problems, it has been argued, but those of us on fixed incomes, it can be lethal.

Some years ago I bought a new Chevy pickup for my work. While it was new, it was about the cheepest thing you could buy that still said Chevy on it. It was a superb pickup and it did it all for me for about 230,000 miles. It was getting old, and it seemed to me that if I were to buy another new pickup, I could work long enough to pay for it and would have a good rig for retirement.

The idea is still good, but even though it can get 20 mpg on a careful run, that is wildly over budget. Instead we drive our 16 year old car that gets 30 mpg.

And that is just the beginning.

Today my power bill goes up 10%. Food prices are rising. Our health insurance has doubled in 5 years.

That garden is not a luxury any longer. It is a necessity.

Last month I put $30 worth of gas in the pickup and I still have some left. That means I didn’t drive that nice pickup very much.

That added discipline is good for us too, maybe. I am a big time journal writer, and go through a pocket Moleskine every few months. I have always been wanting to learn to bind my own books, and now is the time.

The part that hurts is that we won’t get to see grandkids as often. In the past we have driven 165 miles to see a grandson in a play or a granddaughter in a game, and then come home the next day.

That probably won’t happen as often.

This week we are going to go to another graduation. I think it is important that kids are afirmed by grandpa and that their accomplishments are honored. The way we do it may well be in for a transformation.

My grandkids are my best legacy. They are all worth it.