last meal

Tonight I feel like the chef at the penitentary who prepares and fixes the prisoner's last meal.

She did not get a menu choice. Soup and toasted cheese sandwich.

I hugged her a lot of times and I just stare into space.

placement

Monday Miriam is scheduled to go into a nursing home here in Walla Walla. They have a room next to the nurses station, and it has a window on her side.

No one said this would be easy and it isn't.

placement

Today we made the first steps to placing Miriam in a care facility.

We toured the establishment, looked in the nooks and crannies. We were told that the cook is a vegetarian and that there is always vegetarian alternatives to what shows on the menu. We saw the rooms where they do bingo and where they eat and where they party. We went up elevators and into the wing where the place began a hundred and seventeen years ago.

The place is a non-profit, which pleases this old liberal. I asked if it looks like we could make a deal. The admissions officer said that there were two openings right now and she would talk with the social worker in the morning. The paper work is being done, though most of it is already done. 

I have no idea of how long these things take. It could go fast and it could go not quite so fast, but it looks like we will have a bed fairly soon.

In a big way, that is the easy part of it all. 

In spite of my knowing this would happen and my spoken readiness for it to happen, when it happens it is going to hurt, even as it provides Arline and I both with better sleep.

I know all of this, but that does not make it a whole lot easier. 

This is Brianna the graduate. She is now enrolled in one of the best Chef's schools in Portland.
The picture of several years old, but I am very fond of this picture.

graduation

After the camping trip, I had to make a run to Idaho to take back a refrigerator I did not like (it was sent by the insurance company). Stayed a few days and got quite a lot of work done.

Last evening we went to granddaughter 3's high school graduation. It was a group of home schoolers and their families who put on the event. Each parent got a chance to talk about their child, and each child got to talk about something or other and do some music (some better than others). Then there was a slide show of each of the graduates.

That means that even with just 5 graduating, the whole thing took a while. There was a dinner for the families a couple of hours before the event. There was time for each family to pose for the official photographer, and there was cookies and punch after the event.

It was a long afternoon.

The dinner consisted of Vegan Lasagna with Vegan Cheesecake for desert. Seems to me that the terms are sort of an oxymoron, but who is counting.

Most of the cookies were vegan too, but granddaughter brought some that were not. She saved my day.

Granddaughter was beautiful, her mother speech was funny and heartfelt. It was long but it was good.

Top picture is Grandson David heading deeper into the mountains. He hiked over 10 miles that day. I got in about 2!

The bottom is a picture of our camp nestled in among the aspen. Not a place to camp in dead of summer!

camping in Nevada

The trip with grandson 1 was good. We had a good time.

The Ruby Mountains run roughly north to south in the NE corner of Nevada. High elevation, desert mountain range. Snow, rock and a few trees.

Did I mention the brush? Try taking off on your own and you are going to be in for a slow go. At night it was cold, near freezing the first night, but warmer each day and night afterward. The day we left the temps were headed to the 90's.

It was a LONG drive for a long weekend and not one I'd do every day, but for a grandson, any time!

Grandson is young and strong and is  used to long hikes. I would go with him, but head back when I thought I was getting close to my half way point. I had bannock bread and soup ready for him when he came back from the longer of the hikes.

It was good.

There was a little vintage clothing store in one of the older parts of town. They had wonderful mannequins. Old Mannequins are not unheard of in displays, but most are beat up and are missing body parts, but not these.

Daughter had a photo shoot for a client of some of the houses in Portland, I went along. We had never worked together on that kind of thing and it was a blast. 

These three are of the same little house and garage. 

itinerate grandpa

For the last week I have been gone.

Grandpa duty taking a granddaughter back to school in Portland, taking a bed for her that I bought here. Then there is the dining room set that is too nice for my funny little house back in Idaho. I took it to daughter 4's elegant house. It looks right at home there.

After that I tiled a bathroom floor for a friend and spent my birthday (friday) with him and his wife. Their place is not too far from a Vancouver Washington, but it is nestled in the hills in such a way so there is no phone service at all.

So, for my birthday no one could phone me. Daughter sent this scolding sounding email (which came via internet that I could hook into at friend's house): "How dare you be out of phone range on your birthday!"

Don't do that very often, but it can happen.

Friend and wife sang "Happy Birthday" to me at lunch at noon. (Friend's birthday was exactly a week before). I am now 76, which sounded pretty old 15 or 25 years ago. Not sure what it means now. In all it was a quiet day.

Saturday morning I went back to daughters house in Portland, got some brownies and cookies from granddaughter 3 and came on back to our Washington home.

I leave again on Wednesday for a long weekend with my oldest grandson. We are going camping down in the Ruby mountains out of Elko Nevada. Haven't done that before. It was scheduled a couple months ago and will happen.

I'd like to make an annual grandpa and grandsons camp trip, maybe.

Meanwhile, I am a pretty constant care giver for Miriam. I will be with her most of the time, so daughter can get what rest she can before I leave again.

In June I had better stay home!

1:30 am

It is 1:30 and I am dead asleep. 

There is a motion beside me that alerts my senses. I wake.

Miriam is sitting on the side of the bed. I beg her to come back to bed.

She will as soon as she finishes something but I have no idea what that something is. Seems to have something to do with her shoes.

I get up and walk around the bed in the semi darkness to where she is slouched, right after I make a run to the bathroom. I am old guy after all. 

When I return she is still in the same position. She mutters something about shoes again. I still do not understand, but I kneel down and take her shoes off of her feet.  She protests. She has taken a pad off the shelf in front of her bed. She sleeps on the pad so she won’t get the bed wet.

I put the pad back on the shelf and swing her back to a reclining position. In the process of turning her so her head goes on the pillow end and not crosswise, the pad slips (we should have easy slide pads under her bum, I decide).

I do get her back in position. I tuck the bedding around her. All is well (I think).

On the other side of the bed I climb inside the covers still mostly sleepy. There is a chance I can get back to sleep yet. But then she wiggles and moves. I try to figure it all out. What wrinkle is bothering her. 

No luck.

So I get out of bed again and walk around to her side, pull the covers back and smooth out her long night gown while I ask about the current problem. Ahh, it is that long night gown that is the problem.

Covered up again, she is ready to go back to sleep. I return to my side of the bed, but sleep has vanished from my eyes and head.

Now it is 2:11 and I am wide awake. 

This is a wood floor I found in a used building material center in Portland.
It is an intriguing use of materials!

troubled teens

I spent some of last weekend in Idaho at a high school for troubled teens. 

There is a family member who is enrolled in the school. I think she is doing fine, though she might argue with me.

Still, I found the situation very depressing. Again, not the family member, who was on discipline because she was behind in her class work, not for open acts of rebellion. I am pretty upbeat about her. 

There were lovely young women there, teens. I have no idea what they are there for, I have no idea what has troubled their lives, but I do know that the gamut is all encompassing, and I do know they would not be there unless there were serious issues. 

But they looked so good. They were sad, some with deep tear rings under their eyes, others just sad. They could not talk to me, but if I started a conversation, they could respond. I did talk to a few. Then their eyes lit up as they answered my simple questions. (Personal questions are off limits, and I totally respect that.)

As I think of this school and the students, I think how much better my life (and the life of almost every one I know) would have been been improved had we had some of instructions on handling life and counseling that these kids are getting. Maybe we would not need a whole year’s worth, but a bit of help would have been so good. 

Life is not easy. It is not smooth. Some of us were born to families who who by luck or knowledge did a pretty good job keeping us from being a mass of mental scar tissue. Some of were not so lucky.

I am glad this school exists. I am glad for the staff who work hard, most likely for less than wonderful pay, to help the young people of our lives who got off to a really bad start.

I am thankful.