Thanksgiving

I hope everyone had a nice Thanksgiving. It was very strange to have a Thanksgiving without our son. The day seemed a little empty. But, on Thanksgiving night we shared a wonderful meal with long time friends, who have become our extended family since moving to Athens twenty five years ago. I am thankful for that -- it just would have been nicer to have the kid here!

The next few days will be spent cleaning out the refrigerator and getting packed for England. We are looking forward to going and visiting with our friend Pody and her husband Rick. My sister-in-law is from London and although she has lived in Illinois for over 30 years, she was still able to give us some ideas to see some sights in London that would be decorated for Christmas. I worry that I will be a drag on my husband, but hopefully he has traveled enough with me that he will be used to it. I don't travel real well these days and when I get tired, I get very forgetful and confused. Hopefully, we will pace ourselves. When I was in California it was hard, but I did realize that I was there with my family and it didn't matter if I was confused or forgot something, because they were there with me to get me through it.

Ta Ta For Now

Thanksgiving

I hope that all of my friends out there know that I am truly grateful for their friendship, support and love they give me all year round -- not just at Thanksgiving.

A friend of mine's mother was in town from the Northeast for Thanksgiving. I met the mother several years ago when my friend invited me to have lunch with them. Since then, her mother and I have exchanged friendly emails and I usually catch up with her for lunch when she is in town. Yesterday, we spent the better part of the day together as her daughter was working. I enjoyed the day so much -- I think I enjoyed mostly feeling for a few hours that I was "part of the family". I miss that -- not having a large family, not having family close by. Thanks Mrs. K for making my day special....and thanks to your daughter for sharing you with me!

Happy Thanksgiving to everyone!

Not The Best of Days

It's hard for me to write about my bad days even though I know that many of you like to hear the good and bad. I had a really busy week last week and definitely over did it. I try to pace myself but I'm not very good at it sometimes. I was so tired after doing too much. On Saturday morning I tried to do a task of organizing things and getting them into piles -- pretty easy stuff. It took me three hours and then asking my husband for help, to do a job that should have taken at most about 20 minutes. It's so frustrating. I just need to not put myself in those situations -- or manage my time better. I keep saying to myself "if I can just get past Wednesday, or Thursday or whatever"....but sometimes it just doesn't seem to end. I have got to do better.

And, I get in a panic too easily. A panick attack came on over the weekend out of the blue and I hate that. I didn't leave the house all weekend. Not fair to my husband when he wants to do stuff -- but I don't know that I can do anything about it. The doctor said if they got too bad that he would give me some medicine, but I just don't want to take any more medicine.

We have a trip to England coming up in a few weeks. I am very very anxious to go but at the same time a little worried about the crowds and the confusion. I'm looking to my husband to take the lead and to help me -- he will if I ask him to, but he really needs to do it this time without me having to ask him to. He has got to take charge (something he is not used to) or he will probably have a pretty hysterical wife on his hands!

Learning New Things

Learning new things is difficult to someone that has Alzheimer's. Your brain just can't process things like it used to. Today I was doing something around the house and came across a task that I hadn't done in quite awhile. So, I decided to tackle it. I'm not going to say what is was because it was really quite trivial and it will make me sound stupid. But, for the life of me I couldn't remember how to do it and the directions just didn't make sense. Frustration is not even a word that can relate to how I felt. After a few tears about it I left it alone. I then came back to it with not much more success. How incompetent this can make you feel. It's hard for me to accept that I just can't do certain things anymore. Perhaps I'll try again later.

Halloween Memories

It's funny what you remember and what your kids remember about certain things. Years ago when I would take Alan trick or treating, he would come home with way too much candy. Because I didn't want him consuming all that candy at once, and because I didn't want him turning out short and fat like me, I decided to ration his candy. After an initial indulgence, I would let him pick out one piece of candy a day until it was all gone. (I know this sounds harsh). Years later Alan shared with me how he would lay awake at night trying to decide what piece of candy he wanted the next day. And, sometime Ralph or I would help ourselves to some of his candy, and when he went to get that piece of candy that he had yearned for it wasn't there -- wasn't I awful? Who knew it meant that much to him. He never said anything at the time. Now, this is what he is up to on Halloween -- http://www.stanford.edu/~bakowski/blog/index.html

I'm sorry Alan.