Dark

It's the first day of September.

This year I am not sad about the hours of Florida sunshine getting shorter. I'm not whiny about the dark coming earlier and earlier, or the weather cooling off, or the summer ending.

I haven't even gone to the perfectly good pool that I have access to (and pay for, really, with the monthly homeowner dues) at our condo complex one single time this year.  I did buy a new bathing suit, but I haven't worn it.

If anything, the bright blue skies and hot yellow sunshine is annoying. Shut up, summer.

For the first time I'm looking forward to shorter days, sunset coming earlier, and even the cold(er) weather. I keep seeing visions in my head of chilly nights with a house in the darkness, warm orange light from inside peeking through the windows. I keep thinking of fuzzy throw blankets and pumpkin scented candles and cups of hot tea.

I'm also looking forward to Christmas. It'll be the first Christmas that I don't spend with Mom. (There may be one or two Christmases when I was in my late 20's and had just moved to Florida, and Mom and Dad were still a 12+ hour drive away in Virginia, and I stayed in FL and they stayed in VA and we didn't see each other. But that didn't happen more than once, I think. How can I not remember? I gave it so little thought at the time. I sure didn't know that 20 years later I'd literally be brought to tears by my inability to remember.)

It will also be the first Christmas of my married life with Greg that we don't have to drive 7+ hours to Georgia to visit Mom. I kind of hated that drive and I am looking forward to not doing it this year. I also kind of hated not really spending Christmas at home; not being there on Christmas Eve or Christmas Day made me feel like it wasn't really worth a lot of decorating, or a lot of cooking.

I'm going to get a few really good quality Christmas decorations, and find new ways to display the old decorations to give them places of honor in our home. I have handmade decorations made by several family members, some of whom are dead now. I have ugly styrofoam glitter things that I made in kindergarten and Mom saved and put up every year.

After taking our usual Thanksgiving day trips to Greg's various family members the month before, we can just take a few days off work and create our own brand new Christmas traditions.

I swear I'm looking forward to it.

Gifts

It's always a challenge to find Christmas gifts for Mom.  Not only does she not want anything she tries to get rid of the stuff she does have by giving it to me whenever I visit.  Plus she always pleads with me not to spend any money on her. But I really want her to have wrapped packages to open, so I'm always determined to find something.

Every year I get her a Robert Tuckwiller calendar (he paints lovely landscapes of the area of Virginia where we are from).  So that's an easy one.

This year I got her a pretty Marjolein Bastin bluebird refrigerator magnet from Hallmark.  She had a bunch of photos and magnets and things on her refrigerator when she lived in Gainesville, but now her frig is a small one and somehow nothing ever got put on it. She seemed really happy with the little decoration.

A bestselling book from a few years ago (Wish You Well by David Baldacci) has been made into a movie that was filmed in Giles County, where I'm from.  Part of it was actually filmed on the tiny little road where I grew up, right down the street from our house, in the old abandoned one-room building that was my father's school.  (Don't picture the school in the Waltons, that's too modern - picture the one in Little House on the Prairie.)  My cousin's young daughter (whom I've never actually met) is an extra as one of the schoolchildren.  The movie is completed but hasn't been released yet.

I found a copy of the book that meets Mom's requirements: it's a trade paperback but it's not too heavy, and even thought it's not actually Large Print it's easy to read.  Inside the book I put a pretty pink and lavender bookmark, and Mom's started reading it already.

I also bought her a small box of chocolates that had whole hazelnuts inside.  She just loves hazelnuts.

So she had several pretty packages to open and she seemed genuinely delighted with each of the gifts.  We opened presents in her apartment on Christmas Eve and then went to my sister's house for a lovely lunch on Christmas Day (roast chicken, green beans with almonds, mashed potatoes, gravy, rolls, cranberry sauce, carrots and homemade pecan pie that consisted primarily of butter, Karo syrup and brown sugar).  We all ate too much, and Mom took home a leftover piece of pie.

It was a lovely holiday visit.  I am aware that I get too caught up in trying to make sure everything is perfect for Mom, and often having Greg there makes it even worse because instead of letting him help me I just add to the pressure by feeling like I have to make sure everything is perfect for him, too.  Being aware of my tendency to get too stressy makes it a little easier to cut it out when I see it starting, so I think I did a pretty good job this time of just relaxing and enjoying the time with Mom.

It's been too long since I've visited her, and I want to go again within the next couple of months.

Christmas Day

I love the task of trying to find Christmas gifts for my Mom, just one or two, so that she can have packages to unwrap and, hopefully, be delighted with a gift.  It's pretty difficult since she doesn't want anything and is trying to get rid of the things she does have.

For the past few years I've given her calendars with artwork by Robert Tuckwiller, an artist who lives right exactly where we are from, and paints the landscape we think of as home.  I get one for me to put up at my desk at work, one for Mom, and I started getting one for my sister, too, when I realized how much she liked them.

No Place Like Home - Robert Tuckwiller

I swear, that is practically the exact view across the street from the house I grew up in, and the white house looks just like the house that the lady who sent me the bread recipe still lives in.

When I placed the order I told Mr. Tuckwiller how my mother really wanted to know the location of all of the paintings in the calendars, and he wrote out a list for her, even including previous years.  She was completely thrilled to get that.

She gets a ton of Christmas cards, and I also gave her this cute display hanger from Pier 1:

It looks a lot cuter with actual cards in it

Greg did exactly what I love, which is to get me multiple things to unwrap.  The highlights are a 40"x25" canvas art print of Adam Ant!  How neat is that?  He might know me.

It's already on our wall

And a really fancy USB turntable so I can not only listen to all my albums (yes, I still have all my albums from the 70s and 80s, shut up) but I can also convert them to mp3s.  I actually have a bunch of albums that were never released on CD, so I'm really excited about that.

I'm also excited about the blu-rays of season 1 and 2 of Downton Abbey, which came along with a promise from Greg to watch it with me.  The blu-rays will just look gorgeous on our giant tv.

But the best part was the sneaky way I ninja'd Greg's present.  It's pretty hard to spend a lot of money without him knowing it, since we share a bank account, but I realized a couple of months ago that I could just get $20 cash back whenever I made any purchase anywhere when he wasn't with me, and he'd never notice.  I racked up a couple of hundred that way, took his $100 cash bonus that he got at work, and with a little extra "Christmas shopping money" from the ATM I ended up with a bit more than the ~$400 he thought I had.

So he was pretty surprised to get the 4th generation iPad with retina display and a red magnetic cover to go with it.  Heh.  If he ever puts it down, I'll ask him if he likes it.

Despite Mom still being in pain and despite me hovering over her and forcing her to let me do her laundry and take out her trash and turn down her bed (all things she normally fusses at me until I give up even trying to do) we had a pretty nice Christmas.

My sister and her husband came and we all had ham, sweet potatoes, and green beans in the dining room together.
 
It certainly wasn't the typical Christmas most people picture, but I was with my sweet Mom and my sweet husband and we shared hugs and thoughtful gifts and it was, for the most part, very nice.

Christmas Eve

Greg and I drove up to Georgia with our Jetta packed with prettily-wrapped Christmas presents, laptops, our giant suitcase, snacks and our pillows (the secret to sleeping on an uncomfortable bed is to bring your own pillow).

We went out for our usual breakfast for dinner at the local IHOP, and the pancakes with hot syrup and butter were as delicious a treat as always.

The next morning Mom called me while we were still waking up and said she'd fallen and hit her chest on the corner of the table in her apartment.  We ran, and she seemed relatively okay, but in a lot of pain.  She said she felt a sharp pain whenever she breathed. I looked at her chest and she had a minor bruise, but I know (I think?) with elderly people sometimes things take longer to show up.  She is typically very anti-going to the doctor or hospital, so when she tearfully asked about getting medical attention I knew she must be really hurt.  She insisted we take her to an urgent care clinic, because she was scared of having x-rays and being admitted to a hospital.

We went, in the freezing Christmas Eve morning fog and rain, and found a packed waiting room run by a  cold-faced woman who said she had no idea how long the wait would be and waved a long sign-in sheet at me saying, "All these people are ahead of you."

We left and put Mom back in the car, Greg holding the umbrella over our heads while I helped her in, and I told her that if she needed to get medical care, I thought maybe the best plan would be to go back to her apartment and call an ambulance.  That way, she'd be taken right in, without spending hours in a crowded emergency room waiting room.  I told her they couldn't admit her if she didn't agree to be admitted, and she said okay.

In the hallway, I looked at Greg.  Help me figure out what to do, I said, I'm freaking out.  He held my hand and told me to take care of my Mom, and he'd take care of me.

They got there quickly and a bunch of EMTs crowded into her apartment. I noticed one or two stayed in the hallway, not bringing the gurney in right away.  They were all nice Georgia boys with heavy accents, going out of their way to be polite to Mom and address her as Ma'am and direct their questions to her, speaking louder when she couldn't hear them.  Feeling exactly like a scared 12-year old I tried hard to be the adult in charge, and I told them directly and succinctly what had happened.

They asked her if it was okay to examine her chest, and I knelt by her chair and held her hand, knowing it's hard at any age to have your chest examined after having two mastectomies.  The one who appeared to be in charge said he didn't believe any bones were broken or cracked, that he thought she had a bruised sternum.  They listened to her breathing with a stethoscope and took her blood pressure, and said she was breathing just fine.  He cautioned me that he didn't have "x-ray vision" and there was no way to know for sure without an x-ray.

She's 91 and has back problems and going in for x-rays will be extremely hard on her and painful for her, I told them.  I don't want to put her through that if it's not vitally necessary.  What would happen if she does have a cracked or broken sternum?

There's still not much they can do, the EMT told me, except give her pain medication.  I know Mom's history with pain medication, and it's basically nonexistent; even after fracturing two vertebrae she took mild pain pills only rarely, and under great protest.

What would you do, if she were your mother, or grandmother, I asked them.  They looked at Mom.  "Ma'am, do you want to go to the hospital?"

She shook her head.  "No, unless I have to."

Everyone looked at me.  I said that I thought it would be best if we just kept her at home and kept an eye on her.  They all looked relieved and told us to call again if she got worse and they would come right back, it would be no problem.  One guy told me that that's exactly the decision he would have made, but he wasn't allowed to tell me that before.

We all apologized for bringing them out, and they said that it was no problem at all.  Merry Christmas, they wished Mom as they left, telling her they hoped she'd feel better real soon.

Greg and I gave Mom a bunch of ibuprofen and she got back in bed, and by noon the next day she felt well enough to get dressed and have lunch in the dining room with me and Greg and my sister and her husband.  I could tell she was in pain, but she seemed to hold up okay.

She's still having trouble moving around, but has been able to shower and get dressed and undressed, and she said today she thinks it's starting to get better.

Abandoned

Continuing to look around on tumblr I have found a blog called Abandoned Porn.  It's basically beautiful photographs of abandoned places, which look completely poignant and heartbreaking.

Maybe it's the blue mountains off in the distance, but this one really reminds me strongly of the Blue Ridge Mountains where I grew up.  I'm fascinated by it, I can't stop looking at it.  That is the kind of house that was built by hand.  People lived their lives there, were born there, had loving moments and heartbreak there.  Now, even the trees taking it over look dead.

Photo credit:  http://www.flickr.com/people/22563225@N04/

I'm back to myself again, though, which is nice.  I like myself, at least most of the time.  I'm getting together digital photos to take to Mom to put on her digital photo frame, buying Christmas gifts, mailing Christmas cards, burning Yankee Candle tarts that smell like Christmas trees.

Oh, and our dishwasher died, we will have to buy a new one, like now.  I'm not stressy about it, though.  I hated that old crappy dishwasher and look forward to a new one that hopefully works much better and with significantly less volume and overall crapitude than the broken one.

Maybe after it's replaced we can toss the old one in a parking lot and someone will take a poignant photo of it.

I Heart Christmas

Boy, Christmas can really get on top of you and hold you down like you're its bitch, can't it?  A bunch of people at work have out been dealing with various injuries/illnesses/family drama, and the dentist told me that stress-related tooth injuries make this is their busiest time of the year by far.  So far I am holding my own.  My shopping is finished, although I haven't wrapped anything, and two things haven't arrived in the mail yet.  My Christmas cards and stamps have been acquired, all but three cards have been sent out.  I put up our tabletop Christmas tree and lit my Christmas-scented Yankee Candles and pulled out my Christmas t-shirts (living in Florida, t-shirts make more sense than Christmas sweaters).

I'm trying to keep a close eye on my teeth/jaw,since I don't know if I am clenching my teeth in my sleep until it becomes a problem.  So far it's been fine.  I don't want to end up back at the dentist.  I also don't want a repeat of the really bad migraine I had last Christmas.

I love Christmas. I look forward to it all year, and when it's finally here I happily sing Christmas songs and bake cookies and curl ribbons and watch the tv specials from my childhood.  The tricky part is not getting stressed, especially over things that are made up or blown out of proportion by my own expectations.  Last year I got too stressed, and honestly now I don't even remember why.

Every year Mom asks me not to get her anything because she won't have any gifts for me, but I still take her a couple of things so we can open up presents in her apartment on Christmas Eve night.  Last year instead of making a family photo calendar I got her a calendar of Robert Tuckwiller's art, the landscape artist who lives right exactly where we are from.  Mom loved it, so I'm giving her the new one this year.  I have to admit, I got a second one for myself to hang up at my desk at work.  His beautiful paintings make me positively homesick.  I also got a great Black Friday deal on a digital photo frame for her.  When I received it, I wasn't thrilled with the resolution, but it seems to work just great and it's very easy, so I think I'll give it to her anyway.  I'm loading up a memory card with photos and hope to get some from my sister and my niece.

The little old lady who lives next door to us is in the hospital.  I'm not sure what's going on with her, but I like her; she's very sweet, and I hope she is okay.  It really does seem like practically everyone is having some kind of problem right now.

If you are stressy, please take a moment to enjoy this incredible video of Annie Lennox singing God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen, from her new Christmas album.  It's truly beautiful.

They Rocked My Teeth Out

They caught no fish, since the wind was too strong it wasn't safe to go out on the bay.  Bummer for Judas Priest.  They still kept their word about the tickets, but when we got to the venue they turned out to be VIP tickets, which meant tickets in the VIP section.  Which was right by all the other non-VIP sections, although more centrally located.  So we got to see Thin Lizzy (best known for their biggest hit in 1976, The Boys Are Back In Town), Black Label Society (best known for being the band of Zakk Wylde, the guitarist for Ozzy Osbourne), and Judas Priest, best known for being awesome.

One interesting thing about Judas Priest:  in 1990 the band was accused of causing a fan's suicide by subliminally including the message "Do it" in one of their songs.  Rob Halford responded by stating that if they were going to include a subliminal message in their music it would be counterproductive to encourage fans to kill themselves, they'd rather have a message encouraging the fans to buy more records. The lawsuit ended up being dismissed.

Anyway, there were no backstage passes, no meet and greet with the band, just pretty good seats and a very good concert.  Judas Priest had the flaming pyro effects, the black leather outfits, and they really rocked.

For the past few days my teeth have been hurting, a lot, especially in the morning, and especially on the right side.  Yesterday I woke up with a swollen right jaw and pretty intense pain, and managed to get an emergency appointment with my dentist.  They took x-rays and poked around and said that I am not exactly grinding my teeth in my sleep, but I am clenching my jaw in my sleep, to the point where it's causing problems.  (Since my surgery to correct my deformed upper jaw when I was 17, I still have a bite that's just slightly off, my teeth only meeting on the right side, in the back.)  He ground away part of my teeth on the right side, just enough to change where my teeth were hitting, and said that should fix it for now but I need to come in next month to get night guards made.

I managed to still go to the heavy metal concert last night without getting a headache, which I am going to consider a Christmas miracle.

But today I still have pain, I still have swelling, and the ibuprofen and moist heat he prescribed don't seem to be helping.

Of course with my lame-ass dentophobia I am positive that something terrible is happening in my mouth and they just didn't see it yesterday.  Part of my brain knows that even if that is the case and I have to go back in to have some sort of procedure done, I'll survive and it'll be no big deal really.  But the loudest part of my brain is convinced that this will mean a ton of money (right before Christmas), a ton of pain, a ton of vacation time from work that I can't afford to lose, and just lots of agony in general.

I'm just hoping I wake up tomorrow and it's at least better...

Flowers

I went back to Leu Gardens last week.  It's one of my favorite places, and back when Mom and Dad were here in Florida, we went together several times.  For Christmas, I'm making a calendar for my Mom with photos I've taken at Leu Gardens.  I hope she likes it.  :)

Here are a few pics from my visit last week: