Yesterday I put our entire italy itinerary on Travel Mapper which is a Google Sheets extension. Pretty cool. I pre paid tour tickets, added reservation numbers, and split cost between the two families (SIL/BIL are coming with us.) Pretty slick. I even color coded the spreadsheet. I think I have left enough free time in between official tours to hang out.
Food was Greger if still too much but I think the antibiotics are kicking in. I will see if just Tylenol will do it till tomorrow. I did 25 mins of Yoga.
Today I have a putter list but first is to de- Xmas.
Karen: So glad you get to spend time with DS. I agree with BBE. You are certainly orgniazed.
Curly: Great decision to just come home and try again the next day. much better than getting in a fight.
BBE; I will send a screen shot of our taxes ( family farm).. It is about 4 inches thick.
Diet Coaches/Buddies - Tornado was a visit from the (2.5 yo) DFGD and our DS. My job was to spend the whole visit cutting grapes in half with elaborate pantomime and, at her father's insistence, requiring her to say "Please" each time she asked. She ate all that DW had put out; good thing since she showed no signs of slowing down. My excitement was telling my DS that I am now the owner of a non-fungible token (NFT) in a digital wallet. It's an Edgar Degas painting owned by the Boston Museum of Fine Arts (MFA), The amazing Racehorses at Longchamps. I own an NFT of it. My ownership gives me no additional rights that you have to just look at it whenever you want. I feel like I've joined the 21st Century.
In the spirit of full disclosure, it was FREE. Now that I own it, the MFA assumes that I'll next buy additional NFTs of other works from their vast back rooms that are unlikely to ever find their way to the visitors' galleries.
Eating was on plan for meals, CREDIT moi. Snacks were bounded, but not as small as I wished. Dinner was the dish we call "Burger, beans, and rice" because of its three components. We hit a wall - we were out of the size of Glad storage containers that we use to save it for two additional meals. Out because they're all in use, in the fridge, for a variety of reasons. Panic. We can't buy more because Glad, in its Corporate wisdom, slightly changes the size now and then so that the single desire to have a stack of identical containers isn't possible. Might have to take the path maryann said that she took: put all the old ones in a leaves-the-house-only box and buy a new stack in this year's minor shape difference.
Joy (gardenerjoy) - Hope you can settle the family drama. If you succeed, I know a well-known, in-the-news, British family that could use your services. Perhaps your job is easier since no one in your family has sold 1.5 million copies of their side of the story.
maryann - Delighted to learn about Travel Mapper - the Google Sheets extension. Will have to try that.
Karen (karenrn) - Waving in the general direction of Thailand. Bon Voyage.
curlyjax - Bummer that your drive to Boston had to be repeated. But neat that your young, strong DS would be with you for some of the heavy lifting. Kudos to your and your DD for more good talks. Kinda aghast that the Massachusetts DMV is keeping track of your inspection status. Agree, that's a Big Brother type of feeling.
Readers -
Quote:
Chapter 6Stage 3 - The Challenging Situations Plan
General holiday rules. . . . When you automatically say to yourself, I'm definitely not going to have any ... NO CHOICE, you eliminate the struggle and move on.
Judith S. Beck, Ph.D., The Complete Beck Diet for Life (Green book), Pg 157.
Up early with my thoughts this morning 3:30 am. Talked to Mom last night and she was diagnosed with congestive heart failure. That is a pretty scary title. Woke DH for some company. One of his stellar characteristics is his willingness to offer an ear at anytime day or night. Finally went into the office with the summation that my life is rich and full. Part of the duties of that wealth is to feel bittersweet.
Food was better yesterday. Credit for not having a lot of non Greger food around the house so that when I go grazing my damage is pretty minimal. Exercise was non existent. I will do yoga before I go to the dentist.
BBE: Congrats for you NFT. To date I have neither bitcoin nor NFT nor beanie babies. I prefer silly investments in jewelry which I can at least wear.
The children have finally been dropped at their respective home away from homes. I hit Wegmans on the way home from dropping off DS and bought myself some ready made food and a dessert. I also treated myself to watching The Glass Onion on netflix which was very fun. I woke up this morning to light snow and am going to enjoy it from my snug house and try to just stay put today. I have laundry, paperwork and decluttering to occupy myself. I'm designating one corner of the living room as an outbox and will pile everything I want to donate there, and then start bringing things to Savers etc. I also need to make a meal plan and see what's in the freezer I can use.
Widowfriend called me on the way home from dropping off her youngest, chortling "we're free!" and we may have dinner together.
Gardenerjoy: breathing and centering is a great strategy for stress.
Maryann- that Travel Mapper sounds really cool. Yay for yoga, its so great for our minds and bodies.
Karen- hope you had/are having a good flight. Look forward to hearing all about it!
Bill-beautiful painting, how fun to "own" some of it. It is annoying how things like those containers are constantly being changed
Yesterday's adventure added no further drama to the family situation and maybe calmed the waters a bit.
CREDIT for not using it as an excuse to pick up a fast-food lunch or another treat -- especially since I completed the job a good two hours after my usual lunch time. I ate the 100-calorie granola bar that I brought with me and came home to fix a late lunch in my own kitchen instead.
I hardly recognize myself! It's been months since I've had any food that didn't come from my own kitchen. Apparently, now, I prefer it that way.
Exercise +55, 840/1700 minutes for January
BillBlueEyes: Oddly, publishing one side of the story, in deliberately hurtful ways, is part of the problem -- social media makes it possible for any of us to engage in that behavior. I have no clue how to address that aspect of the situation, so I'm focusing on the more practical bits and pieces in the hope that reducing dependence (and the resentment that accompanies it) might help. The enmeshment feels complicated to me but it isn't nearly as complicated as the royal family, so there may be hope.
maryann: I thought congestive heart failure was a scary-sounding diagnosis when my mother got it, too. It's not good, but she lived with it for years after getting the diagnosis, so not quite as close to "failure" as the title makes it sound.
I'm still alive! I do think about you all, and hope you are well. I'm just hanging on until my move and now my mother has passed away. It was a bit ugly in the end when she could not get enough air for two days and the doctor ignored the many requests for the hospice order.
She kept begging me to get the morphine but all I could do was keep calling, and the hospice kept trying to get the order as well. Going to the ED again was out of the question (according to mom). Hospice came to do an evaluation to see if their in-house doctor could give the order instead but mom died shortly after she arrived.
The doctor's office and then the doctor called while I was standing with my dead mother and they both got an ear full. I told them my mom suffered for two days because she ignored the many urgent requests for the order.
My anger has calmed down and now I'm focused on all the adulting that has to be done to settle her affairs.
My weight seems to be up another ten pounds every time I turn around. I'm looking forward to chill times in the summer hopefully.
Tuseday - Pope Gregory XI moves the Papacy back to Rome from Avignon (1377)
Diet Coaches/Buddies - Exercise, CREDIT moi, was shoveling snow for the first time this year. It was only an inch or two, but enough that being walked on would pack it so that it would form ice. Being a holiday made it OK to dawdle and not shovel until about noon; on work days there's a stream of folks walking by on their way to work. Got reminded that my favorite snow shovel corroded last year and was sent out to be recycled. It'd served for many years. I've looked at stores in passing a couple of times but the stuff put out was of poor quality - the blades weren't even straight new. Now I have to look more seriously.
Eating was on plan, CREDIT moi, with slightly more bounded snacks. Dinner was late by our standards because DW was caught up out and about with some friends. I was contemplating whether to walk to some place for takeout or to eat a can of sardines with crackers. Then DW returned to warm up a bowl of left-over dahl so all was well. Years ago, there was a KFC a few blocks away; I was drooling at the thought of dropping by to pick up a bucket of chicken. Just drooling. Alas, a bucket of chicken would last us for weeks these days - just don't down the quantities of food that we used to.
Joy (gardenerjoy) - Congrats for being able to add some calm to the waters. I agree with your thought, social media allows one to publish their side of a grief in a way that hardens the position.
maryann - Sending supportive thoughts to you and your mom for her heart diagnosis. I agree with others, the word 'failure' in its name is misleading. Neat that you're able to see that your life is "rich and full."
curlyjax - Bon Voyage into another stint of empty-nester. Love the notion of having a corner of your living room as an "outbox."
Penny. - Sending supportive thoughts for the loss of your mother. I do hope you have friends who are good listeners; my take is no mater how old we are, it's a shock to realize that we've become an orphan. Wish you well through your last month in your transition state until you move.
Readers -
Quote:
Chapter 6Stage 3 - The Challenging Situations Plan
Talk yourself through temptation. . . . Remind yourself that if you hadn't seen holiday goodies, you may not even have thought of them or wanted them. This helps diminish your sense of entitlement.
Judith S. Beck, Ph.D., The Complete Beck Diet for Life (Green book), Pg 157.
I finally got my dad's stuff sorted into a file box with things properly labelled, and did a lot of bills as well. I vaccumed the living room and made an outbox space, and got all the piled up dishes done. Then I got depressed/ran out of steam, so I watched tv for a bit. There's so much decluttering to do, I get in the "where to start" panic, so I need to stick with one area and just do it. I ended up making a small steak for dinner which I never do, eating from the freezer. Who knows what else I'll find!
I've been having some cramps on and off which is worrying me a bit so I'll have to call the gyn today or tomorrow. Yay, the joys of being a woman.
Penny- I'm so sorry about your mom, and that the end was so hard. Glad you gave them a piece of your mind. Dealing with the legal affairs is a big challenge.
I walked with a friend for a ridiculously long amount of time yesterday. We parked in the middle of a city park that was new to both of us. We wandered our way to a perimeter path and then just kept walking around, not really registering when we were passing our cars again. We might have gone all day, but I eventually got hungry. It was fun and helpful for both of us, I think.
My friend is currently mostly estranged from her family. Although the situation is very different from my niece, I weirdly seem to be collecting estranged daughters at the moment. As DH said, there are worse hobbies.
Exercise +140, 980/1700 minutes for January
Penny: I'm so sorry about your mom and, especially, that the death wasn't the peaceful one that we all know that the medical community is capable of delivering these days. The friend that I walked with yesterday was on the family part of the care team as her stepmother died last year. That went the way everyone wanted, but my friend is still dealing with the settling of affairs. She hopes to be basically done in the next couple of months. DH and his siblings haven't finished the work from when my mother-in-law died in August of 2021. I hope that you get through that phase of adulting with reasonable ease.
Joy, I sure hope it doesn't take a year to settle my mom's estate! I feel stressed just knowing it needs to be done and want it finished asap for that reason. I'm still waiting on the death certificates but spent the day calling each card company in her wallet and making sure it's debt free and canceled.
Curly, good job getting organized. I hope your dad has his DNR done. We found out my mom never did it officially and because Hospice didn't have a chance to admit her, 911 had to be called. We had a house full of police making calls to see if they needed to investigate her death further. Not the peaceful ending I hoped for.
Bill, I meant to ask what your kids do with the coins you give them every Christmas? I like the tradition. Wondering if they save them up in a little treasure hoard, or just spend them. I
What was to be a refresh of a root canal became an extraction. The tooth was not worth saving. So the saga continues. I haven't spoken hardly at all today. it made school quite interesting but the kids were good humored. We watched a couple of important movies. The pain is manageable and getting less. I have made vitamix smoothies so eating ( slurping0 hasn't been too bad.
Weight is safely under 180.
Penny: My thoughts are with you . Are you an only child? Will the burden rest solo on you? My husband has done it a few times and it is never a quick or easy process.
Wednesday-611 gram chondrite type meteorite strikes a house (1916, Stone County, MO)
Diet Coaches/Buddies - Exercise, CREDIT moi, was a walk-about at Halibut Point State Park an hour north of here on the Atlantic Ocean. Turned out to be a near-perfect day for birding: 48 degrees F temps, sunny skies, no wind, and few folks visiting a site that is popular in the summer. Great views of Harlequin Ducks below the cliffs whose looks live up to their name. It's less than a half-mile walk from the parking lot to the outlook - an undulating path around the abandoned granite quarry there. Fun to see the slabs of granite in various stages of being removed before work stopped. Always fun to be reminded that planet Earth has a lot of granite. A few younger folks were there; was especially pleased to see one older woman, walking very slowly, with well-used expensive binoculars, there by herself. We had to show her where the ducks were - she couldn't quite spot them by herself - was grateful that I let her look through my spotting scope. She specifically came to see the Harlequin Ducks that she knew made the site special. I hope I'm that adventurous when I'm a feeble, slow walker.
Eating was on plan, CREDIT moi. Evening snack included a Portuguese Egg pudding (Pudim de ovos) gifted to us by the neat lady who cleans our house every two weeks. It's a lot of pudding. DW gave some to our friend who went birding with us and will bring some to DD today when we pick up the DGD from First Grade. The ingredients of the pudding are: calories, calories, and more calories. But it slides down so easily. We have to give some of it away or we'll just blimp up.
Joy (gardenerjoy) - What a great walk to just keep going. LOL at "collecting estranged daughters" - apparently you're seen as a person who listens.
maryann - Ouch for an extraction. Welcome to the club of folks who'll have a little post screwed into the jaw to accept some sort of fake tooth. I'm in middle of that process right now.
curlyjax - Do enjoy vicariously reading about your progress at reducing 'stuff'.
Penny. - When I recently read about settling estates, there seemed to be a fixed interval of one-year where the executor had to wait to see if any creditors showed up. One may be allowed to ignore this waiting period, if the executor understands that they'll have to retract distributed money to pay them. Might be commonly ignored when the amount of money is small and the executor is a primary recipient. I wish you well figuring it all out. (I'll ask what our (7 yo) DGD does with her growing stash of gold one dollar coins. The (2.5 yo) DFGD didn't even register that they were hers.)
Readers -
Quote:
Chapter 6Stage 3 - The Challenging Situations Plan
Talk yourself through temptation. . . . If you say to yourself, I only want [this food] because I'm seeing it right now, but I can move on as if I'd never seen it, it will be easier to resist.
Judith S. Beck, Ph.D., The Complete Beck Diet for Life (Green book), Pg 157.
I put twice is much on yesterday's to-do list as could possibly be done and then got stressed about it. I think I both designed a better list today and a talked myself into better attitude by reminding myself that I can think of too-long lists as "options" instead of "tasks."
We have a rainy day expected. I rearranged things so that I don't have to go out. I'm going to seek coziness and calm in ways that don't involve food.
Exercise +60, 1040/1700 minutes for January
BillBlueEyes: Thanks for the Missouri fact. I've been to Stone County, but I don't think I heard about the meteorite. A little bit of Branson is on the Stone County side of the line. For those of us who tire quickly of the sort of offerings that Branson has, there's some fine hiking in Stone County.
I've been in Thailand almost 24 hours now. The travel worked out just fine. Very different from last year though. The plane was totally full. Last year I had 8 seats to myself in my row. First I flew to Vancouver BC. I had a 6 hour layover and my friend picked me up at the airport and we went to dinner off site. I was with her last in August and always great to see her. It broke up the time nicely. My next flight was 16 hours non-stop to Bangkok, but I was able to sleep about 4 hours so I was in decent shape when I got here. Ds picked me up and we did the morning errands which meant purchasing food at 3 places and beer at one place and then had something to eat. Last year I had chicken and vegetables over rice at a small place where ds goes every day. This time I had a double portion of veggies over rice and ds told them to hold any oil. It was delicious. Part of that may have been because I was starving after having not much to eat on the flight. I hadn't made any special arrangement for my food and once I deleted the chicken from the first dish and a tuna sandwich which was part of the next meal, there wasn't enough. I finally broke down and ate the omelette at the last meal even though I don't typically eat eggs. I just reminded myself that 90% on plan is plenty good enough. After we had something to eat and I got settled in I took a 3 hour nap. After that we went walking in a park that has a loop that goes up and down, so some elevation gain. Ds battles his weight and although he plays a lot of badminton and does a fair amount of walking, he eats too much, so I'm hoping to be a good healthy influence.
Ds's girlfriend who he had the fake marriage party with last year has gotten herself into some trouble with gambling or loaning money or something. In any event I knew last year that something didn't seem quite right. I think ds kind of had the blinders on at that time. Anyway, she is out of the picture until/unless she cleans up her act. Luckily he didn't have any money involved in anything, but she actually pawned several pieces of his jewelry. The sad thing is intellectually he knows that if there isn't trust there is nothing, but he still cares about her. We'll see what happens. I knew all of this before I came over and even asked if I should come, but he really wanted me to and his Dad who was here all of December told me he really needs the Mom influence. We never get too old to need our Mom. He will be 52 in June.
So, in light of all of that, we may not be leaving the area like I had hoped, but maybe. If not we will just have our routine and I will get to see him plenty and have lots of good visiting time. I will consider it a health retreat and get a pedicure, maybe a facial, massage and all those things that I haven't done at home for awhile. I think he's wanting to be sure the burger stand is running fine and purchase some point of sale equipment before he heads to the states for a couple of weeks in March.
GardenerJoy I just read something on a post I get about prioritizing your to do list, writing it down and then ripping off the bottom half. Making it options instead of to-do is about the same thing I supposed.
Bill The birding day sounds lovely. It's so nice when it's cool and clear. I love seeing older people out "doing the dang thing" as ds would say. Continuing to do what it is they love and not letting age get in the way.
Maryann Sorry about the tooth. Luckily the last time that happened to me, the periodontist who did the extraction was able to place the post immediately. I was so impressed since there was not even one bit of pain. I've had that (my only implant) for 4 or 5 years now. I agree with the others that although heart failure sounds so dire, medications can optimize the function and a person can have many more good years. Remember Dr. Greger's grandmother.
Penny I was so sorry to read about your Mom. As a hospice/palliative care nurse, I was even more sorry to learn the doctor hadn't given the orders necessary to keep her comfortable. I hope your giving him/her an earful will help him be more responsive in the future. I can't tell you how much I learned and how many people I've been able to assist because of my experience.
Curlyjax Sounds like you had a productive day yesterday. Getting your Dad's things organized was a big help I'm sure. I would imagine you do have advanced directives in order with your Dad since you are a social worker and have geriatric care manager's involved.
That's it for now. My goal while here is to keep my food on plan as well as possible and go home with a loss on the scale. There is one goody that I'll have, but I learned on a YouTube that it is just rice flour, wheat flour and coconut milk. I'm sure there is a fair amount of sugar in there too. More tomorrow.
Wow, another exhausting day. I tried without pain meds. Talked a little too much. Not hard to do when you teach and extra period. Sheesh! My worried is I am not leaving enough of me for DH. He gets the grumpy end of the stick too many times this year so far.
Weight is under 180 which is a win until I start feeling better. Hopefully tomorrow I can start getting in the formal exercise.
karen: How fascinating you are in Thailand. I would love to go with you one time. You are a seasoned pro and I want to put a little red pin in the Asia continent. We'll talk. I am glad DS has distanced from a mate in the clutches of a gambling addiction. Truth be told , that addiction can be as devastating as heroine. I have seen it isn my meetings. BBE: Your story of the elderly reminds me when I was skiing. I stopped in the middle of a slope to help a man. He needed me to get him up. He told me once he is up he is fine going down. WhenI went to the bottom of the hill his friend was waiting for him. He was 83. Wow. I want to be him.
OK - Shaking off the grumpies with a little dance - George Micheal's "Freedom" . It is a sure fire happy making machine.
Monday - Martin Luther King Jr. Day
