Michele~Dad recently renewed his license. Being that he was an optometrist for over 50 years he's memorized the eye chart so that won't work. My brother has pointed out many times that due to his age his reflexes aren't as keen as they once were and accidents are caused by this.
I wonder if an online CAD program would work. Try google.sketchup.com
Weekend plans. I'm guessing a movie or two as that's pretty much our normal thing to do. It's too humid (and hot) for golf.
Michele~Dad recently renewed his license. Being that he was an optometrist for over 50 years he's memorized the eye chart so that won't work.
Yet another thing you and I have in common-- my uncle (my only living relative and like a father to me) was also an optometrist and recently retired. He is over 80 now and still driving. Does your dad still have his "girlfriend"?
My office manager had a program and she did a floorplan for me. I found some online but they didn't really fit my needs.
I just made an appointment for a massage for tonight after reading yelp reviews. It is in the person's house (guy) but all the reviews say he is amazing and very professional. I'm looking forward to it!
Yet another thing you and I have in common-- my uncle (my only living relative and like a father to me) was also an optometrist and recently retired. He is over 80 now and still driving. Does your dad still have his "girlfriend"?
I must have failed to mention it. She finally landed a job...in SLC where he lives. So he invited her to live with him. She's moving in this weekend.
Just how inappropriate is that? She's about my daughter's age (23) and he'll be 92. Granted she'll live in the basement bedroom, but still. Everyone wonders about this.
But maybe she'll be able to tell him not to drive. He listens to her. He won't listen to us kids.
Allison, this is a comedy role for Charlie Sheen's old age that is just waiting to be written. To quote a John Mayer song: "Fathers be good to your daughters ..." Because otherwise they may either 1) be far too emotionally demanding in their relationship with John Mayer; or 2) end up with severe Daddy issues & move into the basement bedrooms of 92-year-old men.
I'll also do some moviegoing over the long weekend. I am the last person whom I know who hasn't seen "Fruitvale Station" & also I like the looks of "Museum Hours" which has been playing half the summer at IFC in the Village.
I'm happy today because my manager has arisen from her sickbed & a two-day migraine. She's heading out into her two-week vacation as scheduled. I always feel a little more relaxed when she's away.
But even happier because the furniture restorer just delivered my sleigh bed. He missed the second anniversary of its drowning by Hurricane Irene by just a couple days. Yeah, he's had it in his workroom for two years. It looks really good. Now I need to measure it carefully & order a custom mattress. It's three-quarter size and needs a low-profile mattress, since the tickbed would have originally rested on crossed ropes low inside the frame. I'm so glad that the waiting is over.
saef~you'll have to post photos of the sleigh bed. That sounds beautiful. And I've heard really good reviews on Fruitvale Station but I bet it'd be a difficult movie to watch. Such a sad story.
Here's what it looks like. It's probably from around the 1840s. This is African crotch grain mahogany veneer, which has a feathery, waterfall pattern. The restorer has put a really high French polish on it. You can smell the shellac when you walk down the hallway toward the bedroom. In six months, after it cures, he'll come by and apply a beeswax coating to it and then polish that for me, and that woodgrain will look as deep as a riverbed.
Unfortunately, it's three-quarter size, as I said, and I will have to order a mattress for it. If anyone here ever buys an antique bed, try to get the mattress with it, or if you don't, obtain assurance that it will take a standard mattress.
For hundreds of years, people slept comfortably in what would now be considered a twin bed or three-quarter size bed. A full-size mattress was considered massive. Now everyone needs really big beds, queen size at least. I wonder sometimes if this is a little-remarked effect of the obesity epidemic, or is it just part of our need to supersize & take up more & more space, like with square footage of houses & SUVs & etc.
I like sleeping in this bed. I feel like a kitten in a cardboard box.
Nice bed, saef. What are the dimensions? We sleep in my grandparents' bed (early C20th) which is by no means large but fits into our small 1840s bedroom.
My weekend plans have taken an unexpected turn. My cousin called last night and said that my dad was "on his way out". My cousin is an MD and has seen a lot of people die so I'm thinking this might finally be the end for my dad. I will go up to palliative care this morning and see if I can speak to a nurse or doctor. Not much to be done but wait.
Given our antagonistic relationship over half a century I really have mixed feelings about it all. I'm not sad for my dad as he's made his last year on earth a **** for everyone around him. But I will feel some sort of loss as he is the only immediate family member I have. And he's the next to last (my godfather's still alive out west) of a group of people who all got together after the war, in a new country, and made a life for themselves. They socialized with each other, had kids that got to know each other (on a limited basis) etc.
My dad requested no funeral - just cremation and then interrment. Both my cousins are aware of what is happening so now we wait.
I am going to go on with my life. My dad hasn't really factored into it at all in the last 6 months, aside from my attending his birthday and him threatening me a couple of times over the phone. And my continuing to pay his bills at the hospital.
I'm supposed to go and order our new furniture this afternoon and I think I will. DH's and my lives are going forward and we are going to enjoy our new house and neighbourhood. We got invited to a neighbour's party for next Friday night.
I know how weird this all will look to most people but that's just the way it is.
I am going to go on with my life. My dad hasn't really factored into it at all in the last 6 months, aside from my attending his birthday and him threatening me a couple of times over the phone. And my continuing to pay his bills at the hospital.
I'm supposed to go and order our new furniture this afternoon and I think I will. DH's and my lives are going forward and we are going to enjoy our new house and neighbourhood. We got invited to a neighbour's party for next Friday night.
I know how weird this all will look to most people but that's just the way it is.
How it "will look" to others doesn't matter at all. How it "looks" to one part of your conflicted self, the part that may be wrestling with how much we owe to our blood kin, even when they haven't loved us, when they have in fact berated us, hurt us and tormented us -- that's what you have to make peace with.
What you owe, in my view, is exactly what you've done thus far: You've been paying the bills. As your father probably did for you when you were a child.
But not any more than that. It's a task beyond most of us, to offer love to those from whom we get none. And it's a task no one should take on, to offer love to someone who is attacking us & who's never figured out how to interact emotionally with other people.
Under these circumstances, with your painful history, I think your reaction is the sanest one imaginable.
My dad died about an hour ago. I'm trying to get in touch with someone to see about arrangements but no one is answering the phone there. I'll probably not be posting for the rest of the weekend but I'll try to get back next week.
-- my uncle (my only living relative and like a father to me) was also an optometrist and recently retired. He is over 80 now and still driving. Does your dad still have his "girlfriend"?
I found some online but they didn't really fit my needs.
