Day Twelve - Living till Dying

 Good Mother's Day last Sunday.

I spoke with all three of my sons, nice long chats about potential move, which is on hold until we hear from one of the apartment complexes where I'm on waiting lists.

I am able to verbalize a new term that describes myself. I am now frail. That is really hard for me to acknowledge. I choked up saying it for the first time to my son and his wife.

So far M (in FL) has started checking on moving companies, and pods where we load everything and then unload at destination. But he's shy of being spammed and wouldn't give any of them his email or phone number. So he doesn't have any quotes.

Did I complain? Did I do it myself? Nope. Gonna let them figure it out, even if it hurts.

R said he is able to support me flying out, but probably won't be able to do any more hands on help (he lives in OH). His middle daughter is graduating college next week and they are driving to DC for that. Big family gathering, which I refrained from joining.

​T and K are welcoming, but somewhat cautious about having me stay with them more than a week. K also wants to continue her life choices...and I respect her needs for space too. But they are also pushing for me to not move to their town (Cortez) and rather to Durango. Durango is bigger and is probably a good choice for social and medical needs for me. But if Cortez offers an apartment earliest, I'll take it. Cortez has a much smaller hospital, no pulmonologists, and I'd still need to drive to Durango for the UU church as well as Dr. appointments.

I explained that the biggest thing is just to get me to CO. Once there, I may still move later to another place if there's a reason to do so...and with very little furniture in the move, it won't be as big a production.  I will eventually purchase furniture from thrift stores. That's probably where a lot of my current pieces will go. Or I'll just give them to whomever wants to come get them. They are all from thrift sources anyway.

And I said to each of my sons how important this conversation is to me. They do tend to go elsewhere with a lot of their lives having needs. So each Sunday I'll be calling them in the foreseeable future.

My current situation is one of continuing my health care needs, cleaning up the apartment after last month's hospitalization, and packing the rest of the things I want to keep (dishes, books, clothes etc.) At least most of the pottery is in 10 boxes already.

I am also checking in with the 5 apartment complexes where I'm on waiting lists. Two look promising, one in Cortez, one in Durango.

And I am aware that I had a mental/emotional burn-out last week. I want to figure out just how to stop that from happening again. Pondering the feelings, and any choices I can make for earlier awareness and halting it.

Living till Dying Day Two

 It's the First of May...

I catch echoes of a tune from "Camelot" which a blogger used to post every year. She was called HecateDemeter. I miss her posts.

Today I added this quote to my regular blog about May Day.

We are bodies. We do not have bodies... If all our ‘inputs’ are visual and textual, and all we touch is frictionless surfaces, and if we have not reinstated the rich and varied physical life that lockdowns and contemporary electronic habits have stolen from us, then we will, very simply, be somewhat ill. One birth right of humans is a place in the ongoing physical life of earth. Without it, we are without context, (literally - not in the fabric), sullen, and prone to dubious medications peddled by the Machine.

Am I asking you to roll on the ground in the sunshine or push your faces into the hands of willing friends? Well, that would be a good start, as it would deliver a life-enhancing dose of the a vitamin we are mostly all deficient in - foolishness. Pioneers such as Moshe Feldenkrais and Thomas Hanna based their lives' work on returning people to natural movement. I would encourage us all to urgently attend to the state of our tactile lives, to touching and being touched, to feeling things under our hands and feet that are not manmade.

SOURCE: 

A Low Slanting Ray - Antidotes to the Hubriscene part 4, from the archive

by
Uncivil Savant <carolineross@substack.com>

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I post it again here after reading some blogs and making some comments. I need to get up and away from the computer soon. But it's definitely addictive to me.

Self-care is my mantra today.

I keep giving all the details of my current health on blogs, and am so grateful to have a supportive community here, but I think I'm failing myself. I'm not doing the care that I should, and I wonder how much that contributes to poor health.

Not just eating right....but also

Taking long hot soapy showers or baths.

Skin care.

Dental care.

Hair care.

Digestive care.

Household upkeep

Doing laundry.

Changing the sheets on the bed.

Doing dishes.

Making phone calls regarding medical care

Going to appointments (I'm pretty good about this!)

Car upkeep!

Exercise! Oh my yes...getting myself to just DO SOMETHING!

OK, that's the laundry list of where I know I'm not doing as much as I know how, as much as minimally is needed to be healthy. NOBODY else is responsible for these actions.

So maybe each day of my recovery should have just one of these as the focus. I know I am unable to accomplish all of them daily...even weekly! 

So I lean back into my bag of counseling tricks. What is in my way? 

Not laziness and procrastination...because they are constants about everything except a few bodily functions that break through and I do pay attention to them. 

Denial? Perhaps. Like the one about dying eventually and have I done anything/everything I can before then? I'm writing here as a step in that direction!

I do have a mental barrier about lots of these things...psychologically I mean. The first thing listed is showering, and I do minimal daily cleaning of my body. But getting into the shower has become rare. 

A big part is the evidence that shower leads to wetness in the bathroom, which leads to mold inside the walls, window frame tracks, and the drains. I am so afraid of mold these days. It's a big thing, and I'm avoiding it by not showering at all. I do so weekly so my hair gets a good washing. And then pay attention to drying off the areas in the room that I can. I have 2 fans I use (the ceiling one, and a portable one on the floor.) The maintenance man put a little pot of white and yellow beads on the floor that's supposed to absorb dampness. The dampness is under the floor and behind the fiber-glass shower unit...and gets worse after rainy days. Of course having high humidity each night doesn't help dry the building out.

I just remembered, I have an appointment to have a haircut (with hair wash included) next Wednesday. Shucks, I'm not going to go that long without washing my hair. So today it's full blown shower. And focus on drying the room out afterward. 

Sorry if this is way too much information about rather mundane private stuff. But this is what I'm trying to change in my life, and I make these kinds of attempts to change ever so slowly...just like how long did it take for me to stop having daily showers? It was very gradual. And it has probably been supported by being able to read blogs first thing with my coffee...rather than shivering to dress afterward, and doing all those demanding routines for drying off the room. As the apartment warmed up, I could easily go get cleaned up and dressed after an hour or two...and the easiest way was what my mother called "spit baths" or harking back to using warm water in the basin and washcloth (washrag would be mother's term) with soap. I could dry off in no time, and be dressed.

I want to keep track of my acknowledging this as something needing my attention. This is my baby step today.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg's words