Ready to run away to an island in BVI...

Guess it has been a while since I wrote in my blog...why do I only write when I am upset or stressed? So much has happened since I last wrote...I finallized my retirement papers, Megan and Jason stopped off (a little out of their way ) during their move from Las Vegas to Spokane WA. I flew to Orange County-Anaheim Hills to visit Ian, Linda and my wee granddaughters, Elly and Lindsay for a week then they drove me back here to NM where I was lucky enouogh to have them visit for another week. Right after that (like 2 days later)I had shoulder surgery on my left shoulder to repair a torn rotator cuff. I am still out of school and it has been 4 weeks since the surgery. Physical Therapy is not much fun at this point in time. Michelle (my PT) is working at stretching out the ligaments and muscles that were worked on- can't do any real strength training at this point. Still really painful...like takes your breath away and white knuckles pain. Doing exercises at home 3X daily too. they are hard to do but suck it up Megan says. I can't go back to work until I have the okay from the surgeon but I haven't been able to get ahold of his nurse so I am supposed to keep calling until I do (according to HR) at District. Only 2 more weeks of students then I am supposed to work until end of June...or until that Wed before the end of June. Then off to San Jose with Leslie to the USA Gymnastics National conference and USA Olympic Trials for Men and Women. Leslie has gotten us tickets for the Women's evemts so far. A cruise at the beginning of August with Ian, Linda, the girls and Linda's parents. Should be awesome...Royal Carribean's Oasis of the Seas going to Jamaica, Haiti and Cosumel (?sp) Mexico. So why am I so stressed (read that as pissed off), What could be so wrong in this "most perfect of all perfect worlds"? I guess it started with all of our adult children noticing that their father is drinking a lot more wine than he used to. He used to do a bottle a day now he is up to a wine box or more a day. Why?? I don't know...the kids and I have talked about it off and on for a while now. What do we do...we thought about having a conference (intervention sort of) writing a letter, having one or two of them talk to him, me talking to him. Megan did say what are you going to do if you have a confrontation with him over this...Good Point! I am a chicken to say the leasst. The letter from me was the only one that felt like it might let him know that I was concerned about him. I only know that when he does drink it affects everything in my life at night, the weekends, anytime he is at home and drinking. He stopped for the first 2 to 3 weeks after I had the surgery as I was going to need someone who could help during the night when I needed more ice, pain meds etc. He was great at that point and only had 1 glass here and there, or that was what I thought. Tonight was "the last straw". I am feeding the cats their supper, and I asked him if he had brought home the white plastic shopping bag from BVi- The Last Resort that I had been hanging onto because it was so neat looking. He wanted to use it to take food into work. He had said he would because he liked it too I guess. He insisted that I was accusing him of losing the bag and that I was rude etc, etc and anything else he could accuse me of at that point and wouldn't listen to me when I tried to say that all I did was ask if he brough it back. I also noticed that besides drinking tonight, he also had been drinking downstairs as well because there were 2 empty wine boxes next to the trash that weren't there a couple of days ago. I guess he made me mad enough that I had had it...I had already spent 3 1/2 hours at my father's new room downstairs (that is another story) sorting his clothes, bringing the rest of it down from his room upstairs, unpacking all of this stuff and trying to all of this with one arm in a sling and unable to lift anything with it. So I guess that I was primed for someone to light my fuse. It is 10 PM and instead of getting ready for bed like a normal person who gets up for work the next day...he has decided to make cookies, and drink. That is when I asked about the bag. He really went ballistic over that one. I finally said "you have had to much to drink again, Do you remember Jim and Letty? He was a fabulous cook but he drank wine while he was doing it and the meal got later and later and he got drunker and drunker until he was ready to pass out and the food turned out awful. I don't know how letty stood it. You are acting just like Jim K. You can't cook when you are like that, you crall into bed in a stupor etc etc" He just stood there while I ranted on about how he was killing himself etc etc. I finally fed the cats and walked out of the room. when I went back I told him that he can sleep in the other bedroom. Well, so much for how am I going to deal with confrontation. He had I guess too much to drink already so he wasn't able to come with a good retort. Right now it is almost midnight and he is sitting in front of the tv watching the military channel or surfing with I am sure a glass of wine and I don't care. So that is the end of any romantic thoughts I had been having when we were sitting together watching the 1st game in the eastern NHL Stanley Cup game between NJ Devils and the NY Rangers. It was so mych fun just sitting there together, talking about the game and what was happening with work and with my father. And I tokd him the ultrasound news from Megan and he just ruined it. Maybe that is what I resent the most. When he does the drinking in those amounts ( a box must be equivalent to 3 or more bottles of wine) he just isn't the same person I just spent 43 years with. How sad. Maybe I do need to go to AlANON but I can't do it right now. Just don't have the mental strenth to deal with it. That is why I am writing this in my blog which is only readable by my daughters (LInda you are one of them) and me. Guess I should go to bed now with Toonces the cat. He loves me anyway.

iPad Games Junkie! (part 1-the start)

It is 12:24am on Tuesday Feb 7. I should be in bed asleep right now since I do have to get up and go to work this morning and I had problems getting up Monday morning after going to bed at a reasonable time Sunday night...at least I thought it was reasonable for me...probably after 11 pm. I have always loved playing games on a video games machine or on the computer for as long as I can remember...well, that is a stupid thing to say since I am over the "60+" identity they like to use in demographics and they weren't available back in recorded history! The first time I saw a game system was in a store in a mall in Canada back around 1980 or 1981, probably an Atari of some type. The sales guy was trying to talk Arthur and I into purchasing one of these machines by letting us play a game on it. It was called "Necromancer" and was magic, wizards but very simple PAC Man graphics. I was hooked. If we had had the money there would have been no question about it we would have taken one home but at that time you set it up with your tv. Our b&w tv was from 1969 and had been to germany and back with the US Army. (I think that is the tv we had then but it could have been a hand me down from my mother too) and we had to change the channels with pliers as the knob as bit the dust. We just didn't have the money to buy either another tv or an Atari. Right now, ready to retire, it is funny to look back on how little money we had considering Arthur's engineering degrees and good jobs with engineering firms. I was the stay at home mom with 3 kids from 1 to 9 yrs...going to dance lessons and gymnastics but I digress. The Crosses next door had a new Apple computer (before the II GS). It cost and arm and two legs but he was a sales person for a tv station in Toronto so could afford it. He showed it off to us proudly. Probably within the next year or so I think we ended up with a commodore computer type system that you could play games on with your (even our old) tv. I only remember we had a game where you moved back and forth and shot down aliens that looked like hamburgers. Arthur played that game all the time trying to reach an elusive score of 1 million. When he finally got it he took a photograph of it for posterity. It was the last time he really did anything with video games until my father gave us an Amiga in maybe 1985 or 86 and we were back in the usa in Los Alamos. But I digress again. I finally had it with the aging b&w tv and said I am taking the income tax refund to sears And buying a color tv! I digress again but to understand this part of the story you need to know that up to that point Arthur had always made the decisions on what tech type equipment we would buy (cameras, tv's, stereo, cars, etc etc) and he would do research and mull things ov and over until 2 or 3 years would go by and/or that equipment would become redundant and he would have to start over again. I love my husband but enough is enough! It took me about 30 minutes to pick one out and bring it home. Next memory I have was of probabl Leslie or Ian sick in bed playing PacMan on that tv/commodore. Enough for now more continues next time.

Birthday Parties Revisited

So tired today. Just want to go back to sleep but the cats won't let me...they are saying "feed me" and Nala has been coming up to my face since 7 am touching it with her tiny paws with tiny claws. Of course it is 10 am now so I really should get up and face the day. today I will put things back into the new bathroom closet and finish painting the trim areas...my jobs for today. Anything else beyond that is icing on the cake. Thinking of cake, it was a really fun time at the "outlaws" where the hot tub b party was held. Watching the 8 little 8 and 9 year old girls interact so reminded me of parties for Megan and Leslie when they were little girls. As they got older, Megan's parties were held at Ontario Place in Toronto with bags of GOP, hot chocolate, ice skating outdoors then to round it off a visit to the film festival held in december at the IMAX theater. Star Wars, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Empire Strikes Back are some of the ones I think I remember from those trips. Leslie's parties must have been more normal because neither she nor I can remember much about them except for one...I made a doll cake for one of hers with the barbie doll pick on the top. It turned out really great and I just remembered the party we had for her 18th birthday. Her friend Eve elped meget the fixings for a rat dissection cake. They were all taking adv biology at the time. Eve got the lab coat and some of the fixings and I had hemostats and scalpels. The cake looked like a giant white rat in a dissection tray and inside the layers were gummy hearts and other rat type parts. We surprised her with that one. That was a fun party. It was fun watching her dissect the cake. Ian had a kill Barney for his 18th b day. Only boys were invited. We had a Barney piñata filled with candy, and a table cloth made of paper so they could all release their feelings a out Barney in drawings. It took for ever for them to break barney apart. It was Simon who finally delivered the death blow. It took forever to find all of the candies. We have photos of Ian and some of the other boys with Barney's head on top of their own. The kids will may remember the rest of them better than I do. I should really look for the pictures I know we have of those parties!

House Renovation Part One.........................................(goes on forever)

It is Saturday, day of laundry, pay bills, post office, Jillian's hot tub b-party (helper only),return items to the newly redone bathroom closet, straighten up house best I can with construction stuff everywhere, paint trim in newly almost done bathroom...wait is this all supposed to be done on one day? I don't think so...looks more like a month! And did me tigon that I need to read and answer questions on the 4 hour long gymnastics safety course as well as start looking at the gym judging course stuff (next test is in 5 weeks- may not be able to make that one). We or maybe I should say Arthur is doing the last of the items to the new (as we call it)main bathroom. Only the painting trim needs doing and draw pulls and replacing the plastic pieces that broke on the new fancy frameless 4 panel shower door that broke when Arthur had too much wine and fell over the vacuum cleaner and some wood he had left in the same bathroom. He fell backwards into the tub. I heard a loud crash, waited then hearing no more sounds, finally got up to see what had happened (did I mention that it was after midnight). When I got to the scene of the noise I found him on his back crosswise in the tub on top of the shower door which was unable to support his weight and broke off the little plastic supports! His only comment was I think I damaged the tub. Somehow I was able to keep from killing him, got into the tub, pulled the shower door out from under him then watch as he got up and out of the tub. He was uninjuried and the glass had no scratches on it either. I suggested that he had had too much to drink and needed to go to bed with as much control in my voice as I could muster. He is lucky to have survived the night! I sure did digress on this one. He has now removed all of the entrance way tiles and sub floor...which makes sense as why not rip up some more of the house while we are at it! Actually it does make sense because all of the tools are out that he needed for tile work and it is warm enough for him to cut up all of this stuff outside. It will be wonderful when it is done and look great as he is a careful, methodical worker but I hope to live long enou to see it all through. More on this subject when I have the strength to talk about it.

Fragmented!

Sitting in bed with Toonces (one of our two cats)on my feet, I am trying to think about what to write since I feel I should. Why do I think this...well I have a tendency to start things and not follow through with them. I also know that I do this. It isn't because I loose interest but because there are so many things I want to do that I run out of time to finish them. Okay, then do less things...but that is no fun! I have had many therapists say "you are very fragmented, you need to eliminate some of it in your life" but then (as this stand up comic says) I say nay, nay! These are the things that make my life more interesting. Leslie had a fourth grade teacher in Canada who I did a lot of volunteer work for. I really liked her. She asked me to come in and talk to the class about my hobbies. I was honored to be asked to do this so I said "yes". I tried to think about what I would talk about...my favorite..hmmm..which one would that be. At this point in my life I must have been maybe 38 or so I was doing or had tried/learned/done how to tat (a form of lace making), knit, crochet, weaving on a large loom, quilting, sewing and kilt making, silver smithing-jewelry making, guitar, dulcimer...I'm sure I have left out a few and I had a university degree in sculpture including painting, pottery, jewelry and a minor in music. I finally decided that the best topic for me was that I liked to learn new things! The expression that I tell people is that I am a "jack of all trades and a master of none". Not entirely true but close. I guess this does make me a fragmented person but it sure is fun. I am retiring this summer to continue my learning new things life (working does get in the way of this) and finishing up a bunch of loose ends that have been waiting around for me to find time to get back to them. I will make this happen...I may have to live to be 200 or 300 years old to fit it all in...but I will give it a good try.

Klutz Strikes Again

We were at the gym meet on Saturday morning with the little level 3 girls (including Jillian.) it was a super meet and I was so proud that she went for it again since she had been so tentative before. After the meet and talking to one and all we left the gym in Albuquerque through the back door which meant we walked around a lot of the equipment. I missed falling into the in-floor trampoline which was covered with a mat as there was a parent stationed there to keep unwary klutzes from falling in but...the was no one at the uneven bars at the back of the gym. You guessed it I ran right into one of the guy wires and chains that support them. I was launched into the air, thanks to my right shin, and did a left ankle,left wrist, left shoulder and twisted body plant that probably looked like I was trying for at least a fancy rotation before I landed on my head. Lynne and Anita came running back to me saying "agree you okay?" being really embarrassed since I had not stuck my landing I said" I am fine". Of course, I wasn't fine...two days later and I hurt all OCR. My shin is swollen And bruised, I twisted my left ankle and foot, twisted my already damaged left wrist and jammed my poor unusable left shoulder that needs some for of therapy or surgery. Am I feeling sorry for myself...you bet. I can't believe I didn't see the wires but I was looking a different direction. I have always been this unaware of where different parts of my body are. Over 65 years I have fallen over lines painted on sidewalks, missed the bottom stairs, run arms, hands, feet, toesand my head into more things than I can count. When I was 5 I was pretending to be blind at least that is what I was thinking at the time and holding onto my dad's hand walked right into the corner of a building cutting my head above my eye. My mother was furious at my father for letting me do this. In university, I was riding in my morher' car riding shotgun without a seatbelt. She drove into a ditch when turning the car around on a dark road and of course i hit the top of my head on the windshield...i lived through the experience thNks to a hard head but the next morning I went out to the milk (this is when they still delivered milk to your house) and slipped on the wer porch floor twisting my neck. I ended up having cervical traction and physical therapy for around 3 months while the tendons repaired themselves. That next june,I tried out a skateboard (at the top of a hill) and not being able to stop at the bottom properly I stopped on my right wrist. While still bandaged from this episode I had a porch swing land on my right calf. For my sister's graduation from high school I am all dressed up and wearing a wrist brace and on crutches. That was a rough year for me. Good thing I was young! Two years later at TWU, I crushed my foot in a potter's wheel. Good thing I was wearing heavy leather loafers or it would have broken. For two years, the pottery instructor used me as an example for safety in the lab...he told every one I had been barefoot but that was another girl in the class. I subsequently ended up in a walking for a month and a half. I did poorly in organ and bowling since I couldn't use my left foot for either of them. The stories are endless. Stepping in a hole in Mississauga walking to the store with 4 year old Ian. Landed on my knees. His comment " we should have driven"...crutches again! Stepped in a hole I front of the York Minster in England, again with Ian, no crutches just ice and elevation. Only time I ever broke anything out of all this was 1968. I closed the garage door on three fingers of my right hand. All I could think when I looked,at them trapped in the space between the door slats was I hoped they were Still attached. I broke two of them and crushed the other one. That pain was incredible. They are right when they say that a break doesn't feel like anything else you can ever experience. When I told my mother I was taking skiing all she could say was I was crazy! That was the only activity that I ever did that I didn't get hurt doing. So far my children haven't inherited this tendency for self destruction. Lucky for them.

Gymnastics and Birthdays

Yesterday was my oldest grandchilds 9th birthday. I remember when she was born. Anthony and Leslie called us from Orno Maine saying it is time! this is about 5 am (or earlier) as I remember it. we got busy and started making airline reservations to get up there. even in the best of times it not easy to get anywhere from Albuquerque without changing planes at least twice. After throwing stuff in a bag, Arthur drove the 2 hours to the airport then I started the journey north. First I flew to Dallas, then to NYC then to Bangor where I had to rent a car and drive to the hospital. I had been flying and sitting someplace for 12 hours with the associated delays etc etc. As soon as we landed at each spot I called Anthony and asked for updates. She is in labor, she is closer, she is pushing And so on. Everyone around me on the planes were just as excited as I was. I finally got to the hospital, then to delay thing more they had to call up to L & D to make sure I was expected. Jillian was already he by 10 minutes or so. Ant (we call him "Antman") said it is a little girl...how exciting for Leslie. I knew she wanted a little girl so badly. I went upstairs and got my first sight of beautiful little Jillian behind glass. Leslie was tired but beautiful with the glow of a new mother. I will never forget that moment. Happy birthday Jillian!