Category Archives: Communication

Wednesday morning, 20170621

21 Wednesday Jun 2017

Posted by in Creating order, Families, Lifestyle, Personal, Uncategorized, Vitals

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After taking my FBG, SpO2, and pulse readings, I rolled over and went back to sleep for another hour (or so). Don’t know why those last few hours of sleep after first waking are so sweet. During my (corporate, 15+) working years, I missed that sleep until I moved to the night shift.

Later, when I was moved back to the day shift (promotion to regional payroll coordinator), I switched my sleep/activity schedule so that I could be asleep by 5:30-6:30 p.m., and then awake naturally sometime between 1:30 and 3:00 a.m. Thus, I had all that time before catching the 8:00 a.m. bus to do what I wanted without interruption. (I was not at all a social being.)  When the weather was better, I enjoyed the 45-minute walk through town and across the Red River to the office.

I’d been working freelance for over seven years when my path crossed with Al’s, again, and we started dating. He had quit corporate also, in the (17-18 year?) interim, and was working as a part-time computer operator. When the company learned that he was getting married, they created a part-time computer programming position on the day shift, which grew to full time and their hiring someone else for the evening operations position.

Waking:

  • SpO2=95%, P=65 bpm
  • FBG=112 mg/dL
  • weight unchanged
  • Sleep: 8+ hours

Awoke to:

  • Faint sound of TheScampers, wanting to be fed and outed
  • At the back step, the welcome of rain fine as dew falling from a small cloud directly above
  • Breakfast: 1 apple, 0.5 oz roasted, unsalted almonds, 10 oz. Toddy coffee (2 oz. homemade concentrate, 8 oz. milk)

Today, I have an appointment at the clinic. Six-month checkup after the diabetes diagnosis. I do not expect that it will take that long, although it seems they’ve scheduled it as a ‘long’ appointment.

And there were clouds without rain

27 Saturday May 2017

Posted by in Blessings, Families, Lifestyle, Nature, Personal, Reflections

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So often, driving home on the Memorial Day weekend, the skies were littered with these bright, plump clouds, a brilliant blue background that seemed to reach up forever.

My father was the sexton and groundskeeper for the village cemetery. We children worked for him during the summers, and also, leading up to the Memorial Day weekend, when everything had to be perfect.

This will be the first Memorial Day weekend without him.

My sister posted a picture that she’d scanned in hi-res from the assortment of photographs and letters she took with her back to the East Coast, after Father’s funeral. This one’s from the war years and sent by Father to Mother.

photograph from WW II

They were married before Pearl Harbor. Mother joined the Navy afterward. Father was in the Army [training sergeant] at Fort Dodge, having joined the Army before the U.S. entered the war, which is how he ended up in the same state as Mother.

An interlude for grief

20 Saturday May 2017

Posted by in Blessings, Books, Communication, Creating order, Families

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I find myself overwhelmed by emotion, revisiting in my mind the time close to my mother’s death, seeing her fear over many months, and then the letting go of fear. It is overwhelming to realize once again that she is now free from all fear and free from the continual grief at the ongoing sense of the losses that so altered her life: the sharp dislocation between who she knew that she is and the life that she found herself living. The struggle to live as herself in a disparate world.

I could only try to comfort her. I could not take away the fear because I could not change reality. Her fears were realistic, and her grief was real.

 

And then, I look at where I am finding the most aid and comfort in my own grieving process. A textbook on bridging the gap between grief and bereavement counseling and practice that the grief counselor loaned me, the last time she was here. I think, maybe I also carry a lot of nonfinite grief.

 

SpO2=98%, P=69bpm
BG=117 mg/dL

 

 

 

Another day, Another poem

30 Sunday Apr 2017

Posted by in Communication, Creating order, Disorder, Lifestyle, Personal, Reflections, Vitals, Writing

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Tulips in the Morning Sun

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Today I must write a Weekend Coffee Share article and my last poem for the National Poetry Writing Month (#napowrimo). Also, take a shower. And finish washing the silverware before I get another stack of plates in the sink.

I have been, oddly, posting my #napowrimo daily poems at quietspaces.net/journal, which also is where I will be moving the short stories and such that I have put here. Or I could start a companion journal at WordPress and duplicate my work on their site, which is much more likely to continue after my death. As I have done with my late mother’s website, which we moved to WordPress when WorldNet discontinued its free web hosting for personal consumers.

Again, I awoke to find my SpO2 reading at a bare 90%, and my pulse rate at 63 bpm. That was at 0700. I’ve had my breakfast (awoke again to my alarm at 0900), forgot to take my pills, and so have finished off the last half of a burger patty that was left in the fridge, to accompany pills and avoid stomach upset. Current readings are 96% and 91 bpm. My blood glucose level, however, is back into the mid thirties. It is evident that I should have no carbohydrates but fibre after the noontime.

I’ve helped Al get the air compressor out of the house (attached garage) and set up in the back yard. He’d going to try to get some more work done before 1300. All this would go much better were we to finish up the walls immediately, add a door that locks, and keep everything in there for the remainder of the building process.

I have been enjoying having my journals separated according to general topics/streams of thought and creation. I think it’s a good thing for me, having reading audiences separated for the most part (and, hopefully, nonexistent for some of them).

It looks as though not all of the wildflower seedlings have been killed off by the unseasonable freezing and snows. I am hopeful! In the meanwhile, many of the tulips survived.

 

Keeping track

22 Sunday Jan 2017

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I have sent notes to the diabetes educator and the dental office to explore how soon I might schedule dental work that’s been pending since 15 November. Concerned if it must be delayed much later.

I may not have mentioned it, but my January appointment with the clinic’s dietitian was canceled because she would be out of the office that day. My new appointment is for the twenty-second of next month. Still winging it. My glucose levels now are consistently below 200, and two-thirds of the readings are below 160 (125-185 over the past two weeks).

I most definitely have my energy back and am working on strengthening my leg muscles to enhance the blood flow. The Duck tape on the plantar wart got rid of it/the pain, and so I am able to walk comfortably, again. Which means the mall, since the snow is melting here during the day, and freezing into a skating rink sidewalk each night.

I became maudlin, last night, and did some writing. One poem completed, which I posted last night at QuiltedPoetry.net. Partly because of my inability to travel and because of the dangers (fragrances, allergens) of going into strange buildings, (as well as my being an extreme introvert,) I have been lousy at maintaining friendships as well as communication with family. I believe that I experience closer relationships with Internet contacts than with family members because of that, and so the grief that I feel when a family member dies is … muted? The same with people I used to know, but do no longer, because we have not had contact for too many years.

As my health improves, perhaps my violent reactions to common allergens will moderate, allowing me to go out among the people, again.

BP=114/68, P=74, SpO2=97%
Elliptical machine: 8 minutes (yesterday), 4 minutes (this morning), 11 minutes (this afternoon)
Weight loss:* 7 lbs.
Body temperature: 96.0°F

*Since the beginning of the year, home scale. My intermediate goal is to lose 50 lbs.