joyce scrivner

Life has been challenging.

Worth talking over, but almost impossible to write.

Will come back and start again, though.

It's not unusual

My mother's last sibling died on Monday and they finally reached me today. I"m packing for Kansas and his funeral. I'd plans to see him the end of July and talk about my mother's funeral.

Ah well.

Slice on finding employment:
I've been catching up with job clubs - St. Andrews has a meeting today on interviewing (a good thing for me to review.) And SOAR meetgs every other Monday. I'll try to get to St. Andrews Wednesday meeting as well. I"ve had a request from a local group and would like to know more about them.

I've rewritten my resume, but want to work on the format.

Slice on Organization:
I'm working on clearing my garage of my mother's furniture - she died in late November and my sister shipped all her goods to people before she sold the house last month. The most challenging item is the huge rug. To make room for it here I need to clean out the living space upstairs that was filled with items from the attic storage when the area was weatherized in March. I'd rather sort those items and redistribute (charity, gifts, pass along) than put them back into storage. I expect that will take a month or so.

Meanwhile now the attic space is empty I can get some contractors in to give me estimates on finishing another bedroom and a bath. It's framed, but needs electricity and plumbing and walls. The current walls need some repainting (the weatherization people had to do some work there, they don't repaint.)

Slice on finances:
I'm in the middle of finishing the condominiums accounts. Will have them reviewed and then sent out this week.

Slice on me:
Looking at clothes - will give away some, fix some, make some and maybe buy some.
Looking at person - am in process of finding a health club that works - and will plan to spend time there weekly. Am also in process of investigating tai chi.
Looking at training - am also digging into classes I want to take - schedules.
Looking at internet - I've promised to work on a web site for my artist sister - and have sent her some examples from artists I know. I'm also reviewing what I want to do for myself - a little history (scan and show the engineering slides from my father, maybe some familty stories), a blog, some links to writing,

It all comes together!

Joyce

There is now a screen in the window on the stairs - with lots of help from my friend Ty.

Ty also managed to get the vent cover back on in the kitchen (I'd taken it out to wash it) - turns out the cover is smaller than the hole it covers so the screws have to be applied off side.

Meanwhile, I cleaned window blinds, and the stair window.

Further progress is finally getting a new shelf up (for auto books and maps) on the staircase and beginning the cleaning process on the others - i.e. take off books, take off small items, take down shelf, wash shelf, put shelf back, put books back (washing the top of each), put back small items (washing each.)  Then juggling the new books into place.  I've also removed some art (a set of framed postcards) and replaced them with two Pacific Northwestern Native American prints (facing another I purchased in Seattle) and next to the bookshelves are three Native American tiles.

Next up sweep stairs, finish washing walls, stairs, railings and reevaluate the art in the rest of the area - remove some, hang new/revised art, take down the hook rugs, put up some framed textiles, move the winter stuff to a pile for dry cleaning and review what's out for the spring and summer.  And finish the kitchen (finish sorting paper about cooking and file), do dishes, etc.

Then photo both areas for my prospective renter (due the first week in June.)

Tomorrow I'm also going to setup the bedroom upstairs for repainting - the pink there now is so dark - and next week paint it.

Spring cleaning, spring cleaning, spring cleaning.  Too many years since I've done it! 

<grin>

Spent yesterday doing normal stuff:

I called my friend Ty (who install light bulbs for me which are too high for me to reach in the ten foot ceilings) and paid him congrats on his son Seth taking first place locally in the major chess match.

I call Adora my Center for Independent Living Mentee (I work with her on helping her to solve computer problems) to verify we're meeting this week.

I took my time card to the census - when I left I didn't know who should sign it. I had to rewrite it, had it signed and made arrangements to come back and work again (all temporary)

I went to talk in person with social security. I'd called the 800 number and been more confused than when I called. Still uncertain, but I need to supply some more information for them and come back.

I took five books back to the library and took out 20 more (all on hold), returned 5 of those immediately (too many to haul around - I'll put them on hold when I've returned some of what I have.) I've managed to check what I have and have two I've read recently to take back.

I had dinner at sam's club (cheap pizza, soda, ice cream) and bought some computer utilities.

I paid my house insurance bill and picked up the records of the last year (from before I was treasurer.)

Came back, watched a little tv, played a couple games, wrote some information and started reviewing unfinished to do lists.

Today it's raining harder than yesterday, so it's time to do more spring cleaning.

Stay well.

Joyce

I went to visit my neice at her graduation from Michigan Tech. I spent a night there and then went off to Detroit thinking it was only about 8 hours but it was twelve, so I spent a night in Sagninaw.

The motel felt as if it was on the fringe of bankruptcy. The room was clean - but there wasn't even soap for the bathroom. The ATM was broken, as was the ice machine and the whirlpool. Continental breakfast consisted of four slice of white bread, or four slices of darker bread, generic bagels, generic small doughnuts and three varieties of dry cereal. There was coffee, but I don't drink it, and orange juice which I did. a little jelly (grape), peanut butter or cream cheese. It was quiet. The swimming pool was pleasant, and I took a USA today to read later.

I arrived in Detroit and spent most of the afternoon at John King Bookstore - a huge office building full of (mostly) used books. I raided the sf and mystery paperbacks and scanned some more collectible items - postcards, sterograms, nice wooden bookshelves (too large to take with me.) I had dinner with Cy Chauvin in Hamtramack at the Polish Cafe - I ate pirogis and hot beet soup, he had a sausage plate and hot beef soup. After packing the five boxes of fanzines he had kept for me in the back of my car, I spent the rest of the evening enjoying his cat and his conversation.

I also managed to get in touch with Leah Zeldes that evening. I'd emailed her husband Dick Smith several times but had no response. So I managed to call one of the lines and both Cy and I talked with Leah. We nade tentative plans to have late lunch in Chicago - after I managed to circumnavigate the city on the toll roads and before I headed further north for Milwaukee and they went off to a play. We ended up at a Thai restaurant where Leah ordered for all of us and tried to take photos of the food for a blog with a camera with bad batteries. Dick talked about his consulting business - telling me how Ottawa still had snow in May - and Leah talked about mutual friends.

I managed to head north, but was practically falling asleep at the wheel and over custard at Culvers. I tried to find a motel in Oak (River?) but the first I couldn't tell where the office was (it listed vacancy, but all the lighted rooms said 'private'. The second place I couldn't tell how to get into the parking lot, the third was 'no vacancy' and the fourth didn't answer the bell in the office. I kept going north and ended up at a Days Inn at the airport. No swimming pool but usable wireless.

So I found Grace O'Malley in Glendale and we went to lunch. Then I slept on her couch. Then we went to dinner. Then I took off for Madison.

In Madison I stayed at a Red (River?) Inn again with good wifi. I had breakfast (if you call sweet and sour cabbage soup and blintzes breakfast) at Ella's Deli. I watched the merry go round in the rain. And headed north for Pepin and Minneapolis.

I94 was full of construction - and slow - but I90 to Wisconsin was not, nor was 61 (Mississippi River Road) going north. I stopped at Lark's toy's and bought a walking stick at their garage sale and looked at the Japanese tin toys, but didn't buy any. I ended up at Harbor View Cafe shortly after they opened and was recognized and greeted as I entered. I manage to go about twice a year - but I've been doing it for 25 years. This time morrels were in season so I had morrels and asparagus and felt stuffed when I left.

Minneapolis is home, but I'd forgotten the construction on crosstown to it took a little longer than I'd hoped to get back. I did manage to unload half the car - but still have six boxes of fanzines in the back seat.

That's for this week.
The day after I set off for Chicago and Dick Smith and Leah Zeldes for late lunch.

To me losing my mother was pretty much a wrap for last year.

No matter how badly I felt about my family relationships not having them anymore has left me stranded in the present.

My mother has one last sibling (her brother) still alive. I plan to see him this spring. He's fragile and in a small nursing home in Kansas. He's lived in Glasco area all his life (except for three years in WWII in the army) and all his links are there.

My father's last sibling and his wife are in Durango Colorado - in fragile health but actively walking and living there.

Those are the last links to my family before my generation.

It feels strange to be the oldest of the family living.

Of course some of my generation are gone as well - car accidents, genetic defects that took them young - but most are living. I've a brother and sister. On my mother's side I have one cousin whose wife died last summer in a four wheeler accident. On my father's side have a multitude of cousins - about 20 or so still alive. (My father had eight brothers and sisters of whom six were married with several children each.)

Change.

More later and hopefully soon.

I started writing this yesterday after my sister had called saying mother hadn't gotten up in a couple days, and had barely woken on Thanksgiving.

She moved to assisted living three or four years ago. She had lived alone in the house my father built before they were married since my father’s death in 1999. Local neighbors I’ve known all my life brought her soup and made sure her driveway was shoveled and just watched to see she was alive and doing well. She watered the lawns and made sure the leaves were raked and saw my sister Joan (who lived close and was watching her appointments and concerns) weekly. I tried to convince her to visit, or play bridge with me when I was there, or even drive through the mountains with me, but she refused much of anything except going to lunch or dinner out.

She had seldom drove - never having liked driving originally - and walked to close shopping and MacDonalds. But one day she went to Walmart to shop, and when she got back to her car it wouldn’t start. Now my mother has always depended on others to resolve the day’s small problems. So she called my sister, who was unavailable. And she called several local neighbours, and no one was there. In the end she had a guard find a stranger to jump start her car and when she took it to the service station, she had not driven it enough to keep the battery charged.

But the fact she had no one to answer her calls, and no knowledge of how to approach a solution herself caused a major change in her feelings towards living alone. So my sister found a local assisted living facility and she moved in. She made some friends, and people to talk with, and no longer had to worry about lawns. She stopped walking very far, she stopped doing the social activities with our neighbors she had done before. They seldom visited either though she was only a mile from her house.

Since then her closest friend there has died, and she has felt distanced from others. Joan’s family life has changed as well. She has one brother still alive, and three neices and nephews (but no one she stayed in touch.) It has seemed to me the connections that my mother felt most comfortable in her life have disappeared and she has not formed new connections to her new life. So she’s retreated. At some point earlier in the summer she caused problems at her residence. All I’ve been told is she pulled the fire alarm three times. They couldn’t reach Joan, so they called an ambulance and she went to the hospital for several weeks. Joan said they tried various medications, including none (which was BAD MOTHER) and came to something that stablized her emotions and activity. She moved to a more restricted area in the assisted living and continued there - mostly staying in her room reading and watching TV and waiting for people she recognized to visit.

I spent a week in Colorado visiting her daily. She couldn’t remember the house she lived in for over 50 years. She did recall some of the neighbors, but her memory appeared sometimes random - not recalling dinner yesterday, and thinking she was in Kansas when she could still see the mountains out her window.

In the past month she declined further and the doctors determined she needed oxygen. She had fallen, or fainted, or fallen asleep on her feet. But with oxygen she couldn’t stay where she was, so Joan moved her closer to where she lives into a nursing home. And Joan told me she never walks at all - only moves in a wheelchair and that seldom. She is in bed most of the day and sleeps a great deal.

Mentally I know this is not rare or unexpected. Emotionally I’m fraught because it’s *my* mother.

My emotional response - I wanted to know who my mother is/was - and it’s too late. Can’t tell if it was ever not too late, but there is no way now.

Anyway, Joan had called yesterday saying she had woken on Thanksgiving, but not eaten in several days, and was just sleeping. Joan called this morning at 2am and left a message. I called back at 4am and was told she had passed away around midnight.

So I'm packing to drive to Denver. I'll stop in Kansas to see her last brother (and check if he wants to come as well - I doubt it, but I'll ask.)

Hope you are well, take care of yourselves and yours.

I've put up a set of shelves I purchased 5 years ago - the area where they go had to cleaned - as in shifting heavy stuff away. The other two sets of shelves I bought then have long since been up and in use. I've shelved all the books that were ready to be shelved (recorded, listed) and have not going through the piles of books left and recording and filing them. They should be up soon - some at least.

Meanwhile I've determined I've a goodly stack of books I don't need shelved anymore and am creating a pile to be listed on ebay/amazon/etc.

Next on the list is to attach the stack of boxes in my living room corner with the intention of sorting though artwork and decide whether I want to put it up (and if necessary frame it) or list it for ebay/etzy instead.

Various carpets are getting cleaned, various walls are getting examined and paint will be on my short term purchase list.

That was the second summer I worked at Lakeside Amusement Park.

Working nights at game stands (fishpond anyone?) or the stock car track on Sundays (how odd to have a stock car track in the middle of a parking lot.) I was dating for my first time and my (late nights) were taken up by avoiding my father when I arrived home after midnight.

Arriving on the moon was a wonder, but the personal wonders rather won out for me.

However since then I've met Buzz Aldrin - he was a speaker at a conference sponsored by the Humphrey institute and Anne Morrow Lindberg. (It was odd to go out to talk to the chauffer at the curb and find she was being squired around. The session sort of snuck in on the University and there were only a couple hundred people here to listen to him and his history talk and the new companies he was working with.

Wonder continued.

Joyce