<p>Well, I have a great shot of my D in her dark pants – scrubs – at her first day of clinical training at a local hospital. She’s so happy. If she had any time, she’d be able to talk your D’s shopping. But, she is so busy, it has occurred to her that she may not have time for a dog.</p>
<p>I love the dark jeans. And good jeans can cost a whole lot more than a pair of dress pants from express (where I agree they do a great job on multiple fits and styles). Younger D actually bought black jeans over break, but she is no fashionista so I have no advice on this one. </p>
<p>Fox in the yard today, Cat on high alert. I can’t figure out how to scare the fox off as he seems to have become quite comfortable among the fallen pine needles in the berm. I seriously don’t want him here as our cat does go outside and without claws is unmatched with most other cats, let alone a fox! Good thing it’s really cold. Cat likes to be outside, but isn’t stupid.</p>
<p>H&I invited to a superbowl party. It is seriously the first invitation we’ve had in quite some time. Our friends used to get together all the time, and our Bunko group was an absolute blast. Fast forward however many years and between transfers, moving and divorce… well, it’s a disjointed group. Friends made with other parents at Kids’ school are nothing personal but more in line with out of sight, out of mind. So I am looking forward to it, even though H asked me if I thought the under eye swelling would bug me. Um… now that you pointed it out? Probably! 
I see the dr again on Tuesday for follow up and while it has improved, it’s still really noticeable.</p>
<p>Well, that’s a bummer, Moda…</p>
<p>Since I had no idea about Epic I googled ‘interview at Epic’ and got lots of hits, if you’re looking for comments.</p>
<p>I too have insisted on black fancy jeans for D, and in spite of her attitude she’s worn them several times.</p>
<p>Good luck to your D, RM.</p>
<p>I second NM’s suggestion for places to shop. I keep seeing ads for the Limited showing a collection of dress pants a skirt and a few different jackets that are all in the same fabric so you can pick whichever you like/is most flattering. That might be worth checking out.</p>
<p>No superbowl party for me. But I am meeting a friend for lunch tomorrow and tomorrow night is euchre group, I am looking forward to both. My bunco group fell apart years ago.</p>
<p>My D’s like the black jeans.
D1 called and got the internship she was waiting to hear about. she is very excited.
They use Epic at my hospital. i dont need to but the docs do.
Shaw glad she likes what she is doing.</p>
<p>Congratulations to your daughter on the internship, downtoearth!</p>
<p>yes, congrats to dteD and to RM’s D as well.</p>
<p>eddieO - glad you checked in and that the surgery went well. funny thing, but I share your unpleasant memory. my dad has made it clear that he would like some “assistance” when the time comes, and he too tried and failed to commit suicide many years ago. a difficult memory, to be sure.</p>
<p>oregon - your mother. oy. so glad for you that you live in another state. the state where your almost 1-year-old grandson lives. much better. I don’t know if you remember, but my then 19-yr-old niece had a baby a few months before your grandson was born. she is now married to the baby’s father and they are expecting their second child. not the path I would have chosen for her, but she and her family are happy.</p>
<p>D1 has interview clothes from Express (no interviews yet, but that’s a topic for another day ;))</p>
<p>Black fancy jeans. I’ll pass that on. D has the figure and style to look pretty good in anything, so as long as it neat/clean, I’m sure it’s fine. (She will be in a lab all the time anyway…)</p>
<p>It really is hard to believe that Oregon’s GS is a year old. Where has the time gone? For that matter, how did it get to be February?</p>
<p>Congrats to all our kids on their achievements – internships (DTE!); interviews (ShawSon!) and the like. Who knows where they will be come May/September? And how fast that will all come?</p>
<p>BTW, looks like H and I may go to Greece in September (I have an invitation to a conference, so my way will be paid at least). May need tips on the Greek islands and the west coast of Turkey.</p>
<p>But now, supper needs to be made…</p>
<p>Zetesis me too! We are going on a land tour/cruise, for two weeks. Italy, Greece and turkey</p>
<p>Would love to go to Italy/Greece/Turkey! </p>
<p>dte- congrats to your D.</p>
<p>All of this talk about Epic triggered something in my memory, so I pulled out the Christmas card from my cousin and sure enough, his S who graduated last year works there.</p>
<p>Italy! Greece! DH and I were just talking over dinner about scheduling a trip. Our friend is the U S Ambasssador to Georgia so we are talking about visiting them and then, since we’re in that part of the world, going to Italy and/or Greece. No firm plans yet so I’ll be happy to hear about your trips, Zetesis and dte.</p>
<p>Something lovely is happening in my little town. A HS girl was seriously injured in a sledding accident last weekend (possible paralysis). Apparently, one of her favorite activities is the HS tradition of wearing flannel on Fridays. So all day today current students and alums have been posting pics on FB of themselves wearing flannel with get well messages. The alum pics are coming from all over the world. And there is a pic of the entire student body, wearing flannel.</p>
<p>PRJ - I love that story about the flannel. Wish the accident had never happened, but the support is awesome. FB does some things extremely well! When a kid was hit from behind in hockey last year and was paralyzed it seemed every HS in the area was doing something to honor him. It was quite inspirational. And then this year he won CBS’s courage in sports award (or at least I think it was CBS). I had missed the show over Christmas, but had followed his story from the beginning. Spinal cord injuries are horrific.</p>
<p>Congrats to the internship and what seems like epic connections to insight on Epic! The area is awesome and if she should ever find herself in Minneapolis, I’m here to be helpful!</p>
<p>I sure hope that young girl recovers. Nice about the flannel.
We watched The Sessions tonight and loved Helen Hunt.
The movie Birth Story: Ina May Gaskin and the Farm Midwives is playing in a little theater here. I have the Spiritual Midwifery book from 1978. I had decided never to have children until I read this book. The Farm was a group who landed in Tennessee and practiced midwifery. They were also know for their cookbook. I most likely would have joined this hippie group except they had communal money and that was not happening.</p>
<p>An old colleque sent Gson a set of cd’s that her adult son makes for kids. He is quite good. Victor Johnson. Well I just found out tht he mention’s H and me at times at concerts because we gave him his first stereo (we were moving and had two) in about 1980. Made me feel good but also so surprising to think that something I did not even remember meant so much to a teenage boy. Nice.
D’s car costs $600 and she is freaking and I am taping my mouth shut so the words “we will pay for it” or “we will pay 1/2” do not come tumbling out of my mouth.
The car was free from us and came with new body work and new tires. She is 29. This is the first time she has had a car and I think it is important to let her experience all that means.
Mother is still screaming but sounded hoarse tonight. Still mad at me for not calling my brother and making him change his mind. She is insisting that this is her home and she needs to look out her window into her back yard. She has really hated this house and cannot see and keeps the shades closed at all times.</p>
<p>PRJ, the flannel support is heartwarming!</p>
<p>DTE, congrats on the internship!</p>
<p>When D was home, we were shopping at an Ann Taylor outlet, and she was looking for trouser jeans (they were out of her size). She also borrowed some of my clothes while she was home. Maybe I’m not a fashion disaster after all!</p>
<p>oregon101, the stories of your mother are something else! </p>
<p>This past week was crazy weather-wise. Monday we had a record high of 77. Yesterday when I took the dogs out in the morning it was 7.</p>
<p>Good morning! I only missed a day but not sure I can accurately send the congratulations so if I miss anyone, please forgive me. Kudos to dte d, sending job mojo to rm’s d, super startup mojo to shawson, and fashion/job mojo to Z’sD d ;)</p>
<p>Eddie, glad to hear you’re doing well after surgery no. 2, and sorry your mom is blue. Your dad must be having a hard time with that.</p>
<p>I hope however my crazy life goes that I have the grace to meet my end in some way that does not burden others. </p>
<p>I mentioned before that my dad fought renal cancer for 13 years. During his last bout in the hospital, he wanted to come home, didn’t want anymore surgery or other intervention. My mom was completely against it and convinced it “would kill him.” Technically, he was actually my stepdad, but had adopted me 30 years prior. So even though they’d been together more than three decades, they couldn’t seem to fully communicate about the issue. </p>
<p>I went over and had a long talk with each separately. He told me he didn’t want to burden her but he just wanted to die at home. Period. I tried to help him understand that she was terrified of “causing” his death, and terrified of not knowing what to do to make him comfortable. Then I worked on her, and tried to make her see that granting him the dignity of a more “private” end was an act of love, not actually a burden or anything a person needed to feel guilty about.</p>
<p>To make a long story short, we orchestrated a good combination of home care and pain management and got everything in place and moved him home. He lived another two months. During that time, many friends came to see him to say their goodbyes, and because we were able to staff it appropriately, mom actually got to just spend some “natural” not "hospital time with him. He was very grateful to be in the home he loved, and mom realized that the experience helped her “be complete” with her grief. </p>
<p>Now, nobody spent out their retirement or went bankrupt doing this, because in Canada, such options are mostly funded - the reasoning being they’re going to spend the funds in the hospital anyway. By contrast, here, when my employees mom went on the same journey, the last month of her life was spent fighting insurance companies to cover care and all manner of medical shenanigans, including the cancelation of her cobra because she had been “fired” for having cancer. I felt awful for my employee, that he just couldn’t give her that kind of peaceful passing, and that he was left still with so many medical bills and the sense that all was not done to save her. Had I been his mom, I might have wished for a
sudden end – for his sake.</p>
<p>Watching these two individual deaths unfold makes me realize I might be exactly the kind of person who might say “it’s been great but now I want out” and it also makes me wonder if in a way it is more humane to have a mechanism for that. If it would really be so terrible for us each to have a build-in cyanide capsule that we can just bite down on when we feel ready. Of course, that’s hard for the ones we love, but so is a long languish. Maybe it’s really not so crazy and self-indulged to want to check out and leave some room for the next generation, but we’ve been so conditioned that it is sinful to play god or otherwise contribute to the notion of the timing of our individual extinction within the unknowable master plan that such ideas are taboo ;)</p>
<p>I don’t know but it does make me ponder!</p>
<p>Yeah, with the extremely sudden death of my dad, I am hearing a LOT of “parents lingering for years” stories. So sad and hard to deal with.</p>
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<p>Agreed, and agreed.</p>
<p>Last night, Son and I watched The Tree of Life, which I had ordered on Netflix ages ago. After it was over, I wondered why in the world I had wanted to see it, then looked it up and saw that it was a 2012 Best Picture Candidate, on tons of top 10 lists and on some critics’ Best Picture Ever lists. Did anyone see it? Flashes back and forth between the '50s and the present day, then goes back to the beginning of time - big bang, evolution, jellyfish, dinosaurs, the asteroid, etc.with lots of classical music and the characters occasionally whispering questions to God, about a thousand water metaphors and something with sheer fabric that we didn’t get. If I hadn’t been sitting with Son making funny comments, I would have had a 2 hour nap. If you saw it and loved it, your level of sophistication far exceeds mine!</p>
<p>My mom died suddenly at 52 under similar circumstances as your dad, MP. Dad had a mild MI in one month, a lung Ca diagnosis the next month, had a wonderful two months of travel, part-time work, a daughter marrying and got engaged himself. Then he had a paralyzing stroke, was non-verbal and passed away after 18 months. Despite those 2 great months, I would never wish those truly horrendous months on anyone, patient or caregiver.</p>
<p>kmc- I envy you your Canadian system. </p>
<p>My mom retired, enjoyed a year of retirement and travel, was diagnosed with breast cancer and died a year later at 68. I’ve often said, as hard as it was to lose her so young and her last year was brutal, it was better than what I’ve seen friends go through with their parents’ lingering declines. Especially those with Alzheimer’s, where the body is still going strong but the person they knew is already gone.</p>
<p>We lost my MIL suddenly to a stroke, and our dads are still going strong - minimal physical decline and the only mental “decline” is increased stubbornness and the occasional bout of being a PITA ;)</p>
<p>mp - never saw that movie and now know to avoid it. thanks for the tip!</p>
<p>Having lost both mom and MIL within the last two years, both after years of decline, I think about these issues more than I should. I worry about my kids having to potentially take on caretaking roles for elders while they’re trying to raise their own families. Lingering illnesses , repeated hospitalizations, dementia, take a toll on both elder and their families. My sister never married and is childless so it would be my kids who could potentially have responsibility for her as well down the line (and they understand that) as well as potentially elders in their spouse’s family. Some people’s lives these days are prolonged to the point where the quality of life is just not there anymore. It is sad and depressing to see. My MIL was in a locked memory unit her last few years. It hits anyone potentially. There was a former psychiatrist, former professor, among others, on her unit. Very sad. Not sure what the answer is though. My MIL’s mind was almost totally gone but her body just would not give out .She was almost 92 when she finally died a few months ago.</p>