Moving, Part One

I had three yard sales in October and got rid of my late husband's tools and I will have more yard sales because I am putting my house on the market.  I contacted a realtor, Alison Terry,  and she is like a real dutch uncle. The second day of January Alison put it to me:

You have too much stuff. 

Make each room look spacious. 

Take up the carpet and just paint the floor. 

I am thinking it will be like no one lives in the house. Where will I put the stuff I need when I move? If she's going to be my realtor, however, I better obey her!

My realtor. Alison,  is in my Toastmaster's club and she remembered when I did a speech on "The House That Cleans Itself".  She thought it would be all pretty when she came here. Wrong. I have clutter again after six months of being a widow and previously a hard year when my husband went downhill with dementia.  Plus the rug has bad stains that surfaced.

Just take the carpet up and paint the concrete. 

Now to take up the rug means I had to get rid of the large couch in the family room that stretched from the fireplace to the garage door. Where Ziggy is sitting in the picture is my late husband's "Archie Bucker" seat--his favorite place in the house.

Now you can't move the couch and the pool table outside for a regular yard sale. So I put both the couch and the pool table on three virtual yard sales on Facebook on January 3rd and have been so busy with FB messages since then. I decided that when I talked to someone, I would know; they needed to call me after I messaged them, not just comment on the Facebook group. I was asking $75 for the couch and $800 for the pool table. Within an hour I had a lot of interest with Facebook messages.   

Two couples called me from the laundromat and came by when a comforter was dry. They thought the two-piece couch had the third section in the middle and at one time it did, but my late husband and I had gotten rid of that piece. When they phoned, they asked it were curved and I said "yes" because I thought they meant the curving on top. So they didn't take it. I guess I misled them on the phone. 

But these two couples did thoughtfully help me. They put that couch in the garage for the next person. Then they helped me move furniture. First they moved the living room couch to the adjoining family room. 

Coincidentally the big TV my husband watched in that family room went dead the same day.

They took the big TV to the curve and when I returned from church on Sunday it was gone along with the remote control and instruction manual I also put with it.  I gave them the big TV stand--such nice young folk. And of course I rapped for them! Only I didn't remind them to secure the garage which is getting a new door on January 20th.

So now remembrances of my husband's favorite "Archie Bunker" spot where he watched that TV are gone. See HERE for how this spot was his favorite spot.

After that it continued to be an adventure discovering who would take the couch now in the garage along with the pool table. One husband came by when I was at church and opened the garage with my not being there. 

Breaking and entering--ya think? 

He told his wife it had holes and rips, which wasn't accurate and didn't take it, after she had told me she was first and scolded me for not letting her get a chance before the above lovely group.

I had Pharis come over and secure the property after that gentleman entered the garage while I wasn't there.

Sunday night another wife came by. She would send an email to her husband and they would decide. He said "no".

So it was offered to a family of four who decided to take it. The dad tied it down while the son showed me some karate moves. Nice family! Of course I did rap for them as well.

Meanwhile, several people are interested in the the pool table. Now a pool table is a huge project to move. It involves setting it up at another location. Stay tuned.

Selling the house and moving is indeed an adventure. 

Dealing With Caregiver Stress, Part Two

How am I 

dealing 

with

stress? 

I wrote about caregiver stress HERE, the first post which has gotten a lot of views. That post was October 16 and it is a month and a half later.  I am being deliberate in dealing with my stress--what I can control since I can't control the progress of my husband's dementia. What am I doing to control stress? 

1. Daily I am in Scripture and meditating on it. Praying also with petition for others as well as our needs. 
2. I am seeing a counselor to discuss my stress and get feedback. He asked me to report to him about goals and emotions I am feeling and he let me talk with him for two hours this week! In addition to goals and emotions, I discussed what I think are signs of my depression--sleeplessness and lack of motivation. What I am learning about caregiver stress is going into my counseling dissertation on caregiving--but in a more academic way than these personal reflections you are getting on this blog. 
3. I decided against taking an antidepressant. This is the road I have now (my cross to bear) and I can't escape it. The LORD is by my side. 
4. I am rejoicing over what little I accomplish and not worrying about the rest. Goodbye perfectionism. Saving perfectionism for that dissertation. Grateful for the help that has come my way. Assigning perfectionism to them. 
5. I am being creative--something I enjoy that I can do at home. I am making a round quilt table cloth for Sally. Last minute here, because I have been planning it since last January. She needs it Saturday, December 7 for a Christmas tea at her church. Fortunately she has a plan B. The quilt for the next grandchild is next. According to my counselor this is what is called eustress and it counteracts chronic stress. 
6. Financial stress is upon me, but I am trying to watch spending in the food category by taking out only so much cash from the bank each week for food and "shopping" in our freezer or shopping with a careful food list. Much of this year we have gone out to eat because this seems to delight my husband. He did like the food we had for Thanksgiving. But planning a menu is just one more thing I have to do--but it will help with financial stress. Save money by black Friday spending? Didn't happen for me. Usually I am highly organized for Christmas gift giving, but not this year, and overspending will create more financial stress. 
7. Watch more TV. I confessed to family who stayed with us last week that I rarely watch TV. Have been watching AFV in the evenings with my husband. Great chance to laugh together. Laughing is such good therapy. "Big Bang Theory" and "Duck Dynasty" have been suggested. Now hubby hogs the TV all day long sitting in his chair, for which I am grateful, but we do have two other TV sets. 
8. I am doing less this season. I am not producing a Christmas letter. Good gracious gravy, all the news is here on Plant City Lady and Friends! Upbeat Christmas letter? Not me this year. So much has been difficult this year. I may write a few Christmas cards while a substitute teach in good classes. 

This morning Kenny came over to take morning pills with my husband as usual and he woke him up. Kenny told me that hubby is hallucinating today. Is this a psyche ward? hubby wanted to know. No, I thought to myself, but I am determined to keep myself out of one. 

Quilt for Granddaughter

She's going off to college and I have her quilt to finish, along with other projects this summer. Love the colors she chose for the quilt when we were with her last Christmas. Several months ago I cut this out and put some old and new in the fabric including a pocket from her grandfather's shirt.

Summer project

I got the idea for the slanted design from a Plant City quilt shop below. At right are the tools I used including my rotary cutter on plywood.

Tools to cut evenly;
polar fleece backing on top 

Plant City's
Inspire Quilting and Sewing

The fabric chosen includes brown scraps from when I made the "step" grandkids and my husband matching bathrobes when we were first married. Everyone except my husband has now outgrown those brown bathrobes.

Wednesday morning June 12.  I clear the pool table to spread out the pieces ready to sew on my


Great to have a pool table for sewing quilts

Swedish sewing machine in the background on the pup table. Hope to have this is some kind of condition by Friday when Sally and I and our hubbies are going to Lakeland. (The husbands entertain each other while we shop and this usually works well.)

Wednesday afternoon. That bobbin winder doesn't work. I think I have to go back to Fabric Warehouse in Lakeland before Friday. I take a nap. I think about those Swedes that make my wonderful Husqvarna Viking sewing machine. They can't write directions in English, but their Ikea furniture and my Swedish machine are wonderful.

Wednesday night. After dinner I disregard their directions and get the bobbin wound and I am off sewing again.

Thursday morning. I wake up glad for the new day. But hubby can't get out of bed. We ice his knee as he sits in the bedroom for maybe 45 minutes.  Soon he is motivated to get to his "Archie Bunker" spot in the den and the ice does the trick. He has soon forgotten about all knee problems, hospital trips, etc.  I am always waiting for the other shoe to drop in this caregiving journey.

The other shoe did drop after a very productive morning sewing on the quilt--I get cocky and sew over a pin and break the sewing machine needle. Bummer. Now I have to look up the directions for putting a new needle in the sewing machine. Think I will make hubby lunch.

Thursday afternoon. Somehow I get the needle installed. I finish sewing all the top pieces together with one mistake. One brown strip is going the wrong way--didn't observe the nap on the fabric (when you do this it looks like two different colors). But I am careful to iron the seams one way throughout the quilt. It's starting to take shape.


Ironing seams and top

Friday morning. I repair the one brown strip so the nap goes the same way as the other strips. So excited to share this project with Becky, Holly and Melody at Fabric Warehouse and get their input on the binding. Should it be brown? Should it be beige? They will know. Need to ask them where to sew through all layers for quilting -- straight or slanted or in the blocks? 

We leave with Sally and Jake and go on Lakeland errands. First we stop at Fabric Warehouse. Every time I have had a project since buying my fancy sewing machine from them, I confer with them. Even had classes there. T

They suggest brown cotton binding, not the brown (bathrobe) knit material I put in the quilt;  turns out that kind of materials would give me trouble and cotton works best. For the body of the quilt they suggest I sew slanted in the opposite direction of those slanted blocks for the machine quilting. I buy more quilting safety pins which speed up the process so you do not have to baste. The safety pins go through the cotton to the turquoise and brown polar fleece. (Without that polar fleece, I would have had to use a third layer of perhaps a product called Wonder Under between the front and the back of the quilt.)

Sally, Jake, hubby and I have lunch at Olive Garden and as usual Sally and I order for our husbands who no longer make decisions on what to order in restaurants. Then we go to Michaels, a craft store, but hubby doesn't want to go in the store and he stays in our air conditioned gas guzzler.  Sally, Jake and I go inside. Sally is working on Christmas gifts for her family and gets what she needs.  I buy two T-shirts for $5. I plan to make one of T-shirts say "MC AC The Rap Lady"! Then we all go to a book store and both hubbies go inside and sit down, but not before Sally helps my husband buy me a birthday card for later this month. (We wives help each other out.) I get two gifts for family. Sally buys assorting items and we all head back to Plant City.

Friday night.  I cut out three inch strips of the brown cotton to be used for the binding of the quilt as I did in December HERE. I put more safety pins in the quilt to keep the front and back together while I sew.  The binding doesn't need to be on the bias this time. I start to sew diagonals through the quilt with the machine and the fancy $129 presser foot made for quilting. Then I will attach the brown cotton binding. Time to make dinner and prepare for Saturday activities.

The project is turning out well.  Love the three pockets in the quilt.
 

Granddaughter can keep her cell phone in quilt.
Don't all young people live with their cell?

Will post the final picture on the Plant City and Friends Facebook Like Page when it is done hopefully early next week.



Carol

Another Hospital Trip



Picture of sitcom from link below

I got one of those cries this morning from the bedroom:

I've fallen and can't get up.

It was 6:30 am approximately and sure enough he was on his rear end. I put in a text to my back yard neighbor Kenny who came over. I got on the computer and canceled substituting for the day. Two hours later hubby was in a non-emergency ambulance on the way to Plant City Baptist Hospital ER again.

I drove to ER and I went into ER Room 7 with my iPhone and charger and had friends all over praying. I texted hubby's adult children. I posted a status on Facebook. I texted people who do not do Facebook. I chatted with Facebook friends who play Words With Friends with me on the iPhone or on Facebook. Kerry from church put out email prayer to every one at church.

Again many things were checked out. Hubby had a head scan which is standard procedure for falls with seniors and he hadn't fallen because of a stroke. Xrays revealed that there was no broken bones. His urine was checked and not another UTI, although I didn't think so because he wasn't acting like he had in April. Near noon hubby was released to go home. A nurse helped get hubby into our gas guzzler car--so high up.She went to get someone else to help.

Nurse: How will you get him in the house?

Me: That’s why we came to the hospital.

At home hubby deboarded the car and used the walker and painfully made it to a spot on the couch where I usually sit which has a pullout for elevating one's feet.

Left spot has leg elevation pullout,
Right spot is hubby's Archie Bunker spot.

Later in the afternoon, hubby longed for his Archie Bunker spot. He got stuck at the end of the pullout which we can't get to fold up. There was about an hour of debating how he would get up. 

My husband has a favorite spot across from the big TV like Archie Bunker had above  in the 1970s sitcom. See Archie's chair HERE.  Archie's  son-in-law Mike "Meathead" once broke it, or once sat in it, etc. This sitcom chair was legendary and I believe is in the Smithsonian. Even though hubby could have been comfortable watching TV with his leg elevated at the left spot, it was not his spot opposite his special coffee table with all his stuff. He felt he had to move.

Kenny was not home because he was volunteering elsewhere as an Alzheimer's caregiver, but Kerry had kept in touch with me by text and had her husband Dave come by after his work to help hubby get up and over to his spot. In addition to the walker Dave helped him use crutches which I happened to have to move the few inches. Now teaching someone with Alzheimer’s something new like the use of crutches is difficult. Thanks, Dave.

It was time for bed and Kenny's brother-in-law came over to get hubby off of his spot and into bed. Unlike the whole afternoon, however, suddenly hubby was able to walk. I think it was the magic of his Archie Bunker spot which he insisted on sitting in and of course the prayers of you all who knew of this ER trip. And the ice and the elevation somehow made hubby's right leg better and this morning he is walking. I wondered why in the ER they didn't elevate and ice right away.

This brings up the point of falls and avoiding them. I have put a chair by the bed where hubby fell yesterday and he has accepted this change of furniture. He still has an ace bandage on his knee to remind him of the fall and limps a little.

Chair by bed for safety,
Almost looks like Archie's chair.