Getting My Creativity Back

Port-a-Potties at Best Buy

Wrote two new pieces. I must admit I had inspiration--Black Friday happenstance and a comment from 18 year old Joshua whom I substituted for in September. Ideas take time to jell, but not this Black Friday ditty below.

I am not a Black Friday shopper, but it turned out I was hanging out with Sally and Jake on Black Friday. My car was getting new tires (actually received Black Friday discount) and we went to Best Buy so they could buy a certain item for their granddaughter.

Found out that Best Buy had people camped out Thanksgiving night (Gray Thursday) and they provided potties for their customers! I had to take a picture! I had to write new lyrics to Rocking Around the Christmas Tree. 

Waiting in line on Gray Thursday 

And is it ever cold! 

All I want is in the display 

Get it before it’s sold. 

Waiting in line on Gray Thursday

Let the big discounts be mine 

Later I’ll have some pumpkin pie 

My day off has been so fine.  

You might get a jealous feeling 

When ’er you hear 

All I got for my money 

To deck my halls to be so pretty. 

Waiting in line on Gray Thursday 

Sleeping in on Black Friday 

If I missed some big discount 

I’ll get it Cyber Monday. (Music) 

Waiting in line on Gray Thursday 

And is it ever cold 

All I want is in the display 

Get it before it’s sold. 

Waiting in line on Gray Thursday 

Let the big discounts be mine 

Later I’ll have some pumpkin pie 

My day off has been so fine.  

You seem to have some special feeling 

You say that I’ve been missing? 

Gratefulness for what makes me jolly 

Ingratitude yes ‘tis my folly.  

Thinking about what I’ve been missing 

With all these new traditions 

Ingratitude for faith and family 

Three new days of acquisitions 

Three new days of getting stuff.

I guess I am commenting on how materialistic we are becoming, so to get the bargain we sacrifice family time to wait in line for stuff.  I will share this ditty at Toastmasters like I did my snow birds piece two years ago. See HERE for Summer Wonderland that goes to the music for Winter Wonderland. That post shows celebrating my husband's 75th birthday--so glad we did that.

The occasion for the new rap topic came from Joshua, an 18 year old who said, Mrs. Johnson, write a rap about children having children. I did and it might not be politically correct as adults point out to me, but all the students I have tried it out on like it.

Think, think, think 

You think you're entitled

       Your passions are unbridled 

           You’re barely out of toys

And you’re into boys

You think you’ll be a bride 

But he took you for a ride 

‘Cause he’s given you a distortion 

Of love that’s really hormones

And you’ll have a child 

While you’re still one yourself 

That daddy’s gonna hide 

But we’ll be by your side 

And don’t get an abortion 

Think about adoption

Yes, the diapers start to stink 

All because you didn’t 

Think, think, think 

You don’t have a job 

You can’t go out and rob 

Laundry will be piled 

Welfare will be filed 

‘Cause you didn’t abstain 

And there’s little to gain 

You didn’t think think think 

Yes, it’s time to refrain 

Don’t have a child

While you’re still one yourself.

I also am enjoying rapping for strangers--for example young people who offer to take my groceries to the car. Saturday I saw the latest Hunger Games movie (students I sub for will see it) and I shared my Boredom Games rap with the young woman selling me my movie ticket. She giggled at this 70 year old rapper and I told her about my YouTube channel for MC AC The Rap Lady that is scheduled to have ten more raps up soon.

PUT A SMILE ON 
SOMEONE'S FACE 

WITH HUMOR! 

Getting My Momentum Back

Tuesday I had a lovely breakfast with Kristi who understands grieving from her own path of suffering. She is giving back however. She and her husband have taken in the husband's disabled sister and twenty-something Kristi is making the best of the situation, gradually getting her momentum back. Kristi shared Scripture with me that has helped her and suggested after discipline (doing things she didn't have the momentum to do) the feelings of wanting to take care of her home and sister-in-law came back. Here we were two women almost fifty years in age difference relishing how the LORD is helping us.

Even though it is hard, it is time I get my momentum back after being a caregiver and becoming a widow. Thankful I am able-bodied. START and the spunk will come back.

Here are my 15 momentum starter strategies and things I am thankful for: 

1. Rejoining Weight Watchers. Food still can be fun. I am in no way perfect with my diet, but enjoy the 7 am Weight Watcher group I am in. 
2. Studying my sleep patterns with the Weight Watchers Active Link.Planning 30 minute naps. See HERE. 
3. Having a week off to get things done (November 24-28) and to be there for Sally whose car is in the shop. 
4. Getting on the treadmill. Walked on the cruise and three miles at the Alzheimer's Association WALK TO END ALZHEIMER'S.
   
5. Having yard sales and very conscious of what still needs to leave the house to be able to downside for a move maybe sometime in the next ten years. Meanwhile trying to take care of business at the house including home repairs. 
6. Writing raps again. After a year of not writing raps, finally wrote one and am testing it out when I substitute teach. The topic, "children having children", was a suggestion from an 18-year-old high school boy. He wanted someone to speak up on this topic.  The students so far like it. Meanwhile very shortly ten of my recorded raps will be on YouTube to add to the other three videos. 
7. Taking the anti-depressant Paxil every three days now instead of daily as at the start. In December I will not take this anti-depressant. 
8. Giving back. I daily email other caregivers. I am tutoring Esteban. 
9. Taking time for others. Went to a movie with another widow recently. 
10. Making a list of what I am thankful for and telling people. Went out and thanked my mail lady Connie. 
11. Planning ahead for Christmas. 
12. Keeping a ridged budget and attempting to refinance the house so I can pay off credit cards.  
13. Arranging my workspace for the dissertation on caregiving. Started working on it again after months of doing nothing on it. 
14. Being able to clean the floors. (My husband used to do this for the first years of our marriage and it has been hard for me emotionally to do it.)
15. Making progress with managing grief and being thankful. 

15 Things I Am Thankful For

I am thankful for:

1. Our veterans on this Veterans' Day and my country, state, county and city and elected officials that I can now pray for. Friday at the school where I substituted there was a wonderful, long Veteran's Day Assembly. The students here in Plant City were very attentive at this assembly. Essays were read. A young lady with an awesome voice sang the Star Spangled Banner, and a Vice Principal also sang a patriotic song.  A Power Point show of veterans connected with the school students and staff was shown. This school is having a Christmas program next month--I know because I saw it on the white board in the band class. No "Winter Program".
2. My husband's great attitude and taking one day at a time. We should all do that--take one day at a time.
3. That Alzheimer's is causing me to hold on to my Christian faith in new ways. I am more confident than ever that the LORD will see me through.
4. That Alzheimer's is bringing self-discipline into my life with time management.
5. That Alzheimer's is making me more health conscious so I can be his caregiver/lovegiver all his days and not die first myself. I have lost weight through Weight Watchers and am walking two to three times a week.
6. That Alzheimer's is forcing me to organize our home. When I retired, I thought plenty of time. But our days are numbered and I have to do this now. It feels great to finally have a strategy for doing it thanks to the wisdom of The House That Cleans Itself.
7. That my husband in 2009, even after his early diagnosis, helped edit Getting Off the Niceness Treadmill, the book I had it in me to write. If it didn't make sense to him, what I wrote, it had to be edited.
8. That we survived a crash with a DUI driver that left us with only one car; that my husband decided to just be a passenger a year ago. There is now no car at home here in the country for him to drive away in and he loves our dog and home.
9. That we have camping memories and have gone to Orlando theme parks.
10. Sally and Jake who are on a similar journey with Jake's Alzheimer's. I love how our husbands have bonded and enjoy each other.
11. The Plant City Senior Center---pray that our husbands accept going there. I am so grateful to Sally for getting us into this. Her mother once went there.
12. Going out of town to visit relatives in December while we can do this.
13. The Alzheimer's Association support group and our two facilitators there.
14. That I can still work to pay off credit cards because one day I may not be able to work.
15. My blogging friends.

Thanksgiving Week

Read Sunday morning from Psalm 118:19-21, 29 NLT

Open for me the gates where the righteous enter,

and I will go in and thank the LORD.

These gates lead to the presence of the LORD,

and the godly enter there.

I thank you for answering my prayer

and giving me victory. . . .

Give thanks to the LORD,

for he is good! His faithful love endures forever.

• Love going to church today in a few hours. So does DH. We bring our lunch and eat together after the worship service. Then we have a counseling class. DH listens while I take notes. I will be finishing up a counseling degree in the next several years. My current paper will be on "Dying Well".
• We are not going to be camping with that group. A call was made to say we weren't accepted. Both DH and I are at peace with this (although DH might be hurt). We still can camp with Sally and Jake. Sally and Jake are still in the group, but Sally speculates that it is because this group didn't want another person with Alzheimer's.
• By book is now an eBook on Barnes and Noble. Go to bn.com and purchase at $7.69 for your iPad, computer or Nook. Just type in "Getting Off the Niceness Treadmill", the name of the book.
• I went to a Christian Writer's Conference all day in Orlando Saturday, November 19th. Thanks to Sally and Jake for taking DH to lunch while I was gone. DH is able to stay home by himself, but that sure was wonderful that they thought of this. Sally and I are thinking about introducing our husbands to senior day care, which might work if they go together. These men always have so much fun together. Sally increasingly has to be with Jake and this may help if our husbands can both hang out at a senior day care; they love telling each other the same things over and over.
• Obsessing. DH now obsesses about that camping group. Jake obsesses about not being able to drive and DH made the mistake of driving when the four of us were together recently. Sally told me later, that it really didn't matter. Jake obsesses about how unfair it is that as a man he can no longer drive. DH often comments on Jake and genuinely cares for him.
• DH genuinely cares for me. I love him also.
• I have a week off--no subsituting the week of Thanksgiving. We will be with some of DH's extended family on Thanksgiving. I have a week off to de-clutter, clean. and decorate for Christmas.
• Most of my Christmas shopping is done. My creative gift this year for birthdays/Christmas is not a quilt like the last two years. This year it is Scripture highlights I have been working on each day. These highlights are printed in a binder for selected people. One family member didn't want it because he said it is "too preachy"--so he is getting an iTunes gift card. Other family members are excited about a binder of Scripture highlights. This is not necessarily a cheap gift for our budget, as I have had to buy additional printing cartridges, binders and mail the binders. The binder shows my excitement for God's word and how it sustains me each day.

Saga Six

It is always time to be thankful, not just on Thanksgiving. I am thankful for all that my husband means to me and also can do now. I am thankful for the rich blessings of my faith which daily sustain me. I am thankful for what gets done and what doesn't get done. As FlyLady says, "you are not behind".

Time for company. Whenever we entertain or have something to do now, DH needs a reminder, even though this is on the large calendar. We have needed our rugs cleaned--a job which he has always done. He seemed to put this off day after day. When it came down to the wire, he said why didn't I nag him last week! Of course I had reminded him, but I dared not tell him that fact--he would deny that I had mentioned that carpet. He thinks we should just hire someone or buy a new carpet, but I told him we could not afford to. He has limited energy and I realize I need to pick up the slack on his part. So  I started the carpet cleaner asking him what to do and he said that it needed to be fixed. I bought it to the repair man who mainly just told me how to use it--it wasn't broken. We began to clean the carpet. DH did a little and I did a little. He said to wake him up at 5 am the next morning and he would finish the carpets. When 5 am came he wasn't ready to get up. I got up, however, empowered by my new knowledge of how to use the machine and completed the task as best as I could. The carpeting looks striped and so perhaps it was not on the correct setting, but fresh rugs contributed to a fresh smell in the house and I was content. We had a wonderful meal with all the fixings and we so enjoyed our six guests, guests who are hardly aware how impaired my husband is. 

Need for schedules. That Thursday night of Thanksgiving we went to a Trivia event and hubby wasn't a bit hungry. Finally at 11 PM, he asked if he had had dinner. "No", I said, and he did eat some of the appetizer we were sharing. The whole week has been off in terms of timing for my husband, and I realize I need to get DH on a good schedule. He still can be trained.

Side note one. We saw "Secretariat" with my brother and sister-in-law Tuesday night. We all loved the movie about a famous race horse. The father in the movie has dementia and I wondered what DH might have thought. We have watched the movie "The Notebook" together--where the wife has dementia and at the end of the movie finally connects with her husband. We have discussed that we will always remember each other. DH is getting a photo album made--he has wanted me to do this--like the Notebook.

Side note two. I have a hearing problem--my family lovingly told me. My sister-in-law was helping me with a timer she had bought me some time back. I couldn't hear the beeping, but others could. It was mentioned that in the car when I asked others to speak up, it was my hearing. I have to take care of my health and get an ear exam. I am impaired now also.

Life continues to have challengers, but every day, not just once a year, I need to thank God for His provisions and gifts. The LORD, is indeed my strength and daily sprinkles me with blessings.