Who?

Welp... it's official - my 85 year-old grandmother no longer recalls who I am. Its not that I didn't see it coming, just a little saddened by it all. On Monday, I stopped by the nursing home (with my father) to visit her, a task normally performed each week by my mother. But she's in Africa this week, so the job fell to my father & I during her absence.

The last time I saw Gramma was Christmas Day. It was then I realized many of the things & people she loved would soon be locked away in some hidden corner of her mind. I often wonder how frightening an experience it must be for her & whether it'll become more or less terrifying as her state of dementia progresses.

Unfamiliar surroundings, strangers coming & going; all professing to know things about you, the home you recall - nowhere in sight... how agonizing it must be to realize you can't make sense of 'anything' around you. If you ask me, I'd say, "that's a pretty fucked-up way to go."

It's ironic, when people we love experience conditions such as dementia, or any disease, we often selfishly consider ourselves the victims, sometimes even more than our loved ones! Exorbitant assisted living costs, rising medication bills, outrageous insurance premiums - I know... poor-poor us left holding the God-damned bag, lol.

Granted, no one looks forward to shelling-out their hard-earned money to a less-than-deserving healthcare staff or to an insurance company only concerned with the bottom line, but it's a necessary evil right about now & there really doesn't seem to be any way around it.

Suck it up! After all, what else can we really do? As I look deeper into my own situation, I realize I've got to do this at least 2 more times when my parents reach their twilight years. Might as well look at this as an opportunity to observe what does & doesn't work (when it comes to elderly care) in the hope that I can provide the best quality of life possible for the duration of their respective lifetimes...

The Help...

A good friend of mine mentioned that she was reading 'The Help' (by Kathryn Stockett) & I told her I still hadn't seen the movie, then she added that the book was much better (as is often the case with books made into movies), so I said I'd read chapter 1 for free & buy the rest of the ebook if I got hooked - well, I got hooked. Ended up buying the rest of the book that very same night, lol.

A very interesting read so far. The inhumane way blacks were treated, despite the fact that they played such pivotal roles in the rearing of SO many white children truly amazes me. The arrogant sense of entitlement shared by so many whites during that time period is almost too much for me to stomach at times.

But I've enjoyed the character development thus far & must say that I really like reading about both - the whites who ignored current trends & treated blacks with the respect they deserved, as well as the black maids who cared for these white children SO much even though anger & resentment could've easily led them to do otherwise.

I've wanted to see the movie for some time now & this book only makes me more anxious to watch it & do a compare/contrast between the book & film. I'm currently reading the Steve Jobs biography as well & though I really HATE reading two books at 1 time, both are two I can't seem to put down at the moment.

I'll be sure to update this post with my final impressions, once I'm finished reading - hell, perhaps I'll review the Jobs book as well at that time...

So Much to Do, So Little Time...

In recent years, February thru April has been a pretty busy for me, even busier than the summer months. It seems I have a multitude of family, friends & associates - all celebrating birthdays, babies, weddings, new home purchases, so on & so fourth during this time of year (not to mention the fact that my own birthday was yesterday), so keeping track of social events AND work related functions is at times, difficult.

I often struggle finding ways to attend all of the functions I can, but sometimes it's very easy to spread myself too thin, so I've been working on that lately. I never really used the calendar function of any of my previous cell phones much over the years, but I find doing so nowadays is a must to in order to have any shot at keeping my professional/social life in order.

Right now I've got it worked out so that any e-vites, appointments, meeting request, etc. that get sent to my email accts automatically get added to my work calendar & personal calendars, which both sync with my phone. Whenever I'm on the go, I've got an up-to-the-minute listing of all of my appointments readily available. Even the game schedules for my favorite teams are auto-syncing to my main calendar.

In this fast paced, time is money world we live in today, I'm all about consolidation. So any time I'm able to eliminate steps, or make things simpler - I go for it! Hopefully, organizing/auto-syncing my calendars remains a practical step in getting my life better organized. So far it's been very helpful...

So I went to church today...

I'd actually been boycotting church for years (never really felt the whole ministers buyin' Benzes using tithe money supplied by poor people), but this morning when I opened my eyes at about 6am, for some reason, I up & decided I needed to be in church. So I got myself together & headed to the church I'd attended for years against my will as a child.

It was a bit different than I'd recalled & definitely much shorter - it's amazing how an hour & a half of church service can seem like 3+ hours of torture when you're not even an adolescent yet, lol. Though I still feel a certain way about many who make money within the field of ministry & religion - I do realize the benefits people (including myself) can take away from worshiping among a group of fellow parishioners.

Today Pastor Davis' sermon focused on identifying chronic problems & attacking them at root-level, versus applying temporary band-aids to surface issues. An interesting topic to say the least & I definitely left with additional knowledge of a few things I could be doing here & there to better address some of those lingering, underlying issues in my life. I'm glad I decided to go!

As I listened to the word, I wondered if my mom was in attendance. Using one of these friends/family gps location apps installed on both of our cell phones, I discovered that she was indeed there & sent her a text letting her know I was there. Shortly afterward, she found me & I went to talk with her & my father for a bit before leaving. She was super-excited to see me there - I could tell it really made her day to see me at church without her constant nagging, lol.

Many improvements have been made & a new pastor now roams the pulpit, but the church hasn't changed all that much. The glass remains stained, the ushers are still there & so is the steeple, lol. As for church folk... well, they're still church folk. A new sanctuary built soon, so it was nice to sit thru a service in the church I remember from my childhood 1 last time.