D Selby Designs

So, I guess the wedding went off without any hitches, other than them getting hitched. Since it was in Florida and we have obligations here, we weren’t able to attend the wedding of our dear friend, Jeff Rogers, to his lovely bride, Missy Cheeseman, but our hearts were certainly there. Now, why hasn’t Jeff taken the time to send pictures? It’s only the day after his wedding, after all!

Aunt Sally was here for a visit last week(L, in 3-year old picture with Mom, R), and talked pretty harshly to her sister about getting out and exercising her new hip (after I told Sally that I’m just tired of arguing with Mom). She told her to get up and walk around the house each hour. Mom sits out on our back patio every sunny day, and I just saw a head bob across my studio wall of windows. Seems Mom thought Sally meant for her to walk around the house itself instead of around, inside, the house. Rough terrain for an 89-year old, but she made it unscathed.

I need to be a good daughter and take her out. She’s been cooped up for a couple of days. Tried to have her accompany me to church yesterday. The atrium is so sunny, and so full of people, that while I’m volunteering in the coffee shop, she could ‘people watch’. But, no deal. And the service was awesome! One of the last remaining survivors of Auswich, Ann Klein (88), spoke about her experiences.

She said she had no idea what was happening world wide, only in her little group inside the concentration camp. Stripped, humiliated, filthy, lice-infested, starved, frozen–she didn’t spend a lot of time thinking about what might be happening outside of her world. When she asked where the rest of her family was, and someone pointed to the smokestacks, she thought they were just being mean. Surely the smokestacks were for manufacturing something, not cremation!

Last week, I read a remark of a kid (of course) who said that if a certain candidate were elected president, he’s leaving the country. How nice for us all that he has that freedom.

Greg’s chemo reaction (treatment Thursday) was tougher than the first two, so we had a slow snore of a weekend. Zach joined us for dinner last night, and as they had dessert in front of the television, I noticed that Greg had pulled the folded afghan from the back of his chair so that it rested on his bald head. We did have a cold front move in last night.

SO–always the problem solver, I grabbed a fetching navy striped cotton scarf from my scarf drawer that I never open these days (who wears scarves with pajamas, or studio painting clothes?) and tied it ala Jack Sparrow around Greg’s head. I thought he was going along with it for the laughs, but this morning I got up to freshly brewed coffee and my own Jack. Now, if I can just get him to use eyeliner . . .

Progress with Mom: last week’s doc appointment yielded a new prescription for an antidepressant which was not to help for at least three weeks. I beg to differ. She’s been much sharper, and has even cracked a couple of jokes. And the broad range between our individual Scrabble scores is lessening. What? You think I should GIVE her the game? You don’t know me as well as you thought.

Picture stained glass in autumnal tones, then imagine it raining down in bits and pieces with sunshine catching each rotation, and you have a picture of the view outside my studio window. The trees have gotten their act together, and it’s all for me! I’m enjoying it, but I’ll miss the green leafy screen that gives the impression of a private garden. Soon, I’ll see my neighbors and they’ll see me. Ah, well. I’ll sit back and enjoy the show.

As you know, Mom had a hip replaced late in August. I heard her tell my sister last week a story about, “when I had my leg amputated”. Now I know from where my drama gene came. All these years, I thought it was from my musician father.

I thought the worst part of elder care would be about bodily functions. I was wrong. The tediousness of saying the same thing(s) repeatedly, and listening to the same response(s), and not pursuing one challenging avenue of thought is exhausting. I feel like one of those toddlers you see with a harness and leash, but my leash is tied to the walker of an 89-year old trying (or not trying) to get her new hip joint to work.

I used to cajole Mom into staying up later than 8 PM, but now I wait with baited breath each night for Final Jeopardy.

Watched the DVD of HBO’s John Adams, and it was so smart and current and provacitive (for the record, it took a full minute to come up with that word) that I hungered for each new episode. I’d read David McCullough’s book, so I was able to share with Greg and Zach my prodigious insight. Just when I realized I am that self-important boor I assiduously avoid at all costs, Zach said, “I wish I knew as much history as you do.” So much nicer than, ’shut your pie-hole, old woman.’

Greg is in Tennessee working, and his new assistant is (drum roll) Carey! She’s helping him set up some new departments in stores this week, so he not only has help, but has someone who can tell him to slow down. He over-did it last week, and spent the weekend with severe muscle cramps.

Thanks for letting me vent. I hear the ‘clank-clank-clank’ of the walker, so it’s time for Breakfast Conversation #413. Second verse, same as the first.

Wow, all the news looks bad, but I have this to say about that: I feel pretty smug about not having a retirement fund! This is the grasshopper and the ant, in reverse. Look, folks. There will always be commerce. Even before the flood, there was commerce. And when the ark beached, Noah made beer. I think that’s how John McCain is funding his campaign. Thanks, Cindy.

Anyway, my point–and I do have one–is that we will go on. Thanks, Celine. Our U.S. perspective-problem is this: the majority of Americans don’t travel beyond Florida or California, so we think we’re it. We are insular, navel-studying gimme-gimme consumers who can’t imagine a world where new cars don’t show up in our driveways on a regular basis.

I’m not looking forward to a repeat of the 1930’s ( wasn’t there; I hear about it every day from Mom), but do we really need a world where Paris Hilton is a somebody? A world where gals carry logo purses bought on credit, but have no money to put in them? Volunteer. Pick up some litter. Read a book. Walk.

Chill.

My navel-studying has put me back into Patternmaker, designing needlework for the past couple of days. Not that I’ll post any of it, ’cause in the time it takes me to toggle from backstitch to full stitch, somebody will have scanned it, charted it, and posted it in a chat room. Not that I’m bitter about the demise of my former career.

I’m still cruise director on HMS Dementia. Mom sat out in the sunshine for about three hours today. I’d glance out and feel a little guilty, but she was happy, the cat appreciated her company, and I was toggling between backstitch and full stitch.

If you didn’t see SNL last night, look for it on the internet. Their financial expert had me rolling on the floor!

FIX IT!

I can’t believe Carey’s (and my) friend Shiloh has a child! I have no details other than 3.5 pounds and 15″, nicknamed ‘Bati’ from a long name I can’t remember. Battaleese? I know she’s premature as Mama was on bed rest forever and having placenta difficulties. I just can’t get the image of an 11th grade Shiloh, wrestling for real on the floor of our den with 10 year old Zach, and not giving him a quarter. He didn’t know how to fight a girl, so she whipped him.

She once told me if anything happened to her dear (to us, as well) husband Jeremy, she’d marry Zach to be in the Selby family. I waited for Jeremy to say the same thing about Carey, but he laughed and said, “Heck no, Carey is too high maintenance!”

Oh, Dear Newells, many happy thoughts and prayers. Life as you’ve known it has ended. You will wonder how you ever lived without her!

And some days, the bear gets you.

Greg had a good treatment day Friday–floated all the way home, after a side trip to pick Mom up from cousin Sue, whom Greg regaled with all kinds of slurred stories. Later, that same day, he talked on the phone to his sister and then our Brit friend, Ian, and he sounded like he was on a toot. Poor Ian. Greg went through the entire plot of “The Italian Job” and then told him the L-O-N-G story of winning a clean car award with our Ford Pinto station wagon–In 1973.

Yesterday and today, not so peppy. He took a long nap today, and is now running the vacuum! Some habits just won’t surrender to chemo.

I am doing less than nothing when it comes to painting, all the negative vibes of life as I know it at the moment. My brain is compressed. Scream therapy would have been beneficial on Saturday, but I rooted around until I found the kind of pill movie stars kill themselves with. It worked a treat. Only drawback: after working a hectic 3 hour shift at our church coffee shop yesterday, I had trouble staying awake for the sermon. Hi ho.

I love this time of year. Today’s cobalt sky, the nip in the air, the sudden realization that hey–our neighbor’s tree is red (!), all conspired to make me remember our courting days in Morehead. I’d be walking along the one-way main campus drag, down the slope to the art building, and there would be in the line of slow-moving vehicles a red Camaro driven by a non-bearded, sandy blond Greg!

“Jump in, let’s go grab lunch at Richard’s.” That was a restaurant. Best vegetable soup and grilled cheese, and student priced. Mmm, I can feel my arteries closing as I remember.

Zach buzzed Greg’s head on Sunday, since the inevitable has been occurring. Last night, he caught a glimpse of himself in the motel bathroom mirror, and thought some old skin head had broken into his room. Second chemo is on Friday, so we’re burrowing in this weekend with NetFlix and a pot of chili.

Good studio day yesterday. I’ve been wanting to paint Cindy’s hollyhocks that stand outside her Brambleridge Orchard barn and the work came easily for a change. Greg walked into my studio in the evening and said, “Step away from the easel! You are through!” He was right. Sort of. I still need to glaze the center of the blooms with a bit of magenta, but don’t tell him.

He’s feeling much better today, perhaps because he finished the steroids–until the next treatment in two weeks. Our pal, Mike Kujawa, is undergoing IV antibiotics for yet another blood infection. Such stinky diseases, Lymphoma and MS. Hang in there, Georgene.

Yesterday was Hollyhock Day, and today is Barnes and Noble day for me, if I can get out of here. Carey is coming over to take her Gran to physical therapy. I knew there was a good reason for having kids. Eventually, they grow up and can be guilt-ed into helping out! Our 2 + 1 kids have shown true character these last two weeks.

Carol, you’re in my heart and prayers. What a summer you’ve had. I hope you can come up to breathe, soon.

September 4, 2008 at 3 PM, my body went white-hot from shoulders to hips and I didn’t know whether I was going to faint or vomit. Dr. Gross led me to the examination table and helped me lie down. His nurse brought a cold cloth for my head.

He’d said ‘looks like lymphoma’, and I lost it. I was so unprepared, thinking it was just indigestion.

My husband was fine. He looked at me as though I were nuts. And I felt nuts. And shocked, and thoroughly and completely out of control. There’s ‘flight’ and there’s ‘fight’ and there’s ‘freeze’. I’m ‘freeze’.

But not today. It was all about the heat, shooting from my brain to my bowels which were both very loose. And the tears! I’m not a crier. Never have been. Talk about ‘cry me a river’!

If I was the patient, it would make more sense, I suppose, but the patient is my husband. For thirty-seven years he has been not just my other half, but my three fourths. We have been our own little island, sufficiently entertained by each other to have no need for society.

Just the night before, my cousin said, “I want Greg to be my husband! He’s a keeper!”

He is. He is protective and funny and loving and an excellent cleaner. How can he be sick? I am the strong one and he is the sensitive one. I went through open-heart surgery and was tough as can be. He cried. I didn’t have time to be sick, and even worked on projects the day after surgery.

I don’t even cry at funerals. It is important for me to be in control at all times.

That all changed today.