This is the week of completing all the forms to get Kaiser Senior Advantage through my employer. I don't think they make it particularly hard, but I think I do. I forgot to send a copy of the Medicare card to my employer. I called to find out if all was okay when I found out I had not done that. So I sent that in. Then I called Kaiser and found out they sent me a form to complete to do the transition. Hopefully I have done that right. I mailed it in and they will let me know in 10 to 12 working days if they got it all and send me my Senior Advantage Card.
I didn't work much on my drawing this week. We are working on shapes within shapes in this six week period. Now we are doing balls with cord or grapevines. It is fascinating but I need to work on moving my hand so I get the curves right. Our teacher Carol Bradshaw told us that two men should be joining us soon since they have been working very hard and are passing the other students in the beginner class. I think this ends up encouraging us to do better. She also commented that she felt our drawing was getting so much better that she felt we should be drawing on very good paper. I think Wayne and I are not feeling as confident in ourselves as she has in us, but it does help to hear that someone feels you are doing pretty good.
This week I put a lot of emphasis on sorting through all the pictures I have and separating them to give mainly to family members, but also a couple of friends. I think Billy, my grandson will want to share some of his heritage with Conner, so he is getting quite a few pictures. Since I was on a roll getting things done, I packed up the Wii and gave it to my grandson Devin since I haven't been using it. He was very excited and maybe a little shocked to be getting so much "stuff". Today on Easter, Shelley pulled out people pictures from albums I made and we pretty much threw out many of the scenery shots. I have a lot of these already that maybe I would draw or paint later. Shelley kept a couple of them to do later also.
My main television went out. I ended up buying one from Costco. They really are inexpensive if you don't need the latest style. It is an improvement over what I had. Had to have AT&T here to reprogram the remote, so now everything is working. What I had weighed in around 200 pounds. Quite amazing how light they are now.
My son Jeff and his wife stopped for a short time to visit on their way up north to spend Easter with family on Stephanie's side. Wonderful catching up and hearing about their daughters' (Cassadie and Meghan) experience at Coachella, a newer style of Woodstock. The girls are returning home for the summer in about three weeks.
I had dinner with a friend Susan who used to be my boss. She works in hospice care. She was the best boss I ever had. I keep trying to figure out what it was, but it was a lot of things. She was fair to everyone. She explained things well and she had a wonderful sense of humor. I looked forward to any meetings we had because it was like letting go of the bag of rocks. It was revitalizing. And, we had enough of these, that our group seemed on a high because of this. She is getting certified to do sky diving. I asked if this was on her "bucket list". And she said, "Well, yes, I guess it is, but I hadn't thought of it that way". She loves the sense of freedom as she is coming down. I thought about some experiences I have had in the last ten years and have decided that I can't do these sort of things anymore. When I tell people about them, they just become hilarious stories after the fact. At the time, they were nerve wracking and also physically painful. I don't have the strength I used to have.
I took some pictures to my friend Janet Seinturier. We laughed about some experiences we had related to the pictures and I said that maybe there would be something worth sharing at my memorial service. She called later in the evening concerned that something was happening that I wasn't sharing. I told her "no", I'm not suicidal and I didn't think anyone was going to kill me. She asked if I got news that my end was near. I told her no and that if I got news like that I would share it with her and other people I am close to in my life. I don't want to be alone in going through this and that was why I was encouraging others to talk about it too. I said I knew that we each would eventually go through this alone, but that this alone experience was what everyone before us has done and what everyone after us would do. I explained this to my son Jeff and his wife Stephanie and then today explained it to Shelley. I would rather that we be open about it. That makes it easier for me and I hoped it would end up being that way for them.
In having these talks I find there are similarities as well as differences. There is no way you would really know this unless you talked about it. I appreciate knowing it both ways. When I was a social worker in hospice I really became aware of the similarities we have in dealing with issues. Of course there were differences, but we rarely talk about what is similar. Since I had gone through much loss by the time I was working in hospice, and from what family members would share with me about their experiences, I was able to share this as I tried in my way to make people comfortable with me and in understanding what was likely to occur as they went through the grieving process. Some people thought I had some inside information about them specifically. I would tell them "no", but that these were human experiences. It takes the pressure off people to find out they are not alone.
We had an Easter meal at my home. Very basic, but tasty and always great company even as our group is shrinking.
One of my friends, Zona Gray-Blair asked me to share a story that my mom wrote about us kids as we were growing up. Zona's family and my family were very close and we spent weekends together even though we lived one to two hours away from each other. I'll let you know that I came from a very unorthodox family. So you probably did not have experiences like this, but they were funny. Here is one story:
Excuse Me Neighbors, I Mean a Big Ant!
Rachel was cleaning up everything in the kitchen, as the kids will do sometimes go overboard and not stop till everything's done and they drop in their tracks. So she had started the washer, the dishwasher, the dryer, mopped the floor, and, as an afterthought, she took off all her clothes and put them in the last load and finished cleaning up the last cupboards absolutely stripped.
Rachel had to keep ducking and reeling around the kitchen bent level at the waist, because, with the usual great forethought put into things, the cardboard-replaced broken window in the back door was shoved up to the top and the unbroken see-through pane was shoved down to the bottom. You couldn't see them, but they could see an interesting part of you, particularly if you were a fully-formed female.
Rachel raced to scrub out the pan pantry under the sink so she could throw the rug in the washer before it emptied. "oh," she screamed, "a big roach!"
Mom whispered in a shocked voice, 'Rachel! The neighbors!" as Rachel jumped back from the pantry and skidded on the damp floor, hurting herself.
Rachel lurched up naked into view to edit her last remark, as tears came to her eyes from her wounds, "Excuse me neighbors," she shouted at least as loudly as the first time she had spoken, 'I mean a big ant!"
So that's it for the week. Hope you are doing well and talking with others you are close to. Believe me, these talks are important and make a difference in the relationships we have. Please share this blog if you feel others could benefit and I'll see you here next week. Rachel
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