Total Exhaustion

My great grandson Conner is doing well.   My grandson Billy shared that he is 24 inches long and is 11 1/2 pounds.  He loves to smile and laugh a lot.  He loves to jump.  They hold him up and he pushes off on his legs and they lift him up.   He is on a soy based formula because dairy upsets his stomach.  Billy was this way too and thinks Conner inherited it from him. Here is the latest picture and short video:

No sound because I had to download it through the picture program.

It failed to download as a video, but you get the idea.

So I had a nice talk with my friend Marc, a psychiatrist I worked with.  I was telling him that I have days and times when I just have to lie down because of my back pain.  He got so excited suggesting there is probably a keyboard that would function while I was lying down.  I told him I didn't want to push myself in that direction until I really had no choice.  Anyway, I told him I was thinking of that movie "Being John Malkovich", where there is this floor in a tall high-rise that is half a floor.  I was telling him that I had told some people very senior to me in a job working in the prison that I thought we should make a second floor in the trailer that the whole mental health department for the prison was in.  Instead of a floor, I thought the desks and chairs should hang by cables and that we could have a moving ladder that could move throughout this trailer if someone wanted to get up or come down.  There would be a more open feel than having a floor. These were the Chief of Psychiatry and The Chief of Mental Health I shared this with.  The psychiatrist said "I'm sure he was on drugs when he wrote that."  I told him I thought it was very creative and I really liked my idea.  They really didn't care for it.  Oh well.  I told Marc that this could be the disabled version of "Being John Malkovich" and we could have mattresses for people like me on "the second floor" with a keyboard hanging above us.  I wonder how much work I would get done working like that.  Hmm.

Camping with Barbara Long at Lake Castaic was really wonderful when I was awake.  The problem was that I have been overdoing it for a while and I crashed.  Think of that toddler who runs and runs and then just stops in his tracks and he is out like a light.  I was taking my pain medication regularly to not experience the pain, but perhaps if I felt more of the pain, I would have slowed down.    So I slept six hours during the day and still had a full nights sleep.  When I got home, I went straight to bed in mid-afternoon and slept until morning.  Since I tended to be so tired, it didn't even occur to me to take pictures.  Before we left, I picked up a few pine cones.

For the time we would be camping, we had shopped for some special salads and desserts.  We had veggie sticks with hummus and fruit.  We ate cereal for breakfast.  Barbara Long made her wonderful vegetable bean soup we had for one dinner and we had peanut butter and jelly sandwiches with veggies for the other dinner.  Very little to do and it all tasted fine. We had French Roast coffee using my French Press.  Sounds decadent, but it is quite easy and worth doing that. I brought wine for the evening  It rained later in the day on Wednesday and we ate in the tent.  This tent would accommodate 8 people if they were willing to sleep on the floor of the tent side by side.  For us, it was very roomy.  While camping, we ate out for lunch on both days.  We ate at this wonderful Japanese Restaurant for lunch called Wokcano in Valencia  We had been there before.  Had this great refreshing pear drink. I loved it.  A spice in Barbara's dish caused her a stomach upset.   The following day we looked up restaurants that were vegetarian but where they could accommodate someone who is vegan.  That place turned out to be closed, but we were in an area where there were a lot of Indian restaurants and the one we picked had great food.  It was called Indian Oven on Topanga Canyon Boulevard in Chatsworth.  After, we drove down Topanga Boulevard over the hills and ended up at the coast.  We were not sure where we were going, but we didn't care.  We just wanted to drive and look.  It was a nice drive.  We set the GPS for home and turned it off as we got close to our campground and knew where we were going.  It sure takes the stress off of driving when you are getting directions and we really didn't care if we got lost again.

We also had one van come and park in the area we were in, but they left early the next morning.  So, it was amazing to have an area so big virtually to ourselves.  The Sheriff's Department has a station on the other side of the lake and make loops through the area, so that discourages people from being much of a problem.

My class at The Bakersfield Art Association with Carol Bradshaw is going well.  I had thought I would work on my art while camping, but I slept instead.  I had gone to Open Studio at The Art and Spirituality Center working on pine cones and pine trees.  My fellow student Wayne was embarrassed by his pine cone and I was awed by how realistic it looked.  I told him he could be a botanical artist.  So I drew a pine cone another time.  I still need to work on it.  Carol has brought up several times the value of Fibonacci numbers as it pertained to doing our shells and now our pine cones.  I continue to try to get the numbers right and will keep working on it.  These are the pine trees and the last pine cone I did.  The shape next to the pine cone is what I started with to do it using the Fibonacci spiral (or numbers).  Fascinating really, even though my picture does not do it justice!

           

Shannon McDonnell and family dropping by on Saturday as she was heading north to visit with her mother for a couple of weeks in Washington.  She brought the kids (6) who were very well behaved and her mother-in-law Karen.  It was all very pleasant and they always clean up before they leave. My daughter Shelley is also like this and I really do appreciate it.  Often, I'm done in after everyone leaves and I won't deal with things for a day or two.

I picked up deli potato salad, coleslaw and put together a fruit salad.  Then I got the fixings for everyone to make their own sandwiches.  The weather was reasonable and we ate outside on my patio.  I had the fountain going and the sound effects of birds and chimes (though I have one great chime).  When Shannon comes, she takes care of things I stall on because they require strength, balance, and/or nerve. She tightened the shower nozzle, so it doesn't leak anymore among many little things that I just let go until she is around.     Though we didn't have a lot of time to just chat, we did what we could and look forward to the next trip and I hope her son PJ and her husband Patrick come.  They are always pleasant company.

Later June, my granddaughter Kayla and her best friend Mariah are going with me to my friends Family and Friends Reunion.  Martha Hence has a nice place with a pool and pool house and a river that runs through the property.  Below is a picture of me last year.  We will be camping this year also, but with a bigger tent, going in style with cots and a fan (it was quite warm, though dropped later in the evening).  Thanks Martha for sending this picture to me.

This next week is a full week for me.  I'll have to work in breaks.  Two graduate, Kayla Kline from Junior High and Heather Estes from High School.  Much more going on and I will share next Sunday.  Please check out below and share this blog if you feel others would benefit.  And, I'll see you next Sunday.

Writer Lizzy Miles who work in hospice as a social worker and started the first Death Cafe in the United States connected with me on Google Plus, seeing my blog.  She is one very interesting woman.   I downloaded one of the books she wrote Somewhere In Between: The Hokey Pokey, Chocolate Cake and The Shared Death Experience to my Kindle for 99 cents.   She also has gone through multiple deaths in her family.  Below is a video about her starting the first Death Cafe in the United States.  It had already been in Europe.  The idea is to take death away from being a taboo subject that we can all discuss.  We are all going to go through this, so why not?  Following that was a wonderful video called James - Moving On which was very touching.  I will order my own.  I'm sure you'll like it.

Westerville Home to First Death Cafe in U.S.

James - Moving On by JamesVEVO

First single from the new James album La Petite Mort, out 2 June.
Pre-order the album from http://wearejames.com and receive an instant download of 'Moving On' and 'Frozen Britain'.

CD & vinyl from http://po.st/JamesStore
Amazon CD & 2LP - http://po.st/JamesAmazon
iTunes - http://po.st/LPMJamesItunes

Video by BAFTA award winning animator Ainslie Henderson.
Directed by Ainslie Henderson
Animation by Ainslie Henderson, Michael Hughes
Model Making by Tobias Feltus
To view more of Ainslie's work, please visit www.ainsliehenderson.com

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