Year: 2004

Categories
Just Shelley

Old people die

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

I heard from my brother last night. I guess my Dad’s move from hospital to home did not go well.

The assisted living home didn’t expect Dad to be released so quickly and weren’t set up yet. When Dad got there, all they had was his regular bed and they had to quickly move in a hospital bed, shoving his other bed into the living area. The organization that’s contracted to provide the specialized care Dad needs wasn’t notified and didn’t have anyone there. Luckily one of the helpers at the assisted living home had nursing home training and was able to help in the interim.

The surgeon who operated on Dad sent him home without any further instructions for physical therapy, care, and medicine, particularly pain medicine. All the assisted living home could give Dad was regular Tylenol. My brother hit the roof and had a frank discussion with the head of the assisted living house who directed Mike to the hospital discharge nurse who also had a frank discussion with Mike.

The long and short of it was that the surgeon felt Dad was going home to die anyway, and didn’t need any additional care. Including physical therapy, special care to help Dad once home, and pain medicine.

That was a mistake on his part.

Categories
Weather

Crazy Ivan

I haven’t been writing anything on Ivan because it’s a crazy storm, all over the board. Jeneane’s been covering it more thoroughly, especially the storm’s impact in Jamaica, a favorite spot for her family.

This was a nasty storm in the Cayman Islands, Jamaica, and Grenada, but luckily slipped right between Cuba and the Yucatan Peninsula. As horrid as a hurricane is for us in the states, it’s many times more dangerous for other countries that could get hit.

(As a side note, I noticed that Castro said he wouldn’t accept a penny from us in aid if it did hit. We have had opportunities in the past to extend a hand of friendship to Cuba and have disdained to do so. It is past time that our countries healed the wounds between us. We are too close, in many ways, to continue this old cold war anger.)

The computer models for Ivan differ, but it keeps drifting to the west. Whether it stays this course or not, is anyone’s guess. Florida looks spared this time, but if it hits full strength in New Orleans, this is going to be a nightmare. There’s no sugar coating of this – New Orleans cannot protect itself against anything higher than a category 1 or 2, as this older storm surge simulation demonstrates.

And due to the rather interesting way that politics works in Florida, it’s because of Ivan that Ralph Nader will be on the ballot this fall. I guess the prediction that Nader will become president when hell freezes over is closer to reality than originally assumed if he can muster a hurricane to get him on the ballot.

Politics aside, my positive thoughts go out to Missouri’s brothers and sisters in Louisiana, fellow children of the Mississippi river.

Categories
Stuff

Speaking of fall color

I would like to be out walking more now, but the weather has continued extremely warm, and I don’t deal well with hiking in upper 80 degree weather.

The official Fall Color watch for Missouri starts the 15th of September, and the colors peak about October 15th. I’m in the mood to just spend the rest of September focusing on drives about the state, and maybe into Illinois and up to Wisconsin and over to Kentucky. This is a pretty time of the year in this area, and there’s loads of places I haven’t photographed.

I’m broke, so can’t travel too far, but I can manage some day trips. Nice thing about a digital camera is that it doesn’t cost to take pictures.

What I would like to do is take some photos of the famous Ozark spring mills in the south of the state. I know they’ve been photographed to an inch of their worn and weathered boards, but it would be fun to see if I can capture something unique about them – something new. And this year I am covering The Great Balloon Race, in Forest Park.

As for technical writing, if you want to cover something, drop me a note or say something in comments, and I’ll see what I can do; otherwise, I’m going to assume you’re bored with the tech writing and want to hear about hikes and rides and life and see pics, instead.

Categories
Photography

Looking for fall color

I had the nicest note today from Mike Rodriquez saying, “…partially thanks to you (your wonderful writings about the river and the countryside surrounding SL) we’re moving back to our childhood home in Lindsborg, KS.”

My first reaction on reading this was, “Wow!” followed by a particularly warm and fuzzy feeling followed not too long after with another “Wow” and then a more thoughtful, “Boy, I sure hope they don’t get hit by a tornado”.

Tornadoes, heat, astonishing political dichotomy, and the ever present bugs that see me as a walking buffet aside, on days like today I renew my love of this land, even though the humidity was enough to drench me within a half mile starting my hike. I can only nod when Mike talks about moving back to Kansas because I remember walking steep rocky trails overlooking one river one day; an old country road surrounded by flowers against the backdrop of yet another river the next–all within 25 minutes of my home– and think how can anyone not want to live here?

How many places can you walk the same trail, over and over, and still feel as if it’s bright and shiny new: one time small pink flowers grow out of short dark green depths; another, tall golden brown weeds form a mosaic of gleaming color against rich yellow and light green.

This week when I walked Powder, new small white flowers carpeted the forest floor and I felt like calling out, “Don’t you ever get tired of growing?” But that would only startle the fawns that have now become so used to me (or people really, but I like to think it’s me, personally) that they quietly graze by the side of the trail only a few feet away.

I hadn’t been to the Route 66 State Park since Spring because normally it can be quite warm in the summer, and since horses are allowed on the paths, it can also be a little odorous at times. But it’s also a good place to check for the beginnings of fall color in this part of the state (though a more accurate check requires a trip further north).

I had the park almost to myself, and when I started across the old Route 66 bridge, I decided just to stop, right there on the bridge, and take some photos. I’ve been wanting to try out my fisheye lens of the river and surrounding hills; normally a fisheye distorts an image too much, but this time, I think it worked nicely, capturing what I see every time I cross this old, rusted bridge.

Bigger photo

There’s a specific path I walk when I go to Route 66, but I thought since I had the place more or less to myself (though stopping on a bridge to take photos isn’t the best of ideas in these times) I thought I would explore the back roads from the car, and then stop and hike wherever the mood hit. I’m glad I did or I wouldn’t have found this marshy pond not to far from the river. In the pond was a marsh bird, fishing for frogs and small fish.

When I parked the car to put on my telephoto lens, the bird hid behind the weeds, peeking out at me, coyly, as if it were playing a game of hide and seek. I just sat there in the car, camera pointed out the window, and soon enough the bird cautiously stepped out behind the weeds and resumed it’s hunting–giving me a chance to get a better picture than I normally can.

Bigger photo

Are you ready to move here, yet?

Loren wrote about his trevails with technology today and I felt for him–good technology done badly is the craft of the devil. But when he wrote about walking to St. Louis to deliver something to me and it being probably faster than dealing with a rigidly uncompromising system, I thought there could be worse places to walk to, or around.

I ended up taking my usual walk, a circular route that goes from parking lot to river and back, past open meadow and closed forest. There was a group of deer along the way, but they’re shy unlike the ones at Powder and ran as soon as I got close. There’s one spot where I can climb down the hill to the water along a loose limestone and rock trail. The path was badly overgrown and I couldn’t safely make it all the way down the hill, even with my hiking stick. But it was nice to be clambering around a hillside on loose rock, feeling the challenge on muscles and balance.

You can lose yourself when hiking hills, though as Kierkegaard found, no one may notice:

The greatest hazard of all, losing the self, can occur very quietly in the world, as if it were nothing at all. No other loss can occur so quietly; any other loss–an arm, a leg, five dollars, a wife, etc.–is sure to be noticed.

Categories
Plants

Adventures in house plants

I didn’t know this, but I have green fingers. I knew I had a green thumb, but not green fingers. It could be worse – I could have green ears or green toes. Or even green eggs and ham.

For all that I can be a klutz on many things, I’m actually quite good with plants. I lived on a farm until I was seven, and then puttered in gardens whenever I’ve lived in houses since. As for indoor plants, years ago I had a house full of them, including an elephant ear that grew to enormous size.

I moved around quite a bit, and would carry my collection of plants from place to place. There was a couple of ferns, and several varieties of ivy and shamrocks and jade plants. I also had African violets, coleus, and schefflera and philodendrons – I must have had ten or so philodendron plants. When I moved down to Arizona, we didn’t have room for all the plants in the moving truck; when my Dad came for a visit, he loaded them all into his Ranchero and dragged them down. Of course he got stopped at the border – bringing plants into Arizona or California is a big no-no. However, he managed to talk the inspector into letting him keep the plants.

I hauled them around Seattle and to Yakima; from Yakima to Arizona, and back to Yakima. From there to Ellensburg and on to Seattle and Oregon and then over to Vermont. But when we moved from Vermont, we had a garage sale and I lined all the plants up with a sign saying, ‘Free to good home”. There was a woman who loved plants and solemnly promised to care for them, and you could tell she would because of the way she started talking to the plants immediately. She hesitated with the elephant ear, though; uttering a faint, “My”, when she saw it, but gamely said she would give it a go.

We had to find a new home for the plants because Zoe is a greens eater and will nibble any plant until it dies. Doesn’t matter if I haul in greens for her to eat, she wants the plants. No matter how hard we would try to keep her from them, she’d find a way to jump over barriers, or crawl under gates, and climb poles. Now, I can’t have bouquets of flowers or potted plants, and I put my life in my hands bringing in corn that’s still on the cob – corn husk is her favorite green.

I could let Zoe outside to ‘graze’, but we also feed birds and bunnies, and there seems to be something a little obscene about using natural ground feeding techniques for critters and having an outdoor kitty.

Cats and plants do so well together outside, but can do so poorly when both are trapped indoors. When I was in college, the person who lived behind us also had house plants and a sweet little white kitty he adopted. One day, he was late getting home and since he would keep her inside during the day and didn’t provide a cat box (and they say animals are dumb), she made a running jump and caught on to the macrame plant hanger for one of his plants, climbed into the pot and used the dirt as her potty. He wasn’t happy about the mess, but I was rather impressed with that cat myself – only female cats will do this, males will use any old spot in a pinch.

When I still had my plants, I had quite the assortment of plant care tools, including a device with long prongs that you put into the soil and will emit a sound reflecting the condition and amount of moisture in the soil. My ex-husband hated the thing because when the soil was not in great shape – too dry, or too acidic– it would emit a loud, screeching sound. He said it sounded like we were murdering the cat along with the plant.

I wasn’t much of a plant talker except with the Elephant Ears, and that was mainly curses trying to move the thing. I think my secret to their good health was the fact that I didn’t water too much or too little, used good potting soil, made sure they had good drainage and the appropriate light for the plant. Oh, I also followed their social habit.

I believe that some plants like to be alone, and others want to be in a crowd; I put the plants that were loners into their own corners or space, and the crowd lovers I would group together until they were almost touching. My ferns liked company, but my Christmas cactus did not. My elephant ears liked company, but it was so big it intimidated the other plants and had to go into a corner by itself. I did have other plants in the room, and since it thrived no matter I tried to do to it, it must have been content.

In addition to the balcony garden I hope to have this coming Spring, I think about getting another indoor plant for my desk – a cacti, which could hold its own against Zoe.

Loren posted a lovely poem by Roethke called “The Geranium”:


The things she endured!–
The dumb dames shrieking half the night
Or the two of us, alone, both seedy,
Me breathing booze at her,
She leaning out of her pot toward the window.