My father is definitely thinner. Frailer. His kidneys are failing him but I can’t decide whether he has lost his mind. He probably has, but I don’t want to face it. Most likely because, if he has lost his mind, I am not far behind him. But this is not about me.
My father needs to decide whether to go on dialysis. He’s old. And frail. And forgets things. Did I mention that? However, he has always been rather forgetful as he doesn’t pay attention.
There’s probably only one sure thing. Ama, our little dog who is supposed to be dead by now, will probably outlast us both. She doesn’t forget anything. The diagnostic blood test clearly didn’t tell the full story. The excess insulin in her system was from her pancreas correcting for the dawn phenomenon and not from a tumour. Ama is unusual but not that unusual. Thank Dog!
So here we all are. Not going strong, but still going. Hope you are too.
My True Love was discharged from hospital. Some weird shit went down but he’s alive so that is the main thing. Did you know that many elderly people who probably should be cared for in nursing homes are parked in Australia’s public hospital wards, occupying scarce beds? (Note that WP’s AI assistant advises me that the word “probably” is a weasel word. I like the way it thinks. Note too that aged care is the responsibility of the Australian national government while public hospitals are the responsibility of Australian state governments.) Anyway, there were a lot of dementia patients on the ward where my TL was admitted. He wasn’t one of them. Anyway, anyway, the whole family was so happy when our dear one was discharged despite still not knowing what caused the weirdness.
I must have known that my TL was going to have a medical episode. (Have you noticed that the phrase “medical episode” is the latest fad to describe a serious life threatening medical emergency?) I digress. What were the subtle signs of impending illness? Well, I started to dig up my front yard. Long term readers may recall that another medical episode coincided with my last effort to start a verge garden. Anyway, this time I plan to establish a native grassland in my front yard, hopefully before the dirt is blown away in some summer dust storm or something else happens.
Also in July, my son finally moved into his new house. My heartfelt thanks go to my friends who between them supplied my son with enough secondhand furniture and bits and bobs to almost completely set up his house. The universe also provided him with a few freebies dumped or left out in the street for people to take. My son picked up some roadside coat hangers (!!!), some aluminum outdoor chairs in good nick and this practically new recliner (!!!!).
Who dumps a new recliner in a conservation area? My theory is that someone died in that chair so the grieving parties decided to offload the chair with minimum fuss by dumping it in our conservation area. My son found the same type of chair selling online for $600. Anyway, I rang the government to report it and the person I spoke to said they would add it to the next bulk waste run. Suffering succotash, by the time that happened, the chair would be ruined rain pending! So we took it home. It’s very comfortable and doesn’t smell.
Ama had her own weird medical episode. She’s not a young dog. But she survived. Fynn got another year older. Here he is on his birthday. It was a very cold, rainy day.
Fynn had special icecream as a birthday treat. He thanked us by weeing in the hallway. Fynn doesn’t like rain.
Plus other stuff happened, but these were the highlights.
I hope your July was a good one. Take care, everyone. All the best.
Welcome to my regular Friday song/tune day, ladies and gentlemen, where I pick a piece of music that reflects my mood or the times, to share with you.
Today my choice for Friday song day is I Feel Love, written by Giorgio Moroder and Pete Bellopertte, and performed by Donna Summer. It was inevitable that I would choose this song one day. It was Pan of the Wild Music’s favourite song. We played this song for Pan two days ago when my True Love got out of hospital. Pan, our last little, old canary, died this morning. Some time during the night he had a stroke. He was incapacitated and we took him to the vet this morning and ended his suffering.
Pan’s life was eventful, full of adventure and narrow escapes, song and good friends. I will share his story separately when I’ve had a few days to collect myself. He deserves that. My youngest son dug Pan’s grave. My husband would have liked to have done this one last thing for Pan but he was unable to because of his surgery. As is our practice, we buried him with three coins to pay Charon, the ferryman. A magpie perched on the powerline above us and sung him out.
Let’s listen to Pan’s song now.
The world seems full of anger and sorrow at the moment, ladies and gentlemen. Our fury and narcissism demean life. Love and kindness bring us together. I hope one day that we can all join together in song.
It rained overnight here but the sun came out this afternoon. Pan loved to sing in the morning and bask in the afternoon sun.
Some hospitals have a bit of kit that allows friends and family to track the whereabouts of their loved ones that have been admitted to hospital. I’m not sure whether I like it. For example, when your True Love is in theatre, the app indicates this. However, it doesn’t tell you what is taking so long. Of course, as the anxiety builds and the hours stretch out, the tracker is prone to wondering what happens if the patient (the tracked) dies In Theatre? Fortunately, people come out of theatre sooner or later and when they do, the app indicates that the patient has Exited Theatre. It is left to the tracker to imagine in what condition the patient exited the theatre. When the last update occurs late in the evening, the tracker may have a certain reluctance to call the hospital for information given the hour.
Information provided to families with loved ones in a particular hospital advises that due to the Covid situation, visitors should consider the need to visit and encourages calling loved ones instead. The few times that I have been to hospital to be spliced open to remove wrigglers, I was groggy for days afterward so I do not think it would be at all wise to ring the tracked directly after surgery because clearly that person would be in recovery and not taking calls or back on ward and potentially indisposed, or worse. Having discussed this situation with the wrigglers, we can only presume that someone from the hospital would ring us if the patient was in a bad way or worse. There must be some limits to this app. Surely? Presumably?
All will be revealed. I guess. Tomorrow.
I need a song. I can’t think of a better one than Katie Melua singing If You Were A Sailboat.
I have turned off comments so that I can freak out.
I am posting this again in memory of my mum’s dog, Ashie. He died today from a serious illness. There is only one line and photo in this poem-ish photo-essay that relates to him, but it sums up this beautiful dog so well, at least in my opinion. Farewell, lovely boy. You will be missed.
***
When our family ventures out to our beautiful natural areas, we go slowly, for it is only then that nature’s hidden treasures are revealed. We take out, what we carry in. We tread lightly and with care. There may be no houses, but we are nevertheless going into someone else’s home. This is what we taught our children from a very young age.
Let’s see who is home today – in the rushes.
The little family is well camouflaged. It is a Dusky Moorhen with her chick.
The chick leaves the safety of its nest, but mum is not too far away.
The black swan and her signets weren’t expecting visitors.
But all is calm, so peace is soon restored.
Come out of there, Ash, and leave those ducks alone. Ash is a farm dog. He knows to not hurt the wildlife.
There has been many a twist and turn, and a few curve balls thrown at us over the last few weeks.
My mother and step-father visited from up north, skirting the floods that have left thousands homeless on the east coast of Australia. It has been over two years since I had my hair cut. My mother plaited it for me. The plait was a bit wonky, so perfect for me.
The year that my sister, brother and I had our last Christmas together with our father, was probably the same year that my father bought a jet ski and a schmick new wetsuit to affirm his mid-life experiment. In keeping with the new purchases, he also rented a holiday house at the south coast over the Christmas/New Year holiday period. It was our first ever trip to, and holiday at, the south coast. Summer holidays at the coast are a Canberra tradition that was normally beyond our means. My father also paid for my brother and sister to fly down from Queensland for the festivities, the offer to pay the airfares alone being insufficient to bribe them to make the trip south.
Welcome to my regular Friday song/tune day, ladies and gentlemen, where I pick a piece of music that reflects my mood or the times, to share with you.
For reasons that I am ashamed of now, I decided not to send my children to our local primary school. Instead, I decided to send them to a school out of area. Anyway, for entirely different reasons, it turned out to be a good decision. At first it seemed that we might not be able to get our eldest child into our chosen school. This was quite distressing for our son because he wanted to go to the school with the rocket in the playground. My husband and I also checked out the Catholic primary school in the same suburb as some of my child’s friends would also be attending that school. I was upfront with the principal of the Catholic school about our lack of religion. I explained to him that my child was interested in dinosaurs, planetary science and, you know, evolution. The principal was quick to reassure me that the religious education was only a small component of the curriculum and that the bible was not taught as some literal truth but more as guiding stories. I thought that was very enlightened. I can’t imagine getting that type of response these days. However, at that time, almost half the children who went to Catholic schools weren’t actually Catholic. In the end, a place came up at the rocket ship school and so a temper tantrum was avoided and I did not have to deal with my own internal conflict.
Welcome to my regular Friday song/tune day, ladies and gentlemen, where I pick a piece of music that reflects my mood or the times, to share with you.
I’ve been distracted recently by world, domestic and local crises over the past few weeks. This week, however, I would like to return to my musical journey around the world. Shall we go the Philippines today for a song about misspent youth and family reconciliation? In some cultures, children are expected to rebel, in other cultures it is the reverse. Rebellion is kids’ way of saying, “I’m not you.” Anyway, the song is Anak (meaning child), written and performed by 70s folk singer, Freddie Aguilar. Lyrics in Tagalog are included in the video so that you can sing along. Enjoy.
Shall we have a story about what really happens at Tracy’s house? It is a difficult story to tell because I’m not sure we are doing the right thing by our pet canary. He used to be one of a small flock of house canaries. The little flock had a lovely life together, with free flight across the lounge room, luxurious baths, fresh greens picked for them from the garden, and seed treats, before being tucked into their cages for the night. Life was rosy but, like us, the little birds got old, until, only one, Pan of the wild song, remained.
Reflections of An Untidy Mind 