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Linking up with Wordless Wednesday, Catsynth, Keith, and Sandee at Comedy Plus.
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Words for Wednesday was begun by Delores and has become a moveable feast of word or picture or music prompts to encourage us to write stories, poems, or whatever strikes our fancy.
This month, Sean Jeating is providing the prompts which will appear on River's blog.
This week's words/prompts are:
1.contemporaries
2.easily
3.life
4.met
5.never
and/or:
1.one
2.say
3.sentence
4.who
5.within
use either list or both, or mix and match, just have fun.
Charlotte's colour of the month is Smoky Rose
It is almost inevitable when you get into one of the sandwich generations (taking care of an older and a younger generation at the same time), many of your friends are going to be in this stage of LIFE around the same time as you.
Ms. Winnie is in one of my ladies' circle groups. Grandma (my mom, simply called this on my blog because it's what my kids call her) and Ms. Winnie's mom are close to being CONTEMPORARIES, although they have NEVER MET. They EASILY could have been at school together, with Grandma a few years ahead in grade, but not by enough to make a huge difference.
Ms. Winnie and her family are having to go through the vicissitudes of elder care just as my family is. Grandma is getting noticeably worse in many ways although so far we've been able to keep her at home, albeit with more help now and probably we will need even more in the future.
My friend Ms. Winnie and her family made the difficult decision to move her mother to a care home as her father, unlike Grandpa (my father), cannot oversee her care at home.
It broke Ms. Winnie's heart when it came to this, but she lives several hours away and her youngest child is still in his last year of high school (he was behind by a grade for special needs), so she cannot move to be nearer.
The problem is, after agonizing and choosing what they hoped was the best place for her mom, a major incident on the day her mother moved in has caused them to have to rethink everything.
It seems a few hours after they had seen her mother comfortably settled in and had left, her mom fell and injured her back, was taken by ambulance to a hospital, and not only did no one from the care facility go with her to see to it she got properly treated, they did not notify the family for nine hours.
Yes, her mother was in the hospital for nine hours before anyone bothered to tell them, and the neglect of her injury with no one at the hospital to tell the staff what had happened means they are not sure she will fully recover.
This ONE SENTENCE should SAY all there is to be said about such a care home. Any place which drops the ball this badly and this soon is not going to be on my list, no matter WHO tells me they are "an excellent, five star facility" WITHIN just a few miles from where her parents have lived almost their whole lives.
The worst of it for Ms. Winnie is the family members who are contributing the least to her mother's care are the ones pointing fingers and arguing about what steps to take next, and although they will be glad to tell Ms. Winnie and her father what to do, they (even her brother and sister) aren't going to step in and do it.
They seem to see the world through Smoky Rose colored glasses.
As noted, Grandma is losing a bit each day and is asking for pain relief more often (it's given whenever she asks). We simply wait and do what we can to make her comfortable.
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Today is:
Balloons Around the World -- balloon artists around the world are encouraged to donate an hour or more to a charity of their choice in their community, entertaining children everywhere with balloon sculpture
Banned Websites Awareness Day -- sponsored by the American Association of School Librarians
Bathtub Day -- can't confirm this one, but it's as good a day as any to be glad you have one!
BOL Foundation Day -- Laos
Change a Light Day -- US (was originally sponsored by EnergyStar, promoting energy saving light bulbs; although they don't seem to be running this particular campaign any longer, it's a great idea to switch to the highest efficiency bulbs you can)
while the original dates were on Wednesdays, some websites list this on the first Sunday
Feast Day of Ma'at -- Ancient Egyptian Calendar (date approximate)
If At First You Don't Succeed Day -- in honor of Frank Sinatra, whose CBS-TV musical variety show debuted on this day in 1950; it and the other two shows that followed didn't succeed, but he never gave up and had a great career
Lepanto Day -- Greece
Nagasaki Kunchi -- Nagasaki, Japan (harvest festival, through the 9th)
National Flower Day -- US (anniversary of President Reagan signing the bill, in 1986, that made the rose the US National Flower)
National Frappe Day
Nones of October -- Ancient Roman Calendar; other observances
Festival of Juno Cutitis and Jupiter Fulgor
Victoria, Lady of Victories Day a/k/a Pallas Athena -- also celebrated by the Ancient Greeks
Our Lady of the Most Holy Rosary -- Catholic Christian
St. Justina of Padua's Day (Patron of Padua, Italy; Santa Giustina, Italy)
Try To Start an Argument Over Which Is the Best Muppet Day -- Kermit, hands down (argue below, if you wish)(Possibly started by the International Association of People without a Life)
You Matter To Me Day -- because the phrase "you matter to me" can make a profound difference in someone's life
Anniversaries Today:
Larry King married Julie Alexander, 1989
Dow Jones makes the first report, in the Wall Street Journal, of an average of the prices of 12 industrial stocks, 1896
Birthdays Today:
Toni Braxton, 1967
Simon Cowell, 1959
Michael W. Smith, 1957
Yo-Yo Ma, 1955
Vladimir Putin, 1952
John Cougar Mellencamp, 1951
Joy Behar, 1943
Charles Dutoit, 1936
Thomas Keneally, 1935
Amiri Baraka, 1934
Bishop Desmond Tutu, 1931
Al Martino, 1927
R. D. Laing, 1927
June Allyson, 1917
Vaughn Monroe, 1911
Andy Devine, 1905
Niels Bohr, 1885
Thomas J. Wise, 1859
James Whitcomb Riley, 1849
Caesar Rodney, 1728(O.S. date)
Debuting/Premiering Today:
The Independent(Newspaper, first issue), 1986
"Cats"(Musical), 1982
"Route 66"(TV), 1960
"Your Hit Parade"(TV), 1950
"One Touch of Venus"(Musical), 1943
"Eve of St. Mark"(Play), 1942
Today in History:
The epoch of the modern Hebrew calendar (Proleptic Julian calendar), BC3761
The first public burning of books in Louvain, Netherlands, 1520
Ralph Wedgewood patents carbon paper in London, 1806
The first chartered railway in the US, the Granite Railway, begins operations, 1826
Spain abolishes slavery in Cuba, 1886
Henry Ford institutes the moving assembly line, 1913
Georgia Tech defeats Cumberland college in the infamous 222-0 football game, 1916
160 consecutive days of 100*F+ temperatures begin at Marble Bar, Australia, 1924
Beat poet Allen Ginsberg reads his poem "Howl" for the first time at a poetry reading in San Francisco, 1955
U.S.S.R. probe Luna 3 transmits first ever photographs of the far side of the moon, 1959
Nigeria joins the United Nations, 1960
Oman joins the United Nations, 1971
Cats opens on Broadway and begins a run of nearly 18 years, 1982
The Great Flood of 1993 ends at St. Louis, Missouri, 103 days after it began, 1993
Matthew Shepard, a gay student at the University of Wyoming, is found tied to a fence after being savagely beaten, 1998
The U.S. invasion of Afghanistan begins, 2001
A Southampton University research fellow discovers a long lost Antonio Vivaldi flute concerto at the National Archives of Scotland in Edinburgh, 2010
Scientists Stefan Hell of Germany and Eric Betzig and William Moerner of the U.S. share the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for developing 'super-resolved fluorescence microscopy'; the technology can be used to observe molecular activity in living cells, 2014
Jodie Whittaker debuts in her first full episode as the 13th and first female Doctor Who on BBC television, 2018
The Nobel Prize for Medicine or Physiology is awarded to Peter Ratcliffe, William Kaelin and Gregg Semenza for discovering how cells sense oxygen, 2019
Zanzibar born writer Abdulrazak Gurnah is awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature, 2021
The Nobel Peace Prize is awarded jointly to the Belarusian human rights advocate Ales Bialiatski, the Russian human rights organization Memorial and the Ukrainian human rights organization Center for Civil Liberties, 2022
Hamas launches a major air and ground attack on Israel from Gaza, killing over a thousand people and taking hundreds of hostages, sparking a state of war, 2023
The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine is awarded to Victor Ambros and Gary Ruvkun "for the discovery of microRNA and its role in post-transcriptional gene regulation," 2025
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