Been a Long Time Since I've Seen This (Wordless Wednesday) and Words for Wednesday

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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, the prompts are being provided by River.

This week's words/prompts are:

1.mosey  

2.quicksand  

3.ashes  

4.wire  

5.wild  

6.twisted

and/or:

1. clowning  

2.spilled  

3.villa  

4.reliable  

5.trusted  

6.mountain

Charlotte's colour of the month is Vivid Tangerine.

use either list or both, or mix and match, just have fun.

Once the hospice accepted Grandma, there was no CLOWNING around.  They are a "hospice at home" company, meaning their goal is to keep the patient as comfortable as possible and at home until the very end of life.

There is an aid who comes Monday through Friday.  This is going to be RELIABLE through her whole hospice journey, thankfully.

Ms. Tish doesn't MOSEY around, she can get Grandma bathed and her bed changed faster than QUICKSAND can swallow a gnat.  (Please note, i just made that up to use the word, i actually have no clue how fast quicksand will trap something as lightweight at a gnat, it might not even react.  A small lizard, maybe?  Not a quicksand expert here.)

She is good, and there's no SPILLED water being cleaned from the floor after, either, like when i was doing it.  What can i say, i'm also no expert at this part.

Ms. Tish is also TRUSTED by Grandma a whole lot more than we are.  When Ms. Tish turns her from one side to the other, or works to get her feet separated when they are TWISTED in a sheet, Grandma is very quiet and cooperative.

When i'm trying to turn her to change her, she is constantly yelling she's going to fall.  She's in the middle of a bed, with almost her whole body weight centered over the middle or just barely to one side, and she claims she can feel herself falling.  It makes for some WILD moments when the aid is not there, which, of course, is most of the time.

This is a MOUNTAIN we're all going to have to climb together, finding a way to make Grandma feel safe when we are caring for her instead of Ms. Tish.

Personally, i'd rather be on a VILLA in a mountain in Italy about now, watching a sunset in salmon pinks and Vivid Tangerines, and i'm just saying this, of course, to lighten the moment.

Then there's the nurse, Ms. Sandy.  She comes every Monday and Thursday to check on Grandma, and will come more often as she gets nearer the end.  We've convinced Grandpa, who as a doctor is always extremely concerned about addiction when it comes to giving pain meds, he can give Grandma pain meds whenever she asks and if she becomes an addict at this stage, who cares and who can blame her?  She's hurting, sometimes very badly.

Ms. Sandy and the hospice medical director and Grandpa are still working out which of her other meds, besides the pain meds, she should still take and which are unneeded.  The answer is probably most of them.

There's a podiatrist who works with this hospice and who is scheduled to come out today to tend to her very sore feet.

What has burned to ASHES was my hope there would be more hospice help at night.  This place has someone on call 24/7 in case of emergency, but they only schedule their people to come out during the day on weekdays.  I'm trying to talk Grandpa into getting a sitter two nights a week.

I spent Monday there and stayed until Tuesday morning, taking the night shift.  She had me up every single hour for something, to be changed, to have a blanket put on, to have the blanket taken off, to ask where everyone was and express surprise it was the middle of the night, to tell me the WIRE wasn't right (her phone needed plugging in).

Therein lies some of the trouble.  Grandma keeping her caregivers up all night when we have stuff to do during the day while she can just nap is going to wear us out faster, but it's the nature of this stage of life.

It's also the nature of it her mind comes and goes.  One moment she's fine, the next she is convinced she's at her brother's house (he's been gone for years) and we are lying when we tell her otherwise.  These things happen, we are learning to roll with it.

If you are a praying person, please pray we do right by her, no matter how long or short this time lasts.

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Today is:

Agricultural Reform Day -- Sao Tome and Principe

Ask A Stupid Question Day -- teachers wanted to get students asking more questions, so they started this day, telling them to ask even if the questions were stupid; now, it's a holiday on the last school day of September each year! 

Celtic Tree Month Gort begins (Ivy)

Day of Liberation of the Republic of Abkhazia -- Abkhazia (disputed territory on the Black Sea)

Do Something Wacky With A Grandparent Day -- just not the monkey bars, please; old bones don't knit fast enough; whatever you do, take some pictures!

Eleusinian Mysteries -- Ancient Greek Calendar (the Greater Mystery Rites, date approximate; mystery rites of Demeter and Persephone at Eleusis, one of the most sacred times of their year)

Independence Day -- Botswana

International Translation Day -- International Federation of Translators www.fit-ift.org

Kokkeisetsu -- Chinatown, Yokohama, Japan (Chinese National Founding Day in the largest Chinatown in Japan; through tomorrow)

Medetrinalia -- Ancient Roman Calendar (festival fruits offer to the goddess of medicine)

Monkey Bars Day -- a day to go see if you can still do tricks on the monkey bars, because the internet wants to kill us and let the machines that would never do anything so silly take over

National Hot Mulled Cider Day

National Mud Pack Day -- give yourself a facial

National Women's Health and Fitness Day -- US

St. Gregory the Enlightener (or Illuminator; Patron of Armenia)

St. Jerome's Day (Patron of archaeologists, archivists, Biblical scholars, librarians, libraries, school children, students, translators; Saint-Jerome, Quebec) 

     also an Apache celebration of Geronimo, the Native American who was named after this saint

Truth and Reconciliation Day -- Canada

Anniversary Today:

Haleakala National Park is established in Maui, Hawaii, 1960

Birthdays Today:

Dominique Moceanu, 1981

Marion Cotillard, 1975

Jenna Elfman, 1971

Crystal Bernard, 1964

Eric Stoltz, 1961

Fran Drescher, 1957

Deborah Allen, 1953

Victoria Tennant, 1953

Marilyn McCoo, 1943

Z.Z. Hill, 1935

Johnny Mathis, 1935

Angie Dickinson, 1931

Elie Wiesel, 1928

W. S. Merwin, 1927

Truman Capote, 1924

Deborah Kerr, 1921

Buddy Rich, 1917

William Wrigley, Jr., 1861

Rumi, 1207

Debuting/Premiering Today:

Millie's Book: As Dictated to Barbara Bush(Publication date), 1990

"Murder, She Wrote"(TV), 1984

"Cheers"(TV), 1982

"Love Child"(Single release), 1968

"The Flintstones"(TV), 1960

"Tea and Sympathy"(Play), 1953

"The Red Skelton show"(TV), 1951

"Porgy and Bess"(Opera), 1935

Little Women(Publication date), 1868

"Les pecheurs de perles/The Pearl Fishers"(Bizet opera), 1863

"Die Zauberflote/The Magic Flute"(Mozart opera, K. 620), 1791

The Gutenberg Bible(first section, publication date), 1452

Today in History:

Rambam (Maimonides) authorizes Samuel Ibn Tibbon to translate the Guide of the Perplexed from Arabic into Hebrew, 1199

Anesthetic ether is used for the first time by Dr. William Morton, who extracted a tooth, 1846

German scientist Hermann von Meyer announces the discovery of the first fossil of an archaeopteryx, 1861

The first Portuguese immigrants arrive in Hawai'i, 1878

The world's first commercial hydroelectric power plant begins operation on the Fox River in Appleton, Wisconsin, United States, 1882

Hubert Cecil Booth patents the vacuum cleaner, 1901

The first manned rocket plane flight, made by auto maker Fritz von Opel, 1929

The Islamic Republic of Pakistan and Yemen join the United Nations, 1947

The World Series, featuring the New York Yankees and the Brooklyn Dodgers, is televised for the first time, 1947

The U.S. Navy submarine USS Nautilus is commissioned as the world's first nuclear reactor powered vessel, 1954

James Dean is killed in a road accident, 1955

Mexican-American labor leader César Chávez founds the United Farm Workers, 1962

James Meredith enters the University of Mississippi, defying segregation, 1962

General Suharto rises to power in Indonesia after an alleged coup by communists, and massacres over a million Indonesian people suspected of belonging to the Communist Party, 1965

BBC Radio 1 is launched and Tony Blackburn presents its first show, 1967

Ethernet specifications are published by Xerox working with Intel and Digital Equipment Corporation, 1980 

The Dalai Lama unveils the Canadian Tribute to Human Rights in Canada's capital city of Ottawa, 1990

The first images of a live giant squid in its natural habitat are taken 600 miles south of Tokyo, 2004

The controversial drawings of Muhammad are printed in the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten, 2005

A 315-billion-ton iceberg named D28 calves from the Amery ice shelf, Antarctica, 2019

Canada observes its first National Day for Truth and Reconciliation, honoring victims and survivors of residential schools for indigenous children, 2021

Land, including the world's oldest living rainforest, Daintree National Park, is returned to the Eastern Kuku Yalanji people in Far North Queensland, Australia, 2021

The UK becomes the first major economy to give up coal for electrical power, 2024

Internet provider AOL discontinues dialup service, 2025