Thursday, March 26, 2015

Back in PA

Things changed in a hurry, once we were gone, and I got a call from my sister that my mom was back in the hospital. That happened right around February 1 so I hadn’t even been gone a month yet. Mom wasn’t eating right or enough and was so weak that she could barely function. The doctor said that it’s what they call a “tea and toast” syndrome. Seniors don’t cook for themselves much, they get run down and wind up in the hospital to get built back up and the cycle continues like that. The doctor said that mom was no longer able to care for herself and needed to either go in a nursing home or someone had to stay with her to cook for her so she’d get proper nutrition. I volunteered to fly back and stay with her. Linda and I had made her a promise when we went on the road in 2007 that when the time came we’d be there to take care of her so she wouldn’t have to go in a nursing home.

I’ve been home for about seven weeks now and I can’t tell you that it’s been easy. Mom can be very nasty, doesn’t like most of what you make for her  and I think she has some dementia issues. She got really nasty towards Linda, right before we left, so I don’t know what will happen once Linda returns home. Mom’s short term memory is pretty much shot and she doesn’t listen to anything the doctor tells her to do or not do. She continues to lose weight and she can’t afford to lose much more, since she’s down to 105# now. We have gotten her to drink the Boost drinks, to try and add some calories to her daily intake. She can have all the ice cream and junk food she wants…anything that might put some pounds on her. I’ve had people tell me that due to her age that she has a right to be grumpy or cantankerous. I disagree…I think if God has allowed you to be on this earth for almost 90 years that you should be damn grateful for every morning that your feet hit the floor. He put you here for a reason and it wasn’t to make someone else’s life miserable. Has your soul learned the lesson it was sent here to learn? Have you evolved into a higher level being than when you arrived here? I know one of the soul lessons I was sent here to learn was patience and boy have I been getting a work out in the last seven weeks. LOL

While I have been in Pennsylvania with mom, Linda is still out in Texas working. She hopes to finish up sometime in May and then come back to PA. It’s been really hard being apart. It was just a year ago that we spent six months apart when I went to Indiana to do a farming internship. Now we’re apart for another 3-4 months. But we’ll do what we have to do and honor the commitments that we’ve made.

The weather has been horrendous since I’ve been home. Lots of snow this winter and they are even calling for snow showers this evening. It’s been a very cloudy winter and we haven’t even had any days that resemble spring-like weather yet. My brother is in the middle of maple syrup season and there have been many days where it doesn’t get above freezing so the sap doesn’t run. At this rate the season will continue on into April before we’ll get some warm days where the sap can really cut loose. It’s also been very, very windy and I fear that the bees will have had a tough time getting through the winter. We won’t know until we get a warm spring day and my brother can check his hives for signs of life. Hoping that came through it ok but it’s doubtful.

This coming Tuesday I have an appointment with a dermatologist in the area to get a spot checked out that I’ve been watching for a few weeks. Rather than drive 15 hours round trip to Norfolk to my regular dermatologist, I got an appt locally. That way when they tell me that it’s nothing, I won’t feel so bad. If it is something, I’ll go back to Norfolk to get it taken care of. Keep me in your thoughts and prayers.

I guess that catches you up on what’s been going on around here. Keep smiling and living life to the max!

Monday, January 12, 2015

On The Road Again…

Yep, we are back on the road. My mom’s health situation seems to have stabilized (at least we weren’t going to a doctor on a weekly basis) so Linda and I are currently in Texas working several parks here. Mom is super stubborn and won’t use her oxygen machine while she sleeps, and doesn’t pay much mind to the doctors so there’s not much any of us can do at this point. She wants to live a quiet life by herself so I will honor that and decided to go with Linda to do the jobs that she had planned to do. I’m doing the office work and Linda B is working with the advertisers. We left Pennsylvania Monday, January 5th in order to get out ahead of some “wintry mix” that was coming the next day. We stopped in Lemoyne to pick up our friend Dot who is tagging along till early March, then started the long drive to Texas.

Usually the weather, in the southern states, is reasonably tolerable and we can boondock some nights in rest areas along the way. It has been bone chilling cold and seems more like we are back in Pennsylvania rather than in Alabama or the Carolinas. The polar vortex (do you remember how much I hate those two words) blanketed a large area of the country and we couldn’t seem to outrun it. It snowed our first night in a campground and we awoke to the white stuff. Consequently the roads were covered with salt, the rig became a mess and the windshield was yucked up with salt and streaks. When we stopped at a Flying J, I was happy to see the long handled windshield washers in the bucket.(the day before I had tried to use the short handled ones to clean the windshield, while hopping like a kangaroo to reach the viewing area. The guy filling up next to me was over 6’ tall and took pity on me and came to my rescue and washed the windshield for me) My happiness was short lived as everything in the bucket was frozen solid….it was that cold out. Bitter cold!

Flying J popsicle

We arrived in Port Aransas on Saturday and are set up in a nice site on the corner of the park. The owner is away on vacation and her front desk clerk quit the day she was to leave on vacation. She picked a woman patron in the park to run the desk while she’s away and we’re not sure if we’re on the site she wanted us on or not but we’re set up and will be here till Sunday. We’re working on four parks in total and will be here till the beginning of February. The weather was horrible when we arrived. Rain and 20-30 m.p.h. winds, then in the overnight hours we had thunderstorms/lightening and 30 degree temps. Today it is still windy though the temps are a little warmer. Other RVers who have been here for a while told us that it’s been really cold and miserable this year. The parks all seem to be busy (with the weather the way it’s been up north…who would want to stay home to experience that?).

Once we finish working on these parks, we will go to the home office for TACO training, then on to the company meeting and then to the northern part of Texas to work on the Texas travel guide. It’s not warm but it’s warmer than back home. Life is good.