It was 13 years ago — almost to the day — that Bill received his Parkinson’s diagnosis. It was a blow, there’s no question about it. But in the way that Bill has faced every obstacle in his life, he accepted his future and began learning how to manage it. Me too. Except not with as much grace as he did.

Still, we’re always learning. What we have learned over the years is that for every symptom of Parkinson’s, there is a way to handle it. Most often, you can’t make the symptom go away, but there are ways to manage things so that you can continue to live an active life.

Bill’s most recent symptom is one that is very common for people with Parkinson’s: freezing. I’m not talking about always being cold, though he is that too. I’m talking about the feeling that both of his feet are stuck to the ground and won’t move. The symptom is obviously annoying, but it can also be dangerous. As you try to move your feet to walk, you can instead fall down and break your crown.

We had Bill’s semiannual check-up with his movement specialist last week, and we mentioned his newest symptom. No problemo, she said. (Well, she actually didn’t say those exact words because I’m not sure I would want the medical professional treating my serious ailment using slang.) She scribbled on a sheet of paper and handed me a prescription for him to see a physical therapist who treats people with movement disorders. “She will help you learn what to do when you freeze.”

Yesterday was our appointment with the newest member of our Parkinson’s team, the physical therapist. She examined Bill’s movements and abilities and flexibility. Her determination: He is pretty amazing for having been diagnosed 13 years ago. She also told us something I had never known before. Parkinson’s Disease affects the part of your brain that handles automatic responses. So, things like blinking, and smiling, and walking are no longer entirely automatic. It’s why people with PD often have somewhat emotionless facial expressions. It’s also why many people are unable to stand up from a chair and begin walking.

Her examination and analysis took most of our hour, but she taught us one specific thing to help with his freezing. When he stands up, instead of trying to immediately walk, he should take a second and shift back and forth a bit, giving his brain time to work and giving him some momentum to take the first steps. From what little we have seen, it really seems to work.

In the future, she will be working on his flexibility, his gait, and his balance.

On a lighter note, yesterday was our 30th wedding anniversary!

Yesterday I took Cole, Mylee, and Kaiya our for sushi lunch. I love to watch those three kids eat sushi. It’s worth every penny I spend to watch how quickly they can inhale a tray of salmon rolls or veggie rolls. Green mussels don’t last long either.

We had a bit of discussion about Kaiya’s unusual eating habits. She isn’t much of a meat eater, but likes two things: brats and McDonald’s hamburgers. Vegetarians would have been surprised to see her picking the asparagus out of her veggie rolls. “Basically, I’m a carbotarian,” she has told me in the past. On the other hand, Mylee and Cole are meat eaters.

Mylee summed it up when she told me, “The only time I’m a vegetarian is when I’m not eating.”

Boom.

Have a great weekend.

When I was a little girl growing up in central Nebraska, my mother had a special coat. In those days, men and women dressed up for church. Mom had one particular coat that she wore only when it was very cold and she was feeling very fancy. The coat was made from fur, and it was as soft as a kitten.

I loved to sit next to my mom at church when she wore that coat. I would lay my head on her and pet the fur as though it was alive. It was so soft, and smelled so nice, a combination of nature and her perfume. She looked so pretty. She probably felt pretty too, because that’s what wearing fur did to women back in the days before fur coats became a pallet for red paint. They made women feel pretty and fancy.

Somewhere along the line, I recalled her telling me the coat was made from muskrat fur. I’ve always doubted my memory on that account because muskrats always seemed ugly to me. I’m not a big fan of rodents. I recently double-checked my memory. Were muskrats pelts used to make coats?

The answer is yes. According to Wikipedia, the really expensive fur coats that were popular in the 1960s were made from the fur of leopards, jaguars, panthers, foxes, and, of course, minks. Less expensive furs were made from pelts of wolves and muskrats.

That Mom’s coat was made from muskrat fur suddenly made sense to me. My Dad loved my mother from the moment he met her (according to him) until the day she died. He would have showered her with all the gifts he could afford. He, however, wasn’t a well-paid businessman; instead, he was a hard-working, small business owner and baker. So, muskrat fur it was.

All of that didn’t matter to me then or now. I loved when she wore that coat. She looked beautiful, with her hair curled and her lips painted a pretty shade of red.

Memories flooded back to me the other day when I opened the closet in our guest room to begin cleaning it out and sending its contents to Goodwill. The coat hung between two dresses that have been particularly meaningful in my life — my wedding dress and the dress I wore to Court’s wedding. All three of the garments seemed to be looking at me and saying, “And just what in the hell are you going to do with US, my friend?”

The fur coat is a prime example of the truth I’m going to be facing every day: I have shit that no one wants. Seriously, who among my family wants a fur coat? No one wears fur these days. A large number of my family members live in AZ where it is unbearably hot for much of the year. Wearing fur is a no go and has been since the mid-1980s. I’m not sure Goodwill even wants a fur coat. And could I really bear the thought that my mother’s much-loved coat will go to a teenager for $11.95 to wear as a Halloween costume?

Night before last, I made a surprise visit to my niece Jessie to see the house she and her boyfriend recently purchased. I also took them a pretty pot of plants (I’m telling you that so that I can use alliteration in my blog, making me look smart.) In the course of our tour, I told her about the fur coat, and how it was going to probably end up at Goodwill.

Without hesitation, she told me, “Aunt, I will take the coat.”

I practically started to cry at that point. I know there is no way Jessie will ever wear the coat. But of all of my mother’s grandkids, Jessie is the one who reminds me most of Mom. She’s petite like Mom. She’s small, but powerful, like Mom. She has strong opinions like Mom. I am so happy to have the coat hang in her closet.

I think the part that convinced her was when I explained that the coat had her nana’s initials embroidered inside…..

Now, will anyone step forth and offer to take my wedding dress?

For many years, I kept my calendar on my cell phone and/or my iPad via my BFF Google. I wasn’t really very good at it. I have never learned the skill of typing words using my two thumbs. I’m a pointer finger all the way. It’s slow, but it’s what I can handle. I type text messages the same way.

But it wasn’t the speed at which I put appointments into my calendar that made me rethink my position on calendars. It was the fact that I live in two cities that are in different time zones for six months of the year. The problem was that I would put an appointment into my calendar for, say, 3:30 in one city. Google would then change it to 4:30 if I happened to change time zones. It had no way of knowing that I really meant 3:30 in that second time zone.

I know. I know. There is probably a way to fix this. I addressed the problem for several years by writing out the time in the notes section of my cell phone calendar. So, if the appointment was at 3:30, I would write out three thirty.

At some point in mid-2021, I said, “The hell with it!” Or something like that. I went out and purchased an old-school paper calendar. It had the dates. It had room for notes on the side. It was decorated with pretty pink flowers. I loved it. I love it.

Yesterday morning, Bill and I were driving to an appointment with his neurologist that was scheduled for 10:30. I remember making the appointment this past December, shortly after I had purchased my new paper calendar. I took the calendar with me to the December appointment. And when it came time to schedule our next appointment in six months, I pulled the calendar diary out of my purse, sort of like Captain Kangaroo pulling things out of his big pockets. The scheduler gave me a date and time, and I wrote it into my calendar.

So, I lacked no confidence in thinking, no, KNOWING, that our appointment was at 10:30. Except when we arrived at 10: 25, we were told that we were late for our 10 o’clock appointment.

“No, we most certainly are not late, because the appointment was for 10:30,” I said firmly. I took my calendar out of my purse and showed her. She was clearly horrified that I had a paper calendar diary with pink flowers. And since she is a millennial, she was unable to read my cursive anyway. She sent me to speak with the scheduler.

“I know our appointment was at 10:30, because I wrote it down in my calendar,” I said, pointing to the scribblings in my diary. She looked equally horrified, and I knew I would never convince them that they had gotten the date wrong on their nifty scheduling program on their nifty computer.

The scheduler was smarter than the receptionist, however. She blamed it on the previous scheduler who was no longer with the medical practice.

“Well,” I thought to myself. “She shouldn’t be with the practice if she can’t handle technology.”

We’ll never know who’s fault it was, but it’s always nice to have a scapegoat.

Within the last couple of months, Bill and I made what has been a difficult decision. We are selling our house.

Common sense tells us that downsizing is the right thing to do. Our house is now valued at almost five times what we paid for it. Thirty years ago, when we first moved into this house, I would never, ever, EVER have believed that it would sell for what we think it will sell for today. It would practically be a crime not to take advantage of the market, especially since there are so many other good reasons to move on.

We have four bedrooms, three bathrooms, a formal living room, a formal dining room, a den, an eat-in kitchen, an office, and a finished basement about a third of the size of our footprint. We spend the majority of our time in the kitchen, the bedroom, and the den. Well, and two out of the three bathrooms are popular places.

The dining room has become my puzzle room. I haven’t served a meal in that room in probably three years. The formal living room is simply a walk-through from the dining room to the staircase leading upstairs. Since Bill retired, he spends very little time in his office. My informal office (which is one of the bedrooms) is used perhaps half an hour each day as I write my blog.

Family entertaining has been handed over to our children. I thought not hosting holidays would make me sad. It hasn’t. Not even a little bit. I will happily contribute food and beverage if I don’t have to sweep or cook the turkey. Just like God made our children’s leaving home for college bearable by making teenagers UNbearable, he also made giving up hosting family holiday dinners easy by making the parents too tired to cook.

While Bill has done a yeoman’s job at caring for our beautiful back yard for 30 years, he will be the first to tell you he doesn’t want to do it anymore. There is little doubt that we will miss sitting on our patio and looking out at our park-like yard, but I will be completely satisfied with a small patio or balcony and some potted geraniums.

Over the next few months, Bill and I will be busy packing up 30 years of stuff. I have often complained about my basement storage area, which indeed is packed full of needless items. But it certainly isn’t the only area needing to be cleaned out before our real estate agent can “stage” our house. In one kitchen drawer alone, I found three wine openers, and two thermometers that haven’t worked since Bill Clinton was entertaining guests in the Oval Office.

Kids, take my advice. Don’t hoard. You won’t regret it. One wine opener is enough.

I mentioned earlier this week that our grandson Joseph turned 13 on Tuesday. It’s incredible to think that this boy is now a teenager. I also mentioned that I didn’t have a photo that looks anything like he looks now since he has grown up so quickly. His mother quickly changed that situation by sending me this photo of the new, grown-up version of Joseph Dean. Isn’t he so handsome?…..

Have a great weekend.

Messy
Last weekend, when Bill and I went downtown and pretended we were grownups, we ate dinner at a restaurant called Henry’s Tavern. Bill ordered barbecued ribs and very quickly proved he definitely was NOT a grown up. it didn’t take long before he was covered almost from head to toe with barbecue sauce…..

I told him if he was any messier, he would become a subject of one of the comedian’s jokes. He managed to clean himself up prior to walking over to the theater for the show.

Speaking of Grown Ups
On Tuesday, our grandson Joseph turned 13. He is a very nice young man, smart and sweet. However, it was only yesterday that he was born. I don’t know how the years go by so quickly. I simply can’t believe he is now a teenager. His voice went from sweet little boy to Barry White overnight. I would post a photo of the boy, but in every photo I have, he still has the little boy look about him. When we spoke on the phone on his birthday, he was teenager through-and-through. Happy birthday, sweet boy young man.

In the Weeds
Bill and I tackled the weeds in our backyard yesterday. It seems like since we’ve been home, we have been working hard inside, cleaning out closets and such. I cleaned up our patio the other day, making it at least a somewhat nice area for a cocktail party. But the yard was (and frankly, still is) quite a mess. But we at least made a start. Once the weeds are gone, Bill will put down some red bark to make the areas look fresh.

Goodbye to Childhood
You might remember a number of years ago, when Bill built the grands a sweet little playhouse on stilts in our backyard. As we prepare out house for selling, we decided that playhouse might not seem sweet to a buyer, but might, instead, look like an eyesore. Sunday, while Jen and I were downtown watching Leanne Morgan’s show at the Paramount Theater, Bill and his son Dave bought and set up a Bagster, and began the process of dismantling the whole shebang. The reality is that the grands are all too old now to be interested in playing house.

Ciao.