Winter Imbolc Moon
Kate has a good heart. I’ve always known that. Yesterday it took an iv, a treadmill, some radioactive dye, thallium, and a scan, plus all those technicians and physicians, to prove it. Her lungs are good. Her heart is good. Sjogren’s is bad, or at least ornery, but her underlying health is good.
Since I took up the evening cooking, too, we’ve found that a big part of her daily stress was having to cook after daytime activity had worn her out. As we age, our bodies give us challenges. Some we can ameliorate with exercise or accessories, others demand new ways of living our daily life. A happy third phase depends on our ability to sort out and accept these changes. It really helps to have a partner because what one can’t do, often the other can. I’m so lucky to have found Kate for this journey because we can shift roles easily when we need to.
Rigel’s blood work so far is encouraging. Her liver values are back to normal. This may be a sudden old age shift to intolerance of chicken protein. The rabbit diet food is on its way from Chewy.com. Her appetite is good. If she gains weight on the new diet, that may be all we need to know. Fingers crossed.
If you have Netflix and Amazon Prime Video, I can recommend three shows: Black Mirror on Netflix, Humans and Phillip K. Dick’s Electric Dreams on Amazon Prime. All three are science fiction, all dystopian to one degree or another, but each is wonderful.
We have a cookbook, Twelve Months of Monastery Soups, and I’ve been making soups out of it that Kate thinks sound good. She has a favorite, vermicelli soup, a vegetable soup with noodles. I made some for her last night.
Full day yesterday. Up at 4:45 though Kep had nudged Kate awake earlier and she’d already fed the dogs. Wrote, ate breakfast, came back to the loft and filed all my open tabs in Evernote. That took a while since I’m still fiddling with Firefox Quantum, too, changing zoom levels, color preferences, customizing the tool bar. Got to the new workout from On the Move Fitness about 9:30. Finished, after icing my knee, at 11:00.
So I asked the technician. Turns out the specific tests at drive through testing facilities like the one I visited yesterday use a very specific algorithm, putting the car on rollers and then simulating different traffic conditions. The VW scam depended on the very specific, and standard, testing algorithm. They taught their cars to blow clean during the exact kind of testing done at state and county testing facilities.
Nap-ish. Kate made a pasta dish with chard, yummy, for the Beth Evergreen potluck. A Hanukkah shabbat service. We all brought our family menorahs with four candles, put them on one table and lit them. Rabbi Jamie lit the much larger Synagogue menorah. We sang songs, including dreidel, dreidel, dreidel, I made it out of clay and others unfamiliar to me. There were tables in the sanctuary and we ate the meal there.
Wednesday, adult Hebrew at 4:30 with Rabbi Jamie. Then, kabbalah at 7 p.m. Thursday. Mussar at 1 pm. Then mussar leadership group at 6:30 p.m. Result? Both nights up past my bedtime and an 8 a.m. rising this morning. Oooffdah, as we would have said back in the land of the frozen mustache.
Judaism is humane and that aspect of it appeals to me. A lot. Example. Rich Levine, the lawyer who did our estate documents, attended the MVP meeting last night. He had, he said, with his brother just unveiled his father’s gravestone. Is this a common custom, I asked? Yes, he said, most if not all Jews follow it. A loved one is buried, then not more than a year later, a gravestone is erected. The wait considers a journey the deceased needs to make that can last as long as a year. But, Rich said, you don’t want to make them think that you think it would take them a whole year, so usually the gravestone goes up somewhere between 10 and 11 months after burial. Much less fraught then.
Finished chapter 1 in the Hebrew text, about half way through chapter 2. My plan is to keep working on the chapters until I’ve finished. The Hebrew class itself is a bit chaotic, lots of great information, but they’re teaching Aleph and Bet, beginners and next level, together. I’m out to sea at least part of the time. OK. Most of the time. Still, I can now recognize shabbat in Hebrew and pronounce five letters. Slooooowwww. Next class with Joann Greenberg at 4:30. Two weeks ago Bill and Tom were here for the class.
Kate and I have begun an ongoing effort to help her manage the fatigue which Sjogren’s, rheumatoid arthritis, sarcopenia and reduced available oxygen cause her. We have to be smarter about what mix of activities she does and what ones I do, yet we can’t set up a situation where she becomes housebound. Not good. A delicate balance. Right now we’re looking at the week ahead and trying to imagine how the week will challenge her, then planning for that. A transition to a new phase of life for us.
Trying out another browser, Firefox Quantum. Changing browsers is a hassle, but the benefits of Quantum seem considerable. Right now I’m still on Chrome, but I plan to complete the transition today. I’ll let you know how the transition goes-for those who might care.
Set a time on Thursday to get a new workout. The old one has grown stale, but it brought me to a new level of fitness, one I can feel in day to day activities. Exercise kicks in endorphins for a right now feel good, but it’s most important role is health maintenance. Sarcopenia, the slow decrease in muscle mass that begins in our 40’s, accelerates in our 70’s. You know, opening jars, lifting boxes, pushing a snow shovel, cleaning up the garage, carrying in groceries, all those everyday uses of our body become harder and harder.
Exercise is a way to push back against these changes. It doesn’t solve them, but it helps. The cardio work maintains the pump that literally keeps us alive, helps it respond to crisis modes without giving up. Been at it so long it’s just part of my day.
Been trying to get Boiler Medics, the guy who installed our new boiler, out for a seasonal check of the system. Something’s happening there because they’ve ghosted me for the last few days. This behavior is the mountain way for tradespeople in our stretch of the Front Range; it’s frustrating.