Here my dad poses in front of the place of his first full-time teaching job. It's now an administration building, but at the time it held all the classes for the small town of Stafford.

( Read more... )

I've been on a little vacation from livejournal. Trying to figure out what I could cut back on to get more time in my life for bicycling and housework, eljay was an obvious choice. I haven't read my friends list since Saturday morning, and I doubt I'll catch up. If you had something important happen that I should know about, let me know. Or if you posted a cool bug photo looking for an identification, I'd like to know about that too.

I visited my dad this weekend. That's him up above going into the nursing home where my mother lives. She's wasting away; she weighs 90 pounds, which is probably half of the weight she was when she went in there 15 years ago. She can't eat by herself, and even when someone helps her she often aspirates her food. That's why Alzheimer's patients often get pneumonia. It's really odd to see her as a skinny old lady. I had to accept this time that this may be the last time I see her.

I still want to tell her story here, and I've written out a lot of what I know, and now I need to fix things that my father clarified for me. Today, as we wandered dirt roads in Union Connecticut, he told me that she was bold and adventurous, before her disease made her afraid of everything.

I enjoyed the weekend, spending time with my dad. We walked the Connecticut River Towpath today, as we did about this time several years ago. I knew more birds, was able to identify yellow warblers by song, and we saw signs that beavers live in the area. Charlie enjoyed swimming in the canal and being off-leash in a safe context outdoors.

Today we went to Bigelow Hollow State Park, a truly huge park by southern New England standards, definitely a bigger chunk of protected forest than anything I've been in in Massachusetts. Charlie swam himself sore; he's still on the couch three and a half hours after we got home.

On the way out of town I bumped into a couple Indian guys, a father and son, who were on their way to Six Flags when their car broke down. They were in a convenience store asking, with an edge suggesting desperation, to use a bathroom. The clerk told them that the nearest public restroom was a mile away, by the amusement park. I tidied my car a bit, shoved Charlie over to one side, and offered these guys a ride. I'm still astonished that the convenience store guy wouldn't let them use their lav. What's the big deal? I guess being so close to a big tourist attraction they must get hundreds of people asking every day, but come on, their car broke down and they were desperate! I was glad to help out, any way. I feel that since I didn't get my license until I was 30 that I have 14 years of rides to give back to the universe.

Unfortunately, Karma is mysterious and non-linear, and like luck, it requires your active participation. That's my explanation for getting caught in Red Sox traffic on my way home. The really stupid thing is that I had been watching the game a couple hours ago, so I can't claim ignorance, just thick-headedness. It was so frustrating to be less than a mile from home, poking through traffic for 20 minutes. At 2;30 I was a Red Sox fan; at 5;45 I hated all Red Sox fans.

I have a ton of pictures to fix up and share, most of which are silhouettes of birds. I'll try to be a ruthless self editor. Soon Alexis and I will be reunited. She's been in Vermont while I've been in Connecticut. Her pictures will be undoubtedly better than mine, but it will be nice for those of you who read both of our blogs to see pictures of different things for a change.


Charlie is always a little out of sorts when he visits my Dad. I think he's worried that I'm going to leave him there forever.

I should have mentioned it earlier, but Charlie is a big hit at the nursing home. It's amazing to see people who rot in their wheelchairs all day brighten up when they see him. Today one of the younger residents--a woman in her 40s or 50s with some kind of degenerative illness--showed some interest in him. She seemed physically unable to change her facial expression, but once she started petting Charlie, the corners of her mouth turned up ever so slightly, hinting the smile that she was feeling. The joy that the dogs bring us is nice, but the joy they can bring to people who otherwise live without it is something pretty miraculous.

I spent a good hour trying to write about my mom. I got about 700 words of biography out, a lot of it qualified by "I think" and "I gather," meaning that I'm really unsure about a great deal of my recent family history. I didn't even get to the part where she got sick, and I still found it to be an emotionally exhausting exercise. It must be something I need to do, but it's so much harder than I thought it would be.

I realized that she never got to know me as an adult, which is really frustrating, considering I can see her anytime I want. I don't get to make her proud, ever again.

My mom starting showing signs of dementia when she was in her 40s. We didn't know it at the time, but in retrospect we've worked it out. In fact, every time my Dad and I discuss it, we push the earliest signs backward in time. She has had Alzheimer's disease almost half her life. She hasn't spoken or stood up in over 5 years.

This past week, I had my review at work, which included the fact that I forgot to do a couple very important things--the particulars aren't important (I can't write about them publicly) but it was a bonehead mistake, that anyone can make, that I did twice. If I do it again I'll probably be fired. (Otherwise my review was positive.) I don't know if it was just garden variety carelessness, or a sign that my mind is literally turning to mush. I haven't had a negative review at work in my adult life, so this hurt my pride at the same time as it made me contemplate my mortality in a way that I never have before.

There is a test to find if you carry the gene for Alzheimer's.

There is no cure.

There are some treatments, but they look like snake oil to me.

I want to be a good companion to my wife as long as possible. I don't want to be taken care of.

The disease is slow. It's hard to diagnose. It leaves the sufferer perfectly healthy as their brain slowly, too slowly, dies. It makes everyone who surrounds the sufferer into sufferers. It does little physical damage, but creates so much suffering. I don't want to make my loved ones suffer.

My dad has a lot of hearing loss. I've inherited it. What else have I inherited? Do I want to know?

( 7 warning signs from WebMD )

Another red maple (and it's many fallen leaves) in my dad's yard.

( more fall and family pictures )

Yesterday's tree was Japanese Pagodatree or Chinese Scholar Tree (Sophora japonica or, I think the new scientific name is Styphnolobium japonicum--sources list both scientific names with one or the other set in parentheses) a hardy Asian ornamental legume tree used as an urban accent. Much thanks to bezigebij for the identification.

purplebunnie, I haven't forgotten about you! Your t-shirts are in a box in the trunk of my car, waiting for an opportune trip to the post office.

If anyone here is a comics fan, there's a great interview with Shannon Wheeler (of Too Much Coffee Man fame) here. Shannon is one of the few cartoonists that I was into back when I was involved in comics whose career I've kept up with. Mostly because he has a livejournal: tmcm.

Speaking of which, my brother brush_rat has another page up of his webcomic, Waiting for the End of the World. It's got Satan and a minion talking of disembowelment and puppetry. What's not to love?

In science news that's wholly unsurprising, but probably of interest if you read my journal, barred owls and moose are two of the species that have been discovered deliberately associating with human created habitat for ecological reasons. The barred owl article coins the phrase "uber-forest," which I take to be a meaningless attempt at a grabby headline. Why would the post urban forest be any more "uber" than the pre urban forest?

My Aunt replied to an email of mine with an actual paper letter. It was kind and conversational and wise and great to receive. My mother's mortality and my father's reaction to it, and me and my brother's role in things are nicely and simply explained. My mom was lucky to have an older sister who is so smart and solid. This weekend my brother is coming back east for about 48 hours and I'll meet him at my dad's house tomorrow afternoon. It will be the first time in over a decade that the three of us will be in the same place, without other friends and family members there.

Of course, just before that meeting I will have taken the Massachusetts Pesticide Applicators License Exam, a test that doesn't seem to be too difficult, but Friday is going to be a stress sandwich no matter what I do: Work from 7 to 11 AM, exam from 12 to 2:30, drive to Connecticut, face mother's mortality in a family setting. That last part will probably be relaxing in an odd way.

Egads, I'm going to be late unless I close the thing now. See you this afternoon!

Mom and Dad.

On this day in 365 Urban Species: Northern red oak.