Test

Mommy Duty

It's been a whirlwind July. I planned on visiting my mother who lives in Sun City CA early this month. To avoid driving over the fourth of July weekend I left on Monday the 7th. My plan was to stay until Thursday or Friday and while I was there to have a serious discussion about the next stage of her life. At age 82 we all knew that she couldn't stay in the home she and my dad had bought out there thirty years ago. It was way too big for one person and I was getting the feeling that she really wasn't able to take care of it any more and was almost ready for something smaller with a plan for the rest of her life.

Well, life is what happens while we're making plans. After dinner Monday night I had to take her to the hospital for extreme shortness of breath. She spent the night in the emergency room because there weren't any room available and was moved to a hospital room the next morning. In talking to her doctor I learned that he'd been telling her for some time that she should be living alone and that she had some "mild cognitive impairment." Although she is generally healthy for someone her age, the cognitive impairment meant that she got confused about her medication. What led us to the hospital was the fact that she must not have been taking her blood thinner and blood pressure medicine appropriately.

The result was that between visiting her in the hospital--once that got her heart rhythms regularized she felt pretty good--I was touring the local retirement homes and making arrangement for her to move into one soon after her release from the hospital. She moved into an independent living one-bedroom apartment the following Monday. Independent living means that she can keep doing what she's been doing, going to church and out with her friends, but there's someone else monitoring her meds and seeing that she takes what the doctor ordered on the schedule he prescribed. We also got her set up with the visiting nurses to change the dressing on an open wound she has on her leg that hasn't been healing. Again, I think she was having a hard time remembering to follow the doctor's orders there.

My sister came out and did yeomen's duty de-trashing the house and getting her moved into her new digs. I came home for a couple of days while Peggy was there to take care of some things here. Then went back to be sure everything was settle, at least for the short term. While mom's still pretty good mentally we got the durable powers of attorney signed and I got signature cards for her bank accounts. Luckily most of her financial business is set to run on its own, checks are directly deposited and bills automatically paid, so her account weren't in as bad of a situation as they could have been. But of the few things that she should have been doing, nothing had been done since the first of the year and some things were hanging longer than that. I got all the financial business caught up, all the outstanding bills paid and all the checks laying around the house deposited. Luckily we paid the health insurance before it was cancelled! [Wrong! Found out later that we paid too late so her insurance has been cancelled. I'm not on the hunt for replacement Medi-Gap insurance. Ugh!] Financially she's in good shape at least for the short run.

Over the next couple of months, I will be going to see her more regularly, getting her RV sold, cleaning out the house so we can sell it and deciding if the place she's in now is the best for the long run or if she should be somewhere else. I'm blessed to have a wonderful husband and a great sibling who are each doing what they can to make this work out the best for my mom.

UPDATE 10/31/08: It's been a couple of months. Mom spent six weeks in the hospital fighting a colon infection but she's back in the apartment now and seems to be doing much better. We've disposed of the RV and between Peggy, my self and Caroline, a friend from my hometown that she considers another daughter, we've begun cleaning out the house. So we can eventually sell it. I was gratified the last time I went to visit that there aren't too many "For Sale" signs in her neighborhood. Since it's a 55+ subdivision it's got a limited appeal which may work for us (lots of folks still want to move to California) or against us (they may have to wait to retire and/or won't be able to sell their existing homes).

So the sage continues!

Fire!

It's fire season in Arizona! Woke up this morning to a house that smelled like a campfire. There's a fire burning about 30 miles south of here and the entire area is engulfed in smoke. For those of you who have been here, you'll understand when I say the smoke is so dense that I can't see any of the mountains around us. No Thumb Butte, no Granite Mountain, nothing. Behind our house I can see only to the next ridge, nothing beyond that! 

We're in that period just before the annual rainy season when everything is bone dry. Many fires are started by storms that have enough energy to produce thunder and lightening but don't have enough moisture to actually rain. However, our local fire was started by a stupid camper/hiker who got separated from his buddies and decided to light a "signal fire" in an area where all fires outside designated campgrounds are prohibited. According to the linked article from the local paper (click on title for link), we now have a 500 acre fire burning. As one of the commenters suggests perhaps we need a stupid camper law to penalize people who do really dumb things like this. (Arizona has a "stupid driver law" that charges people who drive around barriers across flooded streets for their rescue. Since we have so little rain, there are many places where instead of building a bridge the road go down and across the river beds. When we do have rain those low spots flood. There's always some idiot who's in a hurry and tries to drive through the water even though the roadways blocked--hence the name "stupid driver.")

7/1/08 Update: Here's an update complete with map and photos.

7/3/08 Update: As of this morning the fire has grown to over 9000 acres. Here's the latest report. 

Rain Water Catchment and Forest Garden

Last last summer my cohousing community applied for a grant with the State Forestry Department for the development and maintenance of our urban forest. I worked on the proposal and became the assistant coordinator of the grant when it was awarded. In October we did our first project under the grant, a partial inventory of the trees in our ravine. Here are some photos from that event.

Last weekend we did the second project, a workshop to built a rain water catchment cistern and planted a forest garden in front of our Common House. The workshop was open to the larger community as well as members of our Village. All in all we had about 40 folks working on the project including the workshop participants and the support folks who fed the workers, did meet and greet and all the other little things that make such a project a success. 

Above is a photo of some folks planting the forest garden which include an Arizona Ash, a couple of apple trees, manzanita bushes (the namesake of the community) and other small bushes and plants. When it all grows up it will be a complete top to bottom little forest with some food plants for both people and animals.

The cistern is a 5' x 6' galvanized metal culvert upended and sunk into concrete. It is positioned under one of the gutters from the common house so it can collect rain water during our rainy seasons. Once the concrete sets up we can install the rest of the plumbing and connect it to the irrigation system. Then we'll be set when the monsoons arrive in July. 

By this time next year we should have more water than we know what to do with. (The average home roof collects more than enough rain to water the average suburban landscape, even here in the high desert!) Although we get a lot less rain than our friends in Houston, our biggest problem here is that the rains don't come at the right time of year. Without help everything dies between the last winter rain/snow in March or April and the beginning of the monsoons in mid-July. We literally get no precipitation during this time! All but the hardiest plants can't survive the burning early summer sun without water. 

We'll do another workshop in the fall to install a second cistern to collect from the other side of the roof and a second, smaller forest garden on the other side of our common house. In the meantime, we're enjoying the sense of accomplishment of taking a barren patch of ground and turning it into a forest oasis while preserving our most precious resource--water.

We'll be putting a whole series of photos from the workshop on the Village website soon.

Update: The Prescott Courier, our local newspaper, did a great story on this event. Check it out here.

Canvassing Fun

Last night and this morning I presenting the steward training for my Unitarian Universalist Congregation. Our UUA consultant was suppose to do the training but he had a family emergency and wasn’t able to make it. Since I was the only person on the Joint Canvass Committee who as actually done an every-member canvasses before I agreed to present the training.

My experience as a steward is that it’s an incredibly fun experience. Many people avoid the experience because they they it’s all about asking for money or forcing people to give more money then they want to the congregation. Actually, it’s more about having a great conversation with either an old or a new friend and in the course of that conversation allowing them to make a pledge for the on-going work of the congregation. Along with all the logistics I had to present as part of the training I hope I was able to pass that attitude along to our stewards.

This is the first time this congregation has done an every-member canvass for many years so this is a new experience for most of our stewards. We’re hoping to make a significant bump-up in our operating budget as well as have a successful capital campaign. We’re trying to do everything “by the book” in order to enhance our chances for a successful campaign.

We’ve already pledged the stewards and a couple of other folks in the congregation. Those early pledges have already committed to 33% of our Operating Budget and 43% of our Capital Budget. YEA!!

Meebo Me

I've joined the 21st century and added instant messaging capabilities to this blog. With Meebo you don't have to have any IM software downloaded on your computer, just use the link in the sidebar on this page. I'm using this with my students so I'm trying to be online MWF mornings into the early afternoon and other days and evenings whenever I'm working on the computer. If I'm not online you can still leave me a message to let me know you were here (or in the case of my students to give me your excuse for not attending class LOL) but I can't respond when I pick up the message later. 

We can't let those teenagers have all the fun, so meebo me!

Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow!

Last weekend we had the first snow of the season here. Although today is bright and sunny with a temperature late in the afternoon of 40, we had several days of rain followed by intermittent snow and cloudy days. The snow was the nice kind--pretty first thing in the morning (when I took these photos) and mostly gone by the end of the day. 

Since we appreciate all moisture, the rain and snow were a welcome change but it was great to see the sun again!

This is our first full year here so we're still learning about the seasons and the weather. So far we haven't had a hugh surprises. This summer was one of the hottest in history in Phoenix and we certainly had our share of too warm days. But so far winter's been pleasant with rain or snow once in a while and temperatures cool enough to pull out the sweaters and warm hats but not bitterly so. How's the weather were you are? Want a change? Our guest bedroom is looking for some company. We'll be here throughout the holiday season so . . .