Strange dream (a bit of an understatement)

I dreamed of suicide again last night.  No, I'm not in the least suicidal nor do I wake up depressed and angst ridden.  Then of course dreaming of taking one's life is not to be pooh-poohed as of no consequence either.  This time, and it was so vivid, it was my 2nd and 3rd husband, Wayne who did the deed.  I had a small derringer which I gave to him, asking him if he would.  So he shot me in the eye as a derringer isn't powerful and might not get through a thick skull.  As I died I called out to the cats, I'm sorry!  I love you. and felt terrible as I was shirking my responsibilities to everyone; Richard, the animals, esp. the animals as Richard wouldn't have the wherewithal to care for them

Then I saw myself fall forward.  We'd been kneeling and I keeled over like that footage one sees of executed prisoners of war.  I stood outside myself and watched me die.  But of course I wasn't dead.  I also felt bad because Wayne wanted to die too (he actually died years ago) but I couldn't shoot him as I was already dead.

Strange.

Then not so strange as it seems the dream is only reflecting what I feel.  I feel trapped.  Of course I do.  I love Richard and will stay with him but if I didn't a bit constrained compared to the old age I'd envisioned, then I'd be abnormal.

And we all know I'm as normal as peanut butter.

Sore finger.  Left forefinger having to press hard and repeatedly on C.  It seems, despite callous, a nerve is hit for a sharp pain jabs.  Sore fingers is one thing, this needle blow quite another.  Hope it goes away with time.  Didn't know guitar playing would be so physically difficult - but then cranking the left arm around the neck to play chords, cramming fingers into awkward positions with strength enough to depress strings ... I don't find it easy.

Just listened to Roxane Elfasci play Debussy's Claire de Lune on the guitar.  Exquisite.  Seemingly impossible to do but she does. 

Then I pick up my poor little Yamaha and clunk my way through scales and beginner pieces.

Sigh.

Anthony came for a visit today.  Was a bit shocked.  Saw Richard as he really is, in other words, saw the dementia in full twisted flight today as it isn't one of Richard's clearer days.  Anthony got quite emotional.  Richard's dementia has been buffered by the conversation before.  When his family is here we are all talking while Richard listens.  Today it was just the 3 of us  - and reality hit home.  Quite sad him seeing his father like this - a man who was always strong and in control - without being controlling. 

But Richard was glad to see him and that was good.  We ate here rather than going somewhere - and that was good too.  Personally I think Anthony needed a good dose of reality, to know the stage his father is at so that further deterioration won't so shocking.  If he'd been distracted by going out to lunch or having the others around he could've postponed this reality check. 

After a couple of weeks of not working on the book I did get some writing done today.  Curious as to what happens to Tanguy et al in The City.  Guess I'll find out!

Have been taking part in Inktober, where one draws something every day in ink and posts it to Instagram.  A few of my drawings have been done last thing at night.  Last night threw something together which I was embarrassed to put up - and lo and behold - had a nice comment and a few likes.  Will wonders ever cease?

Has been a good Sunday.  Most work done - not all - and didn't have to be anywhere other than this lovely lovely place - and saw a wallaby come to the driveway looking for leftover papaya or watermelon.  Didn't know.  Now I'll leave extra out - so the bush turkeys aren't the only ones that get a feed.

Back

Use it or lose it.  True.  Wanted to check exactly when I first picked up the guitar (depressingly find it is a year ago) and could not access this account.  Jumped on the password email account carousel, which is Google at its worst, in an abortive attempt to update old defunct email address and was denied denied denied.  In a devil may care WTF attitude pipped the plogger icon and lo and behold, it opened. 

So here I am in surroundings at once familiar and strange.  Have often thought of returning to record random thoughts - like yesterday; walking Mikaela to the gate on our morning constitutional, gazing at the tree trunks, one with a spot just the right size for my bum at its base, and wondering when was the last time I just sat and looked. I miss that healing limbo of Not Doing Anything when in fact I am doing very much as my hard edges, my rational borders soften and I, in some small way, become a part of nature of which I am a part.  Of which I am apart.  For that's the illusion  -  that I am apart.  Sitting and breathing and being restores a little reality to the unreality of life. 

Other random thoughts - while I try not to dwell on the slow but steady disintegration of Richard's cognitive abilities - often it's pretty brutal.  Today.  Lunch.  Him with fork tines turned down onto his stable table asking why it isn't running?  'What isn't running?' This, he says, stabbing the leaf pattern plastic top.  A minute before he'd been trying to butter the screw top of the Season All jar.  Yesterday afternoon, prior to our towing the wheelie bins to the curb (at least it's all downhill!), he talked about us dragging them up again.  'But they have to be emptied first,' I said.  When that didn't make sense, explained in detail how the big trucks would come in the morning to empty the bins and we would pick them up again and put them in the truck after.  Something we've been doing for 3 years.  I've found soiled underwear hidden in empty drawers, soiled jeans under shelves and he has this thing about socks.  Socks on the nightstand, socks on the fireplace, socks on the couch, socks multiplying like rabbits. 

We go through periods where toileting issues are not an issue, then a long dismal run where they are.  I am getting better at just getting through it and moving on.  Sometimes it takes a herculearn effort to let it go when it seems so obvious (to me) that faeces should not be found on the shower wall or shower floor, the outside of the toilet, on hand towels, under nails, on door handles. 

I briefly joined a FB group for dementia support but quickly unjoined.  Too awful.  A technicolour description of where we're headed.  I've got enough on my plate now, thanks, without depressing myself further. 

Beyond the practicalities of everyday, occasionally, seeing a photograph of Richard before I am overcome with sadness.  One thing I did read on that support group, having to grieve for the loss of someone while they're still alive, or words to that effect.  Too true.

Saw a woman in the checkout queque, snapping at her obviously demented husband because he was too slow and he didn't 'get it'.  And I wanted to say to her, I understand but you must remember, he can't help it.  Richard can't help it.  Can do nothing about his confusion, his loss of words, his loss of meaning and meaningfulness.  So I must help him as best I can; love him, slow down, be patient, support him.  Two cards I've drawn have been of help.  One said, Trust in the Path.  Okay.  I can Trust in the Path.  The other said, ask and you shall receive.  So I have asked for serenity.  If I can remain serene - it's gravy!  I have everything else.   One of the luckiest most blessed people I know so just trust and get through each day with grace and love.  That's all.

Post 49 of 92

Tried to be more open today.  What I read in Maria Popova's blog was an excerpt from Marion Milner's A Life of One's Own.  Milner spent 7 years experimenting with how to live.  It became a search for an authentic life.  We are so programmed to lead the lives required of us by others, including the ever pervasive media something Milner didn't have to contend with in the 1930's, that we lose sight of who and what we are.

What makes me happy? 

I'm not sure.  I think the first few steps out of the house in the afternoon or early morning when I leave the ceilings behind and come into (or out of) the great dome of sky.  Before I start to think, when the infinity of space first collapses the boundaries, I am free of self.  It might be for a nanosecond or long enough to take that obligatory deep clearing breath but it is there.  Then I fetter myself small with thoughts and half tos and plans and all the chains which take me away from the infinite now.

I think that's when I'm happiest.  Not attaining, not accumulating, not doing, just being. 

So yoga class.  Hard work.  She's a good instructor.  Knows her stuff.  At first her continuous commenting annoyed me.  Now I don't mind.  She is sharing what she knows and if she doesn't know it, what she should know she shares.  We're all on a journey of some sort or another.  Noticed today she conducts most of the class with her eyes closed.  I love that.  At home I do most of my practice with closed eyes.  Today she echoed what Milner wrote about, the opening up to the world, the being in the world, the happiness which comes from that. 

There are other kinds of happiness, certainly.  The giddy joy of falling in love, the quiet happiness of lives shared in complete trust, the happiness of danger averted (or sickness or loss, etc.).  There is also the happiness of creating.  Painting/drawing when the signposts are there and it is the bringing into being the complete pix within those hard fought parameters, being lost in that creation.  That is also joyful.

And there's the happiness of gratitude.  Gratitude which bubbles out from an excess of spirit.  Not the gratitude of rote.  I must be grateful for this and I must be grateful for that.  It's a gratitude of excessive life energy or love. 

Post 48 of 92

There were purple bruises under my eyes this morning.  I looked at them with not quite dispassionate interest.  I used to look at others with dark circles and feel a fleeting sympathy.  How awful, I thought in my youthful arrogance, not to be able to sleep well.  Now I know.  Strangely, unless it is a night with only 2 or 3 hours sleep, I seem to function all right.  Perhaps the dragging sensation of a loss of energy is too familiar now to be noticed. 

The strange sensations experienced during the night is part of a whole other world, another existence of which I am now too aware.  I would have sworn one of the cats had scratched the inside of my left arm midway between wrist and elbow.  It burned and stung for hours.  I looked for the telltale marks in the dawn light.  My skin was unmarked.  How odd.

I used to never notice my hair, past shoulder length, getting tangled around my neck in the night.  Now I understand why long haired women pile their hair in a top-of-the-skull ponytail.   I seem to spend half the night unwrapping hair, lifting hair, rearranging hair.  

I listen to Richard's breathing, his snoring, his conversations, his occasional shouts and laughter.  I don't wake him unless he gets too exuberant and talks too loudly for too long.  Odd that the soft Parkinson's voice he has during waking hours gives way to his normal speaking voice at night.

The cats are either good company or pains in the arses.  Natalia, the tiger cat with the hair trigger purr, is my boon companion.  She doesn't seem to mind my constant changes of position, my kicking legs, my pillow gymnastics.  She rides the blanket waves with a constant purr and allows my draping hand to find comfort in the softness of her fur.  She often rubs my fingers with her whisker pads, over and over again.  If I pet her back, knowing just the right places to massage or knuckle rub, she gets overexcited and bites me.  It is a sign of affection and a small price to pay for her company.

So, Monday afternoon.  Before me are the should do's, a list of cleaning, gardening and vehicle jobs to make even the most assiduous chatelaine depressed.  So I don't do them.  I'm a piecemeal cleaner.  Save for the morning blitz; vacuuming (3 cats, a dog and 2 humans in one house, we'd drown in hair if I didn't), kitty boxes, bed making, laundry doing or folding, I don't do much in the way of projects anymore.  I clean one window, vacuum one car, weed one section of a garden, tidy up one corner.  One little bit at a time does, barely, keep total chaos at bay. 

This is the new reality.  Richard tries to help, wants to help but usually makes a project more complicated and more time consuming than it would be if he didn't.  He washed dishes without water the other night.  I feel like an overzealous employer having to double check his work.  The work ethic is still there, the work know how has long fled.

It's a big change for me, Miss Anal Retentive, Everything Has to be Perfectly In Order.  Now I know time is worth more than having a super clean house.  If I want to write, yoga and learn guitar than I have to forego Miss House Perfect. 

So far so good.  As time goes on and Richard requires more than...well, we'll see.  People say there's home help for bathing and feeding.  God damn it. 

Post 47 of 92

Sky is just beginning to lighten.  It's not that early but we're still on daylight saving which makes 6:30 look like 4:30.  There's a push to change back March 1 rather than Easter.  I heartily agree.

Have been writing and painting and reading and practicing guitar and yoga-ing in addition to the usual stuff. Had a pretty bad day last week.  Not sleeping, overly sensitive, depressed but other thatnthat 2 day blip I'm staying afloat pretty well.  What else is there to do?  The deterioration in Richard seems to be more pronounced or happening faster than before.  He was doing the dishes (I cook, he washes up) without water in the sink.  His verbal skills often fail and we spend more time than usual uncovering what he wants to say.  Sometimes he can just show me.  Have made a dentist appointment for next week as his teeth are in a dire need of a clean.  He brushes them twice a day but I didn't know he wasn't brushing them well.  The Parkinsons interferes with manual dexterity so that he isn't getting the brush around his teeth as he should.  Which accounts for his terrible breath.  Maybe that will help.  That and getting him on an electric toothbrush. 

Dental hygiene isn't the sort of thing I considered would be an issue. 

But we're ok. 

Was pushed and cajoled and asked to apply for Art Post Uki, which I did - and was knocked back.  S in a terrible position as she had to tell me when she was the one who nagged, and I mean nagged, in the nicest sort of way, to apply.  Now I have been asked to re-apply.  But I won't.  All my adult life I have sketched and drawn for my own pleasure.  Last year I sold a few pieces, before that I'd given some away, bartered some, had one in a raffle - but there was never any pressure to please any one other than myself.  So I was happy.  Of course some days (many days) I couldn't draw worth crap or was bereft of ideas or just generally uninspired, so although I could be frustrated about my work, I was never sad.  Creating art never made me sad. 

When I was refused I was sad.  Thin skinned, ego deflated, too proud, yes all those things but also really sad.  Someone had a say about my work that meant something.  One auditor liked it, another didn't (awkward composition, doesn't know anatomy).  I've always created stuff for me.  If another liked it, or loved it, wonderful, but it was always for me.  Now I'd let someone else's opinion matter.

So I've made a decision.  No more.  I'll show in the locals, I've got 2 in a raffle next month, but I will never put myself in a position where I'm chasing 'success'.  I was told if I had a 'theme' or made this item my signature in every work or told a story....  This is a different version but the same thing Mal Camin said to me 40 years ago, 'if you change your colour palette your work will sell' and he'd sold out to Worth Avenue and Martha's Vineyard to do family portraits of the wealthy.  He was a talented artist but he was sad.

Post 46 of 92

Strange lights in the sky that weren't fireworks.

I took Mikaela out for her piddle break last night at 11:30.  The sky was clear and cloudless.  Stars bright all the way to the horizon.  While she was doing her business I saw a flash with my peripheral vision, rather like weak heat lightning.  I looked up and saw thin illuminated cloud like shapes: round, oval, losenge - traversing the night sky.  The 'clouds' came from the north.  They sailed or jiggled, hovered,  swung side to side or wobbled then disappeared to be replaced by another.  Mostly they were visible one at a time but sometimes there were two, one 'coming' one 'leaving'.  They didn't seem to move in a 'natural' way which made me think a new gadget has been invented which makes shapes in a clear night sky.  And that was another odd thing.  If there had been clouds then the explanation would be that lights were being reflected off the bottom of them - but there were no clouds.  The illuminated clouds appeared then disappeared seemingly from thin air. 

The only other explanation I can think of is that through some weird atmospheric refraction these were reflections of fireworks going off - before midnight - somewhere else.  Except.  Fireworks tend to shoot up and then dissolve slowly downwards.  These clouds - translucent, not opaque, defined but fuzzy around the edges, sometimes striated along their length - did not move consistently in one direction.