Grandma is taking a long time to live

That's what the youngest said a few weeks ago. He meant well. In fact he meant just what he said - it takes a long time to live to be this old. And today my mom was weeping on the phone and said, "no one tells you what it will be like to be 93." No, they don't.

Now, I just read that Steve Jobs has died. For my age bracket that is ... I don't know. A bit of an earthquake. The ground shifts abit at least momentarily. I am just enough younger to have seen him as "older" but close enough in age to find it jarring. All my adult life he has been the "great innovator".

But he won't know what it is to be 93 and could offer no guidance there. I have no stock in Apple so it is really just interesting news (it took about 20 minutes for Google News to catch up with Yahoo News and move it to the lead story- that was interesting).

So life continues to be odd and not always (read: never) what I pictured when I was young. Also strollers have changed alot since Grandma was a baby.

pink ribbons etc

I saw my obgyn today (and if you are one of my male offspring that -if not the picture-should be your first clue to STOP reading NOW). It was for my "annual". Only they insisted I was last there in '08. Obviously they are sloppy record keepers since I was thinking I might have rushed this appointment and not be due back yet. Naturally they ordered a mammogram. Now on this one I had to concede it had been awhile. By which I mean, OK maybe a decade. But alot had happened in the last decade so it's understandable. Still I decided to not even wait to get home to call and make a date. This became involved. The imaging "center" wanted my old images and they weren't in their computer. I was not enjoying having to emphasize it was well maybe 10 years ago -could even be a little more.

You want I should cut to the punchline? The archivist found them in the soon to be purged shelf dated 1995. No computer record existed since they didn't even have computers back then (I am being funnny -of course they had computers -but they were hand crank models). Archival.

And why was I in a hurry to see the obgyn anyway? Because 1) I wanted replacement therapy -whatever it is I'm missing please replace. I'd looked over the newest flip flop and figured I had 10 more years to get benefits from estrogen and it's little helpers. There's a certain piquancy to age being the big new modifying factor since that was part of my dissetation theme. I could have told them. In fact pretty much any female could have told them that age changes everything. And 2) a public service annoucement about breast exams reminded me it probably was time. First I'd giggled when the very sincere sounding female voice said it was important to "feel your breasts often" -I'm very mature about these things. But they got me because she went on to say you should look for other signs like puckers, oragen peel rashes, etc and (I quote) slash your breast. I was so busy trying to protectively throw my arm across my chest (while driving so it wasn't easy) that it took a few moments for the next words, cancer risks, to sink in. Still it did remind me that it's slashing I want to avoid.

cloudy perspectives

Someone asked at a bible study the other day something about at what times "do you sense the presence of God?". That's easy. When the sun comes out. When the estrogen levels are good. "When do you not sense the presence of God?" Also easy. Invert previous answers. This is why I am wary of my senses. Gray rainy weather that lasts more than a day begins to make me question things and dwell on the worst possible answers to those questions.

Perhaps that's why I said something yesterday to my other and-always-sunny-on-the-inside half about the fact that knowing a person has a handicapped child changes how that person looks to others. In a word they look less sexy.

He took a moment to think about it. He said he doesn't think of himself as "the father of..." but I was probably right. Others do. I know I have watched those little clouds cross a face when someone (not every but some ones) learns I have a disabled son. If it is someone who has known me a while already it is just a momentary readjustment -but it is a readjustment all the same. It is, I think (caveat), why famous people suddenly become all "protecting-their-privacy" when a child has disabilities. The phot-ops are just so much less attractive. And suddenly they aren't someone you'd want to be because no one wants to join this club. As special as it is.

Seeing bugs

I took this picture almost 10 years ago. I didn't need reading glasses then. I was just really impressed that my new digital camera (a 41st birthday present) showed the little bugs I hadn't even realized were there. On reconsideration this should have been a clue. It wasn't cameras improving in this case. I suspect I wouldn't have been as impressed at the closeups in my 30s.

I was one who laughed (laughed!) at all those jokes about holding the menu farther away -that was just silly. And old women who thought some young man attractive -creepy. Groaning every time one got out of a chair -unnecessary! Ridiculous!

Why oh why didn't anyone tell me that I would still feel like a 13 year old even when I had gray hair? That I would still get annoyed with my mom for being critical and think my older sister was... well, my big sister? That grown children could be as exasperating as toddlers -that is if one can ever really consider them grown? Why did none of those older women tell me this? I tell all the younger women. And then I remember, vaguely, like the little bugs I didn't notice when I took the picture, that someone probably did mention something along these lines. There was some buzzing in the background but you know how silly old ladies can be.

scary world

... but a brother makes it less scary. How can you argue with a 18 year age difference now?

I was going to talk about what a mess the world is. And how depressed I get reading about what people find entertaining these days. Or how my mom complained that the other day when she said she was bored I turned the TV on to a cartoon for her to watch. That got a laugh -as she intended. Only she didn't add that I'd searched and searched for anything that wouldn't be offensive to some one born in 1918 -regardless of how open minded they had considered themselves (and I stayed with her to watch Kung Fu Panda and we both laughed at it -she skipped that too).

Also the van died and we don't exactly need another vehicle that seats 8 (even if only theorretically since we never really wanted to put 8 in that space not to mention we'd 'lost' one seatbelt years ago) but on the other hand crutches and walkers don't fit so well into anything else. And the sun has not been shining much and as the older brother in this picture used to say, "blah, blah, blah."

Then I looked for a picture from (just) yesterday to post and I saw some hope for the future again.

invisibility

There was a recent article in the WSJ on "invisible" disabilities. These are disabilities that you can't see. Sometimes I've heard them called "hidden"- same thing, slightly less dramatic. They are very terrible because no one can tell without you explaining... that it is very terrible. I knew all about them before the WSJ article about how these types of disabilities are costing schools more and more money. I knew because people think that 1) I'm much nicer than I am and 2) that my other half and I will sympathize even if we can't know how extra awful it is to have to explain to people that your child (or you) is disabled (but the hopeful sympathizee tries to explain that to me). Other than my height I have no real explanation for the first mistake but as for the second: let me take a whack at it.

Apparently some people think that with a visible disability the world is kinder and more understanding. Did these people not see the Hunchback of Notre Dame? Do they live some place where all the kids want to be best friends with the guy drooling in the wheelchair? Or even sit next to the kid with a stutter and a limp? If it was an option (and you know it is) would they have the word "disabled" helpfully tatooed on their child's (or their own) forehead?

And as for their additional burden of having to explain everything let me explain that seeing the CP doesn't explain anything. We still have to explain (and explain) everything all the time... no he's not as smart as Stephen Hawkin, no he couldn't walk witout the crutches if he really tried, yes he can hear you, -ask him yourself! Plus we don't just explain when we want people to know he has a disability and help would be nice (or not (which we also have to explain)). We have to explain to any random person who asks and to small children who point and stare and to sympathetic strangers. Or at least I have to if I want them to think I am much nicer than I am.

The picture goes with the rant because I took it on August 27th to show the flowers I had picked in preparation for Hurricane Irene -her rain is on the window. Or at least I think it goes with the rant but I'm not going to explain.

pet peeves

...no, actually I find this kinda endearing. When he did this when we were in our 20's and said, "take my picture." I just didn't get it (guyness was more of a mystery then) but when he still keeps doing it almost 30 years later how can I not at least try harder to look impressed? Clearly from his fashion sense it's not a vanity thing.

No, today's pet peeve is more of a statistics and probability thing. First there was the hurricane forecasts where they kept saying things like we were "overdue" for a big one. And now there is this plague-y movie saying basically the same thing for a really scary epidemic. Please understand that I am not saying the big plague, or the big hurricane aren't about to hit. But, unless we are talking earthquakes where no activity means a build up of pressure, in the land of probability a lack of events mean the missing events (probably) aren't that likely. As my advisor once said if the no. 22 (for example, I'm not picking on the number 22) ping pong ball isn't selected for a long run a true statistician doesn't think it has to come up next he* thinks someone swiped the no. 22.
The mechanisms for the next big plague sound plausible enough and many people much smarter and probably tenured think it's coming but what I still don't get is why they don't pay any attention to the fact it hasn't happened yet. I'm sure it's not because that doesn't sound nearly as important to fund and would make a movie even duller than today's blog.
Which reminds me seizures seem to be more like earthquakes than ping pong balls in lottery baskets and Caleb is about due. Shunt failures are somewhere in between ( a long spel of working means...it's working (see what I mean, no plot) but an even longer period could mean some wear and tear. I'm thinking we are in a sweet spot right now and it would be a good time to make travel plans.
If you read through this... thanks.

*the girl statisticians aren't playing the lottery