Less than 6% of people ever get this kind of day!

Happy 65th Anniversary Mom and Dad!

Mom still has the circlet feathered hat, in a saucy coral pink with olive feathers here and there. The white satin peplum suit didn't survive a year, Mom cut it up for a slip! I think she looked like a movie star; so glamorous, and Dad in his double breasted pin striped suit was pretty Hollywood himself.

I tried to find some reliable information about the percentage of marriages that last 65 years.

The closest I came was a government document that stated in 2001 only 6% of all married people at that time had been married over 50 years.  I can't help but wonder if that percentage has grown with all the right after WWII weddings that took place in 1946.  

Even with that big bump in the wedding statistics, I suspect you two's anniversary is a still a pretty rare event.  I am so blessed that both of  you are here to celebrate it and plan to go out for a dinner theater event.  Yah!!! 

Wish I was there with you to celebrate with you.  Shall we start planning for the big 70th in five years?  Why not...I think that day will be here before we know it.

Love you both and may God continue to shower your marriage with blessings!

Whirlwind pt. 2

(My iris are blooming, for the first time.  Loving it!)

For some crazy reason, my last two posts have posted without pictures! 
Then I had to re-post the pictures to see if they WOULD post.
Then I had to go back and add the text.
Anyone else experiencing this blogging glitch?

Ahem.

I'm going to give posting this post another try.


Sunday morning we were pretty tuckered out from all the fun we had on Friday and Saturday.
A quick trip up Cottonwood Canyon to Silver Fork for their locally famous sour dough pancakes finally got us out of the house again.
Back home we retreated downstairs for a private showing of Laura's Texas/Argentina/Uruguay pictures.
(Notice how Hart is snuggled up with Laura and Bernie.  Shy Hart usually will have nothing to do with visitors, but as soon as he saw Laura on Friday night he came right up to her and wanted to sit on her lap.  He hadn't seen her for two years, but clearly remembered she was a friend.  And people say animals don't have memory...)

A couple of thousand pictures seen on the TV screen with her Argentina purchased music CD playing along was a fantastic way to join her on her adventures.  She had sent us her "best of the best" shots via Picasa web album.  We wanted to see ALL of her pictures, so she flew into town with her camera chips and we got to see almost every minute of her wonderful trip.

(And wasn't it very bloggerish of me to take a picture of her picture on the television screen?  Well, my camera just happened to be right next to me, so why not?)

Surfer Girl Laura hangs ten on an old canon.
That's something you just don't get to see very often.

I thought it was interesting how someone in Uruguay had crocheted  a window cover.

Sadly, Bernie had to fly to Houston late Sunday afternoon, leaving us girls to our own devices.
A quick drive up to Neff's Canyon for a short hike on a trail I hadn't known about before, and then a quick run up Mill Creek Canyon to try our luck at morel hunting.

About a five minute trail walk, then I spotted a morel.
Then Laura spotted a HUGE morel.
Then we just kept finding them until I had filled my new willow creel full of mushrooms.

Nice collection of 'srooms!

This one was huge.  Absolutely blew me away when I saw it in the forest.
We had been invited over to our neighbor's home for a glass of wine; they had not had an opportunity to meet Laura before so we just left the unwashed mushrooms on the plate as we headed next door.
My neighbor had graduated from her surgical internship the night before.  We toasted her success and endurance.  Not only had she completed the two year program, but had produced two babies during that time as well.
Whew!

When Laura and I came back home about an hour later I went to pick up the plate of mushrooms so I could wash them before cooking.
That whitish spot:  The mushrooms had spewed spores all over the table while we were gone!
Laura was totally grossed out.  She had refused to actually touch the mushrooms in the first place; she used a large spoon to lift them out of the earth and over to my awaiting creel.
I would never have guessed my nurse daughter would be so squeamish about mushrooms and spores and such.

A little olive oil, garlic salt, and the mushrooms were cooked up for dinner.
Anyone have any other suggestions about how I could cook morels?
I am thinking with butter and a splash of wine might be good.  Maybe chopped up with some pasta?


Then we just talked and talked and talked into the night.
We often talk on the phone together, but lately with work and school our conversations have had to be rather short and farther apart.
That night we got all caught up.

Mother-Daughter talk.
Friend to Friend talk.
Heart to Heart talk.
The kinds of talk that I had always hoped I would have someday when my little girl grew up.
It was even better than I had imagined it would be.

It was just a grand long weekend together.
A whirlwind of memories and good times together.
I'll take those kinds of times together, any time.

My baby...he's thirty.

Thirty years ago on March 7th.

Fourteen years ago.

And today.

He's thirty.

My son is a man that I am proud of.

He says he still feels like a kid though.

(I hope he always does...)

He and his bride chose to celebrate the milestone by taking a ski weekend in Jackson Hole.

We got to take care of their two kids, Meowsie, age 10, and Cheeto, who is 9 months old while they were gone.

A simple task it was, just a matter of pouring some kibble in a bowl and petting them for a few minutes.
We consider this a training period in our lives, and hope someday we will be trusted with grandkids that don't have triangular shaped ears and fluffy tails.

On the actual birthday day, Jeff and Rachel drove back to SLC and came to to our place for a dinner.

Their youngest, Cheeto, came with them.
Cheeto wasn't expected, but is always quite welcomed.

(Tiggie peered around the corner at Cheeto, then headed downstairs to try to forget what he had just seen. We have no idea what Hart did. At least both of them behaved themselves around their young nephew.)

Bernie planned, shopped for and prepared the birthday meal.

Oh so good!

Dessert was a meringue with a cream sauce and fresh fruits.

A perfect finish after a fish/brochette/garlic/tomato based meal.

Cheeto entertained us by chasing a cat toy while we caught up on life: What is going on at church, work, house hunting for them, domestic experiences, the economy.

How our cats wake us up in the morning.

How our cats are insane.

Our whole family talks constantly about our cats.
Tiggie and Cessa each have blogs, and Cheeto appears regularly on Facebook.
When we call each other, it is understood that mostly we will be discussing the latest thing our cats have done, and how cute their latest pictures were.

Cheeto in the jungle.

Cheeto on the hunt. I think his face looks like a little orange pansy.

And I think how his whiskers all point forward is cute, cute, cute.

Gramps and Rachel and Cheeto saying farewell after a fine evening.

Yes, all my children are now in their thirties.

How can that be when most days I still feel like I am only about thirty four years old myself?

And why don't they make that cute little graph thingie from Moms that are my age?

You know the ones I am talking about; that say Oscar is now 2 years, 4 months and 14 days old, with a cute little graphic of a tyke riding a train or a pony or some such, like this one: Maybe I could have one with a cute graphic of a blond haired boy skiing or riding a motorcycle, balancing a laptop and a mortgage, and underneath today it would say:

Today Jeffrey Bernard is 30 years old.

The next day it would say:

Jeffrey Bernard is 30 years and 1 day old.

I'd really like that for each of my kids.

Because you never ever get over how amazing it is to have a child.

It is an on going blessing.

Each day, each month, each year, and each decade.

(And even now, at age 30, he is still saying things that makes me laugh.

Ever heard of 13 bean soup, or maybe 14 bean soup, or something like that?

I used to make that kind of soup all the time.

Tonight Jeff told me he never could stand my 43 kinds of bean soup recipe. I laughed. And am writing it down here to remember it.)

Fanastic News!!!!

We are bouncing off the walls around here!

It is news we have been hoping for, waiting for, and praying for.

Our daughter LauraRN will soon be having new letters and a title with her name!

All of us need to rejoice!

This will effect hundreds, nay, THOUSANDS of people's lives!

It could even effect YOU personally!

While we are cheering for other young people right now who are putting their lives into learning how to best slide down mountains and dance on ice...

While we pay millions to see other people play act in movies, and to read all about their lives in magazines...

While we set aside time and money to pursue and participate in traveling, ceremonies, and pleasures...

This young woman, my daughter, is choosing to put years of her life into learning all that she can about things that will matter to all of us who expect to grow old.

While the world celebrates the baby, the child and the beautiful young adults with adorable pictures and stories, the elderly life phase is being quietly re-examined and re-considered by geriatric experts.

There are questions that they are asking that we all should be asking ourselves:

How shall it be to be old?

How shall it be to be old and frail?

How shall it be to be old and needing care?

What will be done for (or about!) you and for me when we become old.

If we as women live to be 90...should we still have our yearly mammograms?

And what if cancer is found....would it be best for us to undergo chemo, radiation, or surgery?

What if we are experiencing age related dementia...will we be OK with the procedures that are needed for a mammogram?

If we are 90, and have a stroke, and are unable to speak or eat, and our heart stops, will administrating CPR still make sense to us?

(Not CPR as portrayed on television...CPR as it is in real life; with the smell of burning electrocuted flesh, the sound of ribs being broken, and needles being punched into a naked and exposed body surrounded by a host of people? And if the heart begins to beat again, each breath will be taken with the hideous pain from the expansion of ribs that will take take months to heal).

Would we rather be pain free and unaware of family that flies in for a final farewell, or awake, and in agony?

When we are old, will our goals be honored? Will we be allowed to die at home if we wish, instead of undergoing another round of treatment in a hospital?

What is "old" anyway? Is it a number, or a state of being? Can you be old at 50? Can you not be old at 85?

Will decisions by us concerning quality of life and quanity of life be honored?

Will our decisions be trumped by the decisions made by others who do not know us?

Who will we be able to trust to help guide us and our families in making decisions concerning final days?

What of those who have no family who cares about them? What of those who gradually lost kin to due to time or distance or family dysfunctions?

I listen to the health care debate, and shudder at the mention of "death panels".

I also shudder at the mention of treatments given to terminally sick elderly who wish to die gracefully, yet endure last ditch efforts to sooth the conscience of family members who want "everything done" when they themselves couldn't be bothered to even call or write or visit in the prior years.

These situations play out all around us. We want to look away...we want to hope that all will be just fine...and we don't really want to think about all this...until the moment that we have to.

As I said at the beginning of this post: Rejoice.

There are people, not many, but a few, who are willing to take up the task of gaining knowledge about these matters, and who will gain wisdom to share, who are willing to pray and hug and listen, and more importantly, are willing to spend time and money to get some letters and a title added to their name that will grant them the right and priviledge to speak out.

Laura will be one of those people.

She has been accepted into a Master's Degree program at Pt. Loma Nazarean University. She will be studying for her Master of Science in Nursing, concentrating on Geriatrics and Pallative Care.

She has worked in America's finest hospitals in ICU units, Oncology wards, and Bone Marrow transplant units. She has participated in delivering the most cutting edge life saving measures.

Now she works in Hospice, seeking to provide what is most important when the life saving measures will not save, when "treatment" can not deliver the "outcome" of cure or relief.

She has always been there for me when I needed a nurse. I am in awe that she will know what I will need as I and those I love age.

There will be at least two years of schooling ahead for her, done while working full time as a Hospice intake nurse, paying her own way, hopefully with scholarships easing the financial burden. (If only she was able to ski or dance well on ice...then she would be getting paid by some corporate sponsor as she learns, instead of paying for her studies herself. Ah well...society's values often defy reason).

Right now she is the person getting paid to be with patients and family as they confront an inevitable truth: Death is certain, yet life remains; goals can be set and comfort can be achieved.

She is paid to be in the room with those adjusting to their new reality.

Those in the room with her are lucky to have her there. For them the moment will pass, but for her there is always another such moment to come. She is ready each time, for each family, for each person.

And because she cares, she is willing to spend some of her life to prepare to know how nurses can care better for all of us in the future.

That's my idea of fantastic news.

That's my idea of cause for rejoicing.

Further reading:

Mammogram/elderly demetia blog post-love this one!

Mammograms and frail elderly/dementia.

More on Mammograms and elderly

Last years of life needs. of the oldest of the old.

Quote about Geriatric Advance Practice Needs:

The need for geriatric advanced practice nurses (APN) is growing as our nation's older adult population continues to expand with baby boomers nearing retirement age. Geriatric APNs are expert nurses prepared at the master's degree level who provide, direct, and influence the care of older adults and their families in a variety of settings. These nurses are uniquely prepared to improve outcomes of care, promote quality of life, and provide comprehensive care for older adults.

Though the need for geriatric nurses has been identified, the number of students pursuing this field of expertise has not expanded sufficiently, nor been distributed appropriately to various geographic regions and health care settings. The reasons behind the lack of student interest include a limited number of master's programs in this area, few scholarship opportunities, and the lack of visible leadership to attract new students to this career path. If we are not successful in recruiting new students into geriatric nursing, we will limit the access to and quality of care available to our aging population.

Snoopervisors, Seasonal Decorating and Such Fun

Our daughter Laura purchased her very first home last May. It is a two bedroom/two bath condo in San Diego that was built the same year she was born, back in 1978.

It needed a few things to make it just right...like plumbing and electrical repairs.
And kittens.

Laura managed to get the kittens...but the repairs were left for her daddy!

Bernie and I flew to San Diego last Thursday with suitcases full of power tools and such. The cases barely made it for weight limit, and of course everything in the suitcases were sharp or dangerous.

The cases made it on the plane after TSA inspection.

Apparently the cases needed Kitten Inspection as well.

Cessa waited patiently for the work to commence.

(Secretly she wants to be a plumber when she grows up. She has heard that girl plumbers make lots and lots of money!)

She also is considering becoming a painter...

(She is very open to all facets of the construction industry. Maybe some day she will have her own show, something sort of between Animal Planet and Divine Design)

(She's not quite sure about what end of the brush should be used....)

Hensley on the other hand is much more of a poetic soul.

He preferred to play with snowflakes while the plumbing and electrical work was being done.

Yes...the grandkitties are growing and are oh so cute when they cuddle up together for their naps.

They especially like taking naps with their Grandpapa.

The kittens are now allowed out on the balcony, where they sit on thrones...um... I mean antique chairs.

It was hilarious to watch them snoopervise the neighborhood.

Laura is such a good "Sister" to her kittens.

SO nice to be tall when working on overhead lighting fixtures...

Let me tell you...having TWO new florescent lamps inside a new plastic cover really shows all the dirt in a kitchen! I had wiped and swiped the kitchen down...after the new lamps were installed I had to start all over.

Cessa has no interest in being a maid OR helping with house work.

She prefers to just pose nicely on soft fluffy down comforters.

Hensley feels the same way about housework...

Cessa is short for Princessa...and Princess types just do NOT do housework. Ever!

Laura and I ran errands...got Mexican food for Bernie and his Dad, who were working like...well, you know.

The Natal Plums outside the restaurant were flush with Southern California Christmas cheer. Their white flowers smell so sweetly in summer, and the fruit weeps white juice inside when ripe!

Magnolia pods were bursting with shiny red seeds all over town.

(Magnolias are so traditional in the Southern locations...even in Southern California.)

What drives me crazy about SoCal: The parking is always crazy!

Laura had decorated her place so nicely since she moved in. She had to work on Friday, and left out all her Christmas decoration for me to add.
I decorated...and decided that the orange curtains that looks so great the rest of the year needed to be replaced with green ones for the season.

"Yes, Mother" she sweetly replied to my suggestion, and we were off to I-you-know-where-kea to find a set of curtains in green.

Perfect!

Now Laura collects Mermaids (she has been a water baby her whole life, as well as a competitive swimmer and water polo player) and globes (globes because of all the years she traveled...her favorite past time) and she also has quite a collection of nurse related items (because she is a RN) and somehow or another she also collects Nutcrackers after scoring some killer deals on some highly collectible Crackers once.

A Nurse-Mermaid: Just the thing to bring two collections together.

She has an entire room for her mermaid collection and one small tree trimmed just with mermaids and mermen. Amazingly the kittens have behaved themselves and left the tree decorations alone!

And of course Laura needed a Merkitten.

I like this mermaid. I think we could be friends.

It is fun to decorate other people's houses. I decided to grab Laura's red high heels and incorporate them into the decorations.

A sprig or two of greenery tucked into the toes and don't they look PERFECT?

And why not put a second pair underneath the sideboard? Why not indeed! But without greenery, as the kittens would snitched the greens for playtime.

Laura had shopped for everyone already, and wrapped up the gifts for the SLC branch of the clan for us to take home. It is amazing what she thinks of to give as gifts. I wish I had her talent for finding perfect gifts for people.

I love her Christmas china! They are so very modern looking...and with the beaded runner and snow men they look just great on the glass top table that used to be ours in Houston.

This is the first year she has been able to entertain for Christmas with the Christmas dishes. She's a regular "hostess with mostess" year around.

Things that she already had...like the globes in the glass were turned into "Christmas" with a silver star ornament, and some flora.

Her Nurse related tree...or at least mostly nurse related.

Her "big" tree will hold a lot of the ornaments that she collected during her travels over the years. A bowl was filled with a few of the red ones...from New York, Alaska and Hawaii.

Hensley as decoration au natural...he is very good at posing, just like his Uncle Tiggie.

We left on Sunday morning while it was still dark. I lit the snowmen...just because.

It was hard to leave, as always. We got soooo much done: Replace a garbage disposal and faucet set, plumbing to a dishwasher, three light fixtures, a sliding screen door...and added a few dimmer switches.

Bernie spent most of the three days on his side working under the sink. Cessa was with him every moment, snoopervising and also knocking over a bucket of smelly water.

Well, what do you expect from a little kitten anyway?

While we waited for our plane I wondered if this lass had forgot her skirt or pants in the early morning rush?

A closer stare showed that she actually was wearing jeans.

I never did see her sit down...
What is with wearing skin tight tights to the airport lately anyway????

Laura will be posting some "before and after shots" on her blog soon!