Being the peanut butter in the sandwich generation...

 

 

Below is an article I wrote over a year ago.  Things haven't gotten any easier, as my mother-in-law continues to decline from dementia and we attempt to meet her needs to the best of our ability. She is now on Hospice care, which has been terrific for us.  Twenty-six years ago, when my mom had cancer and was at the end of her life, she was on Hospice care for 3 weeks, so I was therefore frightened when we were approached by Janette's doctor about placing her on Hospice care.  I thought she was dying and they hadn't told us!    Today, Hospice recognizes the need for long-term care for dementia patients and the extended length of time services will be needed for them.  We are very thankful for all of the help and support Hospice has provided for us and the compassionate care they give to Janette.

Many adults today are finding themselves as part of the "sandwich" generation.  They are parents who work full time that still have children living at home with them as well as having aging parents who need caring for, too.  It can be exhausting and unrelenting for years and years.  According to the US Bureau of the Census, the number of parents living with their adult children increased from 2.2 million in 2000 to 3.6 million in 2007 – a 63% increase. According to the Pew Research Center study on Social and Demographic Trends (January 2013) adults who are part of the sandwich generation—that is, those who have a living parent age 65 or older and are either raising a child under age 18 or supporting a grown child—are pulled in many directions. Not only do many provide care and financial support to their parents and their children, but nearly four-in-ten (38%) say both their grown children and their parents rely on them for emotional support.

I am one of those statistics.  I have 3 children - one in elementary school, one in junior high, and one in high school.  My mother-in-law is 81 and in the mid-stages of dementia.  After a nasty fall in her independent-living apartment resulting in  2 broken neck vertebrae, surgery and a stint in rehabilitation, we knew she could no longer live safely on her own.  The first thing we did was research as much as we could about what to expect in dealing with dementia.  We discovered that it was important to help her get her finances and healthcare wishes in places before she was no longer mentally able to make those kinds of decisions.  My husband is now her legal power of attorney for both finances and health issues. For about a year she lived with us.  Our house had 3 bedrooms so my children graciously (for the most part) shared a bedroom while Grandma had another.  We all helped her with her activities of daily living.  My son helped her with her physical therapy by playing catch with her.  My daughters helped pick out her clothes for each day and chose audiobooks for her at the library. We had a caregiver be with her while I worked part-time and my husband worked full time.  I felt guilty about never seeming able to keep up the housework and having the caregivers see us rushing around like mad in the mornings because there is no privacy for the rest of the family if there is a caregiver there. The other 16 hours each day we were her caregivers and it was exhausting to do so as well as try to give the children much needed attention. She is a fall risk, so she could not be left alone, therefore we always had someone in the room with her.  At night we used our old baby monitor in her room so we could hear her call if she needed us.  My kids were very understanding, but it felt as if we were being pulled in a million directions between homework, baseball practice, after school activities, orthodontist appointments, grandma's appointments, and getting a household of 6 up and off  to school and work each day or to bed at night.  It takes an incredible amount of organization and coordination to pull all that off. 

Eventually, when my mother in law deteriorated, we could no longer safely care for her in our home and neither she nor we could afford around the clock in-home caregivers. We were fortunate enough to find an assisted living facility that houses 6 residents. They even have a physician, a podiatrist, and a beautician (for nail care and haircuts) who come each month to attend to the residents.  She seems happy and well cared for.  But just because she no longer lives with us does not mean that all our worries are over.  We now have to travel to another neighborhood to visit her and we still take care of all of her finances and manage refills of her prescriptions. We still need to carve out time each week in our busy schedules to go and visit her. 

Many people are fortunate enough to have their parents living with them be in reasonably good physical and mental health, but it is still a challenge for everyone.  It can be difficult for the elderly to accept giving up the freedom of living independently and no matter how well grandparents, parents, and children get along, it can be very difficult to all be under one roof.  As for us, my mother in law has always been there for us and like countless other families in the sandwich generation, we will certainly do our best to be there for her as long as we can.

 

Image courtesy of worradmu at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Container Gardening

 

 

 

 

 

Gardening can be so relaxing.  Planting seeds and seedlings, nurturing them, and reaping the harvest of gorgeous blooms and fresh veggies.  You may think that you need acres of land, or at least a huge backyard, to grow plants, but you can have a full, lush garden in a surprisingly small amount of space. 

Containers are the key.  If you have a tiny yard, a patio only big enough for a bistro table and 2 chairs, or even a sunny windowsill or two, you have room for a garden!  Many kinds of fruits, veggies, and flowering plants thrive happily in containers.  You can find containers of any shape, size, and color with or without drainage holes, using potting soil, dirt from your yard, or sand and you can find a plant happy to grow in it.  Take a trip to your local home improvement store, flea market, or scout out local garage sales to find terrific containers.  An old paint can?  Soup cans? Old goldfish bowl?  Heck, an old rusty wheelbarrow or chair missing its seat? All good, whimsical containers. Good old standby terracotta pots are very inexpensive and can be stacked inside each other to grow multiple levels of plants in a small amount of floor space.  Put the plants that vine and droop in the bottom, such as strawberries, sweet potato vine, ivy, or good old pothos and the tallest in the top pot.  If you are including veggies, add a frame at the top for easy picking of beans, cucumbers, or squash.

You can grow an entire salad in your containers.  Many varieties of lettuce do very well in containers, as do radishes, peppers, and any herb you can imagine. Herbs are the home gardener's best friend.  Get 1 wide pot and some good potting soil and you can plant several different herbs in it all together.  Basil, chives, parsley, cilantro, mint, oregano, thyme, sage, dill - even catnip for your furry friends - are all happy growing together in 1 container.  And the best thing about herbs is they thrive and grow even better as you use the leaves.  As you cut them off, they grow even more, so you really only need 1 of each type of herb to have plenty of fresh goodness for your meals, and probably enough to share as well. It's actually best to always grow some herbs in a container, like mint, spearmint, and catnip, otherwise they will take over the rest or your garden, your yard, your neighborhood…  Well, you get the picture. 

 

Even if you have been a plant killer with a not so green thumb in the past, growing a succulent container garden is easy.  Make sure you have good drainage in your pot and basically ignore the plants.  You say that didn't work very well with your spider plant?  Well, succulents do best when left to their own devices.  They don't need much water, like being in a sunny spot, and don't grow very fast, so they don't need much maintenance.  Cactuses come in all shapes and sizes, as do aloes and other succulents.  Add some pretty pebbles around the plants, and check the soil once every few weeks.  If it is bone dry, water until the soil is nice and moist, not a muddy swamp, and  you are good to go.  You are a successful gardener!

 

Don't let your small space deter you from enjoying plants.  They clean the air in your home, they provide you with yummy things to eat and beautiful leaves and flowers to look at and are a lot easier than you think to live with and take care of.  Why not give it a try - you may find you have a green thumb after all!

 

photo credit: <a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/badalley/8784783928/">Bad Alley</a> via <a href="http://photopin.com">photopin</a> <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/">cc</a>

Save the Egyptian Antiquities!



Will there be any antiquities left for our children and grandchildren to view and enjoy?  Just looking at today's headlines about the turmoil in the Middle East makes one wonder.  Stories are rampant about trading artifacts for cash and weapons to support this side or that in the violence erupting on daily basis, especially Egypt.  Museums and private collections are being stripped and sold to fund militants and armies alike, and collectors world-wide are seeming to turn a deaf ear on the protests that these items will be removed from public view forever.  According to an article published on April 15, 2013 on the website Albawaba, the Egyptian Council for Culture and Arts stated in its report last year that "the amount of stolen Egyptian antiquities after the January revolution reached about 3,000 artifacts, probably now residing outside Egypt in the hands of private collectors." 

Some say, "Can you blame them?"  When a small artifact sells for hundreds of US dollars on sites like eBay, it can help feed and house a whole displaced family and help them escape the violence in which they find themselves living. So what if it goes into someone's private collection never to be shown in public again.  There are plenty of others out there for the viewing.  Not only does this mentality hurt everyone in general, but it also loses critical background information on the item - its location, its age, the relationship to other items found near it - its whole backstory gone, and documentation darned near impossible to corroborate. 

But the blame does not land solely on the Egyptians.  If there was no demand for such trading, especially in the West, where it's common to find greedy collectors or even museums that are willing to accept these items with iffy or no certification at all, then there would be no looting of these historic treasures.  There has been a lot of talk in the media and on the Internet recently about how some Egyptians wanting to protect their cultural heritage have created Facebook pages and other social media that show pictures and descriptions of missing items.  One of the best known is the Facebook page "Stop the Heritage Drain." On the page it states in part, "Help us save our shared heritage.  Over the last two years, Egypt has fallen into a state of increasing chaos. Theft and looting of the country’s heritage have been rampant. Adding insult to injury, the ministries of culture and antiquities, in a (miserable) attempt to pretend that “everything is fine” do not publicize the thefts in order not to scare off prospective tourists.. They don’t want the bad PR you see…   As Egyptians, we think it’s a bit too late for that.."

It contains many, many photos of missing and smuggled antiquities and simply asks that we in the West share this information so that these items of Egyptian heritage can be returned.  We can only hope that this kind of grassroots movement will help in the return of so many antiquities back to Egypt so the world can once again enjoy them, along with their invaluable historic and scientific documentation restored.   

 

Drinking dino water

 

 

 

I love science. So now that fall is here and school has started again, I want to share one of my favorite cool science facts. I was floored in elementary school the first time I learned that we drink the same water as the dinosaurs did.  What?!? How can that be?  Well, let me give you a short lesson in "The Water Cycle."  Cue cool music...  

 

Water has been on the earth for millions of years and water is a pretty durable thing.  It travels through cycles of changing states and constant movement. Most water molecules are pretty durable, too, during all of this change, and continue on, basically recycling themselves over and over.  Water molecules depend on energy from the sun to change states.  When the temperature of the water is moderate it stays in its liquid state.  Liquid water covers about 70% of the earth's surface in the form of oceans, lakes, rivers, streams, and ponds.  When the temperature changes, so does the state of the water.  When the temperature cools to 32 degrees water turns to a solid - ice.  As the temperature heats to over 212 degrees it turns to a gas - vapor.   I bet you didn't know water was so talented, did you? 

 

Of course, water is also a big traveler.  It is always on the move.  Let's use a puddle as an example of water's journey.  The water molecules in the puddle are in their liquid state.  As the sun beats down on the puddle, the temperature of the water rises and the molecules begin to change into vapor, which is lighter than air and  begins to rise.  As more and more vapor rises and the puddle slowly shrinks, it is known as evaporation.  So now the water vapor has risen very high in the sky.  The temperature is much cooler at this altitude and so the vapor begins to cool, too.  As it changes back into its liquid state, the vapor joins with other vapors, creating larger drops or condensation.  You can see this on a window as well when the air inside the room is colder than the air outside and condensation forms on the outside of the window.  As the vapors condense together and create larger and heavier drops, they will fall back down to earth.  Condensation is constantly being blown around by winds. So where the rain drop eventually falls may be many hundreds or thousands of miles from where that water molecule started out in its puddle.  Depending on the temperature of the air around the drops, they will either fall as liquid rain or in cooler temperatures as snow, hail, or sleet.  Once it is back down to the earth's surface, the cycle of evaporation, condensation, and precipitation will start all over again, as will water's change from liquid to gas to solid. 

 

It is so interesting to think that water covers 70% of the earth and humans are also made up of about 70% water.  Even though there is so much water on the surface of the earth, underground, and in the air, only 1% of the earth's water is potable (safe to drink).  The rest is either too dirty or too salty for us to drink.  That is an amazing figure, and water flows through a constant amazing cycle.   Which brings us back to the dinosaurs.  Think of the possibilities. The glass of water you just drank might have also been drunk by a thirsty stegosaurus or even Albert Einstein or it might have sat on top of Mt. Everest as snow or was part of the iceberg that rammed the Titanic.  Pretty mind boggling, huh?

The annual summer drive up north - memories from the 70's

We drove up north a few weeks ago to see family and friends.  I have done that for most of my life. As an adult, my husband and I lived in Michigan before coming home to Florida, so we have travelled back and forth from there many times in the last 10 years, but when I was 7, my family moved to Florida from Ohio.  My dad was recently retired from the Air Force and my mom's arthritic knees really hated Ohio winters.  And so began our annual trek back and forth between the two.  There were some good things about our travels and some pretty bad ones, too. 

Now mind you, this was in the 70's, so things were a bit different.  The best part is that since my brothers were much older, they didn't come. So, I had the whole back seat of our Plymouth (and later Chevy Impala) all to myself.  A huge expanse of real estate that was all mine.  Seat belts?  I don't think they existed in the backseat and if they did, I think they were crammed down under the seat.  I could bring my pillow, stuffed animals, Barbie camper, and entire arts and crafts box and still have room to stretch out.  Yes, I have 3 kids, and yes, they have NEVER been in a moving car in their lives while not buckled or 5-point-harness-strapped into a car seat, booster seat, or bucket seat, and I am eternally grateful that we have those safety items today to protect them, but, it sure was comfortable sprawled out on that seat.  The most awesome thing of all was that every year my mom would buy me a giant, brand-spanking new activity pad.  You know the kind.  It had word searches, "stained glass" color by number sheets, pictures that were only half drawn so you had to finish the lines, the pictures that were mixed up little squares so you had to draw each box in the correct order to get a spectacular finished picture and my favorite, dot-to-dots.  And then, oh yes, my friends, a brand new 64-count box of Crayola crayons.  Heaven!  As I got older and more "sophisticated,"  my favorite thing to bring was my trusty tape recorder, and plenty of C batteries.  It was the size of a cement block (and weighed about that, too) and I became the most awesome mix master/DJ in the world, sticking the cassette player up on the huge ledge under the rear window and recording all my favorite songs.  I loved Paul McCartney and Wings and I recorded "Silly Love Songs" over and over, one from a station in Georgia, another from a station in Kentucky, etcetera, and they all sounded like Sir Paul was singing from the bottom of a well...with sand in his mouth, and I thought it was totally awesome!

My dad, Mr. ex-military guy, was the only one who drove on our trips.  He had a set schedule and we never deviated from it.  We would leave Tampa at 7:30am and head up I-75 doing no more than 60 miles per hour, because in the early 70's that's pretty much where I-75 began.    We would drive to the Florida Welcome Center at the border and stop for a picnic lunch and the mandatory free small glass of Florida orange juice.  We had a cooler, so it was sandwiches, chips, and glasses of water at one of the roadside picnic tables. None of this fast food of today. I would run around and around the grassy area for a bit and then back into the car.  We drove past Atlanta via the bypass the first day, reaching Dalton, GA about 5pm.  We didn't stay at the exact same hotel each time, but they all were similar.  They had an outdoor pool - score!  They almost always had some kind of playground. My favorite had a jungle gym that looked like a giant rocket.  It's not there anymore,  I look each time we go through, but it looked like this one. We would get to go out to eat at either the restaurant at the hotel, or one nearby, usually a cafeteria or buffet-type like Denny's or Morrison's, which was also a real treat.  I got to help dad fill up the cooler with ice from the ice machine - such fun! Then, back to the pool for a swim and lights out about 10pm, which was excitingly late for this little kid.  The next day we'd pack up and get on the road into Tennessee before stopping for breakfast at a rest area.  Breakfast was the best because I got to pick my own individual little box of cereal!  You know the kind.  The box was actually perforated down the center, so all you had to do was peel it back, cut the waxed paper bag inside, and then pour in the milk! Instant cereal bowl!  What technology!  The rest of the day would be spent driving through the mountains of Tennessee and Kentucky.  I seem to remember a lot more scenic overlooks then than there are today on I-75.  We would usually stop at one with picnic tables for lunch.  There was usually a sheer drop off right there on the other side of the guardrail that you could lean over for a spectacular view.  Now that I think about it, that's probably why they don't have those anymore...  I liked driving along with sheer rock walls right beside us where they carved the road right through the mountains.  Sometimes I would see little streams trickling down the rocks, and once I saw a huge stag standing on top of one of those rock walls watching traffic go by. 

But, there were the downsides to traveling back then, too. It could be really hard to get radio stations along the way, no Pandora or Sirius back then, no outlet to plug in a Nintendo (hence the supply of extra C batteries).  So, it was just me and my pre-vacation recorded tapes for long stretches.  Our van today has a DVD player and CD player. It has 3 outlets to charge various "must-have" electronics. We did not buy our van for these.  It just happened to come with them.  My kids get to choose their own DVDs to bring along. It is usually the latest kid's movies du jour, but for whatever reason, every time, they insist on bringing "The Sound of Music." This summer on our trip to Michigan my kids brought all 8 Harry Potter movies...and "The Sound of Music." Do you find that weird? I love "The Sound of Music." We all know all the words to all the songs and we all sing along, in harmonies, I might add, and I am so happy they consistently pick a 4 hour movie, which eats up a lot of time stuck in the car, but I really don't know why this is always in our mix, but I digress. 

Back to the downsides.  I remember that a lot of rest areas back in the day had outhouses, not the air-conditioned snack-filled and gourmet coffee house luxury ones we have today.  We were in one in Georgia this summer that had rocking chairs pulled up to a fireplace and there were dioramas of famous Civil War battles all around the room.   Let's just say that in the middle of July you got in and out of those old ones as fast as possible.  One thing that I hated was that we didn't have A/C in our car.  So we cruised along with the windows open.  Hmmm, that may be another contributing factor in the interesting quality of my tape recordings, now that I think about it.  Driving with no A/C was fine except when it rained. My mom didn't like to drive, but she also wasn't a very patient passenger either, so when it rained she got pretty nervous.  So, she would smoke... a lot.  It was like a thick, gray cloud moved inside the car, and so it was a great relief for us to pass through the rain and be able to open the windows again. I think that is the #1 reason I have never touched a cigarette in my life.

But, for the most part, my annual summer trek up north holds good memories, and I think my kids enjoy the trips today, too.  I bought them activity pads when they were little.  They loved them, too.  I even got them playing the license plate game this time around.  We found 36 different state license plates, 3 Canadian provinces, and one from Mexico at our hotel parking lot in Kentucky, who I think was lost.  Not bad for only traveling through 6 states.  We also played the Alphabet game (looking at billboards and road signs and finding the alphabet in order - we are grateful for the abundance of Quality Inn and Zaxby's billboards today - makes finding Q, X, and Z a piece of cake).  Maybe next year, I need to get us some individual boxes of cereal, a cooler of milk, and some spoons,too. 

What about you?  Tell me some of your favorite travel memories.

Now what?

Well, here I am.  I don't know exactly where "here" is, but it certainly isn't where I thought I would be right about now.  I'm not sure where my path diverged from what I had planned for my life.  I was envisioning me as Dorothy happily tripping down the lovely yellow brick road through the sunlit field of poppies with the spectacular Emerald City Library in front of me and forgot about the Wicked Witch and her flying monkeys.  Dang!  I've always been terrified of those monkeys - and, like Rudolph, the Humble Bumble, but that's for another time.

My library career goes way back - all the way to 3rd grade when I got to work in the school library hanging up the newspapers on those weird wooden poles with slits to hold each section of paper. I won the library helper of the year award in 9th grade and started getting PAID to work in the public library at age 16. You name a job in a library and I have done it - including shelving; fronting shelves and shelf reading - the most mind-numbing thing ever; repairing books that have been mangled, soaked with every liquid imaginable, chewed, and otherwise look like they have survived the apocalypse; checking in and out materials; reference - which is sometimes answering real questions and sometimes diplomatically showing students the materials they need to write their OWN term paper; running a department; running a branch; supervising staff and volunteers; being where the buck stops for customer complaints; reviewing some truly awfully written materials that publishers actually want to add to our collection; discarding moldy bug-infested donations tactfully; surviving summer after summer's worth of children's programming; cleaning up disgusting messes; dealing with the homeless, the people who bring me poisonous insects to identify (honest), and, bet you can't top this one, once finding a piece of fried chicken smashed into a book and replaced on the shelf. 

The library has been my life for most of my life.  I even met my husband at work - we were both shelvers at the same huge library.  No, you will not find any chairs pushed out at our house, and yes, besides our books, our music and spices ARE in alphabetical order - as they should be.  My children have attended storytime from birth and were all avid readers while still in preschool.  Am I bragging? No, I just know how important it is to read to kids right from the get go.   I have worked every day of the week and schedules from 7:30am until 9:30pm, missed church on Sunday mornings; countless kids' activities and birthday parties; favorite TV shows; going to the doctor, dentist, and vet; neglected the service times for my car, and never had a summer off all for my career in the library.  For the past 25 years.

When I started this career, I loved it.  I am a people person.  I love helping people.  I love reading to children.  The neat freak in me does get all excited when the books are all fronted and are in perfect Dewey Decimal order.  I love being able to order the books people really want.  And I like (most) of the library regulars who come in week after week, either alone or faithfully bringing their kids to the library to read, for programs, or just hang out.  Library people definitely are a certain breed - we're quirky, imaginative, demanding yet quite tolerant of new ideas, and not afraid of new technology.  But, as time has gone by, I feel as if I just give and give and give all I've got, and the reward seems less and less and less.  Budget cuts, fewer staff but more in your job description, more gaps in those folks who are tech-savvy and those who aren't yet still need to fill out a form to get food stamps online or look for a job or get tax help, and the completely non-parent-friendly schedules that we've always had in libraries, and it has taken a toll on me. 

So, here I am 25 years later, after a year-long stint of taking time off to become full time caregiver to my Alzheimer's-stricken mother-in-law.  We just moved her into a facility where she will get the added amount of care she now needs, and I need to get back to work.  The last position I worked for had been filled - they obviously couldn't wait for me to come back at my convenience.  So, the possibilities are now endless as to which library direction I should go. But, you know what?  I have discovered that every time I look at the job listings for librarians (and not just public librarians, either), I have to pause as I read those job descriptions, and with each additional duty listed, I find myself getting more and more tired, drained, and exhausted.  I've been there.  I've done that.  Many times.  Am I qualified? Absolutely.  Am I excited about applying?  For the first time in a long time, the answer is no.  I'm sick of the hours, the demands, the extra workloads, and, frankly, the pretty crummy pay that a person in a profession that requires a Masters Degree has always had to put up with.

So, I don't know what I will find out there.  It is both terrifying and exciting to be starting over at this point in my life.  I am leaning more toward researcher-type positions or perhaps working in the publishing industry - both still somewhat librarian-related, but not really.  For now, I check the zillions of employment websites each day, and every once in a while something exciting catches my eye.  Time will tell, and I will let you know.  But, right now, my eyes are tired of staring at the computer screen - I think I'll head to the library and grab an old favorite. Agatha Christie? Elizabeth Peters? Hmm, maybe even a Nancy Drew.