Joan's blog today was perfect. Let's be thankful for what we have, and for what we have had. I personally thank God every day, first that I was born, second, that I was born in the greatest country in the world, where food, faith and freedom are pretty much taken for granted. i don't need to wear a burka, I wasn't circumsized (female circumsition) and that I can go to whichever church I chose on whichever day I choose, or not. i was given a great love in my life, the second time around and for that I am so grateful. That he has been a wonderful stepfather, and grandfather to my kids and grandies, that he has been with me for so long (we met in 1971) and that he has taken care of me, cared for me and mine, and loved me so much in these years, I am so grateful. So now, it's my turn to take care of him, and he still gives me his unconditional love, albeit not always pleasantly (re, driving) but nevertheless i am grateful. today is Thanksgiving, and I especially give thanks for this website, and this message board, and for all of you who have given me courage and strength, and for Joan for starting this website, which has been a lifesaver to many of us. HAPPY THANKSGIVING.
My wish for you all is a peaceful, loving Thanksgiving. I thank you all for your support and encouragement and great advice. While things aren't too bad most of the time for my DH, I know my "turn" is coming. Hope you all can enjoy this day with your loved ones. Hugs to you all.
Chris r said it the best (except that this is the first marriage for DW and me - 54 years). Whenever I get upset about something she has done, or not done, I try to stop and be thankful for all that we have had over the years. HAPPY THANKSGIVING to everyone.
chris r, you did a beautiful job of remembering what to be thankful for. I could have written exactly what you said except, like marsh, this is our only marriage (53 years) and he has taken such good care of me, our children our grandchildren and our home. How could I do any less for him. He's doing so well today. It's one of those good days that makes you wonder if he really has AD....then there's the other days.
hmmm...finally a day off of work..no homecare aide around, DH doing good..relaxed...lots of food coming out of oven soon and I get to have a few drinks with little responsibility. Watching movies. Getting a buzz. Lovely.
Happy Thanksgiving to all my new AD caregiver friends. Through thick and thin we do have a lot to be thankful for. Joan and her giving to all of us. Our spouses whatever stages they are in and those who have passed away. We have our memories and never ending trials that keep us on our toes and when we want to throw in the towel we somehow find the strength to keep going just one more hour. I was at the NH and hugged my newly made AD friends for whatever reason they had no family there and I felt like I had to give each one a hug and kiss on the head and told them that they were loved and I was glad to see them and wished them all a Happy Thanksgiving. My DH said they all have AD very bad since he is still very cognitive for the most part of things that go on around him. He was thankful that he had 2 nurses give him a shower today and was standing in the hallway when I entered his inner sanctum. Such a smile I got and I found myself thinking here is one more reason to be thankful. Blessings to all Jenene
Thanks briegull, I have never heard of tinyurl! Here is the short cut. http://tinyurl.com/5hd82q You just have to open or save.
Yesterday was hard, the first Holiday without my Dad :( My brother sent me an email with this attached. Reminded me I still have many things to be thankful for.
Jenene, that was so sweet of you. I agree with all of you as well, as we carried on the family tradition of taking turns expressing what we were thankful for ... on the top of my list was I am thankful Lynn remembers he loves me, and I him, and that I am still able to keep him home with me.
Happy Thanksgiving to all of our American friends.
It reminds me of a weekend I spent with a friend at his cottage on their own thanksgiving celebration in 2013. The Canadian thanksgiving is earlier in October. We sat around the dinner table and without any previous notice, each person at the table started taking their turn at saying what they were thankful for. I became agitated because I realized I would be expected to say something too - and I had nothing to be thankful for I can tell you. Instead I felt like a rat trapped in a cage that had to claw it's way out and suddenly excused myself from the table and left for the bunkie I was staying in (a bunkie is a small cabin on a cottage property for guests).
I came back a half hour later where they felt terrible that it never occurred to them that something like that would be hard for me. I also apologized. The next morning I was one of the first up because I had been asked to make my fruit salad and when we sat around at breakfast, I said that I do have things to be thankful for which was that among friends I was reminded that there are things to be thankful for - which was that my friends felt thankful for things in their lives. I was never invited back. Oh well.
That was four years and a lifetime ago. Yesterday I went grocery shopping. I passed the area stacked with candy and threw in a bag of turtles. "Merry Christmas" I said to myself. I'm not going to wrap it because there isn't going to be a tree this year again to put it under. I also bought a quartet of cinnamon muffins, a quartet of cheap sticky buns (which I put a dab of butter on, nuke, and eat warm), a banana loaf, and a package of vanilla wafers. Those are all regulars. The bag of turtles is a christmas present.
It's not like those days when there really was a whole family around and a roomful of presents and a beautiful tree and christmas movies on or christmas carols playing and cookies and a huge feast. I miss those. I miss turkey dinners too where making a turkey dinner for one isn't the same as trays of food passing around a big table full of people talking. I miss that too.
In fact, I'm going out to lunch today with the friend who had the last thanksgiving dinner I, and Dianne attended. That was in 2011 where, sitting at the table with a dozen people while it was being loaded with trays of food, Dianne reached out with both hands and felt the turkey up. I tried to get her to stop, but this friend I'll be seeing shortly scolded me that if Dianne wanted to touch HER turkey, then she was welcome to. All righty then.
Got invited to my old high school buddies this weekend for what he refers to as "Yanksgiving dinner". His wife is American so they always celebrate the American thanksgiving. Unfortunately will have to miss it this year. Happy thanksgiving to all of you from the US.
Hi Wolf, I hate the practice of making everyone at the table say what they are thankful for. It's nice to express one's thanks but having to perform on demand is not nice. Plus, it just encourages guests either to show off or to say something hypocritical. Or to have a meltdown, as you did. When I’m in that situation, what I really want to say is that I’m thankful to be sitting at a table in a first world country and not squatting on the ground in some godforsaken refugee camp, hoping that a relief agency will give me a ration of food or a rich country like ours will take me in. But I’m afraid that if I reveal my cynicism, the hosts will disapprove, so I say, “I’m thankful to be here with friends.”
BTW, I know what a “bunkie” is, since I watch the “Island Hunters” show on HGTV. I have one question, though - Do bunkies have bathrooms in them?
Today I’m going to my sister’s house. We are not a big family; in our prime, we were only 10 at the table: 2 parents, 4 kids, 2 husbands, and 2 grandkids, although we often had miscellaneous friends there, too. Now we are down to 7, but one branch of the family will be celebrating in a different part of the country, so there will just be 3 of us here, which is fine with me. I had my last 3 Thanksgiving dinners at my husband’s LTC facility and this is the first one without him. I’m missing him today but have no intention of letting that spoil the occasion. I hope all in the U.S. have a nice day, too, and send all you Canadians belated good wishes.
"Yanksgiving" . I love that one. Mine is turning out to be pleasantly weird. Not sure how the day will end yet, but I had three invitations to Thanksgiving dinner, and two (including the one I accepted) have fizzled out due to the people who invited me either being ill or their own family plans changing. So I texted the third person who invited me, to whom I'm supposed to be going for coffee and dessert anyway, and humbly asked if I could come for dinner, too. So she says to come as soon as I can...must stick a bow on a bottle of wine and get my avoirdupois out the door. Fortunately I am reasonably clean and well-dressed, as I had to sing in church this morning--and I had Bandit outside for an hour's walk up the hill and along the edge of the woods, so he is set for a lazy afternoon waiting for me to come back. Onward!
I did buy a turkey roast - a Foster Farms that is a combo of dark and white meat. I use to buy a frozen one years ago but could not find them. I will make some stuffing to go with it. Bought a coconut cream pie for desert - started on it last night.
It is 64 degrees, the winds are blowing, the sun goes in and out behind the clouds, the door is open, the kitten is on the leash running in and out. She has a 8ft leash which allows her some running distance.
Charlotte, I agree with you the coconut cream pie was the way to go - not the custard pie. Hope it works just as well.
Myrtle, the vast majority of bunkies don't have running water. They're often smaller than a Hermitage and I think the term comes from often putting bunk beds in there but I'm not certain there. It helps to realize that almost all of Ontario cottage country sits right on the laurentian shield. There isn't any soil to speak of and few trees obtain deep roots because it's all rock ground 'smooth' by the ice sheets. That area is littered with lakes literally everywhere. No road is straight for long because every road everywhere has to wind around all the lakes. Running plumbing in the bunkie into solid rock maybe one to five feet under the soil or just as likely sitting right on the rock is an engineering challenge often. That's speaking of Ontario.
We had a good Thanksgiving day. Daughter #1 1lives with me .Daughter # 2 lives 2 1/2 hrs away and son lives in a residential facility. Son is home for the weekend. Daughter #2 invited the 3 of us for dinner but I couldn't imagine getting the retarded son to her house. So daughter #2, her daughter and her significant other agreed to come to our home. For this I am very grateful.
Today we picked up a thanksgiving meal from a restaurant and visited my wife at her ALF. This year the ALF offered the family thanksgiving meal only the week before Thanksgiving, most of the families preferred that. They did serve a Thanksgiving meal to residents. So I had to warm up all of the food in a microwave there and put food on plates. My wife was eating the stuffing even before I heated it up.
So all went well. Should have just ordered two servings but I now have lots of leftovers. Wife was happy with the food, son not so happy. It was a good if hectic visit. Brought a cat, not sure if wife preferred seeing the cat or out son.
Son and I were invited to join SIL and her family for dinner at a restaurant on Saturday night. Unfortunately I am driving son back to college that day, 4 hours each way. She tried to change the reservation to Friday but was unsuccessful. She will host the family for Xmas so we will see her then.
Had a nice meal with 2 of my sisters and am back home in my bunkie, with the fire going, the cat at the foot of the bed, and the TV on.
paulc, You're a real trouper, hauling that cat around. Your wife is lucky to have you, and so is your son.
Charlotte, Sage sounds like so much fun. Are you training her to allow you to clip her nails? I wish someone had done that with Lucy when she was young, so I would not have to take her to the mail salon.
Have not trimmed them since the first week we got her. Tried once but she fought it. She has lots of places to claw in the motorhome so she does it all there. She does give us lots of laughs but she can also drive one crazy when she gets going. Today she has been outside twice, been playing with her numerous times. She use to sit and meow at me but now she comes up and hits me with her paw - no claws. She is pretty good now when playing with me not to put her nails out. When she 'pets' my face she is so gentle.
Hi Charlotte, Kittenhood (is that a word?) is the time to train a cat to let you to handle her paws. All cats hate to have their paws and nails handled but you can teach kittens to allow this by giving them treats. There are many online sites that tell you how. WebMD has a good page. Sage's little kitten nails don't do much damage now but when she is an adult, you will wish you had trained her when it was possible, especially if you eventually move to an apartment and she starts shredding your landlord's woodwork.
All my cats were adopted after the kitten stage so I never had the chance to train them. Even though I have scratching posts, I've had to pay vets and groomers to clip their nails. Due to the high cost of my cats' mani-pedis, I can't afford to get my own nails done. I can't remember the last time I wore nail polish - high school, maybe?
Well thank you wolf, I have to declare this felt like a validation of my feelings today! The past month has been more than I could handle and I've actually had a couple of melt-down days where I was seriously concerned about my ability to hold it together. I'm hoping it is stress overload, just so much happened so fast it's hard to react to each day. I do have a lot to be thankful for but today I just couldn't bring anything into focus. I just want to stop time for a week or so, to find myself again. I just couldn't do holiday today. This from the lady who used to celebrate every occasion and non-occasions with the time leading up to Christmas being wonderfully exciting.
Charlotte, after having to go at breakneck speed all day yesterday, checking in every 5 minutes, I managed to fit in a quick haircut, and actually drove an extra 25 miles at the end of the day in order to get my nails done :) They were so broken, rough, and scraggly they felt like a reflection of my life these days.