An All Too Typical Morning at Casa Tuel

First, I woke up late, because I stayed up until quarter to three watching a British police procedural.

Then I noticed that the lymph node under my left ear was still large, hard, and sore. I have been watching this lump the last three days, putting heat on it, and it has not shrunk. It's still hard and painful. This really concerned me, so that started a round of phone calls: to Swedish Breast Imaging to cancel the mammogram I had scheduled for tomorrow; to my PCP's triage nurse to talk about the lump, and make an appointment to see my PCP to check out the lump, to my oncologist's office to cancel the mammogram online follow up appointment I had for Thursday.

So far, so good. 

Called my son in Tacoma to tell him what was going on. While we were talking, I knocked over a large glass of water onto the table, and me, and the floor, plus my Chromebook and my phone. As we all know, water does not play nice with electronics. I put the Chromebook in a garbage pail, standing on its end to let the water run off, I dried the phone off with a towel. Neither appear to be harmed by the water.

There were two towels on the floor and one on the table at this point. 

I spill water and other beverages all the time. It's a normal occurrence here. I could posit a lot of reasons: clumsiness, not being aware of my surroundings, moving an arm impulsively. This was a larger than usual catastrophe, because it was such a big glass of water.

While I was mopping the water up with towels, I knocked over an open prescription bottle and the pills scattered in the water on the table. Oh, carp. I quickly began picking up the pills to put on a towel to dry (yes, if you are keeping track, there were a lot of towels in play by this time) to dry out. They were slimy and slippery, so extremely difficult to pick up. I could only get one or two at a time. Finally grabbed a scrap of paper and used it like a dustpan, pushing the pills onto the paper which I could then use to set them out to dry. 

They look a little fuzzy from their brief swim. When dry I'll put them back in their container. 

All this happened in the first hour and a half I was up. 

I can't wait to see what other surprises the day brings.

I Can't Hear You

One of the not so delightful aspects of aging is hearing loss.

Both my parents had hearing loss, although I often suspected my father was faking it so he'd be left alone, because if I said something I didn't want him to hear when I was on the phone way across the room, he heard it clearly and sometimes made a tart remark. That sort of thing can make a kid jumpy.

My mother was in denial to the end of her life. Once when she was visiting me, we were driving down the Main Highway, and she kept saying, "What?" to everything I said.

I finally said, "You know, you can get hearing aids if you need them." I was trying to be helpful and caring. She didn't see it that way. She was ticked off, and then she ticked me off. She said, "My hearing is fine. It's you. You mumble. You have no frontal resonance. You never did."

So that was the end of that subject between us.

(Fyi, Google says, “Frontal resonance, also known as the ‘mask of singing,’ is a vocal technique that involves resonating sound closer to the front of the face. This can reduce the impact on the vocal folds, which can make speaking more efficient.”

I remember Mrs. Varin, my voice teacher, trying to get me to make my upper palate and nose - that mask - vibrate with sound when I sang. I did not realize that was frontal resonance.

The other part of singing was sustaining my sound with breath that came from my diaphragm. That seemed to be the most important information I picked up in three years of voice lessons. Breathe from the belly. Later I took lessons from Kendall Aikin Davis here on the island, and she told me one day to support my voice with my breath, "like you're taking a dump."

Oh. Okay. 

But that's sending sound out. Receiving sound, mishearing it, and misunderstanding what someone is saying, is part of aging. I suppose it doesn't happen to everyone. Maybe my mother's hearing was just fine. Too late to determine that now.

When I was in my fifties, I noticed that I was having a hard time hearing what people said. There are three main factors in my hearing loss: one, aging; two, all those over-the-counter painkillers I took during my migraine years; and three, all those incredibly loud rock concerts and dances I went to in the 1960s. 

At the Monterey Pop Festival in 1967, when bands were playing, I heard whistling, which stopped when the music stopped, and I thought it was the crowd showing their enjoyment of the music, cheering and whistling. Years later I realized that cheering and whistling was the sound of my inner ears screaming in pain. So yeah, a little hearing loss there.

Three years ago, when I went to my grandson's high school graduation, I found myself frequently saying, "What?" "Sorry, I couldn't hear that," and "Say again?"  By that time, I had also noticed that when I was in a noisy place, like a restaurant, where people were talking and laughing, and dishes and utensils were clattering, I could not hear what anyone was saying at my table.

I realized it was time for hearing aids. There was a slight delay after I fell on Sporty's back patio and broke a vertebra (L3, if you're interested). But after that, when I was able to drive again, I trundled down to the Tacoma Costco and got some hearing aids. They worked fine. I'm wearing them right now.

 I don't wear them all the time. When I'm at home by myself I often don't put them in because they are foreign objects and after a few hours they start to hurt. I can turn up the TV or whatever else I'm listening to when I’m alone.

When I am not wearing my hearing aids, I sometimes mis-hear things. Recently I was listening to someone talking about "Durable Power of Attorney," and what I heard was, "Gerbil power of attorney."

Last Sunday when I was listening to the church service online, when the priest was reading the Gospel, I heard, "Jesus and his apostles were walking through the drain field ...” Now I knew that couldn't be right. I don't think they had drain fields in first century Palestine. As the scripture went on, I realized they were walking through a grainfield, not a drain field. Whew. That was a relief.

As Miss Emily Latella used to say, that's very different, isn't it?

Where you are now

2/8/24

Do you ever think of me where you are now?

Do you miss me like I miss you?

Is it grand where you are 

Sunny days No storms

No crises that must be fixed by you

 

Are there pillows where you are

So you can throw your arms around one

And pretend that you’re holding me

Does the feel of my body live in your eternal mind

Am I as real to you as you are real to me

Where you are now

 

Is it blissful and peaceful where you are now

Do you have all the pencils

And pens and ink you need

Are the streets paved with gold

But gold doesn’t matter

Where you are now

 

Where you are now

Money doesn’t matter

Where you are there is no poverty

I cannot imagine what it’s like where you are

I hope you are happy and free

Where you are now

Animal Appetites

 

I was in my recliner having one of my favorite snacks the other night – potato chips. My orange cat, Brony, jumped up into my lap and sat down, staring at me intently. I’m kind of dense, so it took me a minute to realize that he wanted some of my snack.

I said, okay, but you won’t like it.

I broke off a little corner of chip and let him sniff it. He grabbed it and ate it right up.

Okay.

I broke off another piece – I’m talking about ¼ inch by ¼ inch, and he gobbled that down, too.

He took a few more pieces from me before losing interest, as cats are wont to do, and hopping down.

I was amazed that he liked potato chips. Not at all a cat food, I thought. So I went to Facebook and I posted: “Strictly speaking, I shouldn't know this, but - I have learned this evening that one of my cats likes potato chips.”

It turns out that I know diddly squat about what cats will eat. Many friends commented on my post about what their cats would eat:

 Bill Henley Cats are weird. I once had a cat that loved white bread. She would get in my lap when I was eating a sandwich and steal bites from “her” side.

Mary Litchfield Tuel to Bill Henley I really didn't believe a cat would go for Ruffles, but he sat on my lap staring at me and the chips intently, and I broke off a tiny piece, and he gobbled it down. Surprise!

Larry Burns If I eat anything with cheese in it, my cat Penny comes and demands some. She also likes butter. I should have her cholesterol checked! 8^)

Mary Litchfield Tuel to Larry Burns I had to make sure I didn't leave butter out on the kitchen counter with my last cat. I'd get up in the morning and see those cute little grooved tongue lick marks.

Liz Illg I grew up in a household that purposely left the butter out, in case the cat needed some.

Traepischke Graves-Lalor I had a cat that loved chips. Another that liked tortilla chips, and another that loved…jalepeño bean dip.

Mary Litchfield Tuel to Traepischke Graves-Lalor Maybe cats are not picky about their food. Maybe we don't give them enough variety to choose?

Traepischke Graves-Lalor I don’t know. My gigantic Siamese, Sasquatch, would climb you for avocado. I could never leave them on the counter to ripen because he’d steal them.

Anne Woodward My cat Taco would dive into the grocery bag if there was a cantaloupe in it.

Kasha Banko So does one of mine

Frances Hogan I read a post the other day by someone who showed their cat eating a doughnut. I thought that was weird so I looked it up. Turns out cats can't taste sugar. Also read in The Inner Life of Cats by Thomas McNamee that scientists have found that cats can chemically analyze their food--preferring foods that have the correct fat/protein ratio, even if the food tastes like oranges. Excellent book. Listening to via KCLS audiobook download, Libby.

Suzanne Sinclair I could not leave a cut piece of cantaloupe on the table or counter because my five-toed “tuxedo” cat named Maggie would eat it!

Liz Illg I've had a couple of cats that enjoyed cantaloupe.

Suzanne Sinclair to Liz Illg It surprised me because it wasn’t meat - meat would have been expected! 

Sue Weston I had a cat that was crazy for cantaloupe.

Frances Hogan Jenny-any-dots loved bread crusts. She'd find a loaf of bread and rip it open to get the crust before I knew what was happening. Once, I found her in the cupboard where I hid the bread. The door was closed and she was chowing down on bread.

Delinda Mccann I can just imagine the look she gave you when you opened the door and interrupted her communion with the loaf!

Sarah Colvin You are not alone… pretzels are a hit with all here

Buddy Logan The food item is not unusual, but . . .

My cat never messed with my food. Maybe because she was naturally polite. She would ask for permission before she jumped on my lap. It took very little for her to realize that tabletops and counter tops were off limits, at least when I was around.

I went to visit my friend Judith, where cats have no restrictions and no manners. We sat down to eat some chicken breasts. When I got up for a second to get something, one of her cats jumped on the table and made off with my entire chicken breast.

Mary Litchfield Tuel to Buddy Logan Wow! I've had dogs who pulled that stunt, but never a cat.

Trish Cobbin Macdonald My cat likes all crunchy salty snacks. She will steal them from me whenever she can.

Trylla Thurmond Esherick My dog likes asparagus!

Sonya Norton I had a cat that liked cheddar. In small chunks. She'd snag it with a claw or two and daintily nibble till it was gone. She was an odd one - lifted it to her face rather than holding it down like a mouse.

 

The Gifts of Old Age

 Gather around, children. It’s story time.

Sometimes I worry that I am too happy.

Understand – in my earlier adult years I planned to be a hard charging elder, still singing, still performing, still writing. I thought I’d drop with my guitar on. Just blink out in the middle of a song.

At that time, I had no idea what was ahead – that I’d cruise into my late seventies unable to walk without falling over, having to use a walker, and sometimes, on bad days, a wheelchair.

I’d say I didn’t see breast cancer coming, but I kinda did. I was in shock when that jagged little object showed up in a mammogram, but so many women get breast cancer that I thought it was simply my turn. The experience I had was not a big deal as cancer treatments go, but frankly, in my opinion, cancer treatments tend to be brutal. Even though my treatment was comparatively simple – surgery, radiation, no chemo, and the experience turned out well, still – it changed me. It changed my body. The experience left me tired, and it was almost a year before I emerged from the brain fog the radiation produced. We’ve all heard about “chemo brain.” Radiation brings its own challenges: “radiation brain.” Boy, was I surprised.

I also did not see in my early years that my husband would die so young. He was 68. From the vantage point of 75, that’s young. He’s been gone for almost ten years now. I integrated my grief into my life and have kept living, even though I have often wondered why, when it seemed like my functional life was over and most of my energy was drained by taking care of myself day to day. Once more I was asking the God I believe in, why? Why this?

After wrestling with the conundrum of why I was still living but not being productive, at some point a deep relaxation set in, and I became downright complacent about my non-productiveness.

“I did nothing today, and I’m okay with that.”

 I could not have imagined doing nothing all day when I was young. I was so driven by my need to prove I had worth, to justify taking up room on the planet, to prove I was not lazy, but now I have many days when I hang around the house and read, and play solitaire, and watch British mysteries and comedies and period pieces in the evening.

I talk on the phone with friends and family. A lot of my purpose now – my productiveness, if you will – is listening to people. I have always loved listening to people. I love their stories, and their spirits. I feel like listening to people is the best thing I do these days.

A bonus is that listening keeps me from shooting my mouth off and saying something incredibly stupid. Seriously, I almost always regret saying anything in any public venue. While I’m kicking myself for what I did say, as well as for what I forgot to say, it is exquisite agony. Why did I say that? Why didn’t I say this? Will I ever not feel like I don’t belong in a room?

Okay, I’ll tell you when I feel like I belong in a room: when I’m singing and playing with other musicians. I still worry about being off the beat or being flat when I’m tired and singing low notes, but mostly we’re all in it together and having a good time. The best time. Yeah. Doing music together is the best time there is.

It doesn't happen often enough anymore – the pandemic kind of threw us all off, and we’re still learning to congregate again, or at least I’m still learning.

I am learning that as the truth of this being in my last years and knowing death is not far away sinks in, I still want to be of some use in the time I have left. I still want to laugh with people – inappropriately if possible.

And I hate it that I’m going to die. I don’t want to leave this party. I am finally getting the hang of life, and many times I am more happy and contented than I have ever been before. This is one of the great gifts of old age.

I didn’t see that coming, either. But I will take it.

 

 

 

The New Computer

 I was getting complacent about my old computer, which turned out not to be wise, because it started blacking out on me. Solid black nothing for a few seconds, and then it came back on. I was going to live with it, until I realized that the blackouts were happening more frequently and lasting longer.

So I decided to get a newer, non-blacking out computer.

Which I have done. Now I’m on the new computer learning curve.

This is an all-in-one computer, so it’s a monitor and a keyboard, and somewhere under or inside the monitor is where the computer innards live. It’s taking a little getting used to. My old computer ran on Windows 10. This one runs on Windows 11. There are little differences to which I need to become accustomed.

So far so good, right? I will reach a point where I’ll feel like this computer is as comfortable as old shoes, but I am not there yet. It has properties and abilities of which I am not even aware. My main uses for a computer are email, watching reels of gorillas and monkeys on Facebook, and playing solitaire. Windows computers have always been good for playing solitaire.

In fact, Mac aficionados have cast a lot of shade on PCs because they believe Macs are superior in every way. They might be right. I don’t know. I only know that I can afford to buy a PC, and the price tags on Macs are way out of my ballpark. I know they are good machines – I started on Macs back in the 1990s, believing they were superior. I had at least three – a Performa, an iMac, and an iBook. All worked fine, until they didn’t, and then I had to take them off the island to a Mac repair shop. About 2004 I purchased a Dell laptop because the newspaper for which I wrote used a PC platform.

I discovered almost immediately that I like PCs better than Macs, for a few reasons, but the main reason is that PCs are language based, and Macs are visuals based. Language is my wheelhouse, and I was happy to start using the dolled up DOS system upon which Windows was based. It felt more natural to me than the Apple products.

Also, for a few hundred bucks I could get a computer that did everything a much more expensive Mac did. The other reason I like PCs is that I don’t have to leave the island and find a repair shop every time something goes caca. Nowadays, you don’t even have to defrag computers once a week.

I used to enjoy the colors that came with the defragging screen, I admit. But I don’t miss the process of sitting here waiting for the computer to sort itself out. Soon the defragging process was changed to an unsupervised process that automatically took place in the night. You could pick the day and time. Now defragging is not even mentioned. I wonder if computers defrag anymore.

One of the properties of growing old is realizing how fast your life went by. The pace at which computer technology and usage has grown parallels that speed. You can get the best and most modern version of a computer, and in a blink there are machines coming out that do more, faster, and your computer is a dinosaur.

A dinosaur is what I feel like these days. I really enjoy talking with members of my cohort – the early baby boomers – they get the references and jokes that I get. Whenever that meme comes up on Facebook that says, “If you remember more than 10 of these things, you are older than dirt,” I say, ten? Heck. I always remember every single one of their examples from bygone days. Wringer washing machines, little wax “coke bottles” with sweet syrup inside, candy cigarettes, and meat from the butcher shop wrapped in brown paper and string. We reused that string, too.

Where was I? Oh, yeah, new computer, I feel like a dinosaur, and my printer won’t work yet. It will, I know, if only because I have three boxes of ink cartridges for it and I don’t want to give up on it until I have used up that ink.

So here I am, trying to figure out this spiffy machine’s workings. I’ll get there.

Miscellaneous notes from piles of paper and a little family history

Dear Hearts,

I am at a stage of life when I am trying to divest myself and my house from all the crap I have accumulated the last 45 years or so. The trouble is - and I know many of you have the same experience - as I go through the old piles, I have to stop and read the writings, and look at the photos, before tossing anything. This blog entry is miscellaneous notes from a little notebook I came across, and then veers into Litchfield family history. 
It starts off useful, with a recipe for making yogurt

Making yogurt

1/3 cup yogurt

Heat quart of milk to 180 degrees

Cool to 115 degrees

Mix in yogurt

Wait.

I haven't tried this yet. 

 

Notebook pages

1.

1.        3/12/15

People who are better than I am

People who don’t watch television every night,

Because, you know television makes your brain liquefy and drip out of your open mouth.

People who are better than I am

Don’t play solitaire for hours,

Trying to make impossible plays or win once, at least.

And their homes are neat and tidy

And their diets are healthy

And they don’t feel guilty when they sit back to relax

Because they aren’t doing the vacuuming, or putting away the dishes, or folding the laundry,

Or any of the other chores I mean to get around to

Because people who are better than I am

Have balance, and structure

And equilibrium in their lives.

But they are not perfect,

For all their tranquility and order

They’ve been known to

Split infinitives

Sometimes they go out and spend money that was meant to pay the bills

Sometimes they lean over a garbage can and yell,

“The world can go to hell!”

So even though I know

They are better than I am

I kind of like them

Just fine.

 

2.

07/22/22

So I cooked

This evening

An artichoke, and some leftover chicken from the freezer.

In all too typical fashion I let them cook dry and burn

And the aluminum cladding on the bottom of the stainless steel pot

The artichoke was in

De-laminated and left part of itself on the element

And a few more drops of itself on the counter

When I lifted the pan off.

I was not expecting that.

That old pot – one of our wedding presents from 1979 –

Is headed for the landfill now.

And the knife I used to cut off the top of the artichoke

Is quite dull after all these years.

I know Rick was with me when I got that knife at the late, lamented, 

Bed Bath and Beyond, around 2007.

It was $30, more or less.

I can’t say we didn’t get our money’s worth out of it.

So

I need

A new knife (15 years)

A new pot (43 years)

A new stove (free discard, age unknown) *

And maybe

A winning lottery ticket.

Time to go shopping.

*This stove miraculously manifested itself and is working just fine.

 

3. 

09/11/23

I don't really have a story to tell. I'm just old, and a lot has happened and I thought should write some of it down. My cousin Charlotte is always telling me to write a book about our family. I haven't done it yet, though there is a story or two there.

When I was in the fourth grade, we were learning about Manifest Destiny (yes, I know now that that was about the eradication of the civilization that already lived here, and stealing their land, but that's another essay) and the brave settlers who came out west in wagon trains. I asked my father one day if our family came west in a wagon train.   He laughed. No, he said, our family waited until the railroad was built and then came out west.

Okay, so the Litchfields were soft, right? They waited until they could buy a ticket and travel in the relative comfort of the train. Well, that's what I thought until I came across the historical family record. Some Litchfields had come out West individually, by horse I imagine, or maybe even around the Horn, and settled in the Central Valley of California, in what is now Manteca. There they farmed, and married, and multiplied, and wrote home to the relatives in the Midwest about what a great place California was. The climate and the rich Delta soil made the living comparatively easy compared to the Midwest's harsh winters and hot summers.

So when the railroad was connected between the West and the East of the United States, a Litchfield family did take the train out west to Manteca. But the train was not made of passenger cars with padded velvet seats. Nope. This was the second train to convey people to the West, and the people rode in boxcars. By the time the Litchfield family arrived in Manteca, one of their children had died. So it wasn't the easy train trip my father made it sound like. It was uncomfortable, and dangerous, and fatal to one of their children. It was common to lose children in the 19th century, but I do not believe that people mourned any less for their children then than people do now.

So that's how the Litchfields from which I descend came to California. 

In the 1880s, my great grandparents, Chauncey and Belle Litchfield, moved from the Central Valley over to a valley in the foothills of the Coast Range. Belle and their eldest son, Percy, my grandfather, could not tolerate the tule fog in Manteca, so they moved to the Coast in hopes of it being a healthier climate.

They settled near Watsonville, in what was and is Green Valley, and planted 100 acres of apple trees, and they prospered and multiplied.

To be continued.

My great grandfather, Chauncey Litchfield. He was named for his grandfather Chauncey.