Firing Up the Hearth
Saturday, January 14th, 2023 11:58 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
snoozefestaudioIt was in the low 20sF all day, but with a bit of sun. Not bad for the middle of January, but cold enough to keep us inside most of the day and night.
I slept in until noon, but then for the first time ever... let Snoop and Prowly go down there with me first thing in the day! And they were quite excited to have the run of the downstairs from the get go!
Tim was up and making coffee. Dad asked for chocolate milk, and we gave him several straws worth of it... followed by a fews straws of water to wash it down.
The walk with Yvette was chilly, but tolerable, and at the end of it, we lingered in the back yard for a long time.
--<>--
Once Yvette was inside, I went back out to the car, fetched a bag of cat litter I'd bought last night, and used it to fill the old downstairs cat box that hasn't been used in six years.
Snoop & Prowly both investigated it immediately, and used it!
The problem with Yvette trying to block them, by sitting in the hallway, began to resolve last night when I constructed a corner bypass tunnel for them, out of two cardboard boxes, some duct tape, and a knife to cut out little doorways and windows.
The Great Cat Bypass, is an L-shaped tunnel that fits in the corner where the hallway meets the kitchen, and allows Snoop & Prowly to tunnel past the spot where Yvette sits, and get back and forth between the kitchen and the living room.
Meant to end the hostile standoffs, between big dog, and little cats... the bypass had the unintended effect of being perceived by both Yvette, and the cats, as a game!
They would hide in the bypass and she would try to predict where they'd come out, and they'd double back, or dart out, and Yvette would offer token snaps at them, but they'd be out of range.
It became a game for the three of them, and in so doing... broke the tension between them last night... such that, by today... Snoop & Prowly had the run of the downstairs all day and Yvette just accepted it, and started ignoring them.
As long as they stayed inside the cardboard tunnel, on their closest approaches to her and her little kabob sticks, at that intersection of the hallway, between Dad's room, and the Kitchen... where she loves to sit all day... they were no longer considered a threat!
It was marvelous!
--<>--
It being the 14th of January, it was time to tweak the winter decorations outside. The Christmas wreath on the front door was retired and replaced with a Valentine door hanging.
The Christmas display in the porch window by the side door was replaced with another Valentine hanging. And the little Christmas tree in the living room window was packed away, and the drapes pulled closed.
The lights on the bushes outside will stay, an continue to turn on with their timers every night for another month. They are now... Valentine's Day lights!
I did this last year, and I do it because you don't get any good, lasting snow around here until Feburary, and the whole point of the outdoor lights is to add some magic to the snowy landscape!
You may recall, I put up all the Christmas lights over my Thanksgiving break at the end of November, a week before Dad broke his hip, and the current crisis began.
So... all through this crisis with Dad, that's been going on for a month and a half now... those lights have just turned themselves on every night, and off every day... as the only predictable, and reassuring feature of this setting for the drama... the house!
--<>--
Inside the house, things have been getting turned upside down and inside out. Beds and junk have piled up on the parking and been hauled away. Hospice workers, relatives, and ministers have been in and out, while Dad's car has been fussed over and fixed and driven back and forth...
But the Christmas lights have dutifully turned on at dusk, and off at dawn through it all!
So it was important to me, today, to update to Valentine decorations, accompanying those lights... as a message to the world at large... and to the people caught up in the drama inside... that the continued stability of the lights, going forward, is no accident.
It's not a display that was put up before a crisis, being neglected as Chrismas fades, because the desperation inside the house is too overwhelming.
It's a deliberately ongoing display that's been updated to anticipate Valentine's Day now, because we have things under control...
And death is natural... life goes on... and this will still be our family house next year!
------------{=0=}------------
As I was taking care of the Valentine transition, Tim... now having had one full week to settle in, was suddenly in the mood to do some cleaning in the kitchen and the bathroom.
He started by looking at the range top, of the oven that hasn't been used at all in about eight years. Did the burners still work? And lo and behold, all four burners did work!
What about the broiler and the oven? Had they been infiltrated by mice?
Surprisingly they had not! No mouse poops in there. Just dust.
Next thing you know, Tim's cleaning out the broiler and the oven, and cleaning the range top and... finally he fired up the oven to see if it would go and it did!
Wow! Maybe we can actually COOK food in this kitchen!
Kevin showed up just then, and suggested we run the oven through it's self cleaning mode, so Tim got that going... a three hour burn at high temp, which not only raised the temperature a few degrees in the kitchen, but provided that gas sound, and burning dust smell that really made the kichen feel alive, like it hasn't since before Mom died.
Tim got to cleaning the bathroom, but Kevin got to vacuuming the kitchen. And that vacuum sent Snoop & Prowly to the safety of the upstairs, of their own volition, while I took Yvette for a walk.
--<>--
After the cleaning jag, the cat's stayed upstairs for a couple hours... presumably now napping, and Yvette also took a nap in the living room.
Tim, Kevin, and I were discussing an errand run. We needed some stuff like laundry detergent, dish soap, wash cloths, and antibiotic ointment, but... now that the oven was working, why not do a grocery run?
Kevin likes to stick to a vegan diet, though he breaks it on trips like this, but Tim, who likes to cook, wanted to get a bunch of veggies and bake them up together, for the three of us to eat tonight!
It was decided that Kevin would stay home with Dad while Tim went with me, because Tim's gotten a bit of cabin fever this week. Kevin's got his Air B&B, and has been driving Dad's car... and I've been going back and forth to work, but Tim's been mostly homebound.
We waited until the eucharistic ministers came to see Dad and give him communion.
And when they were Done, Tim gave them his number and told them that if anybody else from the parish wanted to visit Dad for any reason, on any day, they should arrange it through him, because he was gonna be here all day, every day.
--<>--
After that, Tim and I went to Walgreens first, to get all the non grocery stuff, and then we made a second stop at Supermercado Guiero, for the food!
He got potatos, carrots, onions, broccoli & cauliflower, spinach leaves, and peppers.
He got vegetable soup stock, and seasonings.
We got chips, avacado dip, and sour cream.
I got two frozen pizzas.
And after throwing a few other things into the cart, I paid for it all with SNAP!
$75.00 worth of groceries, for $3.25!
------------{=0=}------------
Back at home, around 7PM, I cracked open my first beer, and, with the oven self cleaning now done, Tim heated her up again to cook his vegan dish!
It took an hour to cook, and in that time we drank, smoked, ate chips with the dip, and checked in on Dad several times.
Snoop and Prowly awoke from their naps upstairs and came back down to patrol the downstairs, and Yvette sat by my feet at the table, snoozing on and off.
Tim's dish was quite good! All three of us had seconds! Kevin loved it, with just the butter and light seasoning. I put sour cream on mine, because... I can't eat baked potatos without some of that!
After eating, I took Yvette for a night walk, and Kevin joined me.
Back in the kitchen, we turned off the overhead fan light and turned on the little sconce lamps to get some mood lighting, and then just continued to smoke, drink and talk around the kitchen table for another three hours.
------------{=0=}------------
What made today different from the week that preceded it, was that, for the first time, I was able to be home all day... for one thing.
For another, Tim was finally truly settled in, and got that hearth fired up and used it to cook a meal for the first time in a decade.
For another, we finally had a whole day, start to finish with the cats downstairs, harmoniously coexisting with the dog.
And for the final thing, the three of us, for the first time, did not divide the time between a hang out in Dad's room and a later hang in Tim's room... but instead basically hung out in the kitchen all day and night... just checking in on Dad, one on one, in our turns, periodically.
--<>--
This was the first Day Dad did not show any interest in smoking a Newport, or sipping any Guinness.
He did have that bit of chocolate milk this morning, and Kevin fed him a few spoonfuls of ice cream while Tim & I were out, but... he was just a little beyond having the will or energy to hang, drink, and smoke like we'd been doing.
The three of us hanging in the kitchen... cleaning it... cooking in it... talking in it... provided an atmosphere and ambiance of home and family that Dad could readily absorb from his room off the kitchen... over the span of the whole day.
------------{=0=}------------
As always, it's difficult to say how long Dad has left, but one week ago tonight, he was still pretty talkative, and laughing a bit with Tim and I, while drinking Guinness and smoking a Newport by himself with no assistance.
And even THEN, he'd seemed worryingly frail.
But now it's a lot more sleeping, little sips from straws, a few words here and there, and a few hand gestures, and... just today... no interest in smoking or drinking.
He's still aware of the goings on around him. I did tell him how I updated the decorations for Valentine's Day, like I did last year, and he was happy to hear it. He did have his little moments with each of us, one-on-one throughout the day.
But I think the ambiance we naturally created in the kitchen... for ourselves, was also good for Dad, in this stage... and very much in keeping with the whole concept of home hospice.
As for the morphine, it still hasn't been touched. It didn't seem necessary today. But I do still think it won't be long.
------------{=0=}------------
We broke it up just after midnight. Kevin drove back to his flat. Tim retired to his room. And I went upstairs.
But as I write this sentence, at 2:30AM, the door to the living room remains open from this morning, and my cats remain downstairs, stalking around in search of mice to catch, while Yvette, Dad, and Tim, are sound asleep.
Maybe they'll have some success!
°¦}
https://soundcloud.com/snoozefestaudio
I slept in until noon, but then for the first time ever... let Snoop and Prowly go down there with me first thing in the day! And they were quite excited to have the run of the downstairs from the get go!
Tim was up and making coffee. Dad asked for chocolate milk, and we gave him several straws worth of it... followed by a fews straws of water to wash it down.
The walk with Yvette was chilly, but tolerable, and at the end of it, we lingered in the back yard for a long time.
Once Yvette was inside, I went back out to the car, fetched a bag of cat litter I'd bought last night, and used it to fill the old downstairs cat box that hasn't been used in six years.
Snoop & Prowly both investigated it immediately, and used it!
The problem with Yvette trying to block them, by sitting in the hallway, began to resolve last night when I constructed a corner bypass tunnel for them, out of two cardboard boxes, some duct tape, and a knife to cut out little doorways and windows.
The Great Cat Bypass, is an L-shaped tunnel that fits in the corner where the hallway meets the kitchen, and allows Snoop & Prowly to tunnel past the spot where Yvette sits, and get back and forth between the kitchen and the living room.
Meant to end the hostile standoffs, between big dog, and little cats... the bypass had the unintended effect of being perceived by both Yvette, and the cats, as a game!
They would hide in the bypass and she would try to predict where they'd come out, and they'd double back, or dart out, and Yvette would offer token snaps at them, but they'd be out of range.
It became a game for the three of them, and in so doing... broke the tension between them last night... such that, by today... Snoop & Prowly had the run of the downstairs all day and Yvette just accepted it, and started ignoring them.
As long as they stayed inside the cardboard tunnel, on their closest approaches to her and her little kabob sticks, at that intersection of the hallway, between Dad's room, and the Kitchen... where she loves to sit all day... they were no longer considered a threat!
It was marvelous!
It being the 14th of January, it was time to tweak the winter decorations outside. The Christmas wreath on the front door was retired and replaced with a Valentine door hanging.
The Christmas display in the porch window by the side door was replaced with another Valentine hanging. And the little Christmas tree in the living room window was packed away, and the drapes pulled closed.
The lights on the bushes outside will stay, an continue to turn on with their timers every night for another month. They are now... Valentine's Day lights!
I did this last year, and I do it because you don't get any good, lasting snow around here until Feburary, and the whole point of the outdoor lights is to add some magic to the snowy landscape!
You may recall, I put up all the Christmas lights over my Thanksgiving break at the end of November, a week before Dad broke his hip, and the current crisis began.
So... all through this crisis with Dad, that's been going on for a month and a half now... those lights have just turned themselves on every night, and off every day... as the only predictable, and reassuring feature of this setting for the drama... the house!
Inside the house, things have been getting turned upside down and inside out. Beds and junk have piled up on the parking and been hauled away. Hospice workers, relatives, and ministers have been in and out, while Dad's car has been fussed over and fixed and driven back and forth...
But the Christmas lights have dutifully turned on at dusk, and off at dawn through it all!
So it was important to me, today, to update to Valentine decorations, accompanying those lights... as a message to the world at large... and to the people caught up in the drama inside... that the continued stability of the lights, going forward, is no accident.
It's not a display that was put up before a crisis, being neglected as Chrismas fades, because the desperation inside the house is too overwhelming.
It's a deliberately ongoing display that's been updated to anticipate Valentine's Day now, because we have things under control...
And death is natural... life goes on... and this will still be our family house next year!
As I was taking care of the Valentine transition, Tim... now having had one full week to settle in, was suddenly in the mood to do some cleaning in the kitchen and the bathroom.
He started by looking at the range top, of the oven that hasn't been used at all in about eight years. Did the burners still work? And lo and behold, all four burners did work!
What about the broiler and the oven? Had they been infiltrated by mice?
Surprisingly they had not! No mouse poops in there. Just dust.
Next thing you know, Tim's cleaning out the broiler and the oven, and cleaning the range top and... finally he fired up the oven to see if it would go and it did!
Wow! Maybe we can actually COOK food in this kitchen!
Kevin showed up just then, and suggested we run the oven through it's self cleaning mode, so Tim got that going... a three hour burn at high temp, which not only raised the temperature a few degrees in the kitchen, but provided that gas sound, and burning dust smell that really made the kichen feel alive, like it hasn't since before Mom died.
Tim got to cleaning the bathroom, but Kevin got to vacuuming the kitchen. And that vacuum sent Snoop & Prowly to the safety of the upstairs, of their own volition, while I took Yvette for a walk.
After the cleaning jag, the cat's stayed upstairs for a couple hours... presumably now napping, and Yvette also took a nap in the living room.
Tim, Kevin, and I were discussing an errand run. We needed some stuff like laundry detergent, dish soap, wash cloths, and antibiotic ointment, but... now that the oven was working, why not do a grocery run?
Kevin likes to stick to a vegan diet, though he breaks it on trips like this, but Tim, who likes to cook, wanted to get a bunch of veggies and bake them up together, for the three of us to eat tonight!
It was decided that Kevin would stay home with Dad while Tim went with me, because Tim's gotten a bit of cabin fever this week. Kevin's got his Air B&B, and has been driving Dad's car... and I've been going back and forth to work, but Tim's been mostly homebound.
We waited until the eucharistic ministers came to see Dad and give him communion.
And when they were Done, Tim gave them his number and told them that if anybody else from the parish wanted to visit Dad for any reason, on any day, they should arrange it through him, because he was gonna be here all day, every day.
After that, Tim and I went to Walgreens first, to get all the non grocery stuff, and then we made a second stop at Supermercado Guiero, for the food!
He got potatos, carrots, onions, broccoli & cauliflower, spinach leaves, and peppers.
He got vegetable soup stock, and seasonings.
We got chips, avacado dip, and sour cream.
I got two frozen pizzas.
And after throwing a few other things into the cart, I paid for it all with SNAP!
$75.00 worth of groceries, for $3.25!
Back at home, around 7PM, I cracked open my first beer, and, with the oven self cleaning now done, Tim heated her up again to cook his vegan dish!
It took an hour to cook, and in that time we drank, smoked, ate chips with the dip, and checked in on Dad several times.
Snoop and Prowly awoke from their naps upstairs and came back down to patrol the downstairs, and Yvette sat by my feet at the table, snoozing on and off.
Tim's dish was quite good! All three of us had seconds! Kevin loved it, with just the butter and light seasoning. I put sour cream on mine, because... I can't eat baked potatos without some of that!
After eating, I took Yvette for a night walk, and Kevin joined me.
Back in the kitchen, we turned off the overhead fan light and turned on the little sconce lamps to get some mood lighting, and then just continued to smoke, drink and talk around the kitchen table for another three hours.
What made today different from the week that preceded it, was that, for the first time, I was able to be home all day... for one thing.
For another, Tim was finally truly settled in, and got that hearth fired up and used it to cook a meal for the first time in a decade.
For another, we finally had a whole day, start to finish with the cats downstairs, harmoniously coexisting with the dog.
And for the final thing, the three of us, for the first time, did not divide the time between a hang out in Dad's room and a later hang in Tim's room... but instead basically hung out in the kitchen all day and night... just checking in on Dad, one on one, in our turns, periodically.
This was the first Day Dad did not show any interest in smoking a Newport, or sipping any Guinness.
He did have that bit of chocolate milk this morning, and Kevin fed him a few spoonfuls of ice cream while Tim & I were out, but... he was just a little beyond having the will or energy to hang, drink, and smoke like we'd been doing.
The three of us hanging in the kitchen... cleaning it... cooking in it... talking in it... provided an atmosphere and ambiance of home and family that Dad could readily absorb from his room off the kitchen... over the span of the whole day.
As always, it's difficult to say how long Dad has left, but one week ago tonight, he was still pretty talkative, and laughing a bit with Tim and I, while drinking Guinness and smoking a Newport by himself with no assistance.
And even THEN, he'd seemed worryingly frail.
But now it's a lot more sleeping, little sips from straws, a few words here and there, and a few hand gestures, and... just today... no interest in smoking or drinking.
He's still aware of the goings on around him. I did tell him how I updated the decorations for Valentine's Day, like I did last year, and he was happy to hear it. He did have his little moments with each of us, one-on-one throughout the day.
But I think the ambiance we naturally created in the kitchen... for ourselves, was also good for Dad, in this stage... and very much in keeping with the whole concept of home hospice.
As for the morphine, it still hasn't been touched. It didn't seem necessary today. But I do still think it won't be long.
We broke it up just after midnight. Kevin drove back to his flat. Tim retired to his room. And I went upstairs.
But as I write this sentence, at 2:30AM, the door to the living room remains open from this morning, and my cats remain downstairs, stalking around in search of mice to catch, while Yvette, Dad, and Tim, are sound asleep.
Maybe they'll have some success!
°¦}
