I'll Be With Me Shortly

Lately my world has been busy enough to need to take a number to have time by myself! Pretty good for someone who can’t move from one place to another on my own, huh?

I sent David off to visit his brother. His brother and family are in Florida now, so it makes for a nice respite on a shoestring. Every now and then he needs a caregiver break from me and honestly, by the time he needs a break from me, I need one from him too. When he gets grumpy, it stresses me badly. Between a few hours more a day for the aides that help me out, home visits from health professionals, friends who drop in to check up on me and nearly constant calls, I’m alone more when David’s home! I appreciate being looked out for but I like my alone time too. I would love a balance between the two all the time.

I’ll have the new power chair in the next couple of weeks. I can’t wait! I know I’ll need help to transfer and dress. I’ll have to re-learn how to stand and use bars to pivot or pull myself. I’ll need to learn the controls and clearances of the new chair and I’ll have to relearn using the transfer board and even what my new limits for reaching things are, but I’m dying to get started! Physical and Occupational Therapy will start again in earnest as soon as the new chair gets here. My first destination goal will be the hospital for an MRI. I need the MRI before I go to Cleveland in June.

Undergrad Degree; Check!

My next planned event out of the house will be much more fun. Tori’s commencement ceremony for her undergrad degree is at the end of May! She’s selected her grad school as she moves on to the next step of her education and will be going right on to work on her graduate degree. I am so proud!

She does have the Cinderella dreams about a wedding someday, but I hope she cherishes the graduation days and the celebrations of her own accomplishments as happier days than an eventual wedding day. I know my opinion is not in the traditional loop, but I would love there to be a day where the “happiest day of my life” for women is a graduation, promotion, opening a business, your own practice or becoming a partner in your firm rather than “becoming a wife.” For me, getting married was a special and happy day, but it was not a day that defines me. It should not be a day that defines anyone. For Tori, next month will be the first of “HER days.” It will be the one of many remarkable achievements she’ll earn in defining who she is and how she’ll contribute to the world. I hope she always cherishes every accomplishment as the most important and happy day of her life so far.

Colors from my flowerbed

We had some rain this week and now it’s just gray and dreary. My aide Wednesday morning freshened up my glass of flowers from my flower bed. I have a fresh daffodil and a couple of my tulips. The tulips are the last of the perennials I have planted. Kelly and I planted Spring perennials in the fall of 2010. Then I spent the beginning of 2011 with all of the test thats eventually made way for my MS diagnosis in June. That meant there wasn't any spring planting for the summer and fall flowers. It also ended up meaning that there were a lot bigger issues than planting flowers on my plate. So for the last five years the crocuses of bloomed, then the daffodils bloomed as the crocuses faded and the tulips came in at the end of the daffodils. Then the weeds grew in filling the flowerbeds for the rest of the year.

It was really my plan, at least my hope, to finally get the rest of the bulbs planted this year. Well, the new chair is going to get here just late enough to have to postpone that one more year. You see the original idea for my flower beds on the side of the house was that in March the crocuses would bloom, snow or no snow, then the daffodils, then the tulips, then something that blooms in June followed by something that blooms in mid-summer and so on until the first frost. So I’ve bookmarked the bulbs I’m going to plant next spring.

Growing in with the last of the tulips and through August will be Stargazer lilies.

I’m going to plant gladiolus to grow in July and August.

There were a few gladiolus in the area that's now my flowerbeds already growing when David moved into this house. He used to cut stems of them for me as presents before I even lived here. They were beautiful on my desk at work and they attracted a lot of attention too. But when we had the basement waterproofed in that area was dug into, we lost all that one of the glads. I plan to add more to the one remaining light purple one.

Asiatic lilies will bloom later in July through August.

My spring planting next year will finish the year’s flowers with dahlias and begonias which will bloom from midsummer through the first frost.

I’m having a ton of fun going through all the different flower bulbs and imagining the colors I'll order them in and how great the flowerbeds are going to look all year next year. And it will be fun next April to do that planting and it will really be fun watching all the colors that last from snow to snow!