Bleah!

Home sick. It's not usually a full-blown cold or flu. I haven't had one of those in about two years (knock on wood). But running out of steam, feeling depleted, lifting too much stuff (yesterday and I'm really suffering today!) and eating weird things or food that isn't quite right...that's what can get me down. So I'm recuperating, taking healing time, resting, thinking about many things. I miss being outside, enjoying the weather. I'm not sure I'll be able to do much of that until June.

Wish I had time....

I really wish I had time to blog. I may have to take it up as a discipline. I'm now testing to see whether I actually have one or two blogs because blogger is creating some confusion about that.

Shopping

We're taking care of business and not especially enjoying this beautiful day. Time to change priorities.


-- Posted from my iPhone

Testing blogging

Just testing this new blogging app.

-- Post From My iPhone

Healing Tears

Yesterday I was here at work, desperately trying to tune into streaming CNN coverage of the inauguration along with whatever I could get on my small, old black and white analog TV. That surely was the last time I'll use that television!

I got static, snow, stops & starts, and decided it was best to get to the nearest big screen TV on the University of Chicago campus. Fortunately the School of Social Service Administration had TWO huge TV screens in their lobby, so colleagues and I went over there to watch the swearing-in ceremony. In the sea of mostly white, middle-class faces there were a few African American folks glued to one screen or the other. There was not much talking, but there were tears here and there. Tears both of joy and healing: celebrating a new day while remembering the long, tortured, national pain that is racism. Not that the pain, the ugliness, the hatred, has gone away, but for once we can sigh with relief in knowing that America has made a huge leap forward in coming to terms with that awful legacy. And there will be much healing work ahead of us, not to mention reparations.

Taking the "Nurse" out of Nursing Home

I have had enough experience now with nursing homes--as the daughter of someone who has been living in one for more than five years--to know that very little nursing takes place in these facilities, and they are NOTHING like home. In my mother's nursing home, the nurses on duty are LPNs. We're very lucky if the LPN in charge knows much of anything, and they aren't always good people managers. The understaffed staff is overworked. They're clearly not well-screened, as they have been robbing residents blind all these years, my mother included. Her wedding ring was stolen a few months back, and before that just about anything attractive or of any value would just disappear. And that was the case even after I put up a sign saying, "Thou Shalt Not Steal."

Of course there are some real sweethearts--people who don't complain about doing the work and who actually DO it, and who care about their charges--but there are always those who will lie to you to make life more convenient for them, or those who have emotional and personality disorders or problems so severe they agitate family members, or at best act as if we have no say in the matter.

Now we're trying to find a way to get our dying mother into a Catholic nursing home where she will feel, we hope, a sense of spiritual peace....or at least some support of that nature. But the nursing home we visited apparently decided we didn't look or act rich enough: we are "Medicaid" people, not the wealthy middle-class types they prefer to associate with. We're fat, not 100 percent healthy, and we look it. And it's easy even for these "Catholics" to find themselves so superior to us because of the way we look and because of the state of our finances. But we have education, skills, training, talents, that might very well overshadow these self-righteous people, and that includes our mother too!! We are just as Middle Class as they, except for our pocketbooks, and yet we are looked down upon; thought to be just a little lower than scum, I guess. This does not sound very Catholic to me; certainly not Christian at all....but how to get the point across when the snubbing is veiled in lies and excuses?

I really think our public schools need to reinstate not just civics courses but ethics courses (and I mean personal as well as corporate ethics) and courses in moral and personal development. Obviously parents aren't doing a decent job of teaching people these days!!! Somebody's got to do it, or our most vulnerable citizens will continue to succumb to the worst of human nature.

From a Nissan Altima back to a Honda Civic

I'm marveling at the difference between the Nissan Altima C. and I rented for our trip to Missouri and my usual (and, of course, beloved) car--a Honda Civic. Shocks, reduced cabin noise, engine power, all make a big difference in how I feel, at least, when I finish a long road trip. And I absolutely love the auxiliary plug that gives you the option of plugging in your iPod!!! Well, I'm thinking deep thoughts today but have little time to write them down.

Perhaps I can use this blog as my MDiv blog from now on.....