Today was my last day at work for this week. Starting tomorrow I am heading out cross-country for a drive back to SD. The Jeep is packed except for the handful of high value items that I will carry out tomorrow morning. There wasn't enough time to do everything at work, so I am leaving with some stuff undone, but I am anticipating that I will be able to get some work done as soon as I arrive back in South Dakota.
I should get them some time Wednesday night, get a good night sleep, then I am going to do a quick turnaround and take my mom up to the orthopedic surgery center in Sioux Falls for shoulder surgery on Friday. We'll end up staying there for two days and then head back to Winner. For there I'll camp out at the ranch and work virtually. I am looking forward to it, though I am sure I am going to miss California, especially the weather!
So, the plan tonight is to simply unwind and then start the trip tomorrow. It is about fifteen hundred miles so it will take somewhere between twenty and twenty four hours of road time to get there. I've made the trip a dozen times or more over the years so it should be pretty routine. The advantage of car travel is that you're able to carry enough stuff that, in the event it is not normal you'll have enough tools and equipment to deal with anything that might arise.
So, wish me luck! I will probably have more of an opportunity to write while I am in South Dakota with those nice quiet evenings at the ranch.
Showing posts with label Winner. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Winner. Show all posts
Monday, October 27, 2014
Friday, February 21, 2014
A Quick Step of a Week
Okay, it is a quiet Friday evening and, after dishes and taking the trash out, I am kicked back and watching an episode of Ancient Aliens, one of my guilty pleasures. Let me catch you up real quick on the things that have been going on. On the personal side of the house TR is on her journey yet, so I am missing her and enjoying each chance to talk when it occurs. The folks are doing well in the assisted living community in Winner, SD. Siblings are doing okay. Most of my friends are continuing their journey there, so all is pretty much status quo. At work we rolled out phase one of the project I am working on and we got some much needed direction in terms of future developments in the project and the O&M support model. The launch was amusing but mostly smooth. Now, we start work on the second phase this coming week. In short, a brisk and busy week without a lot of opportunities to write - most of the free time I had went to work, to the process of getting the project launched. I am looking forward to a solid night of sleep tonight without having to worry about the work project - largely because no one should be working over the weekend. Tomorrow, I am planning on making it a long, slow and easy day.
Saturday, August 18, 2012
A Saturday with Team Banzai
An enjoyable Saturday. I left home about 8:30 AM and spent the entire day wandering. It was extremely nice, if a bit on the warm side. I got home tonight and decided to watch a classic movie that I'd captured on my DVR. The movie?
"The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai across the 8th Dimension". Ahhhh, a true classic cult Science Fiction movie. How can you possibly go wrong with Team Banzai? If you've never seen it - find it, settle in with popcorn and your favorite beverage and enjoy. I personally have no idea how many times I've scene it over the years. Most important to me, I remember when I saw it the first time.
It was the summer of 1984 at the Winner Drive In, east of Winner SD. A hot summer night, with good company, sitting on the white benches in front of the concession stand, in that timeless time when the world was young. So, from that summer night to this summer night, I still love Buckaroo Banzai and the Hong Kong Cavaliers.
Wednesday, November 23, 2011
Traveling Thanksgiving
I am in South Dakota for the Thanksgiving Holiday. At this moment, I am sitting on the couch in the living room on the ranch, listening to Hank Williams, sniffing the scent of fresh barley soup prepared by a professional chef and the scent of biscuits in the oven. That simple dinner is about twenty minutes out, so I thought I would pop online and make a quick entry.
I came back to the ranch on Friday the 18th and will, soon enough, be heading back to California. I like visiting here, it is always good to see my parents, my siblings, and any of my other relatives and old friends that I might stumble across - but, honestly, there is only so much to do in South Dakota, and all of it involves lots of driving.
On Monday, I was the parents driver, taking them into Winner (about twenty miles east) for a doctors appointment and errand running, then driving back to Rosebud (about forty miles to the west), and then back home. It was a fairly long day, but everything went pretty smoothly. Then, on Tuesday, I ran back into Winner to pick up the odds and ends for Thanksgiving Dinner.
We're going to have a small one, half a dozen people or so, and we are going to keep it simple and traditional - turkey, mashed potatoes, vegetables, corn bread dressing, and pies, lots and lost of pies. On Tuesday I picked up eight pies from the Winner bakery - two each of apple, cherry, pumpkin, and pecan. That is going to come out to about 1.8 pies per adult! It certainly could have been the all pie thanksgiving. I am sure they will try to foist one on me for the trip back to SD, but pies, in general, simply do not travel well! No matter how careful you are, at the far end, you end up with "the stuff that makes up a pie all mooshed into a container". Trust me, I've tried it.
So, I am spending the days as simply and quietly as I can, napping, reading, visiting, cooking, watching assorted things on television and listening to my folks listen to Hank Williams. And I am thankful, very, very, thankful, for every moment of it, in all it's simplicity and grace. So wherever you are, whoever you are, I hope you're able to find something simple and graceful to be thankful for.
I came back to the ranch on Friday the 18th and will, soon enough, be heading back to California. I like visiting here, it is always good to see my parents, my siblings, and any of my other relatives and old friends that I might stumble across - but, honestly, there is only so much to do in South Dakota, and all of it involves lots of driving.
On Monday, I was the parents driver, taking them into Winner (about twenty miles east) for a doctors appointment and errand running, then driving back to Rosebud (about forty miles to the west), and then back home. It was a fairly long day, but everything went pretty smoothly. Then, on Tuesday, I ran back into Winner to pick up the odds and ends for Thanksgiving Dinner.
We're going to have a small one, half a dozen people or so, and we are going to keep it simple and traditional - turkey, mashed potatoes, vegetables, corn bread dressing, and pies, lots and lost of pies. On Tuesday I picked up eight pies from the Winner bakery - two each of apple, cherry, pumpkin, and pecan. That is going to come out to about 1.8 pies per adult! It certainly could have been the all pie thanksgiving. I am sure they will try to foist one on me for the trip back to SD, but pies, in general, simply do not travel well! No matter how careful you are, at the far end, you end up with "the stuff that makes up a pie all mooshed into a container". Trust me, I've tried it.
So, I am spending the days as simply and quietly as I can, napping, reading, visiting, cooking, watching assorted things on television and listening to my folks listen to Hank Williams. And I am thankful, very, very, thankful, for every moment of it, in all it's simplicity and grace. So wherever you are, whoever you are, I hope you're able to find something simple and graceful to be thankful for.
Tuesday, November 4, 2008
A Tuesday Afternoon Note
I have had a couple of busy weeks so I have not really had many opportunities to update my journal here. Hopefully, things are settling out a little and that will let me fall back into my normal rhythms. As I mentioned in an earlier entry my mother had a nice little health scare over the last two weeks.
My mother is 72 years old. She was born on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, in Pine Ridge, South Dakota. She is Ogalala Lakota. She went to Holy Rosary in Pine Ridge and St. Francis Indian School in St. Francis (on the Rosebud). She graduated from Sinte Gleska in Rosebud and went on to a long career as a teacher at a variety of schools, finishing her career at Todd County Middle School in Mission, SD. She retired about seven years ago now. Her health has been mostly good, other than scattered incidents. She does have a chronic back ailment that has worsened in the last couple of years.
She appears to have had an acute case of pancreatitis, for which she is currently hospitalized. Last Tuesday she was taken to the emergency room at the IHS (Indian Health Services) hospital in Rosebud, and then after some discussion with her primary care physician transferred to Winner Regional in Winner, South Dakota, where is currently a patient. Since her hospitalization they have been running a battery of tests. The acute pancreatitis is the principle reason she was hospitalized, but she also experienced being badly disoriented - to the point where she has no memory of the first two or three days in the hospital.
Because she is on strong pain medication for her chronic back problem (oxycontin and oxycodone) the doctor suspects that the combined effects of the pain killers kept her from noticing the symptoms of the pancreatitis until it was acute. They have done CT and MRI scans and have ruled out a stroke, so the principle suspect right now in the disorientation is a medication interaction, though acute pancreatitis can also cause neurological symptoms such as disorientation, fatigue, and lethargy.
Mostly I had been talking with my sister (who lives close to my parents) and my step-dad. I've also had other conversations with other siblings and relatives, usually just of the concerned relative or friend nature. Mostly we've been in a wait and see mode. I spoke with my mother over the weekend and she was definitely disoriented.
However, on the good side, she called me last night with her new cell phone. For years she and my step dad have shared a cell phone (since they are usually together anyway when they leave the ranch), but she sent him out to buy her a cell phone since she is laid up in the hospital. She was lucid, alert, and very much in the moment.
We talked for a while about her illness and about the immediate concerns - her doctor is keeping her in the hospital in a "swing bed", a term I had never heard before. It means "When a patient reaches the point in recovery where acute care hospitalization is no longer necessary, but they are physically unable to go home".
My mother started physical therapy the other day as she has an unusual symptom (pain in the balls of her feet) and is having difficulty getting around. Because she lives with my step-dad the concern is that unless she is mobile, if she were to fall, he would not be able to lift her (due to his own health care issues). Depending on how that all works out we will continue the ongoing discussions about potential impacts and long term care.
I will be flying back to South Dakota for Thanksgiving anyway (leaving on the 20th and coming back to California on the 30th), so I am looking forward to some good discussions with my folks and my sister while I am there, just running over the various options and preferences. My folks live on the ranch, about eight miles off the nearest paved road, in rural South Dakota. They have talked about moving into one of the nearby towns a couple of times over the last few years, so it may be time to renew that discussion. We have plenty of options. They have good insurance, as well as medicare and IHS (being enrolled tribal members residing on the reservation).
IHS is iffy when it comes to health care, but it is health care, and what IHS cannot resolve can be covered with their own insurance and medicare/medicaid. Additionally, financial concerns are, thankfully, not a major part of the picture. If the best decision is for in-home care of some sort, then that is the route we'll take. My hope of course is that it is just an incident related to the acute pancreatitis, but I am also aware of comfortable with the course of aging. Naturally, I hope my mother pulls through cleanly and is around for another 20 years to periodically slap me on the head and keep me in line. Time will tell, like it always does.
Other than that, things have actually been going well for me. We are sliding into winter here in this part of California and I really enjoyed that storm we went through. At the start of the California winter I often say "I love the rain", LOL, but I know from experience that if you ask me that question come spring, my primary thought is "I hope this dang rain stops".
On the creative side, I have been working on a short story that turned into an interlocking set of short stories. It swirled around inside of me for a while and in the last day or two the lead character found her voice to tell her tale, so I am looking forward to finishing writing that up and I will post it here for you all to read. I have been thinking about opening another journal on blogspot in order to highlight just my creative writing - my poetry and my short fiction. I have been interspersing it here in this journal, but I was looking through it the other day and there is more than enough to put into its own journal (and I happened to discover another journal or two in blogspot that had taken exactly that approach). It will allow more of a showcase approach to my creative writing.
My thanks to everyone who sent kind words and best wishes and expressed concern about my mother - you have my grateful appreciation as your always do my friends.
My mother is 72 years old. She was born on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, in Pine Ridge, South Dakota. She is Ogalala Lakota. She went to Holy Rosary in Pine Ridge and St. Francis Indian School in St. Francis (on the Rosebud). She graduated from Sinte Gleska in Rosebud and went on to a long career as a teacher at a variety of schools, finishing her career at Todd County Middle School in Mission, SD. She retired about seven years ago now. Her health has been mostly good, other than scattered incidents. She does have a chronic back ailment that has worsened in the last couple of years.
She appears to have had an acute case of pancreatitis, for which she is currently hospitalized. Last Tuesday she was taken to the emergency room at the IHS (Indian Health Services) hospital in Rosebud, and then after some discussion with her primary care physician transferred to Winner Regional in Winner, South Dakota, where is currently a patient. Since her hospitalization they have been running a battery of tests. The acute pancreatitis is the principle reason she was hospitalized, but she also experienced being badly disoriented - to the point where she has no memory of the first two or three days in the hospital.
Because she is on strong pain medication for her chronic back problem (oxycontin and oxycodone) the doctor suspects that the combined effects of the pain killers kept her from noticing the symptoms of the pancreatitis until it was acute. They have done CT and MRI scans and have ruled out a stroke, so the principle suspect right now in the disorientation is a medication interaction, though acute pancreatitis can also cause neurological symptoms such as disorientation, fatigue, and lethargy.
Mostly I had been talking with my sister (who lives close to my parents) and my step-dad. I've also had other conversations with other siblings and relatives, usually just of the concerned relative or friend nature. Mostly we've been in a wait and see mode. I spoke with my mother over the weekend and she was definitely disoriented.
However, on the good side, she called me last night with her new cell phone. For years she and my step dad have shared a cell phone (since they are usually together anyway when they leave the ranch), but she sent him out to buy her a cell phone since she is laid up in the hospital. She was lucid, alert, and very much in the moment.
We talked for a while about her illness and about the immediate concerns - her doctor is keeping her in the hospital in a "swing bed", a term I had never heard before. It means "When a patient reaches the point in recovery where acute care hospitalization is no longer necessary, but they are physically unable to go home".
My mother started physical therapy the other day as she has an unusual symptom (pain in the balls of her feet) and is having difficulty getting around. Because she lives with my step-dad the concern is that unless she is mobile, if she were to fall, he would not be able to lift her (due to his own health care issues). Depending on how that all works out we will continue the ongoing discussions about potential impacts and long term care.
I will be flying back to South Dakota for Thanksgiving anyway (leaving on the 20th and coming back to California on the 30th), so I am looking forward to some good discussions with my folks and my sister while I am there, just running over the various options and preferences. My folks live on the ranch, about eight miles off the nearest paved road, in rural South Dakota. They have talked about moving into one of the nearby towns a couple of times over the last few years, so it may be time to renew that discussion. We have plenty of options. They have good insurance, as well as medicare and IHS (being enrolled tribal members residing on the reservation).
IHS is iffy when it comes to health care, but it is health care, and what IHS cannot resolve can be covered with their own insurance and medicare/medicaid. Additionally, financial concerns are, thankfully, not a major part of the picture. If the best decision is for in-home care of some sort, then that is the route we'll take. My hope of course is that it is just an incident related to the acute pancreatitis, but I am also aware of comfortable with the course of aging. Naturally, I hope my mother pulls through cleanly and is around for another 20 years to periodically slap me on the head and keep me in line. Time will tell, like it always does.
Other than that, things have actually been going well for me. We are sliding into winter here in this part of California and I really enjoyed that storm we went through. At the start of the California winter I often say "I love the rain", LOL, but I know from experience that if you ask me that question come spring, my primary thought is "I hope this dang rain stops".
On the creative side, I have been working on a short story that turned into an interlocking set of short stories. It swirled around inside of me for a while and in the last day or two the lead character found her voice to tell her tale, so I am looking forward to finishing writing that up and I will post it here for you all to read. I have been thinking about opening another journal on blogspot in order to highlight just my creative writing - my poetry and my short fiction. I have been interspersing it here in this journal, but I was looking through it the other day and there is more than enough to put into its own journal (and I happened to discover another journal or two in blogspot that had taken exactly that approach). It will allow more of a showcase approach to my creative writing.
My thanks to everyone who sent kind words and best wishes and expressed concern about my mother - you have my grateful appreciation as your always do my friends.
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