Unpacking the dishes 2

I looked at the clock, one of the items I made sure I put up right away.  I can't stand not knowing the time even if I have nowhere to be, I just need to know.  The clock said it was noon.  No wonder my stomach was growling.  I decided to fix a sandwich and some coffee.  Taking my lunch outside, I couldn't help but take in the view.  So pretty, rolling waves on the lake, no neighbors on top of us and there was a gentle breeze blowing.

I'd been unpacking all morning so feeling sweaty and grimy, I decided to take a quick shower and cool off a bit.  There they were, my towels, then my shower gel, blow dryer and body spray.  Everything I needed.  The hot water rolling over me helped to relieve the tension in my shoulders and my mood.  It felt wonderful, almost making me want to take a nap.  But I have more items to put away so I dry myself off and look for something to wear.  I choose a pair of short cut off jeans and a halter top.  Just cool enough for the warm weather and cool enough to make me not sweat so profusely while I unpack boxes.

On my way back to the living room, I grabbed a hair pull out of my cut off jean shorts.  I looked into the full length mirror and it occurred to me that I may have just cut the jeans a tad too short.  I could almost see my crotch area, but I shrugged thinking I had no one to impress and being home alone, with Mike on a business trip, I continued to pull my hair on top of my head.  The hair was damp from the humidity and a lot of my curls were laying in little, damp ringlets at the back of my neck and forehead.

I  took a long look at the vast array of boxes in the living room and dining area and wondered just how I'd ever get them all unpacked and put away.  Well, I thought to myself, stop wasting time, those boxes won't put themselves away.  Where in hell is that damned air conditioning guy?  I was growing more impatient by the hour.  I figured he's probably some old guy, a fat old guy, slow, probably one of those guys who's ass crack showed each time he bent over to fix anything.  I groaned inside at the thought and giggled a little to myself imagining that ass crack vision.  Never the less, I just hope Old Fart knows his stuff and that Mike has left him some detailed instructions.  I hate being the sole one at home when man chores crop up because I don't know the first thing about them.Getting back to unpacking I found myself engrossed in unwrapping each piece of glassware when, suddenly ,what in hell?"

Excuse me lady, I didn't mean to scare you but I 

I stood up quickly, and what I saw left me stunned

I knocked and I guess you didn't hear me so I took the liberty of letting myself in.

"

Shirtless, muscles rippling and a six pack that I'd only seen in body building magazines was here, in the flesh.  Holy shit!

"I will get to work as soon as you show me where the unit is located."

I must have obviously been staring a him because he almost looked uncomfortable under my gaze. 

   

Unpacking the dishes

I stopped unpacking the dishes for a moment and looked around the kitchen, my kitchen, I still couldn't believe it.  Mike had finally purchased us a house of our own, he made good on his promise to me.  It wasn't that I didn't believe he would, but I think this house is a way of making things up to me. 

 The previous relationship I had before meeting Mike, left me not really sure I could ever trust men again. 

But we just aren't as intimate these days as we were 12 years ago when we first met.  I convinced myself that I didn't miss the sex so awfully much.  Mike is attentive, sweet and tells me he loves me every day we are together, but he just has no interest in sex anymore.  I have my battery operated friend but somehow it's not the same as a warm, erotic touch from a man. 

 I know I'm 35 and he's 60, but no one told me sex drive wanes when guys get older. I couldn't help but laugh out loud about his chosen profession, especially given his disinterest in sex these days.  He's half owner of an erotic film making company. 

Mike is the Midwest Porn King, or so the big newspapers and the television news have called him. 

How ironic. The very thing he's not interested in in his real life, has made him rich in the fantasy world

Looking around, I couldn't help thinking how, just a few years ago, we'd be making love on the big counter in this kitchen.The thought of that made me feel a bit sad.  I love Mike, but without sex, well, it's just been a long time since I have felt sexy, wanted, sensual or very pretty.  I also felt a bit guilty for thinking like this. Mike is away on a business trip for two weeks, so I'm left here, alone, to put away most of our things that the movers just dropped off for us. 

I didn't mind, this big house will become a bed and breakfast once we are settled in.  Mike figured it would be a nice business for me, maybe a distraction to keep me busy and my mind off the reality of our marriage.  I decided to stop for a moment and look around the house.  It's a beautiful house, but a few things do need fixing.  Mike likes to fix stuff at home, but right now, he is away because he has to make sure the business is running smoothly.

 I have always wanted a big, beautiful house, but not a mansion,, I didn't want it to be vulgar. It's the kind of house where I can do my own housework and be the domestic goddess' I always wanted to be.  This one is great and we plan to expand it a little more. 

Mike had wanted to build one on the ocean, but I was worried about hurricanes, so we compromised and decided on a nice, secluded old Victorian on the great lake in Ohio.  

I wandered towards the dining area of the house to look out the patio doors at the back, the lake was stunningly lovely today, but inside was hot, sultry, the kind of day where the humidity was thick and you worked up a sweat walking across the room.  Mike had promised me a pool but right now, at this moment, I'll just be happy to have the central air fixed. 

 

What in hell is the buzz about Culture Change?

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Culture change in a nursing home.  So what the hell is it?

My nursing home books point out the horrors of those places, it's true.  But I also touch on Culture Change and the fact that all nursing homes could, and should, embrace Culture Change and every one of them can make at least some changes anyway and some is better than none.

Culture Change is not a big mystery, nor is it anything that would cost the traditional nursing homes an arm or a leg.  Let's first look at why traditional nursing homes are not really any one's home.  Yes, people may live there, but then people live in prisons and jails and yet none of the inmates would say they are home.

Traditional nursing homes were designed after the Medical Model.  Now we can, right off the bat, understand why that model is not conducive to oozing with a 'homey' feel.  Who wants to go to a hospital, much less live in one?  I dare say few, if any do.

One of the more obvious problems in traditional nursing homes is the elephant in the middle of the living room.  In this case, it's the obtrusive nursing station.  It takes up a good share of the hallway where residents who use wheel chairs, canes or just plain find it difficult to navigate anyway, have to go around making just one more obstacle for those having problems navigating, get past that monstrosity.  Besides hogging most of the hallway, the counter sits up pretty high, forcing residents to 'look up' at the nurses.  This 'looking up' already emits the 'I'm higher than you are' feeling, making residents feel inferior right off the bat.  Imagine being in a wheel chair and feeling even lower than those who walk.  Not pleasant.  Get rid of those stations in my way!

Two residents to a room...........do you or I make a habit of sharing our bedrooms with a complete stranger, in all forms of undress?  No, I know I do not.  Even in a dorm room, the students probably don't walk around naked in front of their room mates.  Two to a room means HIPPA laws are a joke.  If I have visitors and the nurses and doctors are visiting my room mate, well, with only a flimsy curtain separating us, I will know a good share of my room mate's medical status and probably a good share of her medications too.  HIPPA laws are supposed to protect our information.  But, apparently nursing homes do not have to.

Two people to a room means one of us cannot have the freedom of looking outside whenever we want to.  Only the window person gets that luxury. (Thank you ever so much greedy nursing home owners.)  Do not be fooled into thinking two to a room means you get to choose who you want to room with.  Oh no.  If a facility is full, you will get shoved in with whomever the nursing home pleases, simply to fill to capacity and make them more money.  They may care about your preferences way down the road, but it might be after a few nights, weeks or months of a miserable room mate who is not compatible with you at all. 

Many times nurses will dispense medications at meal times.  Listen, there is a reason doctors prescribe certain medications to be taken at certain times.  Medication dispensing is not a one size fits all deal.  No, it should be given to the individual at the prescribed times.  Maybe meal time is not the prescribed times either.

While we are on medications, that med cart outside, in the hallway, has everyone's name and medications prescribed written in it.  If I visit Aunt Gertie, well, while a nurse is with a person in their room, I can flip through that med book and see what anyone else is taking and why.  Again, HIPPA laws just flew out the window.  

Do you have any habits at home that give you pleasure?  Maybe wearing that ratty old sweatshirt you got 10 Christmas's ago and it is full of holes and faded.  Well if you choose to wear that damned thing in a traditional nursing home, and if nurses argue with you about giving it up, if you disagree, it will now be a behavior, a habit to be broken.  Why?  No one comes to our homes to tell us how to dress.  Why should they get away with it now?  If I'm 65, 75, 80 or 90, have I suddenly become three years old in the staffs' estimation?  Yes, that is about the size of it.  WRONG!  

While this blog points a number of what's wrong in traditional nursing homes, making all of us scared stiff about going to one, we will discuss the Culture Change models.  We will see why those Culture Change models have to turn down applicants because they actually want to live there.  

Thanks for reading.  Feel free to give any suggestions or share ideas on my blogs.  All are very welcome to do so.  

The only one who believes him is him

                                         If it were only that simple



"But I love him"  and "You just don't understand"

Today, as I un-friended someone dear to me on Facebook, these prophetic words rang in my ear.  I deleted this person's friendship on the social network because I just could no longer watch her defend a person who absolutely does not deserve defending, her boyfriend.  

Have I ever said those words?  Yes, to my mother when I was young and inexperienced.  Have I heard those words spoken to me?  Yes, from my own immediate family members.  Why is it we didn't listen, why is it you didn't listen and why our daughters, sisters and friends never listen?  Because if a woman has low self-esteem, she will only get in life what she feels she deserves.  Harsh words?  Maybe, but true.  If we truly take a deep look at ourselves, we have to admit this is fact.  Do we like to admit it?  Hell no!  Some women reading this blog will be in a relationship that's bad for her and will still refuse to admit it.  That's just a fact of life.

"She came from such a good family, I just don't get why."

Heard those words before?  Yes most of us have.  Do women have to come from majorly dysfunctional families to have low self-esteem?  Nope.  Parents all wish they were the only influence on their kids.  Wouldn't that be wonderful?  Unfortunately there are a whole host of influences working on our kids.  Kids who bully others into thinking they are strange, ugly or just not normal.  An unthinking adult's stinging words that a kid will take to heart, an adult like a teacher, a coach or a close relative.  Kids, especially growing kids, are impressionable.  Teens look at pictures of the perfect, airbrushed model in the media, they may compare themselves to that unrealistic picture and decide they just cannot live up to it.  Hell, who can?

  Women grow older but not always wiser.  Friends joke about someone who is a 'loser magnet' and wonder why she never picks a winner.  The winners get over looked, passed up or seen as weak, unmanly or some other reason.  The 'loser magnet' just keeps seeking out the guy who treats her as dirt.  Why?  She seeks out the guy who treats her that way because she feels she does not deserve any better.  What happens is:  All the time she spends trying to change some guy, would have been better spent changing herself.  The person in the mirror is the only person we can completely control.  Too many women, from good families or not, have, for some reason, convinced themselves they are not worthy of being treated well.

                         You may have to wade through a lot of these

Let's address that 'came from a good family' thing for a moment.  Social Workers love to say: "Did you come from a normal family?  You poor thing."  Why do they say that?  Because there is no such animal on planet Earth as a 'normal family."  Some families work on good relationships, but no family is perfect and no family is exactly like the next one.  What a myth!  So the 'good family' is not going to save any of us from making bad choices in life.

                                   This guy sounds so nice in fairy tales


As parents we can try to be aware of outside influences on our daughters.  We can try to buffer the hurtful words from those who may make our daughters feel bad about themselves.  But, still, there is no guarantee that you will be able to stem the tide.  When women internalize what they think they deserve, it's a battle to convince them of anything else.  What happens then?  Well, women who internalize it will be susceptible to the men I like to call 'predators' those guys who for some reason, feel women are to be used, abused and treated as less than human, or women they feel are not on the same level playing field as they are.  Shame on those men, but we all know them.  Those guys seek out and latch on to women who feel badly about themselves and those scoundrel men take full advantage of the opportunity. 

Many of those guys don't feel good about themselves either, so in order to make themselves feel better, they seek out women they can grind into the ground in order to boost their own self-esteem.  Some of those guys are babied by their families.  They have been made to think wrong actions are right.  They have families who support their nasty ways of treating women as all right, or they blame the women those guys seek out.  Shame on them.

Some guys and their families are mentally ill and could not recognize anything beyond their own little mentally ill worlds they have created for themselves.  Some are alcoholics and like to use the excuse: "I never know what I do when I'm drinking."  That excuse takes the cake.  So we all can just drink to oblivion, hurt others and then rely on the bottle as an excuse?  Nope, only sick people do that one. 

 Many women do not understand that only professionals can help the mentally ill, the drug abuser or the alcohol abuser.  You cannot change them nor can you cure them.  Many women cannot recognize there is even a problem in those areas.  Especially when they never dealt with those serious problems before.  So those women, with the help of the 'sicko' of course, will start to believe they are the problem, when in fact, it's the other way around.

Do I write this because I'm some expert?  No!  I too have been around that corner.  I too, have tried to help other women understand what is around that corner.  But they do not listen, they do not take heed.  Will any now, reading this blog?  I'm guessing, probably not.  Too many will think: Hey I know we have problems, but we are different.  Gawd, such faithful words never rang more loudly.  I wish, I truly wish, we had all listened and understood good advice from those who have been there, done that.

Religion what is it

I grew up in a small town and my household was pretty conservative.  My Mom and Dad 'liked Ike', didn't fully trust President Kennedy, after all, he was Catholic and I was kind of raised as a Presbyterian.  

I didn't grow up in the part of America known as the Bible Belt, but I lived in the part where religion did get shoved down your throat, plenty.  My parents believed in spankings and I felt the sting of the lilac bush's branch often.  I was a wild child and willful, so my parents said anyway, so I'd get a yard stick and a good old fashioned belt when needed.

That religion part of our lives always baffled me. 

 For years we were Presbyterian, until the only Presbyterian church in our small town closed due to lack of a minister.  After that, my Mom announced we 'would now be attending the Methodist church.'  It mystified me how religions could be so interchangeable but Methodists we became.  I always, there after, felt like an 'adopted' Methodist.  After all, those faithful Methodists had been attending the church forever.  

One of the things I now had to do, was attend the Methodist summer Bible school.  I hated that two weeks every summer with a passion.  Those 'popular, Methodist' girls all had a small group and I was that damned Presbyterian outcast.  I guess I was a bastard in their church as far as they were concerned.  They picked on me something wicked and I was not impressed with how 'Christian' those little bitches were.

We also had a Baptist church in town and I ended up marrying one of those Baptists.  He turned out to be a rat bastard, so I found out Baptists weren't great and wonderful either.  I guess Baptists believed in capital punishment too, and the rat bastard apparently believed in it for his wife too.

One little girl, in my third grade class, was the daughter of the Methodist minister.  I remember saying: "Oh, my god" once on the playground and that girl smacked my face.  She promptly told me I was taking the lord's name in vain.  Well, how in hell did I know this in third grade?  She was such a stodgie little girl, wearing fancy dresses and never uttering a curse word in her entire little life.

Here I am, an adult, still wondering: "Religion, what is it?"
  

Summer coming

Tucked away, in a section of New York State, amidst a group of lakes formed by glaciers, is a place we call the Finger Lakes.  

A land full of old barns, family farmland and a group of people living among some of the most beautiful scenery and majestic hills, in America.

A land rich with history, New York is among the oldest settlements when our ancestors arrived in the New World.  Dotted with some lovely old mansions, from a time when builders were artists, taking pride in their craft. I just love old houses.

Buildings that also ring of past eras, past wrongs and mysterious ways.  A time when people were places in asylums and forgotten.  Some buildings stand as a monument to that tragic practice.  Asylums for the insane, which could have meant anything in those days.

But the Finger Lakes, so I have discovered over the years, is not a place people take lightly.  Many love it, some do not. But summer is coming.  If you can, come visit this land that many of us have called home most of our lives.  Form your own opinions. 

Losses

When we have a relationship, as women, we tend to believe what we read in books, what we see in movies or even what we are told about love by our peers.  It doesn't matter if we are preteen, in our teens or older.  We women are the same, pretty much, we not only tend to believe, we want to believe. Even if we are told certain truths, by older, wiser women who have gone before us, we still think: "That was you, this is me and it's different."  So I'm told: You cannot tell them, they have to live it to learn it.  Is it because when it's learned it sticks with us better?  Perhaps.

What is it we need to believe, to hold on to and yet, many times we discover love and relationships are just the opposite of what our brains have held on to.  

We want to believe if we love them enough, they will never leave, it will not turn sour, love conquers all, we found our soul mate and if we love him enough, he will love us the same.  There is so much our parents, our friends and others we know, do not tells us too,

We are hardly ever told that a real relationship takes work, or it will sour, no matter how much you love him.  No, just because you love him, does not guarantee he loves you the same.  I believe we all have an agenda in our lives.  Maybe you are just there, he needs mothering, he needs to leave home (if young), he needs someone more stable than he is.  Whatever the reasons, they may not be the same as ours.

We want that right guy to fill us up, emotionally, we want that more than we will even admit, we want that usually before we even know who we are.  Before we learn to love who we are.  We think he is supposed to love us no matter what, unconditionally like our parents maybe did, or didn't do, so then we want him to fill a void our parents or parent, did not fill.

Finally, when it does fall apart, turn sour and it breaks up, we are stunned, we don't get it right away.  We feel an ache that is left behind, an ache we feel should not be there.  An ache, longing, a hole in our hearts that take a long, long time to get over. 

Can any of you relate?