Holiday Help for Caregivers

The challenge of caring for one or more family members at home confronts approximately one-third of American adults. If you are one of these family caregivers, you are undoubtedly aware of the resources available in your community, which offer the training and tools to help caregivers succeed. Many are online, as well. Here are a couple of good links.

http://www.aarp.org/home-family/caregiving/ http://caregiver.org/caregiver/jsp/content_node.jsp?nodeid=2224

Huffington Post contributor, Hilary young provides a thoughtful article with tips for holiday survival for caregivers here: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/hilary-young/tips-to-ease-holiday-stress-for-caregivers_b_4261379.html We know for certain, it is a stretch to attend to everything and everyone day-to-day, let alone, during holidays. First you may have to change or lower your expectations and those of family members. 

     This may not be the Thanksgiving to gussy up and get dive into a restaurant crowd. This also may not be the year to try turducken or mom’s incredible pumpkin chiffon pie for the first time. Plan and cook ahead, if possible. If you insist upon cooking, America’s Test Kitchen’s recipe for braised turkey is moist and perfectly delicious. Best of all it is easy and the turkey makes its own gravy, as it cooks!

http://www.americastestkitchen.com/recipes/6830-braised-turkey-with-gravy.

     Plain and fancy pre-cooked Thanksgiving meals are available for pickup or delivery. Just do it! Don’t look back. From Sam’s Club or Costco, to Whole Foods, depending upon the budget, you can order an enjoyable, totally stress-free meal. Cooking is my life, but, if there is going to be bread and pie baking it will be done elsewhere this year. Nor will any of us be killing ourselves to make the household spotless. 

     Get out the good china, sterling and crystal, and dress everyone to the nines. Or serve the meal on disposable tableware to a jeans-clad crew. I promise, the latter is perfectly acceptable. We gather to celebrate gratitude, itself, and the people who share food and drink at our tables. Memories of celebrations past may be joyful or sad, but nostalgia doesn't have to be tied to expectation; just be happy now.

Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life. It turns what we have into enough, and more. It turns denial into acceptance, chaos to order, confusion to clarity. It can turn a meal into a feast, a house into a home, a stranger into a friend. Gratitude makes sense of our past, brings peace for today, and creates a vision for tomorrow. - Melody Beattie

     A critical part of every holiday is self-care, particularly for caregivers. On the Never Do List is neglecting to set aside downtime, whether you spend it alone meditating, or engaging in pampering or entertainment. Be as generous with yourself as possible, and, by all means, enlist help. Once depleted in mind, body or spirit, we cannot serve others effectively.

     I plan to make a wish or blessing jar this year, decorate it, and pass it around the Thanksgiving table with notepaper and a pen. Some of our family will be taking vacation breaks this year. The rest of us are literally and figuratively limping, but we plan to enjoy each other and rare face time ... priceless! 

     Care giving, more often than not, feels thankless. Thank you for the myriad things you do every day, large and small!

Home For The Holidays

The holiday season rolls in like the surf; once the surf is up, we’re on the wave. But, since we’ve visited here time and time again, we’ve stored memories, hopes, traditions ... expectations. Sometimes we forget happiness comes from inside each of us. Joy it is strictly a product of spirit.

Thanksgiving 2013 will be tough for me, personally, and I seem to be limping toward the finish line. For millions of American families, loss of work and/or income will make this holiday season challenging. The good news is, some of the most heartwarming holiday stories have come out of the hardest times. O. Henry's "The Gift of the Magi" is one of my favorites. The "Online Star Register" features it and other classic tales. 

Keep it simple, using this equation:  First, the best gifts are from the hearth and heart. Second, stay away from crowded malls and big box stores. Third, if you find extremely crowded Internet sites and potential purchasing errors, a pain, do a minimum of shopping online, and don’t delay. (I ended up going to a mall at the eleventh hour last year, because an Internet order could not be fulfilled.) Finally, buy local products at local events, and try your hand at homemade decor and gifts.

Sharing the holiday with other people, and feeling that you're giving of yourself, gets you past all the commercialism. - Caroline Kennedy

Not everyone is craft-crazed, but Internet sites, such as Pinterest , feature great ideas for creating decorations and gifts.  Here is a link to Pinterest, and a link to countryliving.com.

https://www.pinterest.com/craftzine/holiday-crafts/

http://www.countryliving.com/crafts/holiday-crafts

Martha Stewart’s site is superb, but I’m assuming people either consider themselves craft wizards, or not. If you are not in the wizard category, start with simple, inexpensive projects. We've all had our crafting disasters. One year, with no chance of buying a Christmas tree, I dragged two very large tumbleweeds inside to strip the debris, then, paint them. This proved beyond messy. Spray paint and glitter came next, also a mess, not to mention, I never did like the finished products. I’ve also really hurt my hands, making Christmas wreaths with wire coat hangers for the bases.

One really fun, easy project to do with children is bread dough Christmas ornaments. There is a tutorial on YouTube, but it is relatively simple, and everybody gets in on the action. Here is a link to the recipe for the dough.

 http://allrecipes.com/recipe/dough-ornament-recipe/

Meanwhile, if you are among the millions of people, who will work up to and during the holidays, be sure to take particular care of yourself.  In the next post, I’ll have ideas for beleaguered working stiffs and the most heroic people of the season, caregivers.

Relinquishment and Renewal

Pi Patel and Tiger Adrift

We relinquish so much, as we age, don't we? Often we relinquish our physicality, and with it, our sense of wellbeing. Buddhism has a great deal to offer concerning the need to relinquish gracefully. One thing my Christian friends and I share is learning to drop the need to control everything and everyone in our lives. As a Navy brat, I moved with my parents constantly. My father would get his orders, and, poof! Suddenly we would adapt to a new coastline, mountains, climate, culture, address, school and work. I would cross my fingers and toes in each new venue that the people, animals and things I'd come to love would not melt away. It was never to be. Nor was goodbye always possible; some years, school would let out for a break, and I'd never return.
     Worst of all, I never was able to say goodbye to my father, before he died, and I became estranged from my mother several years before she died. My father, simply, boarded a train bound for Bethesda Naval Hospital, barely a gray hair on his head, tan, fit and rugged ... never to return alive. My mother had never been a stable woman; she grew less so with the passage of time. My parents were throw-aways, orphan kids no-one wanted, who, miraculously, had found and clung to each other. 

I suppose in the end, the whole of life becomes an act of letting go, but what always hurts the most is not taking a moment to say goodbye. -Pi Patel

     So much of what I know, I learned from my parents' lives. The two were polar opposites. My father had begun facing down death at a very early age, not just because he was orphaned young, but because he had fought in two wars. He was generous to everyone he met, to my mother's chagrin. He lived completely in the moment, was creative, imaginative and spontaneous. My mother was a hard-working, focused, frugal, woman. She knit or crocheted constantly ... never had her hands or mind on idle. An expert seamstress, Mother could tailor a suit or coat. Before a sewing project launched, however, the house had to be immaculate. She was anything but fanciful. Wherever in the world we lived, my mother would go twice a month to a bank, and deposit savings for my parents' retirement, for a life they would one day enjoy.
     The day came for my father to retire from the Navy. He wanted to hunt and fish, until he dropped dead. My mother's part of the dream was a beautiful home. We came to Colorado, to the Western Slope in the early 1950s. All the retirement savings were stolen by a contractor. Within two years my father was dead of pancreatic cancer. My mother never saw a cent of his retirement pay. She became a workaholic, a civil servant, until she died.
     I've relinquished careers and jobs, spending all my savings, any number of times in my life. Recent history is no exception. It makes life so much more difficult, but it also simplifies everything. Letting go is an art and, often, the wiser choice. It beats the hell out of tooth-grinding stress or resentment. 
     More important leaving and letting go open the portal to change, new directions to explore, new paths to follow. In the end I may have to relinquish my very life. In the meantime, my life and learning have made me a seeker. 
     My best advice, although I hate giving advice and virtually never take it, is not to dwell in the past or the future. Never doubt there are great adventures and riches in store. Here's to what lies ahead, my friends!

By Executive Order

Welcome to the roller coaster ride of the Affordable Health Care rollout, or could we call it that? I've come to wonder whether the this ride does not contain within it a microcosm of American Govern-ment in this century. First off it is difficult to discern who will loose and who will win, once people can even enroll. The facts of this legislation have been hidden behind non-issues, half truths and outright lies. Setting aside the issue of accountability for the failure of the rollout, who will be better off and who will be worse off, once those who must enroll have enrolled? It is a fair question, regardless of where one stands on the issue of health care/insurance reform. 

It was settled by the Constitution, the laws, and the whole practice of the government that the entire executive power is vested in the President of the United StateIs. -Andrew Jackson

According to Charles Ornstein, reporting on "Pro Publica," assuming healthcare.gov begins anew and timely, there will be actual winners and losers (i.e., real people gaining or losing ground in their health care coverage.) Here is the link to the entire article:

http://www.propublica.org/article/a-month-in-to-healthcaregov-real-life-winners-and-losers

• First are young people, many of whom are struggling in today's job market. They can remain covered by their parents' insurance, until they turn 26. I am biased here, because one of my grandsons will benefit from this provision.
• Next are people with pre-existing medical conditions, who cannot any longer be denied coverage for those conditions. Again, someone in my family qualifies.
• Next are poor and working poor people in states that have opted to expand their Medicaid programs, to cover people who are truly in need, those whose incomes are up to 138% of the federal poverty level. Incredibly enough, there are plenty of people who qualify (at an annual income of $32,499 for a family of four.) 

All well and good, but, in light of the hysteria, who will lose ground?

People in states that opted not to expand their Medicaid programs. These states will lose in terms of numbers of uninsured people, who should have been helped by the Affordable Health Care Act. 

• First are small businesses. They are among the missing, and the Obama Administration continues to delay creating a marketplace for them. It is difficult to predict how soon the Administration will rectify this.
• Next are people whose new (complying) insurance will cost them more in premiums, but who will be compensated by the government for the difference between what they will pay, versus what they have paid.
• The actual losers in the reshuffle are those who will pay more for their new insurance coverage, but who will not qualify for government compensation. The quality of their coverage will not improve sufficiently to offset the difference in cost.

In fact something on the order of 80% of Americans, who are working, and whose employers pay for their health coverage, are unaffected.

Meanwhile back at the S.N.A.F.U. of healthcare.gov, it has negated short-term wins and winners; it is an expensive loss from any angle. Long term, cost containment in health care and insurance rates, which could make much of this mess worthwhile, will take, by some estimates, a decade to be realized.

Here, to me, is what makes all this American government in a nutshell. The President of the United States, besides being constantly battered in partisan grudge matches, is so reliant upon contractors to effect just about anything, he can neither smell smoke, nor put out fires ... certainly not by executive order.