Filed under: Alzheimer's, Art, Bipolar, Book Conservation, Depression, Health, Survival, Travel
“Say, while you’re here, maybe you can take a look at this piece of artwork I have. It was given to me by the artist, a friend, but it seems to be coming away from the frame.”
This is part of the price of having owned an art gallery and having done framing. Friends and family ask these questions. But it could be worse – I could be a doctor.
“Sure, be glad to.”
* * * * * * *
Email from a friend, following my post about depression:
I hope you’ve turned the corner on the inertia and are getting back into it. Got meds?
My reply:
Lets see – yeah, a couple of different ones for my bp. For the depression? Nope – the state of treatment there is still less than a crap shoot, in terms of finding something that works. And since I am not paralyzed by it, and know how to work my way out of it over time, I’d rather spend the time doing that than mucking around with random chemicals on a “try this for six weeks” basis.
* * * * * * *
I sat in the recliner, just enjoying the picture created by the fair-sized window on the wall across from me. All I could see were trees – no sky, no landscape beyond – just trees.
But what trees!
Coastal redwoods. And only three or four of them. About 25 feet outside the window, so I was only getting a partial view, mostly of that rough, somewhat shabby but oversized bark. With a couple of horizontal branches to make the composition more interesting visually.
“Nice view out this window.”
“Yeah, we sited the house to do that.”
My wife designed this house. It was good to be staying there.
* * * * * * *
On the flight out I sat and thought. For a long time. Listening to music, eyes closed. The Southwest jet was only about 2/3 full, so my wife and I had plenty of room in our three-seat row. I could just relax, spread out a bit, and think.
I don’t do that often enough. Usually, I am reading, blogging, watching something, having conversation. Or I am working – whether at my conservation bench, or playing house elf, or doing something else. But I seldom sit and just think.
Or listen to music. I got out of the habit while caring for Martha Sr. It was difficult to do, since so often I had to be listening to the baby monitor we used to make sure she was OK.
I used to really enjoy listening to music. Just listening, thinking.
* * * * * * *
“See, it’s pulled away from the frame.”
I looked at the piece. We’d hung it off an open door so that I could examine it easily while it was suspended. Abstract, large pieces of torn paper, colored in pastel tones of blues and greens and beiges. The pieces had been heavily gessoed then painted with a thinned-down acrylic. To add some surface effects, the mounted pieces of paper were rolled and folded such that they created a high relief of some five or six inches. All this tied onto the base sheet (also gessoed and painted), which was adhered to a piece of foamcore. This was then mounted by construction adhesive to a strong boxed-“H” wooden frame which you couldn’t see from the front. The whole effect was pretty good, if you like abstract art. Overall, the piece was about 3′ wide by 5′ tall.
“Yeah, I see what you mean. The top part has curled away from the frame, peeling away.”
“You can do whatever you need to. I’ve got some Gorilla Glue – maybe that’s strong enough. Or, if you want to screw the piece back onto the frame, I can get some paint to blend in and mask the screws. Whatever you think it needs.”
I looked at the piece again, hanging there. Pulled a bit, knocked off a chunk of the bead of adhesive. “Let me think about it.”
* * * * * * *
They tell you to expect it to take a year to recover. You don’t believe them.
But they’re right.
Oh, that doesn’t relieve you of the duty to try and get your shit together more quickly. To try and get past the soul-aching exhaustion that comes with having fought the good fight for so very, very long. You have to do that. It is absolutely necessary.
But it isn’t sufficient. It will still take a year. Or longer.
* * * * * * *
I sat in the chair, looking out the window. I had changed my position ever so slightly – now, on the extreme right, I could see about half of the large birdfeeder. We had filled it and hoisted it up that morning. Now maybe a dozen Steller’s Jays were mobbing, taking turns at the feeder, flicking in and out of my picture.
If you know Bluejays, you know these guys. Smart. Stubborn. Survivors.
Sometimes, being a little stubborn is what’s needed. Stubborn in a smart way. While several of their number kept some larger crows away, the others would eat. Then they’d swap. Smart.
* * * * * * *
“We’ll get what we need when we’re out. Is there an art supply store in Ft. Bragg?”
“Yeah, Racine’s. Downtown.” My sister-in-law looked at me, a little quizzical. “I’ll be happy to talk with the artist and get some paints and do the touch-up, if you just want to remount the piece with screws or something. There’s no reason you have to try and match what she used.”
“I won’t need any paints. Nor any screws.”
“What are you going to do?”
“Well, the problem isn’t the adhesive. The problem is the lamination.”
“Sorry?”
“See,” I pointed at the back of the piece. “There’s just this piece of foamcore. There’s nothing to balance the force of the paper mounted to the other side. Rather than trying to force the whole thing back, which will probably result in snapping the foamcore backing, we’re going to dismount it entirely. Then I will put a layer of stiff cloth on the back, using an adhesive similar to the gesso on the front. I want to go to the art supply store, since they’ll either have the PVA I want, or I can get some gesso and use that.”
“Will that work?”
“Yup. It’s a basic process from book conservation, just applied on a larger scale than I usually do it. Same thing as getting the balance right on the cover of a book – cloth on the outside, paper on the inside. It stops the bookboard from warping.”
* * * * * * *
It’s been a year. Or it will have been next week, when I’m on the east coast.
On the day I’ll meet my co-author for the care-giving book, as it happens. Talk about serendipity.
Nothing magical about that. But anniversaries have meaning.
* * * * * * *
I can’t quite explain how it changed. But somewhere along the way out to California I found something. Whether it was in the music, or the thinking, or just the quiet place in my head that resulted from an enforced relaxation for several hours, it was there.
Stubbornness.
Not the stubbornness which saw me through the long years of care-giving. That was different. Defiance in the face of the disease ravaging Martha Sr.
No, this was less about simple survival, and more about . . . well, joy, I guess.
I wasn’t swept away with feelings of overwhelming happiness or anything. But there was a sense that joy could once again be mine. Not just satisfaction in work. Not just enjoyment of life. But joy in being able to create. Maybe not yet. But the possibility was there for the future.
A smart kind of stubbornness.
* * * * * * *
We turned the dining room table into a workbench. I laid down newspapers, then we positioned large jars to support the artwork from the front without damaging the high-relief rolls and folds of paper. I needed access to the back of the piece, and this was the only way to do it.
First, I cut away the frame. Some of the facing of the foamcore came off with the frame, but not much. Then I removed all the remaining old adhesive from both the foamcore and the frame itself. I set the frame aside.
Then I mixed up the straight PVA I’d found at the art supply store with water, 50-50. Set that aside.
I took the piece of light cotton duckcloth I’d gotten, and cut it into three strips, each about 2′ tall and as wide as the foamcore. I laid out more newspaper on the floor. I laid a strip of cloth on the newspaper. And using a 4″ plastic putty knife, I poured/spread the PVA across the cloth. It was necessary for it to be completely saturated, the fibers completely relaxed. I waited for a minute for this to happen. Then I picked up the cloth by one edge, and took it to the table. I draped it across the foamcore, and spread it out smoothly, making sure to have good adhesion.
I repeated the process with the other two strips of cloth, overlapping them a few inches.
“Now we wait,” I told my SIL.
“For what?”
“For it to dry overnight. If the cloth shrinks the right amount as the PVA dries, it will cause a balancing force to the gessoed paper on the other side, and the foamcore will flatten out. If it is not enough, another application of PVA in the morning will help get the balance right. If it is too much, I can spray it with water and let the adhesive relax. It’s just a matter of finding the right balance.”
She looked at the contraption sitting on the table. She said nothing, but it was clear she was skeptical.
* * * * * * *
I had been waiting around for something to happen.
Well, no, I had been trying to figure out how to force something to happen. And being very depressed that I couldn’t do it.
I was being stupid stubborn. Forcing myself to work. To write. To try and find some happiness in this or that.
It was, perhaps, a necessary stage. Just to show myself that I had the stubbornness I needed, even if it was applied ineptly.
But there was a better path. A smarter path. Just relax, and start walking.
* * * * * * *
I poured myself a cup of coffee, walked over to the table.
The foamcore was almost perfectly flat. A slight rise on one corner where the cloth was stronger than the minimal amount of paper on the other side, but that would flatten out just fine.
I sipped my coffee, glanced out the window. From that vantage point I could see the whole bird feeder. There were crows there now, arguing with one another.
Sometimes you just need to understand your way out of problems.
Jim Downey
As usual, it’s only in hindsight that you recognize it. The typical seasonal downturn is something more. Oh, you’re aware of the symptoms. The intense introspection. Desire to sleep more. Lower level of creativity. Difficulty in finding the motivation to do anything. Lack of enthusiasm for the usual things you enjoy. Tendency to drink more, without getting the slightest buzz from it. You’re aware of the symptoms, but until you’ve been dealing with them for a while they don’t all add up to something that you can see.
The ‘black dog‘.
I’ve written about my bipolar tendencies before. It’s mild, but there. I try and keep an eye on it. Sometimes it is hard to discern, amidst the clutter of life. This period of mild depression could have been just the usual seasonal blahs I have, plus some tiredness and stress about my health and desire to get the house ready for visitors, plus the upcoming first anniversary of Martha Sr’s death. That was what I was attributing my feelings to. But this morning, a quiet walk in the brilliant cold, I recognized it for what it was. Depression. Mild, but more than the sum of the various factors I had been noticing.
Recognition of the problem is important. I can take steps to deal with it, and most importantly keep track of where I am in the downward arc. If it looks to be severe, then I’ll see someone about it. But I don’t expect that – my personal mountains and valleys tend to be modest. Mostly it is just a matter of riding it out, putting one foot in front of the other, playing ball on running water.
Jim Downey
Filed under: BoingBoing, Cory Doctorow, Health, Humor, movies, Politics, Survival
I suppose on some level this would be the perfect food for the end of the Bush era – but you’ll forgive me if I don’t add it to my celebratory smorgasbord on Tuesday:
Casu marzu (also called casu modde, casu cundhídu, or in Italian formaggio marcio) is a traditional sheep milk cheese, notable for being riddled with live insect larvae. Although outlawed there for health reasons, it is found mainly in Sardinia, Italy on the black market. Casu marzu literally means “rotten cheese” in Sardinian and is known colloquially as maggot cheese.
Derived from Pecorino, Casu marzu goes beyond typical fermentation to a stage most would consider decomposition, brought about by the digestive action of the larvae of the cheese fly Piophila casei. These larvae are deliberately introduced to the cheese, promoting an advanced level of fermentation and breaking down of the cheese’s fats. The texture of the cheese becomes very soft, with some liquid (called lagrima, from the Sardinian for “tears”) seeping out. The larvae themselves appear as translucent white worms, about 8 millimetres (0.3 in) long. When disturbed, the larvae can launch themselves for distances up to 15 centimetres (6 in). Some people clear the larvae from the cheese before consuming; others do not.
* * *
Casu marzu is considered toxic when the maggots in the cheese have died. Because of this, only cheese in which the maggots are still alive is eaten. When the cheese has fermented enough, it is cut into thin strips and spread on moistened Sardinian flatbread (pane carasau), to be served with a strong red wine.[6][7] Casu marzu is believed to be an aphrodisiac by local Sardinians.[1] Because the larvae in the cheese can launch themselves for distances up to 15 centimetres (6 in) when disturbed,[5][8] diners hold their hands above the sandwich to prevent the maggots from leaping into their eyes.[3] Those who do not wish to eat live maggots place the cheese in a sealed paper bag. The maggots, starved for oxygen, writhe and jump in the bag, creating a “pitter-patter” sound. When the sounds subside, the maggots are dead and the cheese can be eaten.[9]
It’s a bit late for it, but it has to be said: “They’ll eat your eyes out, kid!”
No, actually, the greatest threat seems to be from ingesting the the maggots, and having them survive in your gut. Charming. Not unlike Bush administration political appointees who are trying to burrow their way into permanent positions in the Justice Department, I suppose. So cheesy.
Jim Downey
(Via BB. Excerpted description from Wikipedia entry on Casu marzu. Cross posted to UTI.)
***Say, someone linked this to some site, or spread it amongst their Twitter friends, or something – there’s been a huge increase in hits. Which is cool, but if someone would be kind enough to let me know how it got out into the wild, I’d appreciate it. I’m used to my posts mostly being domesticated, see . . . JD
Filed under: Climate Change, Emergency, Failure, General Musings, Guns, Health, Humor, movies, Nuclear weapons, Predictions, Preparedness, Science Fiction, Society, Survival, Weather
Gah – it’s 55 degrees here. Inside, I mean. No, we don’t have the thermostat turned that low. The heating system, an old hot-water radiator setup, just can’t keep up when the temps get down to below zero Fahrenheit. Not in an old house with minimal insulation (and no simple way of adding any). So we wander around, playing Quintet, waiting for something resembling normal weather to return, trying to get done what we can.
It’s sobering. And instructive. In Communion of Dreams I stipulate a long period of harsh winters for much of the northern hemisphere, following the ‘small’ nuclear war in Asia. Having lived through some 15 Iowa winters, it was easy to imagine what that would be like. But I was younger, and memory is fleeting. Combine those cold conditions for a prolonged period with an economic collapse, and those years in my novel would be brutal – moreso than any of us probably understand.
And let’s hope it stays that way. When I read things like this, I wonder whether I have been entirely too optimistic about our future. Then again, not like these geniuses have been right about anything else for the last couple of years.
Wait – they’ve been entirely too optimistic, too, haven’t they? That’s what got us into this financial mess.
Gods, now I really am depressed.
And cold.
Jim Downey
I may find out Tuesday that I have a serious heart condition. That the cost of being an Alzheimer’s care-giver for those years was higher than I or anyone else expected. Or I may not. Either way, my wife and I will cope with the news, the facts, and move on with our life to the best of our ability. Because unlike my special red plastic cup, I am not busted.
That was from last Friday. Thought I would follow up with a brief note, now that I am just back from seeing my doctor.
After going over everything reasonably carefully, she’s of the opinion that there’s no evidence of heart disease, that the various symptoms which had caused me concern can all be traced to my blood pressure meds. So we’re going to tweak those. But she was adamant that I did the right thing in being concerned and coming in to see her. She also complimented me on managing to lose weight over the holidays. Not a lot, but even a few pounds loss rather than a few pounds gain is a good thing.
So, there’s that. I don’t need to worry about being fragile – just keep doing what I am doing. Not busted.
Cheers!
Jim Downey
Filed under: Alzheimer's, Daily Kos, General Musings, Health, Preparedness, Sleep, Survival
Well, as I mentioned yesterday, we had an Open House here for our neighborhood all afternoon. Which meant a lot of cleaning and prep beforehand (we’re still dealing with all the leftover stuff from the estate division for Martha Sr), the crunch of which has occured in the past week. And then I was on my feet all day, pushing my extrovert batteries to the limit of their enduance by playing host to strangers in my home. In short, by the time everyone left and we got the worst of the mess cleaned up and put away, I was exhausted.
A bit over a week ago I wrote about getting an assessment of my health here sometime after the first of the year. As it happens, a couple of days later I had reason to wonder whether I needed to do so in a more immediate manner, thanks to a clear-cut case of peripheral edema which was the result of being on my feet a lot, more or less in one location. Now, the beta blocker I am taking is a known culprit with this kind of swelling, and I have seen some problems with it off and on over the last couple of months. But this time it was really bad. Made me wonder whether it was evidence of a much more serious problem with my heart. First chance Monday of this week, I called to see about getting in to see my doctor.
Naturally, she is out of the office until next week.
*Sigh.* Well, rather than have to go through and explain everything about my life and condition for the last few years to another doctor, I decided that I would take some reasonable precautions, but just make an appointment with my doctor for next week. And I have no real regrets about doing so – if something serious happens, I can go to the ER about three minutes from here.
Anyway, all of this is a bit of prep for explaining what I decided to do last night. Following the clean-up from the party, and getting a bit to eat, I was beat but my legs were aching – both from being on them for much of the day, but also from making about 50 trips carrying boxes up to storage that morning and the day before. I also had some significant swelling again. A friend suggested a soak in the sit-up jacuzzi tub we’d installed for Martha Sr a couple of years ago, and I thought it sounded like a good idea. Before bed, I went in, got things ready, and climbed into the tub.
As I sat back in the tub, which is really pretty small (to fit into a little nook in our downstairs bathroom), my left elbow came back and smashed a plastic cup containing ice-water. It’s one of those 16-ounce ‘to-go’ cups you’ll find at about any pizza place, intended to last longer than a disposable cup so you can see the logo for the place where you got it. No big deal, right?
Well, not exactly.
But sorta.
See, this one was a nice red. Only one in the house like it. Meaning that during parties or whatnot, it was easy for me to find *my* cup, if I set it down and wandered off to do other things. By tacit agreement with my wife, this had become ‘mine’ – she didn’t use it. Bit silly, really. You know how it is.
So, it busted. Caught it perfectly positioned against the wall, the entire force of my body sitting back focused on it. Didn’t explode or anything dramatic, and I wasn’t doused with a lot of ice water. But it busted beyond repair, a couple of chunks of the red plastic dangling, nice crack around the top.
Coming at the end of the New Years Day celebration, I couldn’t help but sit there and reflect on the appropriateness of the busted cup, as the tub continued to fill around my aching legs.
As I’ve said before, I’m not religious. But many years ago I was a fairly serious student of Zen, until I figured out that for me that was a bit of a contradiction in terms. And from that time I still carry along some perspectives that I have found valuable. One of them is about the inherent ephemeral nature of all things.
So I sat there in the tub, thinking about my poor broken cup. And about my aching legs, and what they may signify. And I felt touched, in a funny way. Letting the cup go – letting it stand as an unintended metaphor for the past year and the changes and costs it has seen, was easy. Allowing that same attitude to seep into me as the water covered me was somewhat more difficult, but eventually worked.
I may find out Tuesday that I have a serious heart condition. That the cost of being an Alzheimer’s care-giver for those years was higher than I or anyone else expected. Or I may not. Either way, my wife and I will cope with the news, the facts, and move on with our life to the best of our ability. Because unlike my special red plastic cup, I am not busted.
Happy New Year.
Jim Downey
Cross-posted to Daily Kos.
Filed under: Ballistics, Flu, Guns, Health, Pandemic, Preparedness, Society, Survival
Naturally enough, given the backstory and plot devices in Communion of Dreams, I have written here many times about the threat of pandemic flu. And given my recent involvement in the Ballistics by the inch project, I have also written about ballistics fairly often. But it is still a little weird to see the two things come together.
Say what?
I was doing a little checking on the Bbti site stats this morning, since we created the site a month ago (didn’t go public with it until two days later). To date we’ve had just under (by about 2,000) a third of a million hits to that site. In looking at where the site had been mentioned (referring links), I noticed that early this month it had been posted in a thread over at PANDEMIC FLU INFORMATION FORUM.
Weird.
Sure, it makes sense. As I have argued here, being prepared for a pandemic may well mean being armed. And in making some intelligent decisions about firearm ownership, particularly for those who are not already firearms owners, having a resource like Bbti can be very helpful. This was one of the primary reasons we came up with the project, after all. Still, it was a little odd to see the site mentioned and discussed in the context of pandemic flu for me this morning.
Now if I could just get them to mention Communion of Dreams . . .
Jim Downey
Filed under: Alzheimer's, Health, Hospice, NPR, Predictions, Preparedness, Science, Sleep, Survival
No, I don’t know what it means.
It was one of those things I woke up thinking in the middle of the night, a week or so ago. So I wrote it down.
Why did I wake up in the middle of the night, thinking such a thing? Good question. It was about 3:00, the usual time I would wake and go check on Martha Sr the last couple of years of her life. And even though it’s been almost a year since her death, I still wake about that time fairly often. I try and get back to sleep, and usually succeed. Because I know sleep is important to my recovery.
I’ve mentioned several times the steps I am taking to get my health under control, and why. For the last six weeks now my blood pressure has been stable in the 145/85 range. Still high, and next month when I see my doctor we may need to tweak my dosages again, but about 90/40 points better than it was three months ago. The meds I’m taking, a beta blocker and a calcium channel blocker, are doing their jobs and helping me detox from my cortisol and norepinephrine overloads, but I’m not past it all yet. My waking at night, even occasional bouts of insomnia, are evidence of that.
And researchers have added another level of understanding to just how dangerous this sleep disruption is:
Morning Edition December 24, 2008 · The human heart requires a certain amount of sleep every night to stay healthy, and that link between sleep and heart health is stronger than researchers suspected, according to a report in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
* * *
When they put it all together, the researchers got a surprising result. Among these healthy, middle-aged volunteers, those who averaged five or fewer hours of sleep had a much bigger incidence of silent heart disease.
“Twenty-seven percent of them developed coronary artery calcification over the five years of follow-up,” Lauderdale says. “Whereas among the persons who slept seven hours or more, on average, only 6 percent developed coronary artery calcification.”
In other words, the sleep-deprived people had 4.5 times the risk of heart disease — and that’s after researchers subtracted out the effects of other known coronary risk factors, such as high cholesterol, high blood pressure, diabetes and smoking.
It remains to be seen why too-little sleep is linked to clogged coronaries. Maybe it has something to do with stress hormones. Lauderdale says other studies have shown that depriving people of sleep raises their levels of cortisol, one stress hormone.
I don’t yet have any indication of serious heart disease. The preliminary checks from visiting the doctor over the last few months haven’t turned anything up, but she has been mostly concerned with getting my blood pressure under control. We’ll be doing a more complete exam in the new year, now that this other issue is less of an immediate concern.
That’s not to say that I expect that we’ll find anything. But neither would it surprise me if we did, given what else I know about what the stresses I’ve placed my body under over the last five years. I’ve been my own puppet, dancing at all hours.
Maybe that’s what it means.
Jim Downey
Communion Of Dreams 