By Diane: Update # 17 for Caregiving Mini-art Respite: Busy, tiring week

 

Fisherman Hubby is needing more help. I am getting a CNA to come once a week and the Hospice nurses have been here for us. Also, family and friends are giving us great support. And sharing memories. We are very, very thankful. It is a good life Fisherman Hubby and I share. I am so thankful I am able to offer him some comfort at this difficult time for us.

Tuesday, September 1,

Why so  tired?  Was it just last Thursday we had a family discussion or was it Friday.  Yes, it was Friday. Or was it two weeks ago Friday.  Yes, time flies. Even when over and over I am disinfecting soiled wash cloths Fisherman Hubby prefers to too small flushable whipes.  Alas, on Monday his impactment broke up. So nice and soothing to look at beauty everywhere - even the kitchen sink view..

It was last Friday that one of our granddaughters and her boy friend painted with me at a neighbor's coy pond. And will come back this Friday to finish our work. This was my start. It needs very very little to communicate coy in an infinate landscape with waterfall and distant vista.

 

By Diane: Mini-art respite from caregiving update #16: Just making plans or fantasies

by Diane

 

Thursday, August 20,

After our party, a son-in-law took this selfie. 

Fantasies of a family and friends' reunion with some of us staying at the Siletz Movie House and a boat fishing procession to a wayside park and beyond into Siletz Bay. We will celebrate old and new memories. Anybody ever heard of a portable organ we can play at the park. One of Don's brothers is looking for a portable piano keyboard. What we do all hinges on the Covid situation and we are all flexible. We might down-scale our reunion to McDonald's forest cabin.

I have many fantasies. Like keeping the house and inviting couples to stay with me  when one of them wants to just paint and the other plans outings on the ocean or rivers or mountain trails. After our meeting on Friday a granddaughter and boyfriend brought an array of his family's Mexican foods. so comforting! Enough for all and the visiting Hospice nurse! Granddaughter and boyfriend are returning next Friday to paint with me. By then I hope to have new canvases - large ones.

Tuesday August, 25th.

My colonoscopy canceled.

Don's impacted bowels are slow to clear and I am scrambeling to get him a cough assist machine so he won't need to take so many constipating medications.

The good news in addition to the ALS Association can loan us  a donated cough assist machine, we won the appeal for almost $900 for the the current respiratory devise. he uses to sleep at night.

In the very warm kitchen window I've been soaking dried acrylic paint in the jars from my palette. I accidently left the the lid off my palette Friday and didn't discover it until late Saturday evening.  So this is a good time to clean and fill my jars up high in anticipation of painting larger this coming Friday.

Between cleaning up paint jars and cleaning up poop that seeps around the impactment now I am giving away pears and apples because there is no time to can or dry them.

Now and then, yesterday and today I make headway on four old paintings that only need a few brush strokes of change. 

by Diane: Mini-Art respite from Care Giving Update #6: Being Prepared

EARLY MORNING CATCH AT RIVER BEND
ON THE SILETZ RIVER

 



REFLECTIONS SEEN AT SPACE #10
COYOTE ROCK  RV AND MARINA
SILETZ RIVER

 So happy! Two paintings are back home from being loaned to the Oregon State Fish Hatchery and Research Center on Fall Creek.  Thank you to Ann and Fran from Seal Rock for delivering them last Thursday. Seeing my work from about seven years ago lifts my spirits and increases my desire to paint large again someday.

Fisherman Hubby and I are limited by his ALS. We are not up to stretching canvases espescially large ones. We continue to do yard work together.  Making preparations for Fisherman Hubby's future needs has almost consumed me this past week. Soon we will have Home Instead care giver here 4 hours on Tuesdays and 4 hours on Thursdays. Then the long term insurance submission forms completed, a new Samsun Stove, a taller toilet, maybe the chimney sweep will also clean the clothes drier duc. Soon I will have a medical alert button system in case I have an emergency. Fisherman Hubby in the moment won't be able to speak clearly to 911.  Most of the time I can not understand anything beyond a word or two. For more lengthy communications he types it out on his Surface Pro Grid 3 speech generating devise.

Tuesday was the first day that our Home Instead care giver worked for us. Mostly I was showing Anastazia our pantry, Freezer, BBQ and every thing she might need. She did an awesome job grilling the prime rib and cutting it small. And we love our clean floors and bathroom. Plus this afternoon I had time to work on a memory painting of a niece's father. I hope to finish it before the celebration of life July 13.
 



by Diane: Art Escape update #19, last update

I love the comments from a plein air painter from Hawaii and another one from my co-author, Rain.  The painting of these swallows looked like surfers on a  big wave. Rain thought that the clouds look like waves. How poetic? I am naming it "Swallows Surfing the Breeze"

Although I am not finished interpreting the flight of two swallows, one moving closer and beginning to turn back to circle and the other cirlcling in the distance. The closer swallow is more blurred because it moves across more of my visual field per second.

I am beginning to make the birds being more important than the sun breaking through the atmosphere after a rain storm when bugs hatch and fly.

This is the last update of art escapes. Next week will be my first post for Tiny Respites.

by Diane: Update #4, Care Giver's Art Escape

The past week had my mind spinning, running about from one doctor to another with tests in between.  Then in addition Monday at noon my husband accepted an opening for an overnight fitting for a C-pap machine. He slept through the night which was phenomenal for him. But now we have to wait until the end of February for the results. Unless there is another opening!
       To my relief the painting palettes and found stamps proved to be exactly right for my life. One of the circles is made with the cardboard protection for a spark plug that a neighbor helped to install in our Toyota pickup. At the worst time the truck's transmission went belly up. Through all the distractions, my painting experience was better than I expected: I could paint a little every day for at least a few minutes.
        I like the linear quality of knots that I discovered in a math course about topology, a branch of geometry. Professor Satyan L. Devadoss' THE SHAPE OF NATURE is a video course from The Great Courses designed for not only people engaged in math but also for history buffs and even artists. I am amazed that I am getting a rudimentary understanding of my father's math hobby. I  am comforted feeling closer to him.  I have his wisdom in how he took such good care of my mother.