Wednesday, October 30, 2013

Looking Forward to the Celebration

We're setting up the ofrenda. Already talking to these wonderful spirits. We'll be working at it for a couple more days transforming this wall of our living room into a shrine, but for now, here are a couple of photos.

Peace to all



The newest edition


Friday, October 18, 2013

Haiku My Heart

Frost on the pumpkin

Colorful leafy carpet

Changes evermore






Peace

Saturday, October 12, 2013

What's Going On


Let's try this. Let's see if I can actually sit here and write. It's been harder than ever for me to pay attention to anything long enough to consider it a thought. Been a lot of extracurricular activities around Spadoville. Still trying to continue on like normal, but normal has been slowly changing over the years and now it's like I'm a full blown chameleon and have changed from one person to another.

Let's take this morning, for example. My routine is far different than it was twenty years ago. Back then, I'd get up and drag myself out of bed, grab a cup of coffee and run out the door headed for work. I'd linger between the warm blankets as long as I could with one eye checking the clock so I wouldn’t be late.

Grabbing a banana as I hurried out to the car, I’d get on the road and drive way too fast in morning rush hour traffic to chase the almighty dollar, just to come home after a long day and be too tired and lazy to cook dinner and instead, spend the hard earned moolah on dinner, eating some crappy processed food service concoction that added to my current condition of heart attacks, congestive heart failure, diabetes and the Medtronic Pacemaker that keeps my old broken heart in rhythm.

These days, I’m always awake by 4:30 am and out of bed by five. Just can’t lay there any longer. I need to toss and turn to get comfortable or to allow me to be in a position where I can breathe.

I get up and sit in my leather chair until six am. It’s not a recliner. Just a good sturdy tan leather chair and ottoman. My blanket is there. Lately, I’ve been using it to cover my cold blood starved legs and feet as the morning temperatures are dropping and the house is much cooler than the 72 degrees we keep it in Summer by way of Carrier air conditioning.

At six, I take my blood pressure. That little portable unit sits on the lower shelf of the end table on my right. At the left side sits another end table that is loaded with plastic boxes of sinew and beads and assorted tools for making Dream Catchers. After the blood pressure routine, I get on  the scale and weigh myself, then to the bathroom for check my blood glucose level. Somewhere during this ceremony I do get to relieve myself as the diuretics (water pills), I take have made my bladder full and is usually the reason I had to get out of bed in the first place..

I go to the computer and with a quickly failing short term memory, I try to transcribe these numbers from the carried out operations onto a chart to show my doctor and clinician next time I go to the VA for an appointment.

By this time, I am freezing and I head for the chair and the blanket again. Still haven’t had a cup of coffee. There are teen agers getting ready for school, milling around the kitchen and grabbing their own banana and swilling down a cup of hot chocolate made from hot water that their Grand Mother has put on the timer to be hot precisely when it is needed.

After these two have gone, the smaller versions get up and have their morning routine. They start one hour later than the teens. How convenient the timing schedule for catching the school bus is. I can’t imagine all four of them getting ready to get out the door at the same time. If it’s anything like dinnertime, when we all gather at the table and rush through the meal to get on with playing with friends, phone calls, face-booking, you-tubing, Net-flixing  and video games, it would be total morning chaos for sure!

Mrs. Spadoman has her coffee and she always asks me if I want a cup. I usually say, “Yes, please”, and wait patiently in my chair for the morning elixir to be set down at my right side, on the table top, right above where I keep my blood pressure monitor. I may wander now to my bedroom and the shelf where I keep the line-up of prescription medicine bottles and small plastic Walgreens  compartmentized holders where the pills from these bottles are distributed by days of the week and time slots.

I take the ones before I eat first and in a half hour, I eat. Cereal, hot or cold, depending on my level of laziness. Rarely do I cook anything like eggs or make toast. I still usually get the banana, but it is eaten at a much more leisurely pace than when I rammed it into my mouth while on the superhighway going to a job site like I did for 33 years prior.

I finish my coffee, if I’ve had one, and eaten breakfast. It’s time now to take the rest of my morning medication. I do my bathroom experience which varies from day to day. Sometimes I shower and shave, sometimes I don’t. I pull a brush through my hair and sometimes splash some water on my palm to slap an unruly wave or curl into just the right place to satisfy the little bit of vanity I still have, which would be hair on the top of my head.

What I do next varies greatly. If I’m not going to the VA for another doctor’s appointment, I try to get something done with a project I have going on in the house, or an art project. There is always something that needs attention when you’re a home owner, and I always seem to have some Dream Catcher or a pair of snowshoes that need to be completed sitting around.

I have actually completed some projects and fulfilled obligations. I’m working on two pair of snowshoes now for a husband and child of a woman here in town. The woman asked me if the art work can be peace signs! Right up my alley. 

Some days I I think I want to have a studio or shop space where I can spread out my work and come and go to it as I please. Then, I figure that I’ve gotten  through this many years without one and managed to get a few items done, why would I need a studio. The leather chair works fine to sit and weave.

Usually, if I’m not needed elsewhere, I go to the local Dish and the Spoon Cafe and have an Americano. It is impossible to go there and not see someone I know and chit chat a bit. I’ve given up political conversations. I’d talk sports, but not many sports people hang out at the Dish and the Spoon. River Falls has 14 bars. I think that’s where I’d find the sports conversationalists.

Last week, I varied the routine as I had some chest congestion that lingered on longer than I needed it to and I finally went to urgent care at the Minneapolis VA hospital. The chest X-ray showed pneumonia and an antibiotic was prescribed. The routine blood test showed some enzyme abnormality and I ended up being admitted and checked out via an echocardiogram and a nuclear stress test. 

More pill bottles were added to my collection. I’ve slowed down a little more as the left side of my heart has a place that is starving for blood. In most cases, folks get a stent put in to the narrowed artery and blood flow is restored. In  my case, the last angiogram showed that there isn’t anywhere on any of the heart arteries where such a measure can be performed. Medication is the answer, and if that doesn’t work, the heart tissue will die, and if it’s bad enough, so will I. I can see it now, the pacemaker/defibrillator exploding with shocks to restart my heart. I hope I’m alone and no one has to watch that.

One step closer to the end of the diving board. I am upbeat for the most part, but still I sit there and wonder if and when it’s gonna happen. I’m not afraid, in fact, I want to experience death just like I experience life, with my eyes and mind open. May be a while yet though. I took my pills this morning.

Peace to all

Wednesday, October 9, 2013

A Special Day

Today, October 9, 2013, Mrs. Spadoman and I celebrate 42 years of being married.

It will be low-keyed for the most part. We will go out for dinner tonight and eat red meat.

I am very fortunate that I have her in my life and hope she feels the same way. I love you Little Honey.

Peace to all.

Sunday, October 6, 2013

It is That Time of Year Again

Los Dias de los Muertos


This years “Days of the Dead” Celebration will take place:

Saturday   November 2, 2013 At Joe and Barb Spado’s:       
523 E. Johnson Street in River Falls, WI
Come anytime after 5 p.m.        Bring a dish to pass 

Traditionally, “Los Dios” are a time when the Spirits of those departed from our lives are thought to pass through the realms and visit us
We await them with something they were comfortable with when they still walked the earth. Feel free to bring something and a picture of someone you’d like to have pay us a visit, we’ll put it on the Ofrenda

We’ll eat and drink and talk into the night with old and new friends, and invite these souls here to join us for the evening, 
in Spirit

Campfire, bring a folding chair, dress for the weather
Main Dish, Coffee, Soft Drinks and Juice on hand. BYOB
This is our fifth year in River Falls. Come celebrate with us
Joe and Barb Spado  (715) 209-0241

This is your invitation to come and celebrate with us. Everyone is invited. Call or write if you have questions about this celebration. 

Peace