Growing old

We got back into town from Bellevue Washington on Saturday afternoon. This has been a trip that has just sucked the life force right out of me. Kathy's whole family is from there, and only Kathy moved away many years ago. The rest of the family, two older sisters, a younger brother and spouses are all still up there.

Why then does Kathy have to be the one to organize care and take the bull by the horns?

Kathy's mom is not doing well, there are multiple health issues going on with her. The latest is Cancer that has spread from a breast to a tumor on the side of her heart. She is too weak to have any kind of treatment, so she is home now, kind of on a home hospice deal. But, she doesn't like the term hospice, and isn't giving up, so it is the word of which we don't speak.

Kathy's dad has his own set of problems, from having a pacemaker with a built in defibrillator (makes for an interesting event when that kicks in), to colon cancer. His turn for surgery is coming up in a couple of weeks. When he goes into the hospital, Kathy's mom will need a lot of care. When he gets home, he will need care as well. So what does the family think is a good idea?

Kathy comes back out to stay with them for a week to 10 days, because you know, she doesn't work or anything...

I want to offer any of them this deal. Come out here and take care of Skyler for a week, while Kathy is out there. I don't think anybody could handle it. I tell you, it is all I can do to keep out of it an keep my mouth shut.

Thanks for listening to me vent, sorry, I now return to my kinder more jovial self.

Skyler had some fun seeing his family, and especially his favorite cousin Kirsten. I have written about Kirsten before, she is the one we all want to be when we grow up. She teaches snowboarding and skiing at Mt Baker during the winter, and guides raft trips and climbs mountains during the summer. Everything she does, she does well. She is naturally talented and as kind as a person can be, and she "gets" Skyler. She came out to Colorado several years ago to go to a camp with him as his aide.



Here is Kirsten, Skyler and me sitting out back of Kathy's next oldest sisters house one afternoon. We drove out to their place to say hi and see her husbands work on his recording studio he is building. It is the 8th wonder of the world! Huge rooms with amazing sound dampening construction.



One large recording room, two smaller ones, a control room and other rooms for people to hang out in and watch. The main room has 155 sound inputs!!



Lets see, what else did we do? Not too much, hung out at a couple of local coffee shops being a cliche:







And Skyler liked his rental van a lot. We have to rent an accessible van for him now because he is too big to get in and out of a regular seat.





My next post will be about the price of homes there. We took some walks and nabbed a bunch of those real estate brochures out in front of houses. Holy shit! Doesn't look like the housing market has problems there!