stabLe_hips

 My husband used to be very interested in finding a trailer in a park along a lake with lots of people to enjoy ourselves with and a soft breeze to enjoy the summer with.  I argued that I preferred to travel - cottages, Europe, cruises - and that a trailer might tie us down and force us to be home when I wanted to be exploring the world. His disease and deterioration have made that harder.  We can't find cottages easily and air travel is horrific and driving takes up most of my already-dear vacation time.  He's so busy with AA and Al-Anon and church and friends, that he can barely make time to go to a park with me, so I put on an alert for wheelchair accessible cottages or trailers for sale. This week I had an alert.  A wheelchair accessible trailer, about an hour from here on an excellent lake in a well known park.  I set up a viewing and excitedly told Bob.  Who was not interested. Too much partying and new people.  He's busy here, at home....

 Growing up evangelical, you don't get to adulthood unscathed by spiritual abuse.   When I was a new teenager, we were at a church where my father was an elder and on the board and the pastor and his family lived across the road from us.  Our families were close.  My mother also worked for the board in some context, one of those independent churches that I can no longer make sense of the hierarchy that it once served.  Suffice it to say, it was a shell corporation for a church - with the pastor's friends on the board, all awarded power and influence - basically creating a small pond for these big fishes.  I was best friends with the pastor's daughter. Everything eventually fell apart.  These things do.  And it was messy, as these things are.  I was commanded to stop being Lee-Ann's friend and not to hang around with her.  Best friends, like first loves, are soul mates at this age, and we both defied our parents and continued to be c...

 Caregiving is hard.   I love Bob - he's a fantastic guy who gives his all - his amazing attitude about his illness and how he still gives back the community is inspiring - as much as everyone connected to the disabled community hates the word inspiring.   But I miss Bob.  The real Bob - the funny, kind of mean Bob who laughed hard and smiled more and wasn't so demanding.  The Bob who had patience and grace and wasn't defensive.  The Bob before the power chair and AA meetings.  Not that I would like the alcoholic behaviours to resurface, but this new fanatical AA Bob is a touch annoying - his cult-like behaviour and dedication to his phone and his AA friends to the exclusion of me and the dogs is frustrating. He just called me - because his nail brush was not where he left it.  He leaves everything where he last used it and I moved it because it had gotten dirty.  So in front of his PSW he not only interrupts me to get it (instead o...