Category: just life

another couple of weeks of minding seniors, trying to find solutions for old problems and a way to move onwards. for a while, things were looking up: one of them is recovering ok from the femur operation and the other was kind of stable for a few days… and then suddenly he was very much not stable, with lots of nighttime agitation, delirium, etc.

while trying to change meds to calm things down, we found out he probably has “Lewy Body Dementia”, a type of dementia that reacts badly to most anti-psychotic meds… which explains why we’ve been in the emergency room 3x in the past 2 weeks, all after trying new meds to ease his crisis. everything just seemed to make it worse, and we were at our wits’ end, sleep deprived and pulling hairs — at least now we understand what is going on. now things seem a bit more stable and we have registered him in an old people’s home — let’s see if he gets a spot soon.

it’s been a bit surreal these past few weeks… like a parallel life that we’ve been dropped into. i’m tired and achy and my blood pressure is shot from being on fight-or-flight mode all the time. i can’t sleep because i keep hearing noises and am constantly on high alert, waiting for yet another crisis to unfold. focusing and getting work done feels impossible in the middle of all this — even staying focused for 15 minutes is a challenge.

i keep telling myself this is all temporary and we’ll get through it —  we can endure difficult things for a season of life. but boy, if this hasn’t been a hard one.

a nothing-special week, spent mostly working at home. i went back to the gym a couple of times — mostly just to cycle or walk slowly on the treadmill, to try to give the shoulder a chance to heal. i did a few days of stronger painkillers and it seems to have helped a bit, but now i have some kind of tendinitis in the other arm…? *sigh*.

designed and ordered some christmas postcards, late as is tradition. we saw bugonia in the cinema with a friend and it was so out there that i don’t know what to think of it. we also watched yesterday, which was more of a cozy evening vibe. almost done reading a letter to the luminous deep and read the little wooden robot and the log princess as well, for a bit of a break (it was sweet).

we went to altura to see the european leg of the great world race. the runners were running 7 marathons, in 7 continents, in 7 days… which sounds crazy or maybe just superhuman. portugal’s was their 5th leg after having run in antarctica, africa, australia and asia. whoa.

no pictures this week, so i checked out what we were doing in this day in previous years.

17 years ago, we were checking out a yoko ono’s retrospective exhibition in shanghai (meh).

13 years ago, we were eating chimney cakes in budapest!

11 years ago, i was looking at my messy desk in berlin:

9 years ago was a wednesday and we visited the lighthouse in vila real de s. antónio:

5 years ago, we planted our bamboo in the garden.

3 years ago, we bought a children’s book about a king who wanted to build a wall…

it’s kind of funny to look back on the archive like this. maybe i’ll turn it into a regular thing, a throwback photo post of sorts. :)

just a quiet week, filled with busy work days in which nothing else happened. we worked, and went to the gym, we ate and took care of things, preparing for september and its winds of change.

we finally received the samples of the new batch of commemorative postcards (they look good!) and then they were on their way to latvia, and off to the shop.

i listened to the martian, which was good, but not as good as project hail mary. super looking forward to the movie!

my old birkenstock were splitting apart in the back, and i macgyvered them with a bit of silicone. let’s see how long they’ll last!

on my getting-rid-of-stuff spree, i sold the old treadmill + a pair of new shoes. the shoes were bought in desperation for an event a few years ago, but they were too large for me and ended up staying in the cupboard, unused. it’s good to see them fly to another pair of feet!

and then on saturday, the parents and little cousin came, with their usual whirlwind of activity and energy. :) i can’t believe this kid has never seen the ocean… it’ll be the first thing on our list!