Category: weeknotes

weeknotes, 9/26

aaaaaah… a whole full week back at home! :D :D :D i can hardly explain how relaxing it feels to be here and to have time again. we’ve taken it easy this week, focusing on the big stuff and getting re-acquainted with being by ourselves. it felt so, so good.

we saw hamnet this week and i’ve been reading howl’s moving castle and listening to when the cranes fly south. the latter is about a senior that is being cared for by his son and some social caretakers and his experience of aging. it’s hitting me a bit hard, having just put father-in-law in a nursing home… but maybe there’s no better time than now to read it.

i went back to the gym today! my right forearm is still a little achy but getting better and it was good to be back to using all the muscles that haven’t moved these past couple of months. they did some maintenance on the sauna and it was extra hot, which felt amazing. i missed it so much!

we went out to eat a few times this week, as if we were starved for food from around the world (indian, korean, japanese, pizza…). but we also ate stuff from our own little plot, which is bursting at the seams with broccoli, cabbages, lettuce, radishes, chard, coriander, etc. maybe it’s all the rain that fell in the last 2 months, or maybe it’s the lack of humans fussing over it — but either way, i’ll take it and make some healthy meals out of it!

just life weeknotes

weeknotes, 7-8/26

more of the same: half of the time spent holding onto all the threads at work and the rest just trying to get things done at the in-laws. new hearing aids, bathroom renovations, dentures stuff, physiotherapy appointments, pressure washing the cement floor outside so that it’s not so slippery… the list is endless. the more time one spends there, the more things there are to do and fix.

things are finally settling down with the boy’s father at the nursing home, as the medical staff there found some old-school medication that helps him sleep at night without making him drowsy during the day. apparently it’s something they haven’t used in years and years, and everyone was happily surprised that it seems to work so well for him. i’m just grateful they didn’t give up — and that they had the resources and the patience to keep trying new things. we were so lucky with the place we ended up picking… i don’t take any of this for granted. our senior is still a little lost, but he’s in good spirits, clean and safe and talking about planting potatoes and beans on the gardens outside.

we watched one battle after another, and i finished listening to the correspondent, which was unexpectedly touching. i swam a few times in the municipal pool and took the kid to her swimming lessons too. the last time we were there she threw a huge tantrum over a band-aid that needed to stay on a scraped knee at all costs… but after awhile (and with the help of a really nice cleaning lady, who fetched us a new band-aid), we were back on the water with the class. 😅

and then the sun started shining again and it felt like heaven. i think maybe we had forgotten what blue skies looked like! the whole country feels radioactively green and blue now — and warm, almost impossibly spring-like in what is still the middle of winter. it feels like hope!

but i saved the best news of all for last: WE’RE BACK HOME! it’s for a short period of time only, but i missed all of this so much these past 2 months — the brightness, the birds, my heated blanket, the salt ponds, my bike, the almond blossoms, our favorite restaurants, the local cine-theatre… and most of all, the quietness of life when it’s just the two of us. <3 words cannot describe it, it’s like the world is right again.

weeknotes

weeknotes, 5-6/26

a quieter couple of weeks, working mostly from home with the heater on max the whole time, very much rinse and repeat. some good nights of sleep, finally.

we’ve slowly been fixing stuff around the house, going through lists, putting systems in place to deal with old problems, decluttering and waiting for the boy’s mom to be well enough for us to go home for a bit. voting ahead of the election to be able to disconnect from the news cycle earlier.

we’ve been visiting the boy’s dad at the nursing home, where he swings between being sedated or making a fuss and keeping everyone awake at night. the people there seem to take it in stride, par for the course, which is at least a little reassuring… but it’s hard not to worry. dementia means that he’s always a little lost, relying on muscle memory that fails him in an environment where everything is new.

otherwise life has been boring and yet grating, like cabin fever. it feels like it’s been raining non-stop for almost 2 months now, and everything is perpetually wet and damp. we’ve been watching the news in constant dismay of how waterlogged and destroyed the country is in this never-ending carrousel of winter storms. we count our blessings while drying clothes with de-humidifiers and prayers.

i’ve been reading cheesy stuff, cat sebastian and the heated rivalry book that everyone has been talking about — this feels like all the “literature” my brain can process at the moment. better times will come.

weeknotes

weeknotes, 3-4/26

on week 3 we finally got some good news: the boy’s dad got a spot in a nursing home! so we packed his suitcase (how weird to choose all the clothes someone is going to wear for the foreseeable future), signed the papers and brought him there.

the facilities are really nice and the workers are friendly and poke him good naturedly when they pass him in the corridor. two of my cousins work there, and it feels a little easier knowing someone on the inside is keeping an eye on him. the transition hasn’t been the smoothest, with him keeping everyone up at night with his wandering around… the in-house doctor has adjusted his medication a few times to help him sleep through the night, and he’s been a bit more sedated than usual. i hope they find a good balance soon. he’s kind of getting used to being there, but not really fully aware of what’s happening — sometimes he recognizes people and sometimes he doesn’t. dementia is hard to describe — it’s cruel and relentless, a steady downwards slope. (i keep drifting to reddit to read other people’s stories).

meanwhile, i’ve been really tired. between managing all these senior logistics and having little niece around for a few days while her parents went skiing (i had offered to babysit months ago), i’m feeling pretty drained. hopefully things will be a little lighter going forward and we will be able to actually work and sleep through the night for a change.

to distract myself, i’ve finished reading all of us murderers and listening to a house with good bones, but have been mostly drawn towards dramione fanfiction, which feels easier to digest with my scattered brain. i’ve taken the kid to her swimming lessons, and enjoyed her splashing and jumps. it’s been cold and raining non-stop and it even snowed in marão, the distant hills covered with a dusting of white.

i really miss the quietness and warmth of home. soon, hopefully.

just life weeknotes

weeknotes, 1-2/26

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.