It is Friday and still ….
It is Friday and still no TRG. Guess I’ll just have to try and remember what I wrote last week and hope that Kris got my subscription started. I did get my Star-News from Medford so I know the address changes I sent out got delivered and working.
Otherwise things continue as they were. Unexpected changes almost on a daily basis. If I could just learn to roll with the punch instead of getting upset, it might help a bit. Just like yesterday when I heard Shelly had just been moved here.
Apparently the group home, Just Like Home, where she has lived the last dozen or so years in Colby closed down. In addition she had fallen and spent several days in the hospital. So apparently she is just here on rehab and is presently quarantined as she hadn’t gotten all her shots.
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It was nice one of the first days to have the doctor in charge here stop by to say hi. One of her first questions was to ask if I intended to keep writing my column? She was happy to hear I was and I’m sure Diane and Kim will be, too, besides some other people who have mentioned it.
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As I mentioned last week, I sleep in a recliner and I was right in bringing the right one. Yet there is that old question.
Am I getting enough sleep and or rest in a chair versus a bed? I got the answer one day a few days after I got here. I got everything ready, the alarm clock so I can tell what time it is, but not for waking me up. I carefully put my walker ahead of my chair next to the bathroom, and my moveable table was also handy with my water and tissue box.
When I got up in the morning I noticed someone had been in the bathroom and picked up the old wash cloths and towel. I also noticed the clothes hamper behind my chair was gone, and stacked against my closet was a pile of clean clothes. I did have to put them away myself.
Now I’ve learned to leave a little room between my walker and the bathroom and let anyone who needs to get in without messing with my stuff and I can sleep and dream peacefully through the night.
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Maybe it is because I’m Swedish, but it did take some time to get it all figured out. I thought I was just coming here to live, but the Living Center is full right now. So I ended up in the rehab building, which means I have to save my urine for them to check. I get walked to the weight room every morning to get weighed and there seems to be no end to someone coming in to check this or that.
Then it finally dawned on me. According to the charts I have, I would pay the same rate if nothing was done. So I’m just getting my money’s worth and believe me, I am enjoying every minute.
The other day one of the staff came by to ask some questions. What day was it, where am I, and simple things like that. Then the question came up, “Are you ever depressed and wish you could die?” Or something along that line. My answer was, “Heavens no, I plan on living to be one hundred.”
The staff person thought that had really made her day.
ÓÓÓÓÓ I sure enjoy having my computer here. It is so nice to be able to talk back and forth, and most important, I can keep writing my column.
Then there is Facebook, which I’ve learned you have to take some things with a grain of salt, but seeing things as they happen and things from the past are great, too.
Once in a while something pops up you weren’t expecting, or something really out of the ordinary. Like the other morning a photograph posted by Ronald Jansen. That would be the retired Pastor Ronald Jansen who attended the Pipe Lake Lutheran Church just as I had.
The picture was very unusual and had been taken inside the Holy Trinity Orthodox Church that is located in the country between Turtle Lake and Clayton. It used to be easy to find. If you take County Trunk K that runs between Turtle Lake and Connorsville on Highway 64, and get by Moon Lake, you pass by it and its’ onion shaped dome stands out in the distance.
The last time I drove that way the trees were getting so tall they kind of kept the church hidden.
From the videos they have posted, the service is a bit different than anything I ever encountered in a Lutheran Church, or any Catholic Church I’ve ever attended for a wedding or funeral.
I guess it was just human nature that people who came here from Europe settled in communities. When my parents moved back to Wisconsin from North Dakota, Mom decided we should go to the church in the neighborhood, even if it was German. Actually she was German, but her family had been in this country so long they kind of broke away from the normal.
On the other hand, when they came back someone said they should be going to Cumberland, “where they belonged.” A picture of my dad and his sister Elsie can be found in the display of confirmation pictures at the Augustana Lutheran Church in Cumberland.
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Thank goodness Wisconsin is smarter than some states which have banned books about slavery and discrimination. I think it is Florida that is leading the way in such a dumb idea. I read someone from our Department of Education has made that announcement. Our country has some sad stories along those lines and we must learn from them or we may find ourselves doing the same dumb things again.
A couple of years ago I rode to Florida to visit Jackie and Bob with Florence’s nephew Kent Smith and his wife Susan. She was born and raised in Florida and I’m not sure how she ended in Minnesota. I asked her about the race issue when she was growing up. She said actually it turned out to be two different groups of Blacks. Those who were brought here from the islands knew how to take care of the orange groves. The other Blacks were the uneducated group.
My old friend Otto Becker once told me about an incident back during the Korean War when he was stationed in Florida. He and a few other fellows got on a bus and went to the back to sit. The bus driver yelled at them and told them to get up to the front of the bus where they belonged or they weren’t going no place.
