Eldercare Is Never Easy And Always Hard

This Vox piece gives a pretty good overview of just how difficult (and expensive!) eldercare can be, and how a generation of Boomers going into their Twilight Years is going to be rough for lots of their grown children:

"Boomers themselves have driven tectonic shifts in American cultural norms and family structures — a revolution in divorce, along with a trend toward smaller families and away from multigenerational living — that could make that backbone weaker. Compared to their elders, boomers will have fewer people in their lives able to step in and care for them as they age, says Rachel Margolis, a demographer and sociologist at the University of Western Ontario. In 2010, there were more than seven potential family caregivers for every person over 80; by 2030, that ratio is expected to fall to 4:1, and by 2050, it will be less than 3:1, according to AARP. More care responsibilities will fall on fewer family members, most of them adult children, who may find themselves caring for loved ones alone or with little help, sometimes across two different households."

Me and my sister are living this right now.  If I haven't mentioned it here, I have told my friends -- my Dad has excellent health care and a real pension after three decades of high level Federal work.  And even with those resources, a lot of genuine sacrifices and hard decisions still had to be made.  And more will come going forward as he approaches the age of 95.

My only suggestion?  Let the children of older folks pay some reasonable amount to go on their parents' health insurance if they give up work to take care of their mom or dad.

And the move to (return to?) multigenerational homes seems an obvious and necessary trend.

Brain Games

I'm liking Connections.  Is it bragging to say I'm pretty good at it?  Seems like you just want to think in parallel terms about possible proper nouns -- names, movies, common expressions -- before you start clicking away.

Wordle still kicks my butt of course.

The Agony and The Agony

It's like Baltimore didn't even try.

Moving Right Along

I started a new job last week and it's going pretty well.

For those keeping score, I had part-time job this past summer working as a jobs counselor for younger folks.  Now I'm full-time in an education-related field here in lovely Frederick.  Not to be coy, as I'll probably give more details later.

As mentioned, I'm also living with my Dad who is a hale and hearty 94.  We made this move for a number of reasons, but basically the nursing home wasn't working out.  Nothing terrible was going on, he just wasn't getting enough social stimulation for the very hard-working but over-tasked staff.

We have some wonderful nurses coming in during the day, allowing me to go to work.  It's tough somedays.  He's becoming less and less mobile, and it's more difficult to communicate with him and understand (fully) what his needs are.

I woke up this morning to a great big windstorm, as it seems fall has finally arrived in Maryland.  My back is sore from lifting my Dad improperly a few times (just once is really all it takes!  use those legs!).  I'm taking life and work one day at time, as much as it's possible not to worry about the future (mortality for starters, and also the fact that I'm on a one-year contract and will yet again be applying for jobs come next summer).

The Orioles lost last night in their first playoff appearance since who knows when.  Nothing will make you a realist quicker than caring for somebody approaching 95.  But part of me is looking forward to the second game this afternoon, come what may.

Losing is fine.  But not believing better days lie ahead?  That's for suckers.

"bright splotches of color against the somber sky"

"Of course, it was not actually the first time he had dreamed.  But his earlier dreams had been the kind that a healthy youth forgot with the coming of morning.  Never once had a dream lingered to affect his waking hours.  Now it was different.  Not only through the morning but through this entire day, last night's dream would persist, sometimes linked with the memory of the dream of the night before, or to be continued in the dream of the next night.  His dreams were like bright-colored garments put out to dry and left forgotten in the rain, hanging on the clothes pole without every drying.  The rain continued.  Perhaps a madman lived in the house.  And more printed silk robes were added to the drying pole, bright splotches of color against the somber sky."

Yukio Mishima, Runaway Horses

"If you knew how I felt now / You wouldn't act so adult now"

 

The Replacements, "Kiss Me On The Bus"

Tim or Pleased to Meet Me?  Which one you got?

Elizabeth Nelson on the reissue of Tim:

"Thus 'Tim' commences with a binary choice. The opening track is called 'Hold My Life,' and the decision is between fame—or at least a life-changing increase in notoriety—and something like a tactical retreat from the limelight. 'Time for decision to be made,' Westerberg intones hoarsely over a driving pre-chorus: 'Crack up in the sun / Or lose it in the shade.' A sentiment worthy of Jay Gatsby himself. By the end, the Replacements did a little bit of both."

Way back when I reviewed Trouble Boys, a band biography that's also worth checking out.

Hagerstown!

 

Spent an afternoon in Hagerstown checking out Hub City Vinyl.  Most people know the town for the nearby Civil War battlefield of Antietam.

Highlights: french fries and Led Zeppelin pinball.

"warm and thick and poisoned with human breath"

"In the trees of the Old Steyne the fairy lights were switched on; it was too early, their pale colours didn't show in the last of the day.  The long tunnel under the parade was the noisiest, lowest, cheapest section of Brighton's amusements: children rushed past them in paper sailor caps marking 'I'm No Angel'; a ghost train rattled by carrying courting couples into a squealing and shrieking darkness.  All the way along the landward side of the tunnel were the amusements; on the other little shops: Magpie Ices, Photoweigh, Shellfish, Rock.  The shelves rose to the celling; little doors let you into the obscurity behind, and on the sea side there were no doors at all, no windows, nothing but shelf after shelf from the pebbles to the roof, a breakwater of Brighton rock facing the sea.  The lights were always on in the tunnel; the air was warm and thick and poisoned with human breath."

-- Graham Greene, Brighton Rock

The Last of Us (with minor spoilers)

I finally got around to watching The Last of Us, and I really enjoyed it.  At nine episodes it managed to fill out some back stories to greater and lesser successes.  Did we need more Bill?  Sure, why not.  Did we need more Jakarta?  No, not really.

I guess I was left feeling that a really good two hour movie could have been made as well, one that would have outshined a nine-part series and brought home the point that Joel acted selfishly, but also relatably.

That's not hating, just wondering if an already baggy video game needed an equally baggy series to boot.

"pure and impenetrable as fine jade"

"The farther out one looked, the darker the color of the water, until it finally became a deep blue-green.  It was as if the innocuous ingredients of the offshore water became more and more condensed by the increasing pressure of the water as it got deeper, its green intensified over and over again to produce an eternal blue-green substance, pure and impenetrable as fine jade, that extended to the horizon.  Though the sea might seem vast and deep, this substance was the very stuff of the ocean.  Something that was crystallized into blue beyond the shallow, frivolous overlapping of the waves -- that was the sea."

-- Yukio Mishima, Spring Snow

Saturday Night Mandu