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Go to first message Go back 20 messages Messages 29065 - 29084 out of 29250 Go forward 20 messages Go to most recent message
29065. Ms. No - 5/8/2018 6:33:38 PM

Seamus --

End of term is June 15, so I've got a little ways to go yet. Senioritis has hit in full force, but I'm really going to miss this group of seniors.

I'm working with the Sophomore teachers on their big end-of-year project too. We're trying to re-create the Medicins Sans Frontiers refugee experience camp. This will be the first year that we do it, but I'm really excited about it. --- Makes me want to teach 10th grade again!

29066. Ms. No - 5/8/2018 6:40:42 PM

In other news --- my mom went in for surgery on a broken femur from a fall she had in the subway and ended up having a stroke. She's doing okay now --- regained speech and mobility --- but they're keeping her in the hospital through Friday before she moves to an in-patient rehab facility for a couple weeks to begin the PT for her leg.

That was the course of my weekend --- every two minutes I'd wonder "Is this the moment I'll remember for the rest of my life as what I was doing when I got the news..."

I've spoken with her twice since the stroke -- most recently yesterday evening and she sounded in good spirits. She was alert and cracking jokes and I couldn't discern any speech impediment.

I'm not ready for my mom to be old or an invalid. I don't suppose anyone is ever ready for that, but it's just a constant recurring shock that my mother had a stroke --- regardless the fact that it was an adverse reaction to surgery rather than an organic cause.

So, I'm hoping for a full recovery and trying to be positive and stay calm, but I think I won't be easy again until I see her for myself and witness her recovery.

29067. Seamus - 5/10/2018 9:19:23 PM

I’m certainly wishing for a full and speedy recovery for your mother, Ms. No. It sounds as if she’s headed in the correct direction. And yes, I hope you can take some comfort from the idea that it was a trauma-plus-surgery combination that brought on her stroke as compared to some underlying organic cause. I don’t know how much assurance that brings to you, but I know it would do so for me.

It seems not to matter our age, but when we fall, there is somehow hell to pay for it. Our bodies must have been designed to be upright and in motion. Whenever either of those conditions aren’t met, it almost seems as if there’s an additional entropic penalty assessed on us. I don’t remember those instructions appearing in the owner’s manual, but there you have it.

In any event, I’m glad to hear that she is progressing in her recovery.

29068. Ms. No - 5/11/2018 3:57:54 PM

Thank you. She's better every day now --- she actually moved to the rehab facility Wednesday night, so things are going very well.


I've always thought our propensity for toppling over is why children are so short. Not sure what to say about the loss of balance and strength that accompanies old age, except that when the model was first designed, the modern longevity perhaps wasn't anticipated?

Or maybe it's just to teach us humility.

29069. Seamus - 5/12/2018 1:52:00 AM

Ah, yes. Teach us humility. After years of repeating that class to no apparent effect, I’m still inclined to face plants and other faux pas, equally divided between the literal and the metaphoric varieties.

29070. Ms. No - 6/1/2018 5:13:07 PM

Happy National Donut Day!!

29071. arkymalarky - 6/6/2018 2:55:40 AM

How is your mom Msno? I hate to hear that she's had a stroke. That's such an uncertain occurrence and you don't know what the results are going to be over the long-term a lot of the time, but I hope she's still recovering well.

I haven't forgotten all y'all, just been very down over retiring and my kiddo finally moving away. It won't be too far, but a lot farther than they are now. Had my last work day yesterday, babysitting grandson for the next 4 days, and trying to deal with how different life is going to be without teaching and with my kiddo so much further away, to say nothing of my grandson. Like I told my principal when I busted out crying in his office right before I left, it's not where I'm headed it's what I'm leaving behind that makes me so sad.

29072. arkymalarky - 6/6/2018 3:00:08 AM

Wonderful to see you here Seamus. Been a long time, but your presence is always a nice breeze.

29073. Ms. No - 6/6/2018 4:55:26 PM

Arky -- she's doing great! She had fully recovered speech and movement before she even got to the alternate hospital with the neurosurgeon, so she didn't end up having to have any procedures for the clots. They'd completely dissolved by the time she got the MRI.

She'll be heading home from the rehab facility this Friday, and my brother is going out to stay with her for a week since I'm still in school. She'll have to use a walker for another couple of months and then a cane for a couple of months, but she's healing up very well and has no left-over effects from the stroke, at all. This is all just the broken leg stuff.

I'm happy for your for your retirement, but I also feel your sadness at it. I'll be teaching for several more years at least, but this class of seniors will be really hard to say goodbye to.

Where did Mose and fam move to?

29074. wabbit - 7/30/2018 9:46:34 PM

Happy Birthday Arky, hope it's been a great day!

Ms. No, how are you making out with the fires, I hope nothing is too close.

29075. Ms. No - 7/30/2018 11:46:50 PM

I'm fine - I'm in Hoboken!

I've got so excited friends in the East Bay and near Redding who are on alert, but so far everyone is safe.

How's by you?

29076. arkymalarky - 8/2/2018 10:00:33 PM

Thanks Wabbit! up in CO, laundry day in Ned. last bd that starts with 5. 😥
Hope all is well with you!
Enjoy your vaca, No! odd not to be back at it. work would start Mon. but already booked helping parents, being Grandma and planning to dive into GOTV when I get home.

29077. alistairconnor - 8/13/2018 12:49:17 PM

Oh helloes to all... hugs all round.
To take up a conversation from March :
Bhel : "I wager AC is a grandpapa at this point!"
No way. Some years off that. My elder just turned 25, she's still at school (Glasgow School of Art). I'm pissed off that when I go to see her graduate next year, the ceremony will not be at the freshly restored Charles Rennie building because it burnt out a second time...

The younger is 20 and does the accounts at a jazz venue (it's more complicated than that...) but is planning to go to New Zealand next year, until further notice.

I'm still buzzing from our annual holiday together. Every year we take a week in my little camper van, now 15 years old itself, and ... go somewhere. We did a complete tour of the Alps, through Switzerland, Austria, Italy, to Slovenia -- great way to mitigate the heatwave, swimming in lakes and rivers every day. I'm amazed that they actually want to spend a week, 24/7, with their old dad, and that we all enjoy it so much.

Neither are currently in relationships that could be described as both long-term and stable... and both are happy with that...

29078. bhelpuri - 8/21/2018 1:38:48 PM

AC - Your holiday sounds great. My own tryst with fatherhood at the moment is part launching pad (the oldest is 18, at boarding school and now applying to colleges very far away from home) and part Papa Bear (the youngest is 10, and we enjoy a significant portion of each day together). The third is 14, and in-between those poles.

Man, time flies. I recall very well meeting your two in NYC when the younger must have been not much older than a toddler!

29079. arkymalarky - 9/19/2018 12:17:25 AM

Yay the Mote's back online! I was beginning to think it was done. I've been swamped since I retired but my parents have everything lined out now and I'm power of attorney and it has been clear to me for the past 2 months that I had to retire. Working locally on gotv through local Democratic party, indivisible, when we all vote, Moms Demand, and a few others that have ways to let people help GOTV

29080. arkymalarky - 9/19/2018 12:17:34 AM

Yay the Mote's back online! I was beginning to think it was done. I've been swamped since I retired but my parents have everything lined out now and I'm power of attorney and it has been clear to me for the past 2 months that I had to retire. Working locally on gotv through local Democratic party, indivisible, when we all vote, Moms Demand, and a few others that have ways to let people help GOTV

29081. arkymalarky - 9/19/2018 12:17:57 AM

*burp*

29082. winstonsmith - 9/19/2018 2:17:29 AM

Yes, I thoughtt it was a goner too. Happy to see it resurrected.

29083. Ms. No - 9/20/2018 4:32:59 PM

Whew! Same here!

My zero-period kids are working on a digital art project at the moment, so I've got a couple of minutes to report.

Mom is doing great --- walking everywhere without the cane, now. No lasting effects from the stroke. On her way to the city at the moment to go play grandma in the arboretum. She's up to 4 miles a day before she gets tired/achy, so I expect she'll be back to full strength in the next couple of months.

Dad is also doing well -- no relapses after getting out of the hospital. Still not smoking (hope it lasts!) and hasn't allowed himself to get sucked back into the toxic work environment that contributed to the pneumonia in the first place.

Attended my first ever women's barbershop chorus rehearsal last night with the Sweet Adelines Sacramento chapter. It was a lot of fun to sing with a chorus again. I was a little rusty with my music reading to begin with, but it all started to come back. Very cool to sing the bass line again after singing solo for so long.

29084. Ms. No - 9/20/2018 4:38:38 PM

In other news, I had a mouse. I say "had" because the exterminator came yesterday and the mouse is no more. So my Sunday will be taken up with scrubbing my kitchen down within an inch of its life to erase any mouse cooties.

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