Green Acres

As we went downstairs to catch the bus on Thursday morning, it was instantly apparent that a skunk had sprayed in the back yard. The stench was strong. After Maggie left I took a shower and went back into my room and realized the smell was very strong in there too, which was odd because my bedroom is in the front of the house. That's when I realized that Brisco (the dog) was the recipient of the skunks spray.

Steve went right after the smell with dawn dish washing soap (we didn't have any tomato juice.) The dog was less than pleased with this part of the process.

It did a pretty good job, and the lingering smells finally dissipated. There were tell tale signs of digging etc in the yard and we knew the skunk would be back. Steve decided to set the "Humane animal trap" that he purchased after Brisco was attacked by a raccoon.

This morning Maggie and I went out to water the back yard and lo and behold, Pepe lePeu is stuck in the trap.











Great. Now what? How does one get a skunk moved without getting sprayed all over again. I grabbed the dog (who was oblivious to the presence of the skunk) and headed back inside. Steve was sleeping in for Father's day, but this was a little more pressing. I woke him saying, "It's Father's Day. Congratulations it's a skunk."


Animal control came out and we learned that it is illegal to trap a wild animal because, after all, they were here first.

The skunk was relocated - but not far from here and we presume he will find his way back. We presume right about now there is a convention going on in the urban wildlife union hall and they will all be here to strike tonight.

Sunshine!

Ahh Monday. The bus has come and gone and taken Maggie to school. We were happy to bid each other adieu. It was a nice weekend - incredibly nice weather wise. And today is another spectacular day.

This is actually typical June weather in San Francisco. The rain earlier in the month was freaky, but the wild flowers from all the rain are spectacular. I took this with my phone as we were walking up at Lone Mountain on the USF campus (about 6 blocks from here). Actually it was foggy by the time we finished this walk, but earlier the day was great.

 The fog rolls in just in time to screw up the 4th of July fireworks and stays until September. Today will be 78 and perfect. July  and August will be 58 and foggy. We learn to enjoy the good days while they last.

Yesterday we went out to see Steve's dad  and make him breakfast. He lives about an hour from here, but with Maggie that might as well be 10 hours. It is just very difficult to take her anywhere. It is much hotter out there and Maggie was pretty listless in the heat. But then again, so was I. We are temperate climate people.

Steve's dad lives in a split level house. We can get Maggie into the Family room from the back yard because it is at ground level. There is also a bedroom/office and a bathroom on that level. It is open to the kitchen/breakfast room, but those are 3 or 4 steps up. Then the bedrooms are up another full level. Despite the relatively easy access to the family room, it is actually more difficult to maneuver Maggie and her wheelchair in this house than in ours. We were eating breakfast about 10 feet from where she was sitting and she kept saying "Dad, I want to go upstairs." It was a bit heartbreaking. She could see and hear us perfectly well, but she wanted to be included at the table with us.  

You might think it would be easy to just bring her up there, but you would be wrong. We have learned that sometime we just cannot do it. Maggie weighs 76 lbs and her chair with all the equipment on it weighs about 140. We cannot do the lifting to get her upstairs knowing we will just have to bring her back down. Maggie survived and we went back to the family room as soon as it was done, but I felt bad.

On a happier note, our friends Mark and Vicki stopped by. They have been bringing my father in law dinner every Sunday for well over a year now. God bless them both. Mark and Steve have been friends since high school and they live fairly close to my father in law. They brought beanie babies for Maggie to fling around the room and she did not disappoint. It was great to get to visit with them.

Mark found this card and thought of us. I laughed so hard I had to scan it when I got home. This is taken at the Legion of Honor about a mile and a half from here. It explains a lot about both our raccoon problem and the problems with the Muni (San Francisco's bus system)

Enjoy your Monday!

Garbage in, Garbage out

Maggie had a young nurse fill in the other night. She is a recent graduate from nursing school, in fact she was in Eddie’s class in grammar school and high school!  She did a great job and did all Maggie’s skilled care with enthusiasm. She had been here a couple of times before training under Fely, but she did this shift on her own. I was home if she needed any help, but she handled things perfectly.

She mentioned how much we recycle and reuse things here, which of course is very different from the hospital. When there is only one patient, you don’t have to worry about spreading germs. Cleaning things well generally takes care of things. It was actually good to hear that she thinks we are efficient with our supplies because I feel like all we do is contribute to the overflowing landfill.  

Maggie generates and incredible amount of garbage. There are at least two large plastic trash bags a day along with a bag or two of recycled food cans  and paper/cardboard from Maggie’s room every day. The rest of the house generates maybe half as much as Maggie does on her own.

The garbage presents something of a problem. The garbage cans are downstairs beneath the deck that comes off of Maggie’s room. Unless one is going to head down the stairs and put the plastic bag directly in the can, I don’t want the garbage outside at night. The raccoons will rip it apart looking for food. That leaves garbage, including diapers, strewn all over the place. Not pleasant.

Generally, I deal with the garbage in the morning. I throw the bag over the deck, put Maggie in the elevator, ride down and then put the bag into the can when I get downstairs. This picture will describe it better than I can. There are the (overflowing) cans along the fence line just at the edge of the deck. You can see the elevator shaft behind the garbage cans.

It’s efficient. Drop the bag, hear the thud, open the elevator door, get in, go down, pick up the bag, toss it in the can and proceed out to the bus.  

I did that this morning before we went shopping. But something wasn’t right. I paused and cocked my head to figure out what was wrong. Then I realized, there was no “thud.” I peered over and saw this.

The garbage was hung up on the cyclone fence. I’m just glad it didn’t land in the neighbor’s yard. That might be difficult to explain at 7AM.

Can you handle THIS?

 What a weekend. We had Eddie visiting for one night, we were invaded by a raccoon, we watched the Giants clinch the West, and we celebrated Steve’s birthday.  None of those things was the highlight for Maggie, though. Rather, a little home improvement project caught her fancy.  

After 20 years of plain wood in the kitchen, Steve put drawer pulls and handles on the kitchen drawers and cabinets. My friend Grace said it’s like putting on the perfect necklace with a dress. It just completes the look. In our case, there is an additional bonus. A certain teenager in this house thinks these handles are GREAT! The drawer pulls are at exactly the right height for the wheelchair.

Maggie could not get enough of these wondrous things yesterday morning when we were making Steve’s birthday cake. She got a hold of the drawers and had a great time opening and closing the drawers. She was tossing dishtowels around the kitchen with great abandon. Late in the afternoon her nurse brought me a key she found in Maggie’s chair. Oops. I tried to keep her out of that drawer but I was obviously unsuccessful.  

Maggie was enjoying herself tremendously when her brother Eddie came up behind her, leaned over and said in his deepest possible voice “Maggie, what do you think you are doing.”  She found that delightful.

Having her brother here, even if only for a couple of hours, was almost as good as having the new drawer pulls. Maggie comes to life even more when either of the boys come home. She will have to wait until Christmas to see Eddie again. We will have to work on getting Tim to come home and give her a brother fix. Forget raccoons and baseball and birthdays. She can show him the new handles.  

Where have you been?

Caring for Maggie is generally more work than one person can handle alone. There are moments it really takes two, but generally, it is about 1.5. That puts tremendous limitations on us and particularly on me.

We have a nurse in the house two shifts a day but I am always close by. If I do leave the house, it is between scheduled treatments and generally only for an hour or so. If I have to be somewhere for an extended period, I plan it when my husband is home to do the backup work for the nurse. It was easier before the boys moved away to college, because they could help the nurse if the need arose, but now they are gone and we have to make do.

Once in a great while we do actually go out together and leave the nurse alone with Maggie. We never leave town and we always have the car so we can be home pretty quickly if something comes up. We leave the phone number of our neighbor, another nurse, and hope for the best. I know there are those reading this saying, “take time for yourselves” and all that. However, unless you are living here, you have no idea what we are dealing with. This works for us. Not perfectly, but it works. The level of care needed places limitations on us, but it also comes with rewards.

As a result of these limitations, we have a daughter who is extremely spoiled. On the rare occasion that we do go out, she lets us know that she does not approve. And if the nurses change shift and we are not home, watch out! Saturday night was one of those nights and I had to deal with Maggie’s teenage attitude Sunday morning.

We were invited to a dinner/birthday party for Peter, an old friend of Steve’s. We haven’t seen these folks in several years because they moved far away. The party was in the home of another of Peter’s friends. It was in Marin County, across the Golden Gate Bridge at least 40 minutes away. That meant we could not get home quickly in an emergency. Steve’s brother and his family were visiting for the weekend and they could step in to help if need be. Therefore, we went and had a nice time.

The afternoon nurse worked from 3PM to 11Pm. The party started at 4:30, but that was a little early for us. We helped get Maggie situated for the evening and left around 5, arriving at 5:45 or so. We stayed until after 11 and arrived back home just before midnight. Maggie was asleep and the night nurse was on duty. She arrived at 11 and stays until 7AM. I went to bed because I have the next shift.

We did not get much sleep that night because the raccoons returned about 2:45AM. I heard the dog and knew immediately something was in the basement. I woke Steve and he and his brother worked for 45 minutes to get three raccoons out of the basement. Steve armed himself with a ski pole and a stick while his brother chose a broom and a mop from the weapon cache. I got a camera, but that wasn’t met with as much enthusiasm as I hoped. Maggie slept through the whole thing, but I kept checking in because the noise was incredible. We returned to bed at 3:30, but the excitement prevented sleep. I still had to get up to let the nurse go home.

At 7AM I was up and getting the rest of the night’s report from the nurse. Maggie was glaring at me. The nurse said Maggie had been awake for a while and had refused to smile. This is unusual for Maggie who smiles almost all the time. I told the nurse Maggie was mad at me. Maggie brought her hand up to her mouth, her sign for ”yes.” I said, “She’s mad because a new nurse came and I still wasn’t home.” Maggie signed yes again and her lower lip began to quiver. I asked her if I came back, and she signed yes, but was really fighting tears. I said, “Don’t I always come back” She gave a slow, sort of tentative sign for yes. I said, “SO what’s the problem?” Maggie tried to keep the pout, but her eyes were sparkling. She then gave up and grinned from ear to ear. The nurse was amazed. I was not. Maggie has been doing this for a long time.

She is spoiled rotten. She expects us to stay within those limited confines that her care mandates. She misses us, and particularly me, when we are gone. She does love her mother, and that is reward enough.

Intruder!

Many nights we have to jump out of bed to attend to an emergency with Maggie. We used to rely on the nurse’s loud voice to wake us. However, our room is upstairs in the front of the house and Maggie’s is downstairs in the back. Ifthe door was closed to Maggie’s room we couldn’t always hear the nurse yelling. To remedy that, we put in an extension phone on the fax line and put it in Maggie’s room; now if the nurse needs me in the middle of the night, she calls the house number and it rings right next to our bed.

At 4AM, I heard screaming. At first, I thought someone was being attacked outside the house. I sat bolt upright and then realized it was coming from INSIDE the house. My brain quickly went down the possibilities. Maggie? No! She cannot scream! What is it? The nurse? No. Steve and I looked at each other and I said. “It’s the DOG!”

The screaming continued. We ran downstairs and headed toward the basement. Graciously, I allowed Steve to go first. I was afraid of what I would see. Was he impaled on something? I am good at Maggie emergencies. Not so good at any others.

Steve started down the basement steps and saw Brisco trying to get up the stairs. A raccoon was on his back attacking him. Both animals were screaming. It was freaky. Apparently the raccoon decided that giant container of dog food was a perfect 4 AM snack. Brisco felt otherwise.

Please remember, we live in the middle of San Francisco in a row house. There are many perils and pitfalls to city living. Wildlife is not generally among those. I just hope that raccoon isn't in a gang who will come back en masse to retaliate.

Steve got the raccoon out the back door and I tended to Brisco’s torn ear. A trip to the vet is in order once the sun comes up. His ear is ok, just a deep scratch. I am trying to remember if his shots are perfectly up to date. We are going to avoid any diseases this city critter may be carrying.

Of course, the vet will have to wait until the plumber comes to check out our sewer problem. Now this is the type of peril I am used to. We discovered water backing up in the sink next to the washing machine. We cannot use the water in the house without exacerbating that problem. Once the raccoon was gone, Steve took the opportunity to bail out the sink before it overflowed again.

The plumber is coming first thing in the morning. Or, what I thought was first thing. Little did I know we would have our own Wild Kingdom show.

Maggie? Fine. Once the screaming stopped, she thought it was hilarious that Dad and I were running around downstairs in the middle of the night. Bonus! She is just sorry she will miss the plumber.