Category: memories

Aging Reflections: the Balance.

A NYTimes headline scored my attention today:

5 Money Lessons From Readers in the Trenches of Elder-Parent Care

Regular visitors to my blog know that my family have been dealing with my aging mother for years. She’d been living a good life; a fall on some stairs changed that trajectory.

Mom fortunately had a good partner, Frank, as she moved toward her 80s. His drawbacks including increasing deafness, blindness, and being five years older than Mom.

We could see what was coming: Mom would need more and more care. The care would become more and more expensive. Frank would be less and less able to help Mom.

I spoke with Mom about it over the years, advocating to get someone in to help her clean and help her take care of herself. I also kept suggesting that they move into smaller place, such as an assisted living facility or a ‘senior’ community.

Mom resisted most of the suggestions. She didn’t want to leave her house. That home represented her life. She bought it on her own, then got her GED and went to nursing school. Mom opened her home to her grandchildren, taking care of them while my sisters went to school or worked.

I eventually convinced Mom to accept someone coming in and cleaning a few times a week. I paid for it, which helped Mom accept the help. She was also willing let that person in because it was a neighbor and someone she knew.

The arrangement ended when the cleaner suffered cancer and could no longer work. Worse, Mom was falling more often. Her recovery arcs were longer. Each hospital episode left her with more challenges. Yet her will to live was undiminished.

Things took a drastic turn last year. Frank, her partner, fell down the stairs. Hospitalized, he went into a coma and died, 95 years old.

This was devastating for us on multiple fronts and forced Mom’s health from concern to crisis.

Mom tried living alone when Frank was in the hospital and everyone hoped he would recover. Falling, though, Mom couldn’t get up several times and slept on the floor. Cooking was a struggle, so she took shortcuts such as eating sardines with crackers for dinner. She grew thinner and weaker.

My sister took her in. Sis set up a nice space for Mom. Perhaps the biggest drawback was that it was located in my sister’s finished basement. It started out fine but soon devolved into a cold war between Mom and everyone living there. Mom has been vulnerable to UTIs, and we think that was part of the problem.

Mom ended up making suicidal comments. She ended up hospitalized and then in an assisted living place where she does not want to be.

All this is just foreshadowing to me. I’ll be 70 in a few months. My wife is a year younger. One sister is two years older, and another is two years younger. The other two sisters are 8 and 10 years younger than me.

The thing is, even as Mom needs help, all of us are also reaching that point. While I’ve been hospitalized and treated for several issues in the last five years, I’ve rebounded. The same can’t be said for my wife, my sisters, and their husbands.

We’re all facing the same issues that others face in this article: how do we help our parents when we’re crossing the threshold into needing help ourselves?

This is the Silver Tsunami, a term many do not like.

I’ve considered moving to be closer to my sisters and Mom. There are many legitimate excuses for why that hasn’t happened. While our southern Oregon home is ideal for us, the location is not any longer. Just under 1900 square feet, the house is single storied with two bathrooms, and three bedrooms. One bedroom is the home office. This is where we spend our most time, reading, exercising, watching television, on the computer.

The area, though, has been enduring droughts. With the droughts have come water shortages, wildfires, and smoke. As those hit, the local economy has suffered. As a result, Ashland is facing a financial crisis. Adding to that crisis is that two major employers, Southern Oregon University (SOU) and the town’s hospital, Assante Ashland Community Hospital, faced their own crises. Those crises forced them to drawdown in significant ways, with more on the way.

At this point, the future is not ideal. As the article points out, we’re not alone in our problems, both with our own health and aging, but also with helping our parents.

What’s troubling me as much as anything is how the GOP has responded. Trump has cut social services to the aging population. He instead wants to spend more money on the military. Equally troubling is that the GOP goes along with this.

There’s already a growing rural hospital crisis in the United States. With Trump in office, madly spending, the national debt has crossed the point where it is now larger than our Gross National Product.

Yet, Trump’s spending priorities are geared toward bailing out countries, starting wars or using the military as a stick to threaten other nations. These do nothing to help our nation’s aging citizens. Trump’s policies have instead resulted in higher prices across the spectrum, which makes everything worse for anyone living a marginalized life. Including people like Mom.

Projections show that it’ll probably get worse, with more citizens requiring healthcare and living assistance. Natural supply and demand for personnel, food, assistance, and medical care will further drive up costs.

It’s a terrible spiral. As wealth becomes more concentrated in the hands of billionaires who care mostly for themselves and their businesses, the rest of us will keep sliding further into debt and crisis.

Sadly, that is Trump’s America. As it now stands, it’s the future for far too many.

Some may say that I’m being fatalistic. I reply, I’m just reading the news and watching the trends.

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Friday’s Theme Music — Surrender

Ashland, southern Oregon — Friday, May 1, 2026.

It’s 57 F outside and a high of 77 is predicted, despite clouds and haze obscuring the sun.

Good-bye April, hello May. As it’s May 1st, I’m staying home and not buying anything today.

The fifth month of 2026 begins with little change politically.

  • Trump remains in office
  • Prices are still rising, with gas in the US setting records for how fast they’re rising
  • Kash Patel is still running the FBI but that’s not expected to last
  • The Epstein files haven’t been released
  • Trump’s approval ratings are falling and his disapproval is climbing

May begins as the third month with the US Schrödinger’s War with Iran where we’re at war and not at war. Common sense says we attacked them, bombed them, killed people, all in pursuit of Trump’s fragile objectives — ego, approval, masculinity. Iran has fought back and we have warships stationed over there. Ergo, it’s war.

Legal semantics are being employed to argue the US is not at war because, law. “Operation Epic LOOK — SQUIRREL” began on February 28, 2026. Trump formally notified Congress on March 2. Today is then the legal deadline to either stop the war or get a formal Authorization for Use of Military Force. All eyes still wearily blink at Congress to see who among them have grown a spine.

Republicans argue that sudden withdrawal would embolden Iran. I think Trump’s failed bombing campaign is already doing that.

Newsweek offered some classic clickbait:

Donald Trump’s odds of winning 2026 Nobel Peace Prize surge

The article says they gave him a 55% chance of winning last year, and now give him a 25% chance. Sounds like Trump math. He’s still in sixth place or lower as a potential winner. In my mind, if they gave the prize to Trump after all his bombing and threats, the prize would lose all credibility.

Trump has seemed very low key, low energy recently. It’s like he checked out. Never one to be on top of things, he’s always been bombastically out there, pretending like he is. I wonder, though, if it’s not a culmination of his war against the press merging with the press’s weariness over his lies and attacks resulting in less reporting of him. Could be, too, that he’s simply retreating into trusted safe places.

Whatever the cause, the optics of his absence as ‘commander in chief’ promote the impression that he’s overwhelmed and flailing. Stacked on top of ‘the bulge’ in his pants, his weary appearance, and fewer, more muted appearances, I’m getting a lame duck vibe.

I’m looking forward to his May 17th Rededicate 250 speech. At this point, anything he says and claims about Making America Great Again is going to remind us about how much worse the nation is now compared to two years ago.

Your Trump Quote of the Day:

I have “Sweet Surrender” by Sarah McLachlan in my morning mental music stream. This actually came about when my ginger fur friend, Papi, did a roll at my feet on the patio as we tested the weather together. I chortled and gave him some skritches and rewarded him with extra treats. His move seemed like he was doing a sweet surrender, but so did my response.

I hope this day goes well for you, with good friends, good food and drink, and good news.

Cheers

1

A Dream: Graduation

I dreamed I was at a sister’s house with other family members, getting ready to go somewhere. I never actually saw anyone but knew this and frequently spoke with them, but just in passing comments.

I knew my sister had decided to start a new business. I saw these large, clear plastic trays, made for transferring fluids, were dirty, so I stopped and cleaned them all, to help her out.

They were all in my sister’s car, waiting for me, a maroon vehicle. I then downloaded two computer things to her car: business planning software for her, and directions to my uncle’s house for me.

When I got in the car, my sister said, “There are two downloaded items.” I explained what they were.

She was driving. I got on the phone with my uncle for directions. I knew how to get there; I just needed the final address. (This uncle is deceased in real life.)

He gruffly asked me if I had pen and pencil. I didn’t but felt that wasn’t needed, and would just depend on my memory.

My sister dropped me off at a facility where I was to graduate. Others who were to graduate were also arriving, in groups. Most were younger. I got in line alone. Watching the operation, I realized that they graduated us in small groups in a building and not on stage.

As I reached the door and stopped, waiting to enter, I noticed the man behind me was trying to push me forward. I turned around and told him not to do that. He, a bearded white guy with wavy blonde hair and blue eyes, backed off.

I went into the room when called forward. I again had to wait. I noticed that they were providing mysteries to the people ahead of me. They were expected to solve them using math. I began trying to shift my focus to do better.

We went left, and then right, lining up. When I was second in line, a man helping with giving out the diplomas came to me to identify me. After he did, he explained that I was graduating at a higher level than the others, and things were a little different for me. He moved me to one side to wait.

After a little bit, he brought over a white sheet of paper and told me to hold onto it. I examined it and gathered that it was a summary of my achievements and records, but it was written in a small font and was often different foreign languages so it didn’t make much sense to me. There were also symbols, like the ‘eye on the pyramid’ used on US money.

Dream end

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The Bottom Line for Trump

For Trump, 2026 mid-terms are coming fast. Reminders are coming, too: of what he promised, the promises he broke, and the failures littering his promises. Here’s one person’s reflections on Trump’s state of the mid-terms worth reading.

Election 2026 #2

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Wednesday’s Theme Music – Trump Circles

Ashland, Southern Oregon — Wednesday, April 29, 2026.

Sunshine and blue sky rule the valley with a 47 degree temperature and a high of 72 F possible this afternoon.

I read a Paul Krugman post this morning. In “The Oil Squeeze Tightens”, Krugman asks, “How long will it take before Trump accepts the reality that he doesn’t have the cards, that in the end his Iran venture will be resolved in a way that leaves Iran stronger and America weaker than before the war?”

Krugman concludes that Trump is clearly dissociating. I feel the same. Trump has become strangely quiet. Is it because of his health? I think it’s that failures are stacking for him. The usual tried and true schemes aren’t working.

Regardless of whether the assassination attempt at the WHCD last week was staged or real, Trump probably expected a bounce from that. He got none. It didn’t help his cause that he immediately pivoted to “Build the ballroom! Security!” It was such a non-sequitur that everyone immediately pounced on the flawed logic.

Trump expected his war with Iran to be over. Instead, more and more are suggesting the US lost that war. It’s at a stalemate, which aren’t good optics for what’s supposed to be a world superpower.

Prices are going up. I don’t think Trump cares about prices for oil, gas, and food, except as it affects his popularity. Nor does he care that he promised to lower them on day one. He lies about prices as much as he lies about losing the 2020 election. His lies are losing their power. Too many are experiencing the real impact of high prices.

Trump probably wants to attack another nation but with Iran going poorly, he’s probably being warned not to. Likewise, he probably wants to escalate on attacks on Iran but somebody with more sense is holding him back.

Meanwhile, summer travel is coming, the war goes on, and Trump’s popularity declines. Beyond all of that, the Epstein files still shadow everything Trump does.

Everything Trump is doing seems flaccid and limp. In his latest Operation Epic LOOK — SQUIRREL! effort, it’s announced his face and signature will be on passports. The usual rejection chorus rang out, but overall, the effort has fallen flat. It’s same old, same old, Trump wants to be idolized, the GOP is supporting it, but it does nothing for anyone but Trump.

Operation Epic LOOK — SQUIRREL! is in danger of becoming Operation Epic Dead Squirrel.

Today’s music in my morning mental music stream riffs off that trend. “Face to the Floor” by Chevelle contain these lines:

Well, caused by their own
And by default
Time to vamanos

Well course now the cracks
Should we intervene?

It brings a chortle out. The 2011 song is probably too alt metal for many but its heavy sound fits my morning mood.

May this Wednesday see you through to a brighter future.

Cheers

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This Old Thing

My wife carries a small Casio calculator in her purse.

Solar-powered, made of black and gold plastic and black vinyl, the calculator folds. When it’s folded, it’s about the size of a credit card and is as thick as two stacked cards. We bought it for a few hundred yen when we lived in Japan on Okinawa between 1981 and 1985.

Actual size.

We used it last night to balance the checkbook. As we finished, we talked to each other about how amazing it was that the little inexpensive still worked. Back then, the yen to dollar ratio was about 234 to 1.

Over forty years later, it’s a little worn but works perfectly. As I reflected on that, I wondered how many other things I’d ever owned that I could say the same about.

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Another White House Dream

This is my sixth recorded white house dream as far as I can tell. Again I’m not talking about the president’s abode.

Middle-aged, I was at my ‘dream home’, a large luxury apartment in very large building. The walls, floors, furniture were all white. It was a very serene, relaxed place. Many windows and sliding doors, several levels, great views of a busy metropolis.

Friends were waiting for me to go out. I was rushing around to get ready. But I was also concerned about calling the plumber; I had to find my phone and call the plumber.

Hurrying around my place, I also seemed to be familiarizing myself with it, even though, in a contrary way, I already knew it. I had my own suite, separate from my wife’s suite, and they were on different levels. My suite featured a large bathroom and sliders to a balcony. Steps from it led to down the building’s common plaza with tables and benches.

While I was dashing, around, one of my friends, H.E., kept texting and calling me, telling me, “Come on.” I kept telling him to just hang on.

Going through one door, I discovered a small room that I hadn’t known about before. It had a sprawling white sofa and several chairs. A few relaxing space, I was astounded to find it. I thought, I never knew this was here, and then thought, I came here to rest.

I then found two other things: a door to a room that was a nursery, and steps going down, which had been blocked off.

I knew I was the ‘original’ owner and figured they’d made those changes and wondered about them.

Back in the main living area, still looking for the phone to call the plumber, I encountered H.E.

H.E. was a large, sort of goofy young guy. I knew him in my dream but he wasn’t anyone from my real life.

I asked him, “How’d you get in here?”

Sheepishly, he replied, “I picked the lock.” Then he urged me to, “Come on.”

I told him, “You shouldn’t have done that. Go on out and wait.”

But he was looking out the window. We had a huge, deep blue community blue. An infinity pool, it took up an entire view of one wall of windows.

The pool really impressed him. I explained what it was, and he kept saying, “That’s so huge and beautiful.”

I agreed. It was very striking against the building’s white surfaces.

H.E. then stepped out to see more of the pool, going to our private patio. Other families were going down to the community plaza space and sitting down to enjoy the sunshine.

I told H.E., “Okay, I’m ready to go.”

Dream end.

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Monday’s Theme Music – Waiting

Ashland, Oregon — Monday, April 27, 2026.

Spring continues in Ashland where hefty cumulonimbus clouds are invading the blue sky. 43 F, we’re rich in sunshine at the moment. Rain is expected in the afternoon with a high of 65 F.

It’s a busy morning of waiting. Water showed up on one bathroom floor last week. I did some amateur diagnostics and concluded, 1) blocked sewer line; 2) blew out the toilet wax seal. After researching the DIY, my wife and I reached out to friends for a plumber recommendation.

In parallel, the toilet shutoff valve in the other bathroom began leaking. I turned it off but it kept leaking. I modified an extra kitty litter box to catch the water and empty it. Then water showed up on that floor.

It’s a single story place with stacked drains, etc. So called the plumber last week. He can’t get to us until today, 11:30. That’s my day.

My texts blew up at 2:50 AM. Mom pulled a 180 on us. Had been campaigning to leave assisted living. My sister approached her about staying there, selling the house, etc. Wrote to us, “Mom seems agreeable to selling her house and staying there.”

On the other hand, the staff wanted to take Mom to the hospital because Mom was leaning to the left and her eyes looked bad. Mom said no.

Sis said she would go over and check out the situation today. She is also finally focused on getting a power of attorney and taking Mom to the post office to change her address.

Waiting for updates to see how this all went. I’m not sure why my sister felt a need to send it so early in the AM. It was 5:30 in Pittsburgh…

Trump had three more people killed in the eastern Pacific and Carribbean. Some news articles give Trump cover by saying the deceased were accused of being drug runners or narco-terrorists.

Sorry, but they accused. They weren’t seen in court. There was no jury, just the U.S. military again killing civilians.

That brings the number killed to at least 186 for the Bible-thumping regime.

We’re still waiting on the full Epstein files, and we’re waiting to see what will happen next in Operation Epic LOOK — SQUIRREL! We’re also waiting to see what will happen next in Trump’s Iran War, now beginning its ninth week.

I’m also waiting to see how much gas prices will increase in the U.S. this week.

Your Trump quote of the day:

Today’s song is “Waiting” by Green Day. The tune is all about the frustration of waiting for changes and differences — “Wake up!” Billy Joe sings. No wonder The Neurons pulled it into my morning mental music stream.

Hope your day has less waiting than mine and that you end up looking back on it and say, “That was a pretty good day.”

Cheers

2

Sunday’s Theme Music — Memories

Ashland, Oregon — Sunday, April 26, 2026.

Hope your April is going well. We’re saying good-bye to it this week.

It’s a cloudy spring day here. 46 F, our afternoon forecast includes rain and a high of 62. It’s a pretty tableau outside, with shafts of sunlight highlighting green leaves and far off trees rising on the southern mountains.

Operation Epic LOOK — SQUIRREL! opened another line of distraction last night. Shots were reported at the White House Correspondents Dinner. Trump and his staff were hustled away. No one was hurt. Headlines were captured, though.

It seems so obviously planned or a deliberate lapse in security. First, Trump never goes to the dinner but decides to go this year. Second, the reactions afterward by Vance, Trump, etc., seemed false.

Bottom line: Trump really thinks we’re idiots.

The allegedly staged attempt is understandable, though. Trump is desperate. His approval ratings are falling, his war is going bad, prices are rising and everyone is reminding everyone else he said he’d lower prices day one. He said he’d end the Ukraine War before he took office but didn’t. He said, no new wars, and here we are, in another war.

We won’t rehash the Epstein files. He wants them buried. Forgotten. That’s not happening.

After the attempt, Trump then called for Americans to come together and resolve our differences peacefully.

Trump quotes of the day:

Trump has a history of using divisive rhetoric. Now he calls for unity.

I wonder how long it will be after this speech before he calls a political opponent, journalist, Democrat, or woman, a dog or scum?

All this focused The Neurons on Trump’s warped memories and views. “Time Warp” from “The Rocky Horror Picture Show” entered the morning mental music stream. I found a Tenacious D cover of it that I enjoyed. Hope you do, too.

Let’s all have a Sunday of peace and unity, along with a little grace, and treat each other like humans.

Cheers

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