Gary BUTTERWORTH Online

STRATFORD, NJ, USA

I haven’t posted much recently, mostly because I haven’t had much to talk about.  But today marks 20 months since I moved in with my grandmom, so I’ll do my usual little monthly update about her life and mine.

Nana

My grandmom, quite frankly, is not doing very well.  Although the back pain that I mentioned in my last monthly update seems to have vanished, she still isn’t eating.  She is down to 95 pounds–nearly 50 pounds less than she was when I moved in in November 2006.

She is still getting weaker.  She now can’t get up out of her chair or out of her bed without considerable help.  About 90% of the time, she cannot stand up without someone standing behind her and balancing her, and about 50% of the time that person also has to support most of her body weight by holding her under her arms.

Even with someone always right by her side, she has still managed to fall twice in the past month.  Once, when I was supporting her with both hands, I took one hand off to flip on a light switch.  She slid right out of the other hand before I could catch her.  And just an hour or so ago, while I was waiting her her outside of the bathroom (I normally turn my back to her and she tells me when she is finished on the toilet), she somehow managed to launch herself head-first into the bathtub. 

She has had maybe a dozen falls in the 20 months that I have been here, but only three of those have occurred while she was being closely supervised.  Two of those three have come in the past month.
(The rest have occurred either in the middle of the night while I was asleep, or when I stepped outside for a few minutes).

So, she now needs constant, close supervision.  Even holding her with one hand and keeping one eye on her isn’t close enough sometimes.

Recently, she has taken to asking me, “When is Gary going to be here?”
When I ask her who I am, she knows that I’m Gary, but she just can’t put two and two together; she doesn’t realize that if I’m Gary, and I’m here, then Gary is here.

Overall, though, her demeanor hasn’t changed all that much, and if you just stopped by for a few minutes, you’d probably be pleasantly surprised.  To an outsider, she probably wouldn’t seem quite as bad as this post makes her sound.

In fact, her brother visited this week.  On average, he visits one or two times a year.  He was here this past Thanksgiving and the Christmas prior to that.  He can clearly see that she is not well, but I’d imagine that he probably hasn’t noticed too many changes between this visit and his previous two.

My grandmom and her brother.

Me

Me?  I’m doing pretty well.  Aside from the fact that I think I’m fighting a summertime cold.

I’ve had some good news recently.  My job just asked me to work from home half a day a week in addition to my two days in DC.  Also, I will most likely be going to Chicago to watch a baseball game next week, and maybe even to Toronto next month if this cricket tournament actually happens.

Last week, my second cousin, Kara, got married, and I went with my mom.

It was a beautiful wedding.
Because I knew hardly anyone there, I was worried that I wouldn’t enjoy myself.  But I ended up having a very nice time anyway. 

It was nice to see the bride again, as well as several of my relatives.  It had been years.  Maybe a decade.
My immediate family is very small, so even my closest relatives are fairly distant (great aunts, second cousins, etc), but it still was good to see them again.  I kind of wish I knew them better and saw them more.  It’s strange when I stop and realize that I actually have family members besides my mom, dad, and grandmom.

On the drive from the ceremony to the reception, we passed this sign:

I thought it was hilarious.

Also, since we’re on the topic of random pictures, I spotted these two birds today just a couple of blocks from my house.  We rarely see birds like this around here.

Any idea what they might be?