Tag Archives: life

What Went on at the Nursing Home?

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Well, to me it was post-acute rehab care, but there were long-term and memory units, so let’s call it a nursing home. I was there for about a month and a half recovering from complications of my knee replacement.

When I checked in, the first person I met was my roommate, a 90-year-old woman named Norma. I’m not sure what she was in the home for. What I did know was that James Arness was her secret love crush. I know this because she kept Gunsmoke playing on the room’s TV eight or more hours per day. Being the newcomer to the room and being over 20 years younger, I didn’t feel I should offer to arm wrestle the remote away from her.

(I was equipped, however. I had my phone, complete with Nook, Kindle, Facebook, and Pandora, complete with a charging cable and a pair of earbuds. I was set. When Norma left to stay with relatives, I had an essentially single room and complete control of the remote. But I digress.)

For those who didn’t choose to stay in their rooms watching TV, there were lots of activities, starting most days with a coffee hour and Wii bowling. Throughout the week, there were concerts, Bible stories, card games, trivia sessions, karaoke, cooking classes, and movie-and-popcorn days. There was a beauty salon for appointments, and one week, even a prom.

I mostly stuck with my phone and its assorted diversions, as well as non-Gunsmoke TV. (The one time I went to a “Family Feud”-style contest, the talk devolved into politics, and I bowed out. And I never even went to my own prom, so theirs didn’t appeal to me, at least. But I digress again.)

Another diversion for me was the age-old sport of door-staring. The restroom and room doors were made of wood, and I could spend endless time staring at them and identifying shapes I could see. There was one spot that looked like a spy peeking through a crack, or if you looked at it another way, a surly baby. Then there was one area that looked like the Virgin Mary or the Dr. Who that my husband likes (the one with the long scarf), only with a coat hook for a head. (Technically, this activity is known as pareidolia, which is a fun fact to know and tell. If you can pronounce it, that is. But I digress yet again.)

It was also fun to collect names. That is, to see how many different ways the staff referred to you. Most of the time, I was called Miss Janet or Mrs. Coburn (both of which are inaccurate), but I was also called Babe, Hon, Sweetie, and even Girlfriend. The woman in the next room was called Chiquita, which I never was.

(I’ve heard this described as “infantilizing” nursing home residents by using endearments instead of their real names. My mother told me that at one place she stayed, there was a woman who had a Ph.D. When she needed help, she would stand in the doorway and shout “Yoo-hoo.” I don’t know what the staff actually called her, but ever after, I thought of her as Dr. Yoo-hoo. But I digress some more.)

The staff had games of their own. They would hide little cutout figures of ducks or gnomes (or something) around the facility and see who could collect them all first. It was entertaining to see the nurses and aides careening down the corridors, laughing and squealing as they searched for the numbered items.

Another pleasant distraction was the little ice cream cart that the staff took around. I couldn’t have any because of my diet, but Dan was there once when it came around and scored himself a root beer float. Most of the time when Dan visited, we held hands and watched reruns of Star Trek.

To me, that was the most fun in the nursing home.

Finally, I Gave In

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All right. I admit it. At last I’m doing what the cool kids do. I’m playing Wordle daily.

I resisted for as long as I could. I even wrote a blog post about how I was not going to succumb. I found it annoying when every day I saw people posting on Facebook what their scores were. That trend seems to have stopped, or at least pulled back. Now, most people only share their results when they get the word in two or three guesses.

My first brush with Wordle came when I was visiting friends in Michigan. Leslie was playing Wordle while someone else drove. She was having a hard time with one particular word and was down to her last try. I looked over her shoulder at the puzzle and said, “Prism.”

“That could work.”

It did.

“You’re good at this. You should be playing it.”

But I resisted. I’ve long been a fan of crossword puzzles and anacrostics. I’ve also done a lot of sudoku and right now I’m obsessed with jigsaw sudoku. (This is an insidious form of the puzzle in which, instead of neat little square blocks, each area is some other shape. A “U” or a snake or some unidentifiable blob. The rules are the same. Each shape contains nine little squares, which must contain the numbers from one to nine. Each row and column must also contain one through nine. But I digress.) (My husband’s famous quote regarding sudoku is, “I may not be able to spell, but goddamit, I can count to nine!” But I digress some more.)

Then one day, one of my writing buddies, Mary Jo, sang the praises of Wordle. “You should try it,” she said. “It takes less than five minutes a day.” (Jigsaw sudoku takes longer than that.)

So, okay. If Mary Jo recommended it, I decided I would try it. I’ve played it every day since, so it’s all her fault.

I have my routine. My first and second words are always the same. They give me all the vowels (including Y) and at least three of the most common consonants. I’ve solved it in three tries more times than six, but four is my usual. I’ve learned to hate words that have several possible choices for the missing letter, like STEA—it could be STEAM, STEAK, STEAD, or STEAL, and if I run out of guesses, I’m screwed. Then there was the time the word was PENNE. Two double letters. Only one letter was revealed by my first two guesses. But I got it!

When I reached a streak of 30 consecutive completions, I told Mary Jo. She admitted, faux-modestly, that her record was 390 days. (I’m sure it’s even more by now.)

Then I found out her secret: She cheats.

(Okay, technically, I guess you can’t call it cheating. She has Wordle buddies that consult with her daily and give each other hints. (I’m not one of them, [sob!].) She refers to the complete list of words that have been Wordle solutions, so that she won’t get hung up on STEA if STEAM has already been used. I didn’t even know the list existed until recently. But I digress again.)

I won’t say I’m addicted to Wordle, but if I’m up after midnight, I do go directly to the Wordle page on the NYT site and try my brain. I tell my husband my score daily. (I don’t do so well on Spelling Bee. Sometimes I can guess at least one word just by looking at it. Other times, I simply can’t, no matter how long I study it. So I don’t. But I digress some more.)

Anyway, I now expect my friends to laugh and point (insofar as you can point online). Especially Mary Jo.

What YOLO Means

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Much as I hate acronyms, one that has wedged its way into common parlance is YOLO. It stands for You Only Live Once. What it means is open to interpretation – by me at least.

Is YOLO a mindset, a lifestyle, or a philosophy? It’s a slippery concept, one that can mean many things to many people. I can think of at least four different ways it is used, some of which I can see as being good.

The first group of YOLO-ers are those who hear You Only Live Once and take it as a dare. These are the adrenaline junkies. They pursue extreme sports, pushing the boundaries of what is sport and what is a death wish. Base-jumping, for example – parachuting from a high cliff or mesa, or even a building. There is no reserve parachute, probably because there isn’t time to use one before making that hard landing. Some people don’t even bother with the parachute, relying instead on a “wingsuit,” something that makes the jumper look like a flying squirrel. Injury or death is a very real possibility. In fact, it is considered the world’s most dangerous sport.

(People who engage in pursuits such as base-jumping and heli-skiing – jumping from a helicopter to begin a back-country ski run – are a bit different from the people who receive Darwin Awards for accidentally removing themselves from the gene pool by causing their own deaths in spectacularly stupid ways. One, for example, was a man who took literally his martial arts instructor’s statement about being able to fight lions. But I digress.)

I don’t understand these people. They only live once, and maybe not very long at that.

Then there are people who believe that You Only Live Once, so they try to cram as many experiences as possible into that one life. These are the people with dozens of pursuits and hobbies, who try out new ones so quickly that their friends can’t keep up with them all. They may shift from computer games to hot air ballooning to scuba diving to photography to whatever comes next. Or the ones who dabble in poetry, astronomy, musical instruments, martial arts, and horseback riding.

They may not become experts at any of these pursuits, but that’s not the point. The point is to try out a lot of different sorts of activities. They may be adrenaline afficiandos, but stop short of being junkies. Activities that could become extreme like bungee jumping are done with supervision and safety equipment.

I like people like this. They have the best stories and the best conversation. They only live once, but they live it with variety and gusto.

There are also people who believe that You Only Live Once and want to make sure that that one life lasts as long as possible. They eat right and exercise. They believe in moderation. They walk or jog five miles a day. They live by various diet philosophies and take lots of vitamins.

I do admire these people. They have dedication, stamina, and determination that I simply don’t. They do the things a person should do. Many of them even enjoy it, rather than viewing it as self-denial and a chore. They can, of course, be thwarted in their quest for longevity by genetics, accidents not of their own making, the eventual onset of old age (though perhaps later than the rest of us experience it), or diseases like various cancers that have no respect for how healthy you’ve been in the past.

But the kind of YOLO-ers I find most interesting and laudable are those who believe that, because they have only one life to live, want to do as much as they can to affect the lives of others.

Teachers, firefighters, and those in the helping professions. Blood donors, librarians, and philanthropists of every stripe. Parents and grandparents, aunts and uncles, good neighbors. Those who care. Those who listen. Those who contribute. Those who share life, make it better, and keep it going. Even people who sacrifice their lives for the sake of others.

These are the people who really know what it means to only live once, and to make the most of it.

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