GOOD THERAPY SESSION and COLORED PENCIL REVIEW

MADISON, AL. 

Today was a good mental therapy session. After a bit of help getting my understanding of the Sudoku rules straightened out I whipped right on through two sets of that game in decent time.  It was a lot less difficult when the real rules were known. So I labed it s good day because it is now a fun game to me.

I finished the valuation of the four colored pencil sets I have been messing with.  After careful analysis of the similar sets of colored pencils I came to the conclusion that any of the sets exceeded my abilities.  The sets had considerably different price tags.  My coloring with each of them over the course of several colorings led me to believe that any of the sets would be just fine for most non-professional art efforts. One of the sets was a watercolor pencil set that did very well as dry or wet coloring.  This does not mean they were identical in performance.  As usual each had a quirk or two to learn but they all did just fine for me. The water color pencils and one set of colored pencils were the Kalour brand. another set of colored pencils was Kird-Barken brand and the  last set and considerably more expensive brand was Prismacolor. I was unable to tell any of the coloring ability between them for an amateur like me.

I very much liked the way each brand handled even though each brand had style of use to be learned . Like proper pressure on the point of the lead etc.  Purchases were all made through Amazon.

I hope that helps some of you with any art efforts you may be doing.

We have a major freeze scheduled starting Friday and lasting a few days so I likely be staying inside until that weather event is over. 

Have fun indoors. 

EASY DAY OF ART EFFORT

MADISON, Al.

Almost the whole day was spent indoors working on art things of one sort or the other. The weather is looking like a week of bitter cold and wetness is in our immediate future. So I will be staying inside a lot for sure.  As I type this we have one day next week where we will not get up to above freezing for about two and a half days. I plan on staying out of that sort of weather. Every one be careful in this messy weather. OFM

EVEN LESS THAN YESTERDAY

 MADISON, AL.

Even less happened today than yesterday. I got a brain recovery session in at therapy that went very well for a change. This therapy just slows down my brain failure rate not cure anything. The best I can tell continuing the therapy often could add me another three or four years to live and still be able to function decently. It is worth the bother since it is usually just playing fun brain games anyway.  Chess. Sudoku or things like that. That is about all the excitement for the day. I hope you folks had some fun too.  Good Night.

NOT MUCH

Madison, Al.

Mostly a piddle around day.  Did my homework for the weekend for my brain repair class. Then it was piddle here and there all day  while waiting for an Amazon package that finally got here about 7pm. At least the whole order made it in decent shape.

I did manage to color a nice 5 x 7 size picture of a lady drawing while sitting on a log outside that came out nice. But this brings us to the end of a decent day and the start of a good nights sleep. So Good night Folks.

NEW ADULT COLORING BOOKS

 Today was the start of a four days of Amazon stuff arriving. For the next four days I have things arriving from Amazon that are little things that make life nicer. Not being able to drive safely makes getting a quick trip to Walmart or anywhere impossible. s Amazon takes the place of running to a local store for anything.  Today two new adult coloring books came in that are going to keep me busy for a few months. Both are full of landscapes of different sorts but are much more detailed than one for kids to color. I will have things to color for a couple of months now.

Today I have been doing my Dementia home work by trying to work out Sadako  puzzles. Yet I still have no idea how to manage them in any manner. But working on them is supposed to noticeably improve my brain. 

That is it for the big excitement of the day so get busy and have some fun for me. Goodnight.

GOOD PLAYING

Madison, Al.

Here it is 0857 Friday night and finally I have something good to write about. Tonight was my grandson's honor band performance.  He plays trombone in the band. They gave their final performance tonight to a large crowd and it was excellent music for all the total performance. I was excessively proud of their performance. That tops out the day very well. YAHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO. 

EXAMPLES OF BRAIN REPAIR GAMES

 MADISON, ALABAMA

Ok folks, as requested, here is the  brain games I played in therapy today. The first one was an eight step word game where you started with one word and followed a clue about changing a letter in the word to form a new word. Then repeated that several times until you got to the end of the clues  with a final new word. It was easy for me to do but my medical lead says that many folks have trouble with it.

Onn to the second game for the day. It was a sudoku puzzle.  I have never enjoyed them and never really got one figured out in my life. Today was as usual 20 minutes of work with no success. And the session was over.  I got to take the sudoku puzzle back to my room to work on it this weekend. Little chance I will figure it out but I will give it a shot. It is the attempting to do it that causes someone to build brain abilities lost due to the dementia  disease whether they win or lose the game. So I will give it a good try this weekend. Another fun  game is s box of different colored thin wood shapes like circles, triangles and other weird shapes are put on a table in front of me.   Then a colored picture of the shapes making a scene like a house and garage is put on the table and I get to arrange the shapes to be just like the scene of the house and garage. Sometimes the pieces are all the same color or other times they are different colors. but you still match a scene  given to you.  There are several more "do it" types of stuff that challenge your ability to follow instructions carefully. 

I do have to say that the different games can be a real challenge on my rough days and some times on a good day it is fun and easy. Each session is supposed to be about 45 minutes of patient working time.

I hope that gives you an idea of the kind of games we play in the brain rebuilding part of the treatments.

Now it is time to get busy having fun. Thank you for reading my babbling.

WHAT NEXT.

 Madison, Alabama

Finished a bit of mental therapy this afternoon and learned what my level of mental ability is. I have recovered to the likely highest level of brain ability I will get and from here on will need to keep on with the brain exercises to minimize the brain deterioration for the rest of my life. Notice I said minimize brain decline.  The decline will continue but we can slow it down but not stop it much less get better. Well my reading about dementia had me prepared for this day as much as possible.  My brain function is definitely less than it was two years ago. So now all the brain work will only be for helping slow down the continuing deterioration. I knew this point was coming up soon and here it is.  So folks now I have a valid reason to sound like a real dummy now. So watch out this ride could get a lot wilder now. Go have fun, life is very short. OFM

QUESTIONS FINISHED

 MADISON ALABAMA

I looked up on the internet and got good news about the weather around here. The normal average date that the weather starts warming up in this area is February 1. I will be ready for it to get on moving upward myself. I used to like a hard freeze or two to knock down the mosquito population down on the Texas coast marshes. But WAY up north like Madison is, mosquitoes are not much of a trouble usually. So let us just get right on into warm weather again.

As far as I can recall I have answered all the questions on my living situation. If someone wants more information just drop the question on me in the blog and I will give you my best guess to the truth as I see it.

That is about all the excitement for today. The latest excitement is Amazon finally delivered the last dribble of stuff ordered before Christmas. It was just ordinary stuff for living and not time critical but I still like to be clear of waiting for stuff later than it was supposed to be here.   Have fun folks.

Cindy question answered

 Madison Alabama

Cindy you asked about activities  for inmates to participate in.  I do not know how many a month we average so I went to the Big Room as they call it where they post a huge monthly calendar of things to do if you want to participate.  For January there is only 80 events this month. Most months have a few more. Out of that 80 events 4 are former professional entertainers that are paid to preform here. They put on an hour show in the afternoon after lunch normally. Yes they are all very good and fun to attend, Three times a week there is a free bingo game hour with winners getting small packages of candy. Margaret sees to it the game is fun. The physical and mental therapy clinic puts on special free events about 3 -5 times a week that are well attended. In between that many church groups stop by to sing and make a pitch to come to their church.  Several other activity groups happen.  I attempted to start a group for learning simple art drawing and coloring. It failed  as the folks just wanted to do coloring as they visit with each other. Several other groups meet weekly or monthly as they choose .  Generally speaking , Anybody can get an approved event going if they want to. All of this is in addition to things like Christmas, Halloween etc parties. The business manager is frequently asking folks what they want to have happening. She helped me get the first coloring teaching class to happen.  On top of all this there is outdoor events when winter is not in charge of the weather. So yep a few things happen once in a while.

Barb in Florida Question

 Madison, Alabama

OK Barb here is my least stupid answer to the difference in how my type of migraine and a dementia start up behave.

The migraine, mine are known as classic migraine. I  start not feeling fine about a minute before I start going blind. Then one or both eyes are blind for a few minutes and then the screaming migraine head ache starts.

For the dementia I am feeling fine and suddenly my balance is bad, knowing where or what is gong on around me may cease to happen.  Then in a few minutes later I figure out I feel bad and feel very run down and and somewhat disoriented for 15  to thirty minutes. After that I can function at a low low level of ability for an hour or so. Then my ability to talk and make sense slowly comes back over the next half hour or so. Full recovery takes a few hours usually so far and then I am weak for a day or so. 

I will tell more about other parts of Dementia tomorrow.

Now for today. I was able to start and complete two new colorings today and they were fun. I am hoping my son can get over here to get me able to put pictures into the blog again pretty soon.

The colorings today came out pretty well and were lots of fun to work out and do. They took about four hours each. When I do new colorings, they get hung on the outside of my room door for a while to let folks that are interested to see them.

That is it for tonight. I will attempt to answer more questions tomorrow after I figure out the answers. Good night everyone,

A THOUGHT

 MADISON, ALA.

So far this sudden move from RV traveler to assisted living has been relatively easy. A big help was my reason for doing it was absolute. There is no way I could stay on the road safely with the Dementia actively destroying my brain. I was already coming back here to get off the road long enough to find out what was wrong and get it fixed. Well the finding out was the easy part. The MRI and EEG both conclusively showed the doctor that it was stage two Dementia. When I saw the " x-rays it was obvious that my brain was in trouble. The doctor carefully explained what it all meant.  For practical aspects it meant that I would not ever be safe to operate a vehicle on the road again. What I have noticed is my reaction times have slowed down tremendously. So even though I feel I could drive a vehicle safely on an empty street I do not figure out what is developing ahead of me until too late. The other part is memory would be getting very iffy and short lived. That IS happening.

The result is  I chose to not even try to drive before I hurt someone by being hard headed. Here we are six months later and it was the proper decision. Living here in the assisted living part of this facility is very safe and nice. When I do have a session of head not working right, I just go back to my room and color or something else and NOBODY gets hurt. Driving when an attack of dementia hits shuts me down mentally about 75% and I am not safe driving on the road.

So I am in a good facility where I get three decent meals a day and a nice snack spot is kept ready for me to grab a decadent snack day or night. There is competent medical help on call in the building 24/7 for when real trouble hits. I am free to come and go any time I choose. But I am learning to feel (fore see) trouble starting and when that immediate medical help is needed it will come running ready to take care of me. That is my current living status as best as I know. We will move to the next step of this lifestyle in the next report.  Have great day folks, I am.

FINALLY OVER

MADISON, AL.

Yahooooo the last Christmas Amazon shipping stuff is completed now. All purchases and packages have been received and marked off the worry list. Now I get to kick back a bit and relax. The OFM had several shipments "get lost" this year and cause some worry and bother. To my amazement EVERY ONE OF THEM eventually was delivered in good condition and no more than two days later than promised. So I call it a good delivery season.

I bought myself a CHEAP set of water color pencils to try out from Kalour on Amazon. I have been wanting to try a style of water color art again now that I have more education about the subject. We will see how that works out. Doing a bit of simple personal art is on the new year agenda since I can no longer safely drive. I think I may have some free time again for fun and games.  This assisted living is a far cry from good boondocking RV travels but I am making it a  fairly nice living style anyway. Is anybody interested in hearing my thoughts about this life style for decrepit old fat men?????? 

As far as my health is concerned the dementia I have is a definite trouble to handle but there is lots of good literature out there on how to make my efforts easier and decent most of the time.

In the meantime I hope everyone has a great NEW YEAR.

NOT MUCH HAPPENED

 MADISON, AL.

A nice quiet day all day with lots of coloring and studying and visiting with a friend here at the OFH (old folks home). Maybe tomorrow will be a rousing success. Have fun, Folks.

ONCE IN A WHILE

 MADISON, ALA.

Now and then things dot not go just right at this place I live. But the caretakers respond very quickly to handle the situation. One such event happened tonight. A resident has been having some difficulty with balance, He normally uses a motorized wheel chair to get around our facility pretty well. Tonight just before I got to the dining room he had a fall in his room and an ambulance was called to get him to an emergency room for checking  him out for injuries. In a very few minutes he was strapped into a wheeled device to safely get him on  to the ambulance. And away he went. We will likely get the story tomorrow during breakfast. I am very well pleased how very well these folks here get trouble handled.

Supper was good and the OFM is having trouble because his eyelids have gotten so fat on the food served here that they keep closing and it is not even 0800 yet. But the day was nice and the OFM managed to lightly injure his right Achilles tendon walking today.  Tomorrow he has to be careful and get that healed.

And that is it for today's exciting events. Good Night Everyone.

COLORING RESEARCH

 Madison, Al.

A coloring I am starting includes a large crack in the ground that happens in a few places on the earth. The OFM had no idea about how the cracks look, size of them and especially what colors are in them. It all led to a couple of hours of great education for the OFM. There are lots of places where all sizes of earth cracks can be visited and in many case folks can hike around down inside the crack. It was an extremely interesting couple of hours reading. Worst of all I have little chance of getting to go see and experience one. So folks take it from me it is great interesting reading to do a  internet search on "cracks in the earth" and read all about something that I should have done while on the road but never thought about it.  At least now I know what color to make the crack and have a little bit of an idea about what I will be coloring.

It was great learning about earth cracks.  Good night.

FOOT TROUBLE

Bunionette is its name and my right little toe is its game. The OFM finally found out what the trouble is and what to do about it.  The base of my right foot little toe is the location and it hurts frequently.  The internet says that they mostly respond well to bunion pads and spacers of sorts and I just live with the nuisance of it. Surgery is seldom needed but surgery frequently requires three months of recovery and still likely to need extra pads. Well now I know and pads will be ordered tonight most likely. 

The day was marred by some Dementia activity  making it necessary to be gentle and careful with my body all day. With that mental activity I have to be extra careful with balance and also tripping on minor items on the floor. So it has been a take it easy day on body moving around.  The therapy session had a complete failure by the OFM on the task given BUT the instructor said that her records showed I took the same logic test earlier in my stay and did much worse.  At least this time I was able to work within the rules and accomplish a good chunk of the task.  So that shows some significant improvement in my ability to do the task required. Maybe we can call it progress.

That is about all the excitement for today around here.

Just A Nice Day

 Madison, Al.

 It was another nice cool day here and a few of us got to sit out in the sunshine with our light jackets on telling tales of questionable truth. We never let facts get in the way of a great story.

We have a few days of decent but cold weather ahead and then another cold front moves through to scramble the weather up for a couple of days. But we are only a few weeks from spring starting to explode on us. Yep the OFM is ready already for spring.

It was a nice day of piddling around on things of mild interest to myself. But tomorrow I need to get more industrious.   Everyone get out and try to have tooooo much fun.  

VERIFIED MY MEDICINES

Madison, Alabama

This facility I am in controls my medicine I get daily. Today I verified that all the medicine I get, 7 tablets per day, were the correct medicines. I do not have info on the quantity of the medicines available to verify but at least the names of the 7 pills each day have been verified.  I get a warm fuzzy over it. 

A new coloring has been started and it may take a while to get done with all the little details in it that have to carefully be handled. I think I can make it a nice coloring but I will need to be very actively careful to get things right.

And the weather cleared up enough that blog reader Betty R and I got to sit out on the patio after lunch and tell all sorts of "interesting stories". We have a grand time visiting out there on occasion.

And that is all the excitement we had for the day. Get out and have fun folks.  GOODNIGHT.

NOT MUCH

 Madison, Ala.

Not much excitement here in the cold wet area. Low forties and drizzle for the weather report. OFM had a nice sit on the patio with my friend Betty and we told stories that might even be true. It was a nice time but a light drizzle sent us inside after a short while. 

During my Dementia treatments this afternoon, just a little ways down the hall was a nice fellow with his guitar playing and singing doing a nice job of entertaining the residents for about an hour. We could hear the show just fine from the therapy room ( torture chamber as we patients call it) . I told the entertainer we enjoyed his performance even though we could not attend in person. He thanked me for letting him know about us down there.

Nothing special happened except coloring some more on the latest effort.  And that  brings us to right now and wishing everyone a great day tomorrow.

GRAND KIDS

 MADISON, ALA.

A neighbor and I were talking tonight when the subject of the OFM's grand kids came up. She wanted to know how old they are. I did not really know so I looked it up. Granddaughter is 9 and grandson is 14. Wow they sure age fast it seems to me. But then again my son is in his mid forties! Wow I must be getting old finally.

Disease wise I had a good day with minor difficulties that are normal for a fellow right at eighty years old (good grief that sounds ancient).

But mostly it was a day of doing little chores here and there in the quarters I have here. I measured this place yesterday and it is slightly over 380 square feet total. That is huge to me since the Castle I lived in for the last 17 years was about 145 SF.  Yep the OFM can live very well in small  areas and love it

Tonight the supper meal was pretty good with BBQ pork ribs,  broccoli with a great white sauce and  black eyed beans . Dessert (which I declined) was a slice of pecan pie. Sweet tea with no ice was my drink. Yep sometimes we eat very well here.

I guess that is about all the excitement this OFM can handle so I will shut down for the night. See ya'll tomorrow.