HUMAN POWER SHORTAGE

 Madison, Alabama

Caretakers are in extremely short supply in this area. Tonight we are down to one on duty when three are the design number to be here. This shortage has been going on for a few months. They had a job fair Friday and only five folks stopped in to check out going to work. Every now and then they hire a person but they usually do not make a month before they disappear.   The care takers that have been here for the year I have been here say the new folks just do not seem to want to have to do anything for their money.  If they last two weeks it is a miracle. Anyway things are decent even with the shortage of workers to take care of things. This is certainly a lot different than what I had hoped what retirement would be like.  Have fun. OFM

SAME OLD SAME OLD

MADISON, ALABAMA.

YEP it is Thursday evening and not a critter is stirring.  But the OFM is still looking for something to put into the blog that is not so boring as lately.  It has been calm around here and nearly boring. But at least everyone seems to be healthy and doing well.  

We have a new coloring fellow in the building.  His grand kid gave him some colors and a book while he was on vacation recently. He is finding out how much fun it can be. We had a nice show and talk after supper tonight. He might get the itch to do more.

Other than that things are just going boringly smooth.  Have fun. The OFM.

NOTHING MUCH

 MADISON, AL.

Really close to nuttin going on around here dees days.

Sitting on the back patio after meals seems to be the exciting portion of the day. Maybe that means I need to stir up some trouble eh. 

Any way have fun and smile as the sun keeps on shining. OFM

SURPRISE SHIPMENT

 MADISON, ALABAMA

SURPRISE MAIL

Yesterday I got a big surprise when two coloring books I did not recall ordering came in. Upon checking more carefully it showed that yep the OFM forgot what he had done. So now I have 110 new flower pictures to color and/or mess up.  Of course I had to piddle with one of them and sure enough it was fun as usual. Part of the fun is that the OFM does not bother with what are the normal and proper colors to use. What does he want them to look like is much more fun. 

Have fun. You can guess what I will be doing. OFM

COLOR PENCIL TEST

 MADISON AL.

How about a colored pencil comparison test. Since OFM does a lot of color pencil coloring for the fun of it, how about a test of good stuff vs cheap stuff. The OFM has been playing with colored pencils for a couple of decades now and is still not an artist but he does do a lot of coloring book coloring for several years now.

In the past I had made a choice to use Prismacolor coloring pencils for my coloring book fun. They are a professional grade and very first cla$$. I have had wonderful times with them and had no performance complaints at all. Keep in mind I am a mildly accomplished knuckle head coloring nut. Prismacolor is definitely an excellent performer for coloring but expensive.

A couple of years ago cheap coloring pencils of decent quality come onto the market from overseas manufacturing facilities.  Several brands are on the market.  I piddled around for about four years with several of them and at first they were kid level junk art wise. But about a year ago some major improvements came onto the market by those folks. So today I ran some testing efforts of my Prismacolor pencils against the Kalour brand of cheap pencils.

Prices are a lot different between the two brands. Prismacolor I normally buy and use is about $38  for a 36 pencil pack.  The cheaper Kalour brand is about $12  for a 72 pencil pack. That is a bunch in my wallet.

Quality of Prismacolor is extremely high in every respect.  Kalour is too new for me to find out a lot of things about them to report like how long they do not fade and things like that.

What I do know is the color of either is very good but how long til Kalour fades is not known.  The lay down of both is very good.  The burnishing of both is really good. The color trueness from one box to the next is very good.  The laydown of color and lead strength of both is very good.

Since all of my coloring is just for fun and gets thrown away a couple of months after completion, the time before fading and things like that are not known. I have thrown away over 200 colorings this year alone so I do not know about color fading time at all. But for my style the cheaper Kalour brand is making a serious drop on cost happen in my hobby with no drop in color quality or workability.  I hope this info is helpful.

GETTING OLD

 MADISON, AL.

Today several small seeming items showed me that I am no longer getting old. I am full force there. In two more months I will be 80 years old and today my body was making certain I knew it. But on the other hand the weather was nice and I did my normal fast walking once a day walk three times.  It amazed me I did it three times in spite of being a little wobbly for a bit. Those three times were spaced out over the day but still they got done in good form. The walk is thirty minutes of aerobic walking speed around our neighborhood.

Later in the day I did my usual stretch band work outs as long as my joints could stand it. About 20 minutes I think. So that worked out pretty well. 

Now if I can keep up this exercise pace .might get some competition (yeh right) ability. 

Things are going pretty well in the AS building. We had a great catfish, hush puppies, cole slaw, baked potato with iced tea lunch today. Boy I don't want to eat that heavy too often but is was sure good this time.

Well that is about it for tonight, Get out and have some fun, I plan too. OFM.

NEW POST ATTEMPT

 MADISON. AL.

A  lot of computer  network trouble tonight is happening. We did get a  head person appointed to run things here.  The best news is that she is the former head of nursing and always seems to have her head working very well when she made decisions in the past since I have been here.  I hope the computer systems start to function better soon. Good night.

CHANGES COMING

 MADISON, AL.

late nite report.

We got notice late today that the new management company has taken over and several things will be changing.  It is been coming for a long while it seems to the OFM team.  There are several changes announced already that will be good to have happen.  The head lady is being replaced as well as the maintenance fellow. Some other things are in the gossip pipe but I have not verified them yet. This has been a long time coming and is really needed. I hope this new company gets it right for all our folks needs.

NEW FOLKS ARRIVING

 MADISON AL.

Today  and the last two days have been big moving days for folks leaving this facility and new folks moving into the empty rooms. Three new folks have moved it in the last week and one is moving to a facility for folks that need extra care that that place can provide. A couple of the rooms here have been being renovated with new flooring and a few other needed repairs from hanging pictures and general living. So things are happening all around me these days, but the nights are always quiet.  With summer being here and kids out of school more grand kids are showing up to visit the old folks around here also. Even though not any thing especially exciting is happening it is a bit of activity happening fairly frequently which is nice. So everyone sits back and lets the world flow on past. Have fun readers, we sure are trying to. 

NASTY STORM HITS

 Madison, Al.

The news spread like wildfire through the facility.   A big storm was headed our way and we better batten the hatches down. So the OFM went to his room to check the weather. Sure enough in about 30 minutes we were supposed to get hit with an ugly front of high winds, excessive rain etc.  So the OFM and a few folks made sure everything in our treasure chest was properly secured. Then the OFM checked the weather himself and all that showed up was the nastiest  weather front I have seen in years. We had about ten minutes I figured and got busy getting my stuff away from the windows of my room and preparing for a leak to happen and need handling. It was looking real bad and my room windows faced directly into it.

Sure enough in a few more minutes a rain squall to challenge the worst rain storms I can recall started .  Lo and behold it did rain and blow like a mean hurricane event but it lasted about ten minutes is all.  Then it cleared out well and was history. I was very happy about that.

So there you have all the big excitement for the last few days came and went in about fifteen minutes. Since then it has been nice but cloudy.   Yep a nice ordinary day except for the little short storm.

Have fun and sweet dreams. 

PLAIN LIVING

 MADISON, ALABAMA

GOOD MORNING.   It has been a few days since the last posting so here goes a post about nothing again. Everything is going fine. By the same token nothing is happening but regular sleeping and decent meals. The biggest thing I can think of  is that switching to synthetic sweeteners from regular sugar in my excessively sweet tea has let me sleep all night without waking every hour or so all night long.  Since the day after the switch I have slept the whole night all but one time and that one was a bathroom trip necessity from too much water sipping as I piddled around in my room that evening.  So we might say I have made progress. Anyway I hope everyone is safe and well while trying to have toooooooooooooooo much fun.

DOCTOR REPORT

 MADISON ALA.

We got to the doctor today right on time and only had about four minutes to wait before we were called in. The doctor was interested in several things he asked about and then we had some serious discussion. The OFM is doing very well and the dementia is progressing right on schedule.  The trip in the ambulance a few weeks ago was to be expected now and then with this mess. It is something that happens with this disease and went very well. The tests that the hospital did were viewed and showed that things were normal for this stage of my disease. So it means that yep I got that junk dementia and it is doing well. Dementia cannot be stopped but it can be slowed down with some treatments in the future.  So that is the whole story for this visit. Several details were discussed in more detail but the final analysis is I am doing well with this disease and the deterioration is right on schedule so relax and enjoy the ride.

That is 

LOTS OF RAIN

Madison, Al.

Here I am with very little to say again so here we go. We have been getting lots of daily rain for a couple of weeks now and it is supposed to continue for several more days.  At least we are not  showing any signs of flooding around here.  But it is still a mess when you go outside to the dumpster or things like that. Keep dry folks. The next big excitement is tomorrow is when I get to see the brain doctor again after the set of tests he wanted done to help him decide what we need to do.

TORNADO??????

 MADISON, ALA.

So the OFM was easing along coloring at his desk in his room and decided to take a break. I eased over to my door and stepped into the hall just as a caretaker was approaching it to alert me.  It seems I was the first person she got to tell me to stay in the hallway alcove where my doorway was located. There is a tornado alert and they were rounding up everyone to come to the small alcove where my door opened. Soon  there was a gathering of folks numbering about thirty sitting and standing around trying to figure out  what was really going on. As usual everyone had a different idea of what should be done.  In the meantime I considered the weather I had just seen outside and relaxed. The conversations were very varied during the half hour we piddled at my doorway.  

As soon as they released up to return to our normal activities I got to get my phone and see what t the alert really said. As usual it did not say a tornado was anywhere around  The alert said there was a large thunderstorm many miles south of us that had the potential to produce a tornado and to be careful to monitor it so if it did you could go to safety.  So what we had was a nice 45 minute gossip session at my door.  I do have to remind myself that the caretakers have several folks here that have to have a LOT of help if a real emergency came along. So they did what they thought was the safest thing to do with what they had for info at that moment. I Must compliment them on doing a first class reaction to the information considering their duties for those less able to get around than the OFM can.  

The rest of the went back to gossip and piddle around for most of them. For the OFM he just went back to coloring another fantastic picture for the garbage can to enjoy. I hope everyone has a great night and better tomorrow.

COUPLE OF ANSWERS

Madison,  Ala.

How about a couple of answers to questions not put into the blog before?

Am I using a wheel chair yet at age 79.6.  Nope not even close. I do not run anymore but every day I put in 30 minutes of aerobic walking inside and / or outside or both. That gets me the 30 minutes of needed heart exercise needed daily. It also lets me keep the joints flexible so I have only small pain in all the joints mistreated while participating in jungle warfare for 16 months in a far away country in 69 / 70.

I do get twice a day a handful of preventive pills  like  vitamins and a couple other pills  to assist in preventing old man troubles.  So except for the Dementia I am in fair shape physically. However my speed of reflexes keeps me from driving for nearly a year now. That is my worst negative problem.  I still think well when a dementia episode is not in progress but the rest of the time I function pretty well except for lots of memory loss of my earlier years. 

The assisted living includes house cleaning, laundry and meals so that leaves me lots of free time to piddle around.  If you have other relevant questions I would be happy to give my input on questions about this lifestyle. In the meantime get busy trying to have too much fun. OFM

THIS LIFESTYLE

 MADISON, AL.

This assisted living life style is pretty boring in general. The OFM is the youngest resident at 79.6 years old.  The oldest is 99 years old with most in their 80s.  They are the most sedentary bunch of folks I know of.  The operators of the place try like crazy to get them to move their bodies but only the OFM bothers to try to keep his body functional. The rest of the folks seem to specialize in griping about every thing. So the frequent classes for painting or coloring or anything else are not normally attended or participated in.

Anyway the health care is decent and the food acceptable 98% of the time. So this seems to be a rather decent place for a Dementia patient person to enjoy his last years. But it is a far cry from hiking kayaking and roaming the country in my RV.

OFM

Very Little Done

Madison, Ala.

Most of the day was spent coloring on two different pictures. Both of them turned out well. The first one took three days to color and the second one only took about 6 hours to complete. It also came out well.

The rest of the day was used up by eating meals that ran 20 minutes late getting to the table.  The cooks here were not having a great day but we did get fed.  And that is about all of the excitement for our building.  Have fun, OFM,

NICE DAY

 MADISON AL.

 Nice weather made the day great for outside sitting and visiting.  So naturally a lot of us assisted living types got outside and did some serious sitting and flapping our jaws. Mostly it was a nice time.  the one thing the OFM did was test a new set of colored pencils to compare to my Prismacolor Premier colored pencils that have held the number one spot in my coloring for years. The Arteza pencils were very nice and performed well.  However they did not really have the smooth feel of my old time favorites. So at least the OFM knows he still is using the best for his efforts.

Other than that nothing special happened except I did keep on breathing and pumping blood. Everyone have some fun. Goodnight,

WHOLE LOT OF NOTHING

 Madison, Al.

The day went along slowly. The warm temp outside was interrupted frequently by a random cold stiff breeze. That was not a nice combination. Most of the day was spent just coloring scenes in coloring books. Practice sure helps the pictures turn out a lot nicer. Sorry nothing special at all today on even on the horizon.  Have a great day. OFM. 

CAFFINE ADICTION

Madison, Al.

This morning already I have had a life changing event and it is not even 0830 yet.  As we were eating breakfast the server mentioned something about my sweet tea consumption.  She and the OFM had had several conversations on diet changes as we age. As a result of the conversation I went back to my room to see what internet sources said about my diet choice on a few things.  As usual the info was not cut and dried but more of a cut back a bit or not style.  BUT what did get me slapped in the face was my caffeine addiction. I had not realized how much I had let caffeine take control of my life AGAIN. But now it will be carefully controlled  AGAIN. This getting old stuff is something else isn't it.  See you later. OFM.