Happy Birthday, Tim

We all have picked up a slight cold combined with allergies this week. Some of us took COVID tests, and they were negative. We are about to leave on a grand adventure. I don't want to say where or when we are leaving, but...it involves suitcases so I am excited. I love traveling!

We had a low key birthday for Tim this week. He requested chocolate cake with cream cheese frosting and homemade cheese burgers with all the fixings. He also wanted a board game night. We played his new board game, King of New York. It was a nice and peaceful evening. Such a nice change from the crazy of the first two months of this year. We are so glad Tim pulled through all of the complications his heart went through this winter. He is such a blessing to our family!

Blessings, Dawn

Goodbye, March

 I haven't been around much this month. That is because it has truly been uneventful. Everyone worked and did their normal activities. I usually think March is the most boring and uneventful month of the year. 

Quick catch up ~ 

• Our sweet rat died. Willow was the best rat we ever had, but she also will be our last caged animal. I felt like she needed an hour out and about each day, which took a lot of time when her care began to fall completely on my shoulders. Everyone else became too busy to give her attention. She was very old and died peacefully.
• Tim was released from visiting nurse care and his cardiologist says that he has a clean bill of health. We are very relieved to put that scary medical chapter behind us!
• I am currently working on repairing and painting the downstairs fireplace hearth so we can get an electric fireplace. A post is coming soon on how I replaced the missing bricks with handmade artificial bricks before painting the whole thing. I look forward to tackling this ugly spot in our home. 

• Rebekah took a master dance class with Fay Van Baar (Nederlands Dance Theater) from the Netherlands. She really enjoyed it. 

Contemporary Master Class

• We also got back the professional photos from ADCIBC (dance competition in Atlanta). This is my favorite photograph.

Classical ballet piece

• Elijah is so busy these days. I made him stand still to get his picture taken before he left the house the other day. I told him I needed proof that he was still alive ~ LOL. His friend group is so lovely right now, and his job at Target is going really well. 

April should be a great deal more exciting. We have three birthdays and a few adventures. It should be a fun month!

Blessings, Dawn

My Grandmother's Cookbook

 I discovered my paternal grandmother's cookbook on my bookcase a few weeks ago. I had forgotten that I had stuck it there after my father's death. I am really enjoying exploring Good Cooking (1936). The book was cherished and well used. It has a broken spine and the pages are worn and food stained. My grandmother wrote all over the cover pages, margins and end pages. Her ideas and recipes are spread throughout the book. In addition, the book is filled with recipes she cut out of magazines and got from neighbors and friends. It is a lovely insight to the way she cooked and baked. The first recipe I made was one of her oatmeal bread recipes. I say one because she had about five different oatmeal bread recipes! She must have loved that kind of bread. I decided to try the one that was carefully typed out on an index card. It was delicious and made an almost perfect sandwich bread. I plan on trying her other oatmeal bread recipes to see if any of them are even more amazing. There are also a half dozen recipes for different cheesecakes. 

The book itself is a treasure. I am thoroughly enjoying reading all of its aged advice. It begins with how to budget your family's shopping and where to shop. We don't even have some of the types of shopping choices that were available in 1936, but it is still fascinating. The sandwich section of the book gave me a chuckle. There are some unusual ideas for fillings, such as chopped tongue with cabbage, watercress and mayonnaise or ground raw carrot, cabbage and celery with ground peanuts and mayonnaise. I actually think the baked beans mashed with sweet pickles might make a lovely filling. I plan on trying some of them. I don't know about you, but we pretty much have peanut butter and jam, lunch meat and tuna fish sandwiches. We could use some creative ideas...but not the tongue one. That one can stay in the book and belong to a bygone era.  LOL

I love old cookbooks and having one that my grandmother used so often is a true treasure. I look forward to using it more over the coming years. 

Blessings, Dawn

A Mother's Journal ~ March 2022

 On my mind ~ My heart is with Ukraine. It is so disturbing what is going on there. Also, I am so sick of listening to people complain. Yes, the gas prices are getting higher; inflation is getting higher; but the reasons are clear. Sacrifices must be made to keep our world free. Must everything be political?  Can no one in our generation pull together and care about anyone but themselves? I am just overwhelmed with how spoiled Americans are at times.  (Yes, I am aware that there are Americans who are doing things for good and care about others...they just seem few and far between these days.) If this paragraph makes you angry, check yourself and ask, "What  am I doing for others and how am I modeling sacrifice to my children without complaint?"

Outside my window ~  It feels like spring is here. It is hard to believe it is truly here, but I hope it stay. The Daffodils are in full bloom.

Where we are going ~  Rebekah and I have been travelling so much in the last few weeks. Last week found us at the UNCSA Dance Festival in Winston-Salem, NC. Rebekah took eight classes and performed at the Stevens Center with her fellow studio dancers. While we were there, Rebekah auditioned and was accepted to their ballet summer intensive. We don't know if she will accept it yet, since we are waiting to hear back from another ballet school. She has done two years of summer intensives with UNCSA (online), and it looks better on a dance resume to do summer intensives at different places. It would be an awesome experience to live on a college campus for five weeks. We are pretty sure we are dropping the summer intensive in New York City because it is just proving to be cost prohibitive with the current state of the world. There are equally exciting options closer to home. 

Where is Rebekah? Look carefully.

This weekend we took Rebekah to an audition for a summer intensive in Cary, NC. This one is the summer intensive that most excites Rebekah's teachers. We will see if she is accepted. So far, she has been accepted to every intensive for which she has auditioned. 

What I am reading ~ I am reading The Lincoln Highway by Amor Towles. It is a relaxing read that I am enjoying. 

What I am watching ~ I am watching way too much news on Ukraine. I am also still watching Call the Midwife with Rebekah. We continue to have our family movie nights on Fridays. It was Rebekah's pick this week and we watched How to Train Your Dragon. We have also watched the 2021 version of Dune and The Dig in recent weeks. 

What I am working on ~ I am working on making everyone's schedule work with the growing gas crisis and our two cars. We have three persons with licenses, a very lousy (almost impossible) bus system to contend with, and five people with commitments all over the place. There are a lot of moving parts to the puzzle and everyone is going to have to make sacrifices to make it work. Elijah's work schedule seems to be returning to normal hours so that is helpful. They had him and everyone else cut down to half shifts which meant he had to be picked up after only three hours. He was given a new shirt at work with the Target dog on it.  My sweet little boy is a grown up young man. 

A special find ~ I found an amazing buy at the thrift shop this week. I found this American Empire  style sofa. I think the frame might be original (1830's). It is in perfect condition with only loose feet that need to be reattached. I need to study how to do that authentically, since it is missing the old fashioned pins. I was able to just slip the feet on which works perfectly when it is stationary. It is the anchor piece I have been looking for to really pull the library together. It was only $100! 

Here is how it is coming together in spring of 2022. Yes, I still need to get the overhead lighting installed that my mother gave us.

A Touch of Beauty ~ While we were in Cary, NC this weekend, we went to the NC Art Museum. We took my mother along and had a girl's road trip. We were especially enamored with a visual light show art display. You look through the hole and see this amazing light show. 

It was lovely to fill our eyes and minds with a bit of artistic beauty!

What's working for me/not working of me ~  Timothy's wound is healing quickly and we should be released from visiting nurse care in the next week or so. It was very helpful having a visiting nurse to help us through that crazy adventure. I feel very blessed for the service. 

We are constantly struggling to figure out how to support our daughter Katie, while still maintaining boundaries and generally not going insane. She is a demanding and chaotic whirlwind, who only wants to do things on her terms and in her way and then wants to be rescued when it all explodes in her face. 

Quick update on Katie ~ She is currently living with her most recent boyfriend  and other roommates in an unfurnished house about an hour away. She has announced that she is marrying this man as soon as he manages to get divorced from his current wife. They are both 21 years old and he has obvious mental health issues, too. He doesn't seem to be dangerous which is an improvement over the last man. She has also acquired a gigantic dog which will just complicate matters the next time she finds herself homeless (sorry...if there is a next time). Who am I kidding? Her current roommates are already threatening to put her out after just a few weeks. 

Praying for all that are suffering and that peace will come to Ukraine and all of the world. Please show kindness as you move through your days. It is what we all can do to create a better tomorrow. 

Blessings, Dawn

Another Hospitalization

 We have had a crazy two weeks. It started with a local doctor appointment to check Timothy's surgical wounds. When she removed the Steri-Strips from his newest surgical site, she found it badly infected. Within a matter of hours we were told that Tim needed to return to Duke and may need more surgery. It was a rushed trip across state with two cars. David (husband) went ahead with Tim, while I tried to put a few things in place for Elijah, who was remaining home. Rebekah hurriedly finished the last of her packing for the dance competition she was supposed to be at in less than 24 hours and joined me in the second car. 

Tim was admitted to Duke and the doctors were instantly baffled. His infection was only skin deep. It hadn't affected the muscle (that was in plain view because the wound was wide open), nor had it affected the pacemaker, pacemaker pocket, his blood or heart. With the level of infection they were seeing, they would have expected the infection to have spread to some or all of the other areas. After two days, their conclusion was that Tim, who has a serious adhesive allergy, had reacted to the Steri-Strips which have a minute amount of adhesive in them. This had never been an issue in the past or even in his first January surgery, because all of his previous surgeries were done by a pediatric cardiac surgeon (because of his congenital status), and they always put an extra barrier between the Steri-Strips and the stitches because kids are so rough on their bodies. Adult cardiac surgeons usually  skip that step in adults. This was Tim's very first surgery ever with an adult cardiac surgeon. As you can imagine, there are some very large notes being added to his medical chart. 

Once we were assured that Tim was not going to need surgery, Rebekah and I proceeded to Atlanta for the dance competition. She missed the first day with graded classes, but she made it in time for the three dances she intended to compete. Rebekah really didn't enjoy the competition style of performing. It was very anxiety producing for her and she even had a small panic attack before one of the dances. I think the combination of feeling unprepared, a lack of experience with competitions or solos (in which you are completely alone on stage), a terrible dance floor that even the judges were complaining about, the stress our family was going through, the cattiness of some of the more experienced girls, and the in-your-face reality that almost no dancers achieve a professional career all collided and made for a very emotional weekend. She actually did pretty well according to her teachers and myself. I think her years of performance training kicked in and she pushed through. But it was the most emotional experience she has ever experienced when it comes to dance. 

 David stayed with Timothy the entire time he was in the hospital. Timothy was released from the hospital after two days and was able to come home to complete his recovery. He now has a visiting nurse who comes in two times a week to look at the wound and change the bandages. We change the bandages ourselves on the other days. Hopefully, this merely will be a memory in another few weeks. I will also take Tim to Greensboro during the next week to see his cardiologist in a clinic that is about an hour closer to home.

Lessons Learned ~  You know how they say you learn more from adversity than from the easy days? I do think that is true most of the time. 

Rebekah in her classical variations costume

I think there are many lessons still being processed by our experiences at the dance competition last weekend. 

• Rebekah reinforced in her mind that family is much more important to her than a full-time  professional career in dance. She was told by one teacher to snap out of it and forget about her family's troubles. That teacher went on to say that she danced the day her mother died, because the show must go on and that Rebekah needed to have the same attitude. Rebekah was totally shocked and dismayed. Her teacher said ballerinas are a type of "freak of nature." Rebekah does not want to become one of those. 
• Rebekah realized that none of this is worth it if it doesn't bring her happiness and that she must find a path that brings her joy. 
• She was reminded that there are multiple ways to be part of the dance world and the larger, more glamourous ways are not necessarily the best fit for her. 
• At the end of the day, she wants to dance, she wants to perform, she wants to feel joy again (this entire school year has been a bit joyless while desperately trying to catch up in ballet technique), she would prefer to not leave home or Asheville in the next year or two (at least) and she is missing contemporary dance.

The lessons for Tim were about what the rest of us learned from his hardship. 

• Elijah held down the house successfully for a few days. He took care of the cats and stayed completely alone with just a quick daily check-in with Grandma. 
• I was reminded how much I like the "little city" feel of a  hospital and that I might want to look at a career in the hospital when I am ready to work outside the home in the future.
• Of course, we learned so much more about adhesive allergies and wound care.

This week was dominated by just trying to catch up, pull our feelings into check, rest and come back together as a family. We are very tight knit and being apart during one crisis after another in the last six weeks has been hard on everyone. I hope we are entering a calmer season!

Blessings, Dawn

A Mother's Journal ~ Remarkable January

It was a remarkable month filled with unremarkable days. I thought I would do A Mother's Journal this morning.

On my mind ~ This has been a stressful month. Tim's surgeries although successful were also very stressful. Our daughter Katie's life is in absolute turmoil from our point of view. We hardly know what city she will be in next and with what man she will be relying on. It is so far from the way we raised her to be!  She is back in our area at the moment but not interested in the stabilizing ideas we come up with.  Lastly, our daughter Rebekah is very stressed out by audition season for summer dance intensives. She is also almost panicked about a dance competition that is coming up in which she feels extremely unprepared.  It is a ballet competition in which she will be doing one contemporary solo, one group piece and one  solo ballet variation. Her stress is affecting the entire family. It is stressful, to say the least, right now. 

Outside my window ~ We have about an inch of snow on the ground and it is bitter cold with a wind chill of minus five. We have had two other snowfalls this month that were  deep enough that they didn't melt away in hours. This one inch snowfall won't melt quickly because the temperature is so low.

What I am working on ~ On the homefront, I am working on keeping the home moving as smoothly as possible, trying to stay ahead of meals and keep everyone healthy. I am also working on lots of travel plans. We are traveling almost every weekend through March for summer intensive auditions, a dance competition, a dance festival and post-operation appointments for Tim. 

Where we are going ~ This month was filled with travel. We spent ten days in Duke University Hospital, which is almost four hours away from home. We also started to travel for an audition, but the in-person portion was cancelled while we were on the road. We had to turn around and return home, so Rebekah could do the audition on Zoom. Next week, we are traveling to Atlanta for the dance competition. 

What we are watching ~ Our family movie this week was The Dig. It was on Netflix and we really enjoyed it. Elijah even gave it a good review, and he is our family's harshest critic. Rebekah and I are also re-watching Call The Midwife for stress relief. The males in the house don't understand how watching childbirth is stress relieving, but we enjoy the mother-daughter time. Dear husband and I are watching The Hardy Boys on Hulu. 

What I am reading ~ I started the month off with reading A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles. I really enjoyed this book and hope to read some others by this author. I am currently reading Five Children and It by Nesbit. This was a book I had wanted to read to my children because they love this author, but we just never got to it. I decided I needed something light and fun. This is a perfect fit. 

What I am grateful for ~ Although this has been a stressful month, I am pleased with the results. Tim is safe and sound. His recovery is going well and he has returned to his six hour a week job. He has managed all of his pain with Tylenol and didn't need any of the stronger pain killers that were prescribed. 

This week, Elijah told me that he really likes his job and work friends. I am so glad that he is fully settled into his job at Target. His benefits started this month, too. Target gives benefits to part-time employees after six months! I am impressed. 

Rebekah passed her first audition with flying colors and received an acceptance letter. She was given the opportunity to take classes between two and seven weeks at their academy.  She will most likely be signing up to do two weeks with that ballet school in the middle of our state. She also was accepted to a one week professional training contemporary dance program at UNCSA which was a deferment from last year, because she did their ballet program which overlapped this program.  Both of these opportunities will be her first times living away from home. She is trying to piece together about six weeks of dance intensives/workshops in different schools and dance companies to maximize her overall experience. 

My favorite photo this week ~ 

Blessings, Dawn

Timothy Update

The device in the side of Tim's neck is an external temporary pacemaker.

After 10 long days and three surgeries, Tim is home. We had an excellent experience at Duke. The nurses and staff were just wonderful. Considering how short staffed they were, we still received the most caring and professional support. There were many days when the goal was just to keep Tim healthy and wait until the lead extraction surgery could be planned and scheduled. David or I stayed with Tim 24 hours a day in the hospital for the entire stay.

Dear Husband came and relieved me for two days so I could go home and tend the home fires. It is an 8 hour round trip between Duke hospital and home, so I only left the hospital once. They two of them had lots of fun together watching horror films on the science fiction channel. 

Tim was a model patient and he was always polite and cooperative with the nurses. Even when he was coming out of anesthesia, his manners shined through. He had the nurses completely charmed. If only there would have been an ice cream machine on the unit, he would have been spoiled by those nurses. However, it was a cardiac unit and all the food was rather healthy. The nurses were also shocked that he ordered broccoli (his favorite vegetable) with almost every meal and actually ate it.

The final surgery was one of the most complicated of Tim's life. The doctor listed off a rather long list of concerns, but he also stated that they had lots of planning time and his team was hand picked. They took every precaution and had a host of backup plans. One of those plans was to have two teams in the operating room for his final surgery. Team A did the laser extraction and placement of the new leads. Team B (a vascular cardiac team) was scrubbed in and on standby in the operating room in case there were complications and they needed to do open heart surgery. As Dr. Hegland (Team A surgeon) said, "Hopefully, we will keep Team B standing around being bored". Fortunately, Team B did end up just standing around in the operating room. The surgery took almost 6 hours (two hours more than expected), but that was simply because they had to go very slowly and use multiple tools to extract the deteriorating leads. They also had to go in from multiple sites so he has a new host of battle scars. We are so grateful and blessed that everything went so well. They never could get his heart to show successful beats over 30 beats per minute (under the pacemaker), so he is once again fully pacemaker dependent. He has spent much of his life in this condition, but in recent years had a higher heart rate so that he wouldn't be in critical condition if his pacemaker failed. Unfortunately, that is not currently the case. They do not know if his heart will recover over time and start having more successful beats as it did after past surgeries. It could be years before he has heart function improvement. It is amazing and awe inspiring what they can do these days.

We even were released in time to beat a huge snow storm home. This is what our back yard looked like just hours after we arrived home and it kept snowing for about 7 more hours. 

Blessings, Dawn