##  Some ongoing summarization stuff.
##
##  As the major tasks of this trip either completed or were well under way,
##  I was able to report back to various interested folks where I was, what
##  was up, and my own expectations.  Eventually this worked up to the point
##  where I considered that things were in a reasonably stable state and I
##  could head back home, at least for a while.  Note the date spread...


Date: Thu, 4 Aug 2022 16:58:40 -0500
Subject: Re: Carmax FAIL (followup, because folks asked)
To: [barefooters list]

I'm in FL at the mo being stunt-caregiver for my mom, while we work on setting
up more longterm arrangements.  As the threat looms of being forced to move to
assisted-living, we're trying to unload material items she can't use anymore,
like the car.  Ongoing and rather complex process, as you might imagine.

ObBarefoot: This facility is one of the very few places I have to put on the
real china-flats once in a while, notably to go to the central dining room for
occasional dinner appointments with her friends.  That, and a jacket.  Nobody
would recognize me.  It's a little bit of "conformity" I can stand once in a
while to avoid freaking out the old folks, and the rest of the time in the
detached house and around the campus I'm barefoot.  Florida asphalt tends to
get rough pretty quickly under the merciless sun, and I enjoy finding the
gnarliest patches in the roads and sidewalks to keep my feet in shape while
I'm here.

_H*

##


Date: Thu, 4 Aug 2022 19:41:48 -0500
Subject: Re: down again
To: [a tech and EV acquaintance who snowbirds between FL and NH]

I've gotten a fair amount of stuff done already.  With the threat of being
coerced/forced to move to assisted-living, which is like the last thing Mom
wants to do but it may just come to that, we're unloading stuff out of the
house.  The bicycles are gone, the remaining knitwear stash is gone, and
despite some effed-up interaction, the car's gone, and we're working on
tarot decks, minerals, and some other stuff.

The fancy leg-brace is in the works for her, but may take a while to be fabbed
and delivered.  Mom basically needs me here as the stunt caregiver in the
meantime; we're trying to set up the third-party visit-in care but that's
taking a while to put together.

Trip down was reasonably uneventful.  Middle day started gorgeous but the heat
and humidity sort of snuck up on me, and by the time that evening rolled around
I opted for a hotel that happened to be right there at a charge stop.  I tried
FPL's new "evolution" public charge-network setup, which was a total fail:

and moved 20 miles down the road to a nice reliable EVgo outside of JAX.

A few rapid-charges aren't going to cut into range that much, I expect, unless
I did it all the time.  What affects the guess-o-meter is transitioning from
local roads to all-interstate over a couple of charge cycles, where the car
evidently takes a rolling average of what I really get and adjusts over that.
So it was giving *very* optimistic estimates at first, and after another couple
of stops it was more in touch with reality.  4.1 mi/kWh over the trip down
overall, more or less -- the Kona's pretty efficient.  Oh, and this run I
tried I-95 just south of DC all the way down instead of my usual I-81 etc.
The chargers at "South of the Border" were broken, but after calling in to
bitch, got a free fillup.

So, basically stuck here till more stuff either leaves or shows up...  I have
to do something about fetching my held mail toward the end of the month, but
I've got friends willing to help with that.

Did I ask you already, what do you do about mail for your snowbirding?  Just
set or unset forwarding twice a year?

_H*

##


Date: Fri, 5 Aug 2022 02:29:59 +0000
From: [said snowbird friend, who doesn't believe in punctuation]
Subject: Re: down again

temporary forwarding with some overlap twice a year   change the mag sub
addresses after two months

and they still lose some or deliver when shouldnt

some banks creditcards wont forward which made some probs

is best if u have friends at both ends (let me know how i can help)


##  He didn't say if "overlap" meant a forwarding loop, or a time with no
##  forwarding at either end.  One would think the right thing would be to
##  forward for where you *are now*, estimate when that will kick in, and then
##  race that condition to the other location to start picking everything up.


Date: Sun, 07 Aug 2022 12:02:40 -0500
To: [close friend back home who's also a barefooter]
Subject: progress report

I might have mentioned some interim things, and you likely saw the misadventure
at Carmax, but to summarize to date...

   bicycles are gone
   car is gone
   knitwear is gone
   rocks are gone
   tarot is in process-ish
   I'm on paypal now  {cue "who are you and where's Hobbit"}
   food shopping is all me for now
   we have sort of a care-visit schedule for showers
   it's still too hot around here
   the leg brace is ... who the f knows

The last item seems to be the major gating thing keeping me here at the mo.
If that gets fabbed and delivered in reasonable time, and training/therapy
ensues and it helps with standing/walking stability, in theory I can free up
and the 3rd-party care folks and/or facility crews can also do shopping runs.
I still don't know how it's going to work out; now it's a different kind of
waiting game than I was in back home.

This week we have a couple of dr appointments, including with the one who
was supposedly ordering/speccing the brace, so we'll use that to further
figure out which butts to light fires under and get the damn thing *here*.

Bright note: 3 solo runs to Publix, no BF issues.  I may not have to use
my prestaged rant of "why don't you call Lakeland corp and tell them you want
different and more friendly signage delivered for the front entrances"...

_H*

##


Date: Sat, 13 Aug 2022 08:48:08 -0500
To: [an occasional virtual-event acquaintance who asked after me]
Subject: Re: [was] Setting up a mailing list (Mailman or other)

Well ... life is weird right now.  I'm down in FL, being the stunt "caregiver"
for my mom, while we work on longer-term solutions that don't need my presence.
Her neuropathy keeps slowly advancing, so it's all a moving target.  We've
been wrapping up a lot of loose ends and getting rid of various stuff pending
a potential move to assisted-living [frankly, not entirely something my mom
wants], but if it comes to that, we're better prepared.  I don't know how long
I have to be here, much depends on availability of various third-party care
and orthotics, and my mail-hold at the post office expires toward the end of
the month.

Not too much on the events front recently; I think people are sort of burned
out on the whole virtual thing but the IRL conventions and stuff now feel
obligated to offer a substantial online/virtual chunk of their programming.
I might help with that part of the Chicago worldcon at the end of Aug, but
much depends on what else I'm wrangling.

[More muck specific to running mailing-lists]

_H*

##


Date: Mon, 15 Aug 2022 11:35:27 -0500
Subject: Re: Okay, off I go
To: [hike group leaders back north]

Still stuck down here.  Mom's neuropathy seems to be getting a bit worse,
and I'm learning all kinds of stuff about Lyrica, gabapentin, tramadol, and
KAFO orthotics.  With the persistent lack of the latter arriving, e.g. a new
leg brace that's supposed to help mobility, I'm in a holding pattern -- leaned
on the ortho company that's supposed to be providing it this morning, but they
can't promise anything.

I'm really hoping they deliver later this week at the latest, so that I could
return home before the post-office mail-hold expires.  No idea if that'll work.
It's kind of miserable watching Mom's efforts to get around the house, but she
[and I, helping] are adapting in a few interesting ways.

Meanwhile, if I walk a "perimeter loop" around the facility campus here, it's
about a mile, but it's usually too hot to make that pleasant, even in the
mornings.  Almost every afternoon brings brief thunderstorms.

Say "woof" to the bears for me,

_H*


##  That last bit requires a little explanation.  With the very dry conditions
##  in Massachusetts over the summer, a few black bears had gotten a little
##  more adventurous in search of food and water, and had been spotted in some
##  backyards and local parks.  One or two hike-group members had some run-ins
##  around their own homes or workplaces, so folks were a bit wary.  The "woof"
##  thing is a bit of a local in-joke; I suspect it takes saying a lot more
##  than that, loudly, to persuade a bear to move off.
##
##  Mom had also been having increased problems with leg pain, and it turned
##  out that she wasn't really on the right regimen of drugs to prevent it.
##  We actually manage to largely fix it over the phone with her doctors, by
##  moving to regular taking of prescriptions she already had.  We were also
##  waiting for a supposedly improved knee-ankle-foot leg brace to show up.


Date: Mon, 15 Aug 2022 11:25:41 -0500
To: [a small group of interested friends]
Subject: more progression

[Updating targeted potentially interested parties here]

Neuropathy is weird, and really hard to treat.

A lot of pain in the ass and down her still-good[?] leg over the last 2
days, and I'm learning more about Gabapentin, Lyrica, and Tramadol which
are some of the things recommended for it.  Her doc today said get back onto
staged regularity of Lyrica for longterm mitigation, and hit it with Tramadol
[yes, it's an opiate of sorts] if/when needed.  [Look em up at webmd..]  It's
basically all spinal, referring down the leg in the brain.

So Mom's waist-deep in her own private fires of hell at the moment.  A bit
of relief came today once we settled on the new course of treatment; no new
prescriptions even needed right away because she had all that stuff in-house.

Still no new leg-brace.  I leaned on the ortho outfit again today, but they
can't promise anything.  So, still in the holding pattern here, and my mail-
hold is nearing its apocalypse.

_H*


##


Date: Tue, 16 Aug 2022 14:28:36 -0500
To: [subset of that same group]
Subject: Re: more progression

Since "nerve pain" tends to be the referred kind, i.e. everything she's
feeling in her legs/feet likely originates from buggered-up signals at the
spine, normal painkillers don't really do anything.  Gabapentin and Lyrica,
primarily anticonvulsants, also seem to have a brain-based effect on pain
response in general.  Opiates, of course, have a larger and more immediate
one.  So we're tailoring timeframe-based usage of these things to mitigate
the absolutely miserable state she was in Sunday, per the doc's advice who
I also talked to on Monday morning and learned more about all this.

Today she's basically fine, and even slept till like 8 in the morning, very
unusual.  So maybe stuff is working...

[# various Worldcon-related banter in here #]

I'm dubious that I can remotely authorize someone to pick up mail.  I could
have set something up in person, maybe, in advance, according to usps.com,
but I'm still not sure how that would work.  I haven't called the PO yet,
I may closer to the mail-hold apocalypse.  However ... it may all be moot
by now.  Barely hours after I sent the last mail, the ortho clinic called,
saying the leg-brace had *just* come in.  So we went and picked it up
yesterday, and Mom's trying to get used to it and if it's really helping or
not.  I'm urging further "engineering" of adaptations so she can get along
without me here, and am targeting next week or even the weekend to start
heading back.  She's probably going to have to hire in a bit more help than
the one day a week she's got right now for help with the shower, cuz she'll
need someone to do shopping runs and get the right things she's fussy about.
I'm urging to save example packaging from stuff she likes so there's no
ambiguity about what to pick up.

Thanx for report on the party ... I did tell Scott what was up with me,
so he wouldn't wonder.  I thanked him for keeping one of the main social
cores alive even though the pandemic isn't over, etc.

I wouldn't expect any concessions from airlines these days... that industry
is completely hosed, all the more reason to not fly.  Fortunately, fuel is
starting to drop back to semi-reasonable levels finally..

_H*


##  We kinda had a regular once-a-week care visit set up at this point, but
##  I wanted to broaden the possibilities for what they might do for Mom.
##  I made an attempt to be organized and efficient about any shopping runs
##  that might be needed, although Mom would still be mistrustful of anyone
##  shopping on her behalf.


Date: Mon, 22 Aug 2022 13:14:08 -0500
To: [the private-duty agency lead who was scheduling shower visits]
Subject: Monday followup

Hi, this is [mother and son] sort of together.  Gloria came in for the shower
today, and it went fine.  Question, though: is the usual schedule still going
to be Sunday mornings, if it doesn't get disrupted by an emergency?

On the other topic: attached is a short PDF of the shopping list we worked
up.  These are Mom's staples, pretty much, the real variation comes with
dinners, and we're trying to stick with easily-microwaveable stuff.  I
just went shopping yesterday morning so we're probably stocked up for almost
2 weeks now, but we wanted to send this so you'd have a copy and see if this
(or part of it) is something you could also work in.  It doesn't take very
long to grab these items; Mom can hand you cash for it, and the list is
roughly in "store order" if you walk into Publix and go to the right down
the produce/deli aisle first.  Next time you see Mom you can discuss
in greater depth, look at packaging, add notes about brands, etc.

I'm taking off for home on Tuesday morning, so Mom will be on her own
for everything else for the moment.  We realize that this is all a moving
target, but things seem fairly stable right now.  The CCed "hobbit" address
is my own email, so you have it.

Thanks!

[attachment; filename="shopping.pdf"]


##  This was around the time I finally decided that I could head back north,
##  so I notified the local neighbors up there that I was about to start up.


Date: Tue, 23 Aug 2022 03:16:58 -0500
To: [northern neighbors]
Subject: headin' back!

Hiya!  It's been an interesting month down here in FL, but things are stable
enough for the moment that I'm heading back starting today.  Should arrive
by Thursday sometime.  Hopefully things have been good up north, the rest
of the trees are staying upright, etc...

_H*