Humor – Page 28 – I'll Call It Like I See It

a saga of one family’s achieving the American dream in Rosenberg, Texas

Mom, me, and Dad in front of our home

at 1021 Timber Lane in Rosenberg, Texas circa 1968

Rosenberg is now a city of 39,468 (2021 census) inhabitants and a part of the Houston – The Woodlands – Sugar Land metropolitan area. When my parents moved forty miles north from our home in Brazoria to Rosenberg in June of 1964, I was a new summer school student at the University of Texas at Austin. How new, you ask? Well, when I wrote my folks to tell them I had found a ride home for a weekend visit in July, my dad wrote back something to the effect that I needed to come to Rosenberg because he and Mom lived there – not in Brazoria where we had lived for the past five years. New jobs for both Dad and Mom, new rental house, new church, everything new. I was horrified – I had hoped to see my friends from high school who stayed at home for the summer instead of going off to college. Why move to Rosenberg, I wondered. Mostly I felt hurt that they hadn’t prepared me with the truth.

The Rosenberg years in the 1960s and early 70s for my parents were good years for them. They were finally able to purchase their own home (1021 Timber Lane pictured above) in 1965 after nearly twenty years of marriage. My mother taught second grade in a much larger school district where my father was assistant superintendent for the Lamar Consolidated schools that continued to grow as Houston expanded south and west. Mom played piano for a Southern Baptist Church as she had done her entire life wherever we were, and Daddy sang in the choir.

Daddy and Mama with their three bird dogs Rex, Dab and Seth

those old dogs couldn’t hunt,

but they did love the sofa in our den on Timber Lane

Daddy with his small grill where he loved to cook steaks

in the driveway of Timber Lane – his one attempt to cook

When I graduated from UT in the summer of 1967, I moved to Houston to take a job with Arthur Andersen, one of the top eight CPA firms in the nation at that time. Sundays often meant driving the half hour from my apartment to see my folks in Rosenberg, making sure I was there in time for church.

This picture is such a favorite of mine because Mom and I are laughing together – I remember she was trying to help me learn how to place my feet at an angle when I stood in high heels. That advice never resonated with me…

…but I did have fun trying to make her happy

I never felt that Rosenberg was my home, but my parents loved their jobs, church, frequently seeing relatives and friends who lived in the Houston area, finally able to purchase their own home on Timber Lane that allowed them to experience the American dream their immigrant ancestors crossed oceans to find. I loved my parents dearly, but I was off to new adventures in the Pacific Northwest three thousand miles from the house on Timber Lane in Rosenberg.

Clouds loomed on all of our horizons as a new decade brought unimaginable losses.

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Please stay tuned.

October 12, 2023

the sundowners starring someone you love (part 2)

Earlier this year our fifteen year old terrier Carl began strange behavior in the late afternoon that didn’t concern Pretty and me at first, behavior we could ignore but gradually attracted our attention when it became more pronounced as time passed. Between 4 and 5 o’clock every afternoon now Carl paces back and forth between the den and kitchen like a tiger in a zoo, becomes agitated like monkeys can be in a cage at the zoo. Anxious, disoriented, restless for four hours of the day, yet content and clingy with us otherwise. Because of our experience with my mother’s dementia in her later years, Pretty and I were better equipped to recognize similar patterns of changes in Carl.

We were still unsure about a diagnosis of his doggie dementia (Cognitive Dysfunction Syndrome or CDS) issues until a conversation with our vet last month confirmed what we also suspected was his total inability to hear anything or anyone. The deafness seemed to happen suddenly this summer, but it could have taken place over a long period of time, Dr. Wales told us. When I asked about other issues Carl had that seemed to happen late in the afternoon and early evening, she explained sundowning in animals occurs similarly to humans.

At our house we have three rescued dogs that live inside ranging in ages from 10 to 15 years. While our best guesses about their ages may be slightly off, Pretty and I laugh about running an assisted living home for elderly dogs. Their activities of daily living (ADL) include eating, sleeping, guarding our home against unwanted doorbell ringers, protecting our mailbox from the mail carriers unlucky enough to be assigned to our address, and occasional short walks. Carl’s hearing loss this summer has been an obvious physical change but not totally unexpected since he had serious ear infections when he came to us in 2020. The behavioral changes, however, have definitely been gradual with increasing intensity, and some research explores a significant incidence of deafness in dementia.

We keep a watchful eye on Carl to monitor his quality of life, but so far he manages to keep up with his ADL; his favorites continue to be eating and sleeping which, if I am honest, are probably mine, too. Dr. Wales told us CDS could not be cured and would worsen as he got older. She did prescribe gabapentin which we tried for two weeks but didn’t appear to help – now I am searching for other options from Dr. Google. These past two days I gave Carl Melatonin gummies in small doses, but he wasn’t happy with the taste and/or texture of the gummies – so peanut butter was the answer for us. Again, limited improvement in his conditions so far, but we’ll keep trying. If anyone in cyberspace has recommendations they have successfully used for Sundowner Syndrome in dogs, please share!

Carl interpreted by Wayside Artist Ann D’onofrio

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P.S. Note to my friends at Animal Couriers in Europe: older cats may also have CDS – Web MD has great info on feline symptoms and treatment. As with everything else I’ve learned about cats, feline behavioral changes can be disguised more easily by cats than by dogs. Hm…makes me wonder.

September 21, 2023

Molly

Daddy dressed me for school today – I love Cutler Jewish Day School!

September 15, 2023

soups, broths, jellies and Jell-o (from Deep in the Heart)

“You’ll have to keep the room as dark as possible. Put sheets over these windows to keep the light out,” Dr. Sanders instructed Mama. “She should eat soups, broths, jellies and Jell-o. That’s all. She can’t strain her eyes, so no books to look at, and no excitement of any kind. I’ll come back again in a few days to see how she’s getting along. It’s just a bad case of the measles, so don’t worry. They’re going around this winter, and she was bound to catch them.”

“How long will she be sick?” Mama asked.

“Depends on how bad a case she has. Sometimes they miss two weeks of school. We’ll have to see. Sheila Rae’s only seven, and the young ones seem to get better quicker. The penicillin shot should help.”

With that bit of cheeriness old Dr. Sanders got heavily to his feet and picked up his black bag. He was a large man with a balding head of white hair that was typically covered by a small brown weather-beaten hat. He peered over rimless glasses that teetered precariously on a nose that appeared lost between his rotund cheeks. He reminded me of Santa Claus in a frayed black suit instead of a shiny red one.

That’s why I always liked him right up until he gave me the penicillin shot, which appeared to be his cure for everything including measles. He was cheery, but not above inflicting pain on defenseless children. And in their own house, too. Not fair.

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My mother always followed the doctor’s orders which included his dietary recommendations for every illness as faithfully as the shot of penicillin he carried in his black bag. This past week I developed a bad case of the epizooti which is my medical term for illnesses I “catch” from Pretty’s allergies. I remembered the dietary advice Dr. Sanders gave when I was sick with any childhood malady so I thought I would follow it seven decades later. Forgive me for skipping the soups, broths and Jell-o recommendations to go straight for the jellies. The Shipt shopper must have wondered why I needed three kinds of preserves: grape, strawberry and apricot. Yummy. The apricot on two pieces of toast for breakfast this morning made me feel better already.

As for the doctor’s “no excitement of any kind” advice, too little too late. The US Open men’s semi-finals in singles were this weekend, and the women’s final is this afternoon. Coco Gauff is my pick to win it all, but Aryna Sabalenka is a tall order for the nineteen year old Gauff who is the first American teenager to be in a final at the US Open since, wait for it, Serena Williams in 2001. Go, Coco!