Where is my watch?

       I have an ongoing battle with envy and gratitude.  I know how fortunate I am.  That good fortune began when I was born to intelligent parents.  We had a nice home in the suburbs.  I attended a Catholic grade school and, after a year in a regular (read: boys and girls) Catholic high school, I told my parents that I wanted to switch to an all girls' Catholic high school.  And off I went to Saint Mary of the Angels Academy.  I figured I'd be less of a loser in a school without boys.  Looking back, I'm glad I didn't ask my parents to send me to an all girls Catholic boarding school. One of my friends from grade school, a very sweet, smart, lovely person, was going there.  My parents would have gladly sent me off; I was getting to be quite the emotional handful.  Being a rather sheltered adoIescent, I was clueless about the cost of Catholic boarding schools.  I was clueless and confused and just plain scared of just...

        S e veral times a week   I drive by a lovely little white cottage near my home.  I don't remember what was there before the cottage appeared;  I think the former structure must have blended right in with the rest of the houses on the street, so I never paid much attention to it.        T he little white cottage is unique in many ways.  What occurred to me the first time I saw the place was that the owners must love their home very much.  Every season and holiday, they decorate the cottage beautifully.  The most recent theme was autumn; soon it will be time for Christmas and the little white cottage will be transformed in a winter wonderland.   The seasonal decoration is abundant; I find myself wondering where the heck they store all that stuff!!!  It's a lot, but it's a lot in a really good way.       Often, I thought to myself that I should just stop at the cottage and ...

  As I wrote in Part 1, Papa (my father) and Nana (his mother and my grandmother) were living with Nana's mother (my great-grandmother) in Wilkinsburg, Pennsylvania when Papa’s father/Nana’s husband committed suicide on December 22, 1916,  in Wilmington, DE.  Nana lived with Papa for the rest of her life.  Even after  he married and had children, Nana was a constant in his life and in ours. Given all of that drama, I always assumed that Nana and Papa had a challenging, difficult, perhaps even sad relationship.  As I wrote in Part 1, my father never wanted to talk about his life before his marriage. From bits and pieces of household conversation, I gathered that things were not always rosy in the Trower/Kelly household.  My great-grandmother was Mary K. Brown until she married Lee Trower in 1887.  Something happened that resulted in Lee Trower moving out of the house.  The 1930 Census data shows that he lived as a "lodger" with a woman named D...

My father wasn't always Dr. Kelly's husband.  But when I was growing up, that was what people called him.  It seemed to me that everyone knew my mother; she was a woman doctor in a time when there were very few women doctors.  She graduated from medical school in 1943.  As one of her two daughters, I was very aware of her importance in our community.  We couldn't go to the grocery store without what seemed liked hundreds of people coming up to us with, "Dr. Kelly!!!  Dr. Kelly!  Do you remember me?  You delivered my babies!  Oh, are these your daughters?  Aren't they pretty!  You look great, Dr. Kelly!  I am so grateful to you for all the care you've given me and my family.  Blah, blah, blah..."   But this blog isn't about her; it's about Dr. Kelly's husband, my father, Cyril Francis Kelly. My father insisted that my sister and I call him Papa; he thought that Daddy sounded too much like Dada...and that really bo...

  My patio is what I love the most about our house.  It's a covered patio, with fans, lights, a table and chairs, and lots of plants.  It's not screened, so we are open to the nature that surrounds us.  Just sitting out there cheers me.  Sometimes we are visited by critters, including lizards, frogs, raccoons, armadillos, and lots of birds. Occasionally, birds will nest in a plant on the patio.  I watch as the mom and dad busily build the nest; I wait for the appearance of eggs, mom and dad taking turns sitting on the eggs, babies hatching, mom and dad feeding the tiny arrivals.  I hear the faint chirping of the newborns and hope that I will be around to watch as the parents urge the little ones to leave the nest.  I've seen that nest-leaving operation only once, but it was a beautiful and life affirming event.   A few months ago, I noticed the frantic activity that accompanies nest building.  Two Carolina Wrens were tearing back an...

My husband has an enlarged heart, also known as Hypertrophic Cardiomyopathy.   In the past few years, he has noticed increased symptoms associated with that condition, especially a shortness of breath when he plays tennis or mows the lawn.  His cardiologist recommended surgery to reduce his symptoms.  She referred us to another cardiologist who has performed the surgery, a cardiac ablation, hundreds of times.  While the cardiac ablation was explained to me many times, I confess that I still have trouble understanding all of it, so here's a reference if you are interested:  Cardiac Catheter Ablation (baptisthealth.com) .  The bottom line, and most significant detail about this procedure, is that it is minimally invasive; it should require at most an overnight stay in the hospital for observation.  This all sounded good to us, so the surgery was scheduled.  I won't bore you with all the details of every test, exam, paperwork, bloodwork, MR...

I've noticed that my memory has been failing a bit over the last couple of years.  There are lots of reasons for this, I'm sure.  I'm getting older, which is certainly preferable to getting dead.  I'm no longer challenged by daily tasks that I faced in my career.   I was a librarian and an administrator at the college where I worked in the last twenty years of employment.   I retired two and a half years ago.  I have to say that  I miss my colleagues, I miss the challenges and the laughter, the projects, the successes, and even the failures that never failed to teach me something.   Between my retirement and the pandemic, my social interactions have diminished significantly.  That has been hard.  But, back to my memory concerns.  I discussed this with my primary care provider.  She encouraged me to have a "neurobehavioral status exam" to assess my knowledge, attention, memory, and assorted other brain related fun...