Martha at the dam.
Hi, Everyone,
So you’ll recall that I’m posting free sample chapters from my free PDF-book, The Martha Chronicles, the story of my wife’s serious fall and lovely recovery this year.
You can get the whole book here: https://www.michaeljaytucker.com/basic-01
Anyway, the chapter below deals with a dam, and an outing, and a peeved wife. There’s also some sort of reference to dart guns. But I’ll leave all that to you to puzzle over.
I’m sure you’ll have it all worked out eftsoons. Or, failing that, at least eftsoonish.
Here ’tis:
The Dam...and Damn Exhaustion
My next post was February 20, 2022. It was brief but, I think, pretty self-explanatory. An aside, we never did manage to find a way around Martha’s tendency to overdo, even while she was healing. That’s partly because I’m just as bad at taking care of myself as she is. I, therefore, have a hard time telling her do things that I wouldn’t. Glass houses, and all that.
Ah well. One of these days we’ll grow up. But not too soon.
Oh, and the dam in the picture below? That’s the North San Gabriel Dam. I frequently run or walk across it. A lovely place for a little exercise, and with great views.
Anyway, here’s the post:
Hi, Everyone,
So, yet another update to the update of the updates…
Martha continues to heal, and she is getting better and better everyday. Increasingly, she uses the Rollator/Walker for getting about...even for *short* trips out of doors. If we can get a handicapped parking space, and if it is close to wherever we’re going, she just uses the walker and doesn’t bother with the wheelchair.
We still do need the wheelchair, however, for jaunts of any significant length. Yesterday, for instance, we went down to Roots (a local restaurant) for lunch, and the closest parking lot was clear across Georgetown Square. So, we bit the bullet and used the wheelchair.
Then, this morning, we got out for a pleasant roll/stroll at Booty’s Road Park, specifically at the base of the North San Gabriel Dam. It was quite nice and I will attach a picture of Martha below. (Yes. There is a fairly major lake on the other side of that big wall behind her. Sort of makes you nervous, sometimes. You wonder how long you could tread water, you know?)
But, the important thing was that we were able to get out, and we had a great time.
One thing we do have to be careful of, however, is tiredness, plus, well, the temptation to overdo. Martha doesn’t handle enforced inactivity well. So, she tends to...er...kinda want to do more than she should just yet.
Yesterday, for instance, she got up and did a laundry, using her walker to support herself, of course. Then, she wanted to change the sheets on the bed. I was able to do much of that, but, even so, she was standing for a good part of the process.
And, then, of course, it hit her later that day. She was pretty well exhausted and really didn’t recover until this morning.
What we learned, of course, was if she had done one task or the other...either the laundry or the bed...she would have been fine. But trying to do both was a chore too far, as it were.
The question for me, of course, is how to encourage Martha to...uh...keep this particular lesson in mind. If she doesn’t like inactivity she is even less fond of nagging husbands…
Say...anybody know where you can rent a tranquilizer dart gun? Asking for a friend.
Copyright©2022 Michael Jay Tucker