Routines: What Really Happens
After living in Alma, Arkansas for a year and a month, I can’t say I’ve established a routine for my days and weeks, but a general outline is slowly beginning to take shape.
Every other Monday, a home health aide comes by and stays with us from 10a to 4p. As predicted by the agency, we don’t have the same person from visit to visit. Additionally, there’s no guarantee that the aide will be vaccinated against Covid. The aide helps with some of the chores around the house including changing Mom’s bed, gathering up trash that’s accumulated in her bedroom, vacuuming her bedroom floor, cleaning the kitchen (including the floor), scrubbing Mom’s bathroom, and helping me get the trash out to the ditch as Mondays are trash days. The big chore that we want to accomplish is getting Mom to shower and we have spotty results on that front. It’s getting better, though.
Every other week is a pretty good pace for the visits. This will become more frequent as Mom’s condition worsens. One of the problems of having a different aide every visit is that the aide and I aren’t climbing a learning curve together. Every time, I need to explain the chores, show the aide where her tools are, and be available to support the aide when challenges arise. Of course, this impairs the benefit of the aide that’s suppose to accrue to me. Having a different aide most every visit doesn’t really effect Mom and she can’t remember things from one minute to the next, so there’s that. (Home healthcare is paid for by my brother. Thanks Barry!)
On Monday and Thursday mornings, I’m starting a class from Hadar (a Jewish learning organization) that’s titled “Re-reading the Torah with the Sefat Emet.” (Sefat Emet is a great Hasidic teacher.) The class runs through the end of the year. I’ll also be taking a shorter class in the evenings on midrash between now and the end of the year as well. It’s a Hadar class.
After my class on Thursday mornings, I have a one-on-one Torah Study session with a friend of mine from my synagogue in Madison.
On Thursday and Sunday afternoons, I play chess with a friend of mine from college. He’s about 300 points better than I am so it’s more like I’m taking a lesson. He lives in Denver and we play on chess.com. One of the great features of chess.com is the ability to get an analysis of the game afterwards that points out all your great (and not so great) moves.
On Friday afternoons, I attend Shabbat services with my friends from my synagogue in Madison and on Saturday morning, I attend Torah Study and services. —All over Zoom.
Once a month, on Sunday mornings, I join with the Men’s Havurah from the synagogue. A Havurah is a special interest group within a synagogue.
I’ll also start studying Mussar (a virtue-based approach to Jewish ethics and character development) with a friend I’ve made from Hadar. We haven’t set a schedule for that yet but will probably be meeting weekly. (She’s written a book that I’m reading and I’ll mention in my reading list below.)
My daily schedule is loosely structured. Every day I want to accomplish the following for myself:
Journal
Write
Study the Parsha
Study Hebrew
Study Yiddish
Study chess
Solve only one Sudoku puzzle
Solve only one crossword puzzle
Read
Watch one episode of Star Trek Next Generation
The reason I’ve put a cap on the sudokus and crosswords is that I’ve been binging on these puzzles and will do them all day long left to my own devices.
Other activities I want to spend less time on is searching for more movies to watch as I have ~7tb of movies and I’ve probably watched only 1tb of them. Recently, I had to buy a 12tb disk to hold them all. I also want to spend less time with the news and social media. The news tends to get me cranked up and my social media, which is limited to Twitter these days (@bjohnson), has some positive impact on me as I’ve curated my feed for positive Jewish life posts, but nevertheless, I find myself mindlessly scrolling if I’m not careful.
I don’t know how long my synagogue in Madison will continue to hold hybrid (in-person combined with online) services. I do know that it recently made a capital investment (for our synagogue) in a piece of technology called an Owl that dramatically enhances the hybrid experience. And I know that since starting our Zoom services, the synagogue has started serving a wider geography, from Madison to Berlin, German. We are also better serving our elderly and differently-abled membership. So maybe (fingers crossed) we’ll persist.
Which is great for me because the synagogue in Fort Smith, Arkansas still isn’t meeting face-to-face and has a Very Small Membership as one might expect. The synagogue in Fayetteville, Arkansas is larger and beginning to meet in person. But even when Covid restrictions are lifted, I’m unable to leave Mom by herself for more than 30m, so attending services at either synagogue is out of the question unless I increase the coverage we’re currently getting from home healthcare.
My synagogue has been very considerate about my circumstances. Besides offering hybrid services, I’ve been given opportunities to lead and facilitate meetings. Previously, I wrote about leading a meeting of the Men’s Havurah about the spiritual aspects of Jews making love. And for Simchat Torah (the anniversary of the day G-d gave us Torah) I led a discussion group about celebrating the holiday in a Sh’mita year. (Sh’mita comes every 7y and we are to leave our fields untended so the earth is renewed.)
Regarding crossword puzzles. I’m bound and determined to up my crossword puzzle game. The way the puzzles work in the New York Times, Mondays are the easiest puzzles and they get increasingly difficult throughout the week until Saturday when the hardest puzzles are published. Right now, I’m knocking out Monday puzzles in no time flat and am able to solve Tuesday puzzles. I haven’t ventured further into the week yet. Sometimes, I solve the puzzle on my phone, but mostly I solve them in puzzle books with a pencil.
Besides the crossword puzzles and chess, I’m spending a lot of time playing sudoku. No brag, just fact, I solve “expert level” puzzles. Sudoku works a different part of my brain than chess and crossword puzzles do. I think they are loads of fun.
The Television
Mom’s television gave out, so I was faced with the chore of buying a new one. My strategy was to go into Walmart and buy the cheapest, simplest television in the store and this I did. Nevertheless, we ended up with a much larger television than before and it has Roku built into it which is just fine with me as, years ago, two of my best friends bought me a Roku when I moved from California to Madison. Right away, I installed the TuneIn channel so Mom and I can listen to my favorite radio stations around the country and I’ve documented in a previous email how much radio means to me. (Right now, Mom and I are listening to WQXR, the classical station in NYC and Mom is becoming a big fan of its host, Terrance McKnight. Mom has good taste.) Next, I installed Spotify and since doing so I’m getting a lot more use of my subscription. Then, I installed my Amazon Prime account and have delved into the Jack Ryan series as I was once a fan of Tom Clancy. Amazon Prime also offers all, and I mean ALL, of the various permutations and combinations of Star Trek. I’m not much of a science fiction fanboy anymore, but it was a formative experience in my youth. By the way, speaking of science fiction, I’ve watched the first two episodes of Foundation and thinks it’s very good even though it has little to do with the books probably because it’s a challenge to distill thousands of pages of multiple novels into a limited run television series.
Holland Carney
Someone important in my life story recently passed away, Holland Carney, the person largely responsible for moving me from NYC to the Bay Area. When we were working together, she was a dear friend. She was super smart, had a very high emotional intelligence and was very funny to boot. May her memory be a blessing.
Psychiatry
It took me a year, but my psychiatric referral finally came through. I’ve been assigned a psychiatric nurse to manage my meds and a counselor for the talking part of the cure. I’ve “met” with the nurse already by telephone and my first appointment with my new counselor is coming up. The nurse affirmed I’m maxed out on my meds. He, the nurse, also affirmed I’m in a very difficult living circumstance right now and for the foreseeable future. The difficulties I’ve carried with me all the way from California persists and are being exacerbated by my living situation, especially my sleep hygiene. For example, I’ve previously written about how Mom wakes up in the middles of the night yelling for help. I can hear this very clearly over the baby monitor I’ve set up in our bedrooms, but would be able to hear her clearly even without the monitor. It is a very startling way to wake up and this might happen three or four times a night. The help Mom needs (a drink of water, turning up the heat, straightening her covers, getting her up to use the bathroom) take only minutes, but waking up from her crying out like that (Help me! Somebody help me!) tends to wind me up and it takes some time to come down from this interruption to my sleep. And there have been nights when I’ve helped her, returned to my room, read a chapter in my book and gone back to bed just to have her call out again before I even drop off to sleep. This produces a lot of wear and tear on me. Sometimes I’ll take a nap during the day, but most often I don’t.
Then there’s the bit where this crosses over into one of my psychiatric problems: I’ve been known to hallucinate a bit. I don’t see things but I do sometimes hear things and (oddly) smell things (usually cigars and watermelon). The way this manifests these days is that I’ll “imagine” that I hear Mom calling out when she hasn’t. I’ll “hear” something over the baby monitor that isn’t really there. Pile this on top of what actually happens during the course of the night and my sleep is wildly dysfunctional. — That can’t be good for me.
What I’m Reading
I’ve never been one to read multiple books at the same time but this habit is changing and I blame a reading partner I have back in Madison. (You know who you are.) Right now, these are the books I have underway:
Absolutely on Music by Haruki Murakami and Seiji Ozawa. It’s a very simple premise: Ozawa comes over to Murakami’s house and they listen to a couple of albums together and discuss. This is an excellent book for anyone into classical music. I wish I could find out what type of audio system Murakami has because I wouldn’t dare play Ozawa an album on anything less than a $10,000 system.
Putting It Together by James Lapine. This is the story of how the musical “Sunday In The Park With George” was created written by the co-creator.
The Choice of Happiness by Sundari Dembe, my study partner from one of the Hadar classes I took who, thank you synchronicity, lives in Lafayette, California, where my family first lived when we moved from New York. The book is a memoir of her wild adventures towards gaining enlightenment. (See Mussar above.)
On Repentance by Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik. I was introduced to Soloveitchik through my Hadar classes and am greatly impressed by the scope of his ideas.
Focusing on my study of the Parshat, and in the spirit of the Sh’mita year when we take a break from our usual pursuits, I’m reading new commentaries this year.
Mending the Heart, Tending the Soul (Directions to the Garden Within), by Gail Albert.
The Heart of the Torah, by Shia Held. Held is one of the founders of Hadar and I’ve taken a class with him that was focused on Teshuvah (see Soloveitchik).
The weekly drash of the Parsha from the Institue for Jewish Spirituality.
These three commentaries were recommended to me by my Torah Study partner in Madison, the one I speak with on Thursday mornings. He is a very wise man and has gifted me many new learnings and insights into the Torah. (Thanks, Don!)
But the novel I’m reading, with great gusto is actually an unpublished manuscript by one of my most dear friends from NYC. I was greatly honored when she asked me to read it for her and give her my comments. I’m up to chapter 4 and am enthralled. The author is one-half of the couple who gifted me my first Roku. (see above). Thank you Harry and Sara.
That’s all for now, friends. I have to go downstairs and make dinner.