Yard Art

Major surgery at age 78 is not undertaken lightly. In fact, in the weeks leading up to my hip joint replacement surgery on May 1, my spirits were low. Feelings of helplessness plagued me and I doubted my ability to make yet another comeback. Going into surgery with doubts does not promote healing.

I knew I had to pull myself out of negative space, so I called Nancy. If anyone can bolster one’s confidence, it’s Nancy. What’s more, she never fails to say something funny and set me laughing. Thanks to her voice over a long distance, my courage returned.

Now, three weeks into recovery, my confidence is back. I can walk without a cane. I ventured out to observe Dennis’s garden this afternoon. I baked a loaf of sourdough bread. I made soup and cornbread. I can get in and out of the car without assistance.

What’s more my sense of whimsy and humor is back. Yesterday on the way back from town I noticed a large green ball resting incongruously in the grass by our county road. Neither Dennis nor I mentioned the ball, but as we drove along, I imagined someone stopping to retrieve that ball. I imagined why that person would want it and what would become of it.

This morning I looked out a front window and was amazed to see the green ball resting on the base of a birdbath whose basin broke years ago.

Dennis confessed that he had gone back to retrieve it. Little had I imagined that ball would end up as yard art at my house. It tickles my funny bone. Now we will watch to see how long it takes the wind to carry the ball to someone else who might need a bit of humor in their life.

Copyright 2014 by Shirley Domer

Foresight

I’m calling it foresight, but really it was just dumb luck that we were prepared in an important way for my hip replacement surgery and for aging in general.

Several years ago Dennis and I decided to go to the Lawrence Home Show, where building contractors and suppliers of plumbing, flooring, and other materials related to the home set up information booths about their products and services.  Our being there was an odd choice, because we had no home improvement project in mind.

Wandering down an aisle we came upon a remodeling contractor’s booth hawking remodeling for handicapped accessibility. A personable fellow stopped us and asked if our bathroom was handicapped accessible. Heck, no, it wasn’t, we answered.

Our two-bathroom house had a bathtub on the second floor and a monstrous tub-shower on the first. The tub-shower was one gigantic piece of molded plastic. Both Dennis and I prefer showers and climbed into the tub-shower every day. I often banged my shin climbing in and despised the plastic-coated shelf rack suspended from the fixed shower head. 

In a twinkling we were making an appointment for the bathroom designer to look at our bathroom and create a plan. The upshot is that the bathroom was gutted and rebuilt. The door frame was even enlarged to accommodate a wheelchair. For both Dennis and me, though, the crowning glory was the new walk-in shower, complete with seat, two grab bars, and a European-style removable shower head.

We’ve enjoyed this shower for years now, but have never really needed its accoutrements until my hip replacement surgery two-and-a-half weeks ago. Without this shower I would have had to be content with basin baths for months to come.

After surgery I was required to use a walker to get around, putting no more than 25 percent of my weight on the new hip. Thanks to bathroom remodeling, I could get my walker right to the shower door, take hold of the grab bar, and sit on the bench. The removable shower head made it possible to precisely bathe without injuring my hip.

Now that I’m walking without assistance I can stand in the shower again, but the grab bars are essential for getting in and out.

I’m thankful for our “foresight;” it helps make it possible for us to stay in our beloved home as we age.

Copyright 2014 by Shirley Domer

Frost Protection

We had not anticipated having to protect our tender garden plants from frost on May 15. Our last frost date used to be May 15, but in recent years our zone has changed from 5 to 6 with a last frost date of April 15. Nonetheless, yesterday’s weather forecast called for night temperatures dipping to 32º F. That is enough to kill tender plants such as potatoes, peppers, and tomatoes.

Late in the afternoon Dennis unearthed our row covers from the barn and broke open a couple of straw bales. He started with the potatoes.

He stretched row covers over the plants and topped them with loose straw. He also put bricks on top of the old coffee cans that shelter the young pepper plants.

Next he scattered straw liberally over the young tomato plants after removing their cages. He hadn't yet protected the ones still in cages at the right when he took this photo.

He threw an old blanket over the stock tank where he had just planted a Sun Gold tomato.

That’s all that was needed. Broccoli, peas, onions, shallots, and garlic are frost hardy.

As it turned out, we thought that only people who live in town had frost. We didn’t see any out here in the hills, but, when Dennis uncovered things this morning, he found the top two inches of the tomatoes were frost-bitten. Because the tomatoes are about a foot tall, they will recover. If Dennis hadn't protected the tender plants, they all would have been ruined.

Copyright 2014 by Shirley Domer

What If?

One great thing about convalescence is that I have plenty of time to read and think. Sometimes this leads to a mental break-through, a putting-things-together moment, a flash of insight.

It started when my pal Linda sent me a link to “Grammar, Identity, and the Dark Side of the Subjunctive.”* Watching this TEDx video got me thinking about the difference between optimist and pessimism.

The subjunctive is used to express unreality in its various forms ­ our wishes, hopes, judgments, and much more. It expresses our “if only” and our “what if?” If only often looks to the past: “If only I hadn’t developed rheumatoid arthritis, I would be a different woman today.”  That’s the dark side of the subjunctive. What if, on the other hand, often ponders questions about the future, such as“Would strawberries thrive if we planted them in the stock tank?”

Trying to envision life without rheumatoid arthritis would be not only nonproductive, but also embittering, and I refuse to go there. I’m sticking with reality and possibilities, such as picking strawberries without bending to the ground.

In the meantime, my hip is healing well and I’m getting better every day. So, if your hip is worn out and causing misery, what if you get a hip replacement? It is much easier than you may fear.

*Sorry, I can't seem to create a viable link to this presentation, but it's easy to find on YouTube.

More Getting Ready

Highly motivated to finish a wall hanging before I go to the hospital tomorrow, I solicited Dennis’s help in hanging it on the living room wall. To be properly displayed it should be hanging in a window, but there isn’t time to figure out how to suspend it, so this is its temporary home.

This hanging was inspired by a window in Delft’s Oude Kerk. The view is toward the street from inside the church. Tree branches are barely visible in the lower part of the hanging. If it were hanging in a window, the branches would be more prominent. Even this close up photo doesn’t do the branches justice.

That’s all right for now. I’ll be back in a couple of weeks with plenty of time to find the right way of making it a window hanging. For the time being I feel satisfied to have completed a piece too long in the works.

This will be my last post for a while. I will be in our wonderful Lawrence Memorial Hospital for several days and then move to a rehabilitation facility until I get used to my new hip.

In the meantime, please send me you positive thoughts.

Copyright 2014 by Shirley Domer

Getting Ready

Hip joint replacement surgery is scheduled for day after tomorrow, so we’re getting ready. I attended a joint replacement class at Lawrence Memorial Hospital, one of the top 100 hospitals in the country, and brought home a notebook full of information about hip replacement, after care, and rehabilitation. With the help of this notebook, this evening we have been preparing for my return from the hospital.

After hip joint replacement one must not allow the knee to be higher than the hip for several week. The notebook says that one must not sit on a chair lower than 22 inches. That is considerably higher than normal chairs. Dennis has been measuring the height of all the seating I plan to use after surgery.

He adjusted the legs of the elevated toilet seat, graciously has loaned by Linda, to exactly 22 inches.

He checked the height of the foam cushions I bought at Hancock Fabrics to put in the seat of my dining chair. Twenty-two inches.

He removed the cushion from one of the living room chairs and placed it on the cushion of the matching chair, and measured. Sure enough, 22 inches.

Dennis went to the basement and brought up a walker that I acquired after a foot surgery, but never used. He also brought up a cane whose origin I can’t remember.

Finally, I got out the ice bag cover I made when I had foot surgery. Its two sides hold two one-quart plastic bags full of crushed ice.  I will need this to control pain and swelling in my hip.

Before I come home after surgery, Dennis will roll up the two carpets and stow them away so they will not be obstacles as I move about. I’m not sure how we will keep Annie from being an obstacle, but I think if we put her bed in an out-of-the-way place, she won’t trip me up.

Here’s the thing: getting ready helps one go into a difficult ordeal with greater confidence. In the case of my upcoming operation, success depends not only on the skill of the surgeon, nursing care, and physical therapy – it depends on the patient doing what she can to be prepared with the help of one good man.

Copyright 2014 by Shirley Domer

Inspiration

Something about travel opens my mind to creative impulses, maybe because I’m away from normal responsibilities and not preoccupied with trivia such as laundry and grocery lists. At any rate, during our trip to Tucson I had the urge to create more wall hangings interpreting in fabric what I had seen there.

Before we traveled to Delft in The Netherlands several years ago I had never made a wall hanging. In Delft I was so struck by the street designs that I came home and started sewing my versions of what I had seen. For example, here are two of the two pieces I made, the one on the left a fragment of sidewalk and on the right the courtyard in front of the University of Delft library.

Visiting the Tucson Museum of Art I was similarly inspired by the exhibit “Rose Cabat at 100: A Retrospective Exhibition of Ceramics.” Inspiration came not only from the shapes and colors of the ceramic pieces but also from the way they were displayed.

Suddenly I could see in my mind a wall hanging of white silk with a little grey silk and small appliqués of vase shapes in all those gorgeous colors. Right away I began to think about how to go about making it.

It happened again on the flight from Tucson to Dallas. The geometric patterns of irrigated fields in west Texas as seen from the sky inspired me to interpret them in fabric.

Constructing a wall hanging based on this scene would be challenging. How would I create all those circles? Appliqué, certainly, but what kind of fabric? These questions entertained me all the way to Dallas.

These ideas probably will never become reality, but the inspirations lift my spirit. My wrecked hands probably couldn’t do the detailed work required, but I can dream about doing it, and that is almost as good.

Copyright 2014 by Shirley Domer