Notes on Life #6

Each time I write a "Notes on Life" blog I check back to see when the last one was written to determine what I need to include. It's been quite a few months since the last "Notes on Life." These blogs are a personal diary of things happening in our daily life. It's been a tough summer with Patrick's illness, but life always gives us a mix of happy times and trying times, so there is still much to celebrate.

Elizabeth Faith Carrabello

Elizabeth Faith

The most exciting news is that our fourth grandchild, Elizabeth Faith Carrabello was born July 28. She is beautiful and looks quite a bit like her siblings. She was born with slight jaundice like her sister, Sofia, so she spent her first few days sunbathing under the UV lights. She's much better now and home with the family.

Sofia is slowly adjusting to not being the baby anymore, although I don't think she likes being demoted. The boys are wonderful with the baby, very attentive and helpful. So, Elizabeth seems to be settling in nicely.

Shari and Patrick

ALS Fundraiser at Zia's
In August, an old friend of Patrick's, Shari Fulton, held a fundraiser for our ALS Walk Team Timmons. She is the owner of the wonderful Zia's in the El Dorado Town Center. If you haven't been there, I highly recommend you head over.

Zia's has homemade gelato, cappuccino and pastries. I think my grandsons tried each and every item, except the cappuccino (trust me they don't need caffeine).  A big thanks to Shari for hosting this event, Tina for organizing it and Corrinne who managed the raffle. The event brought in over $1,000 for the Sacramento ALS Association! I've included some of the photos from the event, some are mine and some are by Dara Fong of Fongfotos.com. Dara's are the better ones!



Patrick and the Fabulous Tina

 The Blue Shield campus is nearby and Patrick was able to see quite a few of his Blue Shield friends. The week before the fundraiser, Rob Geyer, Senior Vice President at Blue Shield, did the ice bucket challenge for Patrick and challenged some other staff members to join the cause. So at the Zia's event Bill Brown, Desmond Moynihan and Paul Vota, all took the ice bucket challenge, in front of the crowd gathered for the Thursday night concert series. Funny how things are viewed by children, Anthony told his mom that grandpa is famous!

Additional ice bucket challenges were held in Patrick's honor at all the Blue Shield locations from El Dorado Hills to Southern California and San Francisco. We received videos from all the different challenges and enjoyed watching them all. The Blue Shield employees continue to be such tremendous supporters of Patrick and the ALS Walk and we look forward to seeing many of them on October 4th- at the 2014 Walk to Defeat ALS! Here is Rob Geyer's Ice Bucket Challenge:

 

And here are the challenged... Desmond, Bill and Paul in response:




Before Pic: Desmond, Bill and Paul




After Pic: Desmond, Bill and Paul


My mother taught me at young age to send thank you cards. Frankly, I'm embarrassed that I've neglected so many over the past year. Honestly, the amount of thank you cards I owe to so many people is a bit overwhelming. So, to all of you who supported the walk, took the ice bucket challenge, dropped by meals, shared your time, sent us notes and emails... and the list goes on, please know that we are very touched by all these gestures. They don't go unnoticed and are not unappreciated.


Christian, Caitlin, Patrick, Cheryl & Anthony
 

Grandkid Craziness

Paul and Patrick - Blues Bros
 




Shawn Rogan and Family

Grandsons: Football, Baseball, and Learning to Get Back Up
Our grandson, Anthony, has played football for the past two years. He loves all things football and during football season its all he talks about. This year his younger brother, Christian, also tried out for the football team. The two boys went to football camp and spent a couple weeks at tryouts. Much to our shock both of the boys were cut from their respective teams (Christian is 6 and Anthony is 9). I think Christian likely didn't make the team because he thought tackling was "hugging" and he liked to hug :). Yes, he told me this one night after practice.

As a mom, when your child suffers these types of bumps in the road, you want to shelter them from the pain. Let me tell you as a grandmother, you really just want blood. My initial response to Corrinne after hearing the news was, "What the h***!" No, I didn't go crazy and start screaming at people - not really my style, however tempting. So, I sat back and mulled it over. A few days after the news Anthony told me, "I'm going to try out for football next year, grandma." He wasn't mad or bitter, he just wanted to be a football player. So, he would shake off the dust and try again next year. I was so proud of him in that moment, more proud of him than me, since I had been contemplating nasty retributions for the league. The truth is that he likely learned more from this experience than he could have ever learned by making the team. I want my grandchildren to be strong because I know life isn't always "fair" and there will be bumps in the road, challenges to meet and times when they have to get back up and dust themselves off.

So, no football games this year.... but the boys opted for baseball, a sport I'm much more familiar with having played about seven years of softball in my youth. We watched them play last week, and you know what? Anthony is a natural! Perhaps there are multiple silver linings in this story. Christian, well, he's cute and looks good in the uniform:)  Because I am a proud grandma, and this is my blog, here are some recent photos....

Anthony

Anthony the Catcher

Christian,Cute as Ever

San Francisco, Museums and Cemeteries


At the De Young Museum

We spent a weekend in San Francisco last month. It's a trip we'd been trying to go on for months. Caitlin wanted to visit the Asian Art museum and we wanted to track down some of our ancestors graves. We visited the De Young Museum, which I had never fully explored. The last time we went was to see the King Tut Exhibit and we didn't spend much time in the other sections of the museum. Now, Caitlin is quite a museum lover, so we've traversed a few over the years. She can spend hours looking around. I remember years ago taking her to the Met in New York, and she didn't want to leave so we stayed until closing. In my case, I enjoy visiting museums, but not to the extent that she does. I tend to wander ahead of Caitlin and Patrick. They seem to connect at museums, discussing different pieces and such. My enjoyment often comes from watching them, they always seem to be engrossed.

Us at Golden Gate Park

So, if you're a museum connoisseur you know that the Asian Art Museum is not the De Young Museum. The truth is I had tickets to the De Young so we talked Caitlin into going there instead of the Asian Art Museum. Well, she liked the De Young but she felt it wasn't near as nice as some of the others she visited. So we owe her a trip to the Asian Art Museum, which she heard is one of the best.


Emperor Norton

The other part of this trip was to visit some of our family graves in Colma. My mother was raised in San Francisco and her parents are buried in Colma. So we visited my grandparents graves, which I haven't been to since I was a child. Patrick's 3rd great grandparents and various uncles and cousins are also buried there. This part of his family comes from Scotland and they worked on the Trolley Cars in San Francisco. Caitlin was a great sport, considering that visiting cemeteries is not everyone's idea of a fun afternoon. However, she found the grave of Joshua Norton, the self proclaimed Emperor of the United States and Protector of Mexico. She had read about him and insisted we track down his grave. He was a bit nutty for his time (1800's), stating that a tunnel should be built under the San Francisco Bay and a bridge built to crossover. :)

Our stay at the Embassy Suites was a challenging one. The hotel was recently renovated and the Internet description did not reflect the changes made to the handicapped rooms. So upon our arrival we found that the king bed we expected was now a queen. Apparently this was a change to allow for more space on the sides of the bed. The trouble is, with ALS, rolling over in bed is challenging, so you roll with difficulty but can't shift back - so a larger bed makes this more manageable. There was nothing the hotel could do because all the handicapped rooms were changed to queen beds and the website information had not caught up with the renovations. So we decided to make it work.

I won't tell you all the problems we had with the room, starting with a constant climate of 80 degrees, which we later found out was because the renovations blocked some of the ducts and they weren't sure how to fix the problem, to a television that didn't work. It is the first time I've ever complained about a room, the manager was empathetic, knew the issues and did credit us the stay. I will say, however, that it taught me a few truths about handicapped hotel rooms:

#1 - Don't trust the hotel website, call and find out if any changes have been made and what the bathroom looks like.

#2 - 'Handicapped room' can mean a lot of different things. For an ALS person, merely putting grab bars in the bathroom does not make it a usable bathroom. I've seen many a handicapped bathroom with a tub/shower combo with grab bars - how exactly does a wheelchair bound person use that?

#3 - ADA does not require all handicapped rooms to be the same, just that they have certain features. So some rooms work better than others. Where the sink is located in proximity to the toilet can make a tremendous difference. In the Embassy Suites room they likely added the roll-in shower to the bathroom because there was a strange slope from the hallway into the bath, quite noticeable and for someone using a walker it forces them off-balance.

#4 - Having specific needs makes it difficult to make changes at the last minute. We could have potentially changed hotels but the chances that a handicapped room with a roll-in shower was available at the last minute was slim.

Funny thing is even with the nightmare hotel room, we had such a great time. The hotel is right on the bay shore near the airport, so there was a lovely view of the bay from the hotel restaurant. The museum and genealogy trek was fun and on Sunday we had coffee with Desmond and Sherrie in Marin County. So, all and all a good trip.

The Quest for a Dog
We are dog people, we love waggly tails, occasional licks and someone to pet. Since Roxie's passing a few months back, the house is awfully quiet with no one to greet us at the door. So we've been on the look out for a new furry Timmons' member. Really it's a crusade, we visit online and in person at all the local shelters on a regular basis. A couple weeks back Patrick found a pug named "Charlie" at the San Francisco SPCA. We like pugs, Denise, my sister, has them and they are funny. Oh, I should have said being funny is one of our top dog requirements.

So we called the shelter, paid $25 and put the dog on hold for 24 hours. The next day we headed to San Francisco to get our new dog, and everyone was super excited. This was a cute dog, tongue hanging out in the picture and everything. We had to get to the shelter by 5pm which seemed easy, leaving at 1pm, but unfortunately there was a major accident going into the city which caused us to take an alternate route through Marin County. This caused a lot of stress, but we did arrive at the shelter at 4:30pm, just in time to see our new dog.

The staff put us in a room with Charlie the pug, gave us a bowl of treats and left. I can tell you the only thing in that room that had one ounce of interest to Charlie was the bowl of treats. Now mind you I like a good treat too, but wow I've never been so snubbed by a dog. I sat down and petted Charlie, and his reaction was to get up and go sit somewhere else. I even called my sister and asked her about pug behavior. Anyway, to make a long story short, we are still looking for a dog... preferably one that likes us.

Our second dog adoption story, is an owner surrender of a beautiful yellow lab. We went to the Lab Rescue day at Petsmart and met a beautiful yellow lab named Sammy whose owner traveled often and couldn't devote enough time to him. We played with him for a good long time and I told the owner, "we'll take him." Well, I guess I really caught him off guard because he said, "now?, I didn't think I'd say goodbye here." So, I backed off, gave him my contact information and told him he could come see our house if it would make him more comfortable. Anyway, we have yet to hear from him... sigh...

I think we're flexible, but there just isn't a lot of variety out there these days . We have to be somewhat selective because we have small grandchildren, so a friendly, predictable breed is what we're looking for. Yes, we love the labs and we did put our application in again with the Lab Rescue. It's likely that we will adopt a lab but our hope was to potentially adopt two dogs - perhaps a lab and a smaller dog - hence the pug.  We'll keep you posted on the dog front.

A Few Side Notes:
We've decided to volunteer with the Lab Rescue transporting labs to and from appointments, foster families etc. It gives us a volunteer job and we get to spend it with some furry friends. So we will get to do some petting soon enough.

We continue to do Sunday Family Dinners. Here are some photos from past dinners.


Christian with a Bump

Reading the Headlines

Patrick and His Girls

Justin and Sofia

Sofia

Anthony, I think

I found a blow-up turkey for Thanksgiving! Yep, I'm super excited. So now I'll have blow-ups on the front lawn from Oct 1 - Jan 1, yippee!

Hope this blog finds you happy and in good health!