Christmas Letter 2009

Christmas 2009
Greetings of the Season! It’s been awhile since I’ve written and caught everyone up on our family’s news. Last year was more than busy, and rather stressful to say the least, so the letter went by the wayside, and this letter will catch you all up.

The snow hasn’t hit yet as I sit here typing this on my MacBook the week after Thanksgiving. Last year we ended up with a record snowfall around Christmastime, and it caused many delays, and frustrations. Last winter was the heaviest snow we had seen in18 years, and it kept coming through the first few months of 2009.

The end of 2008 was a challenging year for our family. My job at the college came to an end on December 5th as I learned that my position after almost 9 years was being cut due to state budget cuts. After that the state required more cuts for colleges, and as the unemployment rate rose, the chance of getting rehired somewhere else became pretty bleak. Fortunately, I left with a 3-month severance, so didn’t have to hit the pavement until March. Still, it was pretty gloomy when I sent out dozens of résumés and heard nothing back for weeks at a time. I began collecting unemployment, and figuring out how to pay for health insurance.

Still, I had to turn my attention to more important things. My parents had been needing our help more now, and mom’s health had declined since October 2008 when we first found out that she had kidney disease. Dad had some fainting spells, and had been in the hospital awaiting a pacemaker implant. The morning after he checked into the hospital, he fell in his hospital room and broke his right hip. The snow made driving impossible for several days, but I managed to drive up to the hospital that morning to be with dad as he prepared for surgery to repair his hip. He was pretty heavily sedated to reduce the pain, but he was talking, though sounded a little confused; he looked at me and commented on my coat, thinking I was wearing mom’s coat, or maybe thinking I was mom. After surgery he was doing OK, and we began to make arrangements for him to stay at a convalescent hospital nearby for the long process of healing as soon as he was released from the hospital. The pacemaker implant was put on hold.

As Christmas approached, and the snow kept falling, Mom packed a bag and came to stay at our house for a few days. Sarah and I managed to finish our Christmas shopping, taking the bus to the mall, which was an adventure in itself. The roads were so bad that many people were counting on metro and buses were very crowded, and not really on schedule. We wrapped presents, made cookies and stayed warm and cozy inside, with occasional walks around the neighborhood, taking pictures of all the snow on the ground. I kept the van going most days, but some days it was impossible to get up to the hospital to see Dad as he still continued to recover from the surgery. We talked to him by phone, kept in contact with his nurse. On Christmas Day, the snow kept falling, and as we prepared to sit down to our Christmas dinner, we called Dad via speaker-phone to wish him a merry Christmas, and to say we wished he could be with us.

Dad’s surgery had gone well, but he still had a tube in his stomach and they would not feed him until his system kicked back into normal activity. He complained about being very hungry. The doctor allowed a small amount of food, but it made him sick so they stopped again, as his system just wasn’t doing what it needed to do. Late on the night of December 25th his body went into septic shock and he ended up in intensive care.

The day after Christmas I went up to see him and it was then that I found out that he had been moved to intensive care. He was on a ventilator and several other life support machines. I was shocked because the last time I talked to his nurse it sounded like maybe he was doing a little bit better. I decided to bring mom up to see him and we talked about how serious this had gotten, and wondered what would happen. By Saturday morning the next day, the IC doctor called me at home and told me the basic facts; Dad was “comfortable” and not in pain; his body had suffered greatly from the septic shock; judging by the xrays the doctor showed us, his lungs were working at a very low capacity without the ventilator, and the chances of him recovering at this point were nonexistent. We all went up to see him that morning. We sat with him for awhile. The kids went out and waited in the lobby. Dad had filled out an advance directive indicating under which circumstances he would want to be on life support, or not, for how long, etc., etc. After considering that, and what we thought he would want us to do, we thought it would be best to take him off all life support except for the ventilator, and let him go. He was one month shy of his 92nd birthday.

So, it was a very sad Christmas. Mom had some further issues with her kidneys in January and was in the hospital for several days. We held a small memorial gathering with friends and family for Dad at the clubhouse at Mom and Dad’s place on January 25th, and mom came home from the hospital just in time, the day before. My cousin Sandy came up from Modesto and stayed with mom, and Martha and Jack, other family from Jackson, came up for the memorial as well. Their presence was so very helpful. (I posted a memorial site for dad on http://www.legacy.com/gb2/default.aspx?bookid=455389470176&eid=viewgb_120109.) We are planning to go up to Lake Tahoe next summer to scatter dad’s ashes over the lake. He and mom met up there, and spent so many happy days up there throughout their lives together, and we thought it would be a fitting place for dad to be.

On a brighter note, Emma (mom) has made great strides in improving her health over the last several months. She has gone from almost needing weekly dialysis, to not needing it at all (she had only had it a few times when she had been in the hospital), decreasing her blood pressure meds and not needing to see the nephrologist any more than every 6 months. With chronic kidney disease, you have to limit your intake of potasium, protien and dairy. I had been teaching mom what foods she could and could not eat, and how to read nutritional labels when shopping at the grocery store. Now she is very careful about what she eats, and does a great job of taking care of herself. She has had some very difficult challenges this past year, and has come through them all quite well. I think she has discovered some strengths in herself that she didn’t know she had. On Mother’s Day we took mom out to the Skagit Valley, to “Tulip Town” to see the beautiful tulips. We had an unusually late tulip season around here (the Skagit Valley is known as a prime tulip-growing area). Mom even took a trip down to Modesto last summer to attend a Scharli family reunion, with the help of Sandy, and she enjoyed visiting her brother Louie, many nieces and nephews and several old friends.

Throughout the summer I kept looking for work, and had a few interviews. I did some volunteer graphic design work for the Shoreline Arts Council, and for a local city council candidate, our friend, Janet Way. A few of the job interviews I had looked promising, but then I was told they decided not to fill the position after all. A couple of prospects that began as full-time, turned into part-time temp offers. This became the typical scenario. In October I accepted a temp position figuring at least it was a JOB. So I have been employed as a graphic designer at a health supplement distributor full-time, temporarily for over 2 months. The prospects for permanent full-time are looking good, though I continue to apply for jobs that look promising. It is really good to be working again, and bringing in some money, and doing something useful.

Our daughter Sarah graduated from high school this past June and both her grandmothers were here for the festivities. Sarah has put off college for now, and enjoys working part time as a preschool teacher. She says about her preschool job that she has the “best job in the world!”. We bought her a very used Geo Prizm as a graduation present. She splurged and bought herself a nice digital camera, which she uses frequently to take pictures of the kids at the preschool. Sarah is still very interested in music (once again she was voted “most inspirational” among her choir classmates her senior year), and she hopes to be in the music program at Shoreline Community College and then transfer from there. But for now she is working, enjoying her new independence, and is one of the few people I know who seems to be having fun every single day.

Dan is enrolled in the film program at Seattle Central Community College, and loves it. He is living the life of a pauper, though, but fortunately he is a pretty frugal person by nature. With the help of some dedicated friends he makes occasional short films on the side which he hopes to submit to some film festivals. He also writes reviews on his blog, http://danhowescinephile.blogspot.com/. He’s not working much now, and the current job market has made it even tougher to find work. Dan spends his free time volunteering at the NW Film Forum on Capitol Hill, working in the box office, and occasionally you can find him volunteering at KEXP, Seattle’s hippest radio station.
 
Patrick and I got out to see a few plays last year; a production of Hamlet done by a very small theatre group on Capitol Hill in Seattle. And during Seattle’s Live Theatre Week last year, we attended 2 plays;The Three Musketeers at the Seattle Rep, and The Arabian Nights at the Balagan Theatre, one of our favorite local, small theatres in Seattle. During the Live Theatre Week you can get free tickets to shows. Theatre Puget Sound (TPS) sponsors it, and it’s a great way to get out and see some shows, and help support local theatre (donations are always welcome). Also saw Taming of the Shrew set in a trailer park, done outdoors by Wooden O Theatre Group. We also got away for a little camping last year in July. We went to the serene town of Sequim (pronounced “Squim”) on the Olympic Peninsula. We camped at the Dungeness Campground and spent one whole day hiking the 6-mile spit out to the Dungeness Lighthouse, and then, of course, hiked back. Walking on sand is not as easy as it may sound!  We toured the lighthouse, ate our packed lunches, and enjoyed the incredible views. We also attended the Lavender Festival in Sequim, which is a big deal there. Lavender farms are all around that area and they have tours in the summer, and lots of lavender products for sale. We also took a day trip to the Olympic National Forest and enjoyed a beautiful hike up to Sol Duc Falls, a few miles up the road from Sol Duc Hot Springs Resort, where we stopped for a relaxing soak for a few hours before heading back to our campsite in Sequim.

This summer for my birthday Pat took me to the Puyallup Fair. We spent the day wandering around the fair, going on rides, eating fair food, and that evening attended the Crosby, Stills and Nash concert. They were fantastic, and sang to a packed house.

Pat bought a Brinkman smoker last year and just loves to smoke various meats. This Thanksgiving he smoked a 16 lb. turkey and it was delicious! He first brined it in apple cider and salt for about 16 hours, and the next morning around 7am (Thanksgiving morning) he put it in the smoker. We thought it might take about 8-10 hours, but it took half that time! It might have been because of the special turkey cannon that he bought to place inside the turkey to speed up the cooking. That bird was smoked in 4 hours! We wrapped it up with towels and stuffed it into a cooler, then when we got to Lois and Kevin’s for dinner, we cooked it in the oven for about 1/2 an hour. It was great! Later in the week we enjoyed smoked turkey soup. We’re planning to smoke our Christmas bird, and now we know just how long to cook it with the handy-dandy turkey cannon. Oh boy, leftovers!

Pat has been doing much of the cooking lately since I have been working full time with an hour-long commute that doesn’t get me home ‘til sometime after 6pm. He has whipped up tasty dishes like turkey parmesan, chicken curry with cauliflower, chipotle chili and a tender pot roast, to name a few. He has discovered the joy of pressure cooking, and loves the fact that he can cook an entire pot roast dinner in about 40 minutes. Gadgets are definately an important part of his process; the instant-read thermometer is always within reach, along with our “bullet blender” and a cheese grater gadget that looks like a mini R2D2 and is perfect for grating hard cheeses like parmesan. We ended up buying a new dishwasher after our old one died back in February...the ol’ handwashing routine was getting a bit tedious.

Since I had so much time on my hands for most of this year being unemployed, I started a vegetable garden in the backyard, with Pat’s help of course, and with the help of our generous and inspiring neighbors down the street, the Peterka’s (they have dug up their entire yard, front and back, and turned it into a veg garden, and they raise chickens as well!). They helped me loosen the sod with their rented sod-cutter, so that we could begin digging up two 4ft. x16ft. beds in early spring. Pat did most of the digging with some help from Daniel ripping off the the sod. It had been over 20 years since we had grown veggies in our yard, and as I bought seeds, and planted, and dug in the compost to enrich the soil, and started the seedlings in paper egg cartons in the basement under lights, I began to feel a sense of renewal, and I found that it was kind of like therapy being out there in the garden tending the plots. As my seedlings grew, I felt so proud! We grew about 20 different things, with a pretty good rate of success. Since we had a nice warm summer, we got a huge amount of tomatoes (3 different kinds) and I made some freezer tomato sauce and some salsa. Had fresh lettuce every day for salad (5 different kinds!) Got several lovely buttercup squashes. And nice green beans. Spinach, leeks, and of course, at least two zucchini every day. Made pesto, jam and leek soup.

Our other outdoor adventure was moving our 8’x12’ shed accross the yard. It had been in the same place for about 20 years. We needed to move it because the spot it was in was blocking an area we wanted to open up to provide access to the backyard. We moved it to a level spot, to the upper part of the yard, south of the garden. Pat’s idea was to use a few 4” plastic pipes under the shed and slowly roll it across the yard using straps and a “come-along” winch. It took about a day and a half, but Daniel and Pat did it with no damage or injury, several inches at a time. We also cleaned the entire thing out and reorganized it so that we can find things! Pat constructed a special bike rack area for our bikes, and all of our garden tools are organized and easily accessable. Hopefully it will stay that way…!

I began making bread this summer, which I hadn’t done in years. Found a good recipe on a blog I follow. So, for a while at least, we had fresh bread for sandwiches and toast each week. Again, therapy. I found that the year had sort of taken it’s toll on me, and I realized that my sudden lack of employment, and the new responsibility of helping my mother out a lot, plus the loss of dad, had made me feel kind of like I was adrift, but also anchored by things that wouldn’t let go of me. I grieved...for loss of a parent, a job, purpose, and direction. But I also started to feel renewed by allowing myself to focus on some basic things, and tried to find a reason for every day. I still got up at 5:30 or 6:00 each morning. I still bathed and maintained a basic level of hygiene, and ate good food, and tried to get exercise by going for walks. But I also spent numerous hours on my laptop, looking for jobs, yes...but also, I think, sort of searching for something that was lost...or just wasting time. Thankfully, we had very nice weather this summer, and being outside was usually an option that saved me from completely wasting away in front of the computer.

I will leave you with good wishes for a great New Year, hope for Peace in the world, and remember to count your blessings...they’re all around you!

Love,
Patrick, Janis, Daniel and Sarah Howes

janisth@comcast.net
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