Getting Involved: Through Care and Giving I've Gotten This Far

These political parties! Maybe because the invent of social media in the ease of our hand-held devices has added a level of stimulus to overwhelming proportions when you’re just trying to relax in retirement.

The past few years have really put the tired in retirement.

It’s not just aging, and the hopeful chill relaxation of retirement, it’s that our world gets smaller. Add in a health crisis, debilitating diagnosis, disability smaller still. I see the small and powerful computers we keep with us at all times an overpowering match for a world gone small.

It can happen to anybody whose world gets small. Argue with me if you want, I have seen people live in the small world poverty effects, and wealth that should create total ease be existentially costly.

Same same caregiving. Doesn’t matter the socio-economic status caregiving by loved ones positively affects health. So much so for our life, disease is cured. That’s over statement, but I terminal disease was diagnosed with timeline that came and went, then was determined gone. Wrong diagnosis during COVID. Either way, we have exceeded expectation for living.

The diminished mobility and health effects of age just make the phone, news, social media so big.

Wanting to help. Wanting to do something different in my daily life to take those caregiver breaks. Mom being so upset through the information she was getting on her phone. I offered to go check-out politics in Bend, Oregon and report back.

For me, I decided to go in as I would everything I used to try to do - go hard - get involved - be open - be useful.

So that all happened fast. Next thing I know Im making this video running to by vice chair of Deschutes County Democrats.

Fleabane and the Flea Bane Connection

Starting out the year in the weeds, and now Fleabane, made me think of someone being a flea, acting a bane? Guess who? Because I imagined times in our past when names couldn’t be spoken. Code and covert came to be.

Setting up the AV studio in our living room for the 2nd time. Adding a new activity of daily living. Highlighting mom’s monthly wildflower was supposed to be easy, breezy time together - and then we talked about the “state of affairs”. Again, not saying the thing. Why not? What’s that all about? 

I was, am, embarrassingly hesitant. To the extent that I talked to both my parents about sharing our first video. It doesn’t feel like being nervous from just being new, or camera shy, or wanting mom to enjoy a new activity at 85.

It’s because I’m not supposed to feel this way. The whole reason we’re doing this system in the United States is because we’ve got to keep trying to do better, because we keep succeeding at it, continues to inspire us, and sometimes we the people gotta we the people.

No weeds. No fleas. No bane.

This is proof that our freedom of speech isn’t in jeopardy. And if, worst case scenario it really is, we gotta speak-up. We gotta use all that ridiculous team building. Human resource navigating. Interpersonal communicating. Conflict resolving. There’s a bunch of us that have so much training in the field of personal development that we just see the next step in the handbook.

I’m not even that good at it. I’d rather not compliment sandwich, and I love most sandwich.

If there’s a connection between wanting to do something new with mom that celebrates caregiving together 10 years pursuing happiness, and the 250 years into an experiment in society that declares independence and the inalienable rights including life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, this is it.

We’ve spoken openly, honestly, with integrity, and visible joy. That’s, in the world of caregiving, enough. 

Turns out to be more.

Turns out to be pretty good for us.

Like Fleabane in the yard.

Spotted Knapweed

Some weeds are actually quite attractive.  One of these is Centaurea biebersteinii or spotted knapweed which resembles Batchelor Buttons, also in the genus Centaurea.  Both species are in the Aster family, Asteraceae.  The short lived perennial has alternate leaves that are pinnately lobed and grey-green in color.  The flower heads lack disk flowers but have numerous thread-like pink to purplish pink ray flowers (see photo below). The head is subtended by distinctive bracts that are ovate in shape tapering to a black tip.  Bloom time lasts from mid-summer into early fall followed by the development of achenes (fruits) that have a crown of bristles on top that aid in disbursement.  The roots produce a toxin that can destroy the root systems of other plants thus contributing to the invasiveness of the species.  Spotted knapweed occurs along roadsides, railroad tracks, waste areas, eroding slopes, pastures, abandoned fields and vacant lots in cities.  Naturally occurring in Eastern Europe, it was introduced into North America in the 1890’s and now appears widespread across U.S. and Canada  It does have some redeeming characteristics in that the flowers attract long tongued bees, and butterflies.