Scary Condo Truths

 Lately, with what  many seniors who give up the "family farm" to live in a condo, are learning, you have elected amateur councils running whole hugely costly building complexes. Most of these elected officials are untrained in the skills of managing multi-million dollar edifices. Why they can't be trained or why they aren't, is a crisis that will perhaps change in a society where condo life is becoming common. Some innocent buyers think that their new home has everything in place and that magically it will all be taken care of. Not so. You will be taking care of it. You will be electing a council of people from among yourselves to do that job. They will determine how your money will be spent. The decisions these volunteers make are no minor matters. Most developments hire a management company and their personnel also, are often only lightly trained to deal with matters that can exceed their capabilities. Management needs to be carefully hired. The state of each strata structure depends solely upon the decisions that this representation comprised of owner councils and professional management makes. The security, safety, operational systems, and more  become the prime responsibility of these few individuals for the many. Expenses of huge residential properties runs high. It also seems that suddenly there arises such bodies to further extrude expense as those engaging in various kinds of attentions necessary to the building itself arise: fire inspections, cleaning, gardening, plumbing, wiring, security, insurance, lighting, assessments of various kinds: the list goes on and on. The building councils also become entangled in on-site personal disputes and other issues connected with group living. Councils are volunteers and their lives are taken up with the attention to caring for those who are fellow residents. It is a big job. As happens often, there can be personal issues between neighbours that are not easily settled and which are certainly not the responsibility of councils to police, but since there is no one else to report an offense or offensive situation to, the council members do become involved  unwittingly and unwillingly. Sometimes at condo meetings, individuals behave in inappropriate ways because of issues they are frustrated over. The solutions to these matters are not easily solved and certainly councils comprised of people who are not paid nor trained specifically, find this difficult or impossible.(I wonder why we can't have official ombudspersons.) Many owners of new condos, do not read the fine print before they purchase their beautifully appointed units. They need to understand shared living and what that means. Shared living is just that. Everyone in that building owns it and is responsible for it. Period. An elected council does the job for everyone in the building and if that job requires money, you pay. I would advise anyone who plans to own a condo to be very well informed before signing on the dotted line. There will be laws, by-laws and rules and these can be changed but not easily, and if so, only by vote.The decisions are firm and fines can be made when the rules, laws and so on, are not adhered to. Appeals can be made but with guidelines. Anarchists can bow out in condo life! It's an "us" not a "me" situation. The condo lifestyle requires a lot of cooperation, coordination, comprehension and very often concession to things that you do not especially want. Your realtor or developer has the fine print. Make sure you go over it carefully. What you see might not be what you get or want, but if you own, you have to live with it. Read the fine print. Please.

Food On Wheels

Grocery delivery isn't something new. I recall, as a child, my mother rushing out the door to join the other ladies of the neighborhood to select fresh goods provided by the Chinese vegetable man whose black van came regularly to our street. Milk and other dairy produce  was delivered on order to our door step. The breadman came to the door bringing baked loaves and other  items. Trips to the butcher shop and those to get canned goods, were the only shopping outings. When super markets arrived on the scene, shoppers flocked to them to buy everything in one store, everything from socks to pots and chocolates to brisket. Today, a new style, based on the old one, has arrived. The modern grocery store shopper can sit at his/her computer and order from a variety of ways, groceries to be delivered right to their door. A personal shopper will select, according to your specifications, what you put on your list. If there is a substitution, it is to your advantage, not the other way around. I am sold on this form of shopping now that I have experienced it. The fresh items that came were flawless, and frozen goods arrived in special containers to keep them solid. I live in a condo and the items came through without hassle, the tricky security system, to my personal door and were carried in to the counter top. Tipping is not allowed, and since you pay by card, there is no fiddling with coinage to be bothered with. What I like best, is that I don't have to take my car out and struggle in a busy lot, to find a parking spot, juggle a basket along the store aisle and then wait in a long line to pay. Everything is completed on my computer and all I have to do is put the groceries away when they come to my kitchen. Easy peasy. While this style isn't for those who love to squeeze tomatoes, shelf gaze or forage, it's ideal in my book. There is planning required, the store I chose allows me to select from the flyer and from all departments, and I may even return things that do not suit. Plastic bags are returned for recycling and the courtesy of the delivery man is second to none. It's a saving even when paying for delivery, a nominal cost. I don't pay for gas, wear and tear on my car. I do not pick up items I don't really need. I don't need to wrangle a basket to my car trunk and back in the rain and cold or subject my nice car to the dents and scrapes of careless people I park beside. I enjoy shopping now that it is so easy and convenient and safe.  Who wouldn't?

Family Doctoring

Family doctor has become an archaic term. There are so few, if any,"family doctors", that when you are asked that question, it's actually embarrassing. Most people other than pregnant women who need on-going care, seldom see the same medical doctor in the clinic more than a few uninterrupted times. It's not to say, it's the doctors' faults. It is to say that medical services are so changed that our attitudes have to, also. When I moved to a new community previously, I asked around if someone could recommend a "good" doctor. The names I was given, I called, but they were not taking new patients. I called the local hospital and was given more names of doctors accepting new patients, but when I phoned, I went on a waiting list. If you are fussy and want a female doctor as many females do, rightly or wrongly, it's a personal and legitimate choice, you may not find one. Many female doctors will attend pregnant women only and state it on their listings. When I moved again  to this new community, even though I didn't need a doctor other than for minor prescriptions, I had to ask a friend to accompany me to ask her doctor if I might become a patient. I talked to the front desk who seemed to be doing the selection process among other matters such as asking registered patients what their problems were before seeing the doctor. Triage by amateur? Many of these folks at reception desks seem to take on work that belies their actual knowledge and training, but that's the system and just try to get past it.  I was very grateful for my friend's recommendation because the doctor was female and although some distance away, reported to be "good". "Good" means that the particular patient and the doctor can establish some sort of rapport. When you have to tell a complete stranger in fifteen minutes, your most intimate physical and often emotional situation, you want someone who seems to understand your "aura". As it turned out, the young female doctor and I, unfortunately, did not find common ground and parted. Even then, not being able to speak to the doctor herself, I had to relate the matter to the office staff. The doctor was busy. And doctors are indeed busy, too busy, with patient loads that are gargantuan.What I had to do to avoid chagrin, was to changed my attitude and I sought out another medical clinic  purported to deal with situations such as my elder one. The clinic I have adopted has promised me a "family doctor" and put me on a waiting list. I don't really care who it is, I am not seeing the doctor for anything other than physical matters. In fact, going to an emergency ward in a hospital seems to be the best way to deal with an immediate problem. And if it requires that you lie down, call an ambulance. At least you can wait on a gurney if needed. There in hospital E you will find doctors who deal with matters quickly and have close facilities that otherwise would take months for your "family doctor" to apply to for access.

Chairperson

Being a chairperson is a daunting position that most of us have experienced. The first time is the worst. The kind of chairperson of which I speak, however, is not about leading a meeting,  but about a person who must sit and do everything in a chair. Me for one. My back being what it is these days, hopefully, on a temporary basis, asks, and not even politely, that I skitter about in a contraption called a rolling walker. It's a kind of skate board for elders or the disabled, temporary or not. At first, I found it awkward and embarrassing, but as the chair and I became better acquainted, it turned into a loyal steed. From it, in spite of the furniture that will likely show the chair's bad moments in small scuffs and accidental encounters for years, I am able to do the laundry, cook and clean. None of the above are easy, but with practice and necessity, the keywords, we, the chair and I, manage quite well. Tell that to my back. Please. The height of the conveyance is such that one must often rise, pain or no pain, to see what's going on. The matters of cooking, particularly demand that one look into pots and pans or microwave ovens, mine, the latter, fortunately at knee level for some architectural quirk no one has been able to fathom. Cooking in a chair is rather like pop-upping and downing. Housework done by chair is even less fun than on two sound legs and one strong back, but it is possible. You can actually wield a hand-held vacuum with some dexterity while sitting down. The best part, is being closer to the floor, and thus able to ferret out the elusive dust bunnies that lurk behind doors and in corners. Folding laundry, especially sheets, is quite another matter on wheels. I finally discovered that my chair has brakes. They keep me from flying across the room for no apparent reason. Sheet folding requires flapping dangerously over the vehicle's side and hoping not to glide or tip, thanks to the brakes. After the day is done: the household chores and all, being done more or less, there is grocery shopping, going to the bank and getting the mail. Grocery shopping was a whole new education when I discovered the huge benefits of on-line groceries that are chosen via photos and flyers, paid for by card and later delivered right to your door. That style will be a keeper even when the chair and I part. Banking now, can be done in the most unique ways, We all know about Paypal and its pals but now there is something called e transfers. You can actually pay someone by e mail and it's fantastic. Utterly. Going for the mail is the most fun. As I whiz down the hall in my bright blue metallic four-wheeler with its handy dandy basket out front full of anything, I may meet my co-residers and while they stand and chat, comfortably I sit. When the time comes to say farewell to my faithful chair steed, I might even miss it. But not the back aches.

Lasagna Siatica

While finding myself almost completely debilitated with a major case of lower back ache, something that revisits during the most inconvenient times, I decided that an easy plan for creating many time-saving dinners out of one, would be lasagna. When it had cooked, I could slice it into sections to place in handy cruets and put them in the freezer. Having mistakenly purchased a package of noodles that do not need pre-boiling before assembling, I thought I had found the perfect solution to convenience while enduring my current back/knee/ankle pain called sciatica. The latter word sounding deliciously Italian, most likely because of it's Latin roots, I felt justified in taking down the carton of spaghetti sauce thinking to embellishing it with whatever I had in the fridge. Yes, there was a side of red pepper, a sweet onion, some frozen spinach and the ever present jug of sherry over at the wine cooler. Not being able to spend time frying up the onion and meat, I simply dumped everything into a pot and let it simmer. I felt justified because Italians do this in making their wonderful sauces. Furthermore, no one was looking. Since I creep about woman-handling a walker with the basket intact, a left over from my dear mother's hip replacement days, I felt quite able to handle mere lasagna. Wrangling a walker cum basket in my miniature kitchen is no easy feat. I had forgotten to take the lastest dose of pain reliever and the walker and my kitchen stool presented a challenge when they met each other and had to be separated. Having wisely placed the pain reliever bottle in the walker basket, all I had to do was reach in and pop the top off and voila, no pain. Ha! Bending to retrieve the bottle from the miasma of assorted usefuls in the basket caused the sciatica to wake up and make itself known. Groaning loudly and struggling toward the fridge doors, there are two of them, I managed to knock over the step stool and trip over the walker but was able to regain balance avoiding hitting my cranium on the granite counter top. I captured a part can of tonic water and downed the pain pill. It required sitting in the walker momentarily to work, while feeling guilty about the bad language that escaped my lips over the fallen foot stool escapade. The pot of tomato sauce was splashing everywhere as I dug about in the freezer section and found four half empty packages of shredded cheese. Their dates were unknown and I didn't care to look. Since the sherry was near by, I grabbed the stubby little round bottle and maneuvered us all toward the stove, emptied a portion in that I hoped was one quarter of a cup. My fire alarm system demands that I keep the door open when I cook and since I had forgotten this step, it began to shriek. Ah, all we needed was a quasi coloratura soprano. Next time I have sciatica, I'm ordering in a pizza.

Bolt of Lightning

Sometimes in life, just when you think everything is close to perfect, from seemingly nowhere, a bolt of white lightning strikes. It can be a sudden accident, a piece of very bad news from afar, or like mine, a serious family health issue that occurs to a person very close.  The words, "it's a tumour and we are not sure, until we remove it, if it is cancerous" throws one suddenly into an unimaginable place. The stable world you once lived in, suddenly has a huge crack in it, a cavernous opening in the solid substance you thought you could trust, and you know you can't allow yourself fall into it. Why? You may be needed. You hear the news, but you don't believe it. It's just too much for your mind to process quickly. The worst is, that it is news, not about you, but about someone you love as much as life itself. You feel that if it were about you, you could deal with it in some cursory manner, but because it happens to someone else, you feel helpless. You are secondary to the problem. You nod and sit down and begin to think about the accompanying intricacies, possibilities, hopes if there are any of them, to be had. Your feelings are about as far down as they can get, but at the same time, you can't let go, you can see only the positives. It's human nature to seek goodness even if it's out of something so bad, it can barely be comprehended. We humans are strong and resilient creatures. We are survivors. We are flesh and blood and thus very delicate, but our strengths are to get through, no matter what. We are hopeful beasts who don't lie down and give up. We fight in some way. And further more, the negatives, if allowed to rule, would be too horrendous to process. But gradually, painfully, orderly, we sort through what  to do next: how to deal with this news, how we can help the individual who received the news about him/herself and who to call on if need be, for help. There are professionals trained to deal with these very things and we have to seek them out.  We try to find solutions to the problem with those knowledgeable, and that process happens over the next phase continuously. It takes a few days for everyone to come down to the realities facing us and those we love. We make a plan to follow whether formally or not. We gather around us those who care, and find great comfort in the sharing of our hopes and our efforts. The "bolt of lightning" that strikes can be used to give us the energy to do what we have to do.  And we do the best we can.

History of Gold

Those of Golden Age, have to be patient in many ways.  It's a time, that you are told,  you can impart the wisdom you have gained over a lifetime, to the younger. It's a tempting thought. But the young want and need, to live their lives in their way, and if mistakes are made, they become the valuable lessons in their lives, not the ones we had. So what does an elder pass on? The work of elders is to impart their histories so that in doing so, the younger may find something of personal value to hold and keep, and perhaps use, in some way on their life journeys. But, like learning the hard way, that flame burns, the best lessons are not tales from the past, but experiences formed in  the present. Personal histories of the aged, add colour and depth to young lives. The true value of learning from elders is to see oneself as the forefront of something very old and precious, very personal and creative. Even unsavory pasts work to do their job in converting bad experiences to corrections of that pattern. Each history provides building material for the young in determining their own destinies. It's a choice as to which bricks of knowledge will be used to construct that plan.  Elderly folk who become upset that their progeny don't take their specific advice shouldn't be concerned. They ought to assume that, like it or not, they did their part simply in telling the family history as they know it. That's lesson enough. It's more important that you offer it, than it be adopted. How do you present this elder gift of your past, the one only you can give? The young being so occupied in these times with work and family, histories told by elders have to be found in small opportunities for brief tales, told in old photos or recounted at family gatherings. Patience is required. Writing histories and keeping them aside is not only satisfying for elders who recount them, but also, marvelous memories for the young to discover later. When my mother died, and I had to dispose of  her effects, I found priceless bits of paper with small notes revealing things I had never known or been told. These hastily penned tiny journals on scraps of paper, don't need to be enhanced or edited.  They stand as recorded, just as the elder did them, complete with every curl of the pen, inflection of the word or glow of a yellowed photograph. Whether these histories in bits or whole, are tossed randomly into a worn suitcase, a shoe box or diligently glued into an elaborately styled album, they are equally perfect in their ways. Often times, it's not how artistic the forms are, but it's the immediateness of the words that charms the most. I have found old recipe books with spelling errors, food spots and margin notes to be far more interesting than some of the fancy scrapbooks with florals and doo dads attached. Just scribble your stories, collect the old pictures and tell your tales. They all make what we were, to what we are.