I Can Dream, Can't I?

I have really loved my time here in Spokane. I truly have fallen in love with the city. And while my health has certainly improved over the past several months, I find that I not having complete control over my home environment is causing me problems.



I don't really know how much greater my improvement would be if I could have a place of my own, but since there are no low-income apartments available for me here, I can't really test it out.

I have been looking on the USDA website for low-income housing for an apartment in a warmer climate since I have lived in USDA housing before and I really like it. It is generally much easier to get into than Section 8, and I especially love that it is available only in small towns. Small-town living has always been more my style. City life is not for me, although if I was going to live in a city, I think I would choose Spokane. 

The USDA website has a handy map that makes it easy to go in and search for apartments by state and county. So, where to start? Well, I really want to go to a warm climate, so I started out by thinking about a few of our family vacations to warmer climates. My husband had a construction business, so winter vacations were all we could do. In our early years, we couldn't usually afford vacations far from home, but later on we enjoyed a few nice ones in Gulf Shores, Alabama, and Corpus Christi and South Padre Island in Texas. I went in by counties and, to my surprise, found out that there was an available apartment 15 minutes away from South Padre Island, with only one person on the wait list.

I'm not sure it's something that will work out, but I am getting on the list. Who knows?

In Search of a Home

I'm back to looking for a home, for several reasons. I have so enjoyed getting to know Spokane and spending time around my son and his family. However, I need to be in a place that meets all of my needs. That means a list of features that I have long recognized but somehow get lulled into thinking that I can do okay without some of them.

The features include:

1) all-electric ~ no gas or oil heat
2) no Wi-Fi, in a low-tower area
3) no users of fragrance in the home
4) a place where I can set my own home temperature ~ preferably a warmer climate altogether, since cold is one of my major triggers.

Yes, I was really looking forward to living here in the summer, all the parks and places that I was wanting to walk through when it turns warm, and the free city pools! I will really miss my family a lot. It's been great getting to spend more time with my son and his wife, and especially my granddaughter, Scarlet. I will miss the bus system here too. It's been so great to be able to get around, even if I have had some issues.

As far as visible episodes, I may appear to be getting better. I am certainly better than I was a year ago, when I was extremely weak every day, often unable to speak clearly, rarely able to go anywhere.

I am much better than that now, but I still have episodes of weakness pretty much every day after enjoying my increased activity level. I have just managed to "fit it into my schedule." I know when I get home, I will basically be unable to do anything the rest of the day or evening. I generally feel it is worth it to have been able to get out and about for even a bit.

However, there's more than that. The exposures to cold and increased activity mainly cause attacks of weakness and paralysis. The exposure to Wi-Fi, gas and oil fumes, fragrance and cleaning supplies does more than that. It leaves me living in a continual mental fog, and a mind is, indeed, a terrible thing to waste.

Low-income housing here in Spokane is very difficult to find, as the need far outweighs the available housing. I am on a few lists, but the projected wait time is very long. So, as long as I am looking again, I will be looking in the warmer climates. I long for warmth.

It's a big decision for me. I have never lived far away from my family. I just want to feel better.

 


I recently finished the nutrition course, "Transform Your Relationship with Food," and it was amazing. I made this video as a contest entry for a scholarship for the longer nutrition course offered by the Institute for the Psychology of Eating, and I actually won! I don't know if I will actually be able to follow up on it right now, as things are really getting kind of crazy. But it was great to win. 

Recent Milestone at Coeur d'Alene Lake

Saturday was a treat for me, as my son and his family took me along for an outing at Coeur d'Alene Lake. I first saw the area about 40 years ago when I was traveling through with my dad and daughter. I was awestruck just seeing it from the highway, so I was anxious to get a closer look.




I sometimes hesitate to go along on things like this because I know I will, at the very least, slow others down, and maybe even more. But I felt like I really needed some clean, outdoor air, and more than I can get just going from bus stop to bust stop.
It was a lot more walking than I have done in a long, long time. We started out walking along the boardwalk, which really presented some challenges for me for a while. The floating bridge has a "calm side" and a "crazy side," with the waters being completely still on the harbor side and crashing on the lakeside. This made for a wobbly walk, and for a while my balance was playing tricks on me and I started to feel the beginnings of my least favorite symptom - the dreaded nystagmus/vertigo stuff. But I was able to keep my footing, though I nearly lost it once on the floating bridge. Important reminder to never do things like this alone.

The long walking bridge presented similar challenges, and my walking started to slow down considerably. When we reached the beach area the kids and the dogs were all having fun at the water's edge and I decided to just keep my slow pace going, rather than try to catch up. Lagging behind gave me a chance to get some pictures from a distance, which was nice.

Finally, I just sat on a ledge that separated the beach area from the sidewalk and park area and waited for them to come around again. By the time they were playing in the park, my legs had reached that stubborn point where they were refusing to move much at all. Even my Tim Conway "Oldest Man" walk was impossible at this point. So we found a place where I could wait with my son Jason and granddaughter Scarlet while Ericka brought the vehicle around.



Rather than seeing this as a defeat, I was very uplifted. I don't know how far we had walked, but we had been gone for 2-3 hours. I am estimating that probably 1.5 to 2 straight hours was spent walking. I haven't done anything like that since working my last part-time job at Petrow's Restaurant, where I would seat people over the 2-hr long lunch rush, and then my legs would quit. Once I would get home and stop, I would not be able to move much for the rest of the evening. I was really going downhill when I quit working there, and for the next year, I was doing well to walk a block or two before my legs would quit, so I saw it as a sign of progress to be able to walk almost continuously for almost as long as I use to do back then.

Then back home, to settle down for the evening, knowing that complete paralysis would soon be coming, and it did. It took me a day or two to recover, but I really saw it all as a milestone.

Beautiful Spokane River Scenery

What a beautiful day! Before Darla leaves, Jason and Scarlet were able to take us to the beautiful Spokane River for a nice walk. The weather was pretty nice, although still a bit cold for me, but it was just a breathtaking view.

I have to say that I am completely taken by the countryside. I can't wait to see more of this lovely place.

The air and the water here are so clean!!! Not much comparison to the Muddy Mo that flows by Omaha. Absolutely gorgeous! What a beautiful way to spend our last few days with Darla before she heads out on her own adventure!

Spokane, Here We Are!

We made it to Spokane! It is so good to see Jason, Ericka, and Scarlet. We went to meeting and met a lot of friends.  








It is always good to have family together, and to see Jason and Darla together is always nice, since my two middle kids were pretty much always side-by-side as kids. For better or worse, they were homeschooled together - brother and sister, classmates, and partners in crime (not really).

Beautiful Montana

As my lease comes to end, I am faced with the challenge of where to move next. I really don't know where I should go, except that my health is always better in a small town environment. Low-income apartments in small towns are extremely hard to come by right now. So I have decided to accept the invitation of my son and his wife to stay with them for a while in Spokane to see how it goes. 
Darla drove me out so that she can spend a little time with me and with Jason's family before she leaves on her own adventure as a missionary in Africa. It was a beautiful drive - absolutely breathtaking!