The Start of a New Year! Hello 2025!

As we embark on the third year of this blog, I felt that it is important to take a moment to reflect.

You have made it to 2025! Even if you just survived the last year (or two or four!), you have survived all of your worst days. That is an accomplishment!

I find it oddly strange that we are in a year that is the same length of time away from 2050 as it is from 2000. My husband pointed this fact out, and I found it disconcerting. How strange and discombobulating that we are at the middle of a timeline between 2000 and 2050? How did that happen?

With this new year, I believe it is an important reminder that we do not need massive goals or to push ourselves to unobtainable lengths for whatever you feel society is pushing us all. Most people do not even pay attention to many outside of their inner most circle, so I want to use this as a reminder that your year can be whatever you want it to be and within goals and dreams that are within your own scope and abilities that lead to your own happiness and sense of fulfillment. And, yes, I do understand that this is difficult and more easily said than done.

With that, you may have noticed that this blog has been quiet for quite some time. While one of my goals since beginning this blog journey was to have posts ready ahead of time and set to post automatically, that will be a continuous endeavor and goal for this year as well. When it is quiet here, you know my life is anything but quiet.

The last three months of 2024 were busy for me, as I am sure it was busy for you all as well. The unexpected hospital stay for my loved one really set things off in October, and the battle with memory loss intensified. We are now at a cusp where the memory loss is really noticeable, and masking is no longer working for my loved one. Evenings out, dinners, holidays, drives, and family time were skipped or noticeably quieter due to the inability to hold conversations anymore.

Also, a more agreeableness to anything said is observable as well. There are not as many disagreements about things as there had been, and things that are spoken are not met with as much of an argumentativeness. It is worrisome for now, since there is still the issue of living alone and the refusal to move for safety.

Regardless of the latest observable changes, the push to drive is still in full swing. After waiting for most of last year and a reschedule due to the stint at the hospital, the simulator driving exam was completed. The results of this exam are determined by the doctor, so we have yet to hear anything.

When asked about the exam by family members, you could tell that the memory of the exam was already mostly gone. It took a few moments for understanding and recall to work, as the facial expressions on my loved one's face gave away that they did not immediately understand the question. The answer was vague and short: "it was like driving," even though the actual exam had taken a full hour and a half to do. No descriptions of driving conditions, situations, or even what the simulator looked like were given, which this person would have been able to provide and would have given without additional questions.

So we will wait and see what the results are.

If the simulator exam was passed, an actual road test is next.

I do want to note that this particular person does not usually go out during bad winter weather. And the day of this exam was full of travel warnings due to lake effect snow, which made driving slower. So I did note that no talk of rescheduling due to weather was made or even brought up, when I did expect it to be brought up. They refuse to go anywhere, regardless of who is driving, so I am wondering and questioning if another decline has occurred. They are also not questioning things that they ought to question, but I will leave that for another day.

As an end to this post: question what you know they would question, especially if they are no longer questioning the things they should be questioning, like traveling an hour in bad winter conditions for a driving test. And give yourself grace. Happy New Year!