December 2013

Happy holidays everyone,

This turned out to be a banner year for Sally and Rodney although neither of us can take much credit for the timing of the two major events that shaped our lives at the end of 2013 and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future. As we reported would happen in last year's letter Rodney was 'severed' from Fidelity as his job moved to North Carolina in September. He is still getting used to the idea that this may really be an early retirement. The coincidental arrival of Sarah Hazel Swartzbaugh (aka Zuzu) on the same day Rodney retired was something we did not know about as we were writing last year. She is a 9th generation Sarah.  Our photo collage has a picture of 4 Sarahs, one on a screen from California.  Needless to say we are very very happy here at 22 Hayes Lane.

We spent a good part of the year looking forward to the arrival of grandchild #1 and it has proven every bit as wonderful and exciting as we expected. When the time came she took her own sweet time in coming but even her poor Mom, Meg, would agree that she was worth the wait. If her two grandmothers have anything to do with it she is going to the world's most photographed baby. Although she the most precious thing in the world and well worth photographing.  BTW, Sally is borrowing her grandmother name from my French Canadian friend Kris, which is Mémère pronounced (mem-meh). Rodney is Granda, which follows his Blair/Lowe traditions.

Spending time at 'Coniston', our Vermont home, has allowed us to see lots of her even if it is still never enough.  Her mom and dad coordinated a switch in their jobs as they planned for her arrival, with Chris getting a promotion to Operations manager with Citizens bank which means that although he is the road a lot visiting bank all over Vermont and New Hampshire he does get to work from home some of the time. Meg is taking a nice three month long break (nice for the US I mean, it not quite as civilized as Europe) and will be moving to a more predictable 9-5 job in the new year. I understand both Grandmothers will be getting 'permission slips' in their Christmas Stockings which will allow them to take ZuZu out of daycare.  

ZuZu's arrival was the prefect way to take Rodney's mind of what retirement means as did a couple of weeks suffering through his 4th Kidney stone. As we write, the stone has been blasted with lasers and he will be returning to hospital on the Dec 24 for the final step in the process of that troublesome little event.

We just got back from a week in southern Florida visiting Sally's sister Dau and family in Cape Coral as well as her Mom and Charlie in Vero Beach.   This was Sally’s third trip to visit family and friends in Florida this year.  Since September 30th, we have also taken two road trips in New England.  It does feel strange to not have to arrange traveling around a 5 day work schedule.  I think we will get used to it.  And we are preparing to leave on Christmas day for a UK trip, spending a few days in London catching up with friends Andy, Miriam and Jake, who moved there a few years ago, and then north to visit Rod’s family.

Retirement plans for Rodney involve much more art and travel wrapped around a good amount of grand parenting.  We both remain involved with the First Parish choir and Sally also sings in a group that serves hospice patients which complements her other volunteer role as a hospice volunteer. Rodney remains involved with Communities Without Borders supporting Zambian Aids orphans (see cuddle dolls in collage) and has began working with a local group doing 'barn raisings' to help insulate houses of poor neighbors. Sally entered her 5th year on the board of the Star Island Corporation which means we had an extra couple of trips out to Star Island this year for official meetings (as a 'hanger on' Rodney just got to relax and read for a few days).

Bethany and her boyfriend Bryan moved from Watertown to Somerville and both moved into new jobs. She is still Director of Social Action at First Parish in Concord but also now runs their youth programs. So between her now full time job at Concord and classes at Divinity school Bethany is a busy lady. Bryan is now playing in two bands and Sally and Rodney bring the average age up when we go hear him play.  Recently we went to Johnny D's in Somerville to an all Monkees show.  9 bands playing 2-3 songs each.  Sally and Bryan's mother Linda, sang along with a lot of the songs.

It would be remiss to end without mentioning the sad events of the Boston Marathon this year. None of us were directly impacted but as was everyone else in the Boston area we were all impacted by the subsequent (and some of us would say over reaching) police action in the area. Living in Watertown, Bethany was the closest to many of the events of the final day's wild end. Our thoughts and prayers go out to those who were injured by the two blasts near the finish line. We remain Boston Strong.

Last weekend we celebrated an early Christmas in VT with Swartzbaughs, Lowes and Russells.  This is our second annual early celebration complete with stockings, eggs benedict and staying in our PJs all day.  It was great to watch to snow come down and have no where to go.  Zuzu played with her favorite present, which was some wrapping paper (see picture in collage).

We have been blessed this year in so many ways, for which we are grateful. Our blessings go out to all of our friends and relatives for 2014 and hope the new year brings you happiness, love and satisfaction in abundance.

Love Sally and Rodney

Lahey Burlington customer service - for the most part an A-

Many of my blogs have been about customer service because I like to tell the good, bad and ugly stories I have had.

Last week, my husband had day surgery at Lahey Clinic in Burlington to remove his ornery kidney stone.  The overall experience was fantastic.  I find that Lahey is very well laid out and organized.  Parking is a pain, but I am not sure how they could improve that except to lower the age by a decade of their visitors and patients, since the 2 mile an hour speed in the parking garage makes for long lines of traffic trying to find a spot.

The check-in for surgery was easy and I left my beloved there to go finish grocery shopping for our impending Christmas celebration in VT.  At check-in I said I would be out and about and would like it if they would call my cell phone.  The doctor would call my cell when the surgery was over and the recovery room would call when I could come visit him.

I finished my shopping and decided I would rather wait at the hospital and given the timing they had told me, I would be waiting about an hour there.  The family waiting room is in the basement of the hospital right near the operating and recovery rooms.  That makes a lot of sense.  What does not make sense is that there is no cell phone coverage there.

I told every hospital employee that I encountered that I was not at home but was waiting in the family waiting room, and that means I told about 10 people in my 2.5 hour wait.

Every 5-10 minutes a doctor would walk into the family waiting room and announce a patient name and then leave with that family and discuss the surgery privately in the hall.  Also every 45 minutes a recovery nurse would come into the waiting room and go around the room asking if you had any questions.  All three times I said yes, I wanted to make sure the doctor knew I was here not at home.  The last time she said, "Yes he is out of surgery but usually it was 45 minutes before family could visit."  I knew he had been out for longer than 45 minutes, because the really nice monitor of all the patients first names and last initials, indicates what stage the patient is in and that had been 75 minutes not 45 minutes.  I did not argue with her, and I knew it would be another 45 minutes before anyone came back in.

My grip about the family waiting room is that the person is not sincere who kept coming in.  She was going through the motions, and got defensive when I said the second time, that I was in the family waiting room not at home.  The doctor NEVER got the message that I was in this room.  She left a voice mail right after the surgery BUT you don't get cell coverage in the family waiting room, and you cannot leave there in case that is the 2 minutes when YOUR doctor comes in looking for you.  I did leave 3 times to use the ladies room right down the hall, but did not risk going up stairs in case I missed someone looking for me.  I knew he was in recovery, but I did not know the surgery started 50 minutes late.  People are anxious waiting for family post surgery so please over-communicate not under-communicate.  They are doing their best to try to communicate to families but there are a few improvements.

One funny aside, as one family member stepped outside the waiting room there was a robot moving down the hall and she kind of freaked out.  As she said "We are anxious enough, but to step in the hall and see the robot moving in front of you is kind of freaky."  I am not sure what kind of machine it was, maybe paperwork, maybe a cleaning machine but it was pretty funny to see.

Improvements for the family waiting room 1) get cell coverage, in this day and age you have to be able to use a phone there.  If this is not technologically something we can do then I am very disappointed.  As an aside, there are parts of Lexington where I don't get coverage so maybe I am just being an eternal optimist on this one.  2) Be sincere when you come into a room of family waiting for their loved ones who have just gone under the knife 3) Have one log where you can update the status of waiting family and communicate this in the patients record rather than on a piece of paper you fill out when you initially register, which apparently you can never update again.

Now for my biggest grip.  The recovery nurse was wonderful.  When she was telling me about the drugs Rod would be on post surgery she made sure to tell me everything she told him, because he was dozing and woozy and would not remember what he had been told.  She said, "The pharmacy up stairs is very slow!  Let me call in your prescriptions!"  Which she left immediately to do.  I went up 20 minutes later, and they said 15 more minutes.  I was trying to make it so that we did not have to wait up there with Rod dozing in the wheel chair in the middle of the pharmacy department.  We went up 45 minutes later to pick them up quickly from the pharmacy and head to the car and then home.  THEY STILL WERE NOT READY!  I asks how long.  5 minutes.  Apparently we were on pharmacy time and 15 minutes later they were still not ready.  I went up to window and asked for them back saying "I am going to fill them at Walgreens".  Suddenly they were ready.  I was pretty snarky (really snarky is not a word when I did a spell check?)  at this time and said "If I were you, my main objective would be to get them filled quickly so patients who had been operated on 4 hours earlier could get home to bed and not wait in a wheel chair in the middle of the pharmacy area."  "That is my goal too"  she said.  "Really?"  I said, gesturing to Rod dozing in the chair.

Their own peers know they are slow and I might add, not customer focused and they are defensive.  The original person I talked to insisted on the paper copies of the prescriptions before she would even start, which I agree with, BUT recovery had called them in (their process) and when they call them in you only need the paper copy to pick them up.

OK, rant over.

Rod is 4 days post surgery, nearly back to normal and this whole kidney stone episode is almost behind us.  Lahey is general gets an A- from me.  Almost everyone we met was friendly, polite, concerned, and efficient.  I think their organization and processes are very good EXCEPT for the family waiting room process and ALL of the pharmacy employees.  I repeat, even their peers know they are slow and not efficient.

Have we gone too Digital? Just wonderin'

Don't get me wrong, I am all for being green and not cutting down trees.  I support storing documents and photos on my computer or in the cloud.

However, in the past week, two organizations to which I belong have experienced the loss of organizational knowledge because a binder with paper documents was lost, misplaced, or thrown away. 

We have a church administrator who is very organized and she keeps everything you need in a binder and most of those binders are at her finger tips.  I asked her a question yesterday and within 2 minutes she found the information for me from five years of history in our church newsletter.  She pulled out five binders, flipped to the correct month and found the information for me.  I wonder if we could have done this search as quickly digitally.  Probably with a good search function we could have.  Yes, and there is something about seeing the hardcopy which is a different experience.

I think about this as well, as I sort my pictures and try to put them into some kind of order.  My digital ones are all by year and month, but hard to search, BECAUSE there are so many of them.  Some of my non-digital photos are in photo albums, and the experience of searching through for a specific one is just a different experience.  Touching those old photos brings me back in a way that viewing on a screen does not.

So I really sound like an old fogey but I miss hardcopy sometimes and I hope to find some of those lost binders, because I know there will be valuable information, we might need for a future task.

Yoga studio versus YMCA

I have just finished a month of a special at Black Crow Yoga in Arlington.  $30 for 30 days of unlimited yoga.  I probably attended 12 classes and they were all terrific.  They have excellent instructors there, and I felt challenged every day that I went.  It is a small, aesthetic studio in Arlington Center, and with no traffic I can get there in 12 minutes.  As well, a friend joined at the same time an we have a coffee date at Barismo in Arlington Center after our yoga.  Go there if you are in the area.  It is a real treat.

I started looking for a studio when my favorite teacher was not rehired at the Woburn YMCA, because she visit her home country and family every summer and they did not rehire her the last two summers she has gone.  I understand that they cannot keep the slot open for 6 weeks, while she is away.  However, she is technically the best instructor.  I tried the other classes and they were not up to the quality of Ruth's classes.  They were too gentle, too short and not personal enough.  Some of them were just not good yoga teachers.

SO now I have a decision.  Join Black Crow for $89/month for unlimited yoga or try to piece a yoga practice attending the ones at the Y that challenge me, and finding Ruth, or Ruth like instructors in other venues.  My considerations are 1) flexibility, 2) timing, 4) my travel calendar and 4) quality of yoga.

Black Crow wins on the 4th one, and the Y wins on the other 3.

I met with the new operations person at the Y on Thursday, and shared with him my concerns and the history of yoga and yoga instructors.  I don't think he knew what hit him when he scheduled this meeting.  He is only a month on his job and promised to get back to me after doing his research into this.

In my 5 years there the yoga/wellness programs have deteriorated.  I attend primarily for the yoga however, I do other things as well.  When I had injuries last year, I used the recumbent bike and elliptical, and I did some water aerobics.  For flexibility the Y wins.

My decision is made and staying at the Y makes the most sense.  I will then take one class a week at Black Crow when they have their $10 community drop in.  It is not perfect but the best for me right now.  I will miss my coffee dates at Barisimo after yoga though.

Sabbath - Weekends last forever now

I don't mean to rub it in, but our family no longer has "weekends", as in the two days of the week to travel, get errands done, socialize, tour, visit etc.

I realized this last night when we planned our next visit to our grand daughter.  My thinking is still locked into having to travel on the weekend to see her, oh and her father and mother.  I had a sinking feeling in my heart that it would be months before we could get up to see her.

"Well, we could go up in the middle of the week!" Rod said.  Yes we can and we will!

This is going to take some adjustment in my thinking.  We have segmented our daily living into weekdays and weekends, and in fact they have these names.  I sometimes wonder how we did all we did when we had two children at home, both worked full time and in there somewhere I got my Master's.

Recently our minister preached on the Sabbath and it has gotten me thinking about what 24 hours we could celebrate the Sabbath.  The challenge would be to put away our electronics, and TV.  It means to really honor the time period and rest and reflect and enjoy life slowed down.

I guess we could start in a shorter segment, which we did by attending the Vespers last Friday night at First Parish Lexington.

SO if you are looking for us in the middle of next week, we will be in Vermont visiting Sarah Hazel Swartzbaugh and her parents.  I guess we should let them know.........

Zuzu pictures are like greeting cards from Bermuda

When Rod and I met in 1985, it was prior to email.  After I left Bermuda, having met him and fallen totally over heels in love, our first cards to each other crossed in the mail.  For the next 18 months we both wrote 1 card a day to each other.  At first, I would read every card every night.  That became unwieldy when I received more than 20 cards, so I would read just the most recent ones.  Occasionally, when I was really missing him, I would read them all.

Similarly the same feeling is happening with Zuzu pictures.  My wonderful son and his wife are supplying me with daily texts of photos of Sarah Hazel Swartzbaugh.  The first day of her life I spent many hours looking at recent pictures.  In fact, at George and Judy's house the night of her birth, 5  devices were being looked at with pictures of Zuzu (her nickname).

I have been putting the pictures in a Picasa Web Album and when I get bored, curious, angry, happy, content, depressed, etc, I pull up that album.  She is now 16 days old, so the album is getting BIG.  I know the novelty of having a granddaughter will wear off, but my delight of looking at the most recent picture will not and I will occasionally go back when she is 20 and look at the entire album.

Technology has changed in the last 28 years, but not the delight at reading/watching communication from/of loved ones.

Black Crow Yoga versus the YMCA

I joined the Woburn Y over 6 years ago, and immediately started going to their morning yoga class on Thursday mornings.  At the time I had Lenore, and loved her.  I just did the yoga and left for the final relaxation pose, because I was off to work.  Very silly looking back at that, but this is how I got into a regular yoga practice.

Upon retirement, I attended yoga at the Y at least 2 times a week and fell in love with Ruth who is a fantastic practitioner.  I tried other instructors as well, and Marilyn at the Y is a close second to Ruth in terms of her expertise and depth of yoga training.  The Y also has some other teachers who are not as good as these two.

Ruth is from Switzerland and goes to visit her daughters and grand children every summer for 6 weeks.  For the last two summers, the Y has refused to rehire Ruth for her regular Wednesday and Friday morning classes.  She has a regular following who were disappointed by this.  I have filled out no less than 10 comment cards about this, 3 in the last 3 months.  I decided yesterday that I needed to kick it up a level.  At the front desk I asked to talk to the person responsible for hiring the yoga teachers.  Lucky for me, maybe, the Executive Director was walking by at that moment and listened to my concerns.  He took my email and we will see what happens.  I don't want to leave the Y, because I like to support the community.  However, I have to have a regular yoga practice and I now know the difference in instructors.

I belong to the Y primarily for the yoga.  I am definitely in a minority given the size of their small studio dedicated to yoga and the size of their space dedicated to weight machines and cardio machines.  I understand that they have to satisfy all of their constituents and that many people do not attend the yoga classes.  Maybe I have gotten an incredible bargain by paying $40 a month for over 7 years and getting Ruth and Marilyn's expertise.  It is possible to attend Ruth's classes at the Winchester Senior Center as a drop in or to attend her classes through Arlington Continuing Ed.  I have thought about doing this but have resisted, because I want to go one place for my exercise.

Three weeks ago I researched yoga studios.  Our local one in Lexington would cost me $14-$18 a session and after paying $40 a month that seems like a lot.  In my research I found Black Crow in Arlington.  I bought their 30 days for $30 deal and am attending whenever I can.  I love the challenge on my body of this studio and all of their teachers; so far I have taken 4 classes.  They have similar rates as our local Lexington Power Yoga studio.  After my 30 days runs out, I may try Lexington's, as much yoga in a week as you can take for $20.

So I have gotten an incredible deal for 5 years at our local Y, and unless I can get the quality of Ruth or Marilyn in a morning yoga class, I may be paying triple that amount at Black Crow or Lexington Power Yoga.  Yoga feeds my spirit, body and soul and $140 a month is worth it.  This means that I will have to get my cardio by walking or biking. In the summer I do that outside anyway.  The winters will be the difficult when the ice and snow prevent walking the bike path.  Then I can go walk at the mall I guess.

We will see if anyone calls me back from the Y.  I don't feel listened to so far having left 3 comment cards in 3 months with my call back number.  I don't expect them to cater to my need for yoga if the rest of their constituents want other exercise programs.  I will be taking care of myself though and intend to make sure my body, spirit and soul are kept healthy with a good yoga practice.