New Year, New and Old Routines

A few things have changed since my last post in January 2025. I have a new job, a continuous glucose monitor, and I’ve gone back to doing yoga. Still taking care of mom. Don’t know much about bird traffic anymore. I only go to the waterfront at dusk or at night now. This black crowned night heron was hanging out near a couple of anglers on New Year’s Eve.

I’m teaching/tutoring kids in English: writing, public, speaking, debate, etc. When my own kids were little, teachers were my heroes. I used to wonder how they could work with so many kids all day. Now that my kids and I are much older, I have more patience. It’s interesting trying to figure out how to relate to kids when you only see them for an hour or two at a time.

After a couple of low blood sugar episodes at work, I finally went back to using continuous glucose monitors (CGMs) again. One of my co-workers told me about LinX, which is only a bit more than US$100 per month. There are alerts when my levels are too high or too low. I still have to go to the app and check it often, though it’s much more convenient than pricking my fingers.

Every day my mom’s with me is a gift. I see her almost every day. She doesn’t use the walker very much these days. We take short walks locking arms. She tripped on the way back from dinner today, and I was able to keep her from falling. She sometimes loses track of whether she’s wearing her dentures. I’ve had to hand her dentures to her or remind her to take them off. She gets offended when I ask her whether she has them on. She says, “Don’t you think I know if I have my dentures on?”

In the past month or so, she’s chosen veggies as her rebellion. She’s been saying from time to time, “I’ve eaten veggies for so many weeks (or months).” I wish we could just fill our lifetime quotas of veggies and be done with them. Earlier this week, she picked a noodle up from the floor and ate it. On the upside, she relearned how to use the foot pedals on trash cans to open them, once. She’d been opening them by lifting the lids. Let’s hope this sticks.