Alfredo Botello Author of Spin Cycle Notes from a Reluctant Caregiver

All Home Care Matters

Enriched Life Home Care Services

Alzheimers, Caregiver, Healthcare, Homecare, Health, Dementia, Health & Fitness, Care, Education

5 • 1.1K Ratings

🗓️ 23 January 2025

⏱️ 61 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

All Home Care Matters and our host, Lance A. Slatton were honored to welcome Alfredo Botello Author of Spin Cycle Notes from a Reluctant Caregiver as guest to the show.

About Alfredo Botello:

Alfredo Botello is a novelist and screenwriter who has worked on projects ranging from the indie Sundance Global Short La Revolucion De Iguodala to the studio tent pole Fast and Furious 9. His debut novel, 180 Days, has garnered multiple literary awards.

He is a Fulbright Fellow in architecture and a Nicholl Fellow in screenwriting. In addition to screenplays and the novels, he contributed a chapter to the Amazon bestseller Wellness

Through Words, and has written for The San Francisco Examiner Magazine, Metropolis, Diablo, Surface, The Utne Reader, Style, The East Bay Express, and The Monthly.

Botello co-owns a cocktail bar in downtown Oakland, Little Bird Bar, and at home dotes on his two Corgis, George and Dotty.

About Spin Cycle Notes from a Reluctant Caregiver:

High school math teacher Ezra Pavic is having a hard time. His wife left him, his son barely tolerates him, and now he’s being blindsided by something he never saw coming: the emotional spin cycle of parenting a parent. His mother Irene has dementia, and it’s exhausting. Caring for her is a constant source of frustration, resentment, and guilt. Lots of guilt.

Overwhelmed by it all, Ezra opens a strip-mall school to help others—and himself—become better caregivers. As he learns to handle the personalities of his nine misfit students, Ezra must also navigate the complex feelings he has toward his mother. It doesn’t help that she adores his do-nothing slacker brother.

But Ezra hasn’t told his students that he also has an agenda beyond becoming a more compassionate caregiver. And, it turns out, so does one of his students. Ezra confides the entire tale to his childhood friend Danny as he attempts to sort it all out and find room in his heart again for compassion and love.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to all home care matters, the show where we discuss all things home care, with discussions
0:06.7	on important age-related matters and topics. Brought to you by Enriched Life Home Care Services,
0:13.3	the number one rated home care provider in Michigan by Top Rated Local.
0:26.6	Hello and welcome back to all home care matters. If this is your first time visiting us here at the show, we want to say thank you for taking
0:30.2	time out to be with us today.
0:32.0	We appreciate how valuable everyone's time is, and that's why we try and make each episode
0:35.9	here at all home care matters,
0:42.6	something that will hopefully matter to you. Today, I am honored to welcome the author of the book Spendcycle, notes from a reluctant caregiver, Alfredo Botella. Welcome, Alfredo. How are you?
0:51.3	I'm good, Lance. Thank you for having me. Our pleasure. Our pleasure.
0:55.0	You know, most of the times, Alfredo, when we have authors on that have written a book
0:59.0	about caregiving or their story about a parent or a spouse that had health issues, it's usually
1:04.0	a nonfiction piece of work, but I just said that this is a novel.
1:08.0	So let's start with what prompted you or inspired you to write a novel
1:13.2	about notes from a reluctant caregiver and spin cycle. Right. So it was inspired by the experiences
1:20.5	I had with my mom, Lisa. About five years ago, she was diagnosed with likely onset Alzheimer's.
1:29.0	And the, I want to say the year or two before that were just, we're brutal.
1:34.3	I felt blindsided.
1:36.0	I felt overwhelmed.
1:37.3	I didn't understand the changes that were happening with mom.
1:40.0	You have to understand, my mom, Lisa, single mom was just an kick-up mom when I was growing up in the 70s.
1:47.4	So after her divorce, she took up belly dancing lessons.
1:51.8	She went on Sierra Club Hikes.
	...

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