This picture has nothing to do with what I wanted to say today but I like the story it tells -all you have to know to fill in the caption is that the track over the roof and down the windshield of the car was put there by the yellow sled in the hands of the perpetrator.
Snowiness and that day seem a far far distant memory today. Now I am fighting my way through all Caleb's bills (it took 4 months but I just got the neurosurgeon's grand total) and trying to be cheery and encouraging seeing my mom in more pain than I have ever seen her in before. Every movement is painful and that means they aren't very quick and that means she can't get where she need to go in time all the time and that means she is embarassed and I am doing alot of laundry as cheerfully as possible. See me whistle while I work... And because she is trying not to complain about life she does complain about the bread my husband got (bad German pumpernickel buying man, bad) or politics or the medicine we try to get her to take or... herself. She is ashamed of herself. I inherited this tendency. The sicker I am the more I apologize -mom always said that was how she could tell when I was really sick. So I guess she is not faking it. But it did get us to go get her the better bread.
And by the way -you know who comes in and keeps grandma company and gets her lunch when I go out? Caleb, of course. And who reads to Jesse when I was too busy? Grandma of course -well all the time, -but when the codeine kicks in! So it is ok, really. (And Wegman's does have the best Napoleons)
I'm think of adding cooking tips.

Morning

It is morning. Caleb's headache is better, mom's pain is worse. She says her condition is depressing -you mean the getting old and your body is falling apart condition? I helpfully ask. Yes. That's the one. Caleb started out that way though so I am not so sympathetic this morning. Also I can only go in so many directions at once so right now I am just going to get the oatmeal done.

Another cat that is gone. We'd made him an outdoor cat after he started expressing his disapproval of Jesse by... no even on a semi ananymous blog I can't go into detail but when the vet stopped laughing she said it was time to banish him from the house. He made it through the first winter but last winter he disappeared. I thought of him when my mom said she felt like a wounded animal and just wanted to go find some where quiet to let her wounds heal (or die I thought) -but no. We (by which I mean the rescue squad) dragged her to the ER where 6 hours later they said her fall had only bruised her -probably. It is possible some of those cracks in her spine are new but most of them are not. She gracioulsy thanked the doctor for telling her his findings, "eventually" -he had almost made it out the door (aka, flimsily curtained opening) when this last word sort of reached out and popped him. My mom may not have good balance but her timing is great. We trundled her back home -but first we stopped by Wegman's since she had never been in one before. So there we were. Mom and wheelchair, Caleb and crutches, Jesse in a cart and me and my sweetie. It was kinda like a date night.
And now, with my sweetie gone on a work trip (they are testing something with balloons, really) , my mom moving as little as possible and me wigging out on some student when I couldn't remember a simple way to make a nice example of confounding I come home and Caleb tells me his head hurts. It has been hurting for hours. And immediately I think that this time I really will lose my mind. Or not. He did admit then that he had forgotten to drink much today. I made him drink and called my prayer partner- she asked if there were any flu symptoms (wisely I have an RN prayer partner) -that would be good. H1N1 would be way better. That's where I am right now, hoping it's just swine flu. Of course there is the very real chance it is just a headache. After all, mom is fine, I found my necklace in the hospital parking lot today only a little run over, I was not at all confused with one student -it's all good (evetually)

falling

This cat is gone but not from falling. She was the best cat so of course she died first. If she had fallen -at least from this she would have landed on her feet. 91 year olds do not land on their feet. Even from no height at all. My mom fell today trying to sit down at the table. The 4 yr old tried to help her up. He went and got a napkin to do this -we do not know why. Eventually my sweetheart (who I fell in love with yesterday, last counting) and the grandson with mutton chops were able to help her up. Then I gave her ibuprofen and the sweetheart offered her wine or tramadol -she went for the wine, and he put on some loud Italian opera and she went back to bed and the littlest took her "Horton Hears a Who" to read to him.
Short pause to check the shelf placement of my latest home-improvement project (which I now pay my children to do) and stop to dance to Guy Clark's rendition of "Homegrown Tomatoes" (find on YouTube), -then my guitar background music, working out the chords. Oh the pauses to dance -that's why I keep falling.

09-09-09 (I like it I admit)

This is a sad picture because it is several years old and I have no morning glories today. They just didn't make it. I have no idea why. That's not like heavenly blues. The moon vines did make it but they look lonely and on such a gray day I wasn't at all surprised they closed as soon as the day began. It is what they always do. It is their nature but today one could hardly blame them. My mother spent the day feeling guilty for not spending more money on our teeth when we were younger (she tended to go for European trips over orthodontia). I told her that was discouraging. I can (just barely) handle the thought of my body falling further apart but not that besides still always wanting to impress the guys I will also never escape mothering guilt. Maybe Alzheimers is not as bad as we imagine. I mean it would be rough on everyone else but how could I worry over what I did or didn't do if I don't remember it? Or would I worry even more then? Did I mention it was gray all day? Or maybe it was sunny but I was staring at the computer trying to make a simple program work -who knows. It was gray by the time I looked up and I realized I had no friends and I was not so cute anymore, and I am pushing 50 (as hard as I can), and the house is untidy and nothing is quite where it should be and... if the sun comes out tomorrow I will be as giddy as ever all over again. It's embarrassing at my age.

sandwiches

Above is a picture of what to expect if you are a late in life baby with a late in life baby. Who says you can't have it all? I asked my mom other day if there was some age at which when you saw a young man you didn't... I didn't get any farther before she answered, "I don't know honey. I'm only 91." By the by, I was going to say, "...wonder if he thinks you're cute?" but I don't suppose it would have changed the answer.
We took her to see the Fireworks and Fountains show at Longwood Gardens this weekend. The whole thing is set to music -in this case music by Khachuriansomething. I figured it was a better choice of my mom than the show set to the music of Abba. As it turned out she said she had never liked Khachuwhatever but didn't want to mention it before hand because I was so pleased with myself for not booking the other one. She did trust me that she would prefer it to whoever Abba was. She only confessed to her previous dislike of what's his name after the show because she had enjoyed it so much. And if we just hadn't been so self-congratulatory about a job well done on the way home the next day maybe we wouldn't have had to all (by which I mean me, my husband, my mom, my youngest, and my sister (all mine you notice)) ride home in the rental car while the van enjoyed a trip on the back of a flat bed truck having fatally overheated about 10 minutes into the trip home. Still we did get to meet a lot of nice people at the WaWa's, several of whom offered to give us rides, and a staff who stored the luggage we got out of the van (and remembering the car seat AND the wheelchair) while we ate at a cute little pizza place (plug for Bravos Pizza in whatever that place was) and waited for my old college friend in Delaware to pick us up so we could get a rental from the airport because it was Labor Day and all the other car rental places were closed (and every now and then college daughter would call about her temporary crown and/or multivariate calculus).

Maybe.

And who says Yankees aren't helpful to strangers? Maybe my mom will even leave the third syllable off now.

Maybe.

Privacy

Today's topic is privacy. I was listeneing to a healthcare discussion panel (I was driving and my darling had left the radio tuned to C-span) and privacy was the subtopic. And I had a kind of post traumatic stress flash back. When the one pictured above in the orange pants was 5 he had to be evaluated by the local child developement experts. Now, you should know that long before Hugh Laurie was on House I subscribed to the same myth promulgated there that given enough information -especially the kind you are hesitant to share - everything will fall into place and the doctors will have some kind of epiphany and simply know all they need to know to fix everything. And I really wanted things fixed. So when the polite young woman asked if there was a family history of I don't even remember what I helpfully, but with great trepidation, offered up to her that my father had been an alcoholic. Dead for 30+ years and he had pretty much stopped drinking by the time I was born but still ... I added that I only mentioned it in case it raised any red flags, and asked that if it did not could she just ignore it. Of course, she assured me, it really didn't add any information they needed and it need not be officially noted. I'm sure you can see this coming (but we didn't), the first page of their report -to go into the official school records said, "The patient is a 5 year old child whose maternal grandfather was an alcoholic." I think it took another few sentences to get to the part where he (orange pants not maternal grandfather) was born at 25 weeks gestation, weighing 1 lb 7 oz.
And let's not even talk about his first hospitaliztion for a shunt revision and the doctor who included us in his "Grand rounds." So there I sat at 25, trying to nurse a baby who wasn't very good at it (that made 2 of us) and connected to IVs and we were surrounded by the old doctor and half a dozen new doctors and made exhibit A. I remember desperately trying to pull things back in place while the one female in the group cringed at the back of the crowd. Medical privacy.
So that should at least help explain why I hide my face here and use one of the many aliases my mother thoughtfully provided me by changing her mind several times about what to call me. That and the fact that this was the only photo with a really good shot of my shoes. I have no idea why my daughter was hiding other than to follow the rule that all 4 kids can NEVER look at the camera at the same time.