Merry Michaelmas!

What a wonderful day!

Mom's stubborn ;-)

Me:  "Mommy, I'm gonna take your picture."

Mommy: "You can take it if you want, but I'm not gonna . . . "

Me (after waiting a bit): "Smile?"

Mom:  "Yes."

And, here she is stubbornly not smiling.  lol.

after the shower

The sun is shining, and she's had a shower.

Beautiful Day!

Good Morning!

Chocolate milk (Boost) this morning!

Happy!

Sunday Dinner

I'm just setting the table for Sunday dinner, and Mommy

is looking at the Christmas village while I work.  We had

roast chicken and baked acorn squash and all kinds of yummies

for dinner.  It was good :-)

shower day

It's time for her shower, but she doesn't look very happy.

So, I ask her to smile.

Here she is explaining to me that she is not going to smile.

But, after her shower, we did get a smile when I told her that

Amanda had borrowed her curlers without asking her, and 

Amanda (who just got home from work) explained that she 

hadn't asked because she borrowed them at 2:00 in the morning.

picture book love

Today, on a whim, I gave her this picture book.

I just grabbed it off the shelf when I was in a hurry,

And, she has been enamored with it all day long!

The funny thing is that I gave her this same book before,

and she wasn't interested in it at all.  This time, though,

she loves it, and that makes me happy as it is one of my favorites.

In it, a baby boy is given a blanket that his grandfather made him.

As he grows, the blanket gets worn out, and the grandfather makes 

the fabric into one "new" thing and then another, using the worn

and faded fabric from the blanket.  At the end, all that is left

is a covered button, which pops off and is lost.  The little boy says:

"Grandpa can fix it!"  And, his mother responds, "Even your grandfather

can't make something from nothing," and it's true.  The grandfather can't 

make something from nothing.  But, the boy discovers he can,

and he writes a story.

raring to go :-)

When it was time to go out to have dinner, 

she got herself all ready before I even went in.

Sometime between 5:45 - the last time I peeked in 

and 6:00 . . . she got herself ready to move.

This is how I found her at 6:00, all her bedding set aside, 

and her stuff bundled up in her hands.

And this is about ten minutes later at the dinner table.

Smile Face :-)

Stephan and David were talking about sports and politics.

Something one of them said got this look and smile.

Pad update

So, we've got the gel pad for her wheelchair,

and not only did it seem to alleviate the problems 

with pressure, but it also raises her up just enough

so she can more easily sit at the table.  It's great! 

Doing stuff

A few hours ago, Mommy laid down her magazine, looked up at me, and said, "We have to figure out what we are going to do."  She spoke this in the tone that she'd used to use years ago to "get organized."  It struck me when she said it.  I was getting ready with all the shampoo and water and wash clothes and towels to wash her hair, and I thought.  Well, that's what we're going to do.  We are going to wash her hair.  (I didn't tell her this because day before yesterday when we were getting ready to wash hair I told her, and she didn't want to, and so we didn't.  I'm trying to let her have her way in every instance where starvation, dehydration, or a rash won't be the result.  Giving her as much power over the details of her life as possible.)

Anyway, so all the time I was washing her hair I thought these thoughts:

Life with Mommy is teaching me how to be content with today.  That is quite a feat as I am possibly the most impatient woman of our age.  All my life, I've had most of my heart and both my eyes on the big tasks in the future, and I've had little heart and pretty much no eyes at all on the small jobs set for today.  But, Mommy is teaching me to think differently.  It is very obvious (even to big-dreaming me) that Mommy can't plan and do what I would have named great tasks in my yesterdays.  She can only do what is set for her today, pretty much this moment.  Nothing else.  And, that is, maybe, THE great task.  And this fact is teaching me, because it's less obvious but just as true, that I can only do the tasks set for me today.  I'd always managed to ignore this truth, and so I never finished the small jobs of each day and, possibly because of that failure, a lot of the big tasks were left unfinished as well.  This probably seems to anyone reading it like Life 101.  It's an obvious truth, but I never learned it before, and the nice thing about it is that the knowledge frees forty-seven year old me from the past and from the future and sets me nicely (and happily) down in today.  Today, I can do what I can actually do today.  No more.  No less.  And if I seem fail in that, tomorrow has the same task.  And, tomorrow, I'll be free from what I've left undone today.  I can't do more tomorrow than tomorrow will hold.

yesterday and today

So, I got a little busy yesterday, and I didn't get the pic I took up.  Again, better late than never, says the girl who's often a day or two or three late . . .

She's having dinner in bed again until a new pad for her

wheelchair gets here (hopefully tomorrow).  Jeanie found it,

and we're hoping that she can sit in her wheelchair without

irritating the soft spot at her tail bone.  I avoided getting her 

out of bed at all for weeks until it was completely healed, and 

then I waited a whole week after that, and we only had her out

twice for about an hour each time, and the soft spot returned.

Now, we're going to try with a gel pad and see if that prevents it.

Here she is this morning.  She's busy, busy, busy with her magazine.