test

can I update?

Mommy loves her flowers!

I've added real flowers to the artificial tulip bouquet.

And she's got some living potted flowers!

Her whole room is filled with light and beauty.

And my news: I ran a half marathon! 

Came in just under three hours!

selfie

(or rather . . .usie)

More flowers . . .

Life with Mom.

When real flowers fail, we can always buy some false ones.

Life with Laurie:

Just ran FIVE MILES! 

(running in a big figure eight from 

the kitchen to the dining room,

around the island and the table.)

Have to live within the life you're living. 

Flowers from Hope House

Stephan and I dropped by Hope House today to see if the neighbor was in.

We need to talk to him about the sewer easement, but he wasn't home.

It wasn't a wasted trip, though. I showed Stephan where the TARDIS is 

going to be placed at the edge of the back garden. I stood on the front porch

to see if I can see the signpost for "Northern Pike" from there, . . almost.

Then, I wickedly picked a bouquet of flowers from the yard. If this were a 

fairy tale, my punishment would be to have to live at Hope House and never

return to Pitcairn again. This is a punishment I'm willing to risk.

I gave Mommy the flowers, and she loves them. I think she loves them just 

as much as Beauty loved the stolen rose from the Beast's garden.

I'm sewing and crotcheting curtains for the kitchen

at Hope House. I try to finish a whole row of stitching 

before I check my phone again to see if any contractors

have gotten back to us with bids. I'm having limited

success with this attempt to keep my sanity and to not

check my email every ten seconds. I find there is a 

strong urge to pretty much just constantly hit "refresh"

and hit "refresh" and hit "refresh" on the email instead

of living life and taking care of responsibilities.

I've been practicing patience for a very long time,

but clearly I'm not a proficient yet. 

On the plus side, Mom just loves my work on these curtains.

Her eyes shine when she holds them and looks at all my 

tiny stitches (you know, the ones she taught me to take), and 

all my rows of crotchet (these Grandma Bailey taught me).

Life is full of small rewards for simple tasks.

And, a further plus, I got a second job to help pay

the mortgage at Hope House in the event that the 

house in Pitcairn doesn't sell. (Maybe it will pay for 

a basic kitchen from Ikea as well? I'm full of dreams.)

Mom inspecting my stitchery.

She approves.

Hope House

I think we might buy a house for Mommy. 

This house.

A woman named Hope owned it for more than fifty years,

and we are so hopeful to get to live there for the next fifty.

(Hopefully, many of those years with Mommy!)
So, this was a house for Hope, and is a house for hope.
Hope House is the proper name.
(Special thanks to Jeanie, the bestower of the name.)

Shady Lane

Look what I found while sorting through Mom's papers!

(I've also got it at 600 dpi if you want to read what she sketched.)

and Stephan found this for us . . . 

http://www.antiquehome.org/House-Plans/1961-Aladdin/Shady-Lane.htm

She's really not easy to distract from the iphone as soon as I'm holding it up like a camera. (Even when I try and use stealth - lol)

So, I say: "Mommy, you look so sad. Are you sad?"
She says: "Noooo."
Then I say: "Are you happy?"
She says: "Yes."
Then I say: "Can you smile for the camera."
She says: "I'll try."
And the above expression is the best I get out of her.

It's really early in the morning.  It's too early even for birds, but Mommy and I are awake. I laid her back down and now she's watching pretty scenes on her TV while we wait for the sun to come up. I don't take too many pictures of her lying on her side, but she does get turned on her side from time to time, and here is a pic to prove it.

The Hospice nurse suggested that we let her hold on to rolled up washcloths to help with the contractures she's developing in her hands. Mom's so cute with these washcloths. She examines them really critically and turns her hands this way and that to look at them, and then when she wants to look at her book or card or other object that I've got lying there to entertain her, she lays the washcloth carefully aside. Mommy makes me smile.

She's really concentrating on the view out the window.

Believe it or not, that glass feeder was

 full an hour before these pictures were taken.

Here she is watching Stephan fill the bird feeders this morning.

The whole time she was getting her breakfast poured through the tube, she was just intent on this book, and she was so happily intent. She was just exuding a feeling of deep interest. (I'm not sure what she was looking at, but whatever it was, it's amazing.)

So, I decided to share with you, and as soon as I took the picture, she looked right up -- for the first time in probably a half hour. I think she's got some kind of "picture" radar. (The phone doesn't make noise. She just knows.)

When she looked up, I said: "I love you," and she said: "You do?" with this tone of amazement, and here is the picture of her saying that:

It's been a long time.

Soon after my last post, Mom was admitted to the hospital with pneumonia and acute respiratory failure. She was dangerously ill, and I thought for quite a few days that she wasn't going to make it, and then there was so much going on that I didn't have the energy to think about blogging. Then we were home, and I had to learn to care for her with a PEG tube and even less mobility and communication than she had before. I got to know some wonderful home-health care and then Hospice personnel. Without their help, I don't know how I could have kept my sense of humor, let my sanity, but life seemed too overwhelming to blog.

After that, writing the post that I'm writing now grew more and more easy to put off as the amount of things I had to catch a reader up on grew and grew with every passing day, then week, then month.

Frankly, if I write a "catch-up post" with just the highlights of the last five months, it will be pretty long and cumbersome to read, let alone write. So, I'm just going to start as though I'd never stopped or as  though this is a brand-new blog just starting fresh in the middle of life.

Mommy is watching space documentaries on Youtube today. She is just fixated on descriptions of stars and whether or not Pluto is a real planet or merely a dwarf one.

air purifier might have been a bad idea

So, it's been a terrifying day with mommy. She's having trouble remembering how to swallow properly, and her throat is irritated and filled with mucus. I was warned about this. The first visiting nurse who ever came to the house talked to me about it, but you can't warn somebody sufficiently for the feeling they will get when they are caring for a person who is having trouble swallowing little bits of ice. I sat on the bed for hours last night, dripping one after another into her mouth. Long story short. Called the doctor first thing this morning, and she's sending out a visiting nurse to evaluate mom and she's scheduled a speech therapist. (Apparently speech therapy can help with the complicated maneuvers it takes for a human to swallow). So, I'm doing all the things the MD told me to do, and Mom's room smells amazing thanks to my mom-in-law and her essential oil humidifier and peppermint (good for clearing all the mucus Mommy is accumulating in her throat). Prayers are so appreciated. Please pray for my mother. I've been thinking a lot about praying without ceasing since she came to live with me - I think every breath a prayer - and today I've learned the every swallow (without chocking) is a praise.

I'm wondering if the new air purifier might be part to blame.  As I was dealing with this today I realized that I've got a lot of mucus build-up in my throat, too, and then I thought about how I was sleeping in the chair in her room all night with the air purifier blowing on me.  Then, I googled, and sure enough dry air is a contributor to mucus formation in the throat.  Well, it's off now, and Mommy is not having much trouble at all swallowing her apple sauce. 

Little Books

She just loves these little books!

sleepy breakfast

She's almost too sleepy to figure out this 

banana, but she's really happy and content. 

all clean and happy

She's had her hair washed and herself washed 

and her bedding all changed and clean. 

It's a clean day today.

She's looking a little mischievous today - lol