Geese Day (Tues 25 Jan, 2011)

When I called it was 3:30pm and mom asked me to call back because one of her neighbors was coming down the hill to build her a fire. I called back around 4pm, and he had left. I bluntly asked, "How come you didn't have a fire? Are you having trouble building fires?" She said, "No, it's not that I CAN'T build a fire! On days like this when I am running all day long, I don't build a fire till later when I am ready to stop for the day. Otherwise I have to keep stopping to put a log on." I told her that there's a general perception that she is sitting around cold all day because she is not strong enough to build a fire, but she said, "I can't get it across to everybody...it's because I don't want to, not because I can't! I don't want to keep having to stop what I am doing to keep the fire going!"

So that gave me an opening to again bring up the idea of getting a propane stove. She laughed and said that her neighbor and I must be "in cahoots" because he had said the same thing. We had a chat about it, and I can tell that she is more open to considering the idea than she used to be. She even suggested that Ed Staub might be a good way to go because that's the company that she already gets her propane from, and since they own the tank, they might be the logical people to run the new line to a propane stove. I told her that I will call them today and get some information for her.

One of the reasons that mom has been "running all day" was that she had gone down to the firehouse for the Tuesday morning quilters gathering. She said that she just loves going down there... "I never had so many hugs in my life!" Since mom is one of the official Rocky Point librarians, she spent her time organizing and putting away books, and she said that the quilters kept an eye on her and kept telling her to sit down. She said, "It was a riot watching them because each one was doing a different thing and each one was talking to herself. You ought to hear those guys!! That's the reason I love to go down there...it was refreshing...it brightens my whole week just listening to them!" Mom got the books done, and she got to see next year's quilt, which she described as gorgeous. The border of the quilt is the Flying Geese design, which reminded her to tell me about a huge flock of Canada geese that flew into the marsh early in the morning while she was sitting in the sun room having her morning coffee. "They landed right across from us in the marsh where they always do every spring, squawking so much that I almost spilled my coffee!"

When she got home from quilt she had lots of little things she wanted to do, like filling her containers of ammonia and dishwashing soap: "I buy the big ones and then refill them..."

I asked her how she felt and she said pretty good. She said that the only thing bugging her is the muscles in her legs, because she went downstairs twice yesterday. She said she can really feel it today in her calf and thigh muscles, "Use it or lose it!" Her Protime on Monday was down to 2 (normal is 2.5 - 3.5) so she was waiting to hear back from Dr. Kubac's nurse about whether to raise her Coumadin dosage.