Reinventing the Calendar (Sun 20 Feb 2011)

Mom said that she is reinventing the calendar, and today is Friday the 13th on Sunday. She had been heating some soup but it boiled over, so she had to go dig out the manual for her propane stove (cook stove, not heat stove...) so she could figure out how to clean out the gas jets. (Apparently you have to clean out the holes with a needle.)

After she cleaned up the stove, she managed to get blood from ehr shin on her white tennis shoes as well as her bath mat, so she had to soak both of them. As a result, the rubber backing of her expensive bath mat peeled away so she had to throw it away.

I asked her about her dinner with her neighbors last Friday night. Another neighbor had come to pick her up and give her a ride to the cabin. "He is the sweetest thing! He came to the door with a bunch of flowers for me!" He had brought her a bouquet of purple flowers, which she loved. He said that he had been in town and figured that it had probably been a long time since mom had flowers, so he brought her a bouquet.

The neighbor's cabin has a big window that looks out on the creek and the snow, and there was a full moon. "Absolutely lovely!" mom said. "We had the best time; it was so much fun!" Her chauffeur brought her home about 9:30, and walked her down to the cabin. They had sent her home with some leftovers, and he carried them down for her and put them away. Mom described it as "Such a fun evening to get out and enjoy myself!"

While we were talking she was getting a bowl out of the cupboard for her early dinner of split pea soup, and a minute later I heard a crash and she had dropped the bowl and it broke in half on the floor. She is having a lot of trouble with her hands today; a combination of neuropathy and arthritis. She said that is why she is dropping things. She did have a fire going when I called, and she stopped in the middle of our call so she could go put another log on the fire. I could hear her in the background saying, "Oh come on HAND, work!"

The neuropathy causes her feet and hands to contract very painfully. She told me that a couple nights ago she woke up with excruciating pain in her foot. She said that it was curved in like a charlie horse. She said that all you can do is get up and walk, but you walk like a person with a club foot. She said she spent 40 minutes trying to get it straightened out. She doesn't want to take any pain meds because that affects her Protime (Coumadin level).

At the end of our call, she said, "I am going to go sit down and read a book so I can't get into any more trouble today!"