Skip to main content

Sick Mama (28/60)

Pay no mind to the rusted handle bars . . . everything rusts here and plus, I'm pretty sure my dad found this bike on the side of the road . . . and yet, it's the bike everyone fights over. 


Oy.  My mama is feeling sick and sad.

It turns out, I feel very sad when my mama is sad.  Especially when she's feeling bad.  Today was literally 900 hours long.  I didn't want to leave her alone, so my errands to grab stuff to finish a lot of organizing didn't happen, but even so . . . I got a lot accomplished.

Her linen closet got an overhaul (good bye old towels and rags and aprons and everything frayed) and organized.  My dad has taken over the dining room table as his study (which as I'm decluttering I've discovered is also a repository for my mothers stuff as well) so I'm working on that and the big credenza in her living room that's filled with old dishes and odds and ends.  Honestly, I think she won't recognize her house when I'm done.  But I promise, I haven't really thrown anything away.  Just put everything with it's match . . . at least, it matches in my mind.

I deep cleaned and dusted her entertainment center (all glass and mirrors . . . beautiful and such a pain to keep clean!) and got some great little baskets to keep her baby toys (she has friends with babies) in under the center.
Before . . . 
After . . . the difference is subtle . . . 

I also totally cleaned the inside of her car (this is my OCD coming out . . . I have to have a clean car) and cleaned her kitchen.  I'm sitting beside her as she's finally fallen to sleep for the first time today.  Even if it only lasts 15 minutes.  Hallelujah!

The highlight of my day was taking my sunset bike ride through the neighborhoods and paths.  The sky was amazing and the air wasn't unbearably hot.  I felt vibrant as I biked through the pink and blue dusk lighted roads . . .

The sky . . . 

You can almost smell and feel the air and warmth . . . 

And I finally did NOT go on Alligator ally!  Super bumpy and last night there was a swamp.  Maybe tomorrow, but for today . . . a HARD PASS . .. 

I am happy to report that there were no frogs or lizards run over and no snake sightings.  And despite some lighting off in the distance, there was no rain.  I came back wet, but that was from sweat.  As I was coming back I thought, yes, it's hot and humid but the air sort of hugs you.  And today, after feeling quite sad about my mama, I could use those hugs.  So thank you Universe for sending me an hour of hugs (and less frogs and snakes . . . thank you!!).

I hope my mama feels better tomorrow.   I think she will.  But the upside is, this is why I came . . . just incase she felt sick, there would be someone here to take care of her.

And that's me.

After all the years of care and love she's given me, I'd say this is a pretty good chance to pay some of that back.

Here's to hoping she sleeps through the night . . .

(Update:  It's the next morning and she slept well and is much much better! Wheph!)


Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Forced Frugality

  We are going on ten months of looking for a job.   Last September, after a rather horrid ten months, John got the boot.  It was oddly and rather unfairly done, but a great relief to all of us.  Working at that company had become a puzzle that grew harder and harder each day until it was in fact, impossible.  The stress of it took a wild toll on John's mental and physical health.  By the end, he was neither eating nor sleeping.  He had strange episodes of racing heart and an inability to tell what was real and what was imagined.  I sat him down and told him I would use up every penny of our retirement and sell the house if it meant he could stop working in that environment.  And it may take all that.  And I still won't regret it.   When I feel rather sorry for myself, I remember what life was like for him a year ago and then I don't feel sad that I am once again digging through my closet to find a new way to wear old things.   In fact, there is part of me (small though it
Post a Comment
Read more

The Best Kind of Tired

  My often daily life . . . (John is two feet away—I can’t do all of them by myself) Last week, every single time I sat down, I almost instantly fell asleep.  I kept telling John, I have the sleeping disease.  What is going on?  Am I getting old?  Is it the covid after effects?  What on earth? He didn’t have any answers for me because he was doing the same thing.   We didn’t really do anything for seven days straights.   And our kids joined us in the sleepy, do nothing, lazy slug bug state. It wasn’t until this morning as I was looking over the pictures of the summer that I realized why. . . We literally haven’t stopped ALL summer long—one awesome amazing trip/visit/fun after the other.  It’s like we are making up for last years “staycations.”  Holy hannah have we ever made up for it.  Just about did ourselves in playing and hugging and kissing and caring for babies. Highlights of the summer (in no particular order): Cousin sleepovers have resumed (most missed activity since the pandem
Post a Comment
Read more

Midlife-Cri-sis

It's been a year.   I'll sum it up by saying that food no longer tastes good to me.   The last time that happened, I had lost three pregnancies in a row and John had lost and found a job and we had moved three times. The feeling is very similar.   There have a been a lot of losses or near losses.  Enough that when the phone pings with a text or vibrates with a call (I long ago turned off the ringer), I take a deep breath and think, you can do this .  More times than not, I need that deep breath. I am probably in the second half of my life and I feel it.  47.  My children are nearly grown.  My house is established.  Our bank accounts don't fluctuate like they used to. I don't go to the store and dream of being able to buy things.  I walk into my closet and wonder what I can do without.   I feel the finality of my existence and I wonder . . . what do I really want out of all this?   For book club, we read A Million Miles in a Thousand Years .  It's about re-writing o
Post a Comment
Read more