Finally

Finished the laundry and we made his bed. Now I'm in my bed listening to the Bastille station on Pandora, specifically The Lumineers' 'Cleopatra' under the two fans. I got a lot accomplished. Also, I made my friend's mom's day by bringing over the big basket of purple petunias he'd sent me out for. She's said she wanted to adopt me. It made the fact that my own mom and grandmothers are gone seem a little less sad.

Heading towards sleep now, a couple of hours late by my timeline, but hey, it'll work. Good night.

It is a pleasant morning

I am almost ready to begin my chores, which I'm dreading a bit because the air conditioning is not working.  So we have the windows open and it's 77 degrees right now inside and perfectly fine under the ceiling fan at the moment, but that's going to change, as it'll be pushing 90 this afternoon.

I awoke to birds chirping and plenty of sunshine coming through my windows.  I've had a shower and am in the minimum acceptable clothes (denim shorts and a light blouse I usually wear a tank top under but I'm choosing to forego that today, as there are solid panels in all the important places).

As my agenda states, I have a full day planned.  I want to get my hair cut; it's atrocious and it's been more than six months.  I'm thinking of a short layered bob.  Also, a friend who is homebound right now with cancer asked me to pick out a hanging basket of petunias for his mom yesterday for Mother's Day, so I did so and will deliver it when they're up and ready, around noon.

There's the normal Sunday chores to do, laundry (mine and YKIWA's, and that includes his bedding), and helping him apply for a part-time job at the public library and applying for two jobs at the University of Kentucky for me.  One of them was the one, reposted, that I terribly flubbed the phone interview on last year.  I'm hoping they'll give me another chance.  I'd tried to do it on my lunch break surrounded by distractions, and it didn't go well.  But it is in my field of health science librarianship, I would do a good job, and I'm very qualified.  I'm just terrified of interviews, at least ones that are by committee.  I do fine one-on-one, and can teach one-on-one, in small groups, and larger ones.  But being grilled by 3-5 people, whether on the phone or in person, flummoxes me.  This is ultimately why I didn't finish my graduate studies in ancient, mediaeval, and early modern history.  Thank goodness the library science master's degree didn't require an oral defence.  But I am going to apply again anyway.  The other one I may get dinged on because I haven't been in an academic library setting in some time, and while I was trained by the best for the job, I don't have a lot of professional-level experience in aspects of it.  Again, I can do the job, and I think I would be good at it, but it would mean changing things back to what I trained for rather than what I've been doing for 20 years.  But I'm up for it.

Okay, the cat boxes aren't going to clean themselves.  One more review of the timeline/agenda, and I'm ready to go.  Have a great day, including a great Mother's Day (I'm a little sad this year, as I have neither mother nor grandmother to give flowers to and spend time with).  So I'll try to use this opportunity to get some things accomplished.

Happy Mother's Day, Momma

My mother and I, circa 1970.

A candle for my mother, may she rest in peace.

I actually read last night, and finished a book

that I'd just been on chapter three when I started. It's The Paper Magician by Charlie N. Holmberg, and it was an excellent light read, and exactly what I needed while recovering from this crud. This afternoon I went to the library and picked up the other two in the series. A little while ago, out of curiosity, I looked to see how much they were on Amazon, and while the paperbacks are quite inexpensive, the Kindle series (all three books) was only $4.05. So I got them on that, because I decided it would be better to hoard electronic books rather than paper ones. :) But really, I want to read the next one, The Glass Magician tonight. I'll read the physical book, as it brings me a bit more pleasure to turn the pages, then take the others back to the library so someone else can enjoy them, and finish up the series on the Kindle with The Master Magician.

I took A to work early this morning, after calling him to wake him up (but he went back to bed), but we got there just in time. That was 8 am. Then I got home and proceeded to sleep until about 11:30 am, and YKWIA called (he'd just gotten up again, too), to see if I could run to the store for a couple of things, that turned into a fairly good-sized grocery run, involving two stores (why are pearl onions suddenly impossible to find?) Then I got back and we watched a couple of episodes of 'Trial & Error' on Hulu (which is hilarious, and expiring, so while he's seen them all, we've got about half left for me to watch in about 11 days. But they're short.)

I came home, rested for about an hour (I didn't actually go to sleep, and I'm only tired because of the crud, but I took some medicine and listened to some music for awhile). I finally started to drift off, but the music was rather peppy, so I got up and excavated approximately half of the bedroom this evening. I have three tubs on the bed--recyclables, dirty clothes, clothes that are clean but need pressing, and then I've folded some of the cold-weather stuff I haven't been wearing that need to be put away and they're piled between the tubs. I also have a pile of bedding (there are a lot of pillows and a very warm comforter that came with my 'bed in a bag', and I can't sleep with all of them on the bed at night time).

I have a few other things to go through, some books stacked, a couple of loose piles of things, and such, but I made quite a bit of progress. Tomorrow I can launder the dirty clothes. I can press the ones that need it, and hang up the ones in the hang up pile. The cold-weather things are going to be put away into some easy-open tubs I have, and stored in the bottom of one of the bedroom closets. A few things need to be put away in the chest-of-drawers. The last couple of things I should do tonight, and move the tubs off the bed, and then I'll be able to sleep. I'm not finished in there tonight, yet. I just got overly hot and had to sit under the fans for a bit. I hate how tired I feel, and how winded I get whenever I try to do anything. I still cough a lot.

When I got home, I watered the outside plants and deadheaded the spent blooms. They're growing nicely. I also watered everything inside as well. I was supposed to do that yesterday, and didn't. Just like today or yesterday I should have done a water change for the fish tank of about 10-15% of the water. I'll try to do that tomorrow. The fish seem happy, at least, and I have done it weekly for a couple of weeks since everything was set back to full-functionality.

It's almost dark. I can't really celebrate mother's day, but I thought I'd light a candle for my mom tonight and let it burn for awhile. I'm thinking of her, anyway. I miss her. We didn't always have the best of relationships, and once upon a time we were too close, really, but I miss her nonetheless.

Okay, I guess it's back to work on the bedroom. I'll have to switch Pandora back to the bedroom TV. Good night.

One last thing

My mom gave me this bear back on Christmas of 2007 (I know because the year is on his foot). It's always been good for a cuddle. I didn't expect to be going into mother's day with such a sense of loss at her passing. But I miss my mom. I decided the bear should have a name, finally. I decided on Pip, because my mom was Phyllis, with Phyl as her nickname, and Phil, short for Philip, is the male equivalent, and as anyone who had read Great Expectations know, Pip is another nickname for Philip. It's roundabout, but there you go. So this mother's day I'll think of good times and cuddle Pip, and be glad that at least my mom is at peace and no longer in pain.

I was feeling oddly awake after my time over at my friends' house

but now I think I'm going to crash soon after all. I spent a good deal of the day there, culminating in an episode of 'Salem', and had a good visit.

I talked to my mom today, who hasn't gotten my card yet (I sent it Thursday, and really thought it was enough time to go 35 miles away, but sadly, no.) My aunt and uncle will both be in this week so I'm going to try to take at least part of Thursday off to go visit them, my mom, and my grandmother. I'm looking forward to seeing everyone.

Tomorrow the plan is to work more on the house, especially the kitchen, bath, and dining room. I'll be sending Philomena back to Netflix tomorrow, and I'd like to have the house ready so A can watch his Bette Davis movies. YKWIA doesn't care for her, so we'll be watching at my house. :)

Okay, that's all for now. I must get up early tomorrow for work, so even though I'm still a bit restless, it's time to move the fan back to the bedroom, plug the phone in to charge, and head to bed. Good night.

Best mother's day card ideas ever....

Got this via a roundabout way, thanks to George Takei's Facebook page. If I were a mom, I would love these. I'm not sure about my own mother, although she braved the moveis long before I did. Suffice to say...go to the page, click on the pictures to enlarge, and enjoy. And I love that George Takei captioned the second one, 'In space, no one can hear mom squee.' The man has a sense of humour. I hope I'm as funny when I'm his age. Hey, I'd just be happy to live to be his age.

Happy Mother's Day

A devoted mother, a shattered son

After a Baghdad bullet, a mother's love: Mom turns home into ICU to care for severely wounded soldier son

Joseph Briseno Jr., Eva's 27-year-old son, is one of the most severely wounded soldiers ever to survive. A bullet to the back of his head in a Baghdad marketplace in 2003 left him paralyzed, brain-damaged and blind, but awake and aware of his condition.

Eva takes care of "Jay" in her suburban Virginia home where the family room has been transformed into an intensive care unit, with the breathing machine and tubes he needs to stay alive.

Try to imagine this life.

Each day starts with two hours of bowel care, an ordeal as awful as it sounds. She labors over his body, brushing his teeth, suctioning fluid from his lungs, exercising his limp arms and legs, and turning him every other hour to prevent bedsores.

She sleeps a few hours at a time, when the schedule says it is her turn, often slumped in exhaustion by his side.

She has been out to dinner with her husband, Joseph Sr., once in seven years.

She could have a better life if she put Jay in a nursing home. Or if she went back to using the home health care nurses the government provided. But one looked indifferently without wiping Jay's mouth when he drooled. Others fell asleep on the night shift, inattentive while Jay suffered seizures.

Kudos to the Brisenos, although I fear they're taking a tremendous toll on their own health and well-being. But at least their son is surrounded by those who love him.

Happy Mother's Day!

From the folks at JibJab.com:

Much better

After some rest and a nice shower, my aches have eased up quite a bit. Maybe I'm not getting old after all, just middle-aged. :)

Today is Mother's Day and I need to remember to call my mom, which means I need to set my alarm for the time after she's awake and before she's at work, which is always a little tricky. Today's the game so that's why it's best I set the alarm.

For all those mothers out there, here's to your day--I'm not sure I could do what you do. Sometimes people assume because I'm in my 40s that I am a mother, but I don't feel badly that I'm not. I don't have the stability in my life for a child, and I'm not sure I'd make a good mom anyway, despite good intentions. So maybe it's just better that I haven't had kids.

Okay, I'm going to stop and get some breakfast and then head over for game prep after I feed the fish and take my medicine. Hope you have a good day.

Nifty

At work I bought a fountain drink, a refill, and a protein bar, all of which had bonus points to my rewards card, and on the last purchase I got a coupon for a free drink and had enough points for a $25 gift card, so I turned in the points and went ahead and got the card. Yay! Free gas/food!

Of course, I'd already filled up today, thinking it the price might go up this morning. It was almost $40. That's about what I pay once a week. The price actually went down (I think it's $2.79 right now). But when it was up over $3 I was lucky enough to have a gas certificate worth 5 gallons for making our selling points quota.

All in all it's been a decent day. It was quiet at the hospital (there's a lecture series going on, so no clinic) and I did a lot of interlibrary loaning. Then I went to Meijer to get a bra and a notebook and wound up with two notebooks (one for me, one for the game), a bra, Mother's Day cards for my mom and grandmother, and two purses (it was buy one get one free). The purse I bought was $17 and the bra was only $14--I expected it to be twice that, so it all evened out. It was truck night at the gas station so I worked my butt off, but didn't have to do register on the new software yet--that's saved for Saturday. Then I went to Kroger and bought dog food, sourdough bread, havarti cheese, and a vanilla/orchid body wash. Cerys and I are enjoying the bread (and I let her have a smidge of the cheese) right now.

Well, that's it. I still have a dog to take out, notes to do, a prescription to phone in, wine to buy, a friend to pick up, and an offering to give due to last week's woeful unpreparedness/loss of what wine I had. I still have no idea where it went.

Good night. I might blog later but I'll have to see how tired I am. Take care.