No visits, boo hoo! - May 13-19/24

Monday, May 13th

M‘s mom, my mom's best friend, got COVID, so the two people who bring Humphrey to me were not able to visit as neither would pass the questionnaire at the entrance. I was left to wile away the day doing whatever the heck I wanted. My default is doing puzzles and watching shows. I got caught up on the HBO shows I hadn't been watching. I love me some John Oliver. I forgot to call the place that makes heavy-duty mounts, as I want to look into seeing if they have something that can mount on the bed rail instead of the floor. The floor mount I have now is good, but it loosens easily and needs to be tightened frequently. We shall see.

Tuesday, May 14th

I really have been wanting to watch Baby Reindeer on Netflix so I did! It is intense in parts but very good. I also finished the current season of The Circle, which is not a great show, but I seem to be a sucker for reality shows. Then I watched the first three episode of Everybody's in LA. Netflix really wants to create shows that can only be seen on Netflix. It got better as it went on. Today was a lot of nothing, and I forgot to call mom again, so I will tomorrow morning. I had leftovers from Sunday’s dinner, which were very, very good!

Wednesday, May 15th

My CNA was S, who is very good and remembers things, but can also be a little bit stuck in her ways. We had a nice, thorough shower with consistently warm water! And then she told me about a music app which seems like a legal version of Napster. I am sure it's different in many essential ways. It has a very specialized search engine for music.

I was jonesing for some Erasure after The Circle, which loves 80s pop, used a few minutes of one of their songs. Then I remembered a song I had found years ago when the sister of my good friend had been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and died in five or six months. And she was exactly my age. Devastating. This was an upbeat song about starting your life and not knowing where you will be going. The mood I was in when I heard it fit perfectly with my friend‘s sister's death. All I remembered was the name, "The Great Unknown." I put that into the search and it turns out there are a great many songs with that title. Just to be safe, I listened to a few seconds of each song just to make sure it was not the one I was looking for. 2 1/2 pages of songs later, I found it! It was the video for the song which ruined my conception of what the lyrics meant. See what you think.

Thursday, May 16th

My therapist ended up helping me with the new iPad for half of our session. Not the best use of her time, certainly, but I guess nothing was going on with me that I needed to discuss. A was still in Germany and mom had been exposed to COVID, so she couldn't visit. This really was a week of being by myself. I had asked my pastor if he could stop by yesterday, but he was off island. Oh, well. I can do fine by myself. I still have the third season of Ted Lasso to finish.

Friday, May 17th

Today was exciting because I had a doctors appointment to go to. I was finally going to see the neuro-ophthalmologist that my old neurologist had recommended to me. I forget why we didn't, but anyway, it was happening today. I had a flash of worry that my chair had somehow not been charged when I knew it had. It was. I got in it and had a quick lunch before mom came up and got me and brought me down to the taxi.

The doctor was very nice and he ended up concluding that since I could see fine close, I didn't need to change my prescription or get new glasses. I am glad that I can see him for my annual visits. I had made my return pick up for later than we needed but I had learned in my years of scheduling buses that I would rather wait a bit then not have enough time for the appointment.

Mom's first reaction was to see if we could call and move the pick up time earlier. I knew we could not and anyway, I like having an extra hour of time in the real world before I have to go back to the hospital. So we went down to the café and I got a bowl of seafood chowder and a bag of Funyuns. Mom had thought we would eat that now until I said I wanted to take it back to the hospital. I had just had lunch and was not hungry, whereas mom was. I chuckled as mom was forced to buy a sandwich that she only ate half of. When we got back, mom gave me some of the chowder with the fish from the hospital’s meal for dinner. Yummy!

Saturday, May 18th

My sister came by after going to WF and getting sushi along with a treat from the clearance section. It was the health food version of Reese's pieces and it was very good! She helped me with a bunch of chores and we got some good things done. We also talked a little bit about how she was thinking about when mom was gone. Ideally, she would work less so that she could do what mom was doing for me. While I would love to see more of her, I don't know how I feel about her changing her life to be able to visit me more. Anyway, the sushi was really, really good!

Sunday, May 19th

Mom came by after church with a bunch of clothes and washcloths that we had weeded through last Sunday. This was from when I had packed up all my stuff in Maui. I love having mom visit, but she and I butt heads a lot. Or we misinterpret what the other person means to say or, worst of all, we assume we know what the other person is or is about to say. So our time together can be very frustrating. Mom said she read the Hole in the Floor essay and that she was open to talking about death, all I had to do was ask. Really? Are you sure? Because I remember, it wasn't until 15 years after the divorce that we talked about that. Mom's deflections are so ingrained she does not notice them.

More and more, I spend entire days, like this one, not watching anything at all. I spent a good hour or two deleting photos from the Apple Photos app, as I was getting tired of seeing the notice that I was almost out of iCloud Storage. That's because you are saving photos that I already have saved in Google Photos. Bastard Apple. I'm not happy with my corporate overlord. But I do love their voice control!

I meant to take a photo when I went to the hospital or clinic last Friday. The grounds are nice and green with tropical plants. I always forget! This photo is me just after I got off the taxi after coming back to the hospital on Friday afternoon.

Have a great week!