Visits and Plans

Visits and Plans

Once again it's been way too long since I spent some time on the keyboard and put together another edition of my notoriously intermittent blog. I probably shouldn't even call it a blog anymore. The word blog seems to describe, at least to me, a piece of writing that is frequently written. The term frequently has to be very loosely applied to describe this one. Oh well, for better or worse, let's keep the name and get on with the key-pounding and word-making.

Last Wednesday an dear friend of ours flew back to Ohio from her home in the deserts of Arizona. Sadly, she came back to initiate the process of moving her mother into an assisted care living facility. But before actually starting that process, she has to go through the preceding process of convincing her mom that this procedure is necessary, even vital. Apparently the older woman has fallen down a number of times and has been unable to get back up off the floor. This has necessitated calls to the emergency squad and to other nearby people to lend a hand. The fear, of course, is that she will fall and be unable to summon help. It is no longer a question of if this will happen, only when. It's inevitable. In an assisted living facility this problem would be eliminated. I don't envy Pam this duty she's undertaking. It's can't be easy doing what she has to do. But I agree with her that it's totally necessary, even if very difficult.

Pam took time out from her discussions with her mother and other obligations she needed to take care of to visit us on Sunday. We picked her up at her mom's place in the early afternoon and took her home with us as she had no car this time. We sat and did some old-fashioned visiting for a number of hours, laughing and talking about our lives and what's been happening since the last time we visited with each other. We commiserated on each others aches and pains from the inexorable process of aging and viewed each others battle scars. Pam had made her trip back sans husband this time. He's recuperating from a shoulder surgery and had remained in Arizona. It was a shame as my wife and I liked Ray and missed his company. He's a corker! Pam also is in recovery mode from a recent surgery. Or perhaps I should say surgeries. She's had both knees replaced recently (and a shoulder not that long ago) and is in the middle of the recovery periods for both of them. She is suffering perhaps more than the average recipient of new knees as she also suffers from fibromyalgia and one of the variants of rheumatism. She always impresses me (and did again) with her fighting spirit even though her body is wracked with miseries. Her startlingly blue eyes, always Pam's best feature, seemed to say I may be down for this round, but there's plenty of fight in this old girl! I halfway expected more of a convalescent than what we actually saw. She was surprisingly spry and agile for someone in recovery from her recent episodes with her orthopedic surgeon. Now I surely don't mean she was ready for a marathon. Far from it. But her disposition was totally upbeat. She even surprised us by emphatically stating that she needed to walk that day, for therapy and to maintain the gains she'd made so far, and we acquiesced by strolling around a nearby park for a half hour or so. She did quite well on that hot day and made an entire circuit of the park before finishing.

We were quite proud of her! She was actually in better shape than our poor old dog who suffered greatly from the heat of the day as he walked along with us in the park.

On returning from our perambulations we returned home to our conversations and more catching up. She related more stories about her family and their ups and downs and we reciprocated with some stories of our own. After a while we admitted to ourselves that we were getting hungry, so we drove up to a nice restaurant in town and had an early supper.

And while I was there I had a thought.

Several weeks ago my wife and I had made plans to visit with another couple down in Wheeling, West Virginia at the Casino/Racetrack on Wheeling Island. This would be next Sunday. Since Pam was going to be still in Ohio then, we asked if she'd like to accompany us there. She wasn't sure if she could, but promised to call and let us know later in the week. We made sure she knew that she wasn't obligated to do it. We know her health was a bit iffy and we surely didn't want to overtire her. So we'll see if she can.

Pam has plans to return to Ohio in late August or early September with her husband in their motor home for a longer visit. They intend to finalize her mom's move to the assisted living facility and to take a longer vacation that has been denied them recently by their respective surgeries. So if she cannot join us at the greyhound track this coming Sunday, it's almost a certainty that they will be able to when they return.

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In a little less than two weeks, my wife, my son and myself are planning to take a short trip. When my son was four years old, we took him on his first vacation up to Toronto, Canada. He enjoyed himself immensely as a little kid but remembers little to nothing of it now. So we thought that might make an interesting trip to take again now that he's almost 30. We'll first visit my dear cousin Lorraine up in Canfield, Ohio. She's never seen my son and we're glad we can bring him to see her at last. Then we're planning on visiting Ft. Erie across the Niagara River from Buffalo, watching the ore boats locking through the Welland Canal on the Niagara Peninsula and also visiting one of the premier museums in Canada, the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto. He saw it as a toddler but obviously doesn't remember. I think it'll be cool to see it again, too. Just a 3-night, 4-day trip to visit a friendly relative and our friendly neighbors to the north. Plus to get a change of scenery for us. To maybe blow off a little dust and to stretch our muscles. And of course, as loyal readers of this blog will recall, to find some geocaches in the new states and country we'll be in.

Wish us all luck for the upcoming weeks.