1. I talked to Mom this morning. Carol comes to her room in the morning and has re-established the routines she and Mom had been doing at home: weigh Mom, take her blood pressure, check her oxygen levels, see about her heart rate. Mom's weight looked good. She's definitely expelled excess fluid caused by edema. Her blood pressure (118/74)was the best I can remember for a long time and her heart rate is at a much slower rate than it was last month. Her oxygen levels are very good. From where I sit, it looks like Mom's time at Kindred is helping her. She is back to being able to get out of bed on her own. This is especially important when she's taking the diuretic. I have no measure available to know if Mom is keeping herself hydrated. I know she finds it perplexing that she takes a pill that makes her have to do the hard work of visiting the bathroom more frequently and that, at the same time, shoe needs to be drinking plenty of fluids and staying hydrated.
In her update for today, Carol wrote that in the hour or so before the sun set on Sunday, she and Mom spent some time outside in the sun at Kindred.
2. There is a lot of uncertainty in the Deke's and my life right now regarding just what we are going to do next, once the Deke leaves her job, and with Mom's situation. After a week of medical tests and keeping up on the news about Mom and starting to work out the future with the Deke (everything is still on the table), I had a strong desire for comfort food around lunch time.
I peeled and cut up about six potatoes and boiled the pieces until they were tender. I also chopped up onion, carrot, and celery and sauteed them in a stick of butter. After these vegetables started to tenderize, I poured enough chicken stock over them just to cover them. let the vegetables get more tender, and then poured in the cooked potatoes. I mixed in a quarter cup of flour, stirred it up, and then added three cups of milk. I heated it all up and the Deke and I had comforting bowls of potato soup for lunch.
3. Just before 3 o'clock, the Deke and I piled into the Sube and headed to Takoma Park, suburb about 20-25 minutes away, for a visit to The House of Musical Traditions, a music store filled with accordions, drums, guitars, mandolins, dulcimers, strings, picks, song books, posters advertising shows from the past and events to come -- in other words, for the Deke, this place is heaven. The Deke is getting ready for the July 22nd Babes with Axes concert and needed some picks and strings and stuff. Just five minutes away from this store sits 3 Star Brewing --- a brewery I'd visited once, but the Deke and I hadn't been to together. I sampled three beers in 4 oz glasses and the Deke enjoyed an Imperial Pecan Brown Ale and then, as we are inclined to do, we drove fifteen minutes east to DC Brau and made our regular Sunday appearance for some Wings of Armageddon and some yakkin' with Angela and Mike who were running the tasting room.
Mike has a friend who lives in Glide, OR, and finding this out brought back a flurry of pleasant images of the North Umpqua River, of visiting Clearwater Falls, Watson Falls, and others, of the wild rhodies on the Watson Falls trail, and of the colliding rivers at Glide. It was fun taking a drive in my memory back on Highway 138, one of my favorite stretches of road in the USA.
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