Make it do

Recent Mom art

I went Saturday. Mom had already been to art, and I attended the baking session with her. There were about eight of us there. Mostly we all watched while Hildur, the new activity woman, from Iceland, made a kind of quesadilla, with two big tortillas sandwiched together with a filling of Brie cheese, apple slices, walnuts, brown sugar and cinnamon, with a little squiggle of caramel syrup on top. It was all heated up in a kind of toaster she had brought. Pretty darn good.

Mary -- a different Mary -- told us about her husband's saying:

Eat it up

Wear it out

Make it do

Do without

Katherine said she had heard the last line, "Throw it out." So we debated that. I see online that the first line could be, maybe better, "Use it up." But we were eating the enchiladas, so we were eating it up. 

Mom does art pretty well, I think. This one, above, is her own work. Sometimes they do art by everybody starting with a blank page, doing something on it, then rotating the pages around the table, creating a set of community pages.

She has her obdurate moments. Sunday, at church, I was pushing her forward (in wheelchair) for communion, and she kept grabbing the pews as we passed and holding on. I couldn't figure out what she wanted. Did she not want communion? Hard to imagine. So I would lift her arm off the pew and put it in her lap. Finally, about after about five of these, I hissed, "What are you doing?"  

She grew quiet. Sullen, I think. And of course I felt bad. We got a brownie after church, which I cut up and saturated in coffee, and fed to her little by little. "That is so good," she said. Nothing like a brownie to bind the wounds.

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Going on a big bike ride next week, and I'm so excited.

Mom and Betty at Singalong

Ain't it pretty

Forth and back

Sister S, descending

Long time, no write. It's hard to say, "No change" in a way that's interesting. On the other hand, there have been small events.

Mom has fallen twice in recent weeks. Both of them out of bed -- she wakes, thinks she can get to the bathroom, and goes down. She's wearing bandages on her hand now and has a scrape on her knee from her most recent fall, about a week ago.

Also, she was moved temporarily to a different room while her own room was fumigated for bedbugs. Her clothes were hither and yon, her shoes lost for a time, and it was pretty disorienting. Finally they brought in a sniffer dog, a bedbug specialist, who declared the coast was clear. It was a beagle, like our old dog Herman on Newport Road, who pretty much lived through his nose.

Mom is lucid at moments, is better for special company, but mostly when I see her she is hard to understand. She speaks very quietly, and is constantly starting thoughts that she is unable to finish. Some seem very urgent, and I say "What? What?" but it never comes through.

She eats well, but is losing weight.

Meanwhile, the rest of us have played some. I went to Frankfort with Sisters S and K and their husbands, and had a real nice week. We hiked in the dunes (above), ate and drank, and I biked. I met up with a friend there and we rode M-22, surely the Midwest's best biking road. Two days later I went to pick him up for another ride, and he'd been hospitalized with a stroke. That's how old we are. He has, thankfully, made a full recovery.

Sophisticated Ladies
(S and K)

Genealogy sidetrip to Alpena

The Olson church in Spruce