monique

Woolgathering
2004-09-26 13:54:52 (UTC)

My Day

It was a cloudy and cool autumn day so John and I spent it
doing yard work. The Beaver boys went to the coast with my
Dad and my sister and had a wonderful day while we slaved
away. Well, not really. It's nice to spend time working
side by side with John and seeing something beautiful and
productive come from it. I guess that could be a metaphor
for marriage.

John's mother phoned to tell us his father was discharged
from the hospital Thursday evening and is now home again.
He's apparently eating well enough and his physical
condition improved enough so that his physician felt
comfortable with letting him go home. John's mother
talked about how depressed he was and when I asked what his
doctor had said about it she seemed surprised and didn't
answer but when I talked to her again this afternoon she
mentioned that she'd just gone to the drug store to pick up
prescriptions for him and one was an anti-depressant. I've
realized John's mother doesn't communicate as much as she
probably should with the doctors and doesn't know what
questions to ask or how to advocate. These are skills I had
to learn when Hugh was born with a heart defect so I'm
trying to gently teach them to her a bit at a time.

We were going to visit John's parents Friday evening but
John had to work late so we postponed it to today.
After cleaning up from doing yard work we were getting
ready to leave the phone rang. It was John's mother telling
us they were at the Chinese restaurant but they would be
home in a little while. That worked well for us as we had
to stop and get a tire for the garden tractor repaired.

The tire repair place had only a few magazines to look at
while we waited. John saw I was looking at a photo of a
very young George and Laura Bush in an old Newsweek and said
that he and George had something in common. "What?" I
asked. "Well, just look at Laura." he replied. I looked at
the photo. "You think I look like Laura Bush?" I asked,
confused. He looked at me with a very serious look and
replied "George and I both married beautiful dark haired
women who've never realized they are beautiful". That was so
sweet.

We drove up to John's parents house just as they arrived
home which worked out well. I'd brought pumpkin pie,
applesauce cake, chicken and rice soup with vegetables and
diced chicken with gravy. John's mother looked a little
confused about that last one so I said she could use it to
make hot chicken sandwiches by heating it in the microwave
and serving it over bread. "Oh! That's easy!" she said.
That was the idea, to make things that could be eaten as is
or just reheated in the microwave.

Tomorrow I'll need to bring boys back to Corvallis so we'll
probably do a little shopping and stop by the library to see
if any more books we have on reserve have come in.




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