I'm going home!
This
morning I was in that delicious space between thinking about getting up and
actually doing it, when my phone rang. Not a familiar number, so I ignored it,
although it nagged at me. When I turned on my computer, I found that neighbor
Polly Hooper had called because Marissa Shuffield on Weatherbe Street had
posted on her neighborhood listserv (next neighborhood over from ours) that a
Cavalier King Charles Spaniel had wandered into her back yard. Polly was
checking on Jordan’s dogs.
I couldn’t
see how “the girls” could have gotten out, but I texted and called, left a
message. No response, and I figured since we were snowed in, they were sleeping
late. Wrong! Jordan finally called. Their front door blew open in the night
(that alone scares me) and the dogs had wandered. Cricket on her little, short
legs had gone over two long blocks in the cold, on snow-covered ice. When she
called, Jordan had JuneBug and Christian had gone to retrieve Cricket. We are
so grateful to Marissa and Polly—“the girls” are tiny and elderly and things
could have been a lot worse without neighborly intervention."The girls," with Cricket on the left, JuneBug on the right
It was
that kind of a week. I almost had a triple whammy—isolation due to covid
exposure, ice and snow, and no internet. I had been “talking” to ATT all week,
as I posted, and I got truly tired of that mechanical voice telling me to go to
the web site when I had just told him I had no connection! Finally, twice, I
talked to a real person: first one was a girl who said she cleared the connection,
and it should be fine; it was briefly, and then out again. Finally a gentleman believed
me that Smart Home Manager, for a monthly fee, was not going to do it. He would
send a new router. Meantime, I had no Wi-Fi. It’s one thing to be isolated but
quite another to be cut off from what is a rather active internet life. I was
even afraid to write much because my computer gave me dire warnings about not
being able to save. Who want to labor over a scene and then have it disappear
into thin air?
An old
trick surfaced in my mind, and I did a hard boot. Magic! It has worked ever
since with a few brief interruptions that I was able to fix. I decided a hard
boot is like a kick in the pants to the computer.
The
ice and snow were pretty, even if I did feel trapped in a white world. We did
not lose power, but I hear as many as fifty thousand households across Texas
did. When I let Soph out Thursday morning, she left no footprints, so I knew it
was ice and sleet. The snow came mid-morning, beginning with large, wet flakes
and then becoming tiny, wind-blown ones. I’d eyeball it and say we got an inch.
Sophie seemed to like it and spent some time lying on her belly on the patio—I’d
have thought she be freezing, but apparently not.
I bet
half the households in Texas had chili for supper last night. Christian made a
big pot—his chili is always delicious, though he’s constantly looking for new
ways to do it. And Jordan made chocolate chip cookies, so we ate well. The
night before Christian was to be gone, so I planned to make scratch mushroom
soup. But when Jordan heard mushrooms, she asked for stuffed mushrooms the way
her grandmother used to do them. So that’s what she and I had for supper. I’m sure
Jacob fed himself something else. So now I have a half pound of mushrooms left—trying
to decide between a really tiny batch of soup or a frittata. Hemm. There’s that
broccoli in the fridge ….
This
is an important anniversary for me: five years ago today I got to come home
from the rehab unit where I’d gone after my extensive hip surgery. My hip
problem was unorthodox—I don’t think the surgeon had seen it before, and he had
to invent his repair technic. When a nurse wheeled me down the hall people
would look and say, “Oh, you’re ‘the hip.’ Nice to have any kind of fame, I
guess. There was some doubt about the extent of recovery. So I am grateful to Dr.
Jeffrey McGowan, and to the rehab people for all the progress I made, and I am
beyond thankful that I am as mobile as I am (I do need assistance to walk, and
I refer to my walker as my chariot). The people at the rehab facility were
skilled and kind, but I felt like I was in a nursing home like my grandmother
was in when I was a child. I was desperate to be home. So it was a happy day
for me.
Chuckle
for the day: why would someone post a comment on my blog that is a sales pitch
for girls’ hoverboards. Do I look like I would ever get on a hoverboard? I
remember one Christmas when all the grandkids got them, and we adults were in danger
of being run down by an out-of-control hoverboard. But that was years ago, and
I’ve heard nothing about them for a long time.
And
the bright idea of the day: a high school in Arkansas has installed a vending
machine—it dispenses books. A local bookstore keeps it stocked. When the battle
lines over books in schools are so clear, I find this truly cheering.
Hoverboard on blog
Pictures: five years ago, day pass and home from rehab my
beautiful girls
