Waiting for Spring

Destination: Port Angeles

 

It's late April and we are still freezing out here, but the bummer is that we can't even complain about it!  No way, not when my family in the Midwest is still having school cancelled because of snow!  At least the rain doesn't have to be shoveled.

 

A few weeks ago Aaron took the whole weekend off to attend an important artist workshop. Then at the last minute the class was cancelled.  What to do, what to do???  Aaron said he could just offer to work and I told him to hush with the crazy-talk (the lack of sun has affected his thinking).  Instead, I split from work at the first available opportunity and we met at the ferry dock on a Friday afternoon and ran away to Port Angeles for a two-night get-away. 

 

Waiting for our ride out of town.

 

It was a quick cure to the cabin fever and we had an absolutely wonderful time!  Turns out there's quite an arts community in Port Angeles, which is near the entrance to the Olympic National Park.  We took a long walk through "Webster's Woods" a 5 acre sculpture park, just packed with really cool installations everywhere we looked.  We were constantly surprised, "Hey!  look up there!...whoa, check this out!"  Most of the pieces were really site specific (colored pins stuck into tree trunks in funky ways to look like growths, mirrors hanging up in branches to give specific reflections...), but some of them were more of the "professional" type.  This cool Pi sculpture is by Micajah Bienvenu (www.artmb.com).   Aaron recogonized it instantly because Micajah was one of the speakers at the Seattle Metals Guild lecture series he organized back in 2008.



I like pi.

Port Angles can pride itself on the nicest customer service around.  It was definitely "small town" in the best sense of the words.  We saw a waitress hugging every customer who came or went.  At one breakfast I spilled my tea (I'm good for that sort of clutz move) and as I was dabbing it up with my napkin a waitress showed up with new napkins, a towel, and new tea all at once.  She said, "Don't you worry dear... if you don't make a mess, I don't have a job."  Well!  Aaron would say she found her dream customer.

Possibly the best part of whole trip was living without a TV. We listened to the frogs, watched the stars in the dark sky, and cuddled up and read books together. It's only been a few weeks, but we're ready to go again and highly recommend Port Angeles!

Hiking in Olympic National Park.

Go Mariners!

Five years ago Aaron mustered up the nerve to ask the question he knew the answer to.  As tradition holds we considered the baseball home opener, "Anniversary Observed".  It was one of the funnest baseball openers we've attended in a while AND the Mariner's won. We had a GREAT time with our other baseball friends stopping by to say hi throughout the evening.

Check out the GIANT new video screen!  It's something like 150 feet long and 50 feet high!  Biggest in baseball!  At least were the best at something...

Cookies and Ice Cream = Speedy Recovery

And then there's 100 year old Grandma Elsie.  Last week I got a call from Nurse Sue at work.   She says that grandma has broken her hip.  My heart sank.  I almost instantly thought, "Oh.  This is how it's going to end..."  Nurse Sue gives me what little information she has and asks if I want grandma transported to the ER.  I consented and immediately started working the phone to make sure Andy and Mary knew what's going on.  Without typing out every last detail...Andy meets her at the ER and that's really where our story begins.

Grandma Elsie when she was just 95.

The doctors ask, "Elsie, does your leg hurt?"
Grandma, "No"
The doctors ask again, "Elsie does your leg hurt?"
Grandma, "Nope."
Doctors lift back the blanket and lightly touch her toe and grandma yells out in pain.
Doctors leave.
Andy leans over and wispers, "Grandma, does your leg hurt?"
Grandma, "Oh yes...it hurts bad!"

They decided that there is no choice - we have to do surgery.  This sounds like risky business to me and Andy, but we know it's the only way we can make grandma feel better.

Grandma gets prescribed all the pain meds she wants. 

Next morning, Andy invites grandma's 95-year old brother to visit her.  I make sure he tells her that we love her. Then she heads to surgery.  We wait.  And, if I'm honest about it, I'm bracing myself for the next phone call and I'm trying to tell myself there are worse ways to go than when you're asleep.... whatever...you can tell yourself that all day long, but when it's all said-and-done, it's grandma Elsie we're talking about and it's too hard to think about it.

Andy calls and texts a variety of messages over the next four hours that go something like this:
Grandma just left for surgery.  No change in plan.  Should be a couple of hours.
She's in recovery.  Everything went as planned except no anasthesia.  They gave her a spinal instead.  Grandma was AWAKE for surgery.  (Seriously?  Seriously!)
Grandma is heading back to her room.
Eating cookies and ice cream.

WHAT?  Does he mean he's eating cookies and ice cream?  Um.  No, he doesn't.

Nurse tells Grandma to pick a clear liquid for dinner: beef broth or 7-up?  Grandma says, "I want cookies".  The nurse starts to read the list of clear liquids to pick from, "Cookies!" she demands and apparently grandma must have been yelling.  A short time later another nurse walks in with cookies and ice cream, "When you're 100 you can have whatever you want."  We couldn't agree more!  Four hours after surgery, grandma was eating cookies and ice cream.  Aaron is so, SO proud to be related to grandma Elsie.

Grandma continues a steady stream of pain-killers and dessert and drifts off to sleep.  Andy curls up on the hospital couch.  It's a slumber party...and apparently the Respiratory Guy wants in on the action.  A little after midnight he wakes grandma up.  She's NOT HAPPY (and neither am I when people wake me up at midnight...um, Aaron).  He wants her to breathe into the little tube that makes the balls bounce up and down.  I'm sure the point is to ward off pneumonia, but grandma isn't interested.  I sense she might have been a tiny bit hostile about it...and looped up on drugs. She leans back, closes her eyes and then out of nowhere just starts to belt out the national anthem.  "Oh say caaan yoooou seeeeeee?"  The respiratory guy looks at Andy and says, "well, that's probably more lung exercise than we were going to get any other way." He makes a check on her chart and leaves.

Andy spends another day with her and then heads home.  On the fourth day, I call the nurses station, "She's doing fine...but she doesn't really eat her food.  She just eats cookies...".  I confirm that this is normal.

She just looks so tiny in her hospital nest of blankets.

And then as fast as all started, it was over.  They sent her back to the nursing home and in less than a week she was back in her own bed at the nursing home.  No special skilled nursing care, just back in her old routine...skipping her meals, eating her cookies.

Mary tells me she hasn't looked this good in a long time, proving cookies and ice cream are medicinal.

Amazing.

 



Mid-morning dessert.  (Aaron calls these "elevenzies".)